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More "Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slopes, and around the hills and promontories, with beautiful green swells of land above it and below it. The horses went upon the run. The postilion had a little handle close by his seat—a sort of crank—that he could turn round and round, and so bring a brake to bear against the wheels, and thus help to hold the carriage back. When he began to go down a slope he would turn this crank round and round as fast as he could, till it was screwed up tight, cheering the horses on all ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... and collars, But never really love his lips, invariably his dollars; We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, my ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... while, when he comes to visit us in Philadelphia, a few people call him a crank, because he lives out here and dresses like a settler; but I call ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... young apprentice he had studied the steam engine, and had resolved that he would improve it by doing away with the crank. To his mind this was a source of great loss of power, and he believed that, if he could transform the rectilinear motion of the piston rod directly into rotary motion without the intervention of the crank, he would ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... again, see if the governor belt is all right, and if it is, it would be well for you to stop and see if a wheel is not loose. It might be either the little belt wheel or one of the little cog wheels. If you find these are all right, examine the spool on the crank shaft from which the governor is run and you will probably find it loose. If the engine has been run for any length of time, you will always find the trouble in one of these places, but if it is a new one the governor valve might fit a little tight in the valve ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... forgotten the discomfort of the experience. "That crazy stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia afterwards, had remained on his mind, heavy and damp, like a cold linseed poultice. His wife's father was a crank, and perhaps even a little more than a crank, a wee bit "touched"—that she couldn't help, poor girl; but any allusion to his cranky produce gave Stephen pain. Nor had he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... triumphantly, "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... a crank in the old fellow,' exclaimed Joseph. 'Is he really such a fool as to think Jane won't use the money for herself? And what about Kirkwood? I tell you what it is; he's a deep fellow, is Kirkwood. I wish ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... "shanghai" fixed to timber, one end of which rested on the parapet whilst the other—in the trench—was packed in a manner to give the required elevation. A cricket ball or jam tin bomb was placed in the pouch and the rubbers were then strained by means of a crank handle winding up a wire attached to the pouch with a trip hook. When the required tension was obtained one man lit the fuse and retired to cover. The other, the expert, allowing the fuse to burn for a certain time—to ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... because of its form, and was the first move towards what are now called Direct-acting Engines, in which the lateral movement of the piston is communicated by connecting-rods to the rotatory movement of the crank-shaft. Mr. Nasmyth says of it, that "on account of its great simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, its compactness and self-contained steadiness, this engine has been the parent of a vast progeny, all more or less marked by the distinguishing features of the original design, which is still in as ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... an idea about that Major I have been a crank of pollination on apples. We had many orchards planted in Kentucky. The Major for pollination is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... destined to the assassin's knife were spoken of by approvers as persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their 'removal.' In Sussex it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may be 'tight,' or 'primed,' or 'crank,' or 'concerned in liquor,' nay, it may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: 'Pransus' and 'potus,' in like manner, as every ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... you!" exclaimed Russ. "Do you think I'd let an act like this get past me? Not much!" and he continued to grind away at the crank of his machine, which he had hastily set up on the edge of the stream, where he commanded a good view of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... go for a spin in the park. Stoop, crank your automobile. Step into the machine. Ride around the track; blow your horn. Pump up your flat tire. Bend and stretch arms upward to rest them. Ride home. Breathe in the good fresh air. Put your automobile ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... your own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me? That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess I'll never see either him or them ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... "All those sails, all that weight! Boxes heaped one on the top of the other—cubes to catch the air—a man sitting inert in a basket, with his hand on a lever and a crank: it's as though one tried to make a stuffed bird fly! And what becomes of the man in all that: the back push, the daring stroke? The man has got to be the backbone of the machine, with his quick balancings, his bendings, which are worth ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a perfect marvel of patchwork—pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on fire seemed to be very great; each gust of wind sent showers of sparks from the furnaces ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... the order of the grades must be maintained, no matter what becomes of the graded. What is it to this great mill if the pupils do fall out of the hopper? So long as the mill grinds and the grinders can hold their places at the crank; so long as they can draw their pay, escape public censure, dodge behind a stack of examination papers when individual complaints appear, shield themselves from responsibilities by records and marks, keep the promotions in order, graduate a class a year in good clothes and with pretty speeches, ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... it, just for the sake of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of any ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the conclusion which had been hovering before him. It was she who reminded him of the surviving brother, Henry Harrington, and she also who suggested that he might be got hold of by means of their hosts of the day before. 'He might be a hopeless crank,' objected Gayton. 'That could be ascertained from the Bennetts, who knew him,' Mrs Gayton retorted; and she undertook to see the ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... doctor, a most extraordinary individual with a crank. He had started a Montenegrin temperance society, called the "Band of Good Hope." At present, I believe, the three hundred odd members were all from Kolasin, and it was meeting with very little encouragement. The cultivation of plums ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... girl! I know you're a crank from Crankville on some subjects. Let us have it for all you're worth. I'm ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... wish I did. If I could only get Helen out once more, I should be the happiest fellow on earth," said Mr. Jerrold, with a sad and puzzled expression on his fine face. "I suspected all along that perhaps some religious crank had got into Helle's head, from the circumstances of her allowing no picture but that Mater Dolorosa to come into her room. It was a queer fancy in one so devoted to paintings as she is. I have been wishing ever since she got it to buy ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, bent on ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, which will go ever on as long as the ruling power turns the crank."[73] ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Marson had realized that he must forego those morning exercises which had become a second nature to him, or else defy London's unwritten law and brave London's mockery. He had not hesitated long. Physical fitness was his gospel. On the subject of exercise he was confessedly a crank. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... patents could be very easily blocked, as Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large engine under his patent, after he had successfully made a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. Roebuck's pits was selected as away from prying eyes. The parts for ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... certain psychological interest in this rowdy corner of a peaceful park. It is typical of England, for one thing. I don't mean to say that tub-thumping is typical of England, but England is certainly the harbour of refuge of the crank. You can see there the crankiest of cranks being as cranky as they know how to be; and you can see also the utterly good-humoured indifference with which the crowds who listen to them regard their crankiness—which also has its meaning. The other evening a middle aged woman ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... thinking thoughts of their own making, that it was impossible to attract their attention for more than a moment; from Bostoc the dramatist to Bastiche the anarchist, each individual was turning his own crank diligently, and not to be disturbed, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the nervous system of a humming bird, or re-set unbruisingly the broken wing of a butterfly, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds of infuriate brute-strength against the calm, chronic, mechanical stubbornness of that auto crank. "Damn!" he swore on the upward pull. "Damn!" he gasped on the downward push. "Damn!" he cursed and sputtered and spluttered. Purple with effort, bulging-eyed with strain, reeking with sweat, his frenzied outburst would have ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... parts of this apparatus to him, told him that, like the gas-engine of Victorian days, it was of the explosive type, burning a small drop of a substance called "fomile" at each stroke. It consisted simply of reservoir and piston about the long fluted crank of the propeller shaft. So much ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment is, I can not forbear saying ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... And only wants, to want his eyes. Make some provision for the younker, Find him a kingdom out to conquer; Prepare a fleet to waft him o'er, Make Gulliver his commodore; Into whose pocket valiant Willy put, Will soon subdue the realm of Lilliput. A skilful critic justly blames Hard, tough, crank, guttural, harsh, stiff names The sense can ne'er be too jejune, But smooth your words to fit the tune. Hanover may do well enough, But George and Brunswick are too rough; Hesse-Darmstadt makes a rugged sound, And Guelp the strongest ear will wound. In vain are all attempts ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid came ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... do," said he. "That there little one up top is Johnny; he's a little crank. An' the big un is Grumpy; she's a big crank. She's mighty onreliable gen'relly, but she's always strictly ugly ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... hard-to-please old crank!" said the young thing who served him after he, the traveling ray of sunshine, had departed with the most exclusive box of paper in the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... of our auditorium has brought me to the conclusion that the public there may be loosely divided into three classes—leaving out reporters of fashionable intelligence, dressmakers in search of ideas, and the lady inhabitants of “Crank Alley” (as a certain corner of the orchestra is called), who sit in perpetual adoration ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... there must be a crank," thought Jack; "but still, since I've money to pay for my breakfast, even a crank won't drive ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Helena now, his face was serious. He cranked the engine—no result. He tried it again with equal futility—then, going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all right. He tried the crank again—the engine, like some cold, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham. "There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family have ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the general's assignment ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... that's the trouble. If he had been, he would never have stayed with that old crank Judge Hollis. The judge thinks he is appointed by Providence to control this bright particular burg. He is even attempting to regulate me of late. The next time he interferes he'll hear ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... and I began casting at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. I had fished but a few yards of water when the quick-eyed Peter cried, "Lameau!" which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... gunpowder. Both vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can show you ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... me by, will you?" said Mat quietly to some of his neighbors. "I want to stop those flying women and the man in the crank ship from coming ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... crank, and swiftly a succession of scenes flashed over the dial. On this little patch of glassite, Kay was actually making the spatial journey to Albany, each minutest movement of the crank representing a distance covered. The ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... shady side yards stood Kent, turning the crank of a hand-organ! He was facing the highway where the other two boys were, but not a trace of recognition was in his face. Ranged in a semicircle before him was a line of little children shuffling their toes to the ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me. Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I hev. An' beggin' your pardon, I ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... PUBLIC OPINION.—The growing power of Public Opinion brings with it increased possibilities for good, but also increased possibilities for evil. In an important sense, this is the age of the propagandist, the crank reformer, and the subsidized newspaper, the age of the agitator who spreads lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against this flood; he must recognize that Public Opinion is often ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... gloom in his voice, "it's a most unhappy state of affairs. He's getting to be a perfect crank. Complines about everything I do. He won't 'ave 'is trousers pressed and he 'asn't been ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... they tormented into the wrack ye see. But I escaped wi' my life, the Lord delivered me out o' their bloody hands, which was an ill thing for them, d'ye see, for though I lack my starboard blinker and am somewhat crank i' my spars alow and aloft, I can yet ply whinger and pull trigger rare and apt enough for the rooting out of evil. And where a fairer field for the aforesaid rooting out o' Papishers, Portingales, and the like evil men than this good ship, the Happy Despatch? ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... twenty children as if turned by one crank, and sitting there they looked out into the moonlight where the shining figure flashed to and fro, now so near they could see the smiling face under the crown, now so far away that it glittered like a fire-fly among the dusky green. Lita enjoyed that race as heartily as she had ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... with a Bell Crank.—Curious examples of mechanical constructions in the communication of motion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... I suppose, out here. Well, you can raise some kind of a light to trot round by, can't you? I'm a crank on ancient houses and furniture. Wish you had some old mahogany—that's what you need in ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... to the regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they see where ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... three-year-old son ready-made to his wedding; and that son was Martin. Old Michael made the boy his own, was proud of his cleverness, would have him go to college, and left him all he had. There was no talk of Martin being anything but a Joliffe till Oxford puffed him up, and then he got this crank, and spent the rest of his life trying to find out who his father was. It was a forty-years' wandering in the wilderness; he found this clue and that, and thought at last he had climbed Pisgah and could see the promised land. But he had to be content with the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... England, and the steamer Peace was built on the Thames, Grenfell watching everything being made from the crank to the funnel. She was built, launched, and tried on the Thames; then taken to pieces and packed in 800 packages, weighing 65 lbs. each, and taken to the mouth of the Congo. On the heads and shoulders of a thousand men the whole ship and the food of ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... timely note from them, at a critical moment in a certain deal, saved all of five millions to Mr. Hale. At another time they sent us a telegram which probably was the means of preventing an anarchist crank from taking my employer's life. We captured the man on his arrival and turned him over to the police, who found upon him enough of a new and powerful explosive ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... runnin' a court any longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's whut ails him! Fur one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank on the street and put a civil question to him—that's ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... were to give seven rapid turns to that crank," said Spieghalter, pointing out a beam of polished steel, "you would make a steel bar spurt out in thousands of jets, that would get into your legs ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... another burst of fire from the flank. With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... suitable size and construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of drain pipe ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see was worse ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... (19) and normally restrains the turning of the shaft by the weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when the bell (22) is sufficiently raised. The bar (29) extends above the bell ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... complete rotation of the magnet producing one such cycle. Obviously the result would be the same if the magnet were stationary and the coils should rotate, which is the construction of more modern devices. The turning of the crank of a magneto-bell rotates the armature in the magnetic field by some form of gearing at a rate usually of the order of twenty turns per second, producing an alternating current of that frequency. This current is caused by an effective electromotive force which may be as great ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... Ephraim, as he followed Barney into the smoking compartment. "He's a bigger crank than ever! ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... her white-winged birds to her tower. The pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens yet longer to hold out, reminding ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... on de groun' en tuck off one er de behime shoes, en loant it ter Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he lope off down de road en den he come back. He tell Mr. Dog dat de shoe fit mighty nice, but wid des one un um on, hit make 'im trot crank-sided. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... sentiment of the country has closed the doors of every machine shop, cotton mill, and similar factories to all persons of color. Again, almost every class of labor which once was done by hand is now being turned off by the crank of invention. The old-fashioned washboard has been turned into a steam laundry and the old spinning wheel has given place to the American cotton mills. The same is true along all lines of common labor. The Negro, however, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... The great crank that grinds the screw, and is itself ground by the piston—not to mention the cylinder and boiler—works in a dark place deep down in the engine-room, like a giant hand constantly engaged on deeds ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank and ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... he cried, "that's no crank letter. This Earle woman is wise. You got to take her as a serious proposition. She wouldn't make that play if she couldn't ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... a piece of heavy iron rod which we procured from the blacksmith at Lumberville. Under Bill's direction the blacksmith hammered a U-shaped bend at the center of the shaft, so as to form a crank, and then he flattened the rod near the ends (see Fig. 284). When the shaft was set in its place these flat spots lay just outside of the bearing boards, and then, to keep the shaft from sliding back and forth in its bearings, we fastened on two clamps ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... cabin and shut the door, while the Scotchman hurried away from the airplane. It was certain that there was no time to get out and crank the propeller and rise before the mad Fulbees would be upon them. Cornered in the little cabin of the machine they would sell their lives as ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... over at Epinal the day after tomorrow,' he said as they left the mill, 'and I'll see if I can get the new crank there.' ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a certain resemblance. The monk, Roger ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... surnamed, from the flatness of his feet, Plautus, was the greatest among the comic poets of Rome. Of humble origin, he was driven to literature by his necessities, and it was while turning the crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial drudgery. Born at an Umbrian village during ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... put in, "and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... page is off the perpendicular about 7 degrees. The first page which is the anvil is fixed save for adjustments for nuts of varying size. The other page or hammer riding up and down through an inch and one quarter of travel is fixed to a crank below. Both of these pages or plates are heavy cast iron plates that are fluted and cause the nut to be cracked against these saw toothed flutes and while being cracked are revolved down through the plates. The plate moving at an angle forces the nut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... famous the country round as a cook, and she excelled herself that afternoon. Bishop is a crank on truck gardening, and the vegetables served would have taken prizes in any exhibit. A delicious soup was followed by a baked sea trout—I must not forget to ask Mrs. Bishop how she ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... all about it—she's delighted to hear that the house is open again, and will come on to you for tea, when you will doubtless get a second edition of her woes. Half-an-hour later Horringford rang me up to say that Alex had been particularly tiresome over some new crank which had set everybody by the ears, that Thomson was sending in a resignation daily, altogether there was the deuce to pay, and would I use my influence and talk sense to her. It appears he is working at high pressure to finish a monograph on one of ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... everyday system of popular education, into a local antiquarian society; but simply let it serve incidentally as a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. A wide-awake, scholarly librarian will like his town, and delight in at least some study of its antecedents. And such a librarian need not be a crank, but must needs be an enterprising, wide-awake, appreciative student, who can scent the tastes ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... magistrate Mr. Cumberland Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard or the fiend ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... to London and on to the earliest possible train for Liverpool, so as to be on hand for the first Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir—good evening, Mr. Van Nant—I'll step outside and tell Lennard to crank up." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... make it intelligible—a labour which was the more distasteful as it was forced upon them by one who, although expert enough in experimentation, was not a mathematician, and who boasted that the most complicated mathematical work he ever did was to turn the crank of a calculating machine; who did all his work, formed his conclusions, and then said—"The work is done; hand ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... pin or crank or cog, on which he had set such store, refused the next hour or day or week to do its work, no trace of his disappointment would have been found in his face or speech. His faith was always supreme; his belief in his ideals unshaken. If the pin or crank would not answer, the lever ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dun'no'! She's an awful crank. She just loves them Injuns, they say. But I, fer one, draw the line at holdin' 'em in my lap. I don't b'lieve in mixin' folks up that way. Preach to 'em if you like, but let 'em keep their ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... you'll laugh—but you wasn't laughing then. I'll say you wasn't. I thought you was croaked. Cost something to repair the plane, too. I'm saying it did. Had to have a new propeller, and a new crank-case for the motor—cost the old man at the ranch close to three hundred dollars before I turned her over to him, ready to take the air again. That's including what he paid me, of course. But I guess you know what it cost, when he ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... said gravely. "I can't say THAT! He's regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you'd hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be," he went on, with brotherly directness. "It wouldn't be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he's off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... The chauffeur turns the crank, but there is no responding quiver. Something has gone wrong; we can't move, and it is not much comfort to remember that, if we could, we should not know where to go. At least we should be cooler in motion than sitting still under ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... practical experience in taking motion-pictures," I protested. "The only time I ever touched a motion-picture camera was when I turned the crank of Donald Thompson's for a few minutes during the entry of the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... slipped off the tail-shaft, and as it went to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the racing engine went to pieces. This might not have prevented the steamer's reaching port under sail or tow, but the forward crank-pin broke, and the piston drove up with nothing to stop it, fetched up with a mighty jolt against the cylinder head—which held—and disconnected most of the bolts which bound the cylinder ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a boy had broken in on the radio concert. Then a crank had come shouting right into the middle of a speech by a politician. A few moments later a message on 1200 had fairly burst his ear-drums. The message had been short, composed of just ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have sustained a ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... I continued, "you see that we shall have no difficulty as to the dam. Then, as to the wheel, it will be a simple one of not more than four feet diameter, presented vertically to what I may term the water-spout, so that its axle, which will have a crank in it, will work the saw direct; thus, avoiding toothed wheels and cogs, we shall avoid friction, and, if need be, increase the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the scriptural idea of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven in the ordinary phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the Almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his thumb and fingers. Even as late as the middle of the seventeenth century Heylin, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... contrivance does not differ in principle from the common winch, or from the key which winds a clock. The motion of the piston-rod backwards and forwards turns such a winch. At each termination of the stroke, the piston, from the peculiar position of the crank, loses all power over it. To remedy this two cylinders and pistons are generally used, which act upon two cranks placed on the axle at right angles to each other; so that at the moment when one of the pistons is at the extremity of its stroke, and loses its power upon one crank, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... box, crosshead, and pitman bearings. Therefore, the engine's over-all length, from head of cylinder to the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft, could not have been much less than 15 feet 9 inches, and probably as much as 16 feet 2 inches, thus making the length at extreme clearance of crank throw as much as 19 feet. These dimensions indicate that the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft must have been from 38 to 39 feet from the forward perpendicular. It is not clear how the wheel shaft was mounted in the vessel. Taking into consideration her depth and ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... was a queer house and a queer printer. There was an old damaged press, on which Franklin exercised his skill in repairing, and a small worn-out font of type. Keimer himself, who seems to have been a grotesque compound of knave and crank, was engaged at once in composing and setting up in type an elegy on the death of a prominent young man. He is the only poet to my knowledge who ever used the composition-stick instead of a pen ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... fellowship with the Unseen, and it would seem that bishops and various crank divines are determined that such a belief shall be discouraged. Man's nature has upon it the Hall Marks of Heaven. Woven into man's anatomical texture we find faculties that transcend this world, that ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... what is the matter. Their bellwether is an old deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a forty-horsepower crank." ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... most thorough books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, entitled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circumstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with it is an ethical one; that the practice should be regulated ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... marvelous like one of those old romaunts my kinswoman Barbara used to tell over to me and the dear lass that's gone. There now—and thou hadst not this matter in hand, I'd wive thee to Barbara Standish—'t is the best wench alive, I do believe, and full of quip, and crank as a jest book." ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... somewhat impatient. He really fancied that Forbes was trifling with him. Indeed, a queer doubt of the man's complete sanity now peeped up in him. Forbes was regarded as a crank by a large section of the public on account of his peace propaganda; if that opinion were justified why should he not be eccentric in ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... the limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... mental suggestion. So we stopped still at the cross-roads and sang hoarsely in the rain and darkness like disconsolate frogs. The starter refused to work when we wanted to go on again and Nyoda had to get out in the mud and crank the engine. ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... The iron crank that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... in one o' the heving peepers, they sez—that the people wot's missin' hev been carted off in aeroplanes by some o' the other religionists wot wanted to git rid o' them, an' that the crank ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... floor if any speck of dust or crumbs could be seen there. Every rung of every chair must be gone over, though ever so clean; every article put up or put out of the way; Miss Fortune made the most of the little province of housekeeping that was left her; and a fluttering tape escaping through the crank of the door would have put her whole spirit topsy-turvy. When all was to her mind, and not before, she would have her breakfast. Only gruel and biscuit, or toast and tea, or some such trifle, but Ellen must prepare it, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... remain, more or less, until five. He would do that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... yourse'f to me things would be different. I never did hold with a woman killin' herse'f with hard work. My first and second had everything that they could wish for, and I was good and ready to do more any time they named what it was. I've got a crank churn. None of these old back-breaking, up-and-down dashers for me. I hired a woman whenever my wife said the word. I don't think either of mine ever killed a chicken or cut a stick of firewood from the time they walked ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This is, no doubt, quite ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... great work of any sort which owes nothing to the historic guild which does that sort of work? Is there one great man in history who gave to the future without getting anything from the past? The bare scientific fact is that no man escapes the tuition of society. The crank does not escape. The freak does not escape. They miss the highest traditions of society only to become victims of lower traditions. Whether such a man have genius or the illusion of genius, it is his tragic fate to have the best that he ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... who was promised a subscription of one thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that he might be directed to some one able ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... broad, open flight of steps, from the main floor above, into it. Here, too, should stand the stone slabs, where the butter is worked, and the churns, to be driven by hand, or water, or animal power, as the two latter may be provided, and introduced into the building by belt, shaft, or crank. If running water can be brought on to the milk-shelves, from a higher level, which, for this purpose, should have curbs two or three inches high on their sides, it can flow in a constant gentle current over them, among the pans, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any one ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... the outside of the cylinder. Two 1/8-inch holes are drilled in this piece as shown in the drawing. The hole at the top is the steam entrance and exhaust for the engine; that is, when the cylinder is at one side steam enters this hole, and when the crank throws the cylinder over to the other side steam leaves through the same hole after having expanded in the cylinder. This cylinder block is soldered to the piston as shown in Fig. 56. The pivot upon which the cylinder swings ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... similar field open in Oude when Government interposes in behalf of the suffering people, and we might prepare for it by converting the Martiniere into a similar school or college. The committee has just expressed to you a hope that Mr. Crank, the officiating principal, may be able to pass an examination in the native languages. This hope can never be realised; and if he does I shall have to record my opinion that he is otherwise unfitted. The power of nominating a principal rests entirely with the trustees; and if ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... to a close when young Johnny Eyre came sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. "Are you at work yet, Lavender?" he said. "I never saw such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... can marry unless he and his bride-elect can show that they will have over a certain income to live upon. In a republican army like ours no man ought to be commissioned unless he will agree to live on less than a fixed amount for each successive grade." They called him "Crank Cranston" in the Eleventh for quite a while, but without affecting in the faintest degree his sturdy stand. Margaret's gowns continued simple and inexpensive, and their mode of living modest as any subaltern's, and many women spoke of them as "close" and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... way he is not a crank," said Mrs. Cristie; "you can't turn him. When he has made up his mind about anything, that matter is settled and fixed just as if it were screwed ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... removed what power would prevent the atheists from producing distinctly anti-Christian plays which might very well cause riots, which certainly would prove a serious counterblast, if discreetly handled, to the efforts of the Church and Stage enthusiasts. One can conceive every kind of crank with money producing a play to advocate his ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... the seed before curing; it is much lighter to handle, and less bulky. It may be done then, or in winter, as you prefer. The seed is removed on a cylinder eighteen inches long, and two and a half feet in diameter, having two hundred wrought nails with their points projecting. It is turned by a crank, like a fanning mill. The corn is held in a convenient handful, like flax on a hatchel. Where large quantities are to be cleaned of the seed, power is used to turn the machine. Ground or boiled, the seed makes ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stimulate him to renewed exertions as it did when he began his career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment to-morrow. The public demands snappy ball, and ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... text was as innocent as a baby: 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.' And when he began in the usual way, the dear old goodies in glasses thought he had been wound up like the musical box and had just turned on the crank, so they cuddled in comfortably for forty winks before the anthem. There were two natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections swayed it, and all the rest of the good old change-for-sixpence-and-a-ha'penny-out, you know. But the lesson ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow came drifting ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... of it," Cressler went on, heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes, I know I am a crank on speculating. I'm going to preach a little if you'll let me. I've been a speculator myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am talking about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows themselves, the gamblers—well, call them speculators, if you like. Oh, the fine, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... these days," said Beale cryptically. "I can tell you something else, gentlemen, and this is more of a suspicion than a certainty, that there is not a crank scientist who has ever gone under through drink or crime in the whole of this country, aye, and America and France, too, that isn't working for him. And now, gentlemen, if ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound of ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... turnip fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard bough. He now limits his aspirations to hares and pheasants, and too probably once in his life 'hits the keeper into the river,' and reconsiders himself for a while over a crank in Winchester gaol. Well, he has his faults, and I have mine. But he is a thoroughly good fellow nevertheless. Civil, contented, industrious, and often very handsome; a far shrewder fellow too—owing to his dash of wild ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 'But she is a crank, though!' said Louie. 'Why, if you make free with her things a bit, or if you call 'em by the wrong names, she'll fly at you! How's anybody to know ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... the platform moves to its position. All that is necessary in the construction of this part of the work is to make a set of ways, and a sliding platform that will run with ease from one side of the stage to the other. A rope attached to the platform, and fastened to a crank below the stage, will propel the Goddess to her position. The ways and platform can be hidden from view by a strip of board, painted to imitate the floor of the room. A small quantity of the whitish-blue fire may be burned near the spot where the Goddess appears. The light should be very dim, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... front of the empty hearth, And he neither ate nor drank. In three days they found him, dead and cold, And they said: "What a queer old crank!" ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... The advantage of this weapon over the steel crossbow (used by the Genoese) lay in the fact that it could be discharged much more rapidly, the latter being a cumbrous affair, which had to be wound up with a crank for each shot. Hence the English long bow was to that age what the revolver is to ours. It sent an arrow with such force that only the best armor could withstand it. The French peasantry at that ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... steam-navigation from the State of New York. Fulton took out two patents for his invention; but unfortunately they were not adequate to his protection, for they covered only the application of the steam-engine to the turning of a crank in producing the rotary motion of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... wind got round to N. and there was no appearance of its abating. At eight, the captain well satisfied that she was very crank and ought to have had more ballast, agreed to make for Bacon Island Road, in North Carolina; and in the very act of wearing her, a sudden gust of wind laid her down on her beam-end, and she never rose again!—At ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Number Seven interrupted me by calling out, "Give us some of those cranks' letters. A crank is a man who does his own thinking. I had a relation who was called a crank. I believe I have been spoken of as one myself. That is what you have to expect if you invent anything that puts an old machine out of fashion, or solve a problem that has puzzled all the world up to your ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... time we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved to be mockeries. Greek Art crushed to the dust by Gothic bludgeons. Dreams ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the drum Hiram passed two lengths of Number 9 wire through large screweyes, making a double loop into which the hook of a light timber chain would easily catch. Into one end of the drum he drove a headless spike, upon which the hand-crank of the grindstone fitted, and was ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Both vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can show you ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with a crank-case enclosed in an outer case in which a vacuum had been created—on the principle of the bottles which keep liquids cold or warm. In this instance the vacuum served to keep the oil in the crank-case, which was poured in warm, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... a barrow-load of the smoulder," said Uncle Ben to Carfax, "and let them work the crank, for John to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... glad to do it, just for the sake of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... startling thing one can do to attract attention. It was the fact that I do NOT advertise that drew you here. And everyone who comes here thinks he has discovered the place himself. He goes and tells his friends about the book asylum run by a crank and a lunatic, and they come here in turn to see what it ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... get a word out of him. He's a Socialist and a crank, you know, and you'd be surprised how ugly some of them fellows can be. As soon as I get the story complete I'll report to you, but meantime there's no ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ran toward ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... that," she agreed listlessly. "Mine isn't. It works like a cinema camera; I've only to turn the crank the other way to be looking ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable. If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming of aluminum and barium peroxide to start it off. The barium ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... eastern slope of Quereau is a very rocky piece of ground full of "trees" (corals) in 250 fathoms. This is a good halibut ground although it is almost impossible to haul the gear by hand and the use of the "gurdy" (a roller turned by a crank and fastened to the dory's bow for winding up the trawl) becomes necessary. Occasional fares of halibut are taken on and about the Rocky Bottom in 20 to 25 fathoms from ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... a connoisseur. Occasionally, when a sparrow hopped in his direction, he would make a sudden spring, and the bird would fly away to the other side of the lawn. I had never seen Edwin catch a sparrow. I believe they looked on him as a bit of a crank, and humoured him by coming within springing distance, just to keep him amused. Dashing young cock-sparrows would show off before their particular hen-sparrows, and earn a cheap reputation for dare-devilry by going within so many years of Edwin's lair, and then darting away. Bob was ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... sailor-boy, and to make them comfortable with the cash. Unfortunately, as I passed through Philadelphia, I went with some wild fellows to the theatre—to so many the gateway to hell—and having grog enough aboard to make me pretty crank and foolish, I soon found myself in the third tier among the painted fire-ships; and as the proverb says, "When the wine is in, the wit is out," so I was led as the simple one of Scripture, "like an ox to the slaughter." Truly, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... auditorium has brought me to the conclusion that the public there may be loosely divided into three classes—leaving out reporters of fashionable intelligence, dressmakers in search of ideas, and the lady inhabitants of “Crank Alley” (as a certain corner of the orchestra is called), who sit in perpetual ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... many cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... result. He tried it again with equal futility—then, going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all right. He tried the crank again—the engine, like some cold, dead thing, refused ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all his attacks, served to win for him the submissive ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... gauntlet of pseudo-designers, crank inventors, press "experts," and politicians; of manufacturers keen on cheap work and large profits; of poor pilots who had funked it, and good pilots who had expected too much of it. Thousands of pounds had been wasted on it, many had gone bankrupt over it, and others ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... discovered that we were intended to be a sort of wild beast. The wonder to me is that 'e didn't go out 'unting chickens with a club, and bring 'em 'ome and eat 'em on the mat without any further fuss. For drink it would be boiling water that burnt my fingers merely 'andling the glass. Then some other crank came out with the information that every other crank was wrong—which, taken by itself, sounds natural enough—that meat was fatal to the 'uman system. Upon that 'e becomes all at once a raging, tearing vegetarian, and trouble enough I 'ad learning twenty different ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... discussed the letters which poured in upon them from theatrical managers, Wild West shows, music halls, and other similar enterprises, and from romantic girls and shrewd photographers, and every other conceivable kind of crank. The offers of the music halls Jack was inclined to consider worth while. "He'd be a great success there, or as a dead-shot in a Wild West show. They ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... short rope spliced round a thimble in the eye of the bell-crank, with a double wall-knot ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the hissing steam as it rushed through the cylinders, and without knowing what was going to happen next,—whether or not the boiler would explode, and the deck be torn up beneath me,—I waited in feverish anxiety for the result. Then I heard the splash of the wheels; the crank turned, rumbled, and jarred on its centre, but went over, and continued to turn. The Adieno moved, and the motion sent a thrill through my whole being. It was fortunate for us that she lay at the pier ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... use asking me hypocritical questions, Rashkin?" Abe replied. "Mawruss would no more touch it as I would. You don't know what a crank I got it for a partner, Rashkin. If I would just hint that I wanted to buy real estate, y'understand, that feller would go all up in the air. And even if he would buy it with me yet, and we should lose maybe a little money, I would never ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... 1842, the inventor made another effort to obtain the help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph. Morse had come to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury. The Bill passed the House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, some of the representatives ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... plan to move the boat in an easier way than by poles. He whittled out the model of a tiny paddle wheel. Then he went to work with Chris Gumpf, and they made a larger paddle wheel. This they set up in the fishing boat. The wheel was turned by the boys with a crank. They did not use ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... broad, made of heavy black velvet. This velvet belt moves over two cylinders at the front and the rear ends of the apparatus. In the centre of the belt is a window 4-1/2 inches wide and 2-1/2 inches high. If the front cylinder is turned by a metal crank, the velvet belt passes over the glass plate and the little window opening moves over the card with its track and figures. The whole breadth of the card, with its central track and its 4 units on either side, is visible through it over an area ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... the warning cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the lake, but they never seemed to catch anything beyond eels, turtles, sun-fish, and a few two inch bass, the name of which they did not even know, and I got into their bad graces by telling them they ought to return the bass into the lake. They thought I was a crank, in fact one of them told me so. These men were salt-water sports, and one man who came there from Newark, N. J., was actually baiting with shrimps for fresh-water bass and had no less than eight hooks upon his line, all baited with shrimps. This man also told me that there ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... says she won't marry me if she has to live with you. She's afraid of you. I told her you wouldn't interfere with her, but she wasn't satisfied. It's your own fault, Eunice. You've always been so queer and close that people think you're an awful crank. Victoria's young and lively, and you and she wouldn't get on at all. There isn't any question of turning you out. I'll build a little house for you somewhere, and you'll be a great deal better off there than you would be here. So ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the news of every-day life—the murders and accidents and political convulsions—but he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Pertell, and Ruth and Alice started the "business," or acting, called for. Russ was grinding away at the crank of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... over his victuals and eat them alone when he knows there's someone next door hungry. Did you ever notice when a man thinks he's a genius he lets his hair grow long and when a woman gets out of her place, to be something she oughtn't to be, she cuts her hair short. Every crank puts some kind of a brand on themselves. You don't have to talk to them to ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... said seemingly wrong. I'm for A. S. just one hundred per cent and would prefer to have it as right as possible. I don't like crank letter writing and would never have written this now if it hadn't been for several of the letters in the March issue that gave me a touch of hades under the collar. S'long. Maybe I'll write again sometime when I get some more "ham science" ideas.—William ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... to decide," says J. Bayard, "whether he was mentally unbalanced, or just plain crank. Comes from some absurd little hole out West, and has but one idea in his head,—to boom that place. Tried to pin a beastly button on me. Ah! I ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, my common sense ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... abstinence. Won't allow any literature with the least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... also call attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped to spit ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... perfect, and, with its suspensions, its elaborations, its gradual crescendos, its unerring conclusions, seems to carry the sheer beauty of expressiveness to the farthest conceivable point. Take, as one instance out of a multitude, this description of the crank who devotes his existence ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the spell of their singing raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... lanterns. "I wish the cows would stop a minute," said Nancy. "I can't seem to think with such a racket going on." Eben turned on the spark of the engine. He had done it before, but it seemed different to do it when his father wasn't standing near. Then he took the crank. "I hope she doesn't kick tonight," he wished fervently. He planted his feet firmly and grasped the handle! Round he swung it, around and around. Only the bellowing of the cows answered. He began again. Round he swung the handle; around and around. "Chug, chug-a-chug, chug, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... when he told me that, for I had been imagining that he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me over to some stupid crank which he would call ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the Oxford don's opinions would lead him to blow up the house; because the Oxford don is an English type. Suppose somebody said, 'Do let me bring old Colonel Robinson down for the week-end; he's a bit of a crank but quite interesting.' We should not anticipate the colonel running amuck with a carving-knife and offering up human sacrifice in the garden; for these are not among the daily habits of an old English colonel; and because ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... was dark and cold; but the poor man bade his wife wait and see what would happen. He placed the little hand-mill on the table, and began to turn the crank. First, out there came some grand, lighted wax candles, and a fire on the hearth, and a porridge-pot boiling over it, because in his mind he said they should come first. Then he ground out a tablecloth, and dishes, and spoons, and knives and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... called on the over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... their villages near the sea beaches or the rivers and lakes. In their canoes they would paddle as far as twelve miles from land. Amongst other fish they caught sharks, killing them before they hauled them into the crank canoes; or, joining forces, they would sweep some estuary with drag nets, and, with much yelling and splashing, drive the fish into a shallow corner. There with club and spear dog-fish and smooth-hound would be done to death ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... be. A mystery to Sweetwater's eyes, and like all mysteries, interesting. For what purpose had it been built and why this isolation? It was too flimsy for a reservoir and too expensive for the wild freak of a crank. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... for their alky-powered jeep and wrecked it and them, how when our haul turned out to be unexpectedly big the four of us left from the kill chummied up and padded down together and amused each other for a while and played games, you might say. Why, at one point we even had an old crank phonograph going and read some books. And, of course, how when the loot gave out and the fun wore off, we had our murder party and I survived along with, I think, a bugger named Jerry—at any rate, he was gone when the blood stopped spurting, and I'd had ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... it!" exclaimed Bess. "I am sure I want to. Let's get going again, if we are to make the Woodbine Way in time to plan the tour. I'm just crazy about the trip," and the enthusiastic girl expended some of her pent-up energies on the crank at ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... only said, dismissing the question with the national gesture. After a moment he added: "I shall tell you something that is strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like the banker say, 'Thees Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a crank, a lunatico;' but it ees a FACT; ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... boats, or on floating spars, but only to meet worse hardships than on sea; for the savages on the coast, aided by your gallant Englishmen, fell on us, defenceless as we were, stripped us of all we had, and drove us from the shore in an old crank of a galleon, which, if it carried us thus far, did so only by the grace of God and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... called a crank. This contrivance does not differ in principle from the common winch, or from the key which winds a clock. The motion of the piston-rod backwards and forwards turns such a winch. At each termination of the stroke, the piston, from the peculiar position of the crank, loses all power over it. To remedy this two cylinders and pistons are generally used, which act upon two cranks placed on the axle at right angles to each other; so that at the moment when one of the pistons is at the extremity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... a day's run to Melbourne, the screw slipped off the tail-shaft, and as it went to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the racing engine went to pieces. This might not have prevented the steamer's reaching port under sail or tow, but the forward crank-pin broke, and the piston drove up with nothing to stop it, fetched up with a mighty jolt against the cylinder head—which held—and disconnected most of the bolts which bound the cylinder to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... equipped. Eastwick and Harrison, it is true, favored an eccentric drive for feed pumps, but they mounted the eccentric on the crankpin of the rear driving wheel and thus produced in effect a half-stroke pump. This was not an unusual arrangement, though a small crank was usually employed in place of the eccentric. The full-stroke crosshead pump with which the Jenny Lind (fig. 22) is equipped, was of course the most common style of feed pump used in this country ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... promotion to the Admiralty, and to place him in charge of the prize to take home. She was the Aigle, privateer, mounting sixteen guns, evidently very fast, but very low, with taut masts, square yards, and seemingly very crank. Most of the prisoners were removed, and Mr Noakes got leave to pick a crew. He chose, among others, Reuben Cole and Paul Gerrard. The surgeon advised that Devereux and O'Grady should go home, and Alphonse ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... delight, I found that it was just buoyant enough to support my weight, and that by carefully seating myself cross-legged, tailor fashion, in the exact centre of it, I could keep it right side up. I next experimented with my makeshift paddle, and although the hatch proved so terribly crank that I was several times in imminent danger of capsizing by the mere sway of my body from side to side, I presently acquired the trick of keeping my balance, and found, to my great delight, that I could actually progress, although only slowly and at ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Jarley Bangs had but little more to say. The boys had left the touring car, and now the man jumped inside, saw to it that everything was in order, and then asked Spouter to crank up for him. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... TELEPHONES ARE RUNG. The old-fashioned telephones, still often used in the country, have little cranks that you turn to ring for central. The crank turns a coil of wire between the poles of the magnet and generates the electricity for ringing the bell. These little dynamos, like those in automobiles, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... I sat in the lantern, the great brazen frame of polished reflectors swung around, once in each minute, within a few inches of the side. Beneath was the projecting handle of a crank, or lever, by pressing upon which the revolution could be instantly arrested. Stooping down, I could sit at ease, with my head clear from any contact with the lamps, and in that position could have the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;—the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,—with a sort of little crank.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... is, What would the necessary alterations cost? Much, of course, would depend on what was done. A very large part of the present screw engines could be used. For example, the crank shaft, some 2 feet in diameter, is a splendid job, and no difficulty need be met with in working in nearly the whole of the present framing. If the engines were only to be compound, two of the existing cylinders might be left ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... have remonstrated against the influence of this second nature, both savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. Rabourdin was, therefore, fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... is," said the woman. "My husband, he was a crank for buyin' fine cattle. I used to tell him he was wastin' his money, but he would do it. Same ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... with so many guns. No; our luck was in to-day, when they discovered us instead of Twine's squadron. We shall make something out of the 20th. They are the right stuff: that squadron went for that rise to-day in splendid style. The Boer cannot stand galloping. I may be a crank—they believe that I am one at Pretoria—but I am convinced that I have discovered the true Mounted Infantry formation for the sort of fighting that we are now experiencing out here. If you find your enemy in any position that you can gallop over, without ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... good results, and save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This device, one style of which is shown ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... had recovered himself, and now believed he had to do with a crank or some person under the influence of liquor, again barred the way. Trying to push the unwelcome visitor out, he ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... suitable vessel. The log states she was a little crank, but an admirable sea-boat. Her rate of sailing was of course, with her build, slow, but her strength and flat bottom stood her in good stead when she made acquaintance with ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... with which LOUIS NAPOLEON has already commenced to astonish the Prussians, suggests congenial work for the numerous performers on the barrel-organ with which our large cities are at all times infested. It is worked with a crank, exactly after the manner of the too-familiar street instrument; and might easily be fitted with a musical cylinder arranged for the performance of the most inspiriting and patriotic French airs. Should ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... that you might doubt my statistics, and might consider me merely another 'crank,' so I placed my figures before Dr. Sundwall, Professor of Hygiene of the University of Michigan, and asked him to check their correctness. Dr. Sundwall and Dr. Newburgh recalculated the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate, the entrepreneurs of discord—every crank in the world had something to say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a matter of fact, the United States ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... as the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again. Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United States man-o'-war Housatonic, but at the same time ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic press ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... feet in the wringer and turned the crank. It was hard work getting Raggedy through the wringer, but Dinah was very strong. And of course it happened! Raggedy Ann came through ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... exactly what is the matter. Their bellwether is an old deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a forty-horsepower crank." ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his council, and not divulge the secrets of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... be over at Epinal the day after tomorrow,' he said as they left the mill, 'and I'll see if I can get the new crank there.' ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... A sand crank is a fissure in the horn of the wall of the foot. These fissures are quite narrow, and, as a general rule, they follow the direction of the horny fibers. They may occur on any part of the wall, but ordinarily are ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... weight seemed to press on his head, and a red mist hung over everything as he walked blindly on. At a point which he had just reached, a heap of rough boxes obstructed his path, and at that moment a huge crank swung its iron arm over the edge of the dock, a heavy weight was hanging from it, and exactly as Cardo passed, it came with a horizontal movement against the back of his head with terrible force, throwing him forward insensible on the ground. The high pile of boxes had hidden the accident from the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... each revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture about two inches in diameter. The right humerus was fractured at the external condyle; there ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... turned by a crank, has been made to speak words, but nothing below a human being has been able to get thought from a written or printed page and convey it to others. To make the machine requires a vast amount of labor expended upon matter; to get the thought requires the awakening of a human spirit. The work ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk-maid sitting by her cow—this fortunate little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank; and, behold! every one of these small individuals started into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron, the soldier waved his glittering blade; ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... paper was next sanded by permitting its lower surface to pass over dry sand in a box standing on the floor. A workman rolled off the paper, and with his hand he strews sand on the upper surface. The rolling taking place on the edge of a table, by means of a crank, the excess ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling cream drowning ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... he has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome, and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure of turning a crank ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Ed turned the crank, an' there on the bank they squatted like bumps on a log. For acres around there wasn't a sound, not even the howl of a dog. When out of the horn there sudden was born such a marvellous elegant tone; ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... what you want—but you can't people—no, not even when you've helped to bring them into the world. No matter how straight they come at birth, they're all just as liable as not to take an inward crank and go crooked before the end." He looked thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the green table, and his face, beautiful with the wisdom of more than seventy years, was illumined by a smile which seemed ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... FREEZER.—Scald the can, the cover, and the dasher of the freezer; cool it before the mixture that is to be frozen is placed in it. Adjust the can carefully in the bucket; put in the dasher; pour in the mixture, cover; adjust the crank. Crush the ice for freezing by placing it in a strong bag and pounding it with a wooden mallet. Mix the ice with rock salt in the proportion given below. Then pour the ice and salt mixture around the can of the freezer. The ice and salt mixture should be higher around the can than ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... carefully educated man shall, like Mr. Pecksniff, squint at a sheet of paper, and that the results of that squint shall set a vast number of well-fed, contented operatives (they are ashamed to call them workmen) turning crank handles for ten hours a-day, bidding them keep what gifts and education they may have been born with for their—I was going to say leisure hours, but I don't know how to, for if I were to work ten hours a-day at ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... great interest, for both Joe and Tony were ambitious of knowing how to handle tools. One day he took hold of the coffee-mill, which some clumsy fellow had only half nailed up in the kitchen, so that, whenever the coffee was ground, whoever turned the crank was sure to bruise his knuckles against the wall. Mrs. Spangler and her daughters of course did all the grinding, and complained bitterly of the way the mill was fixed. Besides, it had become shockingly dull, so that it only cracked the grains, and thus gave them ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... does not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... had called there once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... can be made very simple, of two wooden rollers, fastened in a square frame, running against each other, and turned with a crank and cog-wheel. The rollers should be about nine inches in diameter, and set far enough apart to mash the berries, but not the seeds and stems. A very convenient apparatus, mill and press, is manufactured by Geiss & Brosius, Belleville, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... inaugurated a more scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a certain ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... a while, when he comes to visit us in Philadelphia, a few people call him a crank, because he lives out here and dresses like a settler; but I call ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... position. All that is necessary in the construction of this part of the work is to make a set of ways, and a sliding platform that will run with ease from one side of the stage to the other. A rope attached to the platform, and fastened to a crank below the stage, will propel the Goddess to her position. The ways and platform can be hidden from view by a strip of board, painted to imitate the floor of the room. A small quantity of the whitish-blue fire may be burned near the spot ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... to take it, madame, if I got it. My uncle of Provence has nothing to give me. He merely says—'My dear dauphin, if Europe knocks Napoleon down, will you kindly take hold of a crank which is too heavy for me, and turn it for the good of the Bourbons? We may thus keep the royal machine ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... four stories below I heard something—music. I raised the sash and looked out. An Italian had halted in front of the boarding house with a grind organ and he was turning the crank and the thing was playing. It wasn't much of a grind organ as grind organs go. I judge it must have been the original grind organ that played with Booth and Barrett. It had lost a lot of its most important works, and it had the asthma and the heaves and one thing and another the ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was a crank, at least so many people said; a few thought he was a wonderful person: these were mostly children, old women, and people not in the directory, and persons not in the directory do not count for much. He was in fact a singular fellow. It was all natural enough to him; he ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... if you have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What do ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... imitate English poetry, German sentimentality or some other imported product. It came also with good grace from one whose life was noble, but it had a weak or dangerous or grotesque side that Emerson overlooked. Thus, every crank or fanatic or rainbow-chaser is also an individualist, and most of them believe as strongly as Emerson in the Over-Soul. The only difference is that they do not have his sense or integrity or humor to balance their individualism. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green coat. From cigarette tip to cigarette tip the fraternal ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and you ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... paralysed by its owner's efforts at parody. It had been jerking and bucking like a playful mustang for some time past, and behaving in an altogether curious manner, but now it was stiller than the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro then got out and had a go at the crank. No good. Thereafter, the two made a thorough examination of the beast, but poking and prying into all its secret places booted them nothing. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... But that doesn't change the distinction between men and animals. He is your son, madam—and he's going to be mine. But, fine boy as he is, I call him a crank ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... who made it knew his business; therefore he is a student of this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a—what you call—crank like myself, or a destroying criminal—that is, an anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he asked, without raising his eyes; but ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... our lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... local doctor, a most extraordinary individual with a crank. He had started a Montenegrin temperance society, called the "Band of Good Hope." At present, I believe, the three hundred odd members were all from Kolasin, and it was meeting with very little encouragement. The cultivation of plums for the manufacture of spirits is a staple ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... a word out of him. He's a Socialist and a crank, you know, and you'd be surprised how ugly some of them fellows can be. As soon as I get the story complete I'll report to you, but meantime there's no ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... I don't care whether it's in a saloon or a church or pickling snakes in a museum. I tell you, Tommy's case has made a prohibition crank of me. Talk about it's being a man's lack of will and moral strength—bah! I never knew a man who had more will power than he, or who was more on the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... In the phrase of his religion he 'turned the wheel of the law.' One of his titles is Chakravartin, which means 'the turner of a wheel.' The doctrines of the Buddha are written out on a wheel, which is set in motion with a crank, though it is sometimes operated by horse-power; and such machines are sometimes seen in front of religious houses in Thibet, and the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... to get out and crank the engines, which he calmly proceeded to do. The man who had called himself Algernon Tobey perceived his intention and urged his pony to the front ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Research people about my being asked to be President, because I should certainly feel compelled to decline it. I never go, willingly, to London now, and should never attend meetings, so pray say no more about it. Besides, I am so widely known as a "crank" and a "faddist" that my being President would injure the Society, as much as Lord Rayleigh would benefit it, so pray do not put any obstacle in his way, though of course there is no necessity to ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... girls in our State, and received an appropriation from the New York legislature on the recommendation of the Governor, De Witt Clinton. Mr. Sage gave us a description that night of the time his office was blown up with dynamite thrown by a crank, and of his narrow escape. We found the great financier and his wife in an unpretending cottage with a fine outlook on the sea. Though possessed of great wealth they set a good example of simplicity and economy, which many extravagant people ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the barkeeper. "He's the most cantankerous crank in the township. And say, let me give you a pointer. If the subject of 1812 comes up,—the war, you know,—you'd better admit that we got thrashed out of our boots; that is, if you want to get along with Hiram. He hates ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... braving the elements foolishly. Not that the section-boss esteemed his aged guest. On the contrary, Dallas' evident interest in the stranger had stirred the unnatural jealousy in her father's wizen brain. Already, he hated David Bond, and had set him down for a crank. But Dallas needed a lesson. It was all very well for her to do the outside duties as if she were a man; that did not privilege her to ride roughshod over his opinions, or to rule affairs in general with a heavy hand. However, he found no opportunity for questions. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's whut ails him! Fur one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank on the street and put a civil question to ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... I felt that I ought not to keep such a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed to, one was a ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... revolving axle, called a crank. This contrivance does not differ in principle from the common winch, or from the key which winds a clock. The motion of the piston-rod backwards and forwards turns such a winch. At each termination of the stroke, the piston, from the peculiar position of the crank, loses all power over it. To remedy this two cylinders and pistons are generally used, which act upon two cranks placed on the axle at right angles to each other; so that at the moment when one of the pistons is at the extremity of its stroke, and loses its power upon one crank, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... even a youth then, but he has been strong since childhood. When he was twelve, he used to rest a crossbow on the ground, press it against his chest and turn the crank. None of the Englishmen, whom I have seen in ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... with four little slave girls who were in it. In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the berths where the better-class passengers are generally ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... such a wheel; it was turned by a crank; it did the work perfectly; so, in the year 1793, he had invented the machine ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank and broke ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again. Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United States man-o'-war Housatonic, but at the same time went down, herself, drowning or suffocating all on ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ran toward the standing truck. ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... her to him, he buried his face in her neck, mumbling her name over and over: and neither of them knew that he was rapturously kissing the coonskin collar of his own greatcoat. The launchman, motor crank in hand, paused, staring; he was still open-mouthed when Dan, catching sight ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... packages, Kennedy took three black boxes. They seemed to have an opening in front, while at one side was a little crank, which, as nearly as I could make out, was operated by clockwork released by an electric contact. His first problem seemed to be to dispose the boxes to the best advantage at various angles about the counter where the Kimberley ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... yellowish individual, turning the crank, "look, Nor Juan, how with merely my own strength I can raise and lower the great stone. It's so well arranged that at will I can regulate the rise or fall inch by inch, so that a man in the trench can easily fit the stones ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... rarely," said Alice, who had not heard her sister's last burst of eloquence, and whose thoughts were still running on her nephew, and his various talents. "He's found out summut about a crank or tank, I forget rightly which it is, but th' master's made him foreman, and he all the while turning off hands; but he said he could na part wi' Jem, nohow. He's good wage now; I tell him he'll be thinking of marrying soon, and he ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ownership. This was called the Dred Scott decision, and did much to irritate Abolitionists like John Brown, whose soul as this book goes to press is said to be marching on. Brown was a Kansas man with a mission and massive whiskers. He would be called now a crank; but his action in seizing a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry and declaring the slaves free was regarded by the South as thoroughly representative ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... what? Simply that they will not have her in these preachy domestic parts, that's all. Every time she tries it she gets a 'knock.' I complain, I advise to the contrary. Does it do any good? No. She must chance it, all to please this crank, this reformer." ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... "crank in," and the "kiss of the Jack," All—save, as you say, that darned bend in the back— About the old game is delightful. We thank you for "trolling the bowl" once again, Ah! it were a pleasure to play it with PAYN— (By Jove, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... man of the Ford if his engine had suffered. No, he thought it was all right; he would crank up and see. Good! She started off with a clutter, and he asked me if I wanted to ride. I had not far to go, but gladly accepted, for I was rather struck with this young fellow's grip on himself. It took self-control to avoid making the air blue with abuse. The way that ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... one there was a dreamer born, Who with a mission to fulfill Had left the muses' haunts to turn The crank ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... printer. There was an old damaged press, on which Franklin exercised his skill in repairing, and a small worn-out font of type. Keimer himself, who seems to have been a grotesque compound of knave and crank, was engaged at once in composing and setting up in type an elegy on the death of a prominent young man. He is the only poet to my knowledge who ever used the composition-stick instead of a pen for the vehicle of inspiration. The elegy may still be read in Duyckinck's ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... the talk of the flight across the Atlantic, a means has been found to allow the aviator, or some helper with him, to start the engine once it has stalled in midair. This is accomplished by means of a sprocket chain gear and a crank connected to the engine shaft. The turning handle is ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... she comes coughin' up in that old one-lung machine,—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin' natural, jest restin'. I got sick and tired. The next time up coughs that crippled-up ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... seers and "Orphic" utterances; the air was full of the enthusiasm of humanity and thick with philanthropic projects and plans for the regeneration of the universe. The figure of the wild-eyed, long-haired reformer—the man with a panacea—the "crank" of our later terminology—became a familiar one. He abounded at non-resistance conventions and meetings of universal peace societies and of woman's rights associations. The movement had its grotesque aspects, which Lowell has described in his essay on Thoreau. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... became a man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... What a particular, hard-to-please old crank!" said the young thing who served him after he, the traveling ray of sunshine, had departed with the most exclusive box of paper in the shop under ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any one ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... unwelcome, it does not stimulate him to renewed exertions as it did when he began his career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment to-morrow. The public demands snappy ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... idea," said Harding. "Clarke's known as a crank, and he takes advantage of it to cover his doings. At first, I thought of the whisky trade; but taking up prohibited liquor would hardly be worth his while; though I dare say he has some with him to ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... who can turn a crank can manage a street organ. The arrangement of the instrument being entirely automatic, no knowledge of music on the part of the grinder is necessary. Another class of street minstrels are required to possess a certain amount of musical skill in order to perform creditably. These are the strolling ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... give him an audience, for he has such strong letters from the American Government that one might imagine he was a special envoy sent to offer armed intervention and to end the war. But in my opinion he is merely a crank or an impostor, who has succeeded in obtaining the support and ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... drew near he found this house and the other houses combined in a conspiracy of silence against the musical addresses of a swarthy foreigner who had a foothold a yard beyond the curbstone, and who was turning the crank of his instrument with all the rapid regularity of the thorough mechanician. The whole street rang. "'Ah, perche non posso odiarti!'" hummed Truesdale in unison with the organ, as the performer, after an intricate cadenza, returned to the original theme. "That's the ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... understand where she wanted to go. When finally he grasped the address, he tapped his most conspicuous feature with a horny finger, and, his engine having by this time stopped, descended with creaks and groans to crank it up. He was so long over the operation that she began to be alarmed. However, he was not drunk, only senile. Of the two, his taxi was far worse—rickety, spavined, with every evidence of decrepitude. It started with a jerk which threw its occupant ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... needed for a brilliant society woman. He was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the pump, F, is ignited; the expansion of the gases produced by the combustion acts upon the bottom of the piston, B, forcing it to the top of the cylinder, and thus, by intermediate mechanism, causing the crank shaft to revolve. By the same stroke a charge of air is forced by the compressor, C, into the receiver through the pipe, R. The cylinder is, of course, single acting, and on the down stroke of the piston, B—which falls by its own weight and the momentum of the fly wheel—the exhaust ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... and then turning about let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get back over ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Corliss valves and Inglis & Spencer's automatic Corliss valve expansion gear. Referring to the general drawing of the engine, it will be seen that the cylinder is bolted directly to the end of the massive cast iron frame, and the piston coupled direct to the crank by the steel piston rod and crosshead and the connecting rod. The connecting rod is 28 feet long center to center, and 12 inches diameter at the middle. The crankshaft is made of forged Bolton steel, and is 21 inches diameter at the part where the fly-wheel is carried. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in Cape Town, and he fixed things so's I could lie up a piece in his house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged into the lung—here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He said the British soldier ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... machine. Needless to say, the voice of the inventor, however imperfectly reproduced, was hailed with great enthusiasm, which those who witnessed will long remember. In this machine, the barrel was fitted with a crank, and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... intellectual effort can we of to-day realise the chimerical stamp which the proposition of Columbus bore, and which served to mark him as an adventurer and a visionary or, to use a forceful Americanism, as a "crank" in the estimation of sensible, practical people. He has himself recorded that he believed he was acting under inspiration and was merely fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah. The council of cosmographers summoned by the Queen's confessor, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... increased the popularity of the automobile, but the motor car still had a great drawback-cranking. Owing to the peculiar features of a gasoline engine, it must first be put in motion by some external power before it will begin to operate under its own power. This made it necessary for the driver to "crank" the engine, or start it moving, by means of a handle attached to the engine shaft. Cranking a large engine is difficult, especially if it is cold, and often results in tired muscles, and soiled clothes and tempers. It also made it impossible for the average woman to drive a car because she ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... exasperating to a degree. There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp lookout for cranks, the arrangement ought by rights to have been for fifty policemen outside ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... was Cora's answer, as she stooped over to crank the motor. It started on the first turn and soon the Chelton was chugging a course over the sun-lit waters of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... at an angle the wrong way, and set the worm shaft at an angle double the amount, rather than at 90 deg.. Such a worm gear will, I fancy, outwear a dozen of the scientific sort. It would likely be found a convenience to have the head of a planing machine traverse by a handle or crank attached to itself, so it could be operated like the slide rest of a lathe, rather than as is now the case from the end of the cross head. The principle should be to have things convenient, even at an additional cost. Anything more than a single motion to lock the cross head ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... main floor above, into it. Here, too, should stand the stone slabs, where the butter is worked, and the churns, to be driven by hand, or water, or animal power, as the two latter may be provided, and introduced into the building by belt, shaft, or crank. If running water can be brought on to the milk-shelves, from a higher level, which, for this purpose, should have curbs two or three inches high on their sides, it can flow in a constant gentle current over them, among the pans, from a ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... placed his other passengers in the tonneau, and was trying to crank the motor. Blount was thankful that the new Italian engine was refusing to take the spark. The delay was giving him an added moment ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, entitled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circumstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with it is an ethical one; that the practice ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... tower. The pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens yet longer to hold out, reminding them that with Leyden all Holland must ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the rudder is communicated to the steam cut-off by means of the shaft, C, crank, J, rod, K, crank, I, and the hollow valve spindle. When the tiller is amidships the valve handle, H, is at right angles to the cylinder, and parallel to the tiller. By moving the lever, H, to right or left, steam is admitted to one end or the other of the cylinder, which, acting ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... convulsions—but he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it may be drawn off by opening a trap door. The newly formed aluminum oxide (alumina) floats as slag on top. The applications of the thermit process are innumerable. If, for instance, it is desired to mend a broken rail or crank shaft without moving it from its place, the two ends are brought together or fixed at the proper distance apart. A crucible filled with the thermit mixture is set up above the joint and the thermit ignited with a priming of aluminum and barium peroxide to start ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... map of it right here?" said Elam, tapping his ditty-bag, which was hung across his chest under his shirt. "I am nearer to it now than I have been before, and you had better talk to those who have made fun of me all these years. 'Oh, Elam's a crank; let him alone, and when he gets tired looking for the nugget he'll come to his senses and go to herding cattle.' That's what the folks around here have had to say about me ever since I can remember; but I'll get the start of all of them, you ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... the Countess he had walked down to the garage and stayed until dinner-time. What he had been doing there he did not deign to state; but I had a dim idea that when you went to call on a motor-car in its den, you spent hours on your back bolting nuts, or accelerating silencers, or putting the crank head (and incidentally your own) into an oil bath; and I supposed that Terry had been doing these things. When he returned on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, spending several hours on each occasion, I went on supposing the same; but when at nine ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... week of Selwood's secretaryship to Jacob Herapath. Herapath was a well-known man in London. He was a Member of Parliament, the owner of a sort of model estate of up-to-date flats, and something of a crank about such matters as ventilation, sanitation, and lighting. He himself, a bachelor, lived in one of the best houses in Portman Square; when he engaged Selwood as his secretary he made him take a convenient set of rooms in Upper Seymour ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... of the right hand was crushed by the crank of a steam-engine. The proximal phalanx was completely shivered; its fragments were removed, the cartilage of the proximal end of the distal phalanx, and also of the head of the metacarpal bone, were pared off with a strong knife. The digit was put up on a splint fully extended. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... which will secure him an interview during to-day. Here is that line. Norgate is a young man for whom I have a great friendship. I consider him possessed of unusual intelligence and many delightful gifts, but, like many others of us, he is a crank. You can listen with interest to anything he may have to say to you, unless he speaks of Germany. That's his weak point. On any other subject he is as sane as the best ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rhythmically forward and back, was a clockwork figure as mad as myself, but didactic and gibbering in his madness. Then the boat-hook he wielded with a circular sweep began to take grotesque shapes in my heated fancy; now it was the antenna of a groping insect, now the crank of a cripple's selfpropelled perambulator, now the alpenstock of a lunatic mountaineer, who sits in his chair and climbs and climbs to some phantom 'watershed'. At the back of such mind as was left me lodged two insistent thoughts: 'we must hurry on,' 'we are ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... sanded by permitting its lower surface to pass over dry sand in a box standing on the floor. A workman rolled off the paper, and with his hand he strews sand on the upper surface. The rolling taking place on the edge of a table, by means of a crank, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... psychological phenomena I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, brain atrophy ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... passed under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny. The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or crank journalist might entrap him into ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... instant, you can keep it up all day." Alas! it is just at this point that the fatal defect of Mr. Collins's mechanism appears. But for the artisan's hand, the complicated work would not start at all, and we perceive that, if he lifted it for a moment from the crank, the painfully contrived dream would drop to pieces, and the beautiful bad woman would come to a jerky stand-still in the midst of her most atrocious development. A perpetual literary motion is therefore out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... curious timidity, feeling a kind of awesomeness about every form in the room, he stepped softly to the bureau, applied its key, and following carefully the directions the earl had given him, for the lock was Italian, with more than one quip and crank and wanton wile about it, succeeded in opening it. He had no difficulty in finding its secret place, nor the packet concealed in it; but just as he laid his hands on it, he was aware of a swift passage along the floor without, past the door of the room, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... me!" said Rimrock with a guilty grin. "You're so smart you make me afraid. I'll crank her up, too—do you think that would help some? Huh, huh; ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... girls stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... know you're a crank from Crankville on some subjects. Let us have it for all you're worth. I'm ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the skipper. "You are right, George; it is high time for us to be off. You may make sail at once. Those brigs sail fairly well in moderate weather, but they are very crank, and I believe we can run away from them in such weather as this. Here is one of them hereaway now, who looks as though she would like to have a word with us. Give the little hooker all that she will bear, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the whine of a hand-organ. An armless beggar was turning the crank of an organ with his bare feet. The plateau was fairly alive with beggars, hopping about in the dust like fleas. Some were armless; others legless. They swung along at our heels on long, muscular arms, with leather on the ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... rod is attached to a long cast-iron crosshead, from which two bent connecting rods extend downward, the one to a crank, and the other to a crank-pin inserted in the flywheel. The connecting-rods now on this engine were supplied by Mr. Webb, the original ones—which they have been made to resemble as closely as possible—having been broken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... old crank!" she thought; but she answered civilly, and tried to identify the particular spot, as he seemed ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... of the "Nancy" turned and recognized the countryman whom he had called a "crank" ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... was the only son of Dr. Nancarrow, a man much respected in St. Ia, but whom Admiral Tresize regarded as a crank. For Dr. Nancarrow was a Quaker, and although he did not parade his faith, it was well known that he held fast by those principles for which the Society of Friends is known. For one thing, he hated war. To him it was utterly opposed to the religion which ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... he was sorry Professor Harmon had asked that old crank to help. Laurie didn't say 'old crank,' but I say it, and I mean it," continued Jerry vindictively. "Don't breathe it to anyone, though. It was a brotherly confidence and Hal would rave if ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... exercises which had become a second nature to him, or else defy London's unwritten law and brave London's mockery. He had not hesitated long. Physical fitness was his gospel. On the subject of exercise he was confessedly a crank. He decided ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... invented to save labor, but a number of these are in such common use, produce such good results, and save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This device, one style of which is shown in Fig. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... RUNG. The old-fashioned telephones, still often used in the country, have little cranks that you turn to ring for central. The crank turns a coil of wire between the poles of the magnet and generates the electricity for ringing the bell. These little dynamos, like those in automobiles, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... drawing-room. She spends all her time up in the attic bedroom reading the Bible and writing Christmas stories for children for the religious papers. We don't see her for weeks at a time, and actually forget she lives in this house. She's quite a religious crank, and you won't ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... computrons!" This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. 2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been developed based on ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... clothes, eradicating almost instantly every particle of dirt. We guarantee a wash can be done in the "1900" Machine in less than half the time required by any other washer. There is no bending, no hand-car motion, no turning of a crank worse than a grindstone, no backache, no headache, no standing on tired feet but work easily done by the aid of motor-springs and ball bearings, sitting in a comfortable position at the side ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... the gauntlet of pseudo-designers, crank inventors, press "experts," and politicians; of manufacturers keen on cheap work and large profits; of poor pilots who had funked it, and good pilots who had expected too much of it. Thousands of pounds had been wasted on it, many had gone bankrupt over it, and others ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... a perfect crank about keeping time as that grandfatherly clock of yours. It hasn't skipped a second in two centuries, I'll swear. You see, I was playing off the odd ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... out of the train, walking up toward the engine. About it were men and women, and the children saw a man with a black box on three legs grinding away at a crank. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... speeding down the street from the same direction as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was starting with the crank. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Meanwhile the Mississippi had passed, unseen and unseeing, in the smoke, and had herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. Thus unmanageable she drifted down within thirty yards of the batteries, and had to anchor below. Her loss was 6 killed and 21 wounded; the Kineo, though repeatedly ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... this time, and saw a strange sight. Alongside his boat was a cabin motor craft, and on the rear deck he could see gathered a number of men, women and girls. What took Joe's attention next was a queer oblong box, with a crank at one side, and a tube projecting from it, mounted on a tripod. Then, as his eyes became more accustomed to the light, Joe saw bending over him in ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... climbing over them and easing her at the bowline. Then, as we seized the next instant of the rhythm, and hauled her alongside, Peterson made a leap and went aboard her, and Williams scrambled back, once more, across the two huddled forms. I saw him wrench at the engine crank, and heard the spitting chug of the little motor. They fell off in the seaway, Peterson holding her with an oar as he could till the screws caught. Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of the beam of our search-light, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... indicated by Miss Belcher was a formidable-looking engine with an iron arm or rod terminating in a spoon-shaped socket, and worked by a contrivance of crank and chain. You placed your cricket-ball in the socket, and then, having wound up the crank and drawn a pin which released the machinery, had just time to run back and defend your wicket as the iron rod revolved and discharged the ball with a jerk. The rod itself worked on a slide, and could be shortened ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... be "all Cossack or all republican." Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and constitutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!—Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... machinery that turns the lenses? That 's the main thing. The bearings must be kept well oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. The clock-face will tell you when it is running right. If anything gets hitched up here's the crank to keep it going until you can straighten the machine again. It's easy enough to turn it. But you must never let it stop between dark and daylight. The regular turn once a minute—that's the mark of this light. If it shines steady it might as well be out. Yes, better! ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... there never will be. But I'm no crank. I like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of training my own perceptions, though I should try to preserve ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great hour ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... noise again, and again the human note was heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats—the time during which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all winter and its spattering slop all summer. Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. At the same time, I have engaged a first-rate cook, called ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... the patio of the tribunal was a picturesque well curb of uncut stones. It had a rustic crank of bamboo; its water was slimy and putrid. All sorts of refuse had been thrown around ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... insignificant mistake, seemingly, may prove to be of the most vital importance. Dick went to the telephone. It was one of the old-fashioned sort, still in almost universal use in the rural parts of England, that require the use of a bell to call the central office. Dick turned the crank, then took down the receiver. At once he heard a confused ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... ARE RUNG. The old-fashioned telephones, still often used in the country, have little cranks that you turn to ring for central. The crank turns a coil of wire between the poles of the magnet and generates the electricity for ringing the bell. These little dynamos, like those in automobiles, are ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... will you?" said Mat quietly to some of his neighbors. "I want to stop those flying women and the man in the crank ship from coming down ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... popular education, into a local antiquarian society; but simply let it serve incidentally as a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. A wide-awake, scholarly librarian will like his town, and delight in at least some study of its antecedents. And such a librarian need not be a crank, but must needs be an enterprising, wide-awake, appreciative student, who can scent the tastes and ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... and try surfacing them off with a file. When you place the two filed surfaces together after the first trial both will be convex, because the hands, in filing, unless you exert the utmost vigilance, will assume a crank-like movement. The filing test is so to file the two blocks that they will fit tightly together without rolling on each other. Before shaping and planing machines were invented, machinists were compelled to plane down and accurately finish off ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... walked slowly down the Station Road, swinging the silver-knobbed cane the office clerks had given him when he left the City. Leisurely, without a touch of fear, he passed the Water Works, where the huge iron crank of the shaft rose and fell with ominous thunder against the sky. It had once been part of that awful hidden Engine which moved the world. To go near it was instant death, and he always crossed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... hundred years in the world without giving birth to that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Wilkes, who was promised a subscription of one thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that he might be directed to some one able and willing to assist him. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... my snappy friend had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... wit chip flock crank theft whit shut trick shock sling whet shed shelf trunk trust whig shop swift plank sting whip shad frock swing fresh whiff chub strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... do not know what his age was but he clearly looked older than his years. Some days in the course of our lessons he would suddenly be at a loss for some word and look vacant and ashamed. His people at home counted him a crank. He had become possessed of a theory. He believed that in each age some one dominant idea is manifested in every human society in all parts of the world; and though it may take different shapes under different degrees of civilisation, it is at bottom one and the same; ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... me about your cold-blooded savages! Does anything equal a crank with a camera, bent on snapping off everything that happens?" muttered Jerry, shaking his head in real or ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... ordered Mr. Pertell, and Ruth and Alice started the "business," or acting, called for. Russ was grinding away at the crank of the camera. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... apprentice he had studied the steam engine, and had resolved that he would improve it by doing away with the crank. To his mind this was a source of great loss of power, and he believed that, if he could transform the rectilinear motion of the piston rod directly into rotary motion without the intervention of the crank, he would effect a ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... the rudder is communicated to the steam cut-off by means of the shaft, C, crank, J, rod, K, crank, I, and the hollow valve spindle. When the tiller is amidships the valve handle, H, is at right angles to the cylinder, and parallel to the tiller. By moving the lever, H, to right or left, steam is admitted to one end or the other ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about five inches deep), and then a thin layer of salt. Continue this until the tub is full, ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... 4, 1807, a crowd of curious people might have been seen along the wharves of the Hudson River. They had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a "crank" who proposed to take a party of people up the Hudson River to Albany in what he called a steam vessel named the Clermont. Did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... away by our young friend's suspicions," said he to his old friend. "Scarborough is a fine fellow. But he lacks your experience and my knowledge of practical business. And he has been made something of a crank by combating the opposition his extreme views ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... girls who were in it. In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the berths where the better-class ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... I never saw him so completely cowed. It knocked all the eloquence out of him for once. The man is a crank and an agitator. I have kept my eye on him for some time. He is a fairly good workman in his line, though, and just now can't do much harm, as times are easy and these new improvements of yours keep the people busy with other interests. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... with, I sailed in the Cadogan, Captain John Hall, in company with the Francis, Captain Newsham; and as the latter ship sailed much better than the Cadogan, she left us immediately after getting out to sea. Finding his ship very tender, or crank, Captain Hill put in at Batavia, to get her into better trim. We continued here about ten days; but I can say little about that place, being all the time unable to stand on my legs, and was only twice out in a coach to take the air, two or three miles out of the city, in which little excursion ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... he handed her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day or two it will percolate through to the varlet's intelligence that you are a desperate dog in urgent need of something, and he will bestir himself, and mayhap in a further two or three days' time he will wind a crank, pull some strings, and announce that you are "on," and you will find yourself in animated conversation with an inspector of cemeteries, a jam expert at the Base, or the Dalai Lama. If you want to give back-chat to the Staff you had best take it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... excepte they be broughte up in it." The advantage of this weapon over the steel crossbow (used by the Genoese) lay in the fact that it could be discharged much more rapidly, the latter being a cumbrous affair, which had to be wound up with a crank for each shot. Hence the English long bow was to that age what the revolver is to ours. It sent an arrow with such force that only the best armor could withstand it. The French peasantry at that period had ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... talking. Still I must say it's a pity that folks who have got religion don't take more comfort out of it. Now there's mother; she's a pillar in the church, and a good woman, I believe, but she's dreadful crank sometimes, and worries about things as she hadn't ought to. Now it seems to me, if I had all they say a Christian has, and expects to have, I'd let the rest go. They don't half of them live as if they took more comfort than I do, and there are spells when ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... that portion thereof which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules or horses; another is the before-mentioned ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... we had to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... was a Hand at the reel That nobody saw,— Old Hickory there at every keel, In every timber, from stem to stern,— A something in every crank and wheel, That made 'em answer their turn; And everywhere, On earth and water, in fire and air, As it were to see it all well done, The Wraith of the murdered Law,— Old John ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... that the long-haired Cavaliers used to regard the short hair of the Puritans as the "limit" in bad taste, but the man who today dares to walk down the Strand with hair streaming down his back is looked at as a curiosity and a crank, and we all join in that delightful addition to the Litany which Moody invented: "From long-haired men and short-haired women, Good Lord, deliver us." But who shall say that our children will ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... made another effort to obtain the help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph. Morse had come to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury. The Bill passed the House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... let me tell you I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it; I'm an old man, but I'd ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... sea-worthiness. Williams overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. "It was great fun," says Trelawny, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the yellowish individual, turning the crank, "look, Nor Juan, how with merely my own strength I can raise and lower the great stone. It's so well arranged that at will I can regulate the rise or fall inch by inch, so that a man in the trench can easily ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the man of the Ford if his engine had suffered. No, he thought it was all right; he would crank up and see. Good! She started off with a clutter, and he asked me if I wanted to ride. I had not far to go, but gladly accepted, for I was rather struck with this young fellow's grip on himself. It took self-control to avoid making the air blue with ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... run the gauntlet of pseudo-designers, crank inventors, press "experts," and politicians; of manufacturers keen on cheap work and large profits; of poor pilots who had funked it, and good pilots who had expected too much of it. Thousands of pounds had been wasted on it, many had gone bankrupt ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... biographies such as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... stones pounded up to make a sea beach. On the north side only was there barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the bright things of life—what ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... which the power was applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no necessary ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... as I had recovered breath, I attempted to climb in over the side; but to my chagrin, the crank little craft sunk under my weight, and turned bottom upwards, as if it had been a washing tub, plunging me under water by the sudden capsize. I rose to the surface, and once more laying my hands upon the boat, climbed ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... To crank the motor (for the self-starter had not yet arrived) was a task of magnitude, but he accomplished it and pulled himself into the seat. For a moment he lay upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; then he thrust forward his control lever and the car ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... to crank again. Then he drove away, down into the deep valley and up the hill beyond and away; but Florian Hausbaum stood like Siegfried after ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Jersey. When eighty-eight years old he was as active as a man of half his years. I came upon him one wintry day, when he was of that age, and found him in the barn, shoveling corn into a hopper, of which a sturdy Irishman was turning the crank. The old admiral kept his hired man busy and enjoyed his own work. He was of small figure, always wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, took snuff, and would laugh and shake until his weatherbeaten face was purple over some of his reminiscences ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Miss Merton," whispered Muriel, comfortingly. "She is the worst crank I ever saw. No one likes her. I don't believe even Miss Archer does. She's been here for ages, so the Board of Education thinks that Sanford High can't ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... you was tolerable busy, he up an' says he was hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me. Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Place a crank (E), 5 inches long, on the outer end of the mandrel, as in Fig. 3. Then mount one block on the end of the bench and the other block 3 inches away. Affix them to the bench by nails or screws, preferably ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... sat in front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling cream ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... our after bulk-head, and got two of the boats under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also in danger of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... road, you and a woman, sitting here in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I got to the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... other, Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, 40 In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;) Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain 45 On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, And there seemed to be fire in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that mental freedom could be made a cloak for the basest mental slavery, and that the most hide-bound dogmatist on earth is the modern crank who boasts his freedom from all dogmas. He found the Liberal to be the most illiberal and narrow man he ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the other beam and threw her over, so that she shipped a bucket or two of water. Had the water got into the belly of the sail, the weight would have dragged her down; but Rob instantly got rid of this danger by springing to the halyards, and, the moment the crank craft strove to right herself, bringing sail and yard rattling down into the boat. By this time, so fierce was the squall, a pretty heavy sea had sprung up, and altogether things looked very ugly. When they allowed the jib to fill, even that was enough ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and forth along the bank trying to think of some way to cross the river. He found a high flagpole with a rope going over to the other side. The rope went through a loop at the top of the pole and then down the pole and around a large crank. A sign ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... before yesterday apresurar, to hasten, to urge (a.) apresurarse, to hasten (n.) apresurarse con sus ordenes, to rush one's orders arbol de eje, axle shaft camara de comercio, chamber of commerce cigueena, arbol de cigueena, cigueenal, crank-shaft compania de ferrocarril, railway company con manchas, (designs)—spot con puntitas, con bolitas, (designs) spot contestar, to answer, to reply cuadritos, (designs) checks cuenta simulada, pro forma account culpa, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... off each stay That binds him to his couch of clay, And let him struggle into day; Let chain and pulley run, With yielding crank and steady rope, Until he rise from rim to cope, In rounded beauty, ribb'd in strength, Without a flaw in all his length: Hurra! the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of activity which will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... midnight always in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... have you with me in Santa Barbara," she said. "But Roberto is what the Americanos call 'crank.' No is use asking him. Santa Barbara no is like in the old time, but is nice sleep place, where no have the neuralgia, and nothing to bother. Then always I have the few old families that are left, and we are so friends,—see each other every day, and eat the Spanish dishes. I no know ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... our left fielder, the biggest little crank on earth and the best base runner in the Knox County League, if I do say so! We need more ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... bone of my leg," said he, taking his knee between his hands and lifting it round. "I got it broke in the Bay, but the surgeon has fished it and spliced it, though it's a bit crank yet. Why, bless her kindly heart, if I haven't turned her from pink to white. You can see for yourself ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... elements foolishly. Not that the section-boss esteemed his aged guest. On the contrary, Dallas' evident interest in the stranger had stirred the unnatural jealousy in her father's wizen brain. Already, he hated David Bond, and had set him down for a crank. But Dallas needed a lesson. It was all very well for her to do the outside duties as if she were a man; that did not privilege her to ride roughshod over his opinions, or to rule affairs in general with ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... seen how we have thrown the crank into production. But some activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders. The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held up a small sheet which said in large letters: ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... what you call a kinder crank," answered Mother Mayberry as she paused at the foot of the steps. "A married woman have got to be the hub of a family-wheel, but a old maid can be the outside crank that turns the whole contraption backwards if she has a mind to. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a flare of light upon the screen, as the operator fussed with the lamp for better lumination. He slowly began to turn the crank, and the criminologist watched the screen with no little excitement. The picture thrown up resembled nothing so much as three endless snakes twisting in the same general rhythm from top to bottom of the frame. The twenty-five duplicates were ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... letter from Scudder. I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well useless in any Secret Service—a pity, for he had uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the world, for he was always ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like it. It was some kind of a machine, and the turning of a crank made it draw together in such a way, that if a person were once within its embrace, the pressure would soon arrest the vital current, and stop the breath of life. Around the walls of the room were chains, rings and hooks, almost innumerable; ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... phrase of his religion he 'turned the wheel of the law.' One of his titles is Chakravartin, which means 'the turner of a wheel.' The doctrines of the Buddha are written out on a wheel, which is set in motion with a crank, though it is sometimes operated by horse-power; and such machines are sometimes seen in front of religious houses in Thibet, and the monks have ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... can't say THAT! He's regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you'd hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be," he went on, with brotherly directness. "It wouldn't be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he's off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I reckon, I've been thinking ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is. She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are you doing ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... lower end of the radius frequently occurs from the recoil of the crank, "by back firing," in starting the engine of a motor-car. The injury may be produced either by direct violence, the handle as it recoils striking the forearm, or by indirect violence, from forcible hyper-extension of the hand while grasping the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... collars, it keeps—keeps it forever. Never wears out. Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. In times of great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards. That makes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into a duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for dinner. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sed, "Now hold on, gosh durn ye, what hav ye got to sell anyhow?" Wall, he told me he had some lightnin' rods, and he brought out a little masheen and told me to take hold of the handles and he'd show me what a powerful thing 'lectricity wuz. Wall, I took hold of them handles and he turned on a crank, and that durned masheen jist made me dance all over the porch, and it wouldn't let go. Gee whiz, I felt as though I'd fell in a yeller jacket's nest, and about four thousand of 'em wuz a stingin' me all to onct. Wall, I told him I guessed he could put up a lightning rod or two, seein' as how ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... know. I suppose I'm a crank. They speak another language—those people. I don't understand them. I find that no exertion of the legs brings my mind and theirs any closer together. They bore me stiff and I bore ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the water of salvation to their lips, and the effect has always been the same. There has been something wrong with the valves; the pump has not worked properly; there has been something wrong with the crank; the pipe has not gone down to the water; and there has been nothing but a great jingling of empty buckets, and aching and wearied elbows, and what the woman said to Christ has been true all round, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' Ay! thank God, it is deep; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Greenwich boat, but exerting in their revolutions what seemed to be an almost irresistible power. There was no noise, no vibration, nor the slightest sign of heating. The tremendous frame of ironwork sprang at once into life and motion, with as much ease as if every rod and crank had been worked for the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... atmosphere of the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small brass screws with flat heads that sank in out of sight. When I asked where ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... people made fun of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... broke off, and turned her head ungraciously toward the sounder, which seemed to be repeating something over and over with a good deal of insistence. "That's Shoshone calling," she said, frowning attentively. "They've got an old crank up there in the office—I'd know his touch among a million—and when he calls he means business. I'll have to speak up, I suppose." She sighed, tucked a chocolate into her cheek, and went scowling to the table. "Can't the idiot see I'm out?" she complained whimsically. "What's ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... middle of a network of bogs, but we came upon an outpost of Welsh Fusiliers and spent the night with them. We had smashed the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched the car up temporarily and pushed off at early dawn. Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... rings and collars, But never really love his lips, invariably his dollars; We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, my ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... that old Boxall was trying to frighten them; but I cannot say that I was comfortable, as we had already discovered that the brig, to say the best of her, was excessively crank. The two lieutenants and the master had served chiefly on board line-of-battle ships and frigates before they got their promotion, and were inclined to sneer at the commander's caution, and I know ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... Harrison, it is true, favored an eccentric drive for feed pumps, but they mounted the eccentric on the crankpin of the rear driving wheel and thus produced in effect a half-stroke pump. This was not an unusual arrangement, though a small crank was usually employed in place of the eccentric. The full-stroke crosshead pump with which the Jenny Lind (fig. 22) is equipped, was of course the most common style of feed pump used in this country ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... floats in a layer on the surface of the water, and at every revolution is splashed all over the working parts, including the interior of the cylinder, which it reaches through holes in the piston. The oil is maintained exactly at one level by a very ingenious arrangement. The bottom of the crank chamber communicates through a hole, C, with an outer box, which receives the water deposited by the exhaust steam. The level of this water is exactly determined by an overflow hole, B, which allows all excess above that level to pass into an elbow of the exhaust pipe, out of which it is licked ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... no very happy experience of the post you now hold, and I can well understand that his life during his tenure of it cannot have been a pleasant one. Every crank with an infallible recipe for catching sunbeams in cucumber-frames and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... boy his own, was proud of his cleverness, would have him go to college, and left him all he had. There was no talk of Martin being anything but a Joliffe till Oxford puffed him up, and then he got this crank, and spent the rest of his life trying to find out who his father was. It was a forty-years' wandering in the wilderness; he found this clue and that, and thought at last he had climbed Pisgah and could see the promised land. But he had to be content ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure them off with equal solemnity, telling you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... phenomena I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... experience in taking motion-pictures," I protested. "The only time I ever touched a motion-picture camera was when I turned the crank of Donald Thompson's for a few minutes during the entry of the Germans into Antwerp ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the performers," said one boy to another "Wonder what that feller with the big hat does?" observed a second. "Turns the crank, guess," was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... cut each other out in business, just like the rest of the world. As the first flush of joy died away, men pointed out each other's motes, and sarcasm pushed charity from her throne; and, worse than all, there now appeared that demon of discord, theological dispute. The chief leader was a religious crank, named Krger. He was, of course, no descendant of the Brethren's Church. He had quarrelled with a Lutheran minister at Ebersdorf, had been promptly excluded from the Holy Communion, and now came whimpering to Herrnhut, and lifted up his voice against the Lutheran Church. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... spurted?] through the joints in a wall of thick planks and ran into the excavation, where a few men, sunk nearly to the knees in mud, were working. A forge stood on the top of the bank and the smith leaned on the crank of the blower. He was a short, strongly-built man, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable had happened. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... it no longer. He was fuming at the great window overlooking the street, and now burst impetuously into speech. "No power on earth, you absurd lunatic? do you mean that because this State has a crank like you temporarily at the top there's nothing beyond or behind it to save us from pillage and murder and anarchy? Listen to that, you foreign-born fraud!" and far up the street the morning air was ringing with ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... completion of the Automatic Company's 7 ohm wire between New York and Washington, it happened that Prof. Moses G. Farmer was in the Washington office when the first message was about to be sent, and upon being requested, he turned the "crank" and transmitted the message to New York, at the rate of 217 words ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... "stillwaters" where the biggest fish were wont to lie during the hot weather. Uncle Andy had a prejudice against those good people who were always sternly consistent, and he was determined that he would never allow himself to become a crank; so he went on enthusiastically killing fish with the same zest that he had once brought to the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me? That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess I'll never see either him or ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... accuracy (precision), for whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person of ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... townsman's literary works would be published in a sumptuous twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of mastership. In his lifetime he printed only two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers"—which was even more completely neglected by the public than Emerson's "Nature"—and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... prodigious heart glow of the hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines—whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining rods—the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... willow wands. Every moment it appeared that they must go. Lord Claymore stood watching them, and now and then taking a glance at his enemies, and though cool and collected, seeming positively to revel in the excitement of the scene. The wind was abeam; and the frigate, which proved herself but a crank ship, heeled over till her hammock-nettings dipped in the seething, foaming waters, which bubbled and hissed up through ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... figure as mad as myself, but didactic and gibbering in his madness. Then the boat-hook he wielded with a circular sweep began to take grotesque shapes in my heated fancy; now it was the antenna of a groping insect, now the crank of a cripple's selfpropelled perambulator, now the alpenstock of a lunatic mountaineer, who sits in his chair and climbs and climbs to some phantom 'watershed'. At the back of such mind as was left me lodged two insistent thoughts: 'we ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... for the propagation of rotative oscillations is shown to the left of Fig. 3, and consists of a cylinder, A, mounted on a tubular spindle, and which is set into circular oscillations around its axis by the little vibrating membrane, C, which is attached to the axis of the cylinder by a little crank and connecting rod shown in detail in Fig. 4. This membrane is set into vibration by a rapidly pulsating column of air contained in a flexible tube M, by which apparatus is connected to the pulsation pump which was employed by Professor Bjerknes in his earlier experiments. In Fig. 5, a somewhat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Breton. "He's probably some crank or faddist who's got some theory that he wants ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... The brass mechanism at the end of the next table is the perfected air-pump of Robert Boyle, Newton's contemporary, one of the founders of the Royal Society and one of the most acute scientific minds of any time. And here between these two mementos is a higher apparatus, with crank and wheel and a large glass bulb that make it conspicuous. This is the electrical machine of Joseph Priestley. There are other mementos of Newton—a stone graven with a sun-dial, which he carved ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... impatient. He really fancied that Forbes was trifling with him. Indeed, a queer doubt of the man's complete sanity now peeped up in him. Forbes was regarded as a crank by a large section of the public on account of his peace propaganda; if that opinion were justified why should he not be eccentric ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... hate England and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds approve their action but do not follow it because they dislike ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... piece of heavy iron rod which we procured from the blacksmith at Lumberville. Under Bill's direction the blacksmith hammered a U-shaped bend at the center of the shaft, so as to form a crank, and then he flattened the rod near the ends (see Fig. 284). When the shaft was set in its place these flat spots lay just outside of the bearing boards, and then, to keep the shaft from sliding back and forth in its bearings, we fastened on ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... as if turned by one crank, and sitting there they looked out into the moonlight where the shining figure flashed to and fro, now so near they could see the smiling face under the crown, now so far away that it glittered ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... resolution was passed: "Resolved that the introduction of spinning-jennies, as is practiced in England, into private families is strongly recommended, since one person can manage by hand the operation of a crank that turns ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... sweet old pelican! Because you are to turn the crank! But it's all for love of Anna. Ah, there's no inspiration ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Alcohol is alcohol, I don't care whether it's in a saloon or a church or pickling snakes in a museum. I tell you, Tommy's case has made a prohibition crank of me. Talk about it's being a man's lack of will and moral strength—bah! I never knew a man who had more will power than he, or who was more on the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... foolish Armand's eye—do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But—you are making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... called to him. He was a genial soul, not in the least like the evil-tempered crank who had held the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... an outlet is opened for the air to escape by a tube into branches communicating with each of these four cylinders. This works the tiny pistons, much the same as gas in a gasoline-motor, and they turn the little crank-shaft to which they are connected, and the crank-shaft in turn revolves the propeller ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... at Blindas and his warrant, constable and witch-finder to boot," said old Dame Crank, the Papist laundress; "Wayland Smith's flesh would mind Pinniewinks' awl no more than a cambric ruff minds a hot piccadilloe-needle. But tell me, gentlefolks, if the devil ever had such a hand among ye, as to snatch away your smiths ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of mastership. In his lifetime he printed only two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers"—which was even more completely neglected by the public than Emerson's "Nature"—and "Walden," now one of the classics, but only beginning to be talked ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... imprecations. The clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner, blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this, as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting, ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid, sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... girl. Probably there never will be. But I'm no crank. I like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of training ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... and mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... my comrades. All day long there was a ceaseless stream of abuse, cursing and hearty good wishes, as, for instance, that one's eyes should burst, or that one might be carried off by cholera, but, all the same, among ourselves we were very friendly. The men suspected me of being a religious crank and used to laugh at me good-naturedly, saying that even my own father denounced me, and they used to say that they very seldom went to church and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years, and they justified their laxness ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... occupation. The activity of the walk, the habit that led him by a route where he was familiar with the least incidents, allowed full liberty to his imaginative faculties. He invented at these times extraordinary adventures, enough of them to crank out a score of the serial stories ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... the filing motion, take two blocks of wood, and try surfacing them off with a file. When you place the two filed surfaces together after the first trial both will be convex, because the hands, in filing, unless you exert the utmost vigilance, will assume a crank-like movement. The filing test is so to file the two blocks that they will fit tightly together without rolling on each other. Before shaping and planing machines were invented, machinists were compelled to plane down and accurately ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... seems to me that the legend is the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed. But everyone knows that I am a crank. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... fireman!" cried Freddie, "and I'm pretending Dinah is on fire. See her red apron—that's the fire!" and the little fellow turned the crank of his engine harder than ever, throwing the tiny stream of water all over ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... the school should not be dubbed "old-fashioned", and by all means in her power she kept it abreast of the times. So well did she succeed that the girls were apt to complain that their second Principal was a crank on education, and fond of trying every fresh experiment she could get hold of. The various enterprises added an atmosphere of novelty, however, and prevented the daily life from degenerating into a dull routine. No one ever knew what scheme Miss Teddington might ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... that Mr. Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, bent on ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... know I'm yearning," he said deliberately. "Anyway I don't quit the track I've marked out. That way there's nothing doing. It's a crank with me; ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... making coffee when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... said the woman. "My husband, he was a crank for buyin' fine cattle. I used to tell him he was wastin' his money, but he would do it. Same way ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... was simply a Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two or three minutes ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... will have over a certain income to live upon. In a republican army like ours no man ought to be commissioned unless he will agree to live on less than a fixed amount for each successive grade." They called him "Crank Cranston" in the Eleventh for quite a while, but without affecting in the faintest degree his sturdy stand. Margaret's gowns continued simple and inexpensive, and their mode of living modest as any subaltern's, and many ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... 's right! To grind out a song of cheer I set to the crank my ancient muse. Will somebody kiss that bride for me? I fling with my blessing, both ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... in these times that the country submitted for a month to the intolerable Alien and Sedition acts. Should any congressman propose their reenactment to-day, he would be looked upon as a crank and be laughed out of court. They were enacted when Jefferson was Vice President and were the creation of the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, whose belief was in a monarchy rather ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... locomotive so equipped. Eastwick and Harrison, it is true, favored an eccentric drive for feed pumps, but they mounted the eccentric on the crankpin of the rear driving wheel and thus produced in effect a half-stroke pump. This was not an unusual arrangement, though a small crank was usually employed in place of the eccentric. The full-stroke crosshead pump with which the Jenny Lind (fig. 22) is equipped, was of course the most common style of feed pump used in this ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... smiling pleasantly, "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have sustained a ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... for us was, like all Indian boats, a trunk of a tree hollowed out partly by the hatchet and partly by fire. It was forty feet long, and three broad. Three persons could not sit in it side by side. These canoes are so crank, and they require, from their instability, a cargo so equally distributed, that when you want to rise for an instant, you must warn the rowers to lean to the opposite side. Without this precaution the water would necessarily enter the side pressed down. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... surprise. "Why, I guess I must have turned the crank the wrong way, don't you suppose I did, Mr. Upton?—Don't worry, Allison, old man; I'll rescue you, never fear. I'll try to lower you gently, so that you won't get hurt; you'll call out if you find you're coming down too ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... more than another that hardens the lot of the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for action. As I sat in the lantern, the great brazen frame of polished reflectors swung around, once in each minute, within a few inches of the side. Beneath was the projecting handle of a crank, or lever, by pressing upon which the revolution could be instantly arrested. Stooping down, I could sit at ease, with my head clear from any contact with the lamps, and in that position could have ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... UNREGULATED PUBLIC OPINION.—The growing power of Public Opinion brings with it increased possibilities for good, but also increased possibilities for evil. In an important sense, this is the age of the propagandist, the crank reformer, and the subsidized newspaper, the age of the agitator who spreads lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... ministrations. No night was ever so dark and tempestuous, that he would not brave the boisterous seas of Newport Harbor to attend mass, and no occasion, however inappropriate, was ever lost sight of to advocate its cause; in fact, he was what would nowadays be called most emphatically a crank on that subject, and might not inappropriately be considered a one-ideaed man lacking in the breadth and poise, so necessary to success in the commander of an army in the field. While Buel's Army was in Louisville getting reinforcements and preparing to renew operations ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall
... engine-room. I heard the hissing steam as it rushed through the cylinders, and without knowing what was going to happen next,—whether or not the boiler would explode, and the deck be torn up beneath me,—I waited in feverish anxiety for the result. Then I heard the splash of the wheels; the crank turned, rumbled, and jarred on its centre, but went over, and continued to turn. The Adieno moved, and the motion sent a thrill through my whole being. It was fortunate for us that she lay at the pier in such a position as to require no special skill in handling her. The open lake was astern ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... she heard the explosion and saw the shell burst in the middle of the street, not fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace, towards his car. She heard him crank up the engine. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... was reckoned considerable of a crank. A great educational reformer, and a progressive Democratic stalwart, that is the kind of hair-pin Pappa was! But it is awkward for ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... his family—till you learn how the outside world respects him. Then—hurrah! Strike up the band, boys! When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds looking down on him as a crank—I get so blamed sore at the place that I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... carriage guns and ten swivels for the Adventure. These should have been taken on board at Galleon's Reach, but the Resolution was drawing too much water—seventeen feet. When here Cook showed that he thought she was rather over-weighted with her new upper works, and might prove crank, but: ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... days patents could be very easily blocked, as Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large engine under his patent, after he had successfully made a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. Roebuck's pits was selected as away from prying eyes. The parts for the new engine were partly supplied ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... it is just at this point that the fatal defect of Mr. Collins's mechanism appears. But for the artisan's hand, the complicated work would not start at all, and we perceive that, if he lifted it for a moment from the crank, the painfully contrived dream would drop to pieces, and the beautiful bad woman would come to a jerky stand-still in the midst of her most atrocious development. A perpetual literary motion is therefore out of the question, so far as Mr. Collins is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education's sake, because she won't have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity—THEY have to hustle. ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the steps into the mill to try and stop the arms. He had been a few times in a wind-mill, and knew something about the works. At great risk though of hurting himself, he seized what he thought was the right crank to make the mill stop. His wish was to stop the mill just as the arm to which the miller clung rose above the ground. His heart beat as he watched for the proper moment. It was life or death to the miller. If he stopped it too ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... of many engineers has been to take advantage of these matters by using the valve with 90 deg. angular advance of eccentric ahead of crank, for the admission, release, and compression of the steam, and provide another means of cutting off, besides the one already referred to, viz., cutting off the supply of steam to the chest, and overcome the objection in this one of large clearance spaces. This is done by means of riding cut ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... leaning against a stanchion trying to sense the atmosphere of the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small brass screws with ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... by name, is working on a motor which is said to possess great possibilities in this line. Its distinctive features include a connecting rod much shorter than usual, and a crank shaft located the length of the crank from the central axis of the cylinder. This has the effect of increasing the piston stroke, and also of increasing the proportion of the crank circle during which effective pressure is ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... cried Amy, her eyes shining with anticipation, "to get in front of him and give that old crank a taste of his ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... talk to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go South yesterday. She cry, say ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating on ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water. It was comforting, however, to see that it had not increased, though he did not expect that state of affairs to last. When they drove out into broken water, he found it difficult to work the crank. The plunges threw him against the coaming, and the sea poured in over it continually. There are not many men who feel equal to determined toil before their morning meal, and the physical slackness is generally more pronounced if they have been up most of the preceding ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... He had to crank again. Then he drove away, down into the deep valley and up the hill beyond and away; but Florian Hausbaum stood like Siegfried after the battle ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... out of many will be sufficient sample of the mercies dealt out by the governor to the poor creatures placed under his care. Edward Andrews, a lad of 15, was sent to gaol for three months (March 28, 1853) for stealing a piece of beef. On the second day he was put to work at "the crank," every turn of which was equal to lifting a weight of 20lbs., and he was required to make 2,000 revolutions before he had any breakfast, 4,000 more before dinner, and another 4,000 before supper, the punishment for not completing either of these tasks being the loss ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... end of the drum Hiram passed two lengths of Number 9 wire through large screweyes, making a double loop into which the hook of a light timber chain would easily catch. Into one end of the drum he drove a headless spike, upon which the hand-crank of the grindstone ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... marked respect for 'Captain Cole.' We made the round of the decks, then explored the engine room. Here the designer found himself in an earthly paradise. He button-holed the engineer and inquired into every crank, and piston, and valve, and every bolt, as it seemed to me, till the officer in charge unconsciously began to ask opinions instead of offering explanations. By degrees the captain was equally astonished at the visitor's knowledge, and when at last my friend asked ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... phonograph continued playing the dreary tune, so Ojo seized the crank, jerked it free and threw it into the road. However, the moment the crank struck the ground it bounded back to the machine again and began winding it up. And still ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... at last on what he would be in our so great America. Once or twice, when he was tired or discouraged, Tish had taken him out in her machine, and he had been thrilled—really thrilled. He did not seem able to learn how to crank it—Tish's car is hard to crank—but he learned how to light the lamps and to spot a policeman two blocks away. Several times, when we were going into the country, Tish took him because it gave her a sense of security to ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... interest is exhausted—to say nothing of your patience—you will hear that they have called you a crank and lamented your "wasting your time over such nonsense." That will be your share ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Still I must say it's a pity that folks who have got religion don't take more comfort out of it. Now there's mother; she's a pillar in the church, and a good woman, I believe, but she's dreadful crank sometimes, and worries about things as she hadn't ought to. Now it seems to me, if I had all they say a Christian has, and expects to have, I'd let the rest go. They don't half of them live as if they ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... cried, "that's no crank letter. This Earle woman is wise. You got to take her as a serious proposition. She wouldn't make that play if she ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... constructed in less than a couple of hours, which appears in Fig. 38, consists of a coil, C, strapped down by a piece of tin to a wooden bedplate; a moving plunger, P, mounted on a knitting-needle slide rod, SR; a wire connecting rod, SR; a wooden crank, K; and a piece of knitting-needle for crank shaft, on which are mounted a small eccentric brass wipe, W, and a copper collar, D. Against D presses a brass brush, B1 connected with the binding post, T1; while ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... imagination he would drive; get out, crank, get in again, and roll away in fancy, earnestly practising by the hour in the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... finally burst open with a crash, causing the dust to fly so that Maggie gave a little shriek of dismay. Complete silence and darkness followed the onslaught, and then with a whisper of "Who's afraid?" she drew forth a lamp of diminutive proportions and Etruscan design, and turning the crank produced a brilliant electric flame, which permeated the damp and gloom of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... and did much to irritate Abolitionists like John Brown, whose soul as this book goes to press is said to be marching on. Brown was a Kansas man with a mission and massive whiskers. He would be called now a crank; but his action in seizing a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry and declaring the slaves free was regarded by the South as thoroughly ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... he passed muster he was indeed a valuable soldier, if the value of a thing depends upon the trouble taken to manufacture it. And now poor Gubbins had more to learn! It may seem very easy to turn a crank, to pump, to shoulder a box, to help carry a bale, or to push at a capstan bar, and this certainly is not skilled labour. Yet there is a way of doing each of these things in a painful, laborious, knuckle- cutting, shoulder-bruising, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... The paper was next sanded by permitting its lower surface to pass over dry sand in a box standing on the floor. A workman rolled off the paper, and with his hand he strews sand on the upper surface. The rolling taking place on the edge of a table, by means of a crank, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... revolve. At the point where the two rods meet there is a "crosshead," H, running to and fro in a guide to prevent the piston rod being broken or bent by the oblique thrusts and pulls which it imparts through C R to the crank K. The latter is keyed to a shaft S carrying the fly-wheel, or, in the case of a locomotive, the driving-wheels. The crank shaft revolves in bearings. The internal diameter of a cylinder is called its bore. The travel of the piston is called its ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... further bother; also another dose which he brought to the hotel. Then he insisted on leaving a bottle out of which I am to take a dose every three hours on the journey home. I did not know old Dick was such a crank." ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... old one-lung machine,—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we was actin' natural, jest restin'. I got sick and tired. The next time up coughs ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of any ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... titanium sheets for the tank. Anna de Jong said something about hot showers, and not having to take any more sponge-baths. Howell was watching the stuff come off the other landing craft. A dozen pairs of four-foot wagon wheels, with axles. Hoes, in bundles. Scythe blades. A hand forge, with a crank-driven fan blower, and a hundred and fifty pound anvil, and sledges and cutters and swages ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... Heaven! that the last earthly sound that murmurs in my "death-deafened" ear may be the kind, soothing, pitying voice of woman. When this worn-out hulk, strained fore and aft by exposure and hard service, its upper works crank with vexations and disappointments, shall be hauled up high and dry upon the lee-side of death's cove, may the last that "shoves off" from alongside be woman—I care ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... much used. Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its 10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe it became more popular than the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... reap the benefits. I felt that I ought not to keep such a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed to, one was a distinguished diplomat, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... then. There's your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and you can run ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'em out jest by turnin' the crank, why I should say the more the merrier; but I don't hardly see how you could have a better ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... personal position, as shown in sundry petty treason trials. The simple fact is that German public opinion, embodied in German law, has arrived at the conclusion that it is not best to allow the head of the state to be the sport of every crank or blackguard who can wield a pen or pencil. The American view, which allowed Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley to be attacked in all the moods and tenses of vituperation, and to be artistically portrayed as tyrants, drunkards, clowns, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for dinner. As I went, I was thinking of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... valves and Inglis & Spencer's automatic Corliss valve expansion gear. Referring to the general drawing of the engine, it will be seen that the cylinder is bolted directly to the end of the massive cast iron frame, and the piston coupled direct to the crank by the steel piston rod and crosshead and the connecting rod. The connecting rod is 28 feet long center to center, and 12 inches diameter at the middle. The crankshaft is made of forged Bolton steel, and is 21 inches diameter at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... "Don't crank up till we're ready!" Lite expostulated. "These cayuses of ours are pretty sensible, and they'll stand for a whole lot; but there's a limit. Wait till I get the ropes fixed, before you start the engine. And the rest of you all be ready to give the wheels ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... at the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I heaved in. The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing its drag as the spar ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... their great literary productions, William Washington Brown as the greatest organizer and financier of the century, Prof. Booker Washington as the greatest industrial educator of the world, and last, but not least, Thomas Condon, the greatest crank for the spiritual training and higher education of ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... expecting to hear the deafening noise of stampers, and you find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and the crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure, and the worker has but to turn a tap to give shape to the immense mass of steel, which makes a far more homogeneous metal, without crack or flaw, of the blooms, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... may be a trout-crank, he may have been looking forward for ten weary months to the time when he is to strike the much dreamed of mountain stream, where trout may be taken and eaten without stint. Occasionally—not often—his dream is realized, For two or three days he revels ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... works the apparatus in the background. It is entirely superseding the old-fashioned method of picking the vegetable up and taking a snap at it. But I suspect that to be a successful Asparagus Adjuster requires capital. We now come to Awning Crank and Spring Rollers. I don't think I should like that. Rolling awning cranks seems to me a sorry way of spending life's springtime. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... he for music that's developed by a crank, No chance had he at sculpture, nor a penny in the bank. The pea-nut trade was languid, and for him too full of risk; He thought the work on railways for his blood was rather brisk. The sole profession left him to assuage his stomach's woe, It struck him in meandering the ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... still surprises me to recall. But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments! I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... knew his business; therefore he is a student of this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a—what you call—crank like myself, or a destroying criminal—that is, an anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he asked, without raising his eyes; but ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... replied Ethan, as he turned the crank, and raised the sinker and the cask, so that the skids which supported ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... Bunker Blue. "The auto-van's got a self-starter on. That's the best of all, I think. You don't have to get out to crank up now. It's ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... out of him. He's a Socialist and a crank, you know, and you'd be surprised how ugly some of them fellows can be. As soon as I get the story complete I'll report to you, but meantime there's no use your ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Caledonia now? Where's Caledonia now? Oh, I'm so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. Yes, that wasn't so ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... exertions as it did when he began his career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment to-morrow. The public demands snappy ball, and the young players ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... the house, and, emerging on the platform, saw a sight which filled his heart with joy. On the track stood one of those little flat cars, employed by section-men, which is propelled by means of a wheel and crank in the centre turned by hand, on the same ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... in this: that the cut-off eccentric is not keyed fast, as is customary when valve gear of this kind is employed, but is loose upon the shaft, the angular position in relation to the crank being changed when the engine is reversed; two strong lugs are bolted on the shaft, one driving the eccentric in one direction, the other in the opposite, by acting against the reverse faces of a projection from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... there's much chance," said Ned. "You notified the cops, didn't you, Nick? Good. The battery is low and there isn't any crank on my bus and my only hope is that she'll lay down on them. Soak ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... inventive conception of Mr. Edison is the phonograph, a simple apparatus consisting in its original mechanism of a simple cylinder of hollow brass, mounted upon a shaft, at one end of which is a crank for turning it, and at the other a balance-wheel, the whole being supported by two iron uprights. There is a mouth-piece, as in the telephone, which has a vibrating membrane similar to the drum of a person's ear. To the other side of this membrane there is a light metal point or stylus, which ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... I tell you my Captain gave me a letter to an English Lord in Cape Town, and he fixed things so's I could lie up a piece in his house? I was pretty sick, and threw up some blood from where the rib had gouged into the lung—here. This Lord was a crank on guns, and he took charge of the Zigler. He had his knife into the British system as much as any American. He said he wanted revolution, and not reform, in your army. He said the British soldier had failed ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Sprocket Wheels.—Steel drop forgings, hardened. Gear.—68 regular; other gears furnished if so desired. Bearings.—Made of the best selected high-grade tool steel, carefully ground to a finish after tempering, and thoroughly dust-proof. All cups are screwed into hubs and crank hangers. Hubs.—Large tubular hubs, made from a solid bar of steel. Furnishing.—Tool-bag, wrench, oiler, pump and repair kit. Tool Bags.—In black or tan leather, as may be preferred. Handle bar, hubs, sprocket wheels, cranks, pedals, seat post, spokes, screws, nuts and washers, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... was combined on the day previous. Yet this infinite series of impossibilities must be possible to have the experiments we refer to come true—on the theory of molecular action. This is one of those absurdities that men call the marvellous discoveries of science. No crank in Christendom ever ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began. You're just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can't think what an ass he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep. Everything sanitary and soulful; nothing but pure men and pure women. An addle-headed theorist, he was, till a woman got hold of him—one of the other kind, you know—and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... yonder well-trained orchestra a single voice is pitched one sixteenth of a note too high. For me, I lean out of my window on summer nights enraptured over the organ-man who turns poor lost Lilian Dale round and round with his inexorable crank. It does not disturb me that his organ wheezes and sputters and grunts. Indeed, there is for me absolutely no wheeze, no sputter, no grunt. I only see dark eyes of Italy, her olive face, and her gemmed and lustrous ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... crossing before the machines when one of the drivers saw fit to crank his engine (if that is the knowing phrase) and the thing shook out the usual vibrating uproar. It had a devastating effect upon my companion. He uttered a wild exclamation and sprang sideways into ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... sane woman who is neither a prude nor a crank can do more toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those interested in great city problems have yet dreamed. The day will come when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an opportunity ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... Unfortunately the path led through a thicket of raspberry bushes, and the fruit was so tempting that the boys lost a good deal of time by stopping to gather it. After a tiresome tramp under the mid-day sun they reached the lower end of Schroon Lake, where they hired a crank little row-boat, and rowed up to Schroon. There was a fresh northerly breeze which delayed them; and the spray from the bow of the boat sprinkled them, so that they were uncomfortably wet when they reached the village. By this time they were very hungry ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her head to his heart's content. She will never dare prosecute him, and, if she does, some Humanitarian Society will be sure to see that he is not legally punished. He thus finds safe scope for the indulgence of his crank, and when there is nothing left of his own wife, he turns his unattractive and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... . . . All right. . . I am the man who killed old Norcross . . . Wait! Hold the wire; I'm not the usual crank . . . Oh, there isn't the slightest danger. I've just been discussing it with a detective friend of mine. I killed the old man at 2:30 A. M. two weeks ago to-morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Marjorie. "This is the way it works." And releasing a big wooden button, she let the whole affair slide to the ground, and, then, grasping the handle of a crank, she began to draw ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... magnet producing one such cycle. Obviously the result would be the same if the magnet were stationary and the coils should rotate, which is the construction of more modern devices. The turning of the crank of a magneto-bell rotates the armature in the magnetic field by some form of gearing at a rate usually of the order of twenty turns per second, producing an alternating current of that frequency. This current is caused by an effective electromotive ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... "Orphic" utterances; the air was fall of the enthusiasm of humanity and thick with philanthropic projects and plans for the regeneration of the universe. The figure of the wild-eyed, long-haired reformer—the man with a panacea—the "crank" of our later terminology—became a familiar one. He abounded at non-resistance conventions and meetings of universal peace societies and of woman's rights associations. The movement had its grotesque aspects, which Lowell has described in his essay on Thoreau. "Bran had ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... visited the local doctor, a most extraordinary individual with a crank. He had started a Montenegrin temperance society, called the "Band of Good Hope." At present, I believe, the three hundred odd members were all from Kolasin, and it was meeting with very little encouragement. The cultivation of plums for the manufacture ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... attachment to the end of the working cylinder, f1; b5, b5, bevel wheels driving the valve gear shaft; e, the valve gear driving shaft; e2, eccentric to drive pump; e, eccentric or cam to drive exhaust valve; e4, crank to drive ratchet plate; e5, connecting rod to ratchet pawl; f, cylinder jacket; f1, internal or working cylinder; f2, back cylinder cover; g, igniting chamber; h, mixing chamber; h1, flap valve; h2, gas inlet valve, the motion of which is regulated by a governor; ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and without responsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, we go over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hood and pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test its compression—half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists by the crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgment on oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to prove that it will pull better uphill ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... ignoramus, the lethargic, the brainless, everything that savours of enthusiasm is a craze. The politician who throws himself heart and soul into a political contest is "off his head," is seized with a craze. The philanthropist who builds and endows hospitals and churches is "a crank," following a mere craze. The earnest student of social problems is "off the track," on a craze. The man who seeks relaxation by any change of employment is certain to be classed by some idiot as one who goes off on a craze. ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... hardened. Gear.—68 regular; other gears furnished if so desired. Bearings.—Made of the best selected high-grade tool steel, carefully ground to a finish after tempering, and thoroughly dust-proof. All cups are screwed into hubs and crank hangers. Hubs.—Large tubular hubs, made from a solid bar of steel. Furnishing.—Tool-bag, wrench, oiler, pump and repair kit. Tool Bags.—In black or tan leather, as may be preferred. Handle bar, hubs, sprocket wheels, cranks, pedals, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... were in flood, and we ran into lakes and swamps that we cautiously skirted. Dark overtook us in the middle of a network of bogs, but we came upon an outpost of Welsh Fusiliers and spent the night with them. We had smashed the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched the car up temporarily and pushed off at early dawn. Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional collections of squalid little huts, and in the ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two or three minutes ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... road friends once told me how he sold a bill to a well-known old crank, now dead, in ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... at last, the party lost no time in re-embarking, and soon the big Ajax, given a new lease on life by reason of a sharp turn of the crank in front, was again speeding ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... His hands gripped the wheel. His cheeks had been too ruddily tinted by the Dakota sun to show a blush, but his teeth caught his lower lip. He had no starter on his bug; he had in his embarrassment to get out and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... controversy arose over appointments to important offices in New York, which led to the resignation of Senators Conkling and Platt. This was followed by President Garfield being shot (July 2, 1881) by a crazy crank (Guiteau) who, in some way, conceived that he, through the controversy, was deprived of an office. In company with General Sherman I saw and had an interview with Mr. Garfield in his room at the White House the afternoon of the day he was shot. His appearance then was ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... enough to drive a well man crazy, to say nothing of a half-sick relic like me. I say yes—yes—YES! Sooner or later I'll MAKE you. You've lost your place here. You told me yourself that that old crank Dean is going to make this town too hot to hold you. You'll HAVE to go away. Now ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "If he has to do this for a living I'm sorry for him, and if he isn't compelled to he's probably some sort of useful crank." ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... deliberate, we lingered yet a little over that famous breakfast, then rose, and prepared to follow the mechanical old ape. Boy hugged Bessy fondly by way of good-by, and, leaving Beebe on guard, we went forth. The same long, narrow, tall, and very crank boat received us. The sun was hot enough to daunt a sepoy; down the bare backs of the oarsmen flowed miniature Meinams of sweat, as they tugged, grunting, against the strong current. We landed at the familiar (king's) pavilion, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... characters in nature? New types are due to the rearrangement of previously existing characters, just as with the old-fashioned kaleidoscope, where you turn the crank and get new pictures. Another way is by the sudden appearance ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... maintenance case coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was not even ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... together with four little slave girls who were in it. In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... spiders at his command, this officer improved upon my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... them as they pass from stage to stage of development fills the mind of every sane person with pleasure." One poultry crank insists that each hen must be so carefully studied that she can be understood and managed as an individual, and speaks of his hens having at ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... squeeze. Jack sat in front with Remedios and one of the bags. Mr. Temple and Bob, both big individuals, filled the rear with the balance of the bags. Frank, who had gone to the front of the car to crank it, found no room within for him when he returned. He leaped to the ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... wheels 4 ft. The frames are double, giving outside bearings to the leading and trailing axles, and outside and inside bearings to the driving axle; this arrangement gives a very steady running engine, and insures, as far as can possibly be done, safety in case of the fracture of a crank axle. The frames are 15 inches deep, of BB Staffordshire iron. The wheel base is, leading to driving wheels, 8 ft. 6 in; driving to trailing wheels, 9 ft.; total, 17 ft. 6 in. The boiler is of Lowmoor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural model, for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of fly-paper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: "Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"—which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... revolutions what seemed to be an almost irresistible power. There was no noise, no vibration, nor the slightest sign of heating. The tremendous frame of ironwork sprang at once into life and motion, with as much ease as if every rod and crank had been worked for ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... economy, many other advantages would flow from a judicious regard to similarity in build; as it would permit us to relieve our ships of many of the spare spars with which they are incumbered, and we should probably not again hear of suspending the operations of a frigate thousands of miles away, until a crank or rod could be sent to her; because, when ships of the same class are cruising together, by a careful distribution of spare spars and machinery among them, it is hardly probable that damage would be sustained, or loss of spars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... J. Gatling became part of the artillery equipment during the war, but was not much used. Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its 10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe it became more ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of drain ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... respects him. Then—hurrah! Strike up the band, boys! When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds looking down on him as a crank—I get so blamed sore at the place that I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... your entire day sprawled under a balky car, with a piece of dirty mat between you and the cement floor, your view limited to crank-case, transmission, universal, fly-wheel, differential, pan, and brake-rods you can do with a bit of colour in the evening. And just here ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... then let me tell you I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it; ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... peculiarly interesting on account of their wide applicability. They are equally true for men, animals, or machines; and are wholly independent of the way in which the power is applied: whether, for instance, a man carries his burden, or draws it, or rows or punts it in a boat, or winds it up with a crank ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... he said with a wink at Marny—"food's the ruination of us all; drink is what we want. On yer feet, gintlemen—every mother's son of ye! Here's to the learned, livin' skeleton from Boston! Five per cint. man and ninety-five per cint. crank!" ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and went forward to crank up his runabout, but Ralph detained him a few moments longer, to tell him about the encounter with Bill Terrill. When he had finished, the doctor advised him to pay no attention to the vague overtures made by Silas Perkins' hireling, until the doctor himself had referred ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... striking fact that the great mass of Chinese critical scholarship is entirely adverse to the claims put forward on behalf of the treatise,—a man who believes in it as the genuine work of Lao Tzu being generally regarded among educated Chinese as an amiable crank, much as many people now regard any one who credits the plays of Shakespeare to Lord Bacon,—and I think we may safely dismiss ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... d'ye think of that? I clean forgot my dinner again! If I don't watch out, I'll sure be degeneratin' into a two-meal-a-day crank." ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... lunatic, maniac, bedlamite^, candidate for Bedlam, raver^, madcap, crazy; energumen^; automaniac^, monomaniac, dipsomaniac, kleptomaniac; hypochondriac &c (low spirits);; crank, Tom o'Bedlam. dreamer &c 515; rhapsodist, seer, highflier^, enthusiast, fanatic, fanatico [Sp.]; exalte [Fr.]; knight errant, Don Quixote. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pinchers and hammer. He strung two wires between two trees and twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that twisted the first ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... "We must not let ourselves be carried away by our young friend's suspicions," said he to his old friend. "Scarborough is a fine fellow. But he lacks your experience and my knowledge of practical business. And he has been made something of a crank by combating the opposition his extreme views ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... table is the perfected air-pump of Robert Boyle, Newton's contemporary, one of the founders of the Royal Society and one of the most acute scientific minds of any time. And here between these two mementos is a higher apparatus, with crank and wheel and a large glass bulb that make it conspicuous. This is the electrical machine of Joseph Priestley. There are other mementos of Newton—a stone graven with a sun-dial, which he carved as a boy, on the paternal manor-house; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... by taking the picture twice, as it were. On the first "take" the characters go through the business already rehearsed, and the director keeps careful track of just when each important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank. If, at the count of "Eleven!" one character registers surprise and points excitedly at an unoccupied corner of the room, it is the first step in introducing the fairy, or the spectre, who is to appear there in the picture as shown on the screen. After the scene has been ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... wind was still blowing about twenty miles per hour when we set to work on the machine. I poured some oil straight into the crank-case to make sure that there was sufficient, and we also tested and improved the ignition. At four o'clock the wind dropped, and in an hour the engine was started. While moving along, the idle cylinder was ejecting oil, and this, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... starting crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally, and pulled the lever that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get up the proper speed, and the powerful new engine failed to fire. Charlie ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... letters of this type: "Greeting—You take the prize as an educated fool. According to reports to me by less stupid and more honest men than you, the matter is...." It is surprising how often the handwriting is pretty, coquettish, or affected, but almost half of my crank correspondence is typewritten. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a few jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of prosperity. Not only did he partially pay up his bills, but he had sufficient balance left to redeem his black suit and wheel. The latter, by virtue of a twisted crank-hanger, required repairing, and, as a matter of friendliness with his future brother-in-law, he sent it to Von ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... be a crank," thought Jack; "but still, since I've money to pay for my breakfast, even a crank won't drive ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear of "cold pig"—having the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... facts concerning the bad effects of smoking on mature men that are reliable, make use of them, but be sure you are right about it. Ignorance multiplied by forty or one hundred does not mean wisdom. It is still ignorance. Keep yourself out of the crank army. Do not be so intemperate yourself in thought, speech, and action as to lessen your influence. Temporizing will not do the work, but let us be wise in our approach to the subject before boys, whose viewpoint cannot be expected to ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... without difficulty. It was an old-fashioned set, with a crank and bell for ringing up the call at the other end of the line. A single turn of the crank told him that it was cut off somewhere, doubtless by a switch in the office wiring. In a fresh fever of excitement he began a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... is called coarse is frequently crudely true. Thus, in the streets, in the workshops, and where men untrammeled by niceties engage in personalities the one who believes the other to be a "crank" informs him in crude language that he has intestinal stasis (to put the diagnosis in medical language) and advises him accordingly to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and blast her life forever; you may stab your friend in the dark, and you are all right: but if you eat a piece of fried pork on Friday you are a lost man! China arranges her prayers in a machine, and turns her obligations to Deity off with a crank. There is usually more or less intimate relationship between prayer and a crank. Our God loved human sacrifice in Galilee, and rewarded Abraham for it. He abhors it in Pocasset, America, and his followers threaten to hang the only consistent follower of ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply. "So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what this crowd ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... paper an' Elijah's real put out. He says Hiram had a idea as the more the speed the better the paper an' was just wringin' for dear life, an' the first thing he knew the first issue begin to slide a little cornerways an' slid off into a crank as Elijah never knowed was there, an' him an' Mr. Kimball spent the whole of yesterday runnin' around like mad an' no way to fix it. As a consequence Elijah's very much afraid as there'll be no paper this week an' it's too bad, for every one is in town spendin' the day an' waitin' ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... extremely simple and effective. The cranked part of the rod passing across the end of the wagon, and with handles at each end workable from the 6 ft. way, is attached to the catch hooks by means of a light chain. On throwing the handle over, and against the end of the wagon, the crank moves over and below the center, lifting up the catch into a position out of range of action, and from this position it cannot fall except it is released by the shunter. A shackle and links hang from the end of the drawbar for attachment to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... to work at his engine methodically, wiping dry the ignition terminals, all the various connections where moisture could effect a short circuit. At the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple cylinders ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... side view of a pair of cams; one, C, being a full stroke cam for operating the valve that admits steam to the engine cylinder; and the other, D, being a cam to cut off the steam supply at the required point in the engine stroke. The positions of these cams with relation to the position of the crank-pin need not be commented upon here, more than to remark that obviously the cam C must operate to open the steam inlet valve in advance of cam D, which operates to close it and cause the steam to act expansively in the cylinder, and that the angle of the throw ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last plank, Pass mumbling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... jobs where it does not pay to install a power mixer a hand power mixer mounted on a frame carried by two large wheels has been found at least as efficient as hand mixing; more convenient and easier on the men. The machine is turned by a crank driving a sprocket chain; it is charged at the stock piles and then hauled to the forms to be discharged. Local conditions determine the capacity of power mixer to be used. Difficulties in supplying material ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... Ramsey by name, is working on a motor which is said to possess great possibilities in this line. Its distinctive features include a connecting rod much shorter than usual, and a crank shaft located the length of the crank from the central axis of the cylinder. This has the effect of increasing the piston stroke, and also of increasing the proportion of the crank circle during which effective pressure is applied to ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... valves, the latter closing when the piston had reached the top of its stroke. A partial vacuum was formed, and the atmospheric pressure did work on the piston on its down stroke. A number of cylinders were required in this engine, three being shown in the specification all connected to the same crank-shaft. According to the Mechanic's Magazine, such an engine with a complete gas generating plant was fitted to a boat which ran as an experiment ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... Franklyn and patting him almost paternally] Well, my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious mixture of relief and disappointment in finding that your plan is all moonshine, and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... number of these are in such common use, produce such good results, and save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This device, one ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... manner of life, good fellow, but 'to like' and 'to do' are two matters of different sorts. I tell thee, friend, one must serve a long apprenticeship ere one can learn to be even so much as a clapper- dudgeon, much less a crank or an Abraham-man.[3] I tell thee, lad, thou art too old to enter upon that which it may take thee years to ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... that I said seemingly wrong. I'm for A. S. just one hundred per cent and would prefer to have it as right as possible. I don't like crank letter writing and would never have written this now if it hadn't been for several of the letters in the March issue that gave me a touch of hades under the collar. S'long. Maybe I'll write again sometime when I get some more "ham science" ideas.—William S. Lotsch, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... mind, the spell of their singing raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... Twenty-eight feet long by eight she was: built in Genoa from an English model that Williams, who had been a sailor, had brought with him. Without a deck, schooner-rigged, it took, says Trelawney, "two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam." Truly Shelley was no seaman. "You will do no good with Shelley," Trelawney told Williams, "until you heave his books and papers overboard, shear the wisps ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... sharp report, the frightened shrieks of women and shouts of warning. He looked back in time to see the huge stone turn part way round on the chute and rush, end first, earthward. Expectant silence fell, broken only by the vicious snarl of a flying windlass crank. But in an instant the great slab struck the earth with a thunderous sound that reverberated again and again from the barren hills about. A vast all-enveloping cloud of dust and earth filled the hollow quarry like smoke from an explosion. But there ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... controversy between President Garfield and Senator Conkling resulted in a national calamity. The bitterness that grew out of it had the effect of bringing a crank on the scene of action. Early in July, 1881,—when the President, in company with Mr. Blaine, was leaving Washington for his summer vacation,—this cowardly crank, who had waited at the railroad station for the arrival ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... were out of the train, walking up toward the engine. About it were men and women, and the children saw a man with a black box on three legs grinding away at a crank. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... always in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... reminds me of the "Antiquers"—that's what Peter T. Brown called 'em. They put up at the Old Home House—summer before last; and at a crank show they'd have tied for the blue ribbon. There was the Dowager and the Duchess and "My Daughter" and "Irene dear." Likewise there was Thompson and Small, but they, being nothing but husbands and fathers, didn't count for much first along, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and some into vice and crime. Some of them are worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been devised, one of which is known as the mounting machine, or man-engine. It consists of two parallel rods, furnished at equal distances with steps, while one is raised to a certain height the other is lowered to the same distance. While the movement of the crank is on its turning point, the miner passes from the step on which he is standing to the opposite step of the other. As they are constantly moving up and down, his next step is back again to the rod he had before left, which rising a few feet, he is able to step back to the other, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... over-all length, from head of cylinder to the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft, could not have been much less than 15 feet 9 inches, and probably as much as 16 feet 2 inches, thus making the length at extreme clearance of crank throw as much as 19 feet. These dimensions indicate that the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft must have been from 38 to 39 feet from the forward perpendicular. It is not clear how the wheel shaft was mounted ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... next door hungry. Did you ever notice when a man thinks he's a genius he lets his hair grow long and when a woman gets out of her place, to be something she oughtn't to be, she cuts her hair short. Every crank puts some kind of a brand on themselves. You don't have to talk to them to find ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... great drawback-cranking. Owing to the peculiar features of a gasoline engine, it must first be put in motion by some external power before it will begin to operate under its own power. This made it necessary for the driver to "crank" the engine, or start it moving, by means of a handle attached to the engine shaft. Cranking a large engine is difficult, especially if it is cold, and often results in tired muscles, and soiled clothes and tempers. It also made ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a perfect marvel of patchwork—pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on fire seemed to be very great; each gust of ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... went on, "no intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing unless we give some service in return. For instance, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... CRANK.—With a crank two feet long, one may turn a wheel twice as easily as with one one foot long, but the hand will move twice as far. If a wedge is two inches thick at the large end and ten inches long, a man may lift 1000 pounds by striking ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... ten carriage guns and ten swivels for the Adventure. These should have been taken on board at Galleon's Reach, but the Resolution was drawing too much water—seventeen feet. When here Cook showed that he thought she was rather over-weighted with her new upper works, and might prove crank, but: ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the turning of the shaft by the weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when the bell (22) is sufficiently raised. The bar ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Ef it ain't no rat, an' ain't a monkey, name o' Satan, what kin it be? 'Tain't a 'ooman, for all dem gret long sleeves: you know dat yo'se'f. An' 'tain't like no man as eber I seed. What dat hangin' on to its head? An' what motter wid its eyes, sot crank-sided right 'ginst its nose, kickin' up der heels, pintin' ebry way for Sunday—one en' uv um ez sharp as a 'nittin'-needle, an' tudder en' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the speed you can, Tom!" begged Mr. Damon. "We'll catch the scoundrels now. Speed up the motor! Oh, if I only had my automobile now. Bless my crank shaft, but one can go so much faster ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... we stopped at another haymaker's deserted camping-ground, and took shelter from the now pouring rain under a lean-to of poles covered with bark. A low shanty near having a rude crank for holding a kettle over the fire, we had a comfortable lunch. Out in the open, where there were remnants of rough cultivation, was a sundial made of a jagged-edged flat piece of tin, the figures scratched with a knife. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... tolerable busy, he up an' says he was hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in the matter he knows of?" and he handed her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head on the ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Skinny. They thought he was just a little thief, but anyway, they weren't the kind of fellows to be always talking about it. They had something else to do. They talked a lot about Bert though, and said he was a kind of a crank about Skinny. But anyway, they admitted that he was a hero. Gee, they had ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... heard—"Extraordinary old man!" "You know, he bathes in the Serpentine all the year round?" "And he cooks his food himself, and does his own room, they say; and all the rest of his time he writes a book!" "A perfect crank!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they see where ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... must be plain that so long as the air (or steam) pressure is continued in the forked pipe the piston will automatically cut off its supply and open its escape at each alternate end, and move back and forth. Any boy can see how a backward and forward movement may be made to give motion to a crank. All other details in an engine are questions of convenience in construction, and not questions of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. Isn't Marcia ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... it out for a little while," Rick explained. "But it's too wet." He knew he couldn't sit still, anyway. He wanted to get into the air, to get the feel of things. "Crank ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... to you which will secure him an interview during to-day. Here is that line. Norgate is a young man for whom I have a great friendship. I consider him possessed of unusual intelligence and many delightful gifts, but, like many others of us, he is a crank. You can listen with interest to anything he may have to say to you, unless he speaks of Germany. That's his weak point. On any other subject he is as sane as ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy this treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... incumbrances of condenser and air-pump, occupied much less room than one of ours in a ship of the same tonnage. Every stationary part of the machinery was of polished steel, or bronze, with elaborate castings; a crank indicator and a clock faced each other, and the whole was lighted by two large coloured lamps. These windows were a favourite lounge of the curious and scientific. The carpet was of rich velvet pile, in groups of brilliant flowers, and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... said. "That was an idea! Now, then, Jeekes," he ordered, "crank up that car. And be quick about it! ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... west, had sold out and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person . . . "a crank," Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people . . . and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ten days now since I last saw him at a group-meeting of the Jewish Comrades. I fear he is developing a failing common to many of you English Anarchists; he is becoming something of a crank. He talked to me a lot about vegetarianism and such matters. It would be a thousand pities were he to lose himself on such a track, for he has both intellect and character. He is unswerving where principle is at stake; let's trust he will not lose sight ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... "Oh, he's a crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn't! Ah, he's beginning to ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ought to go out at once. Are you willing to take a chance?" asked the sergeant. The ambulance-driver took a look at the chalk road gleaming white in the sun where it climbed the ridge. "Sure, Mike," he said, and ran off to crank his engine and back his car out of its place of concealment. "Sure, Mike,"—that was all. He'd have said the same if he'd been asked whether he'd care to take a chance ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... first of any jails, where convicts were employed in connection with steam power. We had, it is true, an engine to be worked by manual power, for six or eight men abreast, to drive the circular saw, but it did not answer. It was intended as "crank" labour for ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... of the town, too, where the architecture runs to bungalow styles, where the installment collectors from the phonograph houses are regularly seen, and where papa gets out in front and twirls the crank when the family car goes out for its airing. No important line of demarcation separates the old staid section of town from the new and brighter one. Major Trimble, President of the Jordan Bank & Trust Company, accepts deposits from both sections with strict impartiality; the spire of the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a modest little home, just below Bordentown, New Jersey. When eighty-eight years old he was as active as a man of half his years. I came upon him one wintry day, when he was of that age, and found him in the barn, shoveling corn into a hopper, of which a sturdy Irishman was turning the crank. The old admiral kept his hired man busy and enjoyed his own work. He was of small figure, always wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, took snuff, and would laugh and shake until his weatherbeaten face was purple ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... in the smoke, and had herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. Thus unmanageable she drifted down within thirty yards of the batteries, and had to anchor below. Her loss was 6 killed and 21 wounded; the Kineo, though repeatedly struck, had no ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... this carpet beneath my feet might change to velvet moss and springy turf, these walls to the trees and whispering boskage I grew to love so well, this halting pen to the smooth shaft of sledge hammer or the well-worn crank of the Tinker's little forge, if I might but behold again she who trod those leafy ways with the stately, vigorous grace of Dian's very self, she who worked and wrought and sang beside me with love for me ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
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