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More "Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first indication of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... all other forms of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush and refuse to come out; or ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... down there," pointing out of the window in the direction of the capitol, "called the Congress, and if they would only give me the four battleships I want, I'd be perfectly willing to have any one take a crack at me." Then, for the first time recognizing the existence of the parents, the President said: "And I don't know but if they did pick me off I'd be pretty well ahead of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... in its diameter, this hollow, as my gaze then measured it. It had three openings—one that lay like a crack in the northeast slope; another, the tunnel mouth through which we had come. The third lifted itself out of the bowl, creeping up the precipitous bare scarp of the western barrier straight to the north, clinging to the ochreous rock up ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... him well enough, all this down-on-your-knees business works against you, more than your worst enemy could do. I didn't know so much about it then. I've found it out since, worse luck. And I really believe if George had had the savey to crack himself up a little, and say he'd met a nice girl or two in the back country and hid his hand, Aileen would have made it up with him that very Christmas, and been a happy woman ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... spoonful of whisky, but you can't expect him to start right up and hop around. He got an awful crack, boy." ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... And after a swimming interval they heard him moving. "Cuckoo!" he called; a level flame stabbed the dark; something fell, thudding through the staccato uproar of the explosion. At the same moment the outer door opened on the crack and Carfax's ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... blew through the narrow passage with screaming gusts, and the volley of water was churned into flying foam as she rushed along under a heavy press of sail; for the young commander was bent on letting his officers and men see that he knew how to crack on without losing his head, and the average sailor rejoices in being able to say that he has sailed with a man who was "a slogger." On the other hand, I have more than once seen a whole crew come aft and ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... our stateroom before we are ill," she says presently, in a state of hopeful anticipation, and we retire to No. 49 in the Steamship San Miguel, which all who have taken this journey know to be the best double room on the "crack" steamer of the line. We put up hangers, divide pockets and racks, and prepare for a three weeks' occupancy. Having finished our work, we go to the stern to get a whiff of the stiff breeze blowing from the southeast. The air ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... as sure as you're born!" said Wyngate, with optimistic decision. "That's always the way. You'll find every crack of that blessed old shed stuck full of greenbacks and certificates of deposit, and lots of gold dust and coin buried all over that cow patch! And of course no one suspected it! And of course he lived alone, and never let ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... greatly increased? Who loads you like this, beyond reason and right? Is it done for a purpose, or just out of spite? Is it all your own treasures you have in your pack, That crumples your backbone and makes your ribs crack? It is really too much for an old ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... offer me a visit—I don't know when. I have just answered his note, and endeavoured to limit its meaning to the shortest sense I could, by proposing to give him a dinner or a breakfast. I would keep my bed rather than crack our northern ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... shell, and hemp to hackle; and at which ever corner of the fireplace Winthrop might set himself down, a pair of little feet would come pattering round him, and petitions, soft but strong, to cut an apple, or to play jackstraws, or to crack hickory nuts, or to roast chestnuts, were sure to be preferred; and if none of these, or if these were put off, there was still too much of that sweet companionship to suit with the rough road to learning. Winnie was rarely put off, and never rejected. And the little garret room used by Winthrop ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... energetic signal from their leader they struck up a march and started down street with the offering as a pledge of what they might be expected to do. They were not called on, however, to do all, for at noon the Bear Dance Band arrived from the West and an hour later came the crack thirty-two-piece military band from Medicine Bend, carrying more gold on their lacings and their horns than the local musicians carried in the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... paused long enough to pass a word with Hank, and Andrew, from his place behind the door of the horse shed, could hear it all. He could even look through a crack and see the faces of the strangers. They told how Tomo was wrought to a pitch of frenzied interest by this manhunt. Well-to-do citizens, feeling that the outlaw had insulted the town by so boldly venturing into it, had raised a considerable contribution toward ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... first round success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the December 1991 balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties, but did not appease the activists who progressively ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... first declared that they were innocent—the first word of most of these men when they were apprehended. Parish died silent. George had spent some hours with a clergyman, and was apparently repentant. Just as he reached the box, he saw a friend peering through a crack in the wall. "Good-by, old fellow," he called out, and sprang to his own death without waiting for the box to be pulled from ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... same as in former times. But in the churchyard there were several new graves; and there also, in the grass, close by the wall, stood the old church bell! It had been taken down from its high position, in consequence of a crack in the metal which prevented it from ever chiming again, and a new bell now occupied its place. The mother and son were walking in the churchyard when they discovered the old bell, and they stood still to look at it. Then ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... struggle and lose the bloom of their honesty, how women hide in a smiling pretence, and eye with caustic glances their neighbor's newer house, diamonds, or porcelain, and observe their daughters, such as these,—why, I tremble and tremble, and this scene to-night, every 'crack' ball this winter will be, not the pleasant society of men and women, but—even in this young country—an orgie such as rotting Corinth saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... five of the children huddled together for warmth in one bed, and the parents and balance of the family in the other. I slept on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with my nose glued to the crack to get a breath of God's cold air, in spite of the need for warmth—for not a blanket did the house possess. When I asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we had sent last year, the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers and coats which ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the kind, I was satisfied. But in the midst of my pleasure, our successor—Marquis San Saturnino—made his appearance, and we had to prepare for our departure. One consolation, however, remained. I had just then been appointed to the high rank of cornet in the crack dragoon regiment "Royal Piedmont." I had never seen its uniform, but I cherished a vague hope of being destined by Fortune to wear a helmet; and the prospect of realizing this splendid dream of my infancy prevented me from regretting my Roman ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... They may have knowledge and skill in some things, but they are of no use here. At all the stables the driver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him; they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as a favor if he gives them better than they send. And it is his joke that always raises the laugh, regardless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn't see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to clear, and he set himself to wonder with more force. This was not the deck, for he could feel that he was lying on what was like an old sail, and where his hand lay was not wood, but cold hard stone, with a big crack full of small scraps. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... loved could thus make a public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... chateau served for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated each other. The French, fired on from every point,—from behind the walls, from the summits of the garrets, from the depths of the cellars, through all the casements, through all the air-holes, through every crack in the stones,—fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... for me," he reflected. "Trevanion is always there, and any one can see he's madly in love with her. He bears one of the oldest names in England too, he's heir to an old title, and he's Captain in one of the crack regiments. And Nancy loves a soldier. She comes of a fighting race, and thinks there's no profession in the world worthy of being ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust Of mouldy damps and charnel crust They're patch'd ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pole of las' year's fodder-stack. De rheumatiz done bit my bones; you hear 'em crack and crack? I cain'st sit down 'dout gruntin' like 'twas breakin' ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... way delightful, and each will please best after an experience of the other. (3) But solitude for its own sake should surely never be preferred. We are bound by the strongest obligations to busy ourselves amid the world of men, if it be only to crack jokes. The finest trait in the character of St. Paul was his readiness to be damned for the salvation of anybody else. And surely we should all endure a little weariness to make one face look brighter or one hour go more pleasantly in this mixed world. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... close at its base. He advanced among them. The surface of the rock was uneven—and low down a crack showed. At that instant a slow, sobbing, gasping intake of breath ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... awful beating," pursued Clara. "But I got one good crack at him with a bottle." She laughed. "I don't think he'll be doing much flirting till his cheek heals up. He looks a sight!" She opened her nightdress and showed Susan a deep blue-black mark on her left breast. "I wonder if I'll get cancer from that?" said she. "It'd be ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Winsford, but most of the salt is extracted from brine both here and at Lawton, Wheelock and Middlewich. At Northwich and other places in the locality curious accidents frequently occur owing to the sinking of the soil after the brine is pumped out; walls crack and collapse, and houses are seen leaning far out of the perpendicular. A little ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... at the extreme rear, where she was safe for the time. She was about to advance, when checked by the crash of the window pane and the crack of the rifle. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... plunged furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, and Hawtrey, who sprang down, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... crash! That makes things real. Every word was accompanied by the roar of guns—the rattle of the machine gun and the crack of the rifle. We never knew what it ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith
... me, slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones aches, thy joints cramps, and convulsions stretch and crack ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... of course, already had them. But an adult criminal who had the money to invest in robotic components, or went to the trouble to steal them, had something more lucrative in mind than street fights or robbing barrooms. To crack a bank, for instance, took a cleverly constructed, well-designed robot and plenty of ingenuity on the part of ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the damaged article remonstrated with "Goodness gracious, Wibird! You have broken the jug," his features lighted up, and he seemed immensely relieved. "I thought," He remarked, "I heerd somethink crack!" ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... part in this unlovely Correspondence: the geeho-ing of an expert wagoner, who has got a fiery young Arab thoroughly tied into his dastard sand-cart, and has to drive him by voice, or at most by slight crack of whip; and does it. Can we hope, a select specimen or two of these Documents, not on Grumkow's part, or for Grumkow's unlovely sake, may now be acceptable to the reader? A Letter or two picked from that large stock, in a legible state, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... after all, we were safe. Then her hand clutched mine firmly. A wolf had leaped from covert in the path of the file; loped eastward across the desert, and instantly, with a whoop that echoed upon us like the crack of doom, a young fellow darted from the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... down to the floor and laid his mouth alongside the crack, with the feeling that his message would be more impressive delivered in that way, since he was not to be admitted to the apartment to give it ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... gittin' mad 'bout it. Thet blamed quarter ye giv me rolled down a crack in the stoop, an' got lost. Sure. Got ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... Away! Who is so patient of this impious world, That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue? Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense, That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake? To see the earth crack'd with the weight of sin, Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads Black, ravenous ruin, with her sail-stretch'd wings, Ready to sink us down, and cover us. Who can behold such prodigies as these, And have his lips seal'd up? Not I: my soul Was never ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... boulders of different kinds of rocks, and very sparingly scattered through the soil. We had scarcely reached the summit of this hill, when it was enveloped in thick clouds, from which the lightning flashed, and the thunder pealed close to us, and crack after crack reverberated along the valleys. It soon passed away, however, and left us well drenched, but the western horizon was still black with clouds. From this hill we proceeded to another, which at first sight I had thought was of volcanic origin, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... own. Shakespeare's is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Nipples.— Immediately after each nursing the nipples should be washed off in a saturated solution of boric acid in cold water, and dried with a soft cloth. If they are disposed to crack, anoint them with cocoa-butter immediately after each cleansing. If the skin of the nipple is very sensitive, a nipple-shield should be used for the first few days; or should the nipple become sore at any time, the shield can be resorted ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... have heard my father say the Puritan breed makes the stoutest men-at-arms; that nothing has been found to stiffen a battle-line equal to a good text. Give this fellow a pike, pit him against a boatload of Spanish papists, and, I 'll warrant, he 'll crack more heads than any two of us. Besides, he controls a perfect tornado of a voice, fit to frighten the crew of a frigate on ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... was rather an indication of honest fanaticism than of deliberate reasoning—rather a sign of being solemnly "on the rampage" than of giving way to careful conviction—and more symptomatic of a sharp virtuous rant, got up in a crack and to be played out in five minutes, than of a judicious move in the direction of permanent good. The orthodox looked down with a genteel contempt upon the preachers whose religion had converted Kingswood colliers, and turned Cornwall ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Benham, and before Amanda could realize what he was up to, she heard the crack of his revolver and saw a puff of blue smoke drift away above his right shoulder. The foremost beast rolled over and the goatherd had sprung to his feet. He shouted with something between anger and dismay as Benham, regardless of the fact that the other dogs had turned and were running back, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... When he spoke to her it was almost in a drawl, but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of sting, as Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana accompanies his song with the crack of a driving-whip. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... do to save now. It was useless to expect such foresight on Maurice's part. But for herself, whenever she got an apple or a nut, she put it carefully aside. It was not that her little teeth did not long to close in the juicy fruit, or to crack the hard shell and secure the kernel. But far greater than these physical longings was her earnest desire to keep true to her solemn promise to the dead—to find, and give her mother's message and her mother's gift to ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... dry up, Dave. Ef it took me as long to git to workin' as it did you to git a wife, I bate this hay wouldn't git mowed down to crack o' doom. Gorry! ain't this a tree! I tell you, the sun 'n' the airth, the dew 'n' the showers, 'n' the Lord God o' creation jest took holt 'n' worked together on this ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... kin bet yer breeches I'm not goin' ter let no cave dweller or brush hider tromp onto my moccasins, an' turn ther other cheek ter be tromped on. Ther first feller o' that outfit I cotch sashay in' around me I'm goin' ter take a crack ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... that's your sort!" roared a purple-faced ruffian with a hang-lip. "A right proper gal is that. Give her a huzza and crack yer ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... two jobs on hand to-night," said the leader of the gang. "There's a crib to be cracked an' a guy to be croaked. Red, you an' Gypsie an' the Gunney will crack the crib. It's dead easy. Only an old man an' his wife. The servants are out except one an' he's fixed. I'll give you the layout presently. The other job's harder. Kid, I'll put you in charge, an' as it's got to be done early to-night I'll give you ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Then they crawled in and while Archer reached up and held the door, Tom broke the stick so that the opening was reduced to the inch or two necessary for ventilation. Reaching out, they pulled the vine over this crack until they felt certain that no vestige of door or opening could be seen from without, and this done they sat down upon the straw, their backs against the walls of the vat, enjoying the first real comfort and freedom from anxiety which ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... to the front; the Queen rode near by in her carriage; she wore a smart military coat, colors of her crack regiment; and General Kalkreuth, in a burst of enthusiasm, vowed that the Queen could herself win the war should ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... approach of the late auto-beasts does not frighten me. I rest on my moving legs. My face is wet with rain. Green remains of the night Stick to my eyes. That's the way I like it— Even as the sharp, secret Drops of water crack on thousands of walls. Plop from thousands of roofs. Hop along shining streets... And all the sullen houses Listen to their Eternal song. Close behind me the burning night is ruined... Its smelly corpse burdens my back. But above me I feel the ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... bit—only a yard or two in breadth—that ran by the side of the road. Master Cheese, it must be confessed, did not want for bravery; he had a great deal rather face danger of any kind than hard work; and the rumour about Fred Massingbird's ghost had been rare nuts for him to crack. Up he went, having no thought in his head at that moment of ghosts, but rather ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... confusion, "I'm not at all wet, I'm not." Happily, the children don't know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding sail boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of the fore-boom ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... pieces that have been left of roast or boiled fowls, either turkeys or chickens, crack the bones, cut off the meat, and chop it fine, put it in a small iron pot, or stew pan, cover it with water, put in the gravy that may be left from the fowls, season with pepper and salt, put in some chopped celery, crumbs ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... get out of this, ma'am, or I'll make you!—you and your cowardly man-pup there, as is afraid to look me in the face through the crack o' the door! Get out, I ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... on the cloister wall at Pisa, the Lord Death. His fleshless face peers from behind a bush at Zatzinger's stunted, fever-stricken lady and imbecile gentleman; he sits grinning on a tree in Orso Grafs allegory, while the cynical knights, with haggard, sensual faces, crack dirty jokes with the fat, brutish woman squatted below; he puts his hand into the basket of Duerer's tattered pedlar; he leers hideously at the stirrup of Duerer's armed and stalwart knight. No gods of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Crack! bang! went the rifle and shotguns, as the young hunters took hasty aim. When the smoke cleared away they saw the doe stretched on the ground and one of the deer limping forward painfully. The other ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... L. (BRITTLE WILLOW. CRACK-WILLOW.) Leaves lanceolate, taper-pointed, smooth, glaucous beneath (slightly silky when young), serrate throughout; stipules half heart-shaped, usually large. Branches smooth and polished, very brittle at base. A tall (50 to 80 ft. high) handsome Willow, with a ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... my Lord. If you knew me to be wrong you would not be so sore with me. Nevertheless I am under deep obligation for kind-hearted hospitality. If an American can make up his mind to crack up everything he sees here, there is no part of the world in which he can get along better." He had already written a long letter home to his friend Mr. Josiah Scroome, and had impartially sent to that gentleman not only his own lecture, but also a large collection of the criticisms ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... died. Don Lorenzo pointed a pistol skyward. Drew strove to make his body one with Shiloh's small easy movements. The big gray knew very well what was in progress, was tensing now for a swift getaway leap. And he made it on the crack ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... would drift ashore somewhere; she could land anywhere; even on the steep Kleiner Berg side she could easily have found footing; she was well used to climbing its narrow ledges, and knew every crack and crevice and projection where a step could be taken. But, no; the boat was not going to drift ashore. It had stopped in a tangle of lily-leaves, far out in the water, and there was not a breath ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the painful scenes gone through but yesterday, and the sour-looking ring of men and women gathered to see the start, I was in high spirits as we went spinning down the Carlisle road, with my heart leaping to the crack of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Drainage of Stiff Clays," we shall see that the most obstinate clays are usually so affected by the operation of drainage, that they crack, and so open passages for ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... rule, and the patient may live. I had a patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain blowing in on him under the door—and he got well. As to Fontenette, all his symptoms so far are good. Well—I'll ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... impossible to ignore the horrible truth. The door, cleverly constructed to serve the vengeful purposes of the Duchess, could not be opened from within. Rinaldo laid his cheek against the wall in various spots; nowhere could he feel the warmer air from the passage. He had hoped he might find a crack that would show him where there was an opening in the wall, but nothing, nothing! The whole seemed to be ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... that came from the top of the tree. A crack, a rustle and a shriek from Tara, who seemed to be coming down faster ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the very responsible head of the executive of a great political party. As that executive head he was compelled to regard Paul from a different angle. The millions of South Africa or the Middle West might vainly knock at his own front door till the crack of doom, while Paul the penniless sauntered in an honoured guest. But in his official room in the House of Commons more stern and worldly considerations had ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of hoof above the crack deep enough to draw blood. Soak foot in hot water, apply Pratts Peerless Hoof Ointment and cover with oakum. Pare out sole and open heel—blacksmith must use care in expanding. Apply Pratts Peerless Hoof Ointment daily to the coronet ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... off the edge of the glacial fringe onto the pressure ridges of the tidal crack already described, in spite of the free use of our pickaxes and the pickaxes of the pioneer division, which had gone before, the trail was a most trying one for men, dogs, and sledges, especially the old Eskimo type of sledge. The new "Peary" sledges, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep acclivities. Life will become monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe, will be just so many terrible labors. Your lungs will produce on you the effect of weighing a hundred pounds. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... neck, and was tethered to the spot. "We are obliged to lock this fellow in too, or he would make his escape. Every evening I tickle his neck with my sharp knife; he is so frightened at it!" and the little girl drew forth a long knife, from a crack in the wall, and let it glide over the Reindeer's neck. The poor animal kicked; the girl laughed, and pulled Gerda into bed ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Forrest says take them and carry them with him to wait upon him and cook for him, and put them in jail and send them to their masters." Still they kept on shooting. They shot at me after that, but did not hit me; a rebel officer shot at me. He took aim at my side; at the crack of his pistol I fell. He went on and said: "There's another ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... cottage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, 'to have a pleasant crack wi' the laird.'"[27] ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the trench into [146] the battery, Where we will have gallions of six foot broad, To save our cannoneers from musket-shot; Betwixt which shall our ordnance thunder forth, And with the breach's fall, smoke, fire, and dust, The crack, the echo, and the soldiers' cry, Make deaf the air ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... Dombey through her spectacles, as if she would have liked to crack a few quotations with him from the authority in question. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by a knock at ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... lug—that's certain! Dorey, go and stir down the clo'es in the boilin' suds, and be quick about it, too! Don't ye know better'n to stand starin' at folks like a sick cat?" This, to a little girl, presumably the herald of Joyce's approach, who had been peeping in through the crack of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... either fear or interest. There followed a brief pause, in which the imagination might have conjured up unseen forces gathering themselves together for a final onslaught. It came at last, like a cry, suddenly, amidst a wild outburst of yells, screams, and the intermittent crack of revolvers fired at close quarters. Pandemonium had been let loose on the other side of the silver lake, but the silver lake itself remained placid and untroubled. Only the red eye winked more vigorously, as though its warning ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Roland, slightingly. "You'll get over that in a day, and return thanks that there's one source of trouble less. Look here! If I were in the luck of having a good commission given me in some crack Indian regiment, would you not say, 'Oh be joyful,' and start me off at once? What are you the worse for George's being away? Mother!" he added somewhat passionately, "would you like to see me tied down for life to an old ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... mine. Besides, I'm older than you and if there was one thing your father taught you it was respect for your elders. Two heads are better than one. You crack right along and try to save your ranch in your way and I'll crack right along and try to save it my way. You pay your way and I'll pay mine. That's ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... started to shoot uptown, turning a corner into another deserted boulevard. As it skirted the great Park, he pointed at Central Tower. There seemed to be a slight crack in the smooth surface half way up but, as a moment's mist engulfed the tower, it looked flawless again. Then all the mist was gone and the crack was back, a ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... mediaeval scholars heartily to wish him in the Barathron, books and all, comes forward six hundred years later marshaling phrase upon phrase, clause upon clause, till a modern is forced to exclaim: "What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" Now I have dealt with these complexes in different ways; and sometimes I have cleft and hacked and wrenched them out of all semblance of their original shape, and sometimes I have hauled them almost entire, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... He wouldn't mind me and made me mad, and I up with my stick and gave him one crack on ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... dear to her. The trumpet notes had come back, and in a few moments the music ceased.... Someone was closing the great doors from inside the schoolroom. As the side behind which she was sitting swung slowly to, she caught a glimpse, through the crack, of four boys with close-cropped heads, sitting at the long table. The gas was out and the room was dim, but a reading-lamp in the centre of the table cast its light ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... think yourself a baby; That you have taken these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll tender me ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... before this, had become the property of a certain Mr. Armstrong, a civilian who had made a great fortune in the East, in an age when great fortunes were commonly made by East-Indian traders. His only son had been captain in a crack regiment, and had sold out of the army after his father's death, in order to marry Lady Laura Challoner, second daughter of the Earl of Calderwood, a nobleman of ancient lineage and decayed fortunes, and to begin life as a country ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... descend by lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek, with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the creek to a wilderness of hazelnut-bushes. He taught her to tear the drying husks from the nuts and crack the nuts with stones. At his request Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small frilly dress. He found a piece of string, and they fished for perch in the creek. As they had no bait whatever, their success ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... doctor, "that there is still water inside the moon which is gradually freezing. That operation would sometimes crack the surface, and this has probably caused the quaking that ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... If blazing eyes could crack glass, the spectacles of the old lady would have been splintered into many pieces as she stood by the roadside, the end of her umbrella jabbed an inch or two into the ground. After standing thus for some five minutes, she suddenly turned and walked vigorously away in ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the children not be in school. Somehow they must all manage to break the bonds that held them there and escape from the death-trap before the fatal swinging menace reached them. The stroke of nine, booming out in that house, would be like the Crack o' ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... by a defense. Life is its own excuse for being, and every life is its own apology. Silence is better than wordy refutation. People who want to believe the falsehoods told of this man, or any other, will continue to believe them until the crack ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... about, to Kate cam' back, An' ga'e her mou' a hearty smack, Syne lengthened out a lovin' crack 'Bout marriage an' the care o't. Though as she thocht she didna speak, An' lookit unco mim an' meek, Yet blithe was she wi' Rab to cleek, In marriage, wi' the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... plank, he laid a hand on Stephen's arm, and tottered. The big Louisiana, Captain Brent's boat, just in from New Orleans, was blowing off her steam as with slow steps they climbed the levee and the steep pitch of the street beyond it. The clatter of hooves and the crack of whips reached their ears, and, like many others before them and since, they stepped into Carvel & Company's. On the inside of the glass partition of the private office, a voice of great suavity was heard. It was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... still comes out of a crack in the side of the mountain. This shows that any day melted rocks may boil forth again. About two hundred years ago the mountain threw out so much ash that it covered a ...
— Highroads of Geography • Anonymous
... go and axe her to come to chapel Sunday, her and hers. I'd axe her kindly, and I'd crack a joke with her. And I'd get round her for the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... up some day," Anthea was saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with Cyril, thrust a stout-shod little foot against his brother's chest; there was a crack!—the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father's second-best Waterbury watch, which ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... "if he will beat her!" And he stooped to lock the door. His hand was on the key, but he did not turn it. Who was that? Jan had keen hearing. He jammed his ear against the crack. It was the sound of breathing, heavy breathing, of breathing and tramping, and now—Jan had been listening for perhaps a ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... a pretense of hesitancy she turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... these rocks there was one narrow opening, through which the sea ran clear and deep, making a safe channel to the shore. This was Cook's Crack. Very few of the fishermen knew of it. It was not likely, therefore, that anybody on board of the schooner would be able to pilot her ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... interrupted him with, "The big thing the Legion's got to teach is Americanism and let those crack-brained fools know just what this country stands for." While still another injected, "The average 'long-beard' has been so crazed by persecution in Russia that he would mistake Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... the storm came the thud of torn branches striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as big as a hen's egg. For three ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Anthony, "you never get a compliment out of this gal. She gives ye the nut, and you're to crack it, and there maybe, or there mayn't be, a kernel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had been induced to go out and try for the football team at the university. His fellows knew him as a fair gymnast and a crack tennis player. He was muscular, well-built, and fast on his feet, almost perfectly put together for a halfback. On the second day of practice he had shirked a hard tackle, though it happened that nobody ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... and voting afforded as great a contrast compared with the present as in anything that has gone before. Possibly the ripest stage of the old wine of political life was during the last ten years of the old pre-Reform era, just before the new wine began to crack the old {95} bottles; but though the best glimpses of actual election work should be deferred to a later chapter, there are some incidents belonging to the early years of the century which ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... then. And as for that crack-brained demagogue cousin of yours, he calls the Constitution a compact with hell! I hope I'll live to ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... they danced about each other for a short space; the American, apparently whenever he chose, stepped in and landed left and right on the other's jaw with a sound like the crack of ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and men did squeak, Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that monstrous sin Of deep and arrant ignorance came in: Such ignorance as theirs was who once hiss'd At thy unequall'd play, the Alchemist; Oh, fie upon ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... with her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door when her daughter opened the outside one. She heard Thomas Payne's hearty greeting and Charlotte's decorous reply. The door of the front room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could hear ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in the cold trenches at night, the shell of the Federal mortars rained down upon them, bursting, and mortally wounding them. All day long the fire of muskets and cannon—then, from sunset to dawn, the curving fire of the roaring mortars, and the steady, never-ceasing crack of the sharp-shooters along the front. Snow, or blinding sleet, or freezing rains, might be falling, but the fire went on—it seemed destined to go on ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... tolerably large, it will be necessary, as soon as they begin to boil, to throw in some cold water, and occasionally to repeat it, till the potatoes are boiled to the heart, (which will take from half an hour to an hour and a quarter, according to their size,) they will otherwise crack, and burst to pieces on the outside, whilst the inside will be nearly in a crude state, and consequently very unpalatable and unwholesome.—During the boiling, throwing in a little salt occasionally is found a great improvement, and it is certain that the slower they are cooked the better.—When ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... beyond certain episodes and caresses which could only follow each other in reality, but were united at the same moment in the dream, the sensation clear and precise of a being, of a fluid form disappearing, with the sharp sound of a percussion cap, or the crack of a whip close by, on waking. This being was felt near him so distinctly, that the sheet, disarranged by the wind of the flight, was still in motion, and he looked at ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... not buy shoes for his slaves. When they had to plow, their feet would crack and bleed from walking on the hard clods, and if one complained, they would be whipped; therefore, very ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... rapidly. The branch began to creak. Our hero doubted if it would sustain their double weight. However, he trusted to the wary instinct of the ocelot, which kept coming right forward. Jack was about eight feet from the end of the branch when it gave a very ominous crack. In fact, he saw the white splinters show where it joined ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... Mr. Dinsmore's voice in clarion tones, and instantly the crack of half a dozen revolvers was heard, a light blaze ran along the line of loopholes, and at the same instant a sudden, scalding shower fell upon the assailants ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new Pamela, the support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island, perhaps a little behind London ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... calling many names, and at the same time the crack of a whip. But his name was not among the rest; and he just had time to notice that the Over-Lord stood still, with the other dogs about him. Then he was off in pursuit, straight as a line for the river. There the hare made its first turn, Murphy being twenty yards in rear. He was running mute now, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... gone so very far when he came to the edge of a forest, and there was an old crone with a green nose a yard long, and it was caught in a crack of a log. She was dancing and hopping about, but for all her dancing and hopping she got no farther than that one spot, for her nose held ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... few of the washed crystals in a watch glass. Suddenly there was a sharp crack and the material disappeared. Dr. Bird thrust his nose toward the glass ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... should be afraid to trust it, if it were not for the dogs. He can't crawl out between the logs, that much is certain; but the door is almost ready to drop from its hinges, and has a good deal of play back and forth behind the bar. If he had a thin, stout stick he could slip it through the crack, lift the bar and ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... seething center of a submarine volcano, for, with a roar that made the timbers of the boat vibrate, the gray whale spouted not six feet from where the boy was sitting. Dimly he saw the harpoon hurtle through the spray and the sharp crack of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... size of a sparrow, dropped upon the deck of the ship, so nearly exhausted that one of the sailors was on the point of covering it with his hat. It stayed about the vessel nearly all day, flitting from point to point, or hopping along a few feet in front of the promenaders, and prying into every crack and crevice for food. Time after time I saw it start off with a reassuring chirp, as if determined to seek the land; but before it had got many rods from the ship its heart would seem to fail it, and, after circling about for a few moments, back it ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... knows it. It's one of the secrets of the trade. We cook for all the confectioners, and people think the good things come out of the cellars under their saloons. Good joke, isn't it?" And Snap laughed till a crack came in his neck and made ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... If by means of a raking drive and four perfect brassies at the sixth he managed to get one up for a moment, then at the short seventh a screaming iron and three consummate approaches would make me square again. Occasionally he would, by superhuman play, do a hole in bogey; but only to crack at the next, and leave me, at the edge of the green, to play "one off eleven." It was, in fact, a ding-dong struggle all the way; and for his one-hole victory in the morning I had my revenge with a one-hole victory in ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... and seen that sweet serene face. I should like, as a young man, to have lived on Fielding's staircase in the Temple, and after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his latch-key, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's companionship and conversation has ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the crack of light went Miranda. First her eye and then her ear were applied to the small aperture. She could see nothing but a table directly in front of the door about a foot away on which were quills, paper, and a large horn ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... this letter has been a long time coming, but somehow I always seem to have something to do. There are two noises I can hear now, one the squeak of a rat, but I know he won't come in (at least, I hope not), and two, the crack of a sniper's bullet, which I know has no chance of coming in. As the papers would say, "Situation normal on the Western Front." We get absolutely no news, you know more of what is going on in France than I do. We heard that the division ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... said at last. "It's a rather hard problem to crack. I wish there was some one in the family we could go ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Constantinople resounded throughout Christendom as though it had been the crack of doom, and all men held their breath wondering what next might portend. So stunned were the maritime States that they took no action, letting "I dare not wait upon I would." Their indecision was fatal. Had the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Catalans at this ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... with the drawing-room, library, and reception-room until the daughter of the house is pronounced ready. The plastering, after a dry of eighteen years, has had plenty of time to settle, and is not apt to crack the costly papers or ruin the elaborate frescoes; and the wood-work no longer in danger of warping or ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... continued Parkhurst, more rapidly and coherently, "I saw that there was a crack above the hole where the water came through—as if it had been the old channel of the spring. I widened it a little with my clasp knife, and then—in a little pouch or pocket of decomposed quartz—I ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... the mare from her stall in a crack, And put in her place the old broken-down hack; The hack is so like her, I'm ready to swear The bailiff will ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... arms about each other's waists the two friends went skipping along, until they reached the apartment appropriated to the old gentleman. The door was partially open and they could see through the crack the dark figure of Carrie's father standing with his back toward them. The room seemed very bright and cheerful, and the rich colors of a gay carpet, and the elaborate carving of the massive and antique furniture rendered it still ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them, they could not keep from always laughing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... northwest wind seeks out the tiniest crevice in one's armor. How did those long-ago people manage? Their walls were not sheeted, and they did not know the use of building-paper. Our old wide siding had been laid directly on the bare timbers, the studding; every crevice under the windows, every crack in the plaster, was a short circuit with zero. We decided to take off the antique siding, cut out the bad places, and relay it flat, as sheeting. Over it we would lay building-paper, and on top of this, good substantial ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... somewhat against the Czar's story, that the Holy Alliance was not formed till the autumn of 1815, and that he and Frederick William arrived at Paris in the spring of 1814; and that in the interval he and Francis II. came very near going to war on the Polish question. Alexander was crack-brained, and a mystic, and it is far more likely that he should have originated the Holy Alliance than that the idea should have proceeded from so wooden-headed a personage as the Prussian king, who had about as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... that it was evidently the noise made by the scraping of the smuggler's boots against the stone, as he ascended the zigzag crack to ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Nothing is heard but laughter, conversation, songs, and anecdotes, all rising in a loud key, among the louder humming of the spinning-wheels and the stridulous noise of the reeds, as they incessantly crack the cuts in the hands of the reelers, who are perpetually turning them from morning to night, in order to ascertain the quantity which every competitor has spun; and she, of course, who has spun most wins the kemp, and is the queen for ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Indian, Pompey. He was known to be a crack marksman. They watched for him. Daniel Boone glimpsed him, high up in a tree; waited for a chance, took quick aim—and down from the tree crashed Pompey, dead before he struck the turf. After the siege they found him, shot through the head ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... Ohuivo live in houses. The few caves that are occupied are not improved in any way. One cave contained ancient habitations, and tradition says that there the Tubares had once established themselves. The cave is nothing but a nearly horizontal crack in the rock, situated on the southern side of the river, some 300 feet above the bottom of the valley. It runs from south-east to north-west to a length of about 200 feet, interrupted perpendicularly by a crevice. Entering the cave at the southernmost end I found twelve low-walled rooms, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... pass a juvenile crime bill that provides more prosecutors and probation officers to crack down on gangs and guns and drugs and bar violent juveniles from buying guns for life. And I ask you to dramatically expand our support for after-school programs. I think every American should know ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lady Desdemona to mediate for him with her lord; that she was of a frank, obliging disposition, and would readily undertake a good office of this sort, and set Cassio right again in the general's favour; and then this crack in their love would be made stronger than ever. A good advice of Iago, if it had not been given for wicked purposes, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... arm; and thus one after another they appeared to Faustus in form as they were in hell. Lucifer himself sate in a manner of a man all hairy, but of brown colour like a squirrel, curled, and his tail curling upwards on his back as the squirrels use. I think he could crack nuts too like a squirrel. After him came Belzebub in curled hair of a horse-flesh colour, his head like the head of a bull, with a mighty pair of horns, and two long ears down to the ground, and two wings ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... a letter-opener, crowded bits of paper into the keyhole of the door and up and down the crack. Then he closed the one window, turned out the two gas-jets, and opened the stop-cocks again. An odor of gas soon pervaded the room into which came only a faint light from the State House dome. And now a more hideous hallucination came to that hopeless, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... make A very pretty squirrel track; Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut." ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... trousers pockets, and the other tore my shirt open. I heard a sudden row, a blow, and the fall of a body; then one of them came tumbling down on the top of us and knocked the two fellows over, then they jumped up, and I heard your pistol crack twice and two falls, and as I got up on to my feet to lend a hand I saw one of the fellows bolting down the street, running off in another direction. That was the one, I think, that came down on ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... to moulder in a semi-detached villa.' Well, that struck me as reasonable. 'All right,' I said; 'and do you mean to tell me I can get on that carpet and go straight to London, England?' I said 'London, England,' captain, because he seemed to have been so long in your part of the world. 'In the crack of a whip,' said he. I figured up the time. What is the difference between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... steed! A spirit of wild, ungovernable glee instantly arose within him. Seizing the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it down on his charger's flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its heels, in a way that ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... be in every sense of the word an arduous training, for the first regiment of Guards being considered all the world over as the crack corps of the German army, and as the embodiment of military perfection in every sense of the word, its officers, realizing that it is, so to speak, the star phalanx of Germany, are engaged, morning, noon and night, in maintaining it at its proper ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... that was still in sight, le Bourdon bent his body far over the gunwale, grasping the rice-plants at the same time, and hauling his little craft through them, in the way that sailors call "hand over hand." This expedient most probably saved his life. While bending over the gunwale, he heard the crack of the rifles, and the whizzing of two bullets that appeared to pass just behind him. By this time the whole of the canoe was within ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... hand raised to strike when something happened. A lithe, muscular form glided under the upraised fist, and the next moment there was a sharp crack as the newcomer's fist collided with ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... themselves in a circle, and by striking the shell with a stone succeed in opening it.' That they may try is possible enough; for there is no doubt, I believe, that monkeys—at least the South American—do use stones to crack nuts; and I have seen myself a monkey, untaught, use a stick to rake his food up to him when put beyond the reach of his chain. The impossibility in this case would lie, not in want of wits, but want ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... oppressive smoke and the uncanny noise far down in the depths. Dull and regular, it sounded like the piston of an engine or a great drum, heard through the noises of a factory. Presently there was silence, and then, without any warning, came a tearing crack, the thunder as of 100 heavy guns, a metallic din, and a cloud of smoke rose; and while we forced ourselves to stay and watch, the inferno below thundered a roaring echo, the walls shook, and a thousand dark specks flew up like a swarm of frightened birds. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... bang!" challenged another "express," the shots so close together as to be almost simultaneous. "Crack! crack! crack!" retorted the Winchesters, and from the fact that silence followed I drew a clear inference. I said to myself, "That is an ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... you good and me bad. (He is silent.) Do you remember the time Kari and I went up the glacier, and he fell down into a crack? He told you I had been so frightened that I shook all over. It was not for his life I feared; I feared my ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... only at second-hand, through a medium perhaps wanting in transparence. Her hesitancy considerably surprised him. To Carlisle, as was almost equally inevitable, it was as if in the solid rock of their mutual understanding there had suddenly appeared a tiny crack. She felt the reasonableness as well as the tenderness with which Hugo spoke; she wanted nothing in the world but to do what he wanted. And yet it seemed somehow a physical impossibility for her now ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... behind my temporary rank," I answered hotly. "I waive it, gladly. Anything, for a chance to puncture that rotten carcass of yours or to get a good fair crack at your ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Dick was all eagerness now. "There's to be a jolly crowd there. Sammie told me that he has invited a crack-a-jack of an artist he met at the club. He is an English chap and has been out here only a short time. He puts out some great stuff in the way of pictures, so I understand. Then, that Westcote girl is to be there. My, I'm anxious to meet her. She is worth while ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... the churchwardens of Y that his late importation from the Y pulpit was not very satisfactory. 'And yet,' he said, 'you all cracked him up enormously.' 'Yes,' replied the churchwarden of Y, 'and you will have to crack him up too before you get rid ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... throw away the parings of their nails, but carefully stow them in cracks of the walls or of the boards, in the belief that they will be needed at the resurrection. The Armenians do not throw away their cut hair and nails and extracted teeth, but hide them in places that are esteemed holy, such as a crack in the church wall, a pillar of the house, or a hollow tree. They think that all these severed portions of themselves will be wanted at the resurrection, and that he who has not stowed them away in a safe ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... he went home with Peter Pink, And plenty had to eat and drink; And got new clothes upon his back; And got a hat without a crack; And shoes and stockings for his toes, A handkerchief, to wipe his nose. You've wash'd my face, and cut my hair, Quite clean I am, I do declare! "So now good-bye; straight home I go; I'm off to let my mother know! ...
— Tommy Tatters - Uncle Toby's Series • Unknown
... Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they did not ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... till I get my breath, will you?" pleaded Holmes. "I think you may crack me a bottle of that Tokay over there. I have a ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... full, but the driver informed us that an "extra" (or separate sleigh of smaller dimensions than the stage) had been provided for us; so that we enjoyed the enviable advantage of having it all to ourselves. Crack went the whip, and off went the leader with a bound, the wheeler following at a pace between a trot and a gallop, and our "extra" keeping close in the rear. The lamps were still burning as we left the city, although the first streaks of dawn illumined the eastern sky. In fifteen minutes more ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... crack a bottle together?" (It was astonishing and deplorable how cliches survived ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... disguised like himself, to observe what was transacting in the city. As he was passing through a street in that part of the town inhabited only by the meaner sort, he heard some people talking very loud; and going close to the house whence the noise proceeded, and looking through a crack in the door, perceived a light, and three sisters sitting on a sofa, conversing together after supper. By what the eldest said, he presently understood the subjeft of their conversation was wishes: "For," said she, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... before. He knew this street, set upon a hill, rising steeply between oak and maple trees. Those lampposts were old friends, that crack in the pavement was an ancient landmark. Here were the houses, heavy with familiarity. They seemed to lean expectantly toward him, like spectators waiting for the final act of an ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... I did not wish to realize that it was my last ride, and my last association with any of the men of the mountains whom I had learned to trust, and in some respects to admire. No more hunters' tales told while the pine knots crack and blaze; no more thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears; and never again shall I hear that strange talk of Nature and her doings which is the speech of those who live with her and her alone. Already the dismalness of a level land comes over me. The canyon of the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... of filthy-tongued creatures!" Hsi Jen laughed, "when you've got nothing to do, you make me the scapegoat to crack your jokes, and poke your fun at! But what kind of death will, I wonder, each of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that seemed the most natural way of expressing his gratitude. Ahniny looked round to see if anybody was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler." She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled, saw her through a crack in a picket fence, not a great way off the road. Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he see any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow, a'n't ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village belles under stand ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was the astonishment of the grave and reverend authorities at Randlebury School when they perceived, coming up the carriage drive, a cab with a boy of thirteen perched on the box, tugging at the reins, hallooing to the horse, and making his whip crack like so many fireworks; while inside, comfortably lounging amid a pile of luggage, reclined cabby at his ease, grinning from ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing,—angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead bird,—some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have had a letter sealed,—a round spot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... to-day of that fireless, empty, forsaken house, where the winter sun shines in and creeps slowly along the floor; the bitter cold is in and around the house, and the snow has sifted in at every crack; outside it is untrodden by any living creature's footstep. The wind blows and rushes and shakes the loose window-sashes in their frames, while the padlock knocks—knocks ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... hand me an egg," said Nan, and Flossie picked one up from the dish. She was handing it over to her sister, but her chubby fingers slipped and—crack! went the egg down on ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... with a scene in the interior of a factory. Men, girls and boys are employed. The foreman observes a warning crack in the wall and calls the proprietor's attention to it. In this case the manufacturer is the owner of the building, but he refuses to make repairs. His argument is that the wall has stood for many years and so is likely to stand for many more; it would be a waste of money to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... sound that strikes upon his ear when the leaves, softly shaken by the evening breeze, seem to sigh through the air, or when the tempest, bursting forth with fury, shakes the gigantic trees that crack like reeds. "The chirping of the birds, the cry of the wild beasts, in a word, all those sweet, grave, or imposing voices that animate the wilderness, are so many musical lessons, which he easily remembers." In illustration of this, the missionary describes the singing of a Chippewa chief, and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... run away. And I marked that the North Wind had two great ornamental daubs like shutter-fastenings painted on his cheeks. I sniffed preparation, too, on his followers, and I was sure they were getting ready for some new deviltry. I handed the note to Mr. Brady through the crack of the door that he vouchsafed to me, and when he had slammed and bolted me out, I ran into the street and stood for some time behind the trunk of a big hickory, watching the followers of the North Wind. Some were painting themselves, others cleaning their rifles and sharpening ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... know whether Babie has heard. She has serious thoughts of coming out as a lady-help, editing the 'Traveller's Joy' as a popular magazine, giving lessons in Greek, or painting the crack picture in the Royal Academy. In fact, she would rather prefer to have the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid him live there at discretion, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Snodge, who are both necessary to a united government, but who unluckily detest each other, refuse to sit in the same Cabinet, unless Darrell sit between—to save them, I suppose, from the fate of the cats of Kilkenny. Sir John Cautly, our crack county member, declares that if Darrell does not come in, 'tis because the CRISIS is going too far! Harry Bold, our most popular speaker, says, if Darrell stay out, 'tis a sign that the CRISIS is a retrograde movement! In short, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his coat and carried them to his sister the frog, who dwelt in a marsh, and he asked her to sew them together. The frog had sore eyes, and when she sewed them together she did not do it properly. Hence the wolverine was very angry, and he hit her a crack on the head and knocked her into the water. Then he took up the coat and went and found his youngest sister, the mouse. He told her of his troubles, and how the frog had so badly done her work. Then he showed the mouse how he wanted the coat to be sewed. His ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... bearing. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a husky murmur replaces the harsh stridency of his usual utterance. "What devilish foolery is this—" But ere he can get further, some bucolic statesman brings his massive palm down on the table with a bang that makes the oaken plank crack, and thunders out—"The charter! Where's ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... breath, was leaning against one of the pillars, his arm passed around it for support. Lenora, with Quest and French, searched hastily amongst the packing-cases. Suddenly there was a loud crack, the sound of falling masonry, followed by a scream from Laura. French, with a roar of anger, rushed towards her. She was lying on her side, already half covered by falling bricks and masonry. He dragged her away, just ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or was not a horseman is a question on which there is authority which clashes with Roosevelt's. A year's experience with broncos had taught him much, and though Sylvane remained indisputably the crack rider of the Maltese Cross outfit, Roosevelt more than held his own. "He was not a purty rider," as one of his cowpunching friends expressed it, "but a hell of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... cover the dome must be renewed eight or ten times in a century. Winckelmann attributes their rapid decay to the corrosive action of the sirocco wind; Fea to the variations in temperature, which cause the lead to melt in summer, and crack in winter. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... who had once before obliged the commonwealth of taste, with a very agreeable comedy in his City Politics, yet, in Sir Courtly Nice went far beyond it, and very much surpassed himself; for though there is something in the part of Crack, which borders upon farce, the Spanish author alone must answer for that: for Mr. Crowne could not omit the part of Crack, that is, of Tarugo, and the Spanish farce depending upon it, without a downright affront to the King, who had given him the play for his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... your stomachs are yearning for—why, I am the man for you all," Little John said at once, "and I will beat the four of you heartily, whether you be friends or enemies." Then he began to twirl his staff right merrily, and gave the dumb fellow such a crack upon his crown that he began ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... knowledge was not far behind The Knight's, but of another kind, 480 And he another way came by 't: Some call it GIFTS, and some NEW-LIGHT; A liberal art, that costs no pains Of study, industry, or brains. His wit was sent him for a token, 485 But in the carriage crack'd and broken. Like commendation nine-pence crook'd, With — To and from my love — it look'd. He ne'er consider'd it, as loth To look a gift-horse in the mouth; 490 And very wisely wou'd lay forth ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... that I promptly smashed the thermometer, and we had a fine chase after the quicksilver. You never saw anything like it! It ran like a rabbit, in and out of the nooks and corners of the chair, until at last it disappeared through a crack in the floor; went to ground, you know. Doesn't ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... governess and Rachel were looking on. Rachel had arrived at Westhope the day before from Southminster. "Take your time, my son," said Dick, just eluding by a hair's-breadth a charge through a geranium-bed on the part of the eldest boy. "If you are such jolly little fools as to crack your little skulls on the sun-dial, I shall eat them both myself. Miss Turner says you may have them, so you've only got to take them. I can't keep on offering them all day long. My time"—(Dick ran his bicycle up a terrace, and, as soon as the boys were ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... did come laden with my sin; Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in Till I came hither: What a place is this! Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Must here the strings that bound it to me crack? Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be The Man that there was ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... Bang! crack! bang! went three pistols in rapid succession, and as the reports died away the bob cat fell in a heap on the bottom of the launch, snarling viciously. Then Dandy, still exhausted from his fight in the water, leaped on the beast ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... word "Bank" ought not to have been "Blanche"-street; a name given to it in honour of the lady to whom the principal building in the street belonged, when, just as he had finished speaking, we heard, as if above us, a smart crack. On looking round to ascertain the cause, a sight burst upon our view, that none who witnessed it could ever forget. The instant we turned, we beheld the church tower give way, on the south-west ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... birch. Colette, put kettle on for bile water qvick. Tak' dis seat, lady. I pull off dem blanket. You no need dem more. Turriple cole now. Las' night we 'ear de wolfs 'untin' along dem 'ardwood ridges, back of de river; it ees always sign of big cole. And de river she crack awful, and de trees dey split like guns shoot. Glad you ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... the horse himself and tightened the girths. They walked together towards the great gate of solid wood which fitted into the high wall so closely that none could peep through so much as a crack. At the door the colonel lingered, leaning against his great horse and stroking its shoulder ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... lighter colors of the skin below. As they went under, their huge, black tails, great winged things not unlike the screw-wheel of a propeller, tipped up above the waves. Now and then one would give the water a good round slap, the noise of which smote sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the other's finger, and then the officer interfered and put the "Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it because the woman that did it laid it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because, as she said afterward, she "wanted another crack at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting," and so she did not want her removed. By this time those two women had mutilated each other's clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient left to cover their nakedness. I found that one of these creatures had spent nine years in the county ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... alliteratively, 'A Memento of Margate.' Of these many were broken, but they had been mended with glue, and it is well known that pottery in the eyes of the connoisseur loses none of its value by a crack or two. Then there were portraits innumerable—little yellow cartes-de-visite in velvet frames, some of which were decorated with shells; they showed strange people with old-fashioned clothes, the women with bodices ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... of England Hallowe'en was called "nut-crack" and "snap-apple night." It was celebrated by "young ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... a spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water and her keel plows air. (Byron's Conspiracy, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... ther strangest thing happens. Ther tree opens a crack runnin' all ther way from ther roots up as far as Unc' Fletch kin see. Ther crack is big ernuff ter put yer finger in, but Unc' Fletch doesn't do no such ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... "He did not shoot me, so what does it matter? That was a fine crack on the head you gave him! He will remember us, I think, next ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... had become an open madness: soldiers were sentenced to a thousand lashes for trifling offences, with the result (among others less mentionable) that the Iron Duke of Wellington complained that it was impossible to get an order obeyed in the British army except in two or three crack regiments. Such frantic excesses of this disgusting neurosis provoked a reaction against it; but the clamor for it by depraved persons never ceased, and was tolerated by a nation trained to it from childhood in the schools until ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... call them "old maids;" but it is a malicious appellation, unless it can be proved that they have refused to be wives. I would always take the part of a spinster; they are a peculiar people, far more "sinned against than sinning." Every blockhead thinks himself at liberty to crack a joke upon them; and when he says something, that he conceives to be wondrous smart, about Miss Such-an-One and her cat or poodle dog, he conceives himself a marvellous clever fellow; yea, even those of her own sex who are below what is called ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... of the children huddled together for warmth in one bed, and the parents and balance of the family in the other. I slept on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with my nose glued to the crack to get a breath of God's cold air, in spite of the need for warmth—for not a blanket did the house possess. When I asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we had sent last year, the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... English army in Ireland of a dyssentary, when no other remedy could prevail: The same also in pleurisies, &c. The juice of the outward rind of the nut, makes an excellent gargle for a sore-throat: The kernel being rubb'd upon any crack or chink of a leaking or crazy vessel, stops it better than either clay, pitch, or wax: In France they eat them blanch'd and fresh, with wine and salt, having first cut them out of the shells before they are hardned, with a short broad ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... her evolutions and discipline, perhaps from the old English word for a fine boy. Crack is generally used for first-rate ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... New.—The canvas you work on should not be too freshly primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had it in your own possession ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... there they stopped. They could not dent that compacted mass. The soldiers struggled manfully, but they were held at bay. Harrigan could see the heaving shoulders of the defender over the heads of the assailants, and the crack of hard-driven fists. The attackers were crushed together and had little room to swing their arms with full force, while the big man stood with his back against the wall of the cottage and made every ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... little crowd gathered round the door, however, to see how Jacques De Arthenay looked when he'd made a fool of himself, as they expressed it. They were in a merry mood, the friendly neighbours, and had sundry jests ready to crack upon the bridegroom when he should appear; but when he finally stood in the doorway, with the little pale bride on his arm, it became apparent that jests were not in order. People calc'lated that Jacques was in one ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... seat. At that instant the quiet was suddenly and harshly broken. The stillness of the plain seemed literally split with the crack of firearms. Two shots rang out in rapid succession, and the faintest of echoes from the distant hills suggested an opposing fire at long range. But the first two ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... should be broken off. To prevent the plants falling over after the seed-stalks are grown, dig deep holes, and plant the entire stump in the ground. Scarecrows should be set up, or some like precaution be taken, to keep away the little seed-birds, that begin to crack the pods as soon as they commence to ripen. A plaster cat is a very good scarecrow to frighten away birds from seed and small fruits, if its location ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... their directions. Being desired to lay himself down amongst them, then, as many of them as could get round him began to squeeze him with both hands, from head to foot, but more particularly in the part where the pain was lodged till they made his bones crack, and his flesh became a perfect mummy. After undergoing this discipline about a quarter of an hour, he was glad to be released from the women. The operation, however gave him immediate relief; so that he was encouraged to submit to another rubbing down ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... wagoner who walks beside them. The voice is also greatly used by polo players. Horses are very catholic in their admiration for tit-bits. They like all kinds of sweets and fruit, and will even crunch up the stones of plums and peaches, which require good teeth to crack. An old favourite of mine was particularly fond of ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... so knead again. Then add a spoonful of shortening at a time until the dough begins to crack ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... for age, and they are cheaper and better there than in any other part of the world. The next time you meet us in the Park, we'll show you a pair of boots made for us by Legrand in 1841, which we have ridden in and walked in now three winters; there is not a crack in them; they, like their master, have never lost their soles, (we can't say so much for our hearts,) they fit us like our own skin, and they cost less than a pound sterling. Dear old Hoby may go and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to indicate that in spite of the expansion joints, the concrete will crack more or less and many engineers think it advisable to omit expansion joints in constructing the pavement and when cracks develop to pour bituminous material into them, thus forming ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... very handsome apology. Did Fortnoye accept it?" I asked, turning over the clammy and malodorous epistle. At this inquiry the crack of the door widened and Charles appeared, on fire with enthusiasm, and so possessed with self-importance that he forgot the betrayal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... to justify itself, might be told off without warning to hammer out scales and exercises, and to bedew the senseless keys with tears of weariness or of revolt. But in subjects common to either sex, and held to be necessary even for him whose ambition soared no higher than to crack a whip in a circus-ring—in geography, for instance, arithmetic, or the weary doings of kings and queens—each would have scorned to excel. And, indeed, whatever our individual gifts, a general dogged determination to shirk and to evade kept us all at much the same dead level,—a level ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... my master, to tell him the news." This is a very lively negress, her tongue never stops; she retails all the news of the country to me, and is a great politician in her way. Some of these Ghat negresses are actually witty, and crack jokes with the grave Touaricks. The Touaricks are too gallant to be offended with the freedom of even female slaves. I felt somewhat alarmed, thinking the discomfitted party might come and avenge their defeat upon the unlucky Christian stranger. We barricaded the door, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... moving in his mind and soul. He pulled out his watch and laid it on the top rail of the old oak fence: there was not enough light to read the time, but he could count the ticks he had to live. Suddenly hope flashed through his heart, like the crack of a gun, like a lightning fork—a big rat was biting an elbow of the yarn where some tallow had fallen upon it. Would he cut it, would he drag it away to his hole? would he pull it a little from its fatal end? He was ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... do it, an' there ain't no Injuns near 'nough to play us any tricks. But they'd see the door was open, even if only a crack, and they'd know we was gittin' desperate, or sufferin' a heap, an' that would tickle 'em. I'm ag'in' givin' 'em even that bit of enjoyment. If we can make a break when it gits dark afore the fire-arrers begin lightin' things up we'll ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... time until some one knocked on our door and we were all wide awake in a minute. The fire had burned down and only a soft, indistinct glow from the embers lighted the room, while through a hole in the roof I could see a star glimmering frostily. It was Gavotte at the door and he called through a crack saying he had been hearing queer noises for an hour and he was going to investigate. He had called us so that we need not be alarmed should we hear the noise and not find him. We scrambled into our clothes quickly and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... auditorium where the Adult department of the Sunday-school meets, gives a short exposition of the lesson for the day, and answers from the Question Box. These cover a great variety of subjects, from the absurdity of some crack-brained crank to the pathetic appeal of some needy soul. Some of these questions may be sent in by mail during the week, but the greater part of them are handed to the pastor by the ushers. To secure ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... chair and grabbed its arms until I could hear my knuckles crack. My mind snapped shut with an almost audible crack. ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... not pretend that he was altogether ignorant of her meaning, though, certainly, he had never guessed that she minded the teasing. But before he knew what to say, her eyes were clear again, and the sudden crack in the surface ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... account, to a place where you appear to be the only man of legal learning. However, those who come from where you are either say you are proud because you give no "opinions," or insulting because you give bad ones.[689] But I am now longing to crack a joke with you face to face. So come as soon as ever you can, and don't go and visit your native Apulia, that we may have the joy of welcoming your safe return. For if you go there, like another Ulysses, you will not recognize ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that thing England is apparently not in a geographical or a policial position to furnish in sufficient numbers. The British public now know this, and unfortunately the "forward party" in Russia knows it, and that is why bearded faces at St. Petersburg crack open and emit rumbles of genuine merriment every time Sir Edward Grey stands up in the House of Commons and explains to his countrymen that he has most ample and categorical assurances from Russia that her sole purpose in sending two or three armies into Persia is to show her displeasure ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... thy gentle accumulation of bricabrac should have passed away in such a manner! by means of a man who brings down a butterfly with a blunderbuss, and talks of a pin's head through a speaking-trumpet! Why, the auctioneer's very voice was enough to crack the Sevres porcelain and blow the lace into annihilation. Let it be remembered that I speak of the gentleman in his public character merely, meaning to insinuate nothing more than I would by stating that Lord Brougham speaks with a northern accent, or that the voice of Mr. Shell ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... metal. Perhaps it was some subconscious feeling. At any rate, he held it aloft and gazed at it in the light. As he did so a strange thing happened. Reflected in its surface on the glass, yet distorted like a convex mirror, he could see the door of the closet open just a crack and the evil faces of Balcom and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of a chain of volcanic islands in the West Indies suggests the probability that it follows a crack of great antiquity, though the issue of lava and ashes for several centuries may have been limited to a few isolated points. Just how these vents have been reopened is one of the most difficult questions still ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... embellishment has been made, by placing a stuffed bear near the house, probably in imitation of the Zoological Gardens; but the idea is rather a failure, and would appear more suitable over the door of a perfumer's shop, to intimate the presence of bear's grease. A little gim-crack model of a wooden house is also visible, by way of an ornament, stuck on the summit of a wooden pillar, but the effect is disproportioned to all surrounding objects, even more than the designs on Chinese paper; where men of six feet high are represented ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... condemns me—[to Milton] Thou art wise, Prudent, and skill'd in learned rhetorick— Think'st thou 'twere sad to gaze upon the look, That sudden on the harlot's painted features, Set in the stale attraction of forc'd smiles, Darkens so wildly—that, like one amaz'd, From the crack'd glass she staggers, to her brow Lifts her wan, jewell'd finger—tries to think? The wanton provocation of her features Chang'd all to sickly twilight, blank dismay— And when thought comes, to see the poor wretch quiver, Her eyes' ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... the mare sometimes, as he was doing now. "There is a little ridge in the hoof, girl, but it won't crack; I know it won't crack." And, "This nail is too high. It is my fault. I was gabbin' when ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... longer had a title. Then I saw too that it was a large official document from Rome, and I knew that the long-expected transferal had come. Thereupon I dreamt that I was fleeing with Elsje and that I carried her across a great plain of ice. The ice cracked under my feet and every crack was a snapping spark of bluish fire like a flash of lightning. This betokened ill, but Elsje was ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in the twilight under the clump of cedars that crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead Farm—broad acres of land that the Seviers had had granted them from Virginia—dead, his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face. Just so he had looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment in that hell-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous Andrew, how we had all loved ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... John asked, Where the testimony should be then? He answered, In the hands of a few, who should be despised and undervalued of all[221], but especially by these ministers who buried Christ; but after that he shall get up upon them, and at the crack of his winding sheet as many of them as are alive, who were at his burial, shall be distracted and mad with fear, not knowing what to do; then, John, there shall be brave days such as the church of Scotland never saw the like, but I shall not ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... nuts (I will not call them cheaters), Whose shells do keep their kernels from the eaters. Ope then the shells, and you shall have the meat; They here are brought for you to crack and eat. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in the distance the crack of a whip; she ran to the window and saw the phaeton as it made the turn round the lawn, drawn by two horses. Seated beside Annette, in the back seat of the carriage, Olivier waved his handkerchief as he saw the Countess, to which she responded by waving him ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and the other boys caught up the guns, and ran off in the direction in which ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... whose first meeting with Lincoln in a log school-house has been previously described in these pages, subsequently became a clerk in Lincoln's law-office at Springfield, and furnishes some excellent reminiscences of that interesting period. "A crack-brained attorney who lived in Springfield, supported mainly by the other lawyers of the place, became indebted, in the sum of two dollars and fifty cents, to a wealthy citizen of the county, a recent comer. The creditor, failing after repeated efforts ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... day. Wait became a little more cheerful. Knowles affirmed having heard him laugh to himself in peals one day. Others had seen him walking about on deck at night. His little place, with the door ajar on a long hook, was always full of tobacco smoke. We spoke through the crack cheerfully, sometimes abusively, as we passed by, intent on our work. He fascinated us. He would never let doubt die. He overshadowed the ship. Invulnerable in his promise of speedy corruption he trampled on our self-respect, he demonstrated to us daily ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... "Ye might crack some of their skulls and then they'd git out a warrant and Rease Lynch (referring to the town constable), would ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... translation can express. War['e] means "I," or "mine," or "one's own," etc., according to circumstances; and war['e] m['e] (written separately) might be rendered "its own eyes." But war['e]m['e] (one word) means a crack, rent, split, or fissure. The reader should remember that the term saka-bashira means not only "upside-down post," but also the goblin or spectre ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... gazed where the Singing Mouse pointed, quite beyond the dusty walls, and there I saw as it had said. I heard not the thunder of the hoofs of buffalo, nor the faint crack of the twig beneath the panther's foot. I saw not the lurching gallop of the long-jawed wolf, nor the high, elastic bounding of the deer. The level swinging speed of the antelope, the slinking of the lynx, the crashing flight of the wapiti—no, it was none of these that came to mind; nor did ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... him a moment and then laughed; and he laughed so rarely that it distorted the yellow parchment of his face as if it must crack it. The sound of his laughter was something like the creaking of a cart imitated by a ventriloquist. But Padre Francesco knit his bushy brows, for he thought the sailor was making game of him, who had been ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... sever, rend, smash, shatter, shiver, splinter, batter, burst, rupture, crack; infringe, violate, disobey, transgress, trespass; communicate, disclose, divulge, tell, impart, broach; discipline, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... treach'rous tapster,[2] Thomas, Hangs a new Angel two doors from us, As fine as daubers' hands can make it, In hopes that strangers may mistake it, We[3] think it both a shame and sin To quit the true old Angel Inn. Now this is Stella's case in fact, An angel's face a little crack'd. (Could poets or could painters fix How angels look at thirty-six:) This drew us in at first to find In such a form an angel's mind; And every virtue now supplies The fainting rays of Stella's eyes. See, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... wings to him that cannot sleep, And time seems then not for to fly, but creep; Slowly her chariot drives, as if that she Had broke her wheel, or crack'd her axletree. Just so it is with me, who, list'ning, pray The winds to blow the tedious night away, That I might see the cheerful, peeping day. Sick is my heart! O Saviour! do Thou please To make my bed soft in my sicknesses: Lighten my candle, so that I beneath Sleep not for ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... paused, irresolute. He took off his forage-cap and mopped his brow with his handkerchief, then stood there twisting the cap in his hands. He looked down the dim hall-way, then through the crack of the door, then down at his boots, and all the time Hatton stood there holding wide open the door, yet hoping and praying he would not come in. Something told the lieutenant that the matter so plainly worrying the commanding officer was one neither he nor McLean could speak of if ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... boats and little rakes and hoes and decorate sticks with patterns cut upon the bark. He was clever with his knife and made diligent use of it. He would also stand for hours on the top of a monolith—he thought it was a gate-post—and try to crack his cattle-whip like a pistol-shot. He had to climb to a height to get the lash ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Anthony, and raising his cane, brought it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... meekly down, Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown; The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire; The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat, Repeats imperious, his staccato note; The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bullrush tipsy with his weight: Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings, Feels the soft air, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... by metal or simply painted with a saturated solution of alum. The glass portions of the pump I have contrived to anneal completely by the simple means mentioned below. If the glass is not annealed it is certain to crack when subjected to heat, thus causing vexation and loss of time. The mercury was purified by the same method that was used by W. Siemens (Pogg. Annalen, vol. ex., p. 20), that is, by a little strong sulphuric acid to which a few drops of nitric acid had been added; it was dried by pouring it repeatedly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... board, in any style of piano, sometimes causes trouble due to the vibrating edges of the board coming in contact with each other. Insert the point of your screwdriver in the crack, holding it there firmly; if the rattling stops, the difficulty is discovered, and may be remedied by placing a screw or wedge in the crack, or a wedge of wood, cork or rubber between the sound board and iron plate or casing, if the location of ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... ship: the present her maiden cruise. The greatest pains having been taken in her construction, she was accounted the "crack" craft in the French navy. She is one of the heavy sixty-gun frigates now in vogue all over the world, and which we Yankees were the first to introduce. In action these are the most ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the son of the family, who cut off—or cut at—Georgiana's toes, I remember. With him a sort of cousin, who lives in New York State; and after a few days of toploftical strutting around town, and a pussillanimous crack or two over the back-garden fence at my birds, they went away again, to the home of this New York cousin, carrying Georgiana with them to spend ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crock is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... flurried and yielded, scarcely knowing what he did. In another second he was in the darkened room behind the curtains, through the crack in which he could command the lighted scene before him, and Sir Eustace was back at his place before the fire, reflecting that in his ardour to extricate his brother from what he considered a suicidal engagement he had let himself in for a very pretty undertaking. Suppose she accepted ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... what jolly things he knows! He knows everything you can imagine. It appears he has been rich in times past, and if he wished—But dame! he loves to have his work all finished, and go off on sprees. He's a crack billiard-player, I can ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... cramp of the leg, compulsory movement usually causes relaxation very quickly; therefore the animal should be led out of the stable and be forced to run or trot. Sudden, nervous excitement caused by a crack of the whip or smart blow will often bring about immediate relief. Should this fail, the anodyne liniment may be used along the inside of the thigh, and chloroform, ether, or laudanum given internally. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Judgment feeling in the air. It began with the donkeys waking up and trembling; I noticed that and thought it queer. Then the drivers jumped up—I saw the terror in their faces. Then a roar.... I remember noticing a big black crack in the convent-wall opposite—a zig-zag crack, like a flash of lightning in a wood-cut.... I thought of that, too, at the time; then all the bells in the place began to ring—it made a fearful discord.... I saw people rushing across the square ... the air was full of crashing noises. The ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Every night I hear the crack of the rifles—the sound of the volley that was my brother's death. Soldiers I get, men of the devil-dare kind, to stay with me. They do not come back; they tell that they hear tramp, tramp, tramp of ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... we stared, everyone being too bemused with terror to do aught to protect ourselves, even had we been possessed of weapons. And as we remained thus, an instant, like silly sheep awaiting the butcher, I heard the framework creak and crack, and there ran splits all across the glass. In another moment, the whole thing would have been torn away, and the cabin undefended, but that the bo'sun, with a great curse at us for our landlubberly ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they did not ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... one of the divisions of the fork would have to be cut asunder. A few blows of my axe and the tree began to settle, but as I was about to descend, the fork split and the first joints of my left-hand fingers slid into the crack so that for the moment I could not extricate them. The pressure was not severe, and as I believed I could soon relieve myself by cutting away the remaining portion, I felt no alarm. But at the first blow of the axe which I held ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... but there is most always a streak of humor in them somewhere. Now in the coronation—in the stirring coronation, just after the little king has got his crown back again papa brings that in about the Seal, where the pauper says he used the Seal "to crack nuts with." Oh it is so funny and nice! Papa very seldom writes a passage without some humor in it somewhere, and I ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... along the beach the two saddle mules and the four pack mules of Don Senor Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the crack of the whip of the arriero, Luis. That would be the signal for the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Dumpling, who asked him if he had a quick Hand at Writing: he excused himself, being naturally as Lazy as the other was Indolent, so they contrived to ease themselves by sending for a Hackney Writer out of Temple Lane to be the D—'s Amanuensis, while he and his new Acquaintance crack'd t'other Bottle. ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... and fascination about those fearless and richly imaginative theories which explained all the great changes in the crust of the earth by magnificent cataclysms, upheaving, exploding, overwhelming. The crack of doom meant something after all! What had been should be again. Old times had stories to tell of sublime catastrophes, the crash of systems, and the swallowing up of chains of cloud-capped mountains in the yawning abysses of a world ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles crack. I let out my breath explosively and ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... on guard to see that no one bothered the Clutching Hand at his work, was overcome by curiosity to see what his master was doing. He opened the door a little bit and gazed stealthily through the crack into the room. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the attacking party had done their work; and now, alarmed by the sudden appearance of a resistance stronger than they had expected, were making their escape. Once in a while there was heard a loud derisive shout, now and again the crack of a spiteful rifle, resounding in ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... might have got wrecked accidentally, of course. But the way he took off shows he planned to disappear—a crack-up on top of that would be too much of a coincidence. So any one of umpteen thousands of organizations in the Hub might be the one that has that ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... fortunate for Thure that he made that backward jump; for, at the crack of his rifle, El Feroz made such a tremendous lunge toward him, that the creaking limb bent nearly double, and, with a sound like the report of a gun, broke off close to the trunk and crashed to the ground on top ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... the whole of the back seat, and Jo was squeezed into the crack which was left. Jan was perched on a sort of ledge, facing them. The carriage was narrow, six legs were two too many for the space. Jan's were the superfluous ones. He tried this pose, he tried that, but in spite of his contortions he endured much of the seven hours' journey in acute discomfort ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... rock. She stared at the side of the frost-split fragment with dilated eyes. The crack between the loose outer bowlder and the main mass showed very black and wide in the moonlight. Could it be possible that it had widened—that it was slipping over? And her brother down there ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... before insertion in the oracular columns we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,—literary criticism, at any rate,—is a lost art,—YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the cliquey men are generally such stupendous bigots for their own particular and restricted form of 'style.' Anything new they hate,—anything daring they treat with ridicule. Some of them have no hesitation in saying they prefer Matthew ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... out and grasped a ball smaller than a golf-ball, and pulled carefully, keeping an eye upon Ione. There was resistance to his pull, but gradually the ball came. It seemed heavy. There was a crack as of breaking wood, and he fell backward, with a wave of nausea sweeping strongly over him. He gazed in amazement at a heavy wooden stick that he held in his hands. The only thing about it that suggested the ball for which he had reached ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... single title to land or town, your highness!" cried Leuchtmar, "for you have said that you would substantiate your titles, and give kernels to the empty shells; therefore the Swede shall not crack a single one of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... credit of his State," chaffed a big Ohioan. "He wants to crack up these fellows, seeing they're his comrades. I say, Johnny, are all the white men down your way such little shavers ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... amazed himself,—yet Rodomant exulted in it, his audacity expanded with it, broke down the last barrier of reason. He added stop after stop,—at the last and sixtieth stop, he unfettered the whole volume of the wind. That instant was a blast, not to speak irreverently, which sounded like the crack of doom. To her standing stricken underneath, it seemed to explode somewhere in the roof with a shock beyond all artillery,—to tear up the ground under her feet, like the spasm of an earthquake,—to rend the walls, like lightning's electric ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... glass, and so soon as he had done so began immediately by saying: "I do suppose you think you were treated mightily ill to be so handled last night. Well, so you were treated ill enough—though who hit you that crack upon the head I know no more than a child unborn. Well, I am sorry for the way you were handled, but there is this much to say, and of that you may believe me, that nothing was meant to you but kindness, and before you are through with us all you ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... impatiently pushed her sister aside that she might take a peep at the unconscious Mr. Peabody. As she put her eye to the crack between the curtains she uttered a little shriek that she tried ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... our trains has been a fearful work. I have left the whole business with B., and he has lost two stone over it. I used to think at one time that my own dear native Bradshaw was a sufficiently hard nut for the human intellect to crack; or, to transpose the simile, that Bradshaw was sufficient to crack an ordinary human nut. But dear old Bradshaw is an axiom in Euclid for stone-wall obviousness, compared with a through Continental time-table. Every morning B. has sat down with the book before him, and, grasping his ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... take my life, I would applaud the wisdom of my fate, Which knew to value me at such a rate, As at my fall to trouble all the sky, Emptying upon me Jove's full armoury. Serve in your sharpest mischiefs; use your rack, Enlarge each joint, and make each sinew crack; Thy soul before was straitened; thank thy doom, To show her virtue she hath larger room. Yet sure if every artery were broke, Thou wouldst find strength for such another stroke. And now I leave thee unto Death and Fame, Which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... out the candle. Darkness swallowed us. There was nothing left around us, nothing save night and a thin thread of flame in it, as a crack in the wall of a prison. We stretched our hands to the wire, and we saw our fingers in the red glow. We could not see our body nor feel it, and in that moment nothing existed save our two hands over a wire glowing in a ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... shall have a great catch, if he knock out either of your brains; a' were as good crack a fusty Nut ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... one In Palestine Who gave a certain kiss. More, fine friends, do you give who live In a land not far from this! For what he had done He hanged himself— Shame made a sick heart crack. But you will muster and ride again— And shoot—shoot ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... hole any where, nor any other place where it could go. Just as we were within a stone's throw of the cliff, the river turned sharply to the right and went behind a high point of the mountain that seemed to stand squarely on edge. This was really an immense crack or crevice, certainly 2000 feet deep and perhaps much more, and seemed much wider at the bottom than it did at the top, 2000 feet or more above our heads. Each wall seemed to lean in toward the water as ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... now." Jack sat up and placed his hand to his forehead. "Bloody, eh? Say, that was a crack, all right!" ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... enemy's neck, the hand gripping the nearer side of the jaw, and the other hand pushing at it, he strove to break his neck. Little by little he twisted it. Gradually the chin pointed to the shoulder, almost past it. It seemed that with the fraction of an inch more the vertebral column must crack like a stick of candy. But the hand on the jaw slipped, and the chin, released, shot back again, to be tucked desperately ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... nights and a day, sir, and every one of us with the ulcers right up the arms. It was warm business, I can tell you, sir. My ulcers are all going away now, with this warm cabin, but they were throbbing all night before. When I come down such a crack I was makin' a run for the taickle, for fear we might let the gear drop, and I saw a flash in my eyes, and nothing more till ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... gone Trever, that lov'd you, hence is fled: And Right, which long lay sick, is dead. Trever! whose rare and envied part Was both a wise and winning heart, Whose sweet civilities could move Tartars and Goths to noblest love. Bold vice and blindness now dare act, And—like the grey groat—pass, though crack'd; While those sage lips lie dumb and cold, Whose words are well-weigh'd and tried gold. O, how much to discreet desires Differs pure light from foolish fires! But nasty dregs outlast the wine, And after sunset ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... left hand and Casey clasped it soberly, though he wanted to jump up and crack his heels together,—as he confided afterwards. Injun Jim laid the blade of his ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... the back stairs, for Mr. Pringle objected that she woke him as she passed, whereas the carpet on the front stairs was so thick that there wasn't the least chance of waking the family. As she passed Mrs. Farron's room she was surprised to see a fine crack of light coming from under it. She paused, wondering if she was going to be caught, and if she had better run back and take to the back stairs despite Pringle's well-earned rest; and as she hesitated she heard a sob, then ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... uncomfortable, but not frightened. The noise seemed to proceed from a large carved oak coffer or chest (as old as the house), which stood on a landing, about half-way up the stairs. I approached the chest, and from it appeared to come again the word 'Hush!' Could it be the wind whistling through a crack? No; it was far too loud for any such explanation. I opened the lid of the chest and found it empty. Again the noise, now from under the chest. I was just strong enough to move the chest; I turned it over and slid it down the stairs on to the next landing. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... camped in Owl Gulch, a steep, narrow defile, little more than a crack in the huge walls of surrounding rock; and the next day, after much arduous and violent climbing for horses and men up the gulch and over the low back of a mountain, they passed down into a quiet little valley, just as the sun sank behind the tops of the mountains ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... taught by thee, when Caxton bade His silent words forever speak; A grave for tyrants then was made, Then crack'd the chain which yet shall break." Ebenezer Elliott, "Hymn for the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... notice, serves as a guide to them. When they have found the troop they follow it silently as shadows; they creep and crawl and sneak along the woodland paths as cautiously as leopards. They never tread on a twig which might crack, they never brush against a leaf which might rustle. The elephants, for all their fine scent and sharp hearing, have no suspicion of their proximity. The men lie in wait in a close thicket where the elephants can only move slowly, throw a noose of ox hide before the animal's hind leg, and draw ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... momentum, it could be arrested at any point with even greater ease than any instrument used by hand. While capable of forging an Armstrong hundred-pounder, or the sheet-anchor for a ship of the line, it could hammer a nail, or crack a nut without bruising the kernel. When it came into general use, the facilities which it afforded for executing all kinds of forging had the effect of greatly increasing the quantity of work done, at the same time that expense was saved. The cost of making anchors ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... with Miss Savine, or get that crack-brained aunt of hers to cure your neuralgia. There are also two young premium pupils, sons of leading Montreal citizens, in Mr. Savine's service, who dance attendance upon the fair Helen continually. It shouldn't ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of purification," said Solomon Eagle, who was present during these proceedings; "one that shall search every nook within it—shall embrace all those columns, and pierce every crack and crevice in those sculptured ornaments; and then, and not till then, will it ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was peeping over Rod's shoulder, gave a howl of delight when through the little puff of smoke that followed the feeble crack of the revolver he saw the big leader suddenly crumple up, and, falling in a heap, bring every one of his companions down in a ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... broken by the clear blast of the postillion's horn, reminds the visitor lingering lovingly over the shores at Cahirciveen that the coach for the coast tour is ready. With a crack of the whip that would do credit to Will Goldfinch, in the coaching days of old, the driver urges on his team, and the blooded four-in-hand cut their way clear of the town. The tour along the Atlantic between Cahirciveen and Kenmare is nearly ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... and gone There pictured tiles in the fireplace show, Great beams sag from the ceiling low, The dresser glitters with polished wares, The long clock ticks on the foot-worn stairs, And the low, broad chimney shows the crack By the earthquake made a century back. Up from their midst springs the village spire With the crest of its cock in the sun afire; Beyond are orchards and planting lands, And great salt marshes and glimmering sands, And, where north and south ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you," said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Astro, struggling through the hatch from the power deck. "One more crack like that and I'll stand you on your head and blast you off with ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... a stroke, that crack on the third finger of my left hand, above the top joint, opens and pains me," he declared to anybody who ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... you really think so, Jack?" cried the sad one, his face lighting up with a new hope. "It's awful good of you to crack your brain thinking up such a bully idea for me. And how silly that I never once jumped on that plan. I'm going to try it the very next time our engine kicks up a shindy, and holds ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... know how I fell into these reflections, excepting one thought produced it—that these continual separations were necessary to warm your affection. Of late we are always separating. Crack! crack! and away you go! This joke wears the sallow cast of thought; for, though I began to write cheerfully, some melancholy tears have found their way into my eyes, that linger there, whilst a glow of tenderness at my heart whispers that you are one of ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory of her single instant with Dan, but she felt that in such a cause, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... use a strong solution of alum, and in it to immerse the plate for any length of time; the gelatine is considerably hardened—which is not necessary—and more liable to crack by time in being thoroughly desiccated. We discard the common alum which we found liable to ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... being over twenty, and well-found in beard; but he was not more than four-and-twenty, fresh and ruddy looking, with a short nose and keen blue eyes, and a merry waggish jerk about him, as if the world were not in earnest. Yet he had a sharp, stern way, like the crack of a pistol, if anything misliked him; and we knew (for children see such things) that it was safer to tickle than ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... raised to strike when something happened. A lithe, muscular form glided under the upraised fist, and the next moment there was a sharp crack as the newcomer's fist collided with ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... remains soft, the flea becomes entangled in its tenacious folds, and is rendered perfectly harmless; but it will soon form a hard, smooth coating, entirely impervious to his bite. Should the coating crack at the knee or elbow joints, it is merely necessary to retouch it slightly at those places. The whole coat should be renewed every three or four weeks. This remedy is sure, and having the advantage of simplicity and economy, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... them, so as to get exactly the colour or thickness of material that he wanted. And when he had spent hours and hours mixing his substances and seeing that he had put in just the right quantity of each, and no more, perhaps the fire would be a little too hot and the glass would crack, or a little too cold and the mixture would not become solid glass, and then the poor man had to begin the whole process again from the beginning. Bernard stood by and watched, and noted the patience under failure, as well as the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... there to believe? There stood the gate with the pebble holding it away from the post; and here stood half the neighbourhood, staring at that pebble and at the all but invisible crack it made where an opening had never been seen before, in a fascination which had for its motif, not so much the knowledge that these forbidden precincts had been invaded by a stranger, as that they ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... himself up and began to rattle, when K[)u]t-o'-yis cut him into pieces with his knife. Then he turned around and killed all his wives and children, except one little female snake, which escaped by crawling into a crack in the rocks. "Oh, well," said K[)u]t-o'-yis, "you can go and breed young snakes, so there will be more. The people will not be afraid of little snakes." K[)u]t-o'-yis said to the old woman, "Now you go into this snake's lodge ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... little girl with long bleached tresses and a rather sour face. His legs were much swollen, and he could hardly walk. Carlier, undermined by fever, could not swagger any more, but kept tottering about, still with a devil-may-care air, as became a man who remembered his crack regiment. He had become hoarse, sarcastic, and inclined to say unpleasant things. He called it "being frank with you." They had long ago reckoned their percentages on trade, including in them that last deal of "this infamous Makola." They had also concluded not ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... I cried; 'that fellow Looey the Fifteenth has been doing a lot of work around here hasn't he?' but the waiter was so busy watching the finish of the change he handed me that he didn't crack a smile. ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... escaped; for up there no horseman could follow. But as a trooper came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... This was suggestive. Procuring a stick of proper size, I crossed over to the rear street, and stood back of the tent watching my opportunity. Presently Dunn's head came bobbing against the canvas, and I brought the stick down on it with a good, sharp crack. The effect was all that could be desired. There came an unearthly bellow, accompanied, I grieve to say, with many exclamations suggestive of the future prospects of the culprit who had cracked the head of the festive dancer. Out they poured through the little ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could bear ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... toward Denver, that me, the boys and the sheep were going to Montana. He said, "Alright, Mr. Ryus, we will drill on, as you say, but we will take possession of those sheep before you get into Denver." I told him to "crack his whip," and to go to that warm place from which no "hoss trader" returned if he wanted to, but for him not to interfere with me or the sheep. Away he went. My temper was at its best and thoroughly under control, so I told the boys to not feel the least alarm, no ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... use gittin' mad 'bout it. Thet blamed quarter ye giv me rolled down a crack in the stoop, an' got lost. Sure. Got ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... don't get mad at me, but if you will let me put in your suitcase just one little box of that salve for your finger tips, so they don't crack—" ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... France, meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position. He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is characteristic of his impetuous temperament, as is also a duel which he fought with a Mr ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... Sir John [Falstaff], the very same. I saw him break Skogan's head at the court-gate, when he was a crack not thus high.—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... take them off into your own territory, and keep the shining blessing to be the source of fertility in your own garden, and of coolness and refreshment to your own thirst, your garden will be parched, and your lips will crack. There is a 'broad river,' and there are also 'streams'; which, being brought down to its simplest expression, just comes to this—that we may and must make God our very own property. It is useless to say 'our God,' 'the God of Israel,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... chest, pressing him down with the weight of a giant. Duncan already saw the knife gleaming in the air, when a whistling sound swept past him, and was rather accompanied than followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. He felt his breast relieved from the load it had endured; he saw the savage expression of his adversary's countenance change to a look of vacant wildness, when the Indian fell dead on the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... thus make a public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and lightly ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... on his feet almost as quickly as Dick. Even yet, he did not understand what had happened. At this moment there was the crack of another pistol, and then Ibrahim came running towards them, having shot a man who had suddenly drawn his sword, and tried to cut him down. At his heels came the six men who had, up to this point, been standing in a group ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... and occupy positions that you must attack and from which they can escape. If I could have had my own way on arrival I should have pushed through Bethulie to Bloemfontein, but the fat was in the fire before I got out. Kimberley I believe will be saved. Ladysmith is a terrible nut to crack, but I hope it will (? be relieved). Then I would propose to attack Bloemfontein from Kimberley, and I think an army holding Bloemfontein based on Kimberley will be better off than one which holds Bloemfontein but has allowed Kimberley to be again invested. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... Flanders, Where you go, Gathering your wounded from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... rose up right before the boat. Blue lightning streamed on a lane of tumbling waters at its foot. Was this the entrance? With the vague notion of shortening sail, I let the sheet go from my hand. There was a jerk, the crack of snapped wood, and the next flash showed me Castro emerging from the ruins of mast and sail. He uprose, hurling the wreck from him overboard, then flickered out of sight with his arm waving to the left, and I bore accordingly on the tiller. In a moment I saw him again, erect forward, with ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... recognized the once elegant young man in this latter stage of his existence. Form and features, complexion and expression, were alike degraded. The garments worn by him, who had once been the boasted patron of crack West-end tailors, were now shapeless and hideous. The dandy of the clubs had become ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... dispute is there, which is everything. Enfin they are harmless beings, such as come in useful for padding purposes in country houses during the winter and autumn seasons, being, according to their friends' account, crack shots, "A1 at billiards," and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... white turpentine, 1-1/2 lbs.; gum shellac 1-1/2 lbs.; venice turpentine, 1 gill; let these stand in a jug in the sun, or by a stove, until the gums are dissolved; then add sweet oil, 1 gill; lampblack, 2 oz., and you have a varnish that will not crack when the harness is twisted like the old shellac varnish. It is good also for boots and shoes, looking ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... as I have already said, but that is no great matter. Remember that under the pretext of education you have been stuffed, my dear sisters. You have been varnished too soon, like those pictures painted for sales, which crack all over six months after purchase. Your disposition has not been properly directed; you are not cultivated; you have been stifled, pruned; you have been shaped like those yew-trees at Versailles which represent goblets and ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... quoth the other loudly, "do maintain the good sense and extraordinary wisdom of that most learned William against the crack-brained fantasies of the muddy Scotchman, who hath hid such little wit as he has under so vast a pile of words, that it is like one drop of Gascony in a firkin of ditch-water. Solomon his wisdom would not suffice to say what ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of those around me, however feeble and insipid such a feeling may be. It is a sort of play acted by ourselves and others. No one is deceived by it, since both sides shrink from the word which might crack the plaster and bring the house about our ears. There is an inward equivocation which fears to see clearly in itself, wants to make the best of everything, to reconcile old instincts and new beliefs, mutually destructive forces, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... There was a sharp crack, a loud rustling, and the man darted back with only half his staff in his hand, to run out of the tent, and leave me alone with the body of the first serpent, which I half fancied was moving slowly toward where I lay helpless, if it happened to have still vitality enough left ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... reflected for sometime. Overwhelmed with affection for his son, he summoned all his kinsmen and said, 'That man who will cause the head of my son to fall on the earth while the latter, struggling in battle, will be bearing a great burthen, I say that the head of that man will certainly crack into a hundred pieces.' Having spoken these words and installed Jayadratha on the throne, Vriddhakshatra, repairing to the woods, devoted himself to ascetic austerities. Endued with great energy, he is still engaged in the observance of the austerest of penances outside this very Samantapanchaka, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... rear. Standing in the post-office door only just one month before, she herself had seen children scurrying like rabbits through the back-yard fences, men running silently here and there, men dodging into doorways, fire flashing in the street and from every house—and not a sound but the crack of pistol and Winchester; for the mountain men deal death in all the terrible silence of death. And now a preacher with a long scar across his forehead had come to the one little church in the place and the fervor of religion was struggling ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crack between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and saucers. Then she dusted the parlour, including all the bric-a-brac, which made dusting here an engrossing occupation. Later she helped grandpa hoe the cabbages, and afterward "puttered around" with grandma in the flower-garden. Then she and grandma listened, very quietly, through a crack in the nearly-closed door while grandpa conducted a hearing in the parlour. To tell the truth, Missy wasn't greatly interested in whether Mrs. Brenning's chickens had scratched up Mrs. Jones's tomato-vines, hut she pretended to be interested because ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... topped about thirty-two inches from the ground, having from sixteen to twenty leaves on each stalk, after this the suckers are broken off, and the plants kept clean till cut. When ripe the leaves are spotted, thick, and will crack when pressed between the fingers and thumb. It is cut at any time of the day, after the dew is off, left in the row till wilted, then turned, and if there is a hot sun, it is often turned to prevent burning; after wilting it is put into small ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... not reply. The Captain, to reinforce his courage, stepped back into the dining-room. Miss Pipkin walked over and closed the door. This spurred the seaman to action. He cautiously pushed the door open again, and peeped through a narrow crack. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... race dying out, some fifty years before this, had become the property of a certain Mr. Armstrong, a civilian who had made a great fortune in the East, in an age when great fortunes were commonly made by East-Indian traders. His only son had been captain in a crack regiment, and had sold out of the army after his father's death, in order to marry Lady Laura Challoner, second daughter of the Earl of Calderwood, a nobleman of ancient lineage and decayed fortunes, and to begin life as a country gentleman under her wise governance. The Armstrongs ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Jacob is our Refuge,' and so we may say to the storms of life, and after them to the last howling tornado of death—Blow winds and crack your cheeks, and do your worst, you cannot touch me in the fortress where I dwell. The wind will hurtle around the stronghold, but within there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of rye or wheat was sown, and hacked in with hoes, the roots of the trees preventing the movement of the harrow. The process of "junking" was a tedious one, as the burnt logs soon covered the axe-handle with smut, drying up the skin of the hands so they would often crack ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... seems like drops of water that fall into a room through some crack, and when in its return it is scattered and disordered much like the twine of a cord which is unravelled, the bones are dried up even to ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... airy, trivial one. Again, stout individuals never take a back seat, but always a front one, and, wheresoever it be, they sit firmly, and with confidence, and decline to budge even though the seat crack and bend with their weight. For comeliness of exterior they care not a rap, and therefore a dress coat sits less easily on their figures than is the case with figures of leaner individuals. Yet invariably fat men amass the greater ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the sheltered pool, where the yachts lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and then they sped away toward the little island made by the "intake" of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... what was going on behind him, got out of the way, smiling kindly at the friend of his master, who thus found himself freed from the material obstacle which had prevented his reaching D'Artagnan. Porthos made his sturdy knees crack again in rising, and crossing the room in two strides, found himself face to face with his friend, whom he folded to his breast with a force of affection that seemed to increase with every day. "Ah!" he repeated, "you are always welcome, dear friend; but just now you ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... action so long deferred, found shrewdly the heel of a jawbone, just beneath the ear. Its victim dropped without a cry, but the impact of the blow was loud in the nocturnal stillness of that bystreet, and was echoed in magnified volume by the crack of a skull in collision with a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the rescue of the expiring conversation, and seizing forcibly upon the topic of the weather, inserted that useful wedge into the rapidly closing crack, and waited for Verty to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... ceased and a gleam of light came from under the dome of silver. A crack appeared between its lower edge and the rocky floor of the cavern, and through this crack there shone a light of dazzling brilliancy—a warm light of rosy hue. Wider grew the opening until there was a full three feet between the floor and the bottom of the dome. Impelled by some irresistible force ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... not true of a month before. We climbed into the deep pit, and then stood upon a vast floor of lava, rough, jammed together, broken, jagged, steaming out a hot sulphurous breath at almost every seam, revealing rolls of later lava injections at every deep crack, with caverns and high ridges where the great mass, after cooling, was forced together, and with a steep mountain-side of lava at our left, along the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... think of the smartness of that?" exclaimed Andy. "And so of course poor old Cadger, who is as honest as the day is long, never suspected any trick, but went and opened the door a crack?" ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... how Peter Cheever, talking to the headwaiter at the head of the stairs, saw his wife and Jim Dyckman with their heads together at a table. He wanted to go over and crack a water-bottle over Dyckman's head. He did not do it, for the excellent reason that Zada L'Etoile was at his side. She had insisted on his taking her there "to lunch with the bunch," ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... sweep of their wings as they went. But as I sat there, on that wild crag and that wild morning, I noticed a tuft of dog-violets, growing out of a fissure in the grey rock, and shaken and pounded by the bitter wind. How wonderful is the tenacity of nature. A few grains of dust blown into a crack of barren rock, a few seeds wind-carried also, and then germination in the rain and sun, and when the spring comes, this little clump of flowers in its due season, part of the intricate and mighty forces of renewal ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... found it difficult to sleep on account of the owner's loud snoring. At day-break he lay looking out on the camp through a crack in the cover. He saw the girls rise and depart, and the boys follow them. Thinking it about time for them to be moving, he woke Abrahams and went off to ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... had once before obliged the commonwealth of taste, with a very agreeable comedy in his City Politics, yet, in Sir Courtly Nice went far beyond it, and very much surpassed himself; for though there is something in the part of Crack, which borders upon farce, the Spanish author alone must answer for that: for Mr. Crowne could not omit the part of Crack, that is, of Tarugo, and the Spanish farce depending upon it, without a downright affront ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... inward to the sources of creation, She'll take the reins of the world in hand. She'll stop The sun like Joshua, turn the moon to blood, And if I have to swallow half the herbs In Sherwood, I shall stalk a giant yet, Shoulder to shoulder with thee, Little John, And crack thy head at quarter-staff. But don't, Don't joke about it. 'Tis a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... room at his right; not that from which he had entered, but one still beyond this where he was. He sprang towards the wall and examined it swiftly. Finding a division in the tapestry, he ran his fingers quickly and heavily down the crack between. It came upon the button of a spring. He pressed it, the door yielded, and, throwing it back, he stepped into the room-to see a woman struggling to resist the embraces and kisses of a man. The face was that of the girl who had looked out of the panel ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he had agreed to do, was riding at a leisurely pace, when, without the least warning, the sharp crack of a rifle broke the stillness of, the woods on his right, and the bullet zipped so close to his forehead that it literally grazed the skin, leaving a faint mark, which was visible ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... in Ohuivo live in houses. The few caves that are occupied are not improved in any way. One cave contained ancient habitations, and tradition says that there the Tubares had once established themselves. The cave is nothing but a nearly horizontal crack in the rock, situated on the southern side of the river, some 300 feet above the bottom of the valley. It runs from south-east to north-west to a length of about 200 feet, interrupted perpendicularly by a crevice. Entering the cave at the southernmost end I found twelve low-walled ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the surface wet and chilled even in the height of summer. In yet other regions, abundant moisture combined with heat covers the ground with a pad of fertile humus, while some hundred miles away drying trade winds parch and crack the steppe vegetation, convert most of its organic substance into gases, and leave only a small residue to enrich the soil. Rain itself modifies the relief of the land, and therefore often decides in a slow, cosmic way what shall be the ultimate destination of its precious store of water. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... wait for the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the flock. If only Borden could ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she saw two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with pence and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue at the lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over the ears of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to cover her eyes and avert her face, and all ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... He knew Bradshaw was in pain, because bleeding into high vacuum was always painful. The crack in the Englishman's helmet had let most of the air out, and his own blood pressure had done the rest. He would carry the marks for days. A few more moments, and all air and all heat would have been gone, with fatal results. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Demetrio, who stood over him, knife in hand. The victim raised his wrinkled Indian face; there was not a single gray hair in his head today. Demetrio recognized the spy who had lied to him the day before. Terrified, Luis Cervantes quickly averted his face. The steel blade went crack, crack, on the old man's ribs. He toppled backward, his arms spread, his ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... spurs and crests of many-fountained Ida quaked, as also the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans. Hades, king of the realms below, was struck with fear; he sprang panic-stricken from his throne and cried aloud in terror lest Neptune, lord of the earthquake, should crack the ground over his head, and lay bare his mouldy mansions to the sight of mortals and immortals—mansions so ghastly grim that even the gods shudder to think of them. Such was the uproar as the gods came together in battle. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... dark and duskie brown colour; nor could I perceive that those parts which seem'd to have been Wood at first, were any thing wasted, but the parts appear'd as solid and close as before. It was further observable also, that as it did not consume like Wood, so neither did it crack and flie like a Flint, or such like hard Stone, nor was it ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... but that Prudence said something that thou hast told her—that Pastor Tappau defiled his hands by whipping the witch Hota. What evil thought has got hold of thee? Talk to us, and crack not thy skull against the learning ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... situated, and horribly expensive. Take Toad. I say nothing against Toad Hall; quite the best house in these parts, as a house. But supposing a fire breaks out—where's Toad? Supposing tiles are blown off, or walls sink or crack, or windows get broken—where's Toad? Supposing the rooms are draughty—I hate a draught myself—where's Toad? No, up and out of doors is good enough to roam about and get one's living in; but underground to come back to at ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... from the danger like a frightened thing—and the pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... have guessed that through an adjoining crack another figure was drinking in every word he uttered, and taking it down in official shorthand, he would have spoken in ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... jars to a draft of cold air when removing them from the boiler, as this will be likely to crack them. If, after sterilization seems complete, any jars spoil, increase ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... the overhead rock for quite an area. It revealed the very spot they sought. Just to the left of the entrance and on level with Martin's chin a shelf of rock jutted out a couple of feet from the wall. Above this shelf was an opening, a crack in the ceiling wide enough ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... straight again? Why should she take such work beyond her skill, Which, when she cannot perfect, she must kill? Alas! what is't to temper slime and mire? But Nature's puzzled when she works in fire. Great brains (like brightest glass) crack straight, while those Of stone or wood hold out, and fear not blows; And we their ancient hoary heads can see Whose wit was never their mortality. Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before, There was not poetry he could live to more, He could not grow ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... bleached tresses and a rather sour face. His legs were much swollen, and he could hardly walk. Carlier, undermined by fever, could not swagger any more, but kept tottering about, still with a devil-may-care air, as became a man who remembered his crack regiment. He had become hoarse, sarcastic, and inclined to say unpleasant things. He called it "being frank with you." They had long ago reckoned their percentages on trade, including in them that last deal of "this infamous Makola." They had also concluded not to say anything about it. Kayerts ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... report on Kansas affairs, condemning the action of the free State people and of the aid societies, referring especially to an imaginary "Emigration Aid Company" of Massachusetts, with a capital of $5,000,000, and in consequence holding their existence justified the Border Ruffians of Missouri. The crack of the rifle was soon to be heard on ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... they eat all sorts of herbs, without other scruple than of the badness of the smell: where all things are open the finest houses, furnished in the richest manner, without doors, windows, trunks, or chests to lock, a thief being there punished double what they are in other places: where they crack lice with their teeth like monkeys, and abhor to see them killed with one's nails: where in all their lives they neither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and, in another place, pare those of the right hand only, letting the left ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... plenty of corn. And he, taking the counters and ranging them closely on the board, and crooking his fingers, uttered his reply to Calligenes: "If the cornfield gets sufficient rain, and does not breed a crop of flowering weeds, and frost does not crack the furrows, nor hail flay the heads of the springing blades, and the pricket does not devour the crop, and it sees no other injury of weather or soil, I prophesy you a capital summer, and you will cut the ears successfully: only fear ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... cryin' the minute he spoke; "Come up here, Major! don't let him slip." And jest as nice as a woman could do, He wropped his blanket around them two, And was off in the crack of a whip. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... sounds that came from inside, the place was but partly furnished. Hollow steps sounded down the hallway, shuffling, like weary bones dragging slippers. The door opened and an old woman, very old, peered out of the crack. She coughed. Though it was not a loud cough it seemed to the detective that it would be her last one; there was so ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... To open a crack in this frontier was Nails' supreme goal, because, once opened, men need never fight again amongst themselves for lack of a place to go or a ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the chariot. Uncle David gave each of the children a pretty picture-book before taking leave, and said, as he was stepping into the carriage, "Now, children, I have only one piece of serious, important advice to give you all, so attend to me! Never crack nuts ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... close about their faces in the fearful cold, they had met outside the inclosure of the Post. An hour later they were away under the aurora for Qu'Apelle. Galen Albret's nostrils expanded as he heard the crack, crack, crack of the remorseless dog-whip whose sting drew him away from the vain pursuit. After the marriage at Qu'Apelle they had gone a weary journey to Rae, and there he had first seen ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... from the thickets and river banks, now came a most galling fire, which the soldiers were kept busy replying to. Although much of this shooting was at long range it was very deadly, and at almost every crack of their rifles a soldier, an officer, or a scout fell. General Gibbon, Lieutenant Woodruff, and both their horses were ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... lost all patience, and again seizing his blunderbuss, he exclaimed: "Come, Jack, my boy, take your pistols and follow me; I have but one life to lose, and I will venture it to have a crack at this infernal demon." ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... better for it. I have heard my father say the Puritan breed makes the stoutest men-at-arms; that nothing has been found to stiffen a battle-line equal to a good text. Give this fellow a pike, pit him against a boatload of Spanish papists, and, I 'll warrant, he 'll crack more heads than any two of us. Besides, he controls a perfect tornado of a voice, fit to frighten the crew of a ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... he made work. When there was work to do, he did it with a rush, sweeping the sweat from his grimy brow with his hooked fore finger, and flecking it to the floor with a flirt of the right hand, loose on the wrist, in a way that made his thumb and fore finger snap together like the crack of a whip. This action was always accompanied with a long-drawn breath, almost a sigh, that seemed to say: "I wish I had the easy times you fellows have." In fact, since he came to the neighborhood the current phrase, "He works like a steer" had given way to, "He works like Macdonald," ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... horseback, who met and passed the ball-goers, rode through Kaskaskia's twinkling streets in the pleasant glow of twilight. Trade had not reached its day's end. The crack of long whips could be heard, flourished over oxen yoked by the horns, or three or four ponies hitched tandem, all driven without reins, and drawing huge bales of merchandise. Few of the houses were more than one story ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flinch of his deep eyes confessed the tumult moving in his mind and soul. He pulled out his watch and laid it on the top rail of the old oak fence: there was not enough light to read the time, but he could count the ticks he had to live. Suddenly hope flashed through his heart, like the crack of a gun, like a lightning fork—a big rat was biting an elbow of the yarn where some tallow had fallen upon it. Would he cut it, would he drag it away to his hole? would he pull it a little from its fatal end? ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... buried her wrinkled, fear-stricken face in her thin trembling hands, and wept as though her heart was breaking. "O Marie, blessed Virgin!" she whispered, "save our son, our Pierre; let not the fate of the loup-garou fall upon him." A thin stream of light shone through an ancient crack in the old-fashioned box-stove, and fell caressingly across the bowed head, making its silvery hair look pathetically thin. The bent shoulders of ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... flung off him to gang the faster, and he cam out o' the very same bit o' the wood, majoring and looking about sae like his Honour, that they were clean beguiled, and thought they had letten aff their gun at crack-brained Sawney, as they ca' him; and they gae me saxpence, and twa saumon fish, to say naething about it. Na, na, Davie's no just like other folk, puir fallow; but he's no sae silly as folk tak him for. But, to be sure, how can we do eneugh ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... important money-making enterprises of the Roman world. They maintained luxurious headquarters in the most congested business districts of the capital. They had offices adjacent to each of the circuses, they possessed huge congeries of buildings utilized as stables for their crack racers and barracks for their charioteers, and provided with spacious courtyards for training their teams. Outside of Rome they had similar offices and training-stables in every city and in most towns of any size or wealth. Besides they owned countless stud-farms, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... lordship, I was sitting at work by my fireside between the hours of six and seven in the evening, just as it was growing dusk, and little Jack was spinning beside me, when all at once crack went the window, and down fell a little basket of cakes that was set up against it. I started up and cried to Jack: 'Bless me, what's the matter?' 'So,' says Jack, 'sombody has thrown a stone and broke ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... invited him to come up, as every one seemed to be making his fortune. He wandered between the rushes for two years, not making a fortune, but acquiring much useful experience, learning, amongst other things, the art of a blacksmith, and becoming a crack shot with a rifle. Returning to Sydney, he sailed for the Friendly Islands (Tonga) in company with the king of Tonga's yacht—the TAUFAAHAU. The Friendly Islanders disappointed him (at which no one that knows them will wonder), and he went on to Samoa, and set up as a trader on his own ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... schooner and the shore a gentle sound of splashing came to his ears, and an occasional crack as of oars in their locks. Was it possible that a boat was there between the schooner and the land? What ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with insufficient equipment and inadequate makeshifts of every kind to hold the Company system together that the pioneers might have the water, without which the work of reclamation could not be done. He knew every stake and pile and plank and crack and patch in the whole system. He had learned the tricks of the river and was familiar with the conditions peculiar to the desert country. He knew the terrible danger of the flood season that was only two months away. He had planned and prepared to meet emergencies that ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... watch Madame Leon as she read the letter, and gain some information from the expression of her face; but this seemed impossible, for the keyhole was blocked up by the key, which had been left in the lock on the other side. Suddenly a crack in the partition attracted her attention, and finding that it extended through the wall, she realized she might watch what was passing in the adjoining room. So she approached the spot on tiptoe, and, with bated breath, stooped ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... infant giant; The oak by the roots uptearing, He'll beat you till your backs are sore, And crack your crowns ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... gentleman, still holding Kirk's hands, pushed him gently into the chair he had himself been sitting in. There was a little time of stillness, filled only by the crack and rustle of the fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This broken joint between you and her husband, entreat her to splinter; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your love shall grow stronger than ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the team plunged furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, and Hawtrey, who sprang down, floundered ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... go, the hounds needed no assistance. They ran up and down the rim till they found a crack. Hardly had they gone out of sight when we heard them yelping. We rushed to the rim and looked over. The first step was short, a crumbled section of wall, and from it led down a long slope, dotted here and there with cedars. Both hounds were ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... eggs are usually laid, and in two weeks the little larks crack the shells, and come into the world crying for worms ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... then hammering at it violently. The noise prevented her from hearing that Scarammuccia was growling, but she could feel that he was the moment she laid her hand on his back. Her curiosity was excited, and she stooped down close to him to look through a crack in the boards before which he stood ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... on the besiegers. The walls were built at such angles that a window, with archers posted behind it, could command each wall. Stronger towers were built—round towers with a coping at each storey, solid as a rock, which would crack and lean without falling; there is a leaning tower at Caerphilly Castle. One other way I must mention—the child or the wife of the castellan would be brought before the walls, and hanged before his eyes unless ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... setting of the common and the ridiculous. He looked at her and smiled. Ellen smiled back tremulously, then she cast down her eyes. The fire was roaring, but the room was freezing. The sitting-room door was opened a crack, and remained so for a second, then it was widened, and Andrew peeped in. Then he entered, tiptoeing gingerly, as if he were afraid of disturbing a meeting. He brought a blue knitted shawl, which he put ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in the desk, but Mary had a pocket diary in her chatelaine bag. "We will write a note and shove it through the crack under the door," they said—and did, repeatedly, the ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... fact," the captain went on, "I wish they would adopt rushing tactics. Then they'd be out in the open and we could get a good crack at them. As it is, we're concentrated and they're scattered, and their bullets have a better chance than ours of finding a mark. These sniping methods are all in their favor, if Ditty has sense enough ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... their services, for the handsome remunerations they receive, to the newspaper and periodical press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of writers of manuscripts,—those who were in general employment from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack" transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us, suppliers of scraps of news to the papers,—were still to be found only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for literary acquirements ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... exception was, but he assured her that he had repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters on it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... to you how highly I feel myself honoured that one of your name should sojourn under my roof. Time is a great healer, and by gad, sir, if you will permit me to say so, I shall stand by you in this affair, and between us we shall crack the rascals' skulls!" ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... too, when she was "introduced to the King and Queen" and bumped the ground between the make-believe sovereigns, or got a cup of water in her face when she was trying to see stars through a pipe. And the boys pinned her dress to the bench through a crack and once she walked into school with a placard on her ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... 266. SALIX fragilis. CRACK WILLOW. Bark. L. D.-The bark of the branches of this tree manifests a considerable degree of bitterness to the taste, and is also astringent; hence it has been thought a good substitute for the Peruvian bark, ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... murdered Ward if he had flogged me. Thank Heaven he got off with only a crack of the ruler! The men, I say, are looked after carefully enough. I wish the officers were. The Indians have just broken up their camp, and retired in dudgeon, because the young officers were for ever drinking with the squaws—and—and—hum—ha." Here Mr. Harry pauses, as not caring ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little back against the Tooth's smooth side, a splendid view of the Devil's Tooth ranch was to be had. The house itself was hidden in a cottonwood grove that Belle had planted when she was a bride, but the corrals, the pastures, the road up the Ridge was plainly visible. And in the shallow crack in the rock was another cigarette end, economically smoked down ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... his series of sweeps when the instrument was yet in a very unfinished state, and my feelings were not very comfortable when every moment I was alarmed by a crack or fall, knowing him to be elevated fifteen feet or more on a temporary cross-beam, instead of a safe gallery. The ladders had not even their braces at the bottom; and one night, in a very high wind, he had hardly touched ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... wardrobe being even less presentable, I deemed it prudent to leave him behind. The Beila men brought up the rear of the procession some distance from the Afghans, who, to my anxiety, never ceased scoffing and jeering at them the whole way. Every moment I expected to hear the crack of a pistol-shot, followed by a general melee. Arrived at the Mastung Gate, we dismounted, and, leaving our horses in charge of the guard, slowly proceeded up the steep narrow streets ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... information, I forget; but someway I gradually reconstructed the life-history of this trudger of the lanes. It was much the same, no doubt, as that of many others who are from time to time pointed out to one as having been aforetime in crack cavalry regiments and noted performers in the saddle; men who have breathed into their lungs the wonder of the East, have romped through life as through a cotillon, have had a thrust perhaps at the Viceroy's Cup, and done fantastic horsefleshy ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... fallen away from him, and now he stood entirely naked. He let the latch fall back to its place—carefully, lest it should again make a noise, and that man should hear it. Then he gathered the now damp and dirty sheet about him, and crouched down upon the cold floor close to the crack ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... cavalcade bulked monstrous big and must be visible at a great distance; he experienced much the sensations of a man crossing a sheet of thin ice with nerves painfully strained, awaiting the first menacing crack. In spite of all precautions the animals made a tremendous racket, or so it seemed, and, despite Hilario's twistings and turnings, it was impossible to avoid an occasional loop of barbed wire, therefore flesh and clothing suffered grievously. But at length the party brought up under ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... inspection of their shoulders made the little creatures quiver. Nannie crumbled her bread into a heap, and Blair carried an empty spoon to his mouth with automatic regularity; Harris, in the pantry, in a paroxysm of sympathy, stretched his lean neck to the crack of the half-open door. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... said Martin Lightfoot. "There is magic on it. It must bring us luck. Whoever holds that must kill his man. It will pick a lock of steel. It will crack a mail corslet as a nut-hatch cracks a nut. It will hew a lance in two at a single blow. Devils and spirits forged it,—I know that; Virgilius the Enchanter, perhaps, or Solomon the Great, or whosoever's name is on ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... sprang up from below. Tom had rushed forward, and with the hands stationed there let fly the jib-sheets, and was hauling down the forestay-sail—the foresail had been stowed. Suddenly she rose, and I heard a loud crack, like the report of a musket fired close ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... voice of Mrs. Brier, at the early morning light, "up with you, I tell you. Do you hear? For every minute you keep me, you'll get an extra crack!" and, true to her word, there was presently a grieved cry from the child, upon whose slender shoulders at least a dozen blows ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... lives in the servant's hall, She can set up her back and purr; The little mice live in a crack in the wall, But they hardly dare venture to stir; For whenever they think of taking the air, Or filling their little maws, The Pussy-cat says, "Come out if you dare; I will catch you all with my claws." ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Anglo-Saxon. He was grave, too seldom smiled, and rarely laughed. His expression almost at all times was a compound of seriousness and good-humour. With the rifle he was a good, steady shot; but by no means a "crack" one. His ball never failed to hit, but it often ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... a detailed knowledge of the Miles Standish. "She used to be a crack ship for gunnery—held the record. I wonder if we beat her shooting, or how? I wish I was in it. I wonder which of our ships beat her. Maybe she got a shell in her engines. It's a running fight! I wonder what the Barbarossa is doing," he went on, "She's my old ship. Not ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... she'd put her quack-quack in her pail, and then she'd put her fish in her pail, and then she'd put her frog in her pail. Then she would shake her pail with all of the nuts and the marbles and the quack-quack and the frog and the fish, and they would all go bingety-bang, crickety-crack, bingety-bang, crickety-crack. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... oxidizes to a hard elastic and adhesive coating. If with linseed oil we mix iron oxide or some other pigment we have a paint that will protect iron perfectly so long as it is unbroken. But let the paint wear off or crack so that air can get at the iron, then rust will form and spread underneath the paint on all sides. The same is true of the porcelain-like enamel with which our kitchen iron ware is nowadays coated. So long as the enamel holds it is all right but once it is broken ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... discharging their carbines into each other's faces, rolling, coiled together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters, struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry, Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all the confusion and uproar, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wouldn't be let. I'm a poor girl, an' you're a high-up lad. Whoever heard tell of the like of us marryin', except mebbe in books. I knew well we'd never marry, but I liked goin' about with you, an' listenin' to your crack, an' you kissin' me an' tellin' me the way you loved me. You've a quare nice English voice on you, an' you know it well, an' I just liked to hear it ... but didn't I know rightly, you'd never marry the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... had already been opened, when Garrick deftly inserted his shoulder. Through the crack in the door, I could see the startled roomful of players of all degrees in crookdom, in the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the ice was perfect; the utter stillness of the air at the time when the final congelation of the waters had taken place had resulted in the formation of a surface that for smoothness would rival a skating-rink; without a crack or flaw it extended far beyond ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the tempest black A lantern in his hold: Out, out, alack! one strand will crack! It ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... risks about it," said Sorell decidedly. "I shall go and see Fanning. If there's any doubt about it, I shall carry you up to London, and get one of the crack surgeons to come and look at it. What was the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in his belt and entered the room. He put up his hand to the rafter that crossed the low ceiling and so felt his way along to the middle of the room. Halting there, he removed the fur mitten from his right hand and felt about until his chilled fingers discovered a thin crack in the whitewash of the rafter. The little square of dry wood came away in his fingers. Next moment he held the leather-bound casket in his hand. He opened it and felt the cold jewels which he could not see. Then he closed it, slipped it into a pocket, replaced the square of wood ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... slaves the same wages to-day as I did yesterday.... They never take the answer of Bernard Shaw, who, when asked by a capitalist what he could do, saying that he could not help being a capitalist, was answered in this manner: You can go and crack rock if you want to; no one forces you to be a capitalist, but you are a capitalist because you want to be. No one forces Hillquit to be a lawyer; he could get a job in a lumber yard. There is no more excuse for a man being a capitalist or a lawyer than ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... lard. Separate the heads at the jaw, leaving the tongue attached to the jowl, and taking care not to cut it. Cut off the snout two inches above the tip, then lay the upper part of the head, skin down, crack the inner bone with the axe, press the broken bones apart, and take out the brains. Jowls are to be salted and smoked—heads are best either simply corned for boiling with cabbage, peas, beans, etc., or made in conjunction ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Crane objected; "something else again. What we contend is no man of ordinary common sense could get his own consent to crack a safe, or pick a pocket, or do second-story work, or pull any rough ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... "That's a tough nut to crack, gentle people," he said, "because you've simply got to think of those other five days. The chances are that four times as many people in Delafield go to other public places as go to ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... other than a nation of mere lovers and would-be imitators of Charles Lamb. The moralistic type of humor, the crack of Juvenal's whip, as well as the delicate Horatian playing around the heart-strings, has characterized our humor and satire from the beginning. At bottom the American is serious. Beneath the surface of his jokes there ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... or to rage provokes, Or brings it to the ground by sorrow's heavy strokes; Then of the joys that charm'd, or woes that wrung, Forces expression from the faithful tongue: But if the actor's words belie his state, And speak a language foreign to his fate, Romans shall crack their sides, and all the town Join, horse and foot, to laugh th' ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... pantaloon was there to inflict condign punishment, because none was needed. A brother carter standing by performed the part, extempore. His eye suddenly lit on the culprit; his whip sprang into the air and descended on the urchin's breech. Horror-struck, his mouth opened responsive to the crack, and a yell came forth that rose high above the surrounding din, while his little legs carried him away over the sands like a ragged leaf driven ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms, All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... left her eyes and in them was a quiet glow as she smiled upon her husband whose nerves were as tautly strung as those of a sprinter crouched upon his mark and straining to be away at the pistol's crack. "The traitoress has the infamy to smile at me—whom she has betrayed," was the thought in his heart. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... off abruptly, in something like dismay. She had a fleeting impression of a pair of eyes encountering her own through a crack in the doorway, and as swiftly withdrawn. She walked quickly to the door and flung it open. There was nobody outside, and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... how dare you!" shrieked the monkey's victim, rushing at the gallant old gentleman. She raised her parasol and brought it down on his head with a resounding crack. In the meantime the Italian was howling to "Garibaldi," as he called the monkey, to come ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... swerving suddenly, he made for the crossing without slackening speed. He had almost reached the water's edge when there came a spurt of flame from the door of Doubler's cabin, followed by the sharp whip like crack ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... told her friends, as the man on the bench who held the pistol allowed it to glimmer in the sunlight. The next moment a crack rent the air and the ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... suffice to inspire terror, without the oppressive smoke and the uncanny noise far down in the depths. Dull and regular, it sounded like the piston of an engine or a great drum, heard through the noises of a factory. Presently there was silence, and then, without any warning, came a tearing crack, the thunder as of 100 heavy guns, a metallic din, and a cloud of smoke rose; and while we forced ourselves to stay and watch, the inferno below thundered a roaring echo, the walls shook, and a thousand dark specks flew up like a swarm of frightened birds. They were lava blocks, and they ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... reflect the admiration frankly displayed upon the faces of the two other women. That satin slip seemed to have a moral quality, an immoral character. It made her feel naked—no, as if she were naked and being peeped at through a crack ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Hector's arm. The Watchman barely parried in time. Another feint, at the head, and a slash into the chest; Hector missed the parry but his armor saved him. Grimly, Odal kept advancing. Feint, feint, crack! and Hector's sword went flying from ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... the Brule Rapid—Pusitao Powestik—short but powerful, with a sharp pointed rock at its head, very troublesome to get around. Above this rapid the bank consists of a solid, vertical rampart of red sandstone, its base and top and every crack and crevice clothed with a rich vegetation—a most beautiful and striking scene, forming a gigantic amphitheatre, concentred by the seeming closing-in of the left bank at Point Brule upon the long straight line of sandstone ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... Rex stretched himself at full length on the ground, moved up and down to get at the right distance, and began to assail the grating with a series of such violent kicks as woke a babel of subterranean echoes. Not in vain he had been the crack "kick" of the football team at school; not in vain had he exercised his muscles ever since childhood in scrambling over mountain heights, and taking part in vigorous out-of-door sports. Norah clasped her hands in a tremor of excitement. It seemed to her that no fastenings ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... like manner, in squeek, squeak, squeal, squall, brawl, wraul, yaul, spaul, screek, shriek, shrill, sharp, shrivel, wrinkle, crack, crash, clash, gnash, plash, crush, hush, hisse, fisse, whist, soft, jar, hurl, curl, whirl, buz, bustle, spindle, dwindle, twine, twist, and in many more, we may observe the agreement of such sort of sounds with the things signified; and this so frequently happens, that scarce any ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... day the crack shots and sportsmen of Calcutta went down to the usually peaceful islet and engaged in all the wild work of a regular hunt, and at eve the two leopards were seen, by interested observers in the Wellington, being conveyed away ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... real God, but whether there is a God or not. The intelligence of Christendom to-day does not believe in an inspired art or an inspired literature. If there be an infinite God, inspiration in some particular regard would be a patch—it would be the puttying of a crack, the hiding of a defect —in other words, it would show that the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... foothold sure for shoe 'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious pile As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile. Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about Towers—the heap he kicks now! turrets—just the measure of his cane! Will that do? Observe moreover—(same similitude again)— Such a castle seldom crumbles by ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... a shadow of sound there is But his motion's gentle hiss, Till one fluent arm and hand Suddenly circles, and the wand Taps a bough far overhead, "Crack," and then all noise is dead. For he halts, and for a space Stands erect with upward face, Taut and tense to the white Message of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin, and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled a ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... was comin' near me, an' I was just about happily concludin' I wasn't in the direct line o' fire an' was well covered from strays. So I was snuggin' down in my big easy chair with the D Mark III. on my knee, puffin' my pipe an' repeatin' the F.O.'s orders as pleasant as you please when crack! a bullet comes with an almighty smack through the back o' the arm-chair, bare inches off my ear. Comfort or no comfort, thinks I, this is where I resign the chair, an' I slides out an' squats well ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... place, no opening of any sort is found; if the examination of the walls—even to the demolition of the pavilion—does not reveal any passage practicable—not only for a human being, but for any being whatsoever—if the ceiling shows no crack, if the floor hides no underground passage, one must really believe in the Devil, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... Foster would prove to any man how small a space the acquisitions of a lifetime could be made to occupy when the object was not to display but to pack them. Foster could put all your pride on to four wheels, and Foster's driver would crack a whip and be off with the lot of it as though it were no more than a load ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... ardor: "I tell you what, Levinsky. Why not try to get your old landlady to open her stocking? From what you have told me, she ought not to be a hard nut to crack if you only go about ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual stunned picknickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jam in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners—these are the advance signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... task to estimate Irving or Bryant, but Poe offers a hard nut for criticism to crack. The historian is baffled by an author who secretes himself in the shadow, or perplexed by conflicting biographies, or put on the defensive by the fact that any positive judgment or opinion of Poe will almost certainly ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... letters a small varnished piece of wood, on the back of which he has printed, "This maple panel has been finished with two coats of '61' Floor Varnish. Hit it with a hammer. Stamp on it. You may dent the wood, but you can't crack the varnish. This is one point where '61' ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... glass you will weep over yourself—you will be foolishly happy, or become stupidly noisy. From this glass will spring Prince Carnival, flippant and crack-brained. He will entice you to accompany him; you will forget your respectability, if you have any; you will forget more than you ought or dare forget. All is pleasure, gaiety, excitement; the maskers carry you off with them; the daughters of the Evil One, in silks and flowers, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... breath in the profound silence,—I lowered my boy into the boat. The basket followed. The negro fastened the boat-hook to the cabin window, and on this, lame as I was, I followed the basket. Fortunately, not a plash, a crack, or a footfall disturbed the silence. I looked aloft, and no one was visible on the quarter-deck. A slight jerk brought the boat-rope softly into the water, and I ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... thoughtful. Then he started to say something to his little companion, but before he could speak the buggy began to sway dangerously from side to side and the earth seemed to rise up before them. Next minute there was a roar and a sharp crash, and at her side Dorothy saw the ground open in a wide crack and then ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... street railways of a swarming metropolis stand idle, or the rumble of machinery in vast manufactories dies away to silence. There is alarm and panic. Arson and homicide stalk forth. There is a cry in the night, and quick anger and sudden death. Peaceful cities are affrighted by the crack of rifles and the snarl of machine-guns, and the hearts of the shuddering are shaken by the roar of dynamite. There is hurrying and skurrying. The wires are kept hot between the centre of government and the seat of trouble. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... into nothingness, and I had to make a dangerous descent. The second was a deep gully, but so choked with rubble that after nearly braining myself I desisted. Still going eastwards, I found a sloping ledge which took me to a platform from which ran a crack with a little tree growing in it. My glass showed me that beyond this tree the crack broadened into a clearly defined chimney which led to the top. If I can once reach that tree, I thought, the battle is won. The crack was only a few inches wide, ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... noisily puffed out its first jet of steam, while the wheels began to turn a little, with a visible effort, and Rivet left the station and went to the gate by the side of the line to get another look at Rosa, and as the carriage full of human merchandise passed him, he began to crack his whip and to jump, while he sang at ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... science of geology was young—and we were young too—we remember how there was a certain romance and fascination about those fearless and richly imaginative theories which explained all the great changes in the crust of the earth by magnificent cataclysms, upheaving, exploding, overwhelming. The crack of doom meant something after all! What had been should be again. Old times had stories to tell of sublime catastrophes, the crash of systems, and the swallowing up of chains of cloud-capped mountains in the yawning ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... marked 'bank records' in a chest in the back kitchen of Peters shack. They are sealed in a big tin can marked 'red paint.' What are they saying about Peters? That must be a hard nut for the Lake people to crack, but since they know so much, or they think they know, it might be a good thing to let them find out how little they really do know. I am sorry for poor Peters. He got ugly, however, and it was his ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... boat away dead before it; and away went the lugger, still heading to the southward and westward, but with the wind now dead aft instead of over the starboard bow. But they had scarcely been scudding five minutes when there occurred a sudden rending crack of timber, and the mainmast, weakened by an unsuspected flaw in the heart of it, snapped, about midway between the heel of it and the sheave, and went over the bows, broaching-to the lugger with the drag of the mainsail in ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the simple operation. His impulse towards unreserve puzzled him, and several seconds of silence passed before he spoke again; silence, emphasised by broken snatches of talk and laughter; by the sharp crack of guns; and the whirring of a hundred wings, like the restless murmuring in the heart ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... instant, but before he could give a word of instruction to his men, there fell upon their ears a sound that appalled them,—the distant thunder of hundreds of bounding hoofs; the shrill, vengeful yells of a swarm of savage Indians; the crack! crack! of rifles; and, far down the trail along which Wells had ridden but a few moments before, they could see ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... before, and admitted that I alone could save the Republic, and placed himself at my disposal, to do what I wished, assume any role I might assign him, begging me to promise that if I had any plan in my head I would count on him—yes, on him; and he would be true to the crack ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Though you dare crack a coward's crown, Or quarrel for a pin, You dare not on the wicked frown, Nor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... attention to him. She went close to the hole and pushed gently against the little door that closed it. It didn't move. Then she noticed that at one edge there was a tiny crack. She tried to push her nose through, but the crack was too narrow. Then she tried a paw. A claw caught on the edge of the door, and it moved ever so little. Then Granny knew that the little door wasn't fastened. Granny stretched herself flat on the ground and went to work, ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... terrifying but magnificent sight that our friends beheld, for the earth was trembling and heaving. Great fissures opened in many places. Into some of them streams of lava poured, for now the volcano had opened in several places, and from each crack the melted rocks belched out. The crater, however, was not sending into the air such volumes of smoke and ashes as before, as most of the tremendous energy had passed, or was being used ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... some old pictures on the walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most struck him, however, was the rope of the great alarm bell on the ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Austrians, are now in France; advancing upon Paris. They take Longwy and Verdun; try to take Thonville and Lille, but cannot; and find Dumouriez and his sansculottes, there in the passes of Argonne, the "Thermopylae of France," an unexpectedly hard nut to crack. In fact, the nut is not to be cracked at all: Dumouriez, " more successful than Leonidas," flings back the invasion; compels the invaders to evacuate France; and in November, assuming the offensive, conquers the whole Austrian Netherlands. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Annie find a partner? Some have the gout in their toes, or the rheumatism in their joints; some are stiff with age; some feeble with disease; some are so lean that their bones would rattle, and others of such ponderous size that their agility would crack the flagstones; but many, many have leaden feet, because their hearts are ...
— Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... herself under the shadow and shelter of contemptuousness, but she swells too huge for the den she creeps into. Let her lie there and crack, and think no more about her. The people you have been talking of can find no greater and no other faults in my writings than I myself am willing to show them, and still more willing to correct. There are many things, as you ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... haven't any of which to speak. All the beauties of art, this man thought, were exclusively for him and his precious company of lisping exquisites and giggling, mincing queans. The thought that those who create beauty are also they who possess it, never dawned upon this crack-pated ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... was a very pretty little schooner, pronounced a crack craft by the knowing ones. She sat so buoyantly on the water when motionless, and glided along so gracefully when under way, that even landsmen and landswomen must have admired her. Let it not be supposed that the word landswomen is here used unadvisedly: although the Navy Department ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... observed the hostile movement, and had thrown himself out of the saddle. He struck the hard sand of the hill on all fours and stretched out flat, his face to the ground. He heard the bullet sing futilely past him; heard the sharp crack of the rifle, and peered down to see the man again running ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... talk to for a whole week," she said; "and you'll let me; won't you? I can't help it, anyway, because as soon as I see you—crack! a million thoughts wake up in me and clipper-clapper goes my tongue. . . . You are very good for me. You are so thoroughly satisfactory—except when your eyes narrow in that dreadful far-away gaze—which ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... you had me about to crack—if that was your object. Now then, would any of you mind easing my worries about ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... that he was altogether ignorant of her meaning, though, certainly, he had never guessed that she minded the teasing. But before he knew what to say, her eyes were clear again, and the sudden crack in the surface was almost ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... I gazed where the Singing Mouse pointed, quite beyond the dusty walls, and there I saw as it had said. I heard not the thunder of the hoofs of buffalo, nor the faint crack of the twig beneath the panther's foot. I saw not the lurching gallop of the long-jawed wolf, nor the high, elastic bounding of the deer. The level swinging speed of the antelope, the slinking of the lynx, the crashing flight of the ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... surrendered; these were compelled to lie flat on the ground all night. If in their wounds or achings they moved head or hand, an admonition was delivered from a musket. A change of posture, then a sharp crack, a whizzing bullet, a bleeding victim, a death struggle, a ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... twenty miles off by the cut of her royals. See, what square yards she's got! and how well her masts stand. How light she looks aloft—and yet everything that is required— not a block too large—and yet everything works as easy as possible. On deck, too, you'll find there's no jim-crack nonsense about her— everything is for service, and intended to last; and yet, where there is any brass or varnished wood, it's kept as bright and clean as can be. There isn't a ship on the station can come up to us in reefing or furling; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'e got a crack on the head, though!" Again there was that satisfied resentment in his voice and the little smile twisting his lips. Nedda felt more lost ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right, Mr. Peet. You needn't bother to come down. It's just little Mary Cary." And she opened the door a tiny crack and ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... they, too, had found no trace of the fugitive. With the sergeant's leave I sent the five dragoons into the kitchen with the two maids to have a jug of ale apiece, while he stayed with me in the house-place, to crack a ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of that which is imprisoned in the original snow. Even where this indication is wanting, he can sometimes trace the crevice by the hissing sound of the air streams where they issue from the ice. If he will take time to note what goes on, he can usually in an hour or two behold the first invisible crack widen until it may be half an inch across. He may see how the surface water hastens down the opening, a little river system being developed on the surface of the ice as the streams make their way to one or more points of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... hazelnuts when I was a boy. These are probably the least interesting among the wild nuts since they are usually small and hard to crack. There is much variation in wild hazels, however, and many people may recall them as being reasonably large. One of the two species abundant in Minnesota, Corylus cornuta or Beak hazel, has fine, needle-like hairs on its husk which are sure to stick into one's fingers disagreeably. ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... The gardener would go out and straighten the trampled flowers. The carts of wounded would pass regularly, stopping occasionally for water or tea. They would say the fighting had passed on. And then, suddenly, the crack and boom would approach again, shaking the house walls—the little uncurling puffs of smoke against the blue sky—the gray-blue uniformed Austrians hurrying past in retreat. No carts of wounded any more. There was too much hurry to bother about ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And the melancholy crack In ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... for the boys to start for home. The General took each of them aside, and talked for a long time. He was speaking to Willy, on the edge of the clearing, when there was a crack of a twig in the pines. In a second he had laid the boy on his back in the soft grass and whipped out a pistol. Then, with a low, quick call to Hugh, he sprang swiftly into the pines toward ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... words after him with rapt attention. When he finished the lesson, she pounded, in a wondrous mortar, the dried flour of the banana with the eggs of wild fowl, then fried the paste over the fire he had built. She brought a dish of nuts and showed him gravely how to crack them with a stone, smiling patronizingly at his ready skill. When the dinner was cooked, she offered him one end of the dish as usual, but he thought it was time for another lesson. He laid a flat stone with palm ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... gentleman but as wise as Solomon's aunt. Talk to him like a sweet little boy, and then come back to the Legation and stop with us while you see something of the war. I can take you to within one hundred and fifty miles of the firing line and show you the crack regiments of Germany looking as happy and sleek as if they were merely out for one of the yearly manoeuvres. I would have difficulty, though, in showing you any of the wounded, as they are very careful to see that we are not offended ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... these when I enter an inn. How much the man does for us who props our house when it is about to fall, and who, with a skill beyond belief, suspends in the air a block of building which has begun to crack at the foundation; yet we can contract for underpinning at a fixed and cheap rate. The city wall keeps us safe from our enemies, and from sudden inroads of brigands; yet it is, well known how much a day a smith would earn for erecting ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... be loved. I feared to lose the good-will of those around me, however feeble and insipid such a feeling may be. It is a sort of play acted by ourselves and others. No one is deceived by it, since both sides shrink from the word which might crack the plaster and bring the house about our ears. There is an inward equivocation which fears to see clearly in itself, wants to make the best of everything, to reconcile old instincts and new beliefs, mutually destructive forces, like the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... subtle element behind its visible vapors, it corrupted not only the flesh, but also the souls that had emerged elsewhere into forms of affection and compassion. Two nights ago even she had greeted the crack of the whips with the furious thought, "Strike again!"—and now there stole into her brain, together with the light hallucinations of fever, a hatred of these cringing black men who for a moment had dared to stand before her as antagonists. The ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... verberation, a scream of sundered metal and a clatter of flying fragments, the staple gave way. A crack showed round the edge of the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... is boiled, rub it over with a little salad-oil, which wipe off again; separate the body from the tail, break off the great claws, and crack them at the joints, without injuring the meat; split the tail in halves, and arrange all neatly in a dish, with the body upright in the middle, and garnish with parsley. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... pity," said Caspar, "we could not throw down that great stone and widen the crack in the ice, so that the deer could not leap over it! We should then have it nicely ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... begged and Dido raged in vain. 95 "To arms, to arms!" the bold Thalestris cries, And swift as lightning to the combat flies. All side in parties, and begin th' attack; Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack; Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise, 100 And bass and treble voices strike the skies; No common weapons in their hands are found, Like gods they fight, nor ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... lot of boron deficiency here in the East, and in areas in which we have trouble with growing vegetables, like cauliflower that has a hollow stem, or beets or turnips that split and crack, or where we have so-called drouth spot or internal corking in apples, you can be sure that you can't grow a Persian walnut, because the boron requirement alone is many, many times that of an apple ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... a Tuesday evening, and the men were waiting in the deep double verandas for "Last Posts," when Simmons went to the box at the foot of his bed, took out his pipe, and slammed the lid down with a bang that echoed through the deserted barrack like the crack of a rifle. Ordinarily speaking, the men would have taken no notice; but their nerves were fretted to fiddle- strings. They jumped up, and three or four clattered into the barrack-room only to find Simmons kneeling ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Wha will crack to me my lane? [chat, alone] Wha will mak me fidgin' fain? [tingling with fondness] Wha will kiss me o'er again?— The rantin' dog ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Merrifield married his brother, banking in Ceylon, and may come home any day on a visit; and Ivinghoe's pretty wife is Lancelot's niece. He edits what is really the crack newspaper of the county, in spite of its being true blue Conservative, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a man above the level of the ground, and vanished so quickly that Zinti, who as watching, rubbed his eyes in wonder. After waiting a while, however, he followed in their steps to find that behind the shrub was a narrow cleft or crack such as are often to be seen in cliffs, and that down this cleft ran a pathway which twisted and turned in the rock, growing broader as it went, till at last it ended in the hidden krantz. This krantz was a very beautiful spot about three morgen, or six English acres, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... walks the quarter-deck Is the monarch of the sea; But every day, when I'm on my dray, I'm as big a monarch as he. For the car must slack when I'm on the track, And the gripman's face gets blue, As he holds her back till his muscles crack, And he shouts, "Hey, hey! Say, you! Get out of the way with that dray!" "I won't!" "Get out of the way, I say!" But I stiffen my back, and I stay on the track, And I won't get out ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... began to sound and the whips to crack, and both dogs and horses grew unruly and impatient. The company divided into three parts, forming a centre and rings like an army, and advanced into the bushy plain, sending the dogs on in front. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the gentlemen their caps, to the friends they had ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... well as they could between the tent flaps. They dared not make the crack any wider for fear the man in front might see them. They saw gypsy men, women and children hurrying to and fro, and loading wagons. Some tents were ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... feed 'im?" she asked, hospitably, as he was closing the door; "the's some fodder overhead, an' the corn is in re'ch through the crack ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... "Why, I was first reserve for England against Wales, and I've skippered the 'Varsity all this year. But that's nothing! I didn't think there was a soul in England who didn't know Godfrey Staunton, the crack three-quarter, Cambridge, Blackheath, and five Internationals. Good Lord! Mr. Holmes, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... frightened thing—and the pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water she ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail with obvious relief ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... boxes the heavy one worked with brush and paint marking some barrels. If Billy applied an eye to a crack in his hiding place he could watch every stroke of the fat black brush, and see the muscles in the swarthy cheeks move as the man mouthed a big black cigar. But Billy was not interested in the new freight ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... fit in with mine. Besides, I'm older than you and if there was one thing your father taught you it was respect for your elders. Two heads are better than one. You crack right along and try to save your ranch in your way and I'll crack right along and try to save it my way. You pay your way and I'll pay ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... me take the pail for a moment," said the boy drawing it gently from her hand. "Now I will peep inside. What harm can it do? See, I will lift the cover ever so gently." He put his eye to the crack, when suddenly the cover slipped from his hand and rolled away upon the bank. A great swarm of angry, buzzing creatures flew into his face. He struck at them with his hands, but it was of no use. They stung and stung him. "Alice! Alice!" he cried, "oh, ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something, and there was a great smashing and snapping of undergrowth and fallen branches as they drove in among the birches. Then the team stopped, and Hawtrey, who sprang down, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... farther off with her charge, who lifted her eyebrows in a suggestive manner, as if to say, "You see, my spy has been warned." It seemed as if it would be impossible to hold any conversation at all, but, fortunately, they were put into adjoining cubicles, and Barbara found a crack, which she enlarged ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... yellow or pink in the dining-room. Serve a fruit punch from a table covered with a white cloth and trimmed with smilax, ferns and flowers. Use a large punch bowl and glass cups. Have a square block of ice in the bowl. If a cut-glass punch bowl is used, care should be used lest the ice crack it. Temper the bowl by putting in cold water and adding a few bits of ice at a time until it is chilled. Do not put ice into a warm bowl or one that has not ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... I remember now." Jack sat up and placed his hand to his forehead. "Bloody, eh? Say, that was a crack, all right!" ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... growing warmer, "ought to shut themselves up at home, and not come among sensible, good-tempered persons. As far as I am concerned, I can tell them, one and all, that I am not going to pick out every hard word from a sentence as carefully as I would seeds from a raisin. Let them crack them with their teeth, if they are ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... charm which he recognised in some of Schubert's melodies, he did not care to hear those whose contours were too sharp for his ear, where feeling is as it were denuded, where one feels, so to speak, the flesh palpitate and the bones crack under the grasp of anguish. A propos of Schubert, Chopin is reported to have said: "The sublime is dimmed when it is followed by the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and threw himself at full length into the cradle, where he commenced rocking himself with a force and rapidity that made every thing crack again. ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward. The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... him not to break his engagement to dine at the Halketts', where perhaps from his friend Colonel Halkett, who would never imagine the reason for the inquiry, he might learn how a letter to a crack French regiment should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yellow color had appeared along the under crack of the door. A second later the door was rimmed on all sides with it. It grew; reached out. Energy flowed through it: fingers of dusty yellow pronged out from the cracks where the door fitted, hung wavering for a moment, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... was not so cheery as usual as he made his way into the city. This suggestion of Martha Merrick's regarding his inattention to duty to his beloved nieces was no easy nut to crack. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... to indicate a good appetite. Another solicitor of alms, quite old and bent, had an amusing companion in a little gray squirrel, with a collar and string attached, the animal being as mischievous as a monkey, now and then hiding in one of the mendicant's several pockets, sometimes coming forth to crack and eat a nut upon his owner's shoulder. A blind beggar, of Creole nationality, sat all day long in the hot sun, on the Alameda de Paula near the Hotel San Carlos, whose companion was a chimpanzee monkey. The little half-human creature held out its hand with a piteous expression to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... "Crack!" came a report and a bullet embedded itself in the stout wood of their own boat. Both recognized the report. It was not that of a Spanish musket, but the lashing fire of a Kentucky rifle ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained way. "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... enough," Old Tarwater crooned, as he laid on his son's back and shoulders with the single-tree. "Observe, I ain't hitting you on the head. My father had a gosh-wollickin' temper and never drew the line at heads when he went after tar.—Don't jerk your elbows back that way! You're likely to get a crack on one by accident. And just tell me one thing, William, son: is there nary notion in ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... to Cousin Rachel ten years ago," said Cecily, "and asked her if she might open the chest to see if the moths had got into it. There's a crack in the back as big as your finger. Cousin Rachel wrote back that if it wasn't for one thing that was in the trunk she would ask mother to open the chest and dispose of the things as she liked. But she could not bear that any one but herself should see or touch that one thing. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shilling at twenty yards. Of course, you can't fight him with swords. He's one of the best in all Italy. But you've just as good a chance as he has with pistols. Nine times out of ten the tyro hits the bull's-eye, while the crack goes wild. Just you sit jolly ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... to obey him, Ambrose, flinging himself down at full length, watched with an eye at the crack of the door. He saw a group of men gradually gather at the corner of the store. They advanced, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of some people I found in the bar-room, I took him into the public house. Bedad, it was a hard crack you guv him," added the hackman, in a low tone. "If you pay me the tin dollars, I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... having lost one. "There'll be bonfires all over the place to-night, Lionel—left-handed compliment to me. Here comes Luke Roy. I told him to be here this morning. What nuts this will be for old Roy to crack! He has been fit to stick me, ever since I refused him ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... were half across the short decline and coming like a tornado; in the white camp the bluecoats were running hither and yon deaf to the brave shoutings of their captains; above the swelling thunder of our hoofs rose the mad yell of the onset; and now carbines peal and pistols crack, and here are the tents so close you may touch them, and yonder is one already in a light blaze, and at every hand and under every horse's foot is the crouching, quailing, falling foe, the air is one crash of huzzas and groans, screams, shots and commands, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... hill to the west, around which the ravine curved in a semicircle, rose a frightful sound,—the Indian war-whoop from hundreds of savage throats. Hardly had it fallen on the startled ears of the patriots when the sharp crack of musketry followed, and leaden missiles were hurled into the crowded ranks. Arrows accompanied them, and spears and tomahawks came hurtling through the air ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... such simple device as the following: Suppose the seance room is closed at one end by a pair of folding-doors; these doors are locked, the key kept by a member of the audience, while the keyhole is sealed, and strips of gummed paper are also stretched across the crack between the doors, sealing them firmly together. Confederates enter the room, in this case, by merely pushing BOTH doors to one side, they being so constructed that this is possible. A small space is now left around the end of ONE ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... repainting before the evil is overcome. Now, inasmuch as soft drying paint is unfit to answer the purpose, it is equally as bad when paint too hard or brittle has been used, that does not expand and contract in harmony with the painted article, causing the paint to crack and peel off, which is always the case when either oil or varnish has been too sparingly and turpentine too freely used. Intense cold favors the action, when all paints become very brittle, a fact much to be seen on low-priced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... there was a chill in the air, blissfully happy in their companionship. He had been made to understand that something pleasant was being done for him, but it is doubtful if he could have asked for any greater happiness than just to sit there with somebody to talk to and crack his jokes with. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... into motley groups around two weatherbeaten store-houses—the overseer has retired to his apartment-when they wait the signal from the head driver, who figures as master of ceremonies. One sings:—-"Jim Crack corn, an' I don't care, Fo'h mas'r's gone away! way! way!" Another is croaking over the time he saved on his task, a third is trying to play a trick with the driver (come the possum over him), and a third unfolds the scheme by which the extra for whiskey and molasses was raised. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... There were two doctors, both mild-looking men in spectacles, and a couple of warders—under-officers of the good old burly, bullying sort I knew well. That was the cement which kept the German Army together. Her men were nothing to boast of on the average; no more were the officers, even in crack corps like the Guards and the Brandenburgers; but they seemed to have an inexhaustible supply ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... "He is crack-brained, and calls himself the King," she murmured. "Let him believe it for our sport." Then she called aloud, gulling the suspicious visitor, "Do homage to the King, damsels, and perhaps he may fling his favor to the one of you that dances ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said Constance. "Max brought you, didn't he? If he hadn't sneezed and given himself away, he'd have opened the door a crack ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... a smear? It was—a smear plus. Tickled? Why, Old Hickory came so near smilin' I was afraid that armor-plate face of his was goin' to crack. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... could pour boiling pitch on the besiegers. The walls were built at such angles that a window, with archers posted behind it, could command each wall. Stronger towers were built—round towers with a coping at each storey, solid as a rock, which would crack and lean without falling; there is a leaning tower at Caerphilly Castle. One other way I must mention—the child or the wife of the castellan would be brought before the walls, and hanged before his eyes ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... rumor has exaggerated matters. There are no dead men; one certainly got a crack on the head that rendered him insensible for some time, and another's arm ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... And yet you crack your heads in front of it and fool the people about it. There is no use wasting words, my friend. It's ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... was a worse spectacle than this—worse by far than fire and smoke, or even the rabble's unappeasable and maniac rage. The gutters of the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran with scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... writer in the London Times, "that the Americans have some superior mode of firing." But when Broke with his crack crew in the Shannon beat the Chesapeake fresh out of port, he demonstrated, as had the Americans in other actions, that the superiority was primarily a ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... round the collection. He saw the Louis Quatorze curtain-rods, the cork bedroom suite, the Caesarian nail-brush (quite bald), the antique shaving-mirror with genuine crack—he saw it all. And then we went back into the other rooms and found ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... departure from the present procedure in the matter of examinations. A teacher in the act of preparing a list of examination questions of the traditional type is not an edifying spectacle. He has a text-book open before him from which he extracts nuts for his pupils to crack. It is a purely mechanical process and only a mechanician could possibly debase intelligence and manhood to such unworthy uses. Were it not so pathetic it would excite laughter. But this teacher is the victim of tradition. He knows no other way. ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... to his legs, that a trovoada de cima, or a squall from up-river, was upon us. We took down our hammocks, and then all hands were required to save the vessel from being dashed to pieces. The moon set, and a black pall of clouds spread itself over the dark forests and river; a frightful crack of thunder now burst over our heads, and down fell the drenching rain. Joaquim leapt ashore through the drowning spray with a strong pole, and tried to pass the cuberta round a small projecting point, while we on deck aided in ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was shot with gray, I got up and went down stairs; every board upon the way, and every crack in every board calling after me, "Stop thief!" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!" In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught when my back was half turned, winking. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... for Mr. BONNER'S crack horses, then, that they are not stabled in Paris just now, since they are all considered ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... and his alarm increased as he insisted that he occasionally heard the crack of dry twigs behind them, as if broken by some one pursueing. But Yates deriding his fears, pressed on, making the woods resound with a song, to which he gave utterance from unusually full and strong lungs. Downing gradually slackened his pace, and when Yates was some thirty ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... bush-ranger over yonder? He'd stale the milk out of your tea, he would, be the same token. Well, last night he got vicious and took a crack at my lines. I had rayson to suspect he'd be afther tryin' somethin' on, so I laid for him. I planted a certain mule where he could stale it an' guarded the rest four deep. Begob, will ye believe me, but he fell into the thrap head-first—the poor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... was no dearth, Any more than at Owen Glendower's birth, Or the advent of other great people Two bullocks dropp'd dead, As if knock'd on the head, And barrels of stout And ale ran about, And the village bells such a peal rang out, That they crack'd the village steeple. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... pulled themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of his men. He assumed that his predecessors in the village had been a "rotten lot," and was determined to show the inhabitants of Frelus what a crack English regiment was really like. Frelus was an unimportant, unheard-of village; but the opinion of a thousand Freluses made up France's opinion of the British Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with fatigue, responded to ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... organ loft, who was not content for long to play the part of Patience on a monument, interrupted the speaker with a second question which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to crack. "Are you aware," inquired the blackleg "that the slaves in the South have their prayer-meetings in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing retort. Mr. Garrison—"Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.) The slaves believe ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the girl had spoken Costigan had leaped to the levers, and not an instant too soon; for the tip of that horrible tentacle flashed into the rapidly narrowing crack just before the door clanged shut. As the powerful toggles forced the heavy screw threads into engagement and drove the massive disk home into its bottle-tight, insulated seat, that grisly tip fell severed to ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... Connecticut, Ohio, etc.—and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote until the majority of the rank and file of white men, particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have gone without it till the crack of doom. It was because of the prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the Legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... without fear, but, rarer yet, without reproach—Galahad, not Launcelot. I had learnt myself to be a feeble, backboneless fighter, conquered by the first serious assault of evil, a creature of mean fears, slave to every crack of the devil's whip, a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... guns and her steering gear, and everywhere she went she became a terror to the Spaniards. She dared to go anywhere and do anything. Every man on the ship was devoted to McCalla, and every gunner on board was a crack shot, because they were kept shooting at something all the time. If they couldn't find a Spanish gunboat to shoot at, ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... brave itself—being only militia; but certain it was, that Stubbs was considered a most terrible fellow, and I swore so much, and looked so fierce, that you would have fancied I had made half a hundred campaigns. I was second in several duels; the umpire in all disputes; and such a crack-shot myself, that fellows were shy of insulting me. As for Dobble, I took him under my protection; and he became so attached to me, that we ate, drank, and rode together every day; his father didn't care for money, so long as his son was ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... near enough, sheik," Edgar, who had levelled his rifle at one of the horsemen, said. As he spoke he pulled the trigger, and simultaneously with the sharp crack of the piece the Arab threw up his arms and fell from his horse. The sheik and five of his men fired almost at the same moment. Kneeling as closely as they could, there was room for but seven along the face of the fort fronting the enemy, and at Edgar's suggestion ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... This offers a perfect surface for skating, and attracts not only the boys and girls of the village, but a large number of their elders. The lake grows lively with the gracefully gliding promenade of skaters, with here and there a group playing at hockey, while others disport themselves at "crack the whip." The friction of so many gliding feet imparts to the frozen surface a low and weirdly humming sound, and the droning note is echoed by the hills, until the valley resounds with monotonous music. There are times when the lake is so well frozen that skaters traverse the entire length. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... done, an' Aunty's fixed the fire, An' filled an' lit the lamp, an' trimmed the wick an' turned it higher, An' fetched the wood all in fer night, an' locked the kitchen door, An' stuffed the ole crack where the wind blows in up through the floor— She sets the kittle on the coals, an' biles an' makes the tea, An' fries the liver an' the mush, an' cooks a egg fer me; An' sometimes—when I cough so hard—her elderberry wine Don't go so bad fer ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Troupe upon request would signalize its entry into any town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian braves, and headed by Kishwegin they rode on horseback through the main streets. Ciccio, who was the crack horseman, having served a very well-known horsey Marchese in an Italian cavalry regiment, did a ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... good—when he could find them. A great part of his time also was spent in breaking bones and stones into small pieces for his father to work up into arrowheads. Umpl hated that. He would not have minded doing the fine work about it, but just to crack bones all his spare time was not joyful; and, now that there was no fire to pull wood for, he had just so much ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... the length of the valley a great crevasse had been formed by the upheaval, which must have been many feet in height. In the subsidence one side had fallen several feet lower than the other, and at a place where the crack crossed the wagon-tracks a horizontal motion of several feet had taken place, the road marking ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... sometimes pops out of a filbert-shell in a crack; and I have known it float on the first glass of Herefordshire cider; it also hath some affinity with very stiff and old bottled beer; but in a morning it seemeth unto me ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... was it was impossible to hear plainly, so stepping to the door, she put her ear down close to a crack through which the light was streaming. She listened intently to all that was taking place, although at first it was difficult to make out any sense from the babel of voices. Occasionally she could hear Norman's voice urging the men to be quiet ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... door, no hiding place, no opening of any sort is found; if the examination of the walls—even to the demolition of the pavilion—does not reveal any passage practicable—not only for a human being, but for any being whatsoever—if the ceiling shows no crack, if the floor hides no underground passage, one must really believe in the Devil, as Daddy ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... in the broiler. Be economical with the sawdust, which can be forced into a cottage pudding. When the chops begin to sizzle, add a red necktie and a small bunch of imitation butter and stir gently. Now let them sizzle. If the chops crack across the surface while cooking, it is a sign you were cheated when you bought the kitchen table. Let them sizzle. Serve hot with imitation water cresses on the side. Nice water cresses can be made from green window ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... the firemen's band, affording more blare than music, proclaimed the time had come for a start, and the crack of Mayor Jones' revolver gave the signal for a race through the ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... told us. "Efficient? Lord, yes! I never knew anybody so damnably efficient. Dependable? He is so dependable that he is uncanny. I would rather have a human being around who is willing to smoke a cigar with me once in a while, to crack a joke, or at least to laugh at my jokes. Just to break the monotony, I would be perfectly willing to have him make a few mistakes, to forget something. I have lots of faults—too many, I guess, to be comfortable around such a paragon of perfection ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... or may not be planed, care must be taken that all pieces are sawed or planed to the correct sizes with edges and ends square and true so there will be no bad cracks for drafts and rain to enter. Be careful to nail the pieces together so that they will not have occasion to crack or warp. A good way to save time and lumber is to prepare a piece of stock, getting it of the right thickness, width and length, and then to saw up this stock on lines carefully laid out as shown in the drawings of the bluebird and wren houses, flicker ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert
... Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant, who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort, in which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... come to him. No wonder Ellen was puzzled! She had right on her side, and more than right. It was perfectly true that he had been accustomed to look forward to band nights. It was true that he used to like to have a neighbor in to supper afterwards, and play the fool with the banjo and crack silly jokes; talk shop with Johnson, who was an auctioneer's clerk himself; smoke atrocious cigars and make worse puns. And now! He looked at her ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was going to happen there. And happen it did presently, and that with a splendour that for a moment blinded Gibbie. For just at the horizon there was a long horizontal slip of blue sky, and through that crack the topmost arc of the rising sun shot suddenly a thousand arrows of radiance into the brain of the boy. But the too-much light scorched there a blackness instantly; and to the soul of Gibbie it was the blackness of the room from ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the vilest holes in creation. It is built on a low sandy point of land at the entrance of a great river, and is almost the hottest place on the earth. Mosquitos in thousands of millions; nothing for the natives to do but to cultivate sugar-canes and to perspire. There were two crack regiments quartered at Demerara, who, having to withstand the dreadful monotony of doing nothing, took I fear to living rather too well; the consequence was that many a fine fellow had been carried off by yellow fever. For my part, I took a rather high flight in the way of pastime by falling ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... wouldn't be any mud or any dust or any wind (I don't know what harm he thought the wind would do her). Instead of taking her out he would spend hours in the garage standing still and looking at her, stooping sometimes to examine her for a spot or a crack on her enamel, but always with reverence. I believe he never touched her without washing ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... how women hide in a smiling pretence, and eye with caustic glances their neighbor's newer house, diamonds, or porcelain, and observe their daughters, such as these,—why, I tremble and tremble, and this scene to-night, every 'crack' ball this winter will be, not the pleasant society of men and women, but—even in this young country—an orgie such as rotting Corinth saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... that Durban supported two yacht-clubs, both of them full of enterprise. I met all the members of both clubs, and sailed in the crack yacht Florence of the Royal Natal, with Captain Spradbrow and the Right Honorable Harry Escombe, premier of the colony. The yacht's center-board plowed furrows through the mud-banks, which, according to Mr. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... On no other terms than these would Lanyere consent to part with the authority he possesses, which while it will ensure you the hand of Aveline, will ensure me the keenest revenge upon Sir Jocelyn. I have therefore acceded to his terms. Thou hast got a rare bargain, Lanyere; and when the crack-brained Puritan gave thee that paper, he little knew the boon he bestowed ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... several times discharged their matchlocks. It was a gay, busy, bustling scene. The cavaliers afterwards proceeded to the Castle, and discharged their matchlocks, standing up on the shovel-stirrups, and firing them off at full gallop. But these cavaliers are nothing comparable to the crack horsemen of Morocco. Their horses are in a miserable condition, and they themselves ride badly. The horse does not do well in the Saharan oases. In Fezzan he is often obliged to be fed on dates, which are both heating and relaxing to the animal. Meanwhile the discharge of musketry ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Parish at first declared that they were innocent—the first word of most of these men when they were apprehended. Parish died silent. George had spent some hours with a clergyman, and was apparently repentant. Just as he reached the box, he saw a friend peering through a crack in the wall. "Good-by, old fellow," he called out, and sprang to his own death without waiting for the box to be pulled from under ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn, Each of them sounds his mournful horn: Shrill peals that waver and crack and break. What can have made ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... of no use," said Mamie. "I know a hero. And when I heard of you working all day like a common labourer, with your hands bleeding and your nails broken—and how you told the captain to 'crack on' (I think he said) in the storm, when he was terrified himself—and the danger of that horrid mutiny"—(Nares had been obligingly dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse)—"and how it was all done, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tumult and confusion. The lower rooms were entirely filled with Koorshid's troops; that is to say, with our enemies. Just as my mother was on the point of pushing open a small door, we heard the voice of the pasha sounding in a loud and threatening tone. My mother applied her eye to the crack between the boards; I luckily found a small opening which afforded me a view of the apartment and what was passing within. 'What do you want?' said my father to some people who were holding a paper inscribed with characters of gold. 'What we want,' replied one, 'is to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... an' pull the blinds down. There's coppers on every corner. Now, what is it ye want in the way o' whiskers or hair? Ye can slip me the change through the crack." ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... their breath. Crack! went a distant stick. Silence; nothing stirred except the yearling who had returned to the mast and was eagerly nosing among the acorns. They could hear him crunching the husks, see the gleam of long white teeth which one day would grow outside ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Aeschylus; And you, my poor Euripides, begone If you are wise, out of this pitiless hail, Lest with some heady word he crack your scull And batter out your brain-less Telephus. And not with passion. Aeschylus, but calmly Test and be tested. 'Tis not meet for poets To scold each other, like two baking-girls. But you go roaring like ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... a crib for you to crack to-night. It's Judge Hallers' house. (A loud bumping noise is heard from the direction of the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... are a savin' people. In the day o' plenty they think o' the day o' poverty an' lay by fer it. All at once one uv 'em thought uv a few kernels o' corn, he hed pushed through a little crack in the tin floor one day a long time ago. It happened there was quite a hole under the crack an' each uv 'em bad stored some kernels unbeknown t' the other. So they hed a good supper 'n' some left fer a bite 'n the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... mistake?" the young man asked in a crisp, decisive voice. "This is Mr. Adam Gregg, is it not? I found your door on a crack and thought you were not ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in Germany of an extraordinary nature. Travellers were shown a pair of brass gates, one of which had a crack, caused by the following circumstance:—When a supreme monarch had given orders for the building of a church, the devil came one day and asked what he intended it for, to which the Emperor answered, "For a gaming-house," and Satan went away ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... it straight again? Why should she take such work beyond her skill, Which, when she cannot perfect, she must kill? Alas! what is't to temper slime and mire? But Nature's puzzled when she works in fire. Great brains (like brightest glass) crack straight, while those Of stone or wood hold out, and fear not blows; And we their ancient hoary heads can see Whose wit was never their mortality. Beaumont dies young, so Sidney did before, There was not poetry he could live to more, He could not grow up higher, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... all his soul; Heaped ingots curve his willing back; Submissive to that fierce control, He needs at last the sky-whip's crack, Till at the grave, No more a slave,— "Rest, rest, rest," sighs the whip of the sky: "Hurry not, haste no more, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Burns, in his eagerness, began to climb the corral fence,—until he heard a rail crack under his weight. "Yes, BUST him, if you want to. John Jimpson! if you can rope ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... declared them to be scandalous, disgusting, horrible in which anathema her sister joined. In vain I tried to plead their utility in defence, but Clementine maintained that there was no trusting them, and pushed her finger into one so strongly that it burst with a loud crack. I had to give way, and put my specialties in my pocket, and her final declaration was that such things made ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... I'd had 'em open before, but I guess I hadn't. Says he, 'That paint has got hydraulic cement in it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;' he named over a lot of things. Says he, 'It'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you want to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going to crack nor fade any; and it ain't a-going to scale. When you've got your arrangements for burning it properly, you're going to have a paint that will stand like the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' Then he went into a lot of particulars, and I begun to think he was drawing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... boy, asleep in his father's vineyard, and bade him write a tragedy—-or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise whose shell the bird was unable to crack—-clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo, and that a swarm of bees settled upon his infant lips as he lay in his mother's arms. Less supernatural, but hardly more historical, is the statement in the Life that the poet left Athens for Sicily in consequence ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... swindler, the vile city ruffian, was certainly taking a most ungenerous advantage of the young aspirant for wealth. It was then that Sir Felix felt his own position. Was he not a baronet, and a gentleman, and a very handsome fellow, and a man of the world who had been in a crack regiment? If this surfeited sponge of speculation, this crammed commercial cormorant, wanted more than that for his daughter why could he not say so without asking disgusting questions such as these,—questions which it was quite impossible ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... one more crack out of you, and I'll send you out of this world without a spaceship!" ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... not go to Rome to spend a week there and away again; for it was a month or two's journey from France. The crack of the postilions' whips used to announce to the Eternal City in general the arrival of a distinguished guest. Domestiques de place flocked to the call. The luckiest of them took possession of the new comer by entering his ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... silent pond straightway The restless ice doth crack, And pond sprites merry gambols play Amid ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... place, and saw that the jaws of Isaac moved rhythmically and placidly. Hot anger seized Patrick. He rose deliberately upon his sturdy legs and slapped the face of that sweet dude so exactly and with such force that the sound broke upon the quiet air like the crack of a revolver. Teacher, followed by the First Reader Class, rushed back from Fairy Land, and the next few minutes were devoted to separating the enraged Patrick from the terrified Isaac, who, in the excitement of the onslaught, had choked upon the casus belli, ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... behind, an old Ozenbrigs Vest, two Ozenbrigs Shirts, a pair of Leather Breeches handsomely worm'd and flower'd up the Knees, yarn Stockings and good round toe'd Shoes. Took with him a large pair of Sheers crack'd in one of the Bows & mark'd with the Word [Savoy]. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and secures him so that his Matter may have him again, shall have Three Pounds Reward besides reasonable Charges, paid ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... to see. First we must pause in a middle room full of quaintest odds and ends—crossbows, long whips of hippopotamus hide, strange rusty old swords and firearms—to look at a map of South Africa drawn somewhere about 1640. It hangs on the wall and is hardly to be touched, for the paint and varnish crack and peel off at a breath. It is a marvel of accurate geographical knowledge, and is far better filled in than the maps of yesterday. All poor Livingstone's great geographical discoveries are marked on it as being—perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... deal, but I kept on at my hated task. What else was there for me to do? My salary was so small that, as Charlie Burns, one of my fellow-clerks, said of his, I was afraid to count it over a bare floor for fear that it might drop in a crack and be lost. It was my only revenue, however, and I continued to live upon it somehow. I had a small room in a boarding-house on Shawmut Avenue and I spent most of my evenings there or in the reading-room ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... stairs, Eustace could hear his gay bold tones, calling, "Up! up! my merry men, all! Let not the French dogs find the wolf asleep in his den. They will find our inner bartizan a hard stone for their teeth—and it will be our own fault, if they crack it before the coming of our brave comrades ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... faction trembled at the thought that the substantial award of the saddle and bridle, with the decoration of the blue ribbon, and the intangible but still precious secondary glory of the certificate and the red ribbon might be given to the two mountaineers, leaving the crack rider of Colbury in an ignominious lurch; while the country party feared Hollis's defeat by Hackett rather less than that Jenks would be required to relinquish the premium to the interloper Brice, for the young hunter's ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and I've taken out the drawers and I've looked in every crack and cranny" was Marilla's positive answer. "The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That's the plain, ugly truth, Matthew Cuthbert, and we might as well look ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... just fired off my rifle at a bird which I took for an eagle, little thinking how soon my wasted bullet (for I did not strike the bird) would be wanted in defence of my life. The crack of my piece reverberated from the green-topped bluffs that rose from the prairie; and I suppose it was this that brought Sir Bruin upon me. He came on with huge strides, and I had nothing but a hunting-knife to use in my defence, my discharged rifle being of no use. ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... styptic, and a piece of elastic. "Now," said she to Vizard, "give me a little opening in the middle to plaster these strips across the wound." He did so. Then in a moment she passed the elastic under the sufferer's head, drew it over with the styptic between her finger and thumb, and crack! the styptic was tight on the compressed wound. She forced in more styptic, increasing the pressure, then she whipped out a sort of surgical housewife, and with some cutting instrument reduced the cork, then cut it convex, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... followed an irregular rent in the rock and disappeared to one side. Returning on tiptoe, excited for the first time, he beckoned Grancey to accompany him and led the way with the greatest precaution to a long crack in the side of a hill, scarcely discernible without the closest scrutiny, through which the accents came quite audibly, and they caught sight of the objects below in a grey light. They made out a narrow, oblique ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... uncommonly smart in her evolutions and discipline, perhaps from the old English word for a fine boy. Crack is generally used for first-rate ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Presently up in the tree top, snug under a knotty limb, he spied a little ball of gray fur. Grasping a branch of underbush, he shook it vigorously. The thrashing sound worried the gray squirrel, for he slipped from his retreat and stuck his nose over the limb. CRACK! With a scratching and tearing of bark the squirrel loosened his hold and then fell; alighting with a thump. As the hunter picked up his quarry a streak of sunshine glinting through the tree top brightened ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... gun, as, unless hunger demands it, I do not like to kill. We started out together, climbing the trail in single file, but the enthusiasm of the chase soon led my companions into the deeper brush where the little doves lured them, and only the sharp crack of an occasional shot wakening the echoes of the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... much time to think," guessed Billy, "and to tell the truth, I don't think he's done much thinking since. That revolver must have hit him a fearful crack." ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... Bay as the spot where she, in company with her husband, and two other men with their wives, had seen ten white men dragging a sledge with a boat on it many years ago. There was another Inuit with them who did not go near the white men. The sledge was on the ice, and a wide crack separated them from the white men at the interview. The women went on shore, and the men awaited the white people at the crack on the ice. Five of the white men put up a tent on the shore, and five remained with the boat on the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... handkerchief is a thing distinct from the silk or cotton yarn of which the handkerchief has been woven. The stagnant water above, acidulated by its various vegetable solutions, seems to have been in some way connected with these appearances. In every case in which a crack through the clay gives access to the oozing moisture, we see the sides bleached, for several feet downwards, to nearly the color of pipe-clay; we find the surface, too, when it has been divested of the vegetable soil, presenting for yards together the appearance of sheets ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor—the odor of life. And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting slender shaft. And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... top-branches, moving slowly along through the tops of the other trees, and now they move faster, and everything begins to crack; and, with a rush and a clatter of breaking limbs, the great oak comes crashing down; jarring the very earth beneath your feet, and making the snow fly about like a sparkling cloud, while away run the dogs, with ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... evening the occupants of the camp kept careful watch, and then without warning, as before, the crack of repeating rifles broke the almost ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... even as Lycon strove with all his bull-like might to lift and throw, Glaucon's slim hand glided down beneath his opponent's thigh. Twice the Spartan put forth all his powers. Those nearest watched the veins of the athletes swell and heard their hard muscles crack. The stadium was in succession hushed and tumultuous. Then, at the third trial, even as Lycon seemed to have won his end, the Athenian smote out with one foot. The sands were slippery. The huge Laconian lunged forward, and as he lunged, his ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... I'll lead thee to a better land than Egypt—a land of lake and mountain, and great forests of sweet-scented pine; ay, and find thee a girl fit to mate with—my own niece—a girl strong and tall, with wide blue eyes and long fair hair, and arms that could crack thy ribs were she of a mind to hug thee! Come, what sayest thou? Put away the past, and away for the bonny North, and be ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... beefstykes," M'riar commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin' to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... converse with the stars, whilst I jogged along singing and counting them. Presently I looked back after him, and saw him strip and lay his clothes by the side of the road. My heart was in my mouth in an instant, I stood like a corpse; when, in a crack, he was turned into a wolf. Don't think I'm joking: I would not tell you a lie for the ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... making my observations, when I heard the crack of a shot, and the ripping of plank, on the forward part of the quarter-deck. A little group collected around a falling man, and I thought I caught a glimpse of Captain Rowley's uniform and epaulettes, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... grain from the winnowing basket and perched on a tree close by to eat it. The farmer's wife, greatly enraged, flung a clod at the bird with so good an aim that the crow fell to the ground, dropping the grain of corn, which rolled into a crack in the tree. The farmer's wife, seeing the crow fall, ran up to it, and seizing it by the tail, cried, 'Give me back my grain of corn, or I ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... alarmed," said Mr. Cooper, reassuringly. "I wasn't born yesterday. I don't want to get a crack over the head." ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety of vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island was only 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75 deg. of latitude only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. But my brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his capital lay in lat. 65 deg. N., not the less his dominions swept southwards through a matter of 80 or 90 deg.; and as to the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the dogs. He can't crawl out between the logs, that much is certain; but the door is almost ready to drop from its hinges, and has a good deal of play back and forth behind the bar. If he had a thin, stout stick he could slip it through the crack, lift the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... a scene of horror indescribable. Overhead the storm burst in fury, and flash after flash of fork, or rather chain lightning, leapt into the river. The thunder, too, began to crack like the trump of doom; the wind rushed down, tearing the surface of the water into foam, and, catching under the tent of the cart, lifted it quite off the wheels, so that it began to float. Then the two leaders, made mad with fear by the fury of the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... hour afterwards the postilion, having been put in the right road, passed with a crack of his whip through the gateway of the Barriere Saint-Martin. "Ah," said Louise, breathing freely, "here we ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his grandfather. He gazed benignantly on the claimants. "I'm square, myself, when it comes to my debts, boys. You all know that. But Harlan argued your case last night in a way that's worth the extra money. If he can do that here at home, first crack out of the box, when it's our own money at stake, don't you think he'll do a pretty good job for you down at the State House, where it'll be a ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... he went and fetched his razor, and seizing the goat he shaved her head as smooth as the palm of his hand. And as the yard-measure was too honourable a weapon, he took the whip and fetched her such a crack that with many a jump and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... matter with the electrical service, a fact which I cursed, but not deeply, for it was a beautiful moonlight night and while of course I was disappointed in my reading, I realized that after all nothing could be pleasanter than to sit in the moonlight and smoke and quaff bumpers of champagne until the crack of doom. This I immediately proceeded to do, and kept at it pretty steadily until I should say about eleven o'clock, when I heard unmistakable signs of a large automobile coming up the drive. It chugged as far as the front-door and then stood panting ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Indian devotee, the day coming upon me like the great temple of Juggernaut; cracking of my bones beginning after breakfast; and if I had any respite, it was seldom for more than half an hour, when a newspaper seemed to stop the wheels;—then away they went, crack, crack, noon and afternoon, till I found myself by night reduced to a perfect jelly,—good for nothing but to be ladled into bed, with a greater horror than ever at ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... strode along faster and faster, opening his mouth wider and wider, until they could fairly hear it crack at the corners. ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... that elastic structure and stood ready amid the bracken. Hinchcliffe gave her a full steam and she came like a destroyer on her trial. There was a crack, a flicker of white water, and she was in our arms fifty yards up the slope; or rather, we were behind her, pushing her madly towards a patch of raw gravel whereon her wheels could bite. Of the bridge remained only a few wildly vibrating hop-poles, and those ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... high-soaring profession, as to their mere remuneration are a trade; when artificial fetters are relaxed, and printers, publishers, and authors obtain the reward which well-regulated commerce would afford them, then let floors beware lest they crack, and walls lest they bulge and burst, from the weight of books they will have ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... help it," said Anna-Felicitas through the crack of door she held open; she was already in her nightgown. "You wouldn't either if you were a canary," she added, reasoning with ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... a shrill and terrible scream was heard in the direction of the house, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Ethan and Fanny, appalled by the sounds, looked towards the house. They saw Mrs. Grant rush from the back door, and then fall upon the ground. Two or three Indians followed her, in one of whom Fanny recognized Lean Bear, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... finished and returned again to the library fire, Nan, after perhaps half an hour of desultory talk, yawned rudely and asked if she might go to her bed. Raven suspected her. He noted how she half closed the library door behind her; so he took the chair she had lately left, commanding the crack of it. In about the time he expected, he heard her in the hall. She had come down the back stairs, he judged, and was now putting on her hat and coat, with scarcely ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... down: he gave you the last drop of his jollity. He inspired Newman with something of the same kindness that our hero used to feel in his earlier years for those of his companions who could perform strange and clever tricks—make their joints crack in queer places or whistle at the back ...
— The American • Henry James
... objectives given them by the higher command; they have always wished to be in the front line"; and General Coybet said of the 371st and 372nd: "The most powerful defenses, the most strongly organized machine gun nests, the heaviest artillery barrages—nothing could stop them. These crack regiments overcame every obstacle with a most complete contempt for danger.... They have shown ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... hardly commend itself to any archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the axe-head represent string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that metal took the place of the stone axe-head, and being tough the new substance needed no support. The mightiest man in the prehistoric days ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... knowing it stopped for breakfast at Griffin's Corners, four or five miles beyond, I hastened on afoot, running most of the way, and arrived in sight of it just as the driver had let off the first crack from his whip to start his reluctant horses. My shouting was quickly passed to him by the onlookers, he pulled up, and I won the race quite ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... and tried to open it with his key. It was bolted from inside! There came a muffled report from within. Then he heard a cry, which he recognized as the voice of Chen, the Jap. He dropped to the floor, listening at the crack—a scuffle was ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... appearance therefore again on earth, and hired himself to a rich man as a labourer. He worked all day with the fire burning in him, unseen by other people; but while he was in bed that night, a girl in an adjoining room, perceiving the smell of brimstone, looked through a crack in the wall, and saw him covered with flames. She informed his master, who questioned him the next morning, and found that his hired man was secretly suffering the pains of purgatory, for neglecting to pay a certain sum of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... boldly, "knows there's not a particle of truth in it. The man's malignancy has taken the form of a fixed idea. He's crack-brained. Between us we put the fear of God into him, and I don't think he'll give ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... starts a little tremblin tear, 'At, like a drop o' glitt'rin dew Swimmin within a wild flaar blue, Falls fro ther e'e; But as the sun in April shaars Revives the little droopin flaars, A kind word brings ther sweet smile back: Aw raylee think mi brain ud crack ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... of the world in hand. She'll stop The sun like Joshua, turn the moon to blood, And if I have to swallow half the herbs In Sherwood, I shall stalk a giant yet, Shoulder to shoulder with thee, Little John, And crack thy head at quarter-staff. But don't, Don't joke about it. 'Tis a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... moment something happened. A boy pressed his face against the pane, and stared at the toys. Crack!—a stone hit the glass, and the boy ran away. The wind and the rain swooped in together, upsetting the theatre, and knocking the dolls about. The master hastened to ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... out of breath, was leaning against one of the pillars, his arm passed around it for support. Lenora, with Quest and French, searched hastily amongst the packing-cases. Suddenly there was a loud crack, the sound of falling masonry, followed by a scream from Laura. French, with a roar of anger, rushed towards her. She was lying on her side, already half covered by falling bricks and masonry. He dragged her ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... objective was Soolsby's hut, and, long before he reached it, darkness had fallen. From a light shining through the crack of the blind he knew that Soolsby was at home. He opened the door and entered without knocking. Soolsby was seated at a table, a map and a newspaper spread out before him. Egypt and David, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... willing and wholly competent to instruct our commanders on the correct way to handle troops. As we pushed on through the underbrush and debris of the forest, the smallest stick trod upon would crack like a rifle-shot, and the unearthly howl of a dog, in the yard of a hut near by, made our hair stand on end as it echoed through the woods. The hours passed tediously as we peered through the darkness across the sluggish stream to the opposite side; but a little after midnight ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... their boats in the tiny cove, Jimmy and Matthews, following Harry, alternately running and jogging, hurried along the dim trail. When Jimmy judged they had covered three-quarters of the distance they heard a ringing bark followed by a faint crack of a firearm. This was shortly followed by another. The three stood stock still for a moment and then put on an additional burst of speed. Before they came into the clearing of the farm, they heard the sound of a motor car, fading ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... as a small lump, like a wart generally, on the lower lip in men from forty to seventy. Sometimes it appears at first simply as a slight sore or crack which repeatedly scabs over but does not heal. Its growth is very slow and it may seem like a trivial matter, but any sore on the lower lip in a man of middle age or over, which persists, should demand the immediate attention of a surgeon, because early removal ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... their side and join in the mad slaughter of His own beloved children. And those slaughtered are the workers, and their folks at home naturally wonder why the one big international peace organization on earth, the Church, at the crack of the war demon's whip, deserts its principles of 'Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Peace on earth,' and helps to stampede its followers ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... green tea with his lady,—for all or any of these, or for any thing else that was agreeable to any one else, consistently with the dye of his coat, the Reverend Mr Larynx was at all times equally ready. When at Nightmare Abbey, he would condole with Mr Glowry,—drink Madeira with Scythrop,—crack jokes with Mr Hilary,—hand Mrs Hilary to the piano, take charge of her fan and gloves, and turn over her music with surprising dexterity,—quote Revelations with Mr Toobad,—and lament the good old times of feudal darkness ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... an eye;[2547] the crowd rushes under the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before it stops. The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the large hall of the Oeil de Boeuf, the multitude find themselves face to face with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... likely, the writer thinks, to quarrel with his dessert because he has to pick out, with some little patience, the dainty meats of the nuts he has to arrange and crack for himself. Repetition, and perhaps some contradiction, are acknowledged. But meandering thoughts and ill-digested narratives, though tedious, are not criminal. When these new materials have dried in the noon-day sun for a year and a day, the writer then, or at ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... the lighter colors of the skin below. As they went under, their huge, black tails, great winged things not unlike the screw-wheel of a propeller, tipped up above the waves. Now and then one would give the water a good round slap, the noise of which smote sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sounds came to the shore; with the shouts of the French sailors were mingled the clash of cutlasses and the crack of pistols. The British sailors fought, for the most part, silently. On the heights above, blue lights were burning in the battery, and men could be seen standing on its crest watching the combat below, but powerless to assist ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... on some clothes and went downstairs. A crack of light showed under the kitchen door, and, pushing it open with some force, he gazed spellbound at the ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... but it was in his dreams, as if in another world, where insults and attacks do not arouse one's sensibilities. Then—nothing! A dense shadow, a night of profound sleep. He was awakened by a ray of sunshine which filtered through a crack in the window and shone upon his eyes. The morning light again brought into relief the whiteness of the walls which during the night seemed to sweat the shadows and barbaric ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... evergreen palaces Are split and shattered; The roots creak, and stretch, and groan; 130 And ruinously overthrown, The trunks are crushed and shattered By the fierce blast's unconquerable stress. Over each other crack and crash they all In terrible and intertangled fall; 135 And through the ruins of the shaken mountain The airs hiss and howl— It is not the voice of the fountain, Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl. Dost thou not hear? 140 Strange accents are ringing Aloft, afar, anear? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to me," he retorted, "that your proceedings are rather like those of the amiable individual who offered the bear a flint pebble, that he might crack it and extract the kernel. Your confounded will seems to offer no soft spot on which one could commence an attack. But we won't give up. We seem to have sucked the will dry. Let us now have a few facts respecting the parties concerned in it; and, as Jeffrey ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... he never forgave Crawford for putting so much work upon him. He never lost an opportunity to crack a joke at his expense, and the name "Blue-nose Crawford" "Abe" applied to him stuck to him ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... have to wait long for the Indians, who came dashing up, lashing their ponies, which were panting and blowing. We let two of them pass by, but we opened a lively fire on the next three or four, killing two of them at the first crack. The others following discovered that they had run into an ambush, and whirling off into the brush, they turned and ran back in the direction whence they had come. The two who had passed by heard the firing and made their escape. We scalped the two ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water and her keel plows ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... immortal gods that live therein, When as the morning shows his cheerful face, And Lucifer, mounted upon his steed, Brings in the chariot of the golden sun, I'll meet young Albanact in the open field, And crack my lance upon his burganet, To try the valour of his boyish strength. There will I show such ruthful spectacles And cause so great effusion of blood, That all his boys shall wonder at my strength: As when ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... rustle they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it, except by calling the hours of winter to mind—they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere—in the passing breeze, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... have come to make you an offer for it. It isn't usual for real-estate men to crack up the properties they wish to purchase, but I am not afraid of doing so in this case." He spoke buoyantly, as though he felt confident that he was in a position to carry ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Then an invisible preacher began exhorting his hearers to whip themselves severely, and as he went on his vehemence and passion increased. Presently a loud smacking was heard all round the church, which continued a few minutes; then the preacher urged us to fresh exertions, and crack went the whips again louder and faster than before as he exhorted. The faithful flogged till a bell rang; the whips stopped, in a few minutes the candles were lit again, and the priest came round and collected his cords. I had squeezed mine in my hands, so that he did not see it, and I brought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... ready," Cora told her friends, as the man on the bench who held the pistol allowed it to glimmer in the sunlight. The next moment a crack rent the air and the boats ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... Grant's a good son, and a good brother, and a good friend and neighbor, but"—the Doctor pounds his chair arm vehemently, "there are bats, my dear, bats in his belfry just the same. Don't get excited when you see Grant mount his haystack to jump into the crack o' doom for ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... studio-rumors placing here a collection of original old masters. But we were grievously disappointed, finding nothing but black ruin and decay. The roof over the chancel is entirely open to the sky, and a wide-yawning crack extends down the rear wall to the ground, as if a lightning-stroke had riven it asunder. The canvas of the altar-piece has fallen like a covering over the altar, screening and preserving it, so that its beautiful marble and alabaster ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... an anchor through the incident, and received some small damage to the keel, but no other injury was done—even this, I believe, upon second thought, was unintentional—done in playfulness only! "A shark can take a joke," it is said, and crack one too, but for broad, rippling humour ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... a glance aloft, where she saw another craft, a small flapping affair like the surgeon's. It was just rising on a long slant so as to cross above her course. And at that very instant there came a sharp crack, followed by a splintering crash. The surgeon's flier ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... no place to his mind. One day, however, he was in the furthest recess of his cave, when he felt that among the rocks a little thin wind blew constantly from one corner; and feeling about with his hands, he found that it came out of a small crack in the rocks. The stone above it seemed to be loose; and he perceived after a while that the end of the cave must be very near to the seaward face of the crag, and that the cave ran right through the rock, and was only kept from opening on the outer side by a thin barrier of stone; so after several ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of which she thought, and her delirium transported her abruptly to the crime she contemplated, she said to herself that she would go up the stairs with the bottle well hidden under her shawl; she would knock at the door very loud and continuously. He would come at last and would open the door a crack. She would say nothing to him, not her name even. She would go in without heeding him. She was strong enough to kill him! and she would go to the bed, to her! She would take her by the arm and say: "Yes it's me—this is ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... believe. I came down on you, and you formed a soft cushion," answered the stout gentleman, good-naturedly. "But as to helping me up, do not, I pray you, attempt it on any account; we shall both of us go in if you do. Let us both roll away in opposite directions from the crack before we attempt to get on our feet. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... of her quick, furtive step told him that she was on the alert and determined to defend her castle against all comers. What if she should slip an old rifle through a crack and blow his ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... base his watery throne; The billows in angry fury shall rise, And every sea-mark and dam despise; The lightning shall gleam through the firmament black While the poles of earth and of heaven shall crack, The ocean the heights of Olympus explore, From thousandfold jaws with wild deafening roar The thunder shall howl, while with mad jubilee The hurricane fierce sings in triumph ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... old bag that had held corn for the chickens. He nailed this bag to a stick, and fastened the stick up straight in a crack in the barn door, which lay down flat on the ground. Then he and Sue managed to get the door in the duck pond, on the edge of which it had been placed over ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... nearly every case they're on. They give in first crack. But take the Whitely murder trial I was on. That was as near as I ever come to losing a case. But I managed to hang the jury and the verdict was one of disagreement. Whitely was innocent. Anybody could have told that with half ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... it is one of the articles of faith of a few crack-brained fanatics in this country, and of many ill-informed and prejudiced editors upon the Continent, that the British Government was responsible ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had he not seen Craig getting dizzily to his feet. It was time to end it. He feinted swiftly. Mallow, expecting a body-blow, dropped his guard. Warrington, as he struck, felt the bones in his hand crack. Mallow went over upon his back, fairly lifted off his feet. He was tough; an ordinary man would ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... into the building. The vultures of San Mateo, as he secretly called them, had flocked together for conference. Presently Martinez strolled by the office, outwardly displaying no interest in the structure but furtively seeking to catch a glimpse of the interior through a crack of the drawn shade. But in this he ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Crack your first nut and light your first fire, Roast your first chestnut crisp on the bar; Make the logs sparkle, stir the blaze higher; Logs are cheery as sun or as star, Logs we can ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... grasped in a strong hand by the barrel, was swung over their heads, and down it came with an awful crack upon poor Pike's head. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... trifling cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. Who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an Amazon, and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? Who does not know that the act of a moment may cause a life's regret? A trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night, Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas. Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she was buried under a mass ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... up the track like the prongs of a great jagged toasting-fork. Ha, sonny, what a throw-in for me! Here was a game worth playing. I rode at the man I hated, loosening my stock-whip, and as I came near him, I turned aside and sent out the lash—so as not to touch him. The crack of it sounded in his ears and in his horse's as well, and the beast began to plunge. Here was my chance, and I took it. As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... and what worked out well on the last climb may turn out to be dangerous on the next. Thus, on one ascent of the cliffs of Black Canyon, my companion suggested that we follow a "chimney," a water-worn crack that offered convenient toe-holds. We ascended by the selected route without difficulty. But an hour later, when a similar ascent confronted us, we selected the same sort of route and came to grief, finding our way blocked by an overhanging ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... at his face when he didn't know that I was looking—he always was cheerful with me. He wanted to cheer me up, you see, so he told me all the encouraging news about the movement—though there wasn't very much that was encouraging—and then he would crack jokes and tell stories that made me laugh so loud that all the other patients in the room ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... Tr., p. 398 f.): "I came through a crack between two boards out of the 'wheel room.' The walls dripped with water. Right before me is a brook in which stands a rickety, black piano. I use it to cross over the brook, as I am running away. Behind me is a crowd of men. In front of them all is my uncle. He encourages them to ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... that you pursue. It is not "Wisdom while you wait"; there is no waiting at all. It is a "lightning lunch," a "kill" without the risk and fatigue of hunting. The find and the death are simultaneous. And as to space, a poacher's pocket will hold your library; where now the sewers of Bloomsbury crack beneath the accumulating masses of superfluous print, one single shelf will contain all that man needs to know; and Mr. Carnegie's ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the war-makers we shall never end war, any more than a country can end crime and robbery without a police. Specialist must watch specialist in either case. Mere expressions of a virtuous abhorrence of war will never end war until the crack of doom. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... cocaine and heroin from South America; illicit production of cannabis on small, scattered plots; domestic cocaine consumption is rising, particularly crack cocaine ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... glare of the foot-lights. But instead of the shepherds in white satin who ought to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. As he toils up the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill-adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheapens rapidly in his own view: he feels painfully like the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen of rock-work on his way to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... "Hardly a crack!" Jack retorted. "But I'm more interested in wondering what would become of us. Guess we'd better keep a good thousand feet up, and not bother trying to pry ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... example of the ancient Hebrews; whereunto he condescended, and his mother was very well pleased therewith. In the meanwhile, to quiet the child, they gave him to drink a tirelaregot, that is, till his throat was like to crack with it; then was he carried to the font, and there baptized, according to the manner of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I know, because I heard them pass judgment on the Snark during the process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... life-size. That girl, she's as busy as an ant or a bee! She'll be workin' if her sides crack. She's got no time to be sleepin' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... after that they lay wind-bound under a rocky island. So the sailors went ashore and strolled about to spend the time, and there they found a huge egg, almost as big as a little house. So they began to knock it about with large stones, but, after all, they couldn't crack the shell. Then the lad came up with his sword to see what all the noise was about, and when he saw the egg, he thought it a trifle to crack it; so he gave it one blow and the egg split, and out came a chicken as ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... "living-room," for the only separation between the "living room" and the hall was a demarcation suggested to willing imaginations by a pair of wooden columns painted white. These columns, pine under the paint, were bruised and chipped at the base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a split; the "hard-wood" floor had become uneven; and in a corner the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wall-paper had declined to accompany some staggerings of ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... feet of Demetrio, who stood over him, knife in hand. The victim raised his wrinkled Indian face; there was not a single gray hair in his head today. Demetrio recognized the spy who had lied to him the day before. Terrified, Luis Cervantes quickly averted his face. The steel blade went crack, crack, on the old man's ribs. He toppled backward, his ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... said wearily, after a while. 'You want to be kind, but you can't make black white. That's what I've always said. It's the Will of God, and there's nothing to gain by fighting it. Black will be black, and white will be white till crack ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the flock. If ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a desire to attract the attention of the lady, and induce her to look towards me, I noisily inserted the key in the door, and suddenly opened it with a rusty crack. Turning round to see the effect of my policy—the lady was gone!—vanished! Not yet daunted, I hurried to the place, which was not ten paces away, and closely searched the stone and the space all round it, but utterly in vain; there were absolutely no traces of the ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... whip, and gave the king lessons in whip cracking. "Now you see how it is done," he said, as he handed it back. "If the geese try to run away, crack it loud." ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... jig or aria. But, as for all your warbling Delias, Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias, He owned he thought them much surpast By that redoubted Hyaloclast[7] Who still contrived by dint of throttle, Where'er he went to crack ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... rocks, green crystals hung from the ceiling or formed rows of pillars, even the copper which made the walls of the cave had a coating of green. Wayland broke off a huge projecting lump and left the cave, which instantly closed up so that not a crack remained to tell ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... too, but it wasn't possible. We had to desert one of you, so we stuck by the old man. We hid your revolver and money- belt under the seventh palm, on the beach to the right of this shack. If I'd known you had twenty double eagles on you all this time, I'd have cracked your skull myself. The crack you've got is healing, and if you pull through the fever you'll be all right. If you do, give this woman twenty pesos I borrowed from her. Get her to hire a boat, and men, and row it to Amapala. This island is only fifteen ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... was sinking into the tideless sea in all its gold-and-orange glory as he stood leaning over the stone balustrade watching the splendid marksmanship of one of the crack shots of Europe. He waited until the contest had ended, then he descended and took the rapide back to Nice ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... up to the point where I began to suspect," Ren continued. "I described the feeling I had that was something like watching a large chunk of the bank of a stream break away, starting first as a jagged crack in the turf, with it widening slowly at first, then faster, until the broken chunk becomes a separate THING, dissociated from the bank. It breaks away, drops into the stream—and vanishes; while the bank itself remains, enclosing and containing the ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... that slept along the east wall on the floor below us were in a line with the edge of the outer door, and a chalk line drawn from the crack between the door and the frame to the opposite wall would touch, say 150 pairs of feet. They were a noisy crowd down there, and one night their noise so provoked the guard in front of the door that he called out to them to keep quiet or he would fire in upon them. They greeted this ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was an expert in the physics of | biochemistry and applied quantum theory | to molecular biology. His theory of the | molecular bond won a Nobel Laureate. | | Read Watson's explanation of why Pauling | failed to crack the genetic code. | | Guenther Stent, the molecular biologist of | U.C. Berkeley is an avowed Kantian | who narrowly missed cracking the genetic | code, His philosophy of science is | highly relevant to the application of | neo-hermeneutics ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... brows in deep thought, and stared into the fire. Mr. Buxton was about to speak, but Buck held up his hand for silence, and the quiet remained unbroken till the American slapped his knee with a crack like a pistol-shot, looked round on them, and ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... shied abruptly. The end of the piano was twitched sharply from the backboard. There was a cry, the mulatto staggered and fell with the falling piano, and its weight dropped squarely upon his thigh, which broke with a resounding crack. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... could crack glass, the spectacles of the old lady would have been splintered into many pieces as she stood by the roadside, the end of her umbrella jabbed an inch or two into the ground. After standing thus for some five minutes, she suddenly turned ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... of the high old pews. Through a crack she could look into the next pew; and there they stood. She heard the old man: "Whist, Molly, let's be getting out of this! HE is here with all his grand friends. Don't let ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... knoll or rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocal performance. It has the build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. It gets up before you in much the same manner, and falls an easy prey to the crack shot. Its yellow breast, surmounted by a black crescent, it need not be ashamed to turn to the morning sun, while its coat of mottled gray is in perfect keeping with the stubble amid which it walks. The two lateral white quills in its tail seem strictly in character. These quills spring from a dash ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... licking.' After that they left me, and went back to the house; and as soon as they'd gone, I began to try to find some way of escape, but it was so dark inside the shed I couldn't see anything. Presently I heard a knocking on the boards. There was a wide crack between them in one place, and looking through it I could just make out that there was some boy standing there with what looked like a dirty apron over his trousers. I said, 'Hullo!' and he said, 'Hullo! what's ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... 'n Hell!' and stared. And there she was—Fancy Long, standing plain as day under one of those crack-brained trees, and smiling and waving just the way I ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... his slaves unhappy in every way he could think of. Then he would come up to them and say, 'Come, come, I don't allow any sulky looks. Be cheerful, now, or—' and he would crack his whip in a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin, Young Folks' Edition • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... your turning spheres, And cause the sun to borrow light of you. My sword struck fire from his coat of steel, Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk; As when a fiery exhalation, Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud, Fighting for passage, make[s] the welkin crack, And casts a flash of lightning to [200] the earth: But, ere I march to wealthy Persia, Or leave Damascus and th' Egyptian fields, As was the fame of Clymene's brain-sick son That almost brent [201] the axle-tree of heaven, So shall our swords, our lances, and our ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... get mad at me, but if you will let me put in your suitcase just one little box of that salve for your finger tips, so they don't crack—" ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... island no longer, had lost quite half its security as a military position. The next month, however, brought other changes. Half the pools had vanished by drainings and evaporation; the mud had begun to crack, and, in some places to pulverize; while the upper margin of the old pond had become sufficiently firm to permit the oxen to walk over it, without miring. Fences of trees, brush, and even rails, enclosed, on this portion of the flats, quite fifty acres of land; ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,—and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... allusion to his office reminded him of his professional duties, he added: "I plumb forgot, Auntie Sue, this gentleman is Mr. Ross. He is one of William J. Burns's crack detectives. Don't be scared, though, he ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... covering on them for months at a time, changing the covering morning and night. The stinging, burning and itching sensation would be so intense that at times it seemed as if I would go crazy. When I bent the fingers the flesh would crack open and bleed. It is impossible for me to describe the intense pain and suffering which I endured night and day. After taking six bottles of the "Discovery" I ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... over stones. He knew it was his duty to find out where it was, and very soon he saw a hole in the wood-work through which the water was coming pretty freely. Examining it more carefully he saw that the pressure was threatening to open up a wide crack in the gate; and, child as he was, he knew that if it were not stopped that little stream would soon become a cascade, a great sheet of water, a torrent, and then a terrible inundation which would end in desolation and death. So the little fellow did ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... laughed. "Why, sir," said he, "what other way is there? We cannot stop an irregular crack; we can frame nothing to fit it. The way is to get ready a plug measured a trifle larger than the aperture you are going to make; then drill a round hole and force in the plug. I know no other way than that; and I was a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... nerves never failed him in an emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop. Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent broadside, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!" said Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. "My ankles were all in a fever before, from walking through that prickly furze, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her. She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha's good advice, and of darning stockings! She sat down by the round table to Mr. James's wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches. She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stairway for five minutes. Little light was there in the great hall through which Leothric ascended, for it only entered through arrow slits here and there, and in the world outside evening was waning fast. The stairway led up to two folding doors, and they stood a little ajar, and through the crack Leothric entered and tried to continue straight on, but could get no farther, for the whole room seemed to be full of festoons of ropes which swung from wall to wall and were looped and draped from the ceiling. The whole chamber was thick ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the ice was perfect; the utter stillness of the air at the time when the final congelation of the waters had taken place had resulted in the formation of a surface that for smoothness would rival a skating-rink; without a crack or flaw it extended far beyond the range ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... found Benjamin Bat a much more agreeable companion when he had eaten his fill. Early in the evening, soon after he had waked up, Benjamin was positively ferocious. But the more he ate, the pleasanter he grew. And by the time faint streaks of light began to show in the east he could smile and crack a joke as easily as ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... just arrived at the part of the story where his grandfather was giving orders for the destruction of his emus, when Betty opened the bedroom door a crack, and whispered his name. ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... can you crack a hard nut with a nutcracker when you cannot crack it by squeezing it between ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... fascinations of war, whether on the largest or smallest scale. When we settled down into camp-life again, it seemed like a butterfly's folding its wings to re-enter the chrysalis. None of us could listen to the crack of a gun without recalling instantly the sharp shots that spilled down from the bluffs of the St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without recalling the sounds which startled us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... so much kinder five centuries before, he wondered, and felt sad as the many-colored robes swept on through the grass, and the crack of the rifles sounded sharply through the music of the chanting voices. He went on footsore and sorrowful, thinking of the castle doors that had opened, and the city gates that had unclosed, at the summons of the little long-haired boy whose ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... grain, roots, and nuts as our food, and the incisors as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have been used to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin' to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she asked her ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... its land structures,—as we passed the ocean steamships lying at the "Hook," the sea-captains about me began to talk of the American triumphs of speed. "They say to the Englishmen now," said one, "that we're going to take the berths out of the 'Pacific.'" (She had just made the then crack passage.) "When the English fellows ask, 'What for?'—they say, 'Because Collins intends to run her for a day-boat.'" This extravaganza raised a laugh; but one of the older brethren shook his head solemnly and sadly. "It's all very well," said he; "but what with a steamer twice a week, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... life—Ah, what has it been? [Pall pounds on floor.] What was that?—Ghosts in the sunshine? That would be a funny sight! [Broom raps on floor.] Again! 'Tis said that one can see ghosts in broad daylight, if one peeps through a door-crack, it is even maintained that one can see oneself. Oneself—! If one could really do that, how easy it would be to evade one's worst faults! I'll try it. [Opens door left and ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... the tree.—The cacao trees should, as already stated, have sufficient shade to prevent their being burned by the sun. If they are much exposed to its rays, their branches are scattered, crack, and the tree dies. They are also infested with worms, which gnaw the bark all around, then attack the interior and destroy them. The only remedy which has hitherto been found, is to employ people to kill these worms, which are deposited by ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... heard a desperate battle going on outside. I began shouting and calling for help; everyone in the house was terribly upset. Nimfodora Semyonovna ran out with her hair down, the voices in the yard grew louder—and all at once I heard: 'Hold the gate, hold it, fasten it!' I opened the door—just a crack, and looked out: the monster was no longer on the steps, the servants were rushing about the yard in confusion waving their hands and picking up bits of wood from the ground; they were quite crazy. 'To the village, it has run off to the village,' shrieked a peasant woman in a cap ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... wide, and as it was the 23d of February, the ice had become rotten from the sun glare of the coming spring. As the cannon were drawn to mid-river, though it was seven in the morning, the ice began to heave and crack with dire warning. To hesitate was death; to go back as dangerous as to go forward. With a whoop the men broke from quick march to a run, unsheathing musket and fixing bayonet blades as they dashed ahead to be met with a withering cross fire as they came within range of the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... aesthetic rather than moral, and probable that it is strongest in the lower social strata. Several years ago I went to the first night of a rather foolish play about ancient Rome, in which an early Christian is brought in to be very mildly tortured on the stage. At the first crack of the whip my neighbours sprang from their seats, crying, 'Shame! Stop that!'; and the scene had to be removed in subsequent performances. The operatives in a certain factory stopped the engines for an hour because they heard a cat mewing among the machinery. Having with difficulty ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... see that, marshal," Lindsay said with a smile; "but though I can get on with French fairly enough, my tongue doesn't seem to be able to form these crack-jaw German words; and you see, marshal, it is not the only one that does not. I think, sir, that bad as my German is, it is not much worse than your own, and you have been here much ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... in adapting creatures to the mode of life He has appointed for them. The eagles and hawks, you know, are provided with strong, short bills to enable them to seize and tear flesh. Those of canaries and all the finches are just the very instruments to crack seeds with. Parrots, with their tremendous weapons, can crush the hardest nuts of the tropic forest. The crossbill is fitted with a wonderful tool for tearing fir-cones to pieces. Robins and the other warblers ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... hatchet, or adze, made of a tough greenish kind of stone, very dexterously fitted into a handle; it is then cut into such lengths as are required for the plank, one end of which is heated till it begins to crack, and then with wedges of hard wood they split it down: Some of these planks are two feet broad, and from fifteen to twenty feet long. The sides are smoothed with adzes of the same materials and construction, but of a smaller size. Six or eight men are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... be no doubt whatever as to the effect these noises had upon him. He winced as a dog winces when you crack a whip over him; the only question was whether by a powerful effort he could regain his composure or whether his suffering would overcome his self-restraint to the extent of making him gloomy or querulous during the rest of ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... smiled. It was a dreary, unaccustomed sort of crack in his weather-beaten face. "I had coffee, too," he replied ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... at the Court, tae, aft I saw Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa Gang gesterin' end to end the ha' In weeg an' goon, To crack o' what ye wull but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the winter and go into camp with John, and John met him more than half-way with a promise to accept Oliver's invitation for a week's visit in Kennedy Square the next time he went home, if that happy event ever took place, when they would both go down to Carroll's Island for a crack at a canvas- back. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... gun on his saddle and took careful aim. The crack of his rifle was followed by a hoarse squawk and the tall bird ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... intellectual and social kind this was, for they were neither of them men to shirk from close gripes, or trifle and flourish with their weapons; they laid on and spared not. And then my uncle had generally some special nut of his own to crack, some thesis to fling down and offer battle on, some "particle" to energize upon; for though quiet and calm, he was thoroughly combative, and enjoyed seeing his friend's blood up, and hearing his emphatic and bright speech, and watching his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... or Tertullian! and how complete a confutation of all his grounds does not the passage afford to those humble souls, who, gifted with common sense alone, can boast of no additional light received through a crack in their upper apartments:— ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... steel, spread wide across the open, was within two hundred yards now! Then a hundred and fifty! Then a hundred! Then less, and fierce and sharp like the crack of a rifle came Captain Sherburne's ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to make a heart-string crack. Oh, were it lawful that your pretty souls Might look from heaven into your fathers eyes, Then should you see the penitent glasses melt, And both your murthers shoot upon my cheeks; But you are playing in the Angels laps, And will not look on me, Who void of grace, kild you in beggery. Oh that ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... confidence in the killing power of the gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring. A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a matter of precaution as the tiger had fallen behind rank grass, and the bullet passed through the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals and the whistle blown. I pass close to the huge, dripping signals; there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole, watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the creaking signal overhead moves. In another lonely place stands ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... our only interruptions when Mrs. Symonds and the handsome girls went to bed. I have many memories of seeing our peasant friends off from Symonds' front door, and standing by his side in the dark, listening to the crack of their whips and their yodels yelled far down the snow roads into the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... up into the back seat, and Florence after her, and wrapped them with robes. Then he mounted his horse and started off. "Gid-eb!" growled Stillwell, and with a crack of his whip the team jumped into a trot. Florence whispered ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... holding up her forehead for his kiss, "that young poodle of yours is making me take notice. He gives me intellectual nuts to crack. It's strange ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... was black; The green grass was not seen; The birds did rest On the bare thorn's breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway-track, Had bound their folds o'er many a crack Which the frost had ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... jes' little kids ole marster he ketch us a stealin' watermelons and he say, 'Git! Git! Git! And when we runs and stoops over to crawl through de crack of de fence he sho' give us a big spank. Den we runs off cryin' and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... done dead,' sez Big Pig, sezee, 'en 'fo' she die she tell me fer ter keep my eye on Brer Wolf. I sees you thoo de crack er de do', en you look mighty ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... goodness then that if there BE a crack we know it! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we don't know—!" And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can never then ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... a crack of whips we started, and it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... cramped to stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the crack of ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... smooth funnel of water swirling about with nauseating rapidity. And then (it must have been a reminiscence of his boyhood) he was walking on the dangerous thin ice of a river, unable to turn back. . . . Suddenly it parted from shore to shore with a loud crack like the report ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... almost the whole of the back seat, and Jo was squeezed into the crack which was left. Jan was perched on a sort of ledge, facing them. The carriage was narrow, six legs were two too many for the space. Jan's were the superfluous ones. He tried this pose, he tried that, but in spite of his contortions he endured much of the seven hours' ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... he protested. "I feel fifty per cent better. I'd much rather stay down here with you and Miss Standish for a while, if you don't mind. My nerves are a bit jumpy from that crack over the skull, and I'd like them to quiet down before I ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... ground so fast that the other could not keep up with him. From above there came the crack of a rifle, then another and another, as the men on the ridge sighted their prey. A spatter of bullets threw up the dirt around them. Dick felt a red-hot flame sting his leg, but, though he had been hit, to his surprise he ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... recourse was had to taxation of the clergy, which the prelates successfully resisted; the old quarrel with the Jansenists was revived, and soon Church and Crown were convulsed by an agitation that shook society to its very base. During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles. The poor crazy wretch, who at most deserved detention in an asylum, was first subjected to a cruel judicial torture, then taken to the Place ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... looks won't make his fortune. He's a hard-working fellow enough in his way; but he's something like the horse in the matter of temper. But I think I've taken the devil out of him," said Mr. Spavin, with an ominous crack ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... visible. The two ladies were squeezed into this, and they crouched together, Sadie's arms thrown round her aunt. When they had walled them up, the men turned with lighter hearts to see what was going on. As they did so there rang out the sharp, peremptory crack of a rifleshot from the escort, followed by another and another, but these isolated shots were drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush and refuse to come out; or when it was getting ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... sharp voice of Mrs. Brier, at the early morning light, "up with you, I tell you. Do you hear? For every minute you keep me, you'll get an extra crack!" and, true to her word, there was presently a grieved cry from the child, upon whose slender shoulders at least a dozen blows were ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions nearly parallel. Hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... revive an order that bullies with arsenic in its sleeve. The poisoned host will destroy the Jesuits, as well as the Pope: and perhaps the Church of Rome will fall by a wafer, as it rose by it; for such an edifice will tumble when once the crack has begun. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... and a new election took place. The Whigs lost thereby much of their power, but still were a majority in the House, and the new Tory government found that the Irish difficulties were a very hard nut to crack. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... Prince d'Hessenstein has written to offer me a visit—I don't know when. I have just answered his note, and endeavoured to limit its meaning to the shortest sense I could, by proposing to give him a dinner or a breakfast. I would keep my bed rather than crack our northern ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that the jerry-builder was a hard nut to crack then as now. As to Nero's edict, New York enacted it for its own protection in our ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... said the teacher, "for he won't come open, if he can possibly help it. And there's another fellow (pointing). His name is Slivertwist. If you get a crack in him, you will find him full of twisted splinters that he holds himself together with. The only way is to cut them through with a sharp axe. But he holds on so tight with them that I don't believe you can get him open. He says he never gives up ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... times of the world, the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its seat by the weight of the mountains; the sky is supported over it like a dome, and we are instructed in the wisdom and power of God by being told to find a crack in it if we can. Ranged in stories, seven in number, are the heavens, the highest being the habitation of God, whose throne—for the Koran does not reject Assyrian ideas—is sustained by winged animal forms. The shooting-stars are ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... little wooden cubicle partitioned off from the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct, stretched ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... thunder black, With rain and hail, so much could not be spanned; Fell thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... disgustedly. "Dresses like a dude, an' chases after a bunch of skirts! Spreads himself like a ward politician when he gets a chance! He's my nephew, all right, but as long as he won't run straight, same as I'm doin' now, I'd rather he'd crack a crib than play errand boy for a man I ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... of the box floated what looked like a piece of stiff ribbon, which snapped and crackled as the wind took it. For a few seconds Mimi saw it as it rushed along the sagging line to the kite. When close to it, there was a loud crack, and a sudden light appeared to issue from every chink in the box. Then a quick flame flashed along the snapping ribbon, which glowed with an intense light—a light so great that the whole of the countryside around stood out against the background of black ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... about time for the boys to start for home. The General took each of them aside, and talked for a long time. He was speaking to Willy, on the edge of the clearing, when there was a crack of a twig in the pines. In a second he had laid the boy on his back in the soft grass and whipped out a pistol. Then, with a low, quick call to Hugh, he sprang swiftly into the ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... over. From the Vosges to the sea, not the crack of a rifle nor the moan of a shell; only an abrupt, dramatic silence—the end! Belief in the utter cessation of all that wonderful and terrible activity, penetrated slowly. And as it penetrated Roy realised, with something like dismay, that the right and natural sense of elation ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... was well understood that the author was never to get beyond that passage until he had acknowledged it absurd and egregiously foolish, anybody who knows anything about the genus irritabile will be certain, that if he lived till "the crack of doom," Don Silva would never have passed the Rubicon. It was thus that the poor fellow was tormented: and every time that he was asked to dine in the cabin, he was requested to bring his Tour, in order that the whole of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Prudence said something that thou hast told her—that Pastor Tappau defiled his hands by whipping the witch Hota. What evil thought has got hold of thee? Talk to us, and crack not thy skull against the learning ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... volcanic force which sends out flames and ashes from the tops of high mountains, or makes the solid earth tremble and crack, is at work also below the bed of the sea, and from time to time islands are raised there either slowly or by some sudden convulsion, just as we have also reason to believe that other islands are even now sinking lower under the influence of the same force, until, most likely, in years to come, ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Napoleon also moved away with becoming alacrity. Three minutes later the charge went off. It sounded like the crack of doom. It seemed to split the earth and very firmament. A huge black toadstool of smoke rose up abruptly. Something like a blot of yellowish color spattered all over the landscape. It was ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Overwhelmed with affection for his son, he summoned all his kinsmen and said, 'That man who will cause the head of my son to fall on the earth while the latter, struggling in battle, will be bearing a great burthen, I say that the head of that man will certainly crack into a hundred pieces.' Having spoken these words and installed Jayadratha on the throne, Vriddhakshatra, repairing to the woods, devoted himself to ascetic austerities. Endued with great energy, he is still engaged in the observance of the austerest of penances ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Bully for the Soldiers, they are hear at last, "I thought they would com tomorrow," some of the papers say there is 20.000 of them, that is enough to eat the plase up for lunch. Well I hope we will soon crack this nut that is so hard to crack. I hear there is 15000 Spanish ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... all the Barnyard Folk ate raisins, for they couldn't crack the nuts. It almost gave Ducky Waddles a toothache watching Twinkle ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... when a boy, asleep in his father's vineyard, and bade him write a tragedy—-or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise whose shell the bird was unable to crack—-clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo, and that a swarm of bees settled upon his infant lips as he lay in his mother's arms. Less supernatural, but hardly more historical, is the statement in the Life that the poet ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lugubrious looked the little cortege under the flickering glimmer of the lamp which Benedetta held with arm outstretched, stiffened by determination! And still not a sound came from the old lifeless dwelling, nothing but the silent crumbling of the walls, the slow decay which was making the ceilings crack. Victorine continued to whisper words of advice whilst Pierre, afraid of slipping on the shiny slabs, put forth an excess of strength which made his breath come short. Huge, wild shadows danced over the big expanse of bare wall ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... circle that some member of it was waiting at the door. Now there are ways and ways of rapping at a kitchen window. There is the pit-a-pat of a light heart, and the thud-thud of a heavy one; and there is the sharp crack-crack of haste, and the dithering que-we-we of fear. Davy had a rap of his ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... written! The hideous period of beginning to begin! I imagine it's like the tense moment in a football game, just before the kickoff, only those lucky youths are pushed and prodded into action, willynilly. If only a whistle would blow or a pistol crack for me! ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... hole; and on the rough floor of the latter I stepped on the spade which had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily on ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width —but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. I did not do this, because I did not wish to soil ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole of the last night in searching every nook and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me. Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... shadow of sound there is But his motion's gentle hiss, Till one fluent arm and hand Suddenly circles, and the wand Taps a bough far overhead, "Crack," and then all noise is dead. For he halts, and for a space Stands erect with upward face, Taut and tense to the white Message of ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... little experience one man can cut and roll the pipe alone. This groove is cut deeper and deeper until the pipe breaks apart. If standard pipe is being cut, a file is generally resorted to for cutting the groove. On account of the lightness of the pipe, a hammer and chisel will crack the pipe lengthwise. When cutting extra heavy cast-iron pipe, a good heavy blow must be struck to cause the chisel to cut into the iron. After a few cuts, the beginner will understand the weight of blow that must be struck to cut the ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... to give you a proper mental picture. If you had left me alone I'd have finished it ten minutes ago. The rest moves with accelerated rhythm. It begins with the cracking of a stick in the forest. Hark! A sharp crack is——" ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... all along,' and was six days on the way; spending for food two shillings and sixpence, and nothing for lodgings; but he was in good heart, I think, for almost the only joyous expression in his autobiography is this one, relating to this time: 'Hark, how the wagons crack with their rich lading!' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... mine, where she will ever dwell. Generations of men have gone down to the grave since her time—a succession of kings have lodged within the castle but I am still a denizen of the forest. For crimes I then committed I am doomed to wander within it, and I shall haunt it, unless released, till the crack of doom." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... best dressed among them, for she knew by their pale eyes what their state was. On such nights it was as though a fit of fleshly madness were passing over Paris. The girl was rather nervous certainly, for the most modish gentlemen were always the most obscene. All the varnish would crack off a man, and the brute beast would show itself, exacting, monstrous in lust, a past master in corruption. But besides being nervous, that trollop of a Satin was lacking in respect. She would blurt out awful things in front of dignified gentlemen in carriages ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... on the left; one on the right foot, and another on the left. This serpent does not begin to hurt until it has wound 'round and 'round. Then it begins to tighten and strangle and crush until the bones crack and the blood trickles and the eyes start from their sockets, and the mangled wretch cries. "O God! O God! help! help!" But it is too late; and not even the fires of we can melt the chain when once it ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... quickly, Mr. Finbrink halted in front of his house, scanning the windows. Not a crack in a window pane could he discern, which was not remarkable, in view of the fact that no panes of glass had ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... had just barked for the hundreth time when he heard a twig crack just back of him. It had a different sound from the noisy crack of Jack Frost, and Reddy stopped a yap right in the middle and whirled about to see what it might be. There was Bowser the Hound almost upon him, his eyes flashing ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... night plain as it wuz yesterday. It seems lak de air 'round de quarters an' de big house filled wid excitement; eben de wind seem lak it wuz waitin' fo' som'ting. De dogs an' de pickaninnies dey sleep lazy like 'gainst de big gate waitin' fo' de crack ob dat whip which wuz de signal dat Julius wuz bringin' de master down de long dribe under de oaks. Chile, us all wuz happy knowin' date ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... ideal of virtue absolved in sackcloth and ashes. As an evidence of our generosity, we regard him an excellent Christian, whose life hath been purified with an immense traffic in human—(perhaps some good friend will crack ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... fail now; as the bird rose it flew straight away from me, and it was still uttering its alarm cry when I pressed the trigger and down it fell, stone-dead, shot clean through the body. At the whip-like crack of the rifle the two dogs dashed forward into the thick clumps of low milk-bush into which the bird had fallen, and presently reappeared, Thunder dragging the bird along the ground by one of its legs, while Juno romped round ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... three or four months; an invigorating breeze always blowing, the thermometer ranging between 50 deg. and 60 deg., a cloudless sky, the air perfectly dry, so that furniture and wood fittings shrink, and crack audibly. As rain does not fall during this favored season, the dust becomes objectionable; but that drawback does not extend to shipboard. The man must be unreasonable who doubts life being worth living ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... too bad when these great singers marry themselves into silence before they have a crack in their voices. And the husband is a public robber. I remember Leroux saying, 'A man might as well take down a fine peal of church bells and carry them off to the steppes," said Sir Hugo, setting down his cup and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... instance, he was colonel in command of the famous Coldstream Guards, who covered themselves with glory; and shortly before embarking for America he was made major-general of the line. Braddock had won his promotion solely through gallantry and at a time when a lieutenant-colonelcy in this crack British ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... But with a crack of thunder which Miss Letitia would have said was "near," most certainly, for it sounded as though the heavens themselves were fallen, Arethusa's eyes ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... gallery rifle there was no recoil; and I tried to be as steady as possible in aiming and squeezing. The bullseye was the silhouette, life size, of a man lying prone and firing at me. Instructions were to aim at the bottom of the target, about a foot below him. The crack of my neighbor's piece, very loud and sharp, was the most uncomfortable part of the performance, and I shall shoot tomorrow with cotton in my ears; many decided likewise. I plugged away steadily, the ammunition worked ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... hour. In one minute we were all as wet as if we had fallen off the dock at home. We abandoned the car and ran for the shelter of a big tree near-by. We were no sooner under its spreading branches when, with a sound like the crack of doom, lightning struck it and it went crashing to earth in the opposite direction from us. We didn't stop to reflect what would have happened to us if it had fallen in our direction, but made for the open road where there was nothing ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to burst; it was an accident of this nature which saved the British Belvidera; and the General Pike, under Commodore Chauncy, and the new American frigate Guerriere suffered in the same way; while often the muzzles of the guns would crack. A more universal disadvantage was in the short weight of our shot. When Captain Blakely sunk the Avon he officially reported that her four shot which came aboard weighed just 32 pounds apiece, a pound and three quarters more than his heaviest; this would make his average ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing round, to strike him in his new position, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... they warned him that he had a hard nut to crack; that Wylie was given to "stringing" salesmen and was a hard man to close with, but Hanford smiled confidently. Granting those facts, they rendered him all the more eager to make this sale; and the bridge company ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... sheets which cover the dome must be renewed eight or ten times in a century. Winckelmann attributes their rapid decay to the corrosive action of the sirocco wind; Fea to the variations in temperature, which cause the lead to melt in summer, and crack in winter. ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... congratulation in the fact that rain was not likely to be superadded to our miseries. Short-sighted rogues that we are! What a blessing is it, a knowledge of the evils to come is not permitted to cloud our enjoyments in possession! Crack went the whip. "Hold on with your claws and teeth!" cried the driver; the latter, we found, were only to be kept in the jaws by compression: for the former, we had immediate occasion; our first movement unshipped a trunk and carpetbag, together with the band-box of our fair passenger—the ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... could not be lost. She knew that Burke had slept in the room, and none of the servants had been alone in it since. So the key must be somewhere there, must have been kicked into some corner, or caught in a crack. She had felt so certain of finding it that she had not thought it necessary to tell Burke of her carelessness. But now she began to wish she had told him. Her anxiety was turning to a perfect fever of apprehension. The conviction ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Countess, and impregnable, as he thought, against bankruptcy by reason of his great fortune, tried to satisfy her cravings for splendor of entourage and her infatuation for gambling. The result was that one day the crack of a pistol-shot was heard in the Countess' chamber, and the servants rushing in found the young bankrupt dead, lying across the bed, with a bullet through the heart. The next day a horde of clamorous creditors besieged the house, where the Countess calmly told ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... ordinary coal is, slices of it become transparent if they are cemented in Canada balsam, and rubbed down very thin, in the ordinary way of making thin sections of non-transparent bodies. But as the thin slices, made in this way, are very apt to crack and break into fragments, it is better to employ marine glue as the cementing material. By the use of this substance, slices of considerable size and of extreme thinness ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... same material was trembling before the mouth of the once glowing fireplace? Even so, dear soul, full of loving-kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever making our house seem like a tomb! And with what patience wouldst thou sit sewing by a crack in the shutters an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy scoured tins, that hung ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... your whisker-bed, didn't you?" or, "That'll raise a tidy mouse on your ogle, my lad!" or, "That'll take the bark from your nozzle, and distil the Dutch pink for you, won't it?" While to another he would mention as an interesting item of news, "Now we'll tap your best October!" or, "There's a crack on your snuff-box!" or, "That'll damage your potato-trap!" Or else he would kindly inquire of one gentleman, "What d'ye ask a pint for your cochineal dye?" or would amiably recommend another that, as his peepers were a goin' fast, he'd best ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... got. I'll thank you for your long knife, Mister. That'll do. That opens it, cuts in like rael steel; better it should be into hard word than soft flesh. There they are, then, and not broken; onhurt, without a spot or a crack. Sing praises to the Lord! psalms and hymns of rejoicin'—not a phial broke, nor a box smashed! Praised be the Lord! I say ag'in. Since they are safe, it don't matter if twenty shoulder-blades and ankle-bones ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... specimens, being such a novelty, and standing out so plainly on the flat scene, had been picked up by farmer or cowboy and taken home. Thus each of the several stones in those parts was engaged in holding open the barn door or the ranch gate, or was established in the back yard to crack pecan nuts on, much to the improvement of flatirons. If a man had stolen one and used it openly, he would sooner or later have been found out. But why do ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... has fallen off, say'st thou? Decay of time, believe me Mark; for wit Is wine, and wine is poured into a cup Of sparkling gold, and not into a crack'd Old jug, and thou, illustrious cousin, art Become a broken pot ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... cam' back, An' ga'e her mou' a hearty smack, Syne lengthened out a lovin' crack 'Bout marriage an' the care o't. Though as she thocht she didna speak, An' lookit unco mim an' meek, Yet blithe was she wi' Rab to cleek, In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... quite so!" said Mr. Kent, rubbing his hands with pleasure. "Magnificent! Well, well, it is certainly a delight to hear you say so. After supper we will dismiss the ladies and have a good crack. There are some really startling things to be learned about Wolverhampton in Anglo-Saxon times. You know the town lay along the frontier that was much harried by the Danes, and Edward the Elder won a conspicuous victory over the invaders at Tettenhall, ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... it were buried deep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no sign of anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is only utter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make one's eardrums crack. ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... in our peaceful, happy domestic circle. Do you know what the period of an idolized daughter's engagement seems to the disdained and discarded husband and father? He is too shy and dignified to peep at the billing and cooing through the crack of the drawing-room door like the younger members of the family; consequently, the six months which intervene between the making of the match and its consummation, impress him as a Sahara of tedious confabulation between the pair of ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... trooper came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full length on ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... everyone being too bemused with terror to do aught to protect ourselves, even had we been possessed of weapons. And as we remained thus, an instant, like silly sheep awaiting the butcher, I heard the framework creak and crack, and there ran splits all across the glass. In another moment, the whole thing would have been torn away, and the cabin undefended, but that the bo'sun, with a great curse at us for our landlubberly lack of use, seized the other cover, and clapped it over the window. At that, there was more help ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... and had felt it before; no claw of desert beast was firmer or more unrelenting. Young Hortensius felt his whole body give way, his very bones crack beneath that mighty grip. His head, overheated with wine, fell back against the cushions of his couch, and he felt as if the last breath in him was leaving his ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... days the gun boats pounded away and all night long there was the rattle and crack of the machine guns. No one slept. The little garrison was fast becoming exhausted. Men were hollow-eyed from weariness and so utterly tired that they were indifferent to the shrieking shells and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... filled Dudley's thoughts as he made his way homeward. In her attitude to his engagement he was afraid she was going to personate what is known as a 'though nut to crack." He wondered if she would be waiting up for him, and what in the world she would ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... gone ahead to prepare nooning for the army at the Run. In seven hours the men had marched seventeen miles spite of sweltering heat; but at one, just as the thirsty columns were nearing the rest place, the crack—crack—crack of rifle shots to the fore set every man's blood jumping. From quick march they broke to a run, priming guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later the old trick of Braddock's ambush was being repeated, but this time the Indians were dealing ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Johnny. He put his hands close together on the rim of the wheel, settled his big shoulders, and hauled. With a sharp crack the wheel broke off in ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... reflect: 'What will come of it? Perhaps we may perish in vain?' And they stand there like posts—until they breathe their last. And the fool is brave! He rushes headforemost against the wall—bang! If his skull breaks—what of it? Calves' heads are not dear. And if he makes a crack in the wall the clever people will pick it open into gates, will pass and credit themselves with the honour. No, Nikolay Matveyich, bravery is a good thing even though it ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... followed her feeling very sick, and promptly sat down. Then came Bickley with the air of the virtuous hero of a romance walking a pirate's plank, and also sat down. Only Bastin hesitated until the stone began to move away. Then with an ejaculation of "Here goes!" he jumped over the intervening crack of space and landed in the middle of us like a sack of coal. Had I not been seated really I think he would have knocked me off the rock. As it was, with one hand he gripped me by the beard and with the other grasped Yva's robe, of ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... I was peeking in through a crack and saw him put it there. I was afraid to tell before, though I wanted to. I didn't care so much about Nat, but Dan is a trump, and I can't stand it any longer. I never spent the money; it's under the carpet in my room, right behind the washstand. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... something and went out. Within five minutes Swan, hearing hoofbeats, looked out through a crack in the door and saw Lone riding at a gallop along the trail to Rock City. "Good bait. He swallows the hook," he commented to himself, and his good-natured grin was not brightening his face while he washed the dishes ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... it wise, then, say, in the waning day, When the vessel is crack'd and old, To cherish the battered potters' clay, As though it were virgin gold? Take care of yourself, dull, boorish elf, Though prudent and safe you seem, Your pitcher will break on the musty shelf, And mine by the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... and he would drink nothing but spring water. But Harry was gay enough for two. We could get him to touch nothing until he had both of us girls served, he saying we were greater strangers than he. And since I chose to eat nuts, he would do the same, and would crack all mine for me. He had a clever way of doing this with his hands only, which were small, but like iron for strength; I made a cup of my hands that he might pour the sweet kernels into it, and so ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... by the chiming of bells, and soon afterwards muskets began to crack, near and far. Then there were noises all over the house, and presently what seemed to be a procession of horses or elephants began to thunder up and down the wooden stairs. In vain I tried to snatch the last and best morning nap; there was no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the Mississippi Regiment, constituting one branch of what has been called the "V". When the enemy had approached as near as he dared and seemed to shrink from contact with the motionless, resolute living wall which stood before him, the angry crack of the Mississippi rifle was heard, and as the smoke rose and the dust fell, there remained of the host which so lately stood before us but the fallen and the flying. The rear of our line of battle was again secured, and a service had been rendered which in no ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... rock started easily enough at their energetic effort. A seam appeared to widen—a crack was disclosed—there followed space sufficient to allow a hand to be inserted and then a dozen willing scouts helped with the lift. In a couple of minutes the big slab was thrown over with a crash, and below appeared a cavity that was evidently ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... hideous square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the flat stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up, and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just come from kissing his mother. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Fifth Avenue. If I wasn't stopped I was to drive on to Thirty-fifth Street, cut across to Madison Avenue, down to Thirty-third Street, then back to Fifth Avenue and past Thirty-fourth Street again, going uptown. The guy with the gripsack caught us first crack out of ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... winter night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen when the northern lights are shooting and blazing across the sky. Nor is this all. Wherever there is a nook between the rocks ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... replaced they noticed that a crack was left at each end of the seat, not exceeding ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... gesture was misunderstood. The crack of half-a-dozen rifles responded promptly, and a couple of them took fatal effect. Poor Stanislas fell, badly wounded, with one bullet in his arm ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... your sort!" roared a purple-faced ruffian with a hang-lip. "A right proper gal is that. Give her a huzza and crack yer pipes, lads!" ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from the glare of the sun was soon to end; for before the crack of dawn, or, as it seemed to us, shortly after midnight, came such a clatter with the fires and the high-pressure engine and the sparks, and what all they did in that wild and reckless land, that further ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... sir," she said, "'at whan ye luik in, the place may luik hame-like. We s' ca' the room yours. Come as aften as ye can. It does my Anerew's hert guid to hae a crack wi' ane 'at kens something o' what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane 'll ca' him Lord, but feow 'ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o' them. But there's my Anerew—he'll sit yon'er at his wark, thinkin' by the hoor thegither ower something the Maister said 'at he canna win at the richts ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... tile is not difficult, but must be done carefully or the pipe will crack or a piece will be broken out, thus making the pipe worthless. To cut tile or terra-cotta pipe, stand the pipe on end with the hub down, fill the pipe with sand to the point of cutting. With a sharp chisel and hammer cut around the pipe two or three times and the ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... that 'man is common clay—woman porcelain.' Alas! there is but little genuine porcelain. It is a pity that you couldn't contrive to have a few jars before matrimony, to crack off some of the glazing, and show the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... four perfect brassies at the sixth he managed to get one up for a moment, then at the short seventh a screaming iron and three consummate approaches would make me square again. Occasionally he would, by superhuman play, do a hole in bogey; but only to crack at the next, and leave me, at the edge of the green, to play "one off eleven." It was, in fact, a ding-dong struggle all the way; and for his one-hole victory in the morning I had my revenge with a one-hole victory ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... stabled cow insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as only animal, you must at least accept her as a perfect one. Her mouth is large, but I never saw such red lips, full and red and dewy. Her forehead is low and square, but milky smooth, and I know she could crack a chicken-bone between those white teeth of hers. Even her tongue, I noticed, is a watermelon red. She must be healthy. Dinky-Dunk says she's a find, that she can drive a double-seeder as well as any man ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... out over the water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam's head against an overhanging stanchion announced his approach, that ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... society for a time by most of my companions, getting forward and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer, broken-hearted for two years, my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack will remain to my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times, once on the verge of ruin, yet opened new sources of wealth almost overflowing. Now taken in my pitch of pride, and nearly winged (unless the good news hold), because ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the pleasure of realising cherished plans; the pleasure of health and strength to meet every duty of life cheerfully. And now Nettie began to build castles in the air for Tom. Tom would go to Sandhurst; he would pass well; he would have a commission in a crack regiment. And Tom's repentance of some former disparagement of the sex was shown in such remarks as "that Beauchamp major—you know, the fellow I told you a ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... when Caxton bade His silent words forever speak; A grave for tyrants then was made, Then crack'd the chain which yet shall break." Ebenezer Elliott, "Hymn for the Printers' Gathering at ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... his march across the Appian Way, making of each crack between boards a great abyss to be bridged cautiously with his own body. The day's work was begun, while Davidge drowsed and smiled contentedly at the side of the strange, sleeping woman as if they ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... line; that they blocked the advance that was rolling on toward Paris at a rate of six or seven miles a day; that they met the attack in American fashion and with American heroism; that marines and soldiers of the American army threw back the crack guard divisions of Germany, broke their advance, and then, attacking, drove them back in the beginning of a retreat that was not to end until the "cease firing" signal sounded for the end of ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... rose-flushed little moth that sailed away, with every black one in pursuit. I almost fell from the ladder. I went inside, only to learn that what I feared was true. The wind had loosened the screen in my absence, and the moth had passed through a crack, so narrow it seemed ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... leaves fall, she might be sitting on his knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that you love your child better than all things in the world—now the Patria is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers—and your heart-strings would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice—never again to see her face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night, when we fled fast for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... indication of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! hola! charite pour l'amour ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... five acts, of "The Exquisites" was a satirical piece showing up the ridiculous assumption of affected indifference of the young dandies of the day. The special airs of impertinence by which certain officers of a "crack" regiment distinguished themselves had suggested several of the most telling points of the play, which was in every respect a most remarkable ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... heard Charley tell of several other visits they made that night; but, as I said before, even a Christmas yarn and a ghost story must not spin itself out, like Banquo's line, to the crack of doom. However true or authentic a story may be—and you can easily verify this by asking any member of the Christmas Club in Huckleberry Street—however true a yarn may be, it must not be so long that it ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... surface, weakening it in spots, and if one went through, the tide swept him under the ice, where the water was at least cold enough to chill one and make death easy. On such a day Father crossed the river on a crack, for, strange to say, one of the big cracks that always come in the ice had pushed or folded down, and not up, and the water had frozen over, making a streak of triple-thick ice, and on this streak he crossed the Hudson, the ice so far gone from the sun, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... richest treasury of the chateau, studio-rumors placing here a collection of original old masters. But we were grievously disappointed, finding nothing but black ruin and decay. The roof over the chancel is entirely open to the sky, and a wide-yawning crack extends down the rear wall to the ground, as if a lightning-stroke had riven it asunder. The canvas of the altar-piece has fallen like a covering over the altar, screening and preserving it, so that its beautiful marble and alabaster sculptures still retain their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... suffered from no restoration, and is still wonderfully clean, but the wood on which it is painted has split rather badly in places, one large crack running from top to bottom just beyond the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... was commenced upon the timbers, and carried up about nineteen feet, and, notwithstanding the misgivings of scientific and experienced contractors and builders, and others, the superstructure was completed in 1855, and from that day to this not a crack in an angle of the building has been seen, although it may with truth be said that the engine house floats on a bed of quicksand. There were three thousand feet of aqueduct from the engine house to the lake, which presented similar difficulties, as did also the laying ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... whillywhas!"[4] cries he. "There's intelligence upon both sides. But for my private part I have no particular desire to harm King George; and as for King James, God bless him! he does very well for me across the water. I'm a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books and my bottle, a good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the Parliament House with other lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the golf on a Saturday at e'en. Where do ye come in with your Hieland plaids ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Blue Coat had been moved by Brown Surtout and Crack under both Arms, the Fustian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... apropos of some remark he had made, "talking about the adoration of woman, did not that crack-brained Frenchman, Auguste Comte, propose something of the sort as a feature of his 'Religion ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... gravely, according to their habit, and she heard his steps along the frozen lane. Then she opened the door softly a crack—this was old custom, too—that she might hear them farther. This time she was sure she actually knew when he turned into the road. She went back to the room and stood for a moment, her hand resting on the table, looking at the orderly fire and then at the chair which seemed to belong more ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... making Man's Body, and those Skins, &c. which cover it; till at last, when he was Compleat in all his parts, as if the Mass had been in labour, those Coverings, which he was wrapp'd up in, burst asunder, and the rest of the Dirt dry-d and crack'd in pieces. The Infant being thus brought into the World, and finding his Nourishment fail him, cry'd for want of Victuals, till the Roe which had lost her Fawn heard him. Now, both those who are of the other Opinion ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... pressed a button and the room leaped to light. Through the open crack of the closed door Clay recognized Gorilla Dave. The second of the gunmen was out of range of ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... that the Spaniards acquired such ease in the slaying of Indians that they would crack a man's head merely to see if it would split easily or if their swords were keeping their edge, and that they varied their more direct and merciful slaughters by roasting one of the despised infidels occasionally. Slavery in damp mines, fevers in swamps, unaccustomed ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the Marine Lines Maidan; as for cricket, there probably are more players in Bombay, British and native, than in any town of its population in England—and Bombay's cricket is of the best. More than once have crack teams out from England been heartlessly beaten by local Parsee players. Golf is considered too slow. The next best thing to being a member of the nobility is for a Briton to belong to the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... suffered for the most part silently, but the inanimate fabric of the farm complained with many a creak and crack and groan in the night watches, while Time's servant the frost gnawed busily at old timbers and thrust steel fingers into brick and mortar. Only the hut-circles, grey glimmering through the snow on Metherill, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... had heard of Tom Draw, I was I must confess, taken altogether aback when I, for the first time, set eyes upon him. I had heard Harry Archer talk of him fifty times as a crack shot; as a top sawyer at a long day's fag; as the man of all others he would choose as his mate, if he were to shoot a match, two against two—what then was my astonishment at beholding this worthy, as he reared himself ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... fairly pathetic what a stranger God is in His own world. He comes to His own, and they who are His own kinsfolk keep Him standing outside the door while they peer suspiciously at Him through the crack ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... had time to crack his whip, lo! the cow started off as if she were about to go around the world anew. Horses, carriage, baron, betrothed, coachman, all were hurried away by the furious animal. In vain the knights spurred their horses to follow ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... a liar; but he will become one if he keeps on. He told me once that he used to crack cocoanuts with his teeth when he was a boy; and when I asked how he got them into his mouth, he said he was upward of six feet high at that time, and had an unusual mouth. And when I followed him up and asked him what had become ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... a trumpet. The barrel-organ accompanying the carrousel sent through the air its shrill jerky notes. The lottery-wheel made a whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the crack of the rifle could be heard. And the slow-moving throng passed on quietly in front of the booths resembling paste in a fluid condition, with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animals who ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to be private secretary to Sir Raffle, myself. But he's young, and a hundred a year is a great thing. How we all of us used to hate that man. His voice sounded like a bell with a crack in it. We always used to be asking for some one to muffle the Buffle. They call him Huffle Scuffle at his office. Poor Johnny!" Then ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Warburton was far more extravagant in a later attempt which he made to expound the odd visions of a crack-brained Welshman, a prophesying knave; a knave by his own confession, and a prophet by Warburton's. This commentary, inserted in Jortin's "Remarks on Ecclesiastical History," considerably injured the reputation of Jortin. The story ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... more pleasing, this would be perhaps the most delightful picture in the world: as it is, its blues alone lift it to the heavens of delectableness. By an unusual stroke of fortune a crack in the paint where the panels join has made a star in the tender blue sky. The Tuscan landscape is very still and beautiful; the flowers, although conventional and not accurate like Luca's, are as pretty as can be; the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Tayoga, "and he sat down again on another fallen log. Black Rifle was hungry, and he ate. Here is the small bone of a deer, picked quite clean, lying on the ground by the log. Black Rifle was a fortunate man. He had bread, too. See, here is a crumb in this crack in the log too deep down for any bird to reach with his bill. Black Rifle sat here quite a long time. He was thinking hard. He did not need so much time for resting. He remained sitting on the log while ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... colours till he made one that had the tint of real flesh. Thus he was the first to overcome the difficulties of drawing and the first to discover a mixture that would not leave a glazed, hard, unnatural appearance and be likely to crack and destroy the ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
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