"Sputtering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ones. I wonder what the plague can keep him so long; he must have been gone an hour. There, steady, steady, old horse. Confound this weed! What rascals these tobacconists are! You never can get a cheroot now worth smoking. Every one of them goes sputtering up the side, or charring up the middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre and tobacco juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Adelaide represent that all the taste and skill was in the laying out the leaves, and pinning them down, and that anyone could put on the ink; in vain did Mary represent the dirtiness of the work: this was the beauty of it in her eyes; and the sight of the black dashes sputtering through the comb filled her with emulation; so that she entreated, almost piteously, to be allowed to "do" an ivy loaf, which she had hastily, and not very carefully, pinned out with Mary's assistance—that is, she ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time, the maid-servant filled the pan with milk and set it over the fire to heat it for the children's supper. She had scarcely done this, though, when there was a great sizzling and sputtering, and the milk was burned so badly that not even ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... sank when it was seen that the chief neither held out his hand nor moved from his seat. Silver-Tongued and sunny-hearted, the Jarl's son was well-beloved. There was a long pause, in which there was no sound but the crackling of flames and the loud sputtering of fat. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... gorge in front of us the Mexicans suddenly checked their horses, bringing them plunging on their haunches in the dust, and then swung round upon their pursuers, while from every crag and bush at the side of the gorge the concealed riflemen sprang into view—and the sputtering of the machine guns swept the advancing column with ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... removed, it leaves a gate for the metal. Pour melted lead into the gate until it is full, then, when cool, shake it out from the sand and remove the charred paper. A file can be used to remove any rough places. The dry paper ball prevents any sputtering of the hot lead. —Contributed by W. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... and struck a match on his sleeve, but it broke short off at the head, and the sputtering sulphur dropped into the stream and was quenched. He struck another, this time with success. He saw the heading; the way was clear; and he started on, holding one hand out before him, touching at frequent intervals the lower wall of ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... went through the Hampton Wick coverts without hanging a moment, just throwing the hounds for two minutes off their scent at the gravel pits. The check was very useful to Tony, who had got his second horse and came up sputtering, begging the field for G—'s sake to be,—in short to be anywhere but where they were. Then they were off again down the hill to the left, through Mappy springs and along the top of Ilveston copse, every yard of which is ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of the jungle. Piang attempted to guide them across, but he walked into the water and sank from sight, and there was a cry of horror, for it seemed that one of the many crocodiles had dragged him under. When he came up sputtering and splashing, none the worse for his dip, he chided them for their little faith and pointed significantly to his charm. He had miscalculated in the blackness of the night and could not locate the ford. A drizzling rain was still falling; great hairy-legged ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... kind of museum. Cocher stopped at the door, and we heard a general sputtering of gutturals between him, W., and G., he telling them something about Luther. I got it into my head that the manuscript of Luther's Bible was inside; so I rushed forward. It was the public library. A colossal statue of Goethe, by ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... movement by a lurch to starboard that carried away the lashings of the chair; and, in an instant she and the steward and stewardess, along with Master Negus, were rolling to leeward on the floor amongst the dunnage, the whole quartette sputtering and splashing in the sea-water, and vainly endeavouring for some time to rise, for the "Major," first clutching one and then the other as they were scrambling to their legs, hampered their efforts without improving her own position ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... The sputtering was not yet loud enough for the warriors on the bank to hear it, and he ventured to rise high enough for another look over the edge of the canoe. In two minutes, he calculated, the fire would reach the ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were the backbone of the team, and many a new trick in the game was invented by one of them as they sat together in the autumn nights over the sputtering lamp. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... weak and sputtering so on account of his lungs being all filled with smoke, that he couldn't shout and after a while he drifted up on the bar near Second Bend. Then he got the dugout set right side up on the mud while he bailed it out by splashing in it with his hands and afterwards ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... morning, it was broad day. He felt so stiff and ill he could scarcely move, and with difficulty made his way to the room below. The old woman was at the stove, frying some sputtering pork, and its rank odor was most repulsive to the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... finally, the roll off into dim distance of the splendid vehicle, watched by the crowd that have gathered round it, till it is lost from their sight. A steam-coach, with its disgusting, hissing, sputtering, shapeless, lifeless engine, ought to be ashamed of itself, and would probably blush for its appearance, if it were not for the quantity of brass that goes to its composition. On the above-mentioned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... more than thirty feet from the fire. Bruce was washing his hands in a canvas basin. Langdon was mopping his face with a towel. Close to the fire Metoosin was kneeling, and from the big black skittle he was holding over the coals came the hissing and sputtering of fat caribou steaks, and about the pleasantest smell that had ever come Muskwa's way. The air all about him was heavy with the aroma ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... coarse butterless bread tasted good. As they grew more awake they began to wonder how the coffee had been made, but the mystery was soon explained, for at a short distance a fire of leaves and branches was burning brightly with a kettle sputtering merrily in the middle. And round the fire Mick and his wife and big Tony were sitting or lying, each with food in their hands; while a little nearer them Tim was pulling another ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... down in safety and came up into the second saal to watch the course of events. Hagen gave a fearful groan as a shell broke into the kitchen behind us, and, bursting in the centre of the stove, sent his chefs-d'oeuvre of cookery sputtering in all directions. He gave a still deeper groan as another shell crashed into the principal dining-room and knocked the long table, laid out as it was for the marriage-feast, into a chaos of splinters, tablecloth, and knives and forks. The Restauration ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... a kind of a lamp out on the floor beyond, and it burned with a sputtering and a hissing and a roaring, and it threw a big bluish kind of a flame straight out, like ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... windows of which the occupants could look in upon us, if they had cared to do so; but they did not. They seem little interested in anything; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. Below is a wine-shop, with a little side booth, in which some German travelers sit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The inn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; but away above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope, with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles. Stalden is high, but the hill ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... voice, the baby began to howl, dissatisfied with its nourishment. The little girl shrugged. "Il est toujours en colere," she muttered. The woman turned it around with difficulty—it seemed a big, heavy baby, but white and sickly—and gave it the other breast. It began sucking her noisily, rooting and sputtering as if it were famished. It was too painful, it was almost indecent, to see this exhausted woman trying to feed her baby. Claude beckoned his men away to one side, and taking the little girl by the hand drew her ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... sputtering to the floor of the cave, having been knocked from the hand of Hank when the wolf struck him heavily. He could be heard trying to rescue it before it went completely out, all the while letting off a volley of whoops ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... into the circle, placed a fire cracker in the grass, and lit it. But, with the first sputtering of its fuse, the old negress clasped him to her breast and rushed out of harm's way. It was not an exhibition of which a Fearless Firer might have been proud, nor did the screams of laughter greeting it serve to palliate his anger. But it was neither fun nor anger with Aunt Timmie. Her mind ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... blazed with a little sputtering roar. Nagger snorted. "Wildfire!" exclaimed Slone. That word was a favorite one with riders, and now Slone used it both to call out his menace to the stallion and to express his feeling for that ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... already on the fire, supported by two stones. It was steaming and sputtering. Then, for the first time, she observed that Janus Grubb was nowhere in sight. Harriet got up and tip-toed softly to the edge of the cliff, where she lay down flat, peering over. At first she saw nothing of interest; ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... go down and get your breakfast. No more waffles, tell Aunt Jemima. Bring the pipes over here and throw on another log... that's right." A great sputtering of sparks followed—a spider-legged, mahogany table was wheeled into place, and the dejected darky left the room for the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... . Many a Time and oft have Charles Diodati and I discust fond Legends, such as this, over our Winter Hearth; with our Chestnuts blackening and crackling on the Hob, and our o'er-ripe Pears sputtering in the Fire, while the Wind raved without among the creaking ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... with an automatic hatred—the hatred of the well-fed for the starved, of the warlike for the weak. When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, your black, black beard, from your white teeth. With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals. You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be of ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... argument cut society in half. Learned doctors battled in the columns of scientific journals. Businessmen dictated sputtering letters to their secretaries. Housewives wrote newspapers or argued heatedly in the cornergrocery. Radiocommentators cautiously skirted the edge of controversy and more than one enthusiast had to be warned by his sponsor. Fistfights ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of headache. It reminded her how little work she had done to-day; she must, she must force herself to think of the task in hand. A machine has no business to refuse its duty. But the pages were ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the French approach the ruined house and, appropriating what wood is still left there, heap it by the roadside and set it alight. A mixed rain and snow falls, and the sputtering flames throw ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... burn the candle to the stick, The sputtering socket yields but little light. Long life is sadder than an early death. We cannot count on raveled threads of age Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use The warp and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a start and looked into the sputtering glare of a torch. Its light wove across the crags and gullies of the troll-wife's face and shimmered wetly off the ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... punishment, and principles—and the Principal—forbade noisy upbraidings. And so with long, strange words, to supply the element of dread uncertainty, she began to speak, slowly and coldly as one ever should when addressing ears accustomed to much sputtering profanity. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... or keeping Mr. Rossitur company down stairs,—Fleda was carefully roasting some of the same oysters for Hugh's supper. She had spread out a glowing bed of coals on the hearth, and there lay four or five of the big bivalves, snapping and sputtering in approbation of their quarters in a most comfortable manner; and Fleda standing before the fire tended them with a double kind of pleasure. From one friend, and for another, those were most odorous oysters. Hugh sat watching them and her, the same ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... there[24] Pallas tripp'd him. Ordure foul His mouth, and ordure foul his nostrils fill'd. 970 Then brave Ulysses, first arriving, seized The cup, and Ajax took his prize, the ox. He grasp'd his horn, and sputtering as he stood The ordure forth, the Argives thus bespake. Ah—Pallas tripp'd my footsteps; she attends 975 Ulysses ever with a mother's care. Loud laugh'd the Grecians. Then, the remnant prize Antilochus receiving, smiled and said. Ye need not, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... a little shiver he crawled back into the tent where his two companions were crouching beside the cooking lamp. The feeble light of its sputtering blue flame touched their faces which were graver than usual, but Charly turned and looked up as he ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... began to suffer another syncope. When it recovered, with the usual fizzing and sputtering, Mr. Peck was on his feet, asking to be relieved from his duties as moderator, so that he might make a statement to the meeting. Colonel Marvin was voted into the chair, but refused formally to take possession of it. He stood up and said, "There is no place where we would rather hear you ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... purple pines of the Long Hill. The snowy fields were gleaming with their radiance—rose pink and pure gold with deep blue shadows along the fences and in the hollows. The old kitchen, spotlessly clean, was flooded with the evening light—the yellow painted floor, the shining kettle sputtering comfortably on the stove, and the tin milk-pans ranged along the walls all gave back the sunset glow. This was the hour Elizabeth enjoyed most—the hour when she and Mother MacAllister were safe from the teasing and tormenting of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... blew shrewdly: beneath lay cottage roofs, and in front a limitless gloom, which by daylight would have been an extensive northward view, comprising the towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton. It was now a black gulf, without form and void, sputtering fire. Flames that leapt out of nothing, and as suddenly disappeared; tongues of yellow or of crimson, quivering, lambent, seeming to snatch and devour and then fall back in satiety. When a cluster of these ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... no need for a second shell, for the sputtering rifle-fire ceased as if by magic, the Boers retiring, leaving the colonel's force at liberty to go on at leisure strengthening the emplacement of the enemy's heavy Creusot gun, and forming a magazine for the abundant supply of ammunition, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Why was he to be punished? Those who read shall hear. The walls of the chamber were fitted with tubes, and electric wires, and knobs and buttons. A bright fire burned on the hearth. The thick Brussels carpet was littered with pot-boilers, all fizzing, and sputtering, and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a distant nose seemed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... semi-darkness, lighted only by the dim rays of a sputtering kerosene lamp, whose vile odor made ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to brush a cobweb from your cork by and by. O little fool, that has published a little book full of little poems or other sputtering tokens of an uneasy condition, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special sensibility that runs through your exiguous organism, and the one phosphorescent particle in your unilluminated intelligence! But if you don't leave your spun-sugar confectionery ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that they were in earnest. There was something more inexorable in their actions than in a court of law. At the last he showed some courage of a brute kind, reviling them all, sputtering forth his hatred, and interlarding it with a confession and threats of what he wanted to do. They silenced him by leading him to the wall and adjusting the noose. Once more Rogers besought him to pray and then, when he again burst into oaths, they thrust him off. The fall ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... against the wall and stood ready for the draw. In the crisis, at the first hostile move, he decided that he would dive straight for the table, low. It would tumble the room into darkness as the candles fell—a semidarkness, for there would be a sputtering lantern still. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... that for? What the demon's all this? What's the matter?" he exclaimed, sneezing, coughing, and sputtering through the water that Sybil had ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... hotelish room it was! He tossed off his coat and sat for ten minutes looking blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then his whole life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him with appalling distinctness. Throwing himself on the floor beside his bed, with clasped hands and arms outstretched on the white counterpane, he sobbed. "Oh! God, dear God, I thought you ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... doll-like things, in lace and ribbons, were thumping second-door windows with their tiny hands, and crowing with ecstasy at the sight of the flaky shower. "Baked-tater" cans and "roasted-apple" saucepan lids were sputtering and frizzing in impotent rage as they waged puny war with the congealed element. Hackney charioteers sat on their boxes warped and whitened; whilst those strange amalgams of past and never-to-come fashions—the clerks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... strong hands lifted the Fish over the sputtering water, he put his mouth downward. "Whssh!" he said. He blew the water all over the people, so that many were burned and could not see. Screaming with pain, they ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... sprang to the floor, Pete struck a light, and the next minute the kerosene lamp, flickering and sputtering at first, was shining in the eastward window. Outside the door the ranchman found Wells tightening his saddle-girths, while his horse, snorting with excitement, pricked up his ears ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... plenty of small fuel, and in a short time a bright fire was blazing on the rock and there was a wonderful smell of frying bacon in the air. The boys sat cross-legged around the fire, while Jean turned the bacon and broke the eggs into the sputtering fat. ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... open the tight little window, letting a draft of fresh air rush into the stifling attic. Then he sat on the edge of the tick for a few minutes, ruminating, his gaze fixed thoughtfully on the sputtering, imperilled candle. Finally he shook his head, sighed, and began to unstrap his roll of blankets. He had decided to remove only his coat and waistcoat. The sharp, staccato barking of a fox up in the woods fell upon his ears. He paused to listen. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the fallen branch. But what had broken it? He lit match after match, holding the light with his left hand while he turned over the dry ground with his knife. Presently he brought up a handful of stones and earth, and laid them on a bit of ruined wall close by. Stooping over them with his dim, sputtering lights, he presently discovered some terra-cotta fragments. His eye, practised in such things, detected them at once. They were the fragments of a head, which had measured about three ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disaster. The curry stuck in his throat, the coffee spilt all down his shirt-front, and in the struggle his chair gave way beneath him and he was landed on the floor with half the table on the top of him. There he lay sputtering, kicking and swearing, and the shrieks of laughter from the other passengers were almost deafening; in fact so great was the noise that the steerage passengers and crew came bolting to the cabin. Goody was borne off to his cabin, and he kept his daughter by him until we were at the wharf. ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... whenever the sun shines upon them, one's eyes are put out by the glare of their white walls; and when it does not shine!—why, in the winter, there's no resource left for a man but hopeless and shivering resignation, with their wide, windy chimneys, and their damp, crackling, hissing, sputtering, tantalizing fagots."—I confirmed my argument in favour of our metropolitan obscurity by another stroke of the poker against the largest fragment of the broken coal; and then, letting fall my weapon, and turning my back to the fire, I exclaimed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... in a small, round, harmless looking paper cylinder which, of course, he knew held something like gunpowder; he saw them tamp it down with infinite care, leaving only a protruding fuse; he saw them light the fuse and scamper off to a safe distance while he watched the sputtering sparks run down the fuse, pause at the tamping, then, having pierced it, disappear. The great explosions which succeeded were, at first, a little hard upon his nerves, but he saw that those who compassed them did not flinch when they came, and, after he had dodged ridiculously ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... leaned over and spoke earnestly to his neighbor, then some one laughed aloud. Instantly the flood-gates were opened; the air was vibrant with the hum of conversation, the ringing of call-bells, and the sputtering of fusees. A blue haze of cigarette-smoke formed itself above the heads of the assemblage; the Utinam Club had come to its ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar; then he said, "Oh, I suppose she's respectable enough; but she's certainly 'dreadful.' He says she's a music teacher. Probably caught him that way. Music would lead Maurice ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... him across his sputtering clay pipe. "Get this idea of people out of your head. Shut yourself up in a hole, work. What's society, anyhow? A lot of bored people who want you to amuse them. I don't approve. Better marry that pretty girl in the creamery. She'll worship you as a god, make you comfortable. That's all ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... of rationality, the miser fell back, sputtering, into his previous gibberish, but it took now an arithmetical turn. Eyes closed, he lay ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... warm. At its first touch the hard plaster melted like snow. Sputtering and choking for breath, Rawson came to the surface. He found he could move freely, then reaching hands hauled him out upon the floor, and through all his dread he found time to marvel at his own firm muscles and the healthy white of his skin ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... receivers crackled, and he manipulated the controls until the sputtering ceased, when ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... creek did as Billy asked him, while the latter sat with his eyes upon the fire seeing in the sputtering little flames the oval face of her who was ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sputtering with wrath the postilion cursed me and demanded to know what I meant by sitting a-top when travelers wished to pass through. I assumed the vacant grin ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... and heat it directly over the flame until it boils, stirring it occasionally to assist in the melting. If it is oleomargarine or process butter, it will sputter noisily and take on a curdled appearance; whereas, if it is butter, it will melt and even boil without sputtering although it foams to ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... Bright, manifested the usual variety and contrariety of disposition. They were all right when well handled, and this Rolf could do better than Van, for he was "raised on oxen," and Van's over voluble, sputtering, Dutch-English seemed ill comprehended of the massive yoke beasts. The simpler whip-waving and fewer orders of the Yankee were so obviously successful that Van had resigned the whip of authority ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sputtering of the fat man there sounded, too, a shrill, childish scream of fear, and a wild yelp of pain—the latter unmistakably from a canine throat. Amid the wreckage Nan beheld a pair of blue-stockinged legs encased in iron supports; ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... desire of a man for a manchild. The Chief had buried all that in the desk drawer with the picture; but he had gone overboard in his best uniform to rescue a wharf-rat, and he had felt a curious sense of comfort when he held the cold little figure in his arms and was hauled on deck, sputtering dirty river water and broad Scotch, as ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... They stood sputtering, coughing, and choking, and when they could look again they saw a solid wall of red flame, thick, impenetrable, shuddering with the breath ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... marvel that now presented. Poor, silly Fayette, looking more foolish and grotesque than ever, climbing upwards into the daylight, blinking and sputtering, his back against the stones of one side the shaft, his feet against the other, his hands clutching, pulling; both feet and hands almost prehensile, like the creature's to which Cleena had likened him, yet safe, unbruised, and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Carne, whose troubles were faintly illuminated by a sputtering wick. "Get out, you scoundrel, as you love plain English. Go direct to the devil—only let me ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... regiment nearest the Surgeon's Quarters were greatly surprised by the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly— ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... we were put on board the brig Curlew, lieutenant Head, a polite and humane gentleman, and much beloved by his own crew. He is, I am informed, son of an English baronet. He is a plain, honest man, with easy, elegant manners, and very unlike the sputtering commander of the Tenedos: a man who allowed us to be stripped of all our little pocket articles: not much to the honour of his commission, or credit of his nation. We were kept very close while on board the Curlew, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... toward the offender and spring the finger from the thumb, as in the act of sprinkling water. (Long.) The conception is perhaps "causing blood to flow," or, perhaps, "sputtering away the life," though there is a strong similarity to the motion used for the discharge of a gun ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... one and one-half hours, and so on. If the oven is in not too hot, the beef requires no basting. When it is at the proper temperature and the cooking is going all right, the meat will keep up a gentle sputtering in the pan. A roast of beef should never be washed but carefully wiped off with a damp cloth. When meal is done, take it from the oven, cut off the outside slices, then salt and pepper well. The meat, if roasted in this way, will be sweet, juicy ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... creature thought he could frighten me, for he kept right on scolding and sputtering until I got my paw on his neck, and of course that settled him. I left him a good deal worse off than Mrs. Lioness did Mr. Rat, when she wanted ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
... the air were uncommonly active while he slept. The wireless, sputtering and crackling, was carrying the news from general to general that a smart little action had been fought at Chastel, where another smart little action had been fought not long before, that the Germans had been overly daring and had ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Johnny shouted above the sputtering cough of the motor. But Bland only shook his head slowly from right to left and back again. Bland's ears were a waxy white now, and the line of his jaw had sharpened. Johnny believed that Bland would fail ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... desperately again that he couldn't swim, and then he thought wildly of the Judge, who hadn't regained full consciousness. He went under once, and came up choking and sputtering. He decided his end had come—and he didn't even know the identity of the enemy who had done him in. It was ironic. He should have asked Dor to tell him more about Garf—was he a traitor, or a Tamdivarian gangster, or what? John Andrew ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... in the dim, sputtering glow of an oil-lamp, John Cummins and Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problem that had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there was no element of humor in what they were doing, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... long," said Oldbuck, with much self-complacency, "ere my womankind could have made such a reasonable bargain with that old skin-flint, though they sometimes wrangle with her for an hour together under my study window, like three sea-gulls screaming and sputtering in a gale of wind. But come, wend we on our ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and three or four loggerheads (long irons clubbed at the end) were always lying in the fire in the cold season, waiting to be plunged into sputtering and foaming mugs of flip,—-a goodly compound, speaking according to the flesh, made with beer and sugar, and a certain suspicion of strong waters, over which a little nutmeg being grated, and in it the hot iron being then allowed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... challenge that he had been expecting and that he meant to accept. With a grim smile on his lips he walked toward the German and when but one apple barrel lay between them reached across and dragged the foreman sputtering and swearing down the passageway to a window at the end of the room. By the window he stopped and putting his hand to the throat of the struggling man began to choke him into submission. Blows fell on his face and body. Struggling terribly the German kicked McGregor's legs ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... philosophy was not proof against it, he returned to the promenade deck, which was sheltered from the severity of the blast. He had got reconciled to the whole thing, and ceased to bother his head about the big wheel, the sputtering steam, and the walking beam; so he seated himself, and began to wonder what all the people in ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... town, or in the nearest convenient place to the centre." It was thus agreed that a new house was to be built, but where to build it was not easily determined. The maxim, large bodies move slowly, was verified in this instance, for, although there was much private sputtering in regard to the location, no further public action was taken for two years. Meanwhile Jedediah Cooper and Jacob Upton, the two tavern keepers in the westerly part of the town, despairing of any redress, determined, together with some of their neighbors, to have a meeting-house among ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. "The balance of 'em must of got lost," he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. "It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer," he whimpered aloud, dropping the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... as the host styled it, combined dining-room and kitchen, for while in one corner stood a deal table with plates, cups, etcetera, but no tablecloth, in another stood a small stove, heated by an oil-lamp, from which issued puffing and sputtering sounds, and the savoury odours ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... accustomed to Strong monopolising the conversation, that he had become hopelessly lost as the discussion went on, and the sudden appeal to him all but paralysed his power of speech. He was still gurgling and sputtering when Strong ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... cannot but shrink from the harsher sounds of my own human voice." Taking these as a text, he comments first on the necessity for silence in an age when "trade is the most boisterous god of all the false gods under heaven." The clatter of factories, the clank of mills, the groaning of forges, the sputtering and laboring of his water power, are all lost sight of in contemplating the august presence of the dead, who speak not. He speaks next of the stateliness of the trees, which suggests to him the stateliness of the two great heroes of the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Sputtering, gasping, and actually crying with rage, the bully stumbled to his feet and charged blindly for Bob. That agile youth had turned and dashed for the train, which was now slowly moving. He caught the steps of the baggage car and drew himself ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... flies, and the hour is come to get ready the midday dinner. Fanchon's grandmother stirs up the drowsy fire; then she breaks the eggs on the black earthenware platter. Fanchon is deeply interested in the bacon omelette as she watches it browning and sputtering over the fire. There is no one in the world like her grandmother for making omelettes and telling pretty stories. Fanchon sits on the settle, her chin on a level with the table, to eat the steaming omelette and drink the sparkling ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... may have been one o'clock, or two, or three, I was awakened by the awfullest screaming and sputtering, growling and swearing, that ever startled a weary man from his slumbers. I leaped out of bed under the impression that at least twenty little children had fallen into as many tubs of boiling water. I threw open the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... what's a little water; 't will du un good!" So in the end they raised the groaning man and bore him forth, followed by Anthony with the blunderbuss across his arm. And presently from without came a splash, a fierce sputtering and a furious torrent of gasping oaths, which last sound greatly relieved me; and now, what with this and the excitement of the whole affair, I sank down in a chair, trembling from head to foot and my head bowed upon my hands. But hearing a light footstep, I looked up to behold the lady, a bewitching ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... face drawn in a hundred cross lines and all askew with her anger. She had been spouting and sputtering what she called her righteous indignation for some minutes, when after a brief pause and with the angry expression still on her face she exclaimed: "Well, I don't care, ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... abyss, in which immense wheels encased in wide thongs were turning, whirling about, and rumbling, he gave various orders in a clear voice, and light then burst forth on all sides, sometimes in sputtering greenish jets, sometimes in quick flashes, or in serpentine trails like streams of fire. I looked at this man of medium size, with rather a large head and a noble-looking profile, and I thought of Napoleon ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... to find how difficult it is to combine dinner-getting with baby-tending. When she opens the oven-door, there is Minna's head thrust up under her arm, the inquisitive little nose in great danger by reason of sputtering gravy. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... is followed by Mr Malone in supposing, that Hunt himself is the Templar alluded to. But Dryden seems obviously to talk of the author of the Defence, and the two Reflectors, as three separate persons. He calls them, "the sputtering triumvirate, Mr Hunt, and the two Reflectors;" and again, "What says my lord chief baron (i.e. Hunt) to the business? What says the livery-man Templar? What says Og, the king of Basan (i.e. Shadwell) to it?" The Templar may be discovered, when we learn, who ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... shelter of their hut, which still stood unhurt; but the fir branches of the floor were soaked with water, for a wave or two had risen above the ledge of the door. After much difficulty, with the aid of a candle, the Esquimaux lamp was lighted, and after much sputtering, the six wicks diffused their cheering light and grateful warmth through the hut. Then Peter, with his axe, cut a gutter through the doorway, letting off the standing water, and in the course of an hour ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... deck. His men were hoisting aboard the three dripping, sputtering passengers who ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... had, in a way, disregarded his instructions—had done as I pleased after he had left me alone. I wanted to go to Junot's, therefore was not one bit sorry that I had frightened him, and said not a word to his sputtering about the danger from Indians and horse thieves as we started back to camp. After we had gone a little distance up I said, "I left something by that rock." I tried to lift the big fish to show him, but they were too ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... few minutes of sputtering anger, the real estate man organized a pursuit of Jerry. He made sure that the forest youth had run out of the kitchen at about the time the visitors came ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson |
