"Metallic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broken by a sharp, metallic clang. She screamed, jerking her eyes back to the table. The plate had fallen down. Hans sighed as though awakening from sleep. The clang of the plate had aroused them to life in a new world. The cabin epitomized the new world in which they must thenceforth live and move. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... same moment, whilst D'Artagnan was leaning over the aperture to listen, a metallic sound, as if some one was moving a bag of gold, struck on his ear; he started; instantly afterward a door opened and a ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the cash register shot out with a metallic clang. Hiram's dollar jingled in among its kind. The girl's slim fingers were suspending a quarter to be dropped into his palm, suggesting to Hiram's abnormal mind the fear of contamination. He feebly put out his hand, and she ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... long left alone that night to look at the strip of moonlight on the cold ashes of her fireplace. The Shop below shook suddenly with many footfalls, and the metallic officious barking of the Dog David rent the still air of ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... the song is a noise I can not understand: Chink! chink! a clear metallic ring as of coins flung vigorously on the floor. I am well aware that this vibrating house exaggerates every sound during the silence of night; but all the same, I am puzzled to know what my mousme can be doing. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... city journals filed in, avidly expectant. With them came two officials of the racing association, and a metallic-eyed man whose plain clothes were contradicted by the badge visible under his coat. There was silent orderliness; the grim significance of the room, the presence of the watchful surgeons, the central figure of the driver so well known to all of those ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and agitation of mind, by loud exclamations of surprise and joy. His brothers, astonished at finding the fire extinguished when they awoke, had proceeded to arrange the fuel in order to renew it, when they found in the ashes three huge metallic masses, which their skill (for most of the peasants in the Harz are practical mineralogists) immediately ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lungs, and they kept to work at him till they drove him into a mountain fever, and finally into a metallic sarcophagus. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... on the lower step drawing on his fur mittens, and, nodding at the child-face smiling at him from the window, then started to go. But at the first step his foot struck against some object which gave out a metallic sound, and stooping quickly, he raised from the snow a small pistol. One glance showed him that it was in perfect order, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Dawson's rather metallic voice became almost sympathetic, and I was pleased to observe that his harsh profession had not destroyed in him ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... door was opening in the side of the sphere, and the illumination within threw a bright beam of amber-colored light in their direction. A metallic ramp slid out and angled ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... is to say, the notes of Law, preferred then to the metallic currency—that four millions were paid to Bavaria, and three millions to Sweden, in settlement of old debts. Shortly after, M. le Duc d'Orleans gave 80,000 livres to Meuse; and 80,000 livres to Madame de Chateauthiers, dame d'atours of Madame. The Abbe Alari, too, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... neutralise each other, leaving the remainder to produce the effects of colour. Such are the colours of soap-bubbles, or of steel or glass on which extremely fine lines have been ruled; and these colours often produce the effect of metallic lustre, and are the cause of most of the metallic hues of birds ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... no less than in its beauty. But fashion restored, a thing which neither time nor revolution ever pretended to do. Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day,—marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated cherubs, which began to ravage the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medici, and destroyed it, two centuries later, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... fishing-rod, that stood in a corner behind a book-case. The young man's face grew red in spite of him. It was impossible not to feel guilty of something in the presence of Judge Strong. Even Elder Jordan started as his brother official's metallic voice rang out, "I see that you follow in the footsteps of the early disciples in one thing, at least, Brother Matthews. You go fishing." He gave forth a shrill, cold laugh that—more than anything else—betrayed the real spirit he ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... my heart was not reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic aspect, instead of the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... only a child, hardly more than thirteen; but her figure is tall and slender, her face calm as if hewn out of alabaster, with severely antique lines, as if her mother had looked always at the Venus of Milo. Her thick black hair has a metallic gleam like the plumage of the black swan; but her eyes are dark-blue. The long delicate eyebrows almost meet over the brow, which gives her face a curious charm; it is as if these arching brows formed a black aureole round the brow ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... fortunes. One of the greatest hindrances to advancement in life is the lack of observation and of the inclination to take pains. An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could not afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather;" he was so poor that he had to borrow a sickle to cut the grass in front of his hired tenement. Now he is a very ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of our camp. The country traversed this day is all well grassed and thinly timbered with terminalia, box, and silver-leafed ironbark; trap-rock visible in several places, and the soil was a good red loam. The metallic barometer has a second time suddenly deviated from the aneroid barometer, and the form of the vacuum vessel has visibly altered, the construction being too slight to bear the motion of the pack-horse, though one of the steadiest animals had ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... of technology predominate, such as, oil refining by distillation only; produces basic liquid fuels, coal, metallic chromium, lead, zinc, and ferronickel; light industry produces basic textiles, wood products, and tobacco Agriculture: provides 12% of GDP and meets the basic need for food; principal crops are rice, tobacco, wheat, corn, and millet; also grown are cotton, sesame, mulberry leaves, citrus fruit, ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... curious type was that young woman of American extraction, with hair of an acid blond, like lemon-pulp, over a bold forehead and metallic blue eyes. As her husband would not allow her to go on the stage, she gave lessons, and sang in some bourgeois salons. As a result of living in the artificial world of compositions for voice and piano, she had contracted a ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... its stability. The keen blade of Mr. Sullivan's mind cut through this contradiction, and in the Prudential building he carried out the idea of a protective casing so successfully that Montgomery Schuyler said of it, "I know of no steel framed building in which the metallic construction is more palpably felt through ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... little cabin, I sat watching her coming along, with the ruddy orange rays of the setting sun lighting up her sides and rigging, and brightening the showy paint and gilding with which she was decorated, so that they had quite a metallic sheen. ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... political point of view, he was of more service to the cause as an Irish Protestant, there being too few of them in our ranks. He had a fresh, pleasant, shrewd-looking face, and spoke with a decided northern accent, which had somewhat of a metallic ring. Some of his brother Members of Parliament thought his "obstruction" methods highly ungentlemanly, but he believed in fighting England with her own weapons. If good Irish measures were not allowed to pass, he would throw every obstacle in the way of English measures ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... copperas—for the purpose of ink- making; and that even the addition of any persalt, such as the nitrate or chloride of iron, though it improved the present color of the ink, deteriorated its durability. The author failed to procure a persistent black ink from manganese, or other metal or metallic salt. The author exhibited a series of eighteen inks which had either been made with metallic iron or with which metallic iron had been immersed, and directed attention to the fact that though the depth and body of color seemed to be deepened, yet in every case ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... English derivation, by doubling the letter l, because he remembers the ll of their foreign roots, or their foreign correspondents. But let him also remember, that, if a knowledge of etymology may be shown by spelling metallic, metalliferous, metallography, metallurgic, metallurgist, metallurgy, medallic, medallion, crystallize, crystalline, argillous, argillaceous, axillar, axillary, cavillous, cavillation, papillate, papillous, papillary, tranquillity, and pupillary, with double ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the great ocean, as the Polynesians have been for a period of centuries that would count back to the times of William the Conqueror or Charlemagne, with only such outfit of the world's goods as might survive a 3,000-mile voyage in frail canoes, reenforced by such flotsam of the world's metallic stores as the tides of ocean might chance to bring them—and, with such limited capital to start with in life, what, should we judge, would have been the outcome of the experiment in religion, in morals, in art, in mechanics, in civilization, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... born of the flame, as, in thine ignorance thou dost call that mighty agent. Look now;" and she pointed to the metallic lump she had brought with her, which, still gleaming faintly, lay upon the floor. "Nay, it has no heat. Thinkest thou that I would wish to burn my tender hands and so make them unsightly? ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... budget of suggestions and corrections and rearrangements, Mrs. Harley added to the complication. Usually the most natural woman in the world with a soft infectious laugh, a rather shrewd humor and a neat gift of comment, she assumed a metallic artificiality that distressed herself and surprised Joan. She babbled about absolutely nothing by the yard, talked over George's halting but gallant attempts to make things easy like any Clubwoman, and in an ultra-scrupulous endeavor to treat Joan as if she ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... caverns, which excite the surprise and admiration of strangers. These are entered by a passage, formed with immense labour through the solid rock. In the interior you are surrounded by brilliant crystallizations, various kinds of metallic ores, spars, &c., with petrifactions hanging from the roof, pendent as icicles. The roofs of the numerous caves are of different descriptions; some have the appearance of arches formed by the hand of man, others appear to be immense masses ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... built of metal, it might be supposed that such a contrivance as the Hughes induction balance might be employed to locate it. The Hughes balance is a device which is extremely sensitive to the presence of minute metallic masses in relatively close proximity to certain parts of the apparatus. Unfortunately, on account of the presence of the saline sea-water, the submersible is practically shielded by a conducting medium in which are set up eddy currents. Although the sea-water may lack somewhat in conductivity, ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... reeking with sweat and garlic. Upon a platform in a corner between two violins, sat Arnud before his cymbal, resplendent in frilled shirt and embroidered vest, thundering on his instrument the favourite songs of the dancers, shouting now and then in unison with the melody that pattered out in metallic rain from the instrument before him. For four hours and more, with intervals sufficient only to quench their thirst, the players had kept up their interminable accompaniment to dance and song. It was clearly ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples, without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world which his entrance, into her tradition-bound ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... of the Malay is not so clean as that of the ant or the birds; even the burrowing animals are neater. The native women are graceful and almost pretty, slight in figure, and passionately fond of ornaments, covering their arms and ankles with metallic rings, and thrusting silver and brass rings through ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... nickel, tin, clay, numerous metallic and nonmetallic ores), steel, wood products, cement, chemicals, fertilizer, clothing and footwear, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... knew them at once for his little boy's buttons, the workmanship being peculiar to one village of his district, and one family thereof. The sailor would thankfully have taken one rupee apiece for them; but Sir Duncan gave him thirty for the three—their full metallic value—upon his pledging honor to tell all he knew about them, and make affidavit, if required. Then he told all he knew, to the best of his knowledge, and swore to it when sober, accepted a refresher, and made oath to it again, with some lively ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... gas so made has no photometric value, its constituents being perfectly non-luminous, and attempts to use it as an illuminant have all taken the form of incandescent burners, in which thin mantles or combs of highly refractory metallic oxides have been heated to incandescence. In carbureted water gas this gas is only used as the carrier of illuminating hydrocarbon gases, made by decomposing various grades of hydrocarbon oils ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech, and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!—We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic,—his way is through Chaos ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... downward from the summit of the hill, the sides of the abyss bore little resemblance to each other, and, apparently, had at no time been connected, the one surface being of the soapstone, and the other of marl, granulated with some metallic matter. The average breadth or interval between the two cliffs was probably here sixty feet, but there seemed to be no regularity of formation. Passing down, however, beyond the limit spoken of, the interval rapidly contracted, and the sides began to run parallel, although, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... blows over the summer sea to the cliffs of Sark. Monsieur Laurentie, under the shelter of a huge red umbrella, is choosing the ripest cluster of grapes for our supper this evening. All the street is as still as at midnight. Suddenly there breaks upon us the harsh, metallic clang of well-shod horse-hoofs upon the stony roadway—the cracking of a postilion's whip—the clatter ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ends of equipment, the Red Cross wagons, the motor lorries, the forage carts, the baggage-master's gig. The tents of drivers and conductors swarm around the vehicles. On the open spaces horses lift their metallic eyes to the sky's emptiness, with their feet on barren earth. Four poilus are setting up a table. The open-air smithy is smoking. This heterogeneous and swarming city, planted in ruined fields whose straight or winding ruts are stiffening ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and a hot dog with a skin on it, the first Doak had ever seen. They had grape pop and a few laughs. Fun in the sun at Dubbinville, U.S.A. Wouldn't the gang at home get a belt out of this? And where was June's bright metallic laughter ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... him at work, was hard and metallic, steel-studded and shrapnel-toothed. Now and then he bristled with bayonets, and they glittered here and there in tiny groups, and charged up the rocks and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... hindrance incident to walls or roof, (see P. of G.P., Joseph Smith 2:43; also The Articles of Faith, i:15-17). That Moroni was a resurrected man is shown by his corporeity manifested in his handling of the metallic plates on which was inscribed the record known to us as the Book of Mormon. So also resurrected beings possess the power of rendering themselves visible or invisible to the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... entablature in pure Greek examples was identical with the Ionic; the shaft and base were only slightly changed in proportion and detail. The capital, however, was a new departure, based probably on metallic embellishments of altars, pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a high bell-shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves, above which were pairs of branching scrolls meeting at ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... book comes "rounding," or giving the back of the book a curved instead of its flat shape. This process is done with the hand, by a hammer, or in a rounding press, with a metallic roller. Before rounding, the back of the book is glued up, that is, receives a coating of melted glue with a glueing brush, to hold the sections together, and render the back firm, and a thorough rubbing of the back with hot glue between the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... cold, she was petrified; and as she stared helplessly at the dark eyes pressed close to hers, she saw them suddenly suffuse with fiendish glee. The most frightful change then took place: the upper lip writhed away from a few greenish yellow stumps; the lower jaw fell with a metallic click, leaving the mouth widely open, and disclosing to Lady Adela's shocked vision a black and bloated tongue; the eyeballs rolled up and entirely disappeared, whilst their places were immediately filled with the foulest and most loathsome indications ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... observed that there was upon its background no picture at all, but only a background of merging tints which seemed to change, and to be now sky, now sea, now green grass. This empty picture had, moreover, an odd metallic coloring which fascinated me; and saying to myself "Is there really any painting on it?" I mechanically put out my hand and touched it. On this I was instantly seized by a frightful sensation, a shock that ran from the tips of my fingers to ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... four co'tce, but instead of using wood in their construction he made them of a metallic substance, like iron. He placed these at the cardinal points and sent the moon to make a fire near each of them. This fire was obtained from the "burning stars," the comets. The co'tce were made exceedingly hot and the twins ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... mild little voice. "You see I always have the extra saddle, the extra railway ticket, the extra what-ever-it-is. And—and—" Caressingly a little gold-tipped hand reached out through the shadows and patted something indistinctly metallic. "My mother's memory? My father's revolver?" she drawled. "Why, what better company could any girl have? Indiscreet?" Slowly the tip of her little nose tilted up into the light. "Why, down in the Transvaal—two years ago," she explained painstakingly, "why, down in the Transvaal—two years ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... he could cling for hours to any metallic surface, or at will propel himself about or hang suspended between any two or more metallic objects. As to his personality, he was equally magnetic, for wherever Denver took him he attracted curious stares ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... the cry of liberty. But the movement must start here. The city must rise against the throne. And against that there are two obstacles." He paused. The clock ticked, and water dripped into the tin pail with metallic splashes. "The first is this marriage. The second—is the Crown Prince Ferdinand ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be gold. These he made into a small lump, which he carefully preserved until he left the lake, and it was doubtless lost on the mountains at his death. This was in the spring of 1847, before the discovery of gold in California. The strange little metallic lump was exhibited to several who are yet living, and who think there is reason for believing it was really gold. A few years before the construction of the Central Pacific, Knoxville, about ten miles south of Donner Lake, and Elizabethtown, some six miles from Truckee, were famous mining camps. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... a knock at the door. A clerk from outside presented himself. As he held the door for a moment ajar, a wave of tangled sounds swept into the room,—the metallic clash of a score of typewriters, the shouting and bargaining of eager customers, the tinkle of telephones in ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... waiting for the breeze, drifted idly toward the Golden Gate; there was not a cloud in the blue arch of the sky. The little McDowell whistled for her dock at Alcatraz. On the prison island men were breaking stone with a metallic clink—clink—clink. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the Upper and Lower, and is adorned with a cathedral, whose metallic roof glitters in the sun like a vast diamond. Indeed, the tin-roofs of the churches and public buildings give this city a splendid look on a bright sunshiny day, testifying, moreover, to the dryness of the air. Captain ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he heard a light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat. Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees, into the sole of which ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... want to do that for?" The sister's grey eyes had caught a metallic gleam, as if from the talk about gold. "Why let anybody out? Why can't you go on ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of all was at the outskirts of the crowd, around a sort of platform a few paces from the home of Ibarra. Pulleys creaked, cries went up, one heard the metallic ring of stone-cutting, of nail-driving; a band of workmen were opening a long, deep trench; others were placing in line great stones from the quarries of the pueblo, emptying carts, dumping sand, ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of the globe. The greater part of his time on this occasion will be devoted to the study of the wonders that lie under the surface of the earth; of the revelations of extinct animal life made by impressible rocks; and of the metallic wealth which human ingenuity has adapted to the wants and luxuries of mankind. In the fossil remains he will be able to recognise traces of an animal life, of which we have no living specimens; of trees, the like of which never rise from the bosom of the soil at ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... group of people gathered—cabmen muffled to the throat, women draggled and dirty, boys with faces that were old. Another would be a potato-engine, with its own volumes of white vapor, and the clank of its oven door like the metallic echo of the miner's pick. The line of regular lamps was like the line of candles stuck to the rock, the cross streets were like the cross-workings, the damp air settling down into streaks of moisture on the glass ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... is,' Frank Stebbing's metallic voice could plainly be heard, flavoured with an oath. 'This is your neglect, White, droning, stuck-up sneak as you always were and will be! I shall report this. Damage to property, and maybe life, all along of your ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night, and though out to the east the restless waves beat heavily on reef and shore, their action here was a slow heaving and curling over on the black metallic sand with a sound that to those on shipboard was like a whisper, but whose movement could be seen by a faint line of lambent light just in the blackest part to leeward of the ship, where sea touched shore. Sometimes this was so faint as ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... a most wonderful stone that Dr. Kendall has found—at least to me. I have never seen anything quite like it, the arborescent forms of the central thread of iron being hardly ever assumed by an ore of so much metallic luster. I think it would be very desirable to cut it, so as to get a perfectly smooth surface to show the arborescent forms; if Dr. Kendall would like to have it done, I can easily send it up to London with my ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... the Inner Temple clock, mingling with the harsher tones of St. Dunstan's and the Law Courts, slowly told out the hour of midnight; and as the last reverberations were dying away, some metallic object, apparently a coin, dropped with a sharp clink on to the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... stopped. But an unmistakable whistle of lead was accompanied by a metallic puncture below. The bullet hit the near end of his petrol tank almost at his knee. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... wherein is much loss, sith it is so quickly broken; and yet (as I think) easy to be made tougher, if our alchemists could once find the true birth or production of the red man, whose mixture would induce a metallic toughness unto it, whereby it ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... was buying a silly toy, called, I think, the cricket or cri-cri. It was a short slip of steel fixed by one end to a metallic base. Pressed out of shape by the thumb and released, it yielded a very distressing, tinkling click. Nothing else was needed to take the popular mind by storm. The "cricket" had its day of glory. Oblivion has executed justice upon it so effectually that ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Dr. Ravenshaw's study ticked loudly in the perfect stillness and then struck ten with a note of metallic derision as though rejoicing in the theft of an hour from a man who prided himself on knowing the value of time. Startled to find that it was so late, Barrant sprang to his feet and rang the bell. A sleepy Cornish maid appeared in answer, and Barrant informed her that ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... and inwardly with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; great, now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, brotherly, whole-hearted man." Or again: "Smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between. I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe. We shall see ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... The dull metallic sound of hammer blows on steel echoed queerly around the well of the staircase. Brisley and Gunn, standing very close together on the bottom step of the stair to the third floor, watched the police furtively. Irvin and Gray found a common fascination in the door itself, and Seton, cheroot ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... he stood very high; and that in addition to very perfect workmanship, there frequently appeared considerable evidence of a feeling for harmony and for a just proportion and arrangement of parts." It is also mentioned that "in the manufacture of metallic bedsteads he has ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... only in clay and indeed in most rocks except sandstone and limestone, but also in several of the precious stones, in the yellow topaz, the blue sapphire and lapis-lazuli, and the red garnet and ruby. It might look down upon some of its metallic relatives, but it is friendly with them all, and perfectly willing to form alloys with most of them. A single ounce of it put into a ton of steel as the latter is being poured out will drive away the gases which often make little holes in castings. Mixed with ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... note to the end of the cord, weighted it with a bunch of keys, and crept back to where I had marked the rail. Inch by inch I payed out the line, leaning well over. At last my ears detected the dangling of the metallic keys against glass, and, by manipulating the rope, managed to make them sound with clear insistence. I repeated the effort several times before there was any response. Then the port seemed to be opened cautiously, although no gleam of light shot forth. She had evidently extinguished ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... that in the shaking hands beneath the cap? Christopher's eyes, still on the tragically foul face, never dropped to catch the metallic gleam; his whole mind lay in dragging out the truth entangled in the wild words. The voice quivered more and more as if under spur of some mental effort that urged the speaker to a climax he could not reach but on the current of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... San Bernardino he happened to purchase a gun lacking a front sight. Bennett therefore sought a gunsmith, whom he requested to make a sight out of the metallic rock which he had found that he might have a souvenir which would not be ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... accustomed to English verdure. Olive-groves, it is true, have been naturalized in poetry as conveying an image of beauty and freshness; but in reality nothing can be more opposed to the oaks and elms of an English hedge-row, than the pale shining gray of this stunted tree, which has more of a metallic than a vegetable appearance. Nor does a perpetual succession of corn-fields, however rich in reality, present the same appearance of luxuriant vegetation as an English pasture. There is, besides, nothing in the nearer approach to Nismes, which reminds one of the environs ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... her into it, still with his mouth set and his eyes a trifle sunken. All about there were laughing groups of men in uniform. Outside, the parade glowed faintly in the dusk, and from the low barrack windows there came the glow of lights, the movement of young figures, voices, the thin metallic notes ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... who know the animal well, entertain of his sagacity. An eastern tailor to the Court was making a magnificent doublet for a bashaw of nine tails, and covering it, after the manner of eastern doublets, with gold, silver, and every species of metallic magnificence. As he was busying himself on this momentous occasion, there passed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory teeth, and shaking, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere of the sky, like iridescent gauze, showering a thousand harmonies of metallic colors. Like a dome of vitrified glass, it shut down on the illimitable, tawdry sweep ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... to them both at the same moment. One of the nuns put out her hand as she saw her falter; but she recovered herself and entered the yard. The rusty hinges creaked weirdly as the door closed behind her. A moment later, he heard the metallic ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... voice came to him it sounded low, yet hard and metallic. One would have wondered whether he ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... respects than injections. They are administered in the following manner:—A jar holding about a gallon of water, simple or medicated, as may be advisable, is placed upon a table or high stand. A long india-rubber tube is attached to the bottom of the jar, ending in a metallic tube, and furnished with a stopcock. The patient seats herself on the edge of a chair over a basin, introduces the tube, and turns the stopcock. The liquid is thus thrown up in a gentle, equable stream, without any exertion ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the first time, I heard the note of the cuckoo. "Cuck-oo—cuck-oo" it says, repeating the word twice, not in a brilliant metallic tone, but low and flute-like, without the excessive sweetness of the flute,—without an excess of saccharine juice in the sound. There are said to be always two cuckoos seen together. The note is very soft and pleasant. The larks I have not yet heard in the sky; though it is not infrequent ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a mounting misery, likewise turned the corner it was irrevocably remote, beyond all prospect of being overtaken by anything human pursuing it afoot. The swaying black bulk of it diminished and was swallowed up in the snow shower and the darkness. The rattle of mishandled gears died to a thin metallic clanking, then to a purring whisper, and then the ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening with closed eyes to a number of sounds. Of these there most impressed him two. They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic clicks, softened somewhat by distance. After a time it occurred to him to open his eyes. At once he noticed two things more—that he had some way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... one of the Reverend Grant's cigars. Propitiation must indeed be desired when the incense is abhorred. But Finlay declined to smoke. The Doctor, with his hands buried deep in his trousers pockets, where something metallic clinked in them, began to pace and turn. His mouth had the set it wore when he handled a difficult motion in the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... ringing of the telephone in a distant part of the house came with the effect of a sudden blow. Schooled as were most of these men to suppress their emotions, some of them started at the first burst of metallic sound. Jimmy caught the looks that some of them cast at one another. In those looks there was hesitance, and ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... rolling stock were forwarded by sea, involving heavy expenditures for freightage, and a ten per cent war risk on insurance. The company endured further embarrassments from the lack of capital, and the fact that in California a metallic currency formed the only circulating medium. Nor was it the least of its difficulties that the enterprise met with an ambiguous reception in many portions of the State, San Francisco especially regarding it with cold indifference. The zeal with which the road was pushed amid these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... a stuff so termed the gold wire was beaten out after the execution of the embroidery, a process which widened the metallic surface and gave great richness of appearance. The fact was rather, however, according to Dr. Rock, that the gold used in weaving such tissues was not wire but beaten sheets of gold cut into narrow strips. This would seem sufficient to explain the term "beaten gold," though Dr. Rock in another ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in the kindling rays, Shone with metallic lustre, sombre fire; His fiendish eye, so blue, and fierce, and cold, Froze like th' hyena's when she tears the dead. The sculptured beauty of the marble brow Of Pallas glittered, as though diamond-strewn: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cheerfully painted vase on the sideboard. And surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten how the outlines of such groups of flowers as you see there, are printed, just as I was printed, and are afterwards shaded and filled in with metallic colours by women and girls? As to the aristocracy of our order, made of the finer clay-porcelain peers and peeresses; - the slabs, and panels, and table-tops, and tazze; the endless nobility and gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea services; the gemmed perfume ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... know that he was so strong as to be able to rejoin his friends again, who must love him so much, and be so anxious about him. Her father thought she would be pleased, and, now that he was gone, there was really no necessity for her to hurry back. Miss Jenny, in a high metallic voice, did not know that she had expressed any desire to stay, still if her presence had become distasteful at home, if her own father was desirous of getting rid of her, if, when she was so soon to leave ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... step by chance into a little streamlet, and find the water of a most agreeable temperature. They put this water in earthen jars to cool, in order to render it fit for drinking, but it never becomes fresh and cold. It contains muriatic acid, without any trace of sulphur or metallic salt. I think it is Humboldt who supposes that in this part of Mexico there exists, at a great depth in the interior of the earth, a fissure running from east to west, for one hundred and thirty-seven leagues, through ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... apply her eye to the main orifice to see if Peter had damaged it, handling the euphonium in the manner of a telescope. I was thinking of the reproaches in prospect, when I was startled by a loud shriek, to which the euphonium imparted a metallic vibration, and Mrs. Nagsby dropped the instrument on to the floor, the good lady herself following it with a thud. A wee mouse scuttled across her face, disappeared behind the easy chair, and doubtless ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... as to provide for supports for the outer walls of asbestos wood, which serve to insulate the calorimeter. Between the channels beneath the calorimeter floor and the 3-inch channels is placed a sheet of zinc which forms the outer bottom metallic wall of the chamber. ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... up; he was about to speak, when Miss Darrell swept up to us noiselessly with a hard metallic smile on ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... inch by inch, and leveled it across the bed. It was Jan's goose-gun, loaded with buck-shot. There was a single metallic click as she drew the hammer back. In the doorway, looking at the stars, Blake did ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... is the parent of the cheese maggot. The fly itself (Piophila casei, Fig. 90) is black, with metallic green reflections, and the legs are dark and paler at the knee-joints, the middle and hind pair of tarsi being dark honey yellow. The Wine fly is also a Piophila, and lives the life of a perpetual toper in old wine casks, and partially emptied beer, cider and ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the metallic prizes of the great campaigns, these prizes could neither have benefited the members of the nobility as a whole nor, in the days of comparative peace which had followed the long epoch of war with wealthy powers, could they be ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... he said. His voice was small but cool, penetrating and metallic. I thought of fine steel wires. And, when I replied, my own voice had something of the ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... respectfully I may wish to speak of Gerard, I do not, in my conscience, consider him superior to what may be called the second rate class of portrait-painters in England.[194] His outline is often hard, and full of affectation of a knowledge of drawing: his colouring is as frequently severe and metallic, and there is rarely any expression of mind or soul in his faces. I saw at Laugier's the other day, his portrait of Madame de Stael—painted from recollection. He certainly had forgotten how to colour when he executed it. Forster ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... intelligent face. Eyes which at the least opposition would glow like coals of fire; and above them a permanent contraction of the superciliary muscle, an invariable sign of extreme energy. Short hair, slightly woolly, with metallic reflections; large chest rising and falling like a smith's bellows; arms, hands, legs, feet, all worthy of the trunk. No mustaches, no whiskers, but a large American goatee, revealing the attachments of the jaw whose masseter muscles were evidently of formidable strength. It has been calculated—what ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... you are a true archer, and you will actually look with tolerance on anything so stiff and metallic and mechanical as a gun. Your wife will accustom herself to shavings and scraps of feathers on the rugs. Inspirations will come to you anent better methods, which you will urge enthusiastically on the old timers; and the old timers will smile upon you sweetly and sadly. They had those same ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... undoubtedly serviceable, but more or less muddy and stained. That wouldn't do at all! Striding to the kitchen he poked about and finally unearthed a box of stove-polish that he had purchased and laid away for future use against that happy time when stove-polish would be doubly appreciated. The metallic luster of his boots was not altogether satisfactory, but it would do. "This here bein' chief engineer of a popcorn machine ain't what it's said to be in the perspectus. Gets a fella lookin' greasy and feelin' greasy, but the pay kind of makes up for it. Me first month's wages blowed in for outside ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... minutes Downy is back at work. Again I cautiously and silently approach, but he is now more alert, and when I am the width of three grape rows from him he rushes out of his den and lets off his sharp, metallic cry as he hurries away to some ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... simple process. Metallic mercury is easily volatilized, and separated from the gangue, at temperatures far below redness. Our closed retort would be admirable for ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... Porringer, a small metallic dish. Remembered, had not forgotten. Plight, condition. Pensioner, one who is supported by others. Pilferers, those who steal little things. Vigilant, watchful. Inmates, those living in the same house. Holiday, a day of amusement. Buffeting, striking with the hand. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... beautiful species of Cormorants, having brilliant violet green metallic reflections and, in the breeding plumage, crests on the forehead and nape, as well as large white flank patches. They breed in large colonies on the Aleutian Islands, placing their nests of sticks and sea mosses on the rocky ledges, often hundreds of feet above the sea level. Three or four ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... curious vehicle, a kind of frame on two long beams, a little raised in front like the runners of a sledge, and upon which there was room for five or six persons. A high mast was fixed on the frame, held firmly by metallic lashings, to which was attached a large brigantine sail. This mast held an iron stay upon which to hoist a jib-sail. Behind, a sort of rudder served to guide the vehicle. It was, in short, a sledge rigged like a sloop. During the winter, when ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... comes—although in some cases they dare not do so, fearing that an evil spirit will draw them in—in the hope of enriching themselves with treasure trove. The same light is said by the Mexican miners to "burn" over the place where a lode of rich metallic ore exists undiscovered, or even within the workings of a mine, sometimes, when a body of rich ore has ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... reducing a picture was invented about the year 1603. It consists of four metallic or wooden bars or rules, which are perforated by a series of holes (numbered from 1 to 20), and connected together by means of an adjustable thumb screw. The instrument is provided with a tracing and a marking point, and a screw or point which ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... another bench. Here were a vise and other heavier tools. On the floor under this bench were stowed many mechanical odds and ends—-pieces of wood, coils of rope, even a bundle of tent-pegs, though nothing was visible of a metallic nature. ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... cold, instead of the air-tubes alone being affected, the windpipe, and especially its upper part, becomes congested, and the lining membrane swollen. Partly owing to this, partly owing to its nerve-supply being disturbed, the child breathes noisily and hoarsely, and the cough has a peculiar metallic clangor. In the other case there is not merely the congestion of the windpipe, the disturbed nerve-supply, and the swollen state of the membrane; but in connection with the influence of the special poison of diphtheria, a deposit takes place at the back of the throat, whence ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... and be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teaches that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago. Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solid crystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which), to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around the earth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Bible represents God as creating the sun and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... moment, near the bookbinder's house below, came into sight Astier-Rehu, recognisable by his long frock-coat of a metallic green and his large wide 'topper.' Most people in the neighbourhood knew this hat, which, set on the back of a grey curly head, distinguished, like a halo, the hierarch of ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of rose, black, silver. Short twists and upstartings, Rose-black, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... of the brush striking sharply and with metallic distinctness on a dustpan came from the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of the cup were a number of metallic compartments, and the whole interior portion was revolving slowly at a turn of the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... muffled; a puff of smoke hung for a moment like the smoke from the pipe, appearing methodically between the passive onlooker's teeth; the man who had struck stopped dead in his tracks. There came a second shot; then in sharp staccato succession four others, followed by the ugly little metallic click announcing that the gun had emptied itself. Before the last explosion the balancing body sagged limply ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... certainly extremely beautiful. The slopes and broad ravines were absolutely covered with fields of flowers of the most exquisitely beautiful colors. Among those which had not hitherto made their appearance, and which here were characteristic, was a new delphinium, of a green and lustrous metallic blue color, mingled with compact fields of several bright-colored varieties of astragalus, which were crowded together in splendid profusion. This trail conducted us, through a remarkable defile, to a little timbered creek, up which we wound our way, passing by a singular and massive wall ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... phenomenon, says Sir David Brewster, in his "Letters on Natural Magic," there is a convent miraculously preserved in the bowels of the hill; and the sounds are said to be those of the "Nakous, a long metallic ruler, suspended horizontally, which the priest strikes with a hammer, for the purpose of assembling the monks to prayer." There exists a tradition that on one occasion a wandering Greek saw the mountain open, and that, entering by the gap, he descended into the subterranean convent, where ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of the old Scandinavian gods. Near the Faroe Islands we dashed into a violent thunderstorm, and were almost deafened by the terrific explosions, or blinded by the flashes of lightning. Otherwise we could enjoy both of these electrical displays without fear, as the metallic shell of the car was a good protective screen. Certainly our flying machine would be an excellent means of making observations in meteorology, from the sampling of cirrus cloud to the chasing ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... rocky or metallic fragments which in their journey through space are caught in the earth's atmosphere and instantaneously ignited by the friction. Far away in the depths of space one of these bodies felt the attracting power of the sun, and began moving towards him. As it approached, its speed ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... having suspended speech. This throughout the saloon; for all, bar-drinkers as well as gamesters, have caught the ominous words, and thoroughly understand their import. No longer resounds the chink of ivory cheques, or the metallic ring of doubloons and dollars. No longer the thudding down of decanters, nor the jingle of glasses. Instead, a stillness so profound that one entering at this moment might fancy it a Quakers' meeting, but for the symbols seen around—these, anything but Quakerish. Easier to imagine it ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... be accentuated, and that is the use of plenty of clean water. Another is that you should keep your palettes separate. For myself, I make use of a common white metallic dinner-plate, known as iron-stone china, costing another ten cents, for my sky-palette, squeezing the color-tubes in a row around its edge and my Chinese white below them on one side toward the bottom. For my transparent ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... the defenders unannounced. On and on they stole, step by step, praying for silence. Would the gentle shuffle of feet be heard by the men who lay within stone-throw of them? Their hopes had begun to rise when there broke upon the silence of the night a resonant metallic rattle, the thud of a falling man, an empty clatter! They had walked into a line of meat-cans slung upon a wire. By measurement it was only ninety yards from the trench. At that instant a single rifle sounded, and the Canadians hurled themselves ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the table in the corner; then placed it in the circle near the medium. I asked the operators to touch the disc of the instrument very gently. They did this almost at once, the 'touching' consisting of a metallic scraping upon the brass disc, quite audible, similar in type to the imitation of the floor being rubbed with sand paper, a phenomenon I ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the fog and spray hid the ship from view. But a sound, which Frederick did not immediately connect with the ghastly spectacle on the deck, rose above the seething and roaring of the merciless sea and the metallic clanging of the hurricane. For several seconds Frederick's thoughts were far away in a certain place near his home, a wide, marshy meadow-land, where great flocks of migrating birds stopped to rest in their passage. But ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a distant metallic clangour; then came the rushing of wings, the alighting of a noisy flock of birds which began to cry "Come back! Come back! Come back!" and Dyke's gun spoke out twice, bringing down ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... on the stile, and looked with eyes that seemed blurred with impalpable flaws at a world in which even the spring buds were wilted, the sunlight metallic and the shadows mixed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... reformed his lines and assaulted and took the enemy's first lines of entrenchments. Kershaw marched in rear of the brigade, giving commands in that clear, metallic sound that inspired confidence in his troops. At the foot of the declivity, or where the ground begun to rise towards the enemy's lines, was a rail fence, and at this obstruction and clearing of it away, Kershaw met a galling fire from the Federal sharpshooters, but not a gun had been ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... search my memory for a long time, even for days, in order to give precision to the vague feeling that I have seen it before, so as to finally say with confidence, "It is So and So!" Or else I hear in my inner ear a certain voice, with a metallic tone and authoritative inflections: this voice pronounces scientific phrases, gives a series of lectures, but I know not to whom it belongs, and it costs me a long effort to reach the interpretation: it is the voice of M. Dastre! There ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... filled with a sickly smoke. The Man brought some bear skins and covered the sufferer, for, the season being autumn, the night was cold. Pierre, who had thus spent his first sane and conscious hour in many days, fell asleep. What time it was when he waked he was not sure, but it was to hear a metallic click-click come to him through the clear air of night. It was a pleasant noise as of steel and rock: the work of some lonely stone-cutter of the hills. The sound reached him with strange, increasing distinctness. Was this Titan that had saved him sculpturing some figure ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cloak reveals the DUKE to be clad in a scarlet satin doublet, which has a high military collar and sleeves puffed with black. His tights also are of scarlet, and he wears shining soft black riding-boots. Jewels glisten at his neck. About his middle, too, there is a metallic gleaming, for he is equipped with a noticeably long sword and a dagger. Such is the personage who now addresses himself more ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... my life of idleness had ended and that a new life of activity in many parts of the world was about to commence. His manner was quite unemotional, neither harsh nor kindly, his metallic voice conveyed no more than the bare meaning of the words which he uttered. When, finally, he ceased speaking, he struck a gong which hung from a corner of the huge table, and Chunda ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... our party evidently frightened everybody, for we had hardly shown ourselves on the summit of the pass when in the fort a gong began to sound loudly, filling the air with its metallic notes. A shot was fired. Soldiers with their matchlocks[2] ran here and there. They pulled down one of the black tents and hastily conveyed it inside the fort. The greater part of the garrison sought shelter within the walls of the fort with the hurry almost of a ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... girl, in her little metallic voice. "I like you. You like me. You give one dollah; I take you see Chinese man smokes mo' 'n all oddeh mens. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... None but those who have witnessed so awful a tempest at sea could form an idea of the weight and destructive power of the wind, crushing and beating every thing to pieces, as if it had been done with a heavy metallic body. At 8 P. M. the soldiers and sailors could not stand at the pumps, but were obliged to bale out ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... commonwealths, but which individual means are inadequate to furnish, and for the due administration of which individual guarantees are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals, railroads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange whether metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, ought legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the visible personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... calls of maam and duraquara; and shrill laughter-like notes of the large tree-climber as it passed from tree to tree; the quick whistle of cotingas; and strange throbbing and thrilling sounds, as of pygmies beating on metallic drums, of the skulking pitta-thrushes; and with these mingled other notes less well known. One came from the treetops, where it was perpetually wandering amid the foliage a low note, repeated at intervals of a few seconds, so ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... itself seemed to grow larger—the sky became of a metallic tint, the sea lost its silvery brilliancy, and gradually assumed the hue of molten lead. The captain, having several times examined his barometer, came on deck. "All hands, shorten sail!" he shouted out, and while the boatswain was turning up the crew he ordered a signal ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the desk. The officer was delivering his report. Then the Kaiser seemed to question him, for I heard his hard, metallic voice: ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... note that a year or two later, courses of lectures in "natural philosophy" and chemistry were given for the benefit of members; and the early records tell us that in illustrating a lecture on electricity the instructor, "Mr. Steele, showed a metallic conductor used by Dr. Franklin in making experiments." Later, lectures on astronomy were given for the benefit of readers, and drawing classes ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... entered the drawing-room, I heard the voice of the hostess; it was a voice clear, decided, metallic, bell-like, uttering these words: "Taken Abbots' House? I ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... relatively plentiful. Gold, though readily available, was considered a nuisance, since it was of no practical value due to its softness, excessive weight and its affinity for many catalysts. Most of the other metallic elements were present in quantities approximating those of Earth, except for an element called "morlus". When Tonlos mentioned ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... the anchor chains, the rattle of the links of the trucks that bring down the cargoes, the metallic clank of sheets of iron falling on the stone pavement, the dull thud of wood, the creaking of the carts plying for hire, the whistles of the steamers, piercingly shrill and hoarsely roaring, the shouts of dock laborers, sailors, and ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the thing's body, struck ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... rule out the whole class of guns requiring metallic cartridges, and as there are undeniable advantages connected with their use, we deem it necessary to give our reasons for this decision somewhat at length. The cartridges are made of copper and filled with powder, and the ball being inserted in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... settling down over the woods. A chill vapor seemed to arise from the water. There was a melancholy note in the tweet of the low-flitting birds. The rustling trees softened their murmur to a continuous whisper, soothing and caressing. The tinkle of the creek became more metallic and pronounced. Near by, down the stream, a sudden chorus of frogs burst into croaking, their isolated notes blended by the chirping undertone of the crickets and tree toads. There were other sounds, mysterious, untraceable, but all musical ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... legend could be engraved upon them with the burin. To drill a hole through them required great dexterity, and some of the lapidaries, from a dread of breaking the cylinder, either did not pierce it at all, or merely bored a shallow hole into each extremity to allow it to roll freely in its metallic mounting. The tools used in engraving were similar to those employed at the present day, but of a rougher kind. The burin, which was often nothing more than a flint point, marked out the area of the design, and sketched out the figures; the saw was largely employed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Metallic rods upheld the curtains; rods that shone brightly, and curved upwards, forming a canopy. My eyes ran along these rods, scanning their configuration, and admiring, as a child admires, the regularity of their curves. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the shoulder of the deputy. It was a flashing line of light which focused suddenly in a single, glinting dot. That instant something hummed evilly beside the ear of Andy. A moment later the report came barking and echoing in his ear with the little metallic ring in it which tells of the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... years ago, was conveyed under the canon of the Duke of Richmond. I have no interest in our present representative; nor if I had, is he returning. Plate, of all earthly vanities, is the most impassable: it is not Counerband in its metallic capacity, but totally so in its personal; and the officers of the custom-house not being philosophers enough to separate the substance from the superficies, brutally hammer both to pieces, and return you only the intrinsic: a compensation which you, who ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... considerable thickness, technically over one inch in circumference. Ropes are made of hemp, manila, flax, cotton or other vegetable fiber or of iron, steel or other metallic wire. A rope is sometimes called a line. They are composed of threads which are spun or twisted into strands and the finished ropes have special names, according to the number of the strands, and the various sizes are indicated by the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... near the holy mountain, where he sometimes lives with his family. I saw there a fine collection of stuffed birds, which he had brought himself from the Himalayas. I was particularly struck by the pheasants, some of which shone with quite a metallic lustre; and there were some not less ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... piping, and still farther—there was a truck and hoist unloading a massive object into place right now—there were huge engines fitting precisely into openings designed to hold them. Others were being plated in with metallic skins. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... earth, without heeding the ungracious return which she may make; and a rich warm sunset flung over the hills and woods a delicious atmosphere of beauty, burnishing the dull heights and the gloomy pines with golden hues, far more bright, if for less highly valued by men, than the metallic treasures which lay beneath their masses. Invested by the lavish bounties of the sun, so soft, yet bright, so mild, yet beautiful, the waste put on an appearance of sweetness, if it did not rise ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... points, Mabel. For one thing, it's blue metallic ink. Feisul's private letters are all written with indelible black stuff made from pellets that I gave him; they're imported from ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy |
