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Clapper   Listen
noun
Clapper  n.  A rabbit burrow. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books



... ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the North; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon be on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and clapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of houses ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... empyema, bronchiectasis, or sarcoma of the lung. There is symmetrical enlargement and deformity of the hands and feet; the shafts of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion into the wrist and ankle-joints. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... doubt at ye lauoh at havers, an' there's mony 'at lauchs 'at your clipper-clapper, but they're no Thrums fowk, and they canna' lauch richt. But we maun juist settle this matter. When we're ta'en up wi' the makkin' o' humour, we're a' dependent on other fowk to tak' note o' the humour. There's no nane o' us 'at's lauched at anything you've telt us. But they'll lauch at me. Noo ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the tower, trying to steal the clapper of the chapel bell. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs in your clear, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... heroes came face to face, each made prodigious start, in the style of a veteran stage champion. Then did they regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious ram-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw themselves into one attitude, then into another, striking their swords on the ground, first on the right side, then on the left; at last at it they went, with incredible ferocity. Words cannot tell the prodigies of strength and valor displayed in this direful encounter—an ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... the northward," he continued, "Satronians to the southward, and just you and Ducconius sandwiched in between, clapper-clawing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... and Taffy was sounding the bell, by a thin rope tied to its clapper. The heavy bell-rope would be ready next week; but Humility must first contrive a woollen binding for it, to prevent its chafing ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "Take the clapper out of your throat when you are drunk," said Mouche, pulling his grandfather by the blouse, and tumbling him down on a bank under a poplar tree. "If that hound of a mayor heard you say that, he'd never buy any more ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... crown of his head, to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth. He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; For what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks. "I hope he is in love." —Much ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... play is well begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... that could be invented. As soon as we came in the great hall there stood many flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair and left nothing in it; ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a whapper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your service.' Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks, half a thousand little clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear little eyes sparklin', like so many stars ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... are many different forms of the same instrument, there are evidences of their all having at some time served the same purpose, even down to that strange instrument about which Du Chaillu tells us in his "Equatorial Africa", a bell of leopard skin, with a clapper of fur, which was rung by the wizard doctor when entering a hut where someone was ill or dying. The leopard skin and fur clapper seem to have been devised to make no noise, so as not to anger the demon that was to be cast out. This reminds us strangely of the custom ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... that, hasna he keepit me in a sleep a' this while as deep as death? An' here do I find him abscondit like a speeder i' the mids o' my leddy's wab, an' me dreamin' a' the night that I had the Deil i' my house, an' that he was clapper-clawin me ayont the loom. Have at you, ye brunstane thief!" and, in spite of the good woman's struggles, he lent me ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... you not to be, I say; and either, Sedgett, you does woman's work, gossipin' about like a cracked bell-clapper, or men's the biggest gossips of all, which I believe; for there's no beating you at your work, and one can't wish ill to you, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution. They 'wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm.' You can tie up the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the solemn conviction that Jesus Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... in my temples like the clapper of an alarm-bell. That which was going forward, and to which one after another was called forth, was my concern; it must be, and mine alone. I felt I could not longer keep my place, and I had pushed back my seat when I saw Uncle Tucher standing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... without a crupper, and making a noise like a cow without cymbals. A certain latinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the authority of one Taponnus,—I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet, —who wished those bells had been made of feathers, and the clapper of a foxtail, to the end they might have begot a chronicle in the bowels of his brain, when he was about the composing of his carminiformal lines. But nac petetin petetac, tic, torche lorgne, or rot kipipur kipipot put pantse malf, he was declared an heretic. We make them as of wax. And no ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Bruce is your man," laughs Mr. Littlefield. "He's as tall as a bell-tower. And he's got a bell-clapper in his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... night. By that time Charles was almost drunk, and then broke up, he resolving to go thither again, after he had seen me at my lodging, and lie with the girl, which he told me he had done in the morning. Going to my lodging we met with the bellman, who struck upon a clapper, which I took in my hand, and it is just like the clapper that our boys frighten the birds away from the corn with in summer time in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... against the soft iron strip or armature S; and from S the current flows back to the battery. As soon as the current flows, the coils become magnetic and attract the soft iron armature, drawing it forward and causing the clapper to strike the bell. In this position, S no longer touches the screw P, and hence there is no complete path for the electricity, and the current ceases. But the attractive, magnetic power of the coils stops as ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... rapidly filling with water. Doubtless the unfortunate man was perfectly aware of the imminence of the danger; but we may charitably suppose, that he held such language for the purpose of preventing alarm which might be fatal. The alarm bell was now rung with so much violence that the clapper broke, and some of the passengers continued to strike it for some time with a stone. The bell was heard, it is said, at Beaumaris, but, as there was no light hoisted on the mast of the steamer, (a fatal ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... thoughts, and incidents that defy belief and alienate the sympathies. The scene of the IN PACE, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it has ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des poignees de cheveux, POUR VOIR S'ILS NE ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... glorious play of chess, and causes the memory of Hector to be consecrated by the foundation of a chantry of priests who are to pray for the repose of his soul. A third finally condemns the erring Cressid to be stricken with leprosy, and to wander about with cup and clapper, like the unhappy lepers in the great cities of the Middle Ages. Everything, in short, is transfused by the spirit of the adapters' own times; and so far are these writers from any weakly sense of anachronism in describing ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... is evident to sense in the string of a violin or harpsichord, for we may perceive by the eye, or feel by the hand, the trembling of the strings, when by striking they are made to sound. If a bell be struck by a clapper on the inside, the bell is made to vibrate. The base, of the bell, is a circle, but it has been found that by striking any part of this circle on the inside, that part flies out, so that the diameter which passes through this part of the base will be longer than the other diameter. The ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... corners of the den, command was given that, without let or stop, dead-man's bell should be rung for joy. So the bell was rung, and the princes rejoiced that Mansoul was likely to come to ruin. Now, the clapper of the bell went, 'The town of Mansoul is coming to dwell with us: make room for the town of Mansoul.' This bell therefore they did ring, because they did hope that ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... isn't me, sir," replied the beadle in a distressed manner. "It's Monsieur Granoux, he's gone up into the steeple. I must tell you that I removed the clapper of the bell, by his Reverence's order, precisely to prevent the tocsin from being sounded. But Monsieur Granoux wouldn't listen to reason. He climbed up, and I've no idea what he can be ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... and how should I, Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.' 'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there, I think no more of deadly lurks therein, Than in a clapper clapping in a garth, To scare the fowl from fruit: if more there be, If more and acted on, what follows? war; Your own work marred: for this your Academe, Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo Will topple to the ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O cuckoo pint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig, canopied in leather and curtained clumsily. The Yankee laughed at the heavy straight shafts and the mule that drew the volante, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... for nothing here can be arbitrarily substituted or added: genuine strength can only create from necessity. Wherever in the series of your pieces Goethe himself incites your strength, the bell resounds with its natural full tone, and the clapper beats in it as the heart does in the body. If you had been able to ring the whole "Faust"-bell (I know this was impossible), if the detached pieces had had reference to a great whole, then that great whole would have thrown on the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell. A devil in an everlasting garment hath him; One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf—nay worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands; A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well; One that, before the judgment, carries ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... mind by this time what sort o' game lay behind it, and he was bound to be at it. Any one would 'a thought his nateral feelings would 'a stood in the way some, seein' as 'twor his own wife he wor clapper-clawin' at sich a rate; but they didn't seem to a bit: and, I tell you, he made the fur fly 'thout con-sideration. The blood streamed down inter my face, and the smell of that and the flesh choked me. My arms wor ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. And, indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and watches in the borough. Never was such a place for keeping the true time. When the large clapper thought proper to say "Twelve o'clock!" all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo. In short, the good burghers were fond of their sauer-kraut, but then they ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... blessed and delivered to him. Next he was warned not to approach the dwellings of men, or to wash in running streams, or to handle the ropes of draw-wells, or to drink from the cups of wayside springs. He was forbidden the highways, and when he went abroad a clapper must give token of his coming and going. Nothing that might be used by others should he ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... bell at once by thrusting his left hand in its mouth and holding the clapper; but the little peal he had rung had done its work of setting all the mules in motion, bringing them all up close to the ringer, who found himself in the midst of a knot of squealing and kicking brutes, who diversified their vicious play by running open-mouthed ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... little—with Mr. Magruder. There was a postscript from Aunt Melinda, and a separate sheet written by his younger sisters, with scrawly postscripts from the little boys to tell Jack how the workmen had dug down and found the old church bell, and that there was a crack in it, and the clapper was ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard

... slowly up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity. The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, higher and larger than the church, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a man with tongue of wood Who essayed to sing, And in truth it was lamentable. But there was one who heard The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood And knew what the man Wished to sing, And with that ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane

... had stung China fall Chinks that time has made Christ, for me to live is Church, built God a Church-going bell Church, who builds to God a Churchdoor, not so wide as a Churchyards yawn Cities, far from gay City sec upon a hill Civet, good apothecary Clapper-clawing Classic ground Clay, o'er informed the tenement of —, blind his soul with Cloud out of the sea —capped towers —, overcome us like a summer's —, sable —but serves to brighten Cloy the edge of appetite ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... horrible birds, with brazen beaks and claws, and ready-made arrows for feathers, which ate human flesh. To get them to rise out of the forest was his first difficulty, but Pallas lent him a brazen clapper, which made them take to their wings; then he shot them with his poisoned arrows, killed many, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... see, I heard his ugly voice out in the front bar, askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up! Ye see?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of what had happened. "And then I take it he come sneaking down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come again, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... contains a gruesome moral tale by Ricardo Santiago, entitled "The Bell of Huesca". It is proper to remark here, that an important sentence was omitted at the top of page 3. The passage should read "'Sire, thy bell has no clapper!' 'Thy head shall be the clapper'; said the king, and he sent him to the block" etc. Whatever may be said of the aptness of the allegory, it is evident that Mr. Santiago possesses the foundations of a pure and forcible prose ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... long time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell. Then it began to toll. The boy was an unpractised hand, and the strokes were irregular, sometimes too ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... mill, too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my venerable ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... while they were still moving along the Kaluga road, Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight—and often thinking they were escaping ran right ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania for the State House in Philadelphia, 1752", and underneath: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, Lev. XXV, V, X." In August, 1752, the bell was received in Philadelphia, but was cracked by a stroke of the clapper the following month. It was recast, but the work being unsatisfactory, it was again recast with more copper, in Philadelphia during May, 1753, and in June was hung in the State House steeple, where it remained until taken to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... all a-quiver with merriment. The old man draws himself up to his full height, all save that loving bend of the head over the beloved instrument. His long slender foot, in its quaint "Congress" shoe, beats time like a mill-clapper,—tap, tap, tap; his snowy curl dances over his forehead, his brown eyes twinkle with pride and pleasure. Other feet beside his began to pat the ground; heads were lifted, eyes looked invitation and response. At length the child Melody, with one superb outburst ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards

... and seized the heavy oars. Something like laughter, or, as it were, the clapper of a scarer of birds, echoed among the rocks at the rattling of the rowlocks. As if invisible hands withdrew it from me, the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... "Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand first, however, that there are certain conditions attached ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it would surely and slowly die of it. The leper was unclean: he was thrust out of the town: he had to live apart, or congregated in hospitals with other wretches similarly afflicted: if he walked abroad he wore a grey gown for distinction and carried a clapper as he went along, crying 'Unclean, Unclean,' so that the people might stand aside and not so much as touch his garments. And since he could not work with his hands, he was permitted to carry into the market a 'clap dish,' that is to say, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... chatrynge pye. Whiche doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... thence I went to Langden. Whereat immediately descending from my horse, I sent Bartlett, your servant, with all my servants, to circumspect the abbey, and surely to keep all back-doors and starting-holes. I myself went alone to the abbot's lodging, joining upon the fields and wood, even like a cony clapper, full of starting-holes. [I was] a good space knocking at the abbot's door; nec vox nec sensus apparuit, saving the abbot's little dog that within his door fast locked bayed and barked. I found a short poleaxe standing behind the door, and with it I dashed the abbot's door in pieces, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... of it to let love lodge there. Then the good man perceived that he needed a wife in his manor, and it appeared more lonely to him than it was. And what then was a castle without a chatelaine? As well have a clapper without its bell. In short, a wife was the only thing that he had to desire, so he wished to have one promptly, seeing that if the Lady of Azay made him wait, he had just time to pass out of this world into the other. But during the baptismal entertainment, he thought little of his severe wounds, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... now: that was a bit o' brag on the boy's part: he's so eager to save his neck as you or me either. Awnly Jonathan's bin here and tawld up summat that makes un want to be off to wance, for he says, what us all knaws, without he's minded to it you can't slip a knot round Jonathan's clapper; and 'tain't that Jerrem's afeared o' his tongue, awnly for the keepin' up o' pace and quietness he fancies 'twould be better for un to make hisself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... composed only for my own Pleasure, will, long after my Death, see the light in Print, and that some copper Captain, or counterfeit critic, or pitiful creature of that kidney, will question my Rank, or otherwise despitefully use my Memory. Let such treachours and clapper-dudgeons (albeit I value not their leasing a bagadine) venture it at their peril. I have, alas, no heirs male; but to my Daughter's husband, and to his descendants, or, failing them, to their executors, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... Sir Philip Sidney as saying that the "chief life of modern versifying consists in rhyme." Swift agrees with him. "Verse without rhyme," he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell without a clapper." He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatly improved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroic and sonorous ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... DeMille won reputation by collaborating in "The Wife," "Lord Chumley," "The Charity Ball," and "Men and Women," he was probably first individualized in the minds of present-day theatregoers when Mrs. Leslie Carter made a sensational swing across stage, holding on to the clapper of a bell in "The Heart of Maryland." Even thus early, he was displaying characteristics for which, in later days, he remained unexcelled. He was helping Bronson Howard to touch up "Baron Rudolph," "The Banker's Daughter" and "The Young Mrs. Winthrop;" he was succeeding with a dramatization ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. From time to time a heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, and recall me to the obscure borders of consciousness; or I heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 'All's well!' I know nothing, whether for poetry or music, that can surpass the effect of these two syllables in the darkness of a ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his peace; for, as his usual conversation turned chiefly on his clapper and toll-dish, he had no mind to brag of his wealth in presence of Christie of the Clinthill, or to intrude his discourse ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... now as if I could see myself in a mirror of anguish, altogether changed, as if my head were a complete void at times and became something sonorous, and then was struck violent, prolonged blows from a heavy clapper, as if it had been a bell, which fills it with tumultuous deafening vibrations, from a kind of loud tocsin and from monotonous peals, that were succeeded by the silence ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... before the time, whomsoever and wheresoever. Folks talk o' bridlin' the tongue; let 'em git a blind halter, say I, and a curb-bit, and a martingale! Not that I set an example, Goodness knows, for mine runs like a mill-clapper, rickety-rick, rickety-rick; but never mind, it may be ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... made of two round disks of gold paper with the string pasted between them. For the bell we are now making, the clapper should be almost one inch in diameter. Fold a piece of gilt paper and cut out the two disks at one time (Fig. 193). Cover the wrong side of one disk with paste, lay the end of a string across the middle (Fig. 194), and press the other disk on top. Both sides of the clapper will then ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard

... nine she heard them at play outside among the elms, and at nine o'clock punctually called them in to work by ringing her handbell—the clapper of which (vain extravagance!) had recently been shortened by the village tinsmith to prevent its wearing the metal unequally. Five scholars answered its summons—'Thaniel Langmaid, Maudie Hosken, Ivy Nancarrow, Jane Ann Toy and her four-year-old brother Luke. Their ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... claw and curry your own skin, Greater or less, than to forbear, 75 And that you are forsworn, forswear. But first, o' th' first: The inward man, And outward, like a clan and clan, Have always been at daggers-drawing, And one another clapper-clawing. 80 Not that they really cuff, or fence, But in a Spiritual Mystick sense; Which to mistake, and make 'em squabble In literal fray's abominable. 'Tis heathenish, in frequent use 85 With Pagans and apostate Jews, To offer sacrifice of bridewells, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... words STUDY HOURS upon it, distinctly to the school. In the drawing it is represented in an inclined position, being not quite drawn up, that the parts might more easily be seen. At d, there is a small projection of the tin upwards, which touches the clapper of the bell suspended above, every time the plate passes up or down, and thus ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... in a rough platform which was built round the bell, probably to allow workmen to attend to it now and then in case it were not hanging safely. It looked a great mass of metal, so large and heavy that even the clapper must be an ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then instantly all would be silent again. Theirs is an apt name,—Rallus crepitans. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... him well. "A palsy on her leg, and a palsy strike thee," he thundered, "if with thy old women's tales we miss the path! Go drive the goats in, thick-chops, and stay that clapper of thine till they ask for a crow-keeper. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... 1708. The minute-hands are 9 feet 8 inches long, and weigh 75 pounds each. The pendulum is 16 feet long, and the bob weighs 180 pounds, and yet is suspended by a spring no thicker than a shilling. The clock goes eight days, and strikes the hours on the great bell, the clapper of which weighs 180 pounds. Below the great bell are two smaller bells, on which the clock strikes the quarters. In the northern tower is the bell that tolls for prayers. Mr. E.B. Denison pronounced the St. Paul's bell, although the smallest, as by ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... glibly a translation without one particle of literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my next neighbor said to me, "that man will be our valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That glib reciter did become the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... more appropriate to present surroundings? But would it? Ah, Philip felt a twinge then. "Touche!" chortled some unseen imp who plied a venomous rapier. Thank goodness, a sailor was standing by the ship's bell, with his hand on a bit of cord tied to the clapper. It would soon be seven o'clock. Even the companionship of the uncouth skipper was preferable to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... Greek words myself," said Drysdale; "but old Murdock was too pleased at hearing his own clapper going, and too full of whisky, to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... greater than any I had heard before and set my heart a-beating like the clapper of the convent bell. But one only stayed in his chair, and his looks were heavy with anger. At him the rest pointed fingers and called on him derisively to pay the wager and be glad. Whereat he tugged from his belt a bag of gold which he flung at us as though ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... as the ring of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... live content with honest state, They're public pests; knock we 'em on the pate! They set a vile example! Quick—arrest That Fool, who ruled and failed to line his nest. Just hit a bell, you'll see the clapper shake— Meddle with Priests, you'll find the barrack wake— Ah! Princes know the People's a tight boot, March 'em sometimes to be shot and to shoot, Then they'll wear easier. So let them preach The righteousness of howitzers; and teach At the fag end of prayer: "Now, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... to illustrate the principles of the electrostatic charge, involving the ringing of bells by electrostatic attraction and repulsion. It is used in connection with a frictional, or influence electric machine. Two bells are employed with a button or clapper suspended between them. One bell is connected to one of the prime conductors, q. v., of the machine. The other insulated therefrom is connected to earth, or if an influence machine is used, to the other ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... suspended to the neck of an animal, have observed that the natural sound is an irregular one—that is, there is no system or regularity about the sound made by an animal in cropping the grass or herbage. There is the clapper's tink-a-link, tink-a-link—an interval of silence—then the occasional tink, tink, tink, to be followed, perhaps, by a repetition of the first-named sounds, varied occasionally by a compound of all, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who asserted they ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... in the days when "mother did it," had acted as a sort of Gabriel's trump, was still extant, minus clapper and handle, I was enabled to provide myself with its fac-simile. Armed with this instrument of retribution, I laid me down to sleep by Charlie's side, gloating in anticipation over my ripening ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... "Hold your clapper, you spooney, and be damned to you!" exclaimed the angry veteran.—"Had the Ingian fastened his paw upon your ugly neck as he did upon mine, all the pitiful life your mother ever put into you would have been spirited away from very ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanity the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding. Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails out of my hands because you have to go back home before the eldest kid asks for a story. Are you the loafer who ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... observed by the passengers, and there was a dead silence aboard, broken only by the thumping of the engines and the splash of the paddle-blades as they pounded the still waters. Presently the dreary clang of the bell, struck by the clapper as the sea rocked it, came to us in uncertain and fitful tones. It was a melancholy sound, but its effect was cheering, because it gave the people some idea of our whereabouts, and was an indication that we had crossed the intervening space between the islands ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... tin tube, with a small piston at each end. By pushing in one piston, the air in the tube conveys the effect to the piston at the other end, which strikes against the bell—this piston being, as it were, the clapper on the outside of the bell. The intensity of confined sounds is finely exhibited at Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle of Wight. There is here a well 210 feet deep, of twelve feet in diameter, and lined with smooth masonry; and when a pin is dropped into it, the sound of its striking the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... intelligence who hasn't wept over little Cosette, been in love with Enjolras and "doted on" Gavroche and Jean Valjean! So ultra nice has the world become that we must skip the Canticles. Shakespeare's plays must now be clapper-clawed to make them palatable. Alexander Pope's philosophic rhyme must be deleted with dashes. Walt Whitman's poetry is too strong for the average stomach. But we continue to fire into the bosoms of our families the daily press with its specialization ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... dead too? den her clapper is stopped at last. [Pause.] So de old woman is dead; well, she led me a hard life—she was de wife of my bosom, she was mine frow for all dat. [Whimpering.] I'm dead too, unt dat is a fact. Tell ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... artificial structure underneath that swelling skirt; that a scaffold, a framework, has been erected to support that dome of silk; and that the wearer is merely an automatic machine by which it is made to perambulate. A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by the neck ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... minutes past six. Of course there remained but little more than half an hour, in which to execute the sentence of the law. Cuffe had never quitted the deck, and he actually started when he heard the first sound of the clapper. Winchester turned toward him, with an inquiring look; for everything had been previously arranged between them; he received merely a significant gesture in return. This, however, was sufficient. Certain orders were privately ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... that! Bevis knows as much about sailing as most folks. But there's a nasty sea fog come on, and just as it happens the clapper is gone out of the bell by St. Morval's Head. Bevis is always a terrible one for hugging the coast, and I'm afraid if he doesn't hear the bell he won't quite know where he is in the fog, and he may be on the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... finished, he flew away, with the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left. He flew far away to a mill, and the mill went "Clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper." And in the mill there sat twenty millers, who chopped a stone, and chopped, "Hick, hack, hick, hack, hick, hack;" and the mill went, "Clipper, clapper, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... The great clapper hurled itself against the mighty sides of the bell with a violence which split the nerves and made the ear-drums creak. The blood surged to Roldan's head, carrying chaos with it. He had a confused sense of a ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... foot of the mound fifty musicians were playing on their barbarous instruments, elephants' tusks giving forth a husky note, deerskin drums, calabashes, guitars, bells struck with an iron clapper, and bamboo flutes, whose shrill whistle was heard over all. Every other second came discharges of guns and blunderbusses, discharges of cannons with the carriages jumping so as to imperil the lives of the artillery-women, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... although partially discharged in the unopened bud, is prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... them her darlings, and her white boys, Her ducks, her dildings—all was right boys— "Only," she said, "my lads, have care Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; For, if he catch, he'll maul your corpus, And clapper-claw you to some purpose." She was in truth a kind of witch, Had grown by fortune-telling rich; To spells and conjurings did tackle her, And read folks' dooms by light oracular; In which she saw, as clear as daylight, What ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... design in the procreation of this yet more mysterious and magnificent monster of a play. That on its production in print it was formally announced as "a new play never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar," we know; must we infer or may we suppose that therefore it was not originally written for the stage? Not all plays were which even at that date appeared in print: yet it would ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... had doubtless been eavesdropping, suddenly appeared and interrupted the conversation with, "Ma, now don't you git started 'bout dem old times. You knows your mind ain't no good no more. Tomorrow your tongue will be runnin' lak a bell clapper a-talkin' to yourself." "Shut your big mouth, Henrietta." Frances answered. "I been sick, and I knows it, but dere ain't nothin' wrong wid my mind and you knows it. What I knows I'se gwine to tell de lady, and what ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... Holyrood and the College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk and Peebles that ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... clapper strikes the lip of a bell it produces a sound and sends a tremor out upon the air. The vibrations thus made are ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... very few turbellaria we find otolith vesicles. These are little sacks in the skin, lined with neuro-epithelial cells and having in the middle a little concretion of carbonate of lime hung on rather a stiffer hair, like a clapper in a bell. Such organs serve in higher animals as organs of hearing, for the sensory hairs are set in vibration by the sound-waves. It is quite as probable that they here serve as organs for feeling the slightest ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... as follows, their birth and christening. "1774—9th October. The Churchwardens return thanks to His Lordship Jean 0. Briand, Bishop, for the present he made of the big bell, which, exclusive of its clapper, weighs 3,255 lbs. Name, LOUISE, by Messieur Montgolfier, Grand Vicaire, and Mdlle de Lery, representing its Matron. Blessed by Monsigneur ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Permacetty (or Spermaceti), "the sovereignst remedy for bruises;"—"perhaps," says Dr. Prior, "as a joke on the Latin name Bursa pastoris, or 'Purse,' because to the poor man this is always his best remedy." And in some parts of England the Shepherd's Purse is known as Clapper Pouch, in allusion to the licensed begging of lepers at our crossways in olden times with a bell and a clapper. They would call the attention of passers-by with the bell, or with the clapper, and would receive their alms in a cup, or a basin, at the end of a long pole. The clapper was an instrument ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... covered with the flying French cavalry—Burgundy, and Bern, and the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. "What is your clamor about Oudenarde?" says another bell (Bob Major THIS one must be). "Be still, thou querulous old clapper! I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June, when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... has an e'e, she has but ane, The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper tongue wad deave a miller: A whiskin beard about her mou', Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... had been writing over my own name. One day a letter was forwarded to me by an editor to whose care it had been addressed. It was a short, formal note from the maternal Sellars, inviting me to the wedding of her daughter with a Mr. Reginald Clapper. I had almost forgotten the incident of the Lady 'Ortensia, but it was not unsatisfactory to learn that it had terminated pleasantly. Also, I judged from an invitation having been sent me, that the lady wished me to be witness of the fact that my desertion had ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... and Sancho Panza in the one same man! you will readily comprehend what a cat-and-dog couple they made! what strife! what clapper-clawing! Oh, the fine dialogue for Lucian or Saint-Evremond to write, between the two Tartarins—Quixote-Tartarin and Sancho-Tartarin! Quixote-Tartarin firing up on the stories of Gustave Aimard, and shouting: "Up and at 'em!" and Sancho-Tartarin thinking only of the rheumatics ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... He was a heap aboot the place afore his brither dee'd, an' they war freen's as weel 's brithers. They say 'at the lady Arctoora—h'ard ye ever sic a hathenish name for a lass!—is b'un' to merry the yoong lord. There 's a sicht o' clapper-clash aboot the place, an' the fowk, an' their strange w'ys. They tell me nane can be said to ken the yerl but his ain man. For mysel' I never cam i' their coonsel—no' even to the buyin' or sellin' o' ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... any doubt! The lamp was beating back and forth like the clapper of a great bell. Where was he? Billy sought a window. He found some little round, glass-covered holes near the low ceiling at one side of the room. It was only at the greatest risk to life and limb that he managed to crawl on all fours to one ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... figure. Now you know, Anne, I always take the ground that us women ought to stand by each other. We've got enough to endure at the hands of the men, the Lord knows, so I hold we hadn't ought to clapper-claw one another, and it isn't often you'll find me running down another woman. But I never had much use for Rose Elliott. She was spoiled to begin with, believe ME, and she was nothing but a lazy, selfish, whining creature. Frank was no ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is but a clapper. Simplicity itself. The feathers in the hat next me are bright and pleasing as a child's rattle. The leaf on the plane-tree flashes green through the chink in the curtain. Very strange, ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf

... Alec Johnstone to him, "wait till auld Clapper gie's ye a biff or twa wi' his muckle tawse. Do ye ken what he does to mak' them nippy? He burns them a wee bit in the fire, an' then st'eeps them in whusky. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... near that when, towards dusk, the convent bell began to ring against the sky, I could see its bell-rope and clapper moving; and sometimes, as I sat there at my window, I would think about the mysterious existence, so near me, ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... their own terms for this universal instrument, but it is everywhere recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—it is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... admired in their native haunts, and prized for the aquarium. But they are very delicate. How beautiful and remarkable are these headless Discophori, as they float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders are but so much sea-water, inclosed in so slight a tissue that it withers in the sun, and leaves only a minute spot of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... sentry on the forecastle struck Eight Bells, and the men were piped down to dinner; the boatswain's mates sounding their shrill calls through the ship as the echo of the last stroke of the clapper on the side of the ship's bell ceased to reverberate in the noisy air, which was filled with the creaking of the blocks aloft and the hum of the wind, the sea breaking against our counter alongside in a sullen fashion as if old Neptune were disappointed at letting ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... first caresses, he shouted to his assistants, placed in the lower story of the tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel creaked, the enormous capsule of metal started slowly into motion. Quasimodo followed it with his glance and trembled. The first shock of the clapper and the brazen wall made the framework upon which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo vibrated with ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... clapper! like my mill in a high wind, landlord. Clapper! clapper! clapper!—enough to ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... wedding-bell, all of white flowers; and he's hanging it in the folding doors;" upon which announcement, every one ran down stairs, to view the new beauty, and the bride jerked the flowery clapper by its white ribbon; then departed in haste, and with a sudden shyness, as Dr. Barnett and the minister, were seen coming slowly ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving

... the downy, the dapper; He flew in and perched on the knob of the clapper, And shouted Too-whoo! An echo awoke Like a far-off ghostly Bing-Bang stroke: "Just so!" he cried; "I am quite at home! I will take his place ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... of some monstrous beast more horrible than any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the sounds are scattered forth in ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Moscow—the manufacturers, the churches, the remains of the old days, the museums, the libraries, (of no interest to my mind), not forgetting the famous bell. I noticed that their bells are not allowed to swing like ours, but are motionless, being rung by a rope attached to the clapper. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... chill daylight, shivering in my pale blue cloak, impetuously clanging the brazen lion's head upon its clapper. The outer door opened to me noiselessly as it had done before, shutting as silently after. But the garden, which had seemed picturesque and dreamy under the kind sunlight, now looked ghastly, disheveled, crumbling, as if it had been deserted ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... earnest in everything I can do to please you. Only one thing I entreat in return for the many I intend to do for you: do not expose me to Argueello's persecution, for I would rather lose your friendship than have to endure hers. Good God, friend! her tongue goes like the clapper of a mill; you can smell her breath a league off; all her front teeth are false, and it is my private opinion that she does not wear her own hair, but a wig. To crown all, since she began to make overtures to me, she has taken to painting white, till her face ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the sympathies. The scene of the in pace, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again, the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it had ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des poignees ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... rattle on, perhaps he did not even listen to him. He paid as little attention to the tongue of the Leather-bell as he did to the clapper of the bell that hung in the church tower, perhaps less. For, indeed, in the solemn sonorous ding-dong, ding-dong of the church bell, those who have ears to hear, and still preserve memories of the past, may ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... music for ever floating in the upper air as part of the city's life—the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it. Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London. The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben—that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church discipline ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... hundred feet high, which vibrated with every stroke of the great bell hanging midway between his airy perch and the ground. He was sixty years of age, and had white hair, but he was as strong as younger men, and could swing the clapper against the side of the great bell with a boom that could be heard across rivers, and far into the peaceful country, on quiet nights. His eyes were so sharp, that, without the aid of a glass, he could read names on the paddle boxes of steamboats, where ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... sitting on the small of his back. His shirts, collars, and neckties were clean and always "dressy." Nellie saw to that. Besides he always had gone in for gay colours when it came to ties and socks. His watch-fob was a thing of weight and pre-eminence. It was of the bell-clapper type. In the summer time he wore suspenders with his belt, and in the winter time he wore a belt with his suspenders. Of late he affected patent-leather shoes with red or green tops; he walked as if he despised the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... has an e'e, she has but ane, [eye] The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, [besides] A clapper tongue wad deave a miller; [deafen] A whiskin beard about her mou, [mouth] Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... the hurry and bustle that had passed, of which he had now some curiosity to know the particulars. He therefore applied to his bell, which he rung at least twenty times without any effect: for my landlady was in such high mirth with her company, that no clapper could be heard there but her own; and the drawer and chambermaid, who were sitting together in the kitchen (for neither durst he sit up nor she lie in bed alone), the more they heard the bell ring the more ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... hundred men. These work upon the surface; but the directions must be communicated from below, perhaps from the depth of two hundred fathoms. This communication, however, is accomplished with ease and certainty by signals: the usual apparatus is a kind of clapper placed on the surface close to the capstan, so that every man may hear, and put in motion from below by a rope ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... your little Caroline to speak, your sensibility has been touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and torrent ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... pears made their appearance, and there were plums in the orchard. Then they made use of all the devices which had been recommended to them against the birds. But the bits of glass made dazzling reflections, the clapper of the wind-mill woke them during the night, and the sparrows perched on the lay figure. They made a second, and even a third, varying the dress, but without ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... of fine young seedlings that I have been caring for. All the woods were cleared away from them to give them plenty of light. They are watered by the old hand bucket method in dry spells. I report on them occasionally to Mr. G. F. Gravatt and Mr. Russell B. Clapper of the U.S.D.A. They are a faint ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... been dead. He was a leper; his cruel disease drove him from the haunts of men. The last we knew of him, he went forth with cup and clapper as they are wont. Soon after news ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... above him, vague in the obscurity, the outlines of a gigantic bell, hanging motionless. The green glare, shining on its rim and partly illumining its empty hollow (he saw no clapper) revealed the sheen of the bronze ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... steals grain from the growing corn and rice. A clapper of split bamboo is sometimes made to scare away ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... was one of the ancients, a carpet-weaver, pious as Martin Luther, but a trifle liberal with her idioms. The tongue in her head wagged like a bell-clapper. Whatever was whispered in the Hills got somehow into Aunt Peggy's ears, and once there it went to the world like the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... and cover coal; Let the mouse out of her hole; Crickets in the chimney sing Whilst the little bell doth ring; If fast asleep, who can tell When the clapper hits ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... a cowbell—that was it; but why did it seem to come from overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly from one quarter to another—from left to right and back again to left? And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... was a tall, upright churn; as soon as Georgie had ended his speech, the lid of the churn began to clipper-clapper, and who should speak out of it but the boggart himself. "Ay, Jerry!" said he, "we're a flittin', we're a flittin', man! Good-day to ye, neighbor, good-day to ye! Come and see ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... supports lined with iron. The sombre bell metal was slick as if oiled and absorbed light without refracting it. Bending backward, he looked into the upper abyss and perceived new batteries of bells overhead. These bore the raised effigy of a bishop, and a place in each, worn by the striking of the clapper, shone golden. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... she repeated, "it is all a mistake; the majority of young men in our world do not marry whom they please: they may think so, but in the majority of cases they marry whom we please. The bell responds to the clapper; but who is it that makes the clapper to speak? The ringer. Do you see the ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... of the lower town, followed by the bellman who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations, Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town hall of the same, at seven of the clock ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks." —Much Ado ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... first time, that the colossal bowl was neither more nor less than a bald, smooth, and perfectly white human skull. A closer inspection convinced him that it was that of his own deceased and venerated parent. Above, upon the forehead, there was a moveable clapper, through which the superfluous smoke ascended; the tube was fixed in the mouth, and the eye-holes were continually supplied with gold pieces by a couple of thousand of indefatigable dwarfs, twenty or thirty of whom tugged along one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various



Words linked to "Clapper" :   applauder, mouth, taste bud, oral fissure, tongue, articulator, organ, rima oris, oral cavity, striker, pharynx, lauder, clap, extoller, throat, clapper valve, tastebud



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