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More "Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things. If, for instance, a walled city is to be stormed, a parcel of soldiers, piling themselves on a heap across the stage, are supposed to represent the wall over which the storming party is to scramble. This puts one in mind of the shifts of Nick Bottom. "Some man or other must present wall," and, "let him have some plaister, or some lome, or some rough-cast about ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... There the slave-raiders, subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... gale of wind and come back to a certain spot, but he need not have been incredulous, for in about five minutes' time the Shiner came sliding down as though to run over the boats, being thrown up into the wind in the nick of time. As the schooner settled beside the boat, all the men but two streamed aboard her, one remaining at the bow, to shackle the seine-boat to the iron that hung from the hook at the fore-rigging on the port side, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the way gentlemen go on? They'd amuse themselves a bit, to be sure ... why shouldn't they ... they'd amuse themselves, and then drop it.... They may well say, Fall in love with Old Nick, and you'll think ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Tailor, called by the nick-name Silguero,[40] six blows of the best sort for the lady whom he compelled to leave her necklace in pledge with him. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wi' its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls As we ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... adventures some far-fetched parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... attempted to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes he would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon his arm or back. He was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective thrust. Then he changed his tactics, and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Just in the nick of time the cowboy swung his legs up around the limb. The horrible claws of the grizzly swept through the air not a foot below where he had hung. Frank shuddered at the consequences had anything happened to bring Reddy within reach of ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... by the feet of reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command—vile men, whose hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside—incompetent ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... of the good, honest, considerate German soldiery; and, if he can help it, he will not in any similar case leave so much as a wooden spoon to be carried off to the Fatherland, and added as yet another trophy to the hundred thousand French clocks and the million French nick-nacks which are still preserved there as mementoes ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Cicero seems to have been a person worthy to be remembered; since those who succeeded him not only did not reject, but were fond of that name, though vulgarly made a matter of reproach. For the Latins call a vetch Cicer, and a nick or dent at the tip of his nose, which resembled the opening in a vetch, gave ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... but started back immediately on beholding the highwayman in the middle of the room, sipping a basin of broth. There seemed a horrible conspiracy for the destruction of a literary gentleman from London in this Northamptonshire village. Mrs. Clare, fortunately, intervened at the nick of time to keep Mr. Townsend from fainting. Patty, always neatly dressed—save and except on washing days,—approached the visitor; and her gentle looks re-assured Mr. Chauncey Hare Townsend. He wiped his hot brow with his scented handkerchief, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's Valley either." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I looked at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a place all ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... enjoyment to the young...My wife has ailed a good deal nearly all the time; so that I loathe the place, with all its beauty. I was glad to hear what you thought of F. Muller, and I agree wholly with you. Your letter came at the nick of time, for I was writing on the very day to Muller, and I passed on your approbation of Chaps. X. and XI. Some time I should like to borrow the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," so as to read Colenso's article. (229/1. Colenso, "On the Maori Races of New ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... in the nick of time for them—in very truth. If we hadn't, their exchange would have gone down soon and they know it. I shall never forget the afternoon I spent with Mr. Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law on that subject. They saw blue ruin without our financial ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... much extinct for us as are the Lares, Larvae, and Lemures of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck is unknown; urchin means properly 'a hedgehog,' being the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... or 30 yds. from the bull, draws its attention to him by means of violent gestures. As the bull charges, the banderillero steps towards him, dexterously plants both darts in the beast's neck, and draws aside in the nick of time to avoid its horns. Four pairs of banderillas are planted in this way, rendering the bull mad with rage and pain. Should the animal prove of a cowardly nature and refuse to attack repeatedly, banderillas de fuego (fire) are used. These are furnished with fulminating crackers, which explode ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... caught in her teeth. She being a bashful young thing—then. Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home. But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff. Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... again, for the great ice wall was getting very close, and he had given many looks at the huge cliff to see whether it would be possible to climb up, when once more the sinking spirits rose with a bound, for, in the nick of time, Johannes shouted, "All clear ahead!" the gong sent forth its notes to order full speed, and the water was churned into a foam as the propeller began ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Fattore, was, as is well known, the nick-name of Giovanni Franceso Penni, born in Florence in 1486, and subsequently a pupil of Raphael's. According to Vasari he was known by it even as a boy. Whether he is spoken of in this passage, or whether the word Fattore ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... with an air of comprehension. He did not, however, comprehend. He only felt that the boy was wonderful. Imagine the boy saying that! He bent lower. "Come on up," he said. "I'll give you a hand. Stick your feet into that nick there." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... he bade his companions good-bye. All at once it occurred to him to try taking off his clothes. This made just the difference required, and with a tremendous effort he got out of his prison-house in the very nick of time. ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... tell you he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, beginning to ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... has yet to be reckoned with. He is furious at the interruption of the sacrifice, and is about to execute summary vengeance upon both Iphigenia and Orestes, when Pylades returns with an army of Greek youths—whence he obtained them is not explained—and despatches the tyrant in the nick of time. The opera ends with the appearance of Pallas Athene, the patroness of Argos, who bids Orestes and his sister return to Greece, carrying with them the image of Diana, too long disgraced by the barbarous rites ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... no room left for any remembrance of the man. He was in a perfect ecstasy of rage at the insolence of the buck, and rushed upon him like a cyclone. Against that irresistible charge the buck had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wanderings and exile loaded with the most precious spoil; should it chance to slumber, "it does but recoup its strength." It tempers the body itself and makes it tougher; it does not consume life, however long it lives; it rules over man like a pinioned passion, and allows him to fly just in the nick of time, when his foot has grown weary in the sand or has been lacerated by the stones on his way. It can do nought else but impart; every one must share in its work, and it is no stinted giver. When it is repulsed it is but more prodigal ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the most part. But her father did spank her once. She got two bottles of pills out of his office and dared Alice Clow to see which of them could swallow all the pills first, and if her father had not happened in the nick of time those two children would have been corpses by night. As it was, they were both sick enough shortly after. But the doctor spanked Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of it that she never meddled with anything in his office afterwards. We hear a great ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... my Charlie's name, [love] Tho' some there be abhor him: But O, to see auld Nick gaun hame, [going] And Charlie's faes ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... shown that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won't ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... fright, her being wholly obsessed by the one thought of escape, Sally flew on down the drive until, on the point of leaving the grounds by the gate to the highway, she pulled up perforce and jumped back in the nick of time to avoid disaster beneath the wheels of a motor-car swinging inward ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... thirty scalps from the hated British heads. In the meantime, other engineers had traced out the road from the bay to the battery. Led by their officers the French regulars set to work with such goodwill that the road was ready next day for the siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed in the nick of time. ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... God, as it were in revenge for injury done him, doth snatch away souls in the very nick of their backsliding, as he served Lot's wife, when he turned her into a pillar of salt, even while she was looking over her shoulder to Sodom (Gen 19:26). An example that every backslider should remember with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is not a snake-story, Mrs. Hill. I had a boy once in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That was ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... our Buildings, immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation in a ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... friend's play can sit, But he must needs find fault, to shew his wit: Then, for his sake, ne'er stint your own delight; Throw boldly, for he sits to all that write; With such he ventures on an even lay, For they bring ready money into play. Those who write not, and yet all writers nick, Are bankrupt gamesters, for they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... nothing was more natural than that the youth should ride forward with the purpose of giving him his quietus, disregarding his own safety until a bullet through the body should apprise him of his fatal oversight. It was this fear that checked Warren in the very nick of time. ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... yard, but I carried it off in spite of her, and now send it to you, hopping you will put a letter in the newspaper of Lundon cleering the karacter of me and my wiffe Peggy, and my Inn of the Golden Arms. As for Miss Jeny ye may mak her as black as auld nick, for over and above Peggies half pund of tea, and your Bowa, Jeny (I hae good reason to believe) is no better than she should be. I am, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... it is funny how a nick-name travels. There were about five hundred men there still, and I heard one say as I passed, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... a flying leap, he grasped the lowermost limb and swung upward, at the moment the foremost grizzly was beneath him. So close in truth was his pursuer that the hunter distinctly felt the sweeping blow of his paw aimed at the leg which whisked beyond his reach just in the nick of time. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... that Ethel would have married Lord Farintosh the next week?)—annoying folks are got out of the way; the poor are rewarded—the upstarts are set down in Fable-land,—the frog bursts with wicked rage, the fox is caught in his trap, the lamb is rescued from the wolf, and so forth, just in the nick of time. And the poet of Fable-land rewards and punishes absolutely. He splendidly deals out bags of sovereigns, which won't buy anything; belabours wicked backs with awful blows, which do not hurt; endows heroines with preternatural beauty, and creates heroes, who, if ugly sometimes, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so good, Jim, but I reckon I'm good enough to go to Heaven. People bein' what people be, an' me bein' what I am, all with a pow'ful lot to fight ag'inst an' born with somethin' o' the old Nick in us, an' not bein' able to change our naturs much, no matter how hard we try, I reckon I hev a mighty fine chance o' Heaven, which, ez I said, I want to be a world, right smart like this, only a heap bigger an' finer. But I don't mean to go thar for seventy or eighty years ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fashionable young men into a set of forlorn-looking beggars. Each laughed at the appearance of the other, unconscious of his own transformation; but Bob, with more truth than politeness, informed us that we all 'looked like the Old Nick;' whence it appeared that in Bob's opinion the Enemy is usually sorely afflicted with a shabby wardrobe, and that, in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gamekeeper over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That Mr. Lascelles, 'e ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... speaking to him. He heard again the soft, rippling laugh, girlishly sweet, that had fascinated him at Hawkins' ball; he heard the distant hum and chatter of other voices, and then one loud and close—that of Chesbro, who had unwittingly interrupted them, and saved him, just in the nick of time. ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... nedrig, low, rascally. nedsteg, see nedstiga, ned|stiga (-steg, -stigit, -stigen), to step down, descend. nedt, downwards. nej, no. nek|a (-ade, -at), to deny, refuse. nerifrn, from below. ner, see ned. nere, down. nick|a (-ade, -at), to nod. nidingsdd (-et,—), villainous deed. niding (-en, -ar), outlaw, villain. nidingsfunder, no sing., malicious artifices. nidingsstng (-en, -stnger), niding post, pillory. njuta (njt, njutit, njuten), to enjoy. nog, indeed, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... a low-ceilinged room above a baker's shop in the village, and had strewn it about with books and photographs and nick-nacks until the drab surroundings seemed to reflect a little of her dainty personality. Thither, later in the day, she took Betty off to tea and introduced her to a tall fair girl with abundant hair and a gentle, rippling laugh that had ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... two or three naturell, but are fayne to borrow of the English: mary, this want is releeuved with a flood of most bitter curses, and spitefull nick-names. ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... however; longer to think of than to do; especially as Winthrop took upon himself the most of what was done. One or two nick-nackeries of preparation, in the shape of a new basket, a new book, and a new shawl, seemed delightful to Winnie; though she did not immediately see what she might want ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... little white arms from my neck five minuts, bekaze the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are above groun' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... stopped the cab and prepared to descend, a faint—a very faint— sound almost in my ear, set me keenly on the alert. Just in the nick of time I ducked ... as the blade of a long knife flashed past my head, ripping its way through ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... roared into life. The ship moved slowly forward as Dr. Bird climbed on board. Toward the oncoming trucks they rushed across the plain. A crash seemed imminent. In the nick of time McCready pulled back on his joystick and the plane rose gracefully into the air, clearing the leading truck by inches. The truck halted and hastily mounted a ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... allow it to trouble them whether the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... sake. He had unusual endurance, and could keep at work or play long after others were tired. He was a famous ball player, and distinguished himself at the green corn dances. There he drank without flinching such large draughts of the bitter "black drink" that he was nick-named by some "Asseola," which means ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... that she had told God everything, and that He would send us plenty in the morning. Next day, with the carrier from Lockerbie came a present from her father, who, knowing nothing of her circumstances or of this special trial, had been moved of God to send at that particular nick of time a love-offering to his daughter, such as they still send to each other in those kindly Scottish shires—a bag of new potatoes, a stone of the first ground meal or flour, or the earliest homemade ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... It was mescal—an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down easily ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... until the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... I believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What have you done ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... bad players are sent Where all their false notes are protested, I am sure that Old Nick will play him a trick, When his bad trump and he are arrested, And down in the regions of Discord's own legions His head with two French ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Inquisition at Lisbon, had come to fight in the Vende, where he was noticed for his courage and his quality of leadership. He was an excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was the more remarkable because, at this time it was not ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... forget me? Jacob Tripple, your hand! A kiss, Little Scout! Why, your old father's 'most young again, and his good girls shall dine like other good girls, after all! How very thoughtful of Griffin to send it in the nick of time, too. Come, sit up again before it gets cold, and I wish we had something as hot to drink Griffin's health in. Why, I believe I could sing a song again if we had something ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... well as the boy. Nicodemus is a long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides, as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy young Nick, and of course I shall be styled old Nick, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this camp ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... Numbers to have pick'd and Criticiz'd upon, had he not been interrupted just upon his Delivery; nay, after the Preliminary Sigh had made Way for his Utterance. But so was his Fortune, Don Mario was coming towards the Door at that very nick of Time, where he met with a Priest just out of Breath, who told him that Lorenzo was just breathing his last, and desired to know if he would come and take his final Leave before they were to administer the Extream Unction. Don Mario, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... imp of evil brook to lie hidden in the Holy Hole behind the very altar?" said Mrs. Woodford. "But I hear Nick bringing in supper, and I must leave you for the present. God in His mercy bless you, His poor child, and lead ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this. He was not hard on the captain. Nothing was further from his thoughts. Friend! Of course he was a good friend and a faithful servant. He begged Powell to understand that if Captain Anthony chose to strike a bargain with Old Nick to-morrow, and Old Nick were good to the captain, he (Franklin) would find it in his heart to love Old Nick for the captain's sake. That was so. On the other hand, if a saint, an angel with white wings came ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... tired of answering questions," Rick said, "but I've got one more. How did you happen to arrive right in the nick of time?" ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... said her father. "And we are to be fellow-passengers, so it was very lucky that we were there in the nick of time." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... but if he did, what happened! Why, I had my counter-spy, an honest little Irish boy, in the creditor's shop, that I had secured with a little douceur of usquebaugh; and he outwitted, as was natural, the English lying valet, and gave us notice just in the nick, and I got ready for their reception; and, Miss Nugent, I only wish you'd seen the excellent sport we had, letting them follow the scent they got; and when they were sure of their game, what did they find?—Ha! ha! ha!—dragged out, after a world ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... been massacred to a man—as their ammunition was spent—but for the heroism of Ray, who had run the gauntlet through the Cheyennes all alone in the darkness, found Truscott's squadron going rapidly away in another direction, turned him to the rescue just in the nick of time, and now, weak and wounded, was being sent in to Russell; that there had been several men killed, quite a number wounded, and that among these latter were Blake, Wayne, and Dana; and that Blake, too, would be sent to ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... use of our trying to hit that mark so far away?" grumbled Bristles; which expression of defeat was something strange to hear from his lips, because the owner of the shock of heavy hair that stood upright, and had gained him such a peculiar nick-name, was as a rule very stubborn, and ready to stick ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... impressively. "Isn't it an amazing thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow's poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King's second best set. Her best set is still ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... quite frantically. 'On my honor and my oath, he will be married!' The admiral, incautiously perhaps, but with the best intentions, told her you were married already. She gave a scream that made the windows ring again and dropped back on the sofa in a fainting-fit. The doctor came in the nick of time, and soon brought her to. But she was taken ill the same night; she has grown worse and worse ever since; and the last medical report is, that the fever from which she has been suffering is in a fair way to settle ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Nick Lansing spoke at last. "Versailles in May would have been impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it's exactly the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So—with all respect to you—it wasn't much of a mental strain ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... in the window with his legs crossed, and his arms folded, and his face making you think of the Old Nick?" ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... Cronin's right bower, and I thinks as how this guy is the joker of the deck trying to make a dirty deuce out of me. But, if you want to see the girl, she's right upstairs. His work was a little speedy on first acquaintance. Nick, keep your eyes on this machine, for we may get another call on this floor—This way gentlemen. Watch your step, for ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Cutting away or depressing the cap at the point where it meets the nick in the screw head, substantially as described, so that such cut away or depressed portion, while connected with and forming part of the cap shall lie within outline the nick in the screw head, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... seem able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... "Glad to see you, Nick," said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. "Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be nabbed. What ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... maintained only through fear and by force, owing to the soldiery of the watch who are called tristes-a-patte by the crowd. "This nick name enrages this species of militia, who then deal heavier blows around them, wounding indiscriminately all they encounter. The low class is always ready to make war on them because it has never been fairly treated by them." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mr. Sam saluted him amiably, still without rising. "You've come in the nick of time. I have just been chatting with Miss ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nick the cook knock'd thrice, And all the waiters in a trice His summons did obey; Each serving man, with dish in hand, March'd boldly up, like our train-band, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... to pieces? But that, as I accept it, is easy of elucidation. Imagine a vast crescent moon, with a downward nick from the end of the tail. This form the fissure took, in one enormous sweep and drop towards the mouth of the valley. Now, as we rushed headlong, the gentle curve received us from space to substance quite gradually, until we were whirring forward wholly on the latter, my luggage suffering the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Amphipolis, Nicias was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... beneath the ice, and with it the location of your father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of babiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... some would-be wit Dubbed the fair dame. The title may not fit With accurate completeness; It soars some shades too high, this modish mot, As 'Mrs. LYON-HUNTER' sinks too low; Both nick-names fail ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... "Old Nick," replied Boswell; "and I can tell you there's a pretty fight on between the supporters of the administration and the opposition. Secure in his power, the Grand Master of Hades has been somewhat arbitrary, and he has made the mistake of doing some of his subjects ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... and on through my teens and into my early twenties—ah, those romping elfin twenties!—I was, in outline, what might be termed dwindly, not to say slimmish. Those who have known me in my latter years might be loath to believe it, but one of my boyhood nick-names—I had several, and none of them was complimentary but all of them were graphic—was Bonesy. At sixteen, by striping myself in alternate whites and blacks, I could have hired out for a surveyor's rod. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... India, had been employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals themselves, whose statements had never been tested ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... how fortunate to have secured you at short notice like this," Lord Bracondale was saying. "I only found I had a free evening at breakfast, and I met Jack on my way to the polo-ground just in the nick of time." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... enemy had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render them worthless. A large number of beef hides ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... on my way here," said Ben. "He told me I'd come just in the nick of time. I didn't know what he meant, ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... officer felt of his moccasins; they were wet to the touch, but as yet no moisture had penetrated his socks. "You yelled in the nick of time," he declared, as he dried his soles ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... "Nick!" he called in horror to one of the guides. "For God's sake bring some brandy! No! he's had too much of that already. Water! Water—can't ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... troops arrived in the nick of time, they would have saved Candia, but by a sudden accident all was lost, and after so terrible a reverse, the Isle of Candia, wrested from the potentates of Europe and Christendom, fell a prey ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... was a note of comedy. It was supplied by a negro roustabout on one of the large transports. This darky throughout the trip had been very fearful of submarines, and when the actual moment of danger came he acted upon a predetermined course, and shinned up the mainmast as though Old Nick himself were at his heels. When the excitement was over an officer called up ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... evening got out his writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... now, honey I don't ye go fo' to set up yo'sef agin de ghoses, kase dey's powerful pernickety when dey's crassed," said the old woman, whom Mark, with his love for nick-names, had ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... mate, "the Rock-scorpions are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H . . . just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... cleared in this way. They first 'dead' a piece of ground in the woods adjoining the plantation: by 'deading' is meant killing the trees, by cutting a nick all round each, quite through the bark. Out of this ground each colored person has a piece as large as he can tend after his other work is done; the women have pieces in like manner. The slave works at night, cutting down the timber and clearing the ground; after it is cleared, he ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... to fight, all inexperienced, the battle of life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping the large spectacles from which his nick-name, "Gig-lamps," was derived. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... have 'em; Their stubbornenes and pride requires 'em greater. The Prince strikes iust ith' nick and strikes home nobely: This new pretending faction had fird all els; They had floong a generall ruyn on ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once highly becoming ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... unhasty strokes up on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... it was as if a fire ran through all his body and changed it into the essence of her: neither was there any naysay in her eyes, nor any defence against him in the yielding body of her. But even in that nick of time he drew back a little, and turned his head, as a man listening, toward the door, and said: "Hist! hist! Dost thou hear, maiden?" She turned deadly pale: "O what is it? What is it? Yea, I hear; it is ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... a story out of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change,—now an old man, now an old woman,—a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think of the right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me. To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley's name, that consummate villain would suffer the royal frown. And so he did, never having been ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase for it back again, seven miles ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his epistles." At another time he overtook a young woman Friend in worldly dress, upon which he remarked, "Satin without, and Satan within." But this time he got as good as he gave, for the young woman added, "And old Nick behind!" When it was the fashion to wear a number of capes, one above another, on a great-coat, Nicholas met a young acquaintance dressed in the mode. Taking hold of one of the capes, the old Quaker asked innocently ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... came in the nick of time. All the pent-up spleen and hatred of Peigan Charley had culminated in an irresistible desire. He had seized a rifle from one of the camp Indians standing by, and had flung himself on the banked up defences. Even as his boss shouted, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the stream to see what prize could be worth so great an exertion. As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... catch up with dat old rascal ony other time since I'll know him first. Me, I'll be only fifteen den. Dat's long time 'go, eh? Well, for sure, I ain't so old like what I'll look. But Old Man Savarin was old already. He's old, old, old, when he's only thirty; an' mean—bapteme! If de old Nick ain' got de hottest place for dat old ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... your father's tale just now put me in mind of him—paid half a crown to a conjurer, one time, to have his fortune told; which was, that he would marry the ugliest maid in the parish. Whereby it preyed on his mind till he hanged hisself. Whereby along comes the woman in the nick o' time, cuts him down, an' marries him out o' pity while he's too weak to resist. That's your Future; and, as I say, I ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... came to know a kind old fellow who loved to linger, his hands resting on his staff, watching their play, listening to their laughter; whose ample pockets were storehouses of good things. Their elders, passing by, would whisper to one another how like he was in features to wicked old Nick, the miser of Zandam, and would wonder where he came from. Nor was it only the faces of the children that taught his lips to smile. It troubled him at first to find the world so full of marvellously pretty girls—of ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... They gambled as long as they had a dollar left or could get credit on the next month's pay day. Then they gambled for their shirts and their bayonets. All day long whenever they were in the barracks, you could hear the rattle of the dice, and the familiar call of "Phoebe," "Big Dick," "Big Nick," and "Little Joe." When they were not on drill the men would infest the barracks for hours at a time, gathered in crouching groups about the dice, the air thick and blue with cigarette smoke; while others had nothing better to do than to sprawl on their cots and talk; and from their ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to open covers cautiously, and to preserve seals entire. I will draw out from this cursed letter an alphabet. Nor was Nick Rowe ever half so diligent to learn Spanish, at the Quixote recommendation of a certain peer, as I will be to gain the mastery of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away,—how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody. Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? or has ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Tennessee is now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... young fellow up at the San Benito not half to be trusted—Robson can't make out his accounts; and here am I such a wretch that I can hardly tell what two and two make; and here's Ward, the very fellow to come in and set all straight in the nick of time; and I can't ask him so much as to look at a paper for me, because I'm not to ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on Charles's lips. This discomfiture of the truculent Rufus supplied for him the comic element of his entertainment, and came just in the nick of time to prevent its heroics and its sentimentalities ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... poor girl has fallen in love with a Christian chief, who lives on an island some fifty miles or so to the south of this one, and that she is meditating a desperate attempt at escape. So, you see, we have come in the nick of time. I fancy that this chief is the fellow whom you heard of, Ralph, at the Island of Emo. Besides all this, the heathen savages are at war among themselves, and there's to be a battle fought the day after to-morrow, in which ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the broken cart wheel, or hide-and-seek by moonlight, that I wish to speak here, but of another diversion next day, and of a mysterious stranger who arrived at nick of time to participate ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... their chums, as well as many other cadets and boys and girls from that vicinity, had been using the hill for a couple of hours when the race between the Blue Moon and the Yellow Streak was proposed by Nick Carncross, the ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... Abnegation Mings as you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay to that, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... call real cleverness," said the Scarecrow, approvingly. "I wonder my brains did not think of that long ago! Get to work, my dear Nick, and fit the ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... turning in my tracks and addressing a small brown-leafed beech. "What! little Hyla, are you still out? You! with a snow-storm brewing and St. Nick due here to-morrow night?" And then from within the bush, or on it, or under it, or over it, came an answer, Peep, peep, peep! small and shrill, dropping into the silence of the woods and stirring it as three small pebbles might ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... last finished a breakfast that would have astonished the whole Corporation of London; and then taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back—doubtless more German than its master—he said, as he lifted up his carpet-bag, "I must be off—tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug; thence to Paris. How my pretty Fan will have grown! Ah, you don't know Fan—make you a nice little wife one of these days! Cheer up, man, we shall meet again. Be sure of it; and hark ye, that strange place, as you call it, where I took ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is his own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat fast fifty ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... quiet! What spirits were his, what wit and what whim, Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb! Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball, Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all! In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick, But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein, As often we wish'd to have Dick back again. Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, The Terence of England, the mender of hearts; A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men ...
— English Satires • Various
... grove the garden and the spring. The horseman was Lanpher, manager of the 88 ranch. He was followed by another rider, a lean, swarthy individual with a smooth-shaven, saturnine face. Racey knew the latter by sight and reputation. The man was one Skeel and rejoiced in the nick-name of "Alicran." The furtive scorpion whose sting is death is not indigenous to the territory, but Mr. Skeel had gained the appellation in New Mexico, a region where the tail-bearing insect may be found, and when the man left the Border for the Border's good the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... all her husband could eat and couldn't eat; she called her children 'little tots,' and said she couldn't get so much as a 'serviette' washed in the house. I thought nobody talked of serviettes outside Wells and Arnold Bennett. Mrs. Duff-Whalley rescued me in the nick of time before I could do anything desperate, and then she cross-examined me as to my reasons ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... To the very root of the family tree Were a task as rash as ridiculous: Through antediluvian mists as thick As London fog such a line to pick Were enough, in truth, to puzzle old Nick, Not to name Sir ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... for Britain's enemies would be on her back while she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must beat in his veins till the end ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone. "Shut up, Nick! This is ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... whined at the bear. The limb cracked, and Dave ceased chopping and shouted "Look out!" We shouldered arms. The dog was in a hurry. He sprang in the air and landed on his back. But Dave had to make another nick or two. Then with a loud crack the limb parted and came sweeping down. The dog jumped to meet it. He met it, and was laid out on the grass. The bear scrambled to its feet and made off towards Bill. Bill squealed and fell backwards over a log. Dad rushed in and kicked the bear up like a ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... parts of the Winkie Country are full of happy and contented people who are ruled by a tin Emperor named Nick Chopper, who in turn is a subject of the beautiful girl Ruler, Ozma of Oz. But not all of the Winkie Country is fully settled. At the east, which part lies nearest the Emerald City, there are beautiful farmhouses ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... got to loggerheads one night for no reason apparently, save that each had a high reputation for courage, and neither could find a worthier antagonist. In the nick of time Rablay appeared; he seemed to understand the situation at ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... seem to have a faculty for always turning up when I want you," she replied. "I was just thinking how often you had appeared in the very nick of time. Seriously"—her voice took on a graver note—"I feel I can't ever repay you.—you've come to ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... you in the nick of time," said the old thane courteously. "From your dress I take it that you are one of the Frankish paladins we were on the way to see. But do they always talk good Wessex at the court ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... you," said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... Lavinia, bundled up as usual, and the amiable Amanda, both flushed with constant pokings and thrashings of their steed. A venerable ass, so like an old whity-brown hair trunk as to his body, and Nick Bottom's mask as to his head, that he was a constant source of mirth to the ladies. Mild and venerable as he looked, however, he was a most incorrigible beast, and it took two immortal souls, and four arms, to ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... "I guess we came just in the nick of time. You were about at the last ditch, but from all the signs you must have put up a ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... for one would have thought it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... who fought so stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered rather ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... voices here explained to Sir Richard how Number 666 had come up in the nick of time to receive the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house from ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... laugh. Oh, I bet we have! Ma an' me can stand it, but, mister, I don't want folks to laugh at my children, and there's other things I don't want to happen to 'em. Buddy's a wild hoss and he's got a streak of the Old Nick in him. And Allie ain't broke no better 'n him. I got a feelin' there may be trouble ahead, an'—sometimes I 'most wish we'd never ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the nick of time. All the pent-up spleen and hatred of Peigan Charley had culminated in an irresistible desire. He had seized a rifle from one of the camp Indians standing by, and had flung himself on the banked up defences. Even as his boss shouted, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... up some small stones, which lay littered in front of the cave, and commenced a fusillade. It had such good results, that a few seconds later, the three horses were plunging off along the bottom of the gully as if Old Nick himself ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Senator Jerry Clemens, who had early been a Union man, but later was disposed to accept secession as an accomplished fact; then, on the Union occupancy of Northern Alabama, he boldly advocated a restoration of the State to the Union. Colonel Nick Davis, likewise an original Union man, at first opposed secession; then, after Bull run, accepted a colonelcy in an Alabama rebel regiment; then declined it, and thereafter tried to remain loyal to the Union. The conduct of such strong men ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... near locoes him, it's so clost an' turrible. He boils out on the floor an' begins to claw on his duds, allowin', bein' he's only half awake that a-way, that it's a passel of them murderin' Clay Whigs who's come to crawl his hump for shore. But she's a false alarm. It's only a Dom'nick rooster who's been perched all night on my grandfather's wrist where his arm sticks outen bed, an' who's done crowed a whole lot, as is his habit when he glints the comin' day. It's them sort o' things that sends a shudder ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... for an instant into a shower of diamonds; then down it fell, down, down! As in its descent it passed the bridge on which we stood, the shadows of our two figures rushed up the opposite wall, like a pair of demons scared out of their abode by the hissing flame; and Nick, the guide, as he leaned over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow in the blue elfish light,—was a caricature, half grotesque, almost terrible, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns up from San Francisco ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... your wife, I'd be along with you those nights, Christy Mahon, the way you'd see I was a great hand at coaxing bailiffs, or coining funny nick-names ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... evidence throughout the day, and since no news is good news, one or two unquenchable spirits in his troop continued to hope that he would put in a dramatic appearance just in the nick of time, with the report of a sensational discovery—the tracks of a bear or a wild cat, for instance. It is significant that they would have been quite ready to believe him, ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... fellow, it was fifteen times worse for you than for us! A most uncomfortable position; I congratulate you a hundred times. Just in the nick of time, too. In a month or so there would have ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he cried. "By all that is wonderful it is little Nick! Remember you? Why, we played soldiers together when we were children. ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Lizzie how matters stood. She kept what she called a bookseller's shop as well as the post-office; but the supply of books corresponded exactly to the lack of demand for them, and her chief trade was in nick-nacks, from marbles and money-boxes up to concertinas. If he found the post-mistress in an amiable mood, which was only now and then, the caller led up craftily to the object of his visit. Having discussed the weather and the potato-disease, he explained that his sister ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... in it—like time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... elections and organizing state governments in the customary form. The President was earnest, not to say pertinacious, in urging forward these movements. On September 11, 1863, immediately after the battle of Chattanooga, he wrote to Andrew Johnson that it was "the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal state government" in Tennessee; and he suggested that, as touching this same question of "time when," it was worth while to "remember that it cannot be known who is next to occupy the position I now hold, nor what he will do." He warned ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... endurance, and could keep at work or play long after others were tired. He was a famous ball player, and distinguished himself at the green corn dances. There he drank without flinching such large draughts of the bitter "black drink" that he was nick-named by some "Asseola," which means ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him, if I can hit the nick of time." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... it is some mistake;" the manager spoke most suavely. "But certainly I did wish to speak to madame. I wished to ask her whether she was satisfied with her apartment. I find that the rooms she has generally occupied have fallen vacant, in the nick of time. Perhaps madame would like to look at them, ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... "Just in the nick of time, Martha," said Thinkright, coming forward and shaking hands. "We've a beauty ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... trees. Even though the hounds kept nipping the cougar, the persistent fellow still pursued the hunter. At last Jones found the right shell, just as the cougar reached for him. Major, the leader of the hounds, darted bravely in, and grasped the leg of the beast just in the nick of time. This enabled Jones to take aim and fire at close range, which ended the fight. Upon examination, it was discovered the cougar had been half-blinded by the fine shot, which accounted for the ineffectual attempts he had made ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping the large spectacles from which his nick-name, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... transformed us at once from rather fashionable young men into a set of forlorn-looking beggars. Each laughed at the appearance of the other, unconscious of his own transformation; but Bob, with more truth than politeness, informed us that we all 'looked like the Old Nick;' whence it appeared that in Bob's opinion the Enemy is usually sorely afflicted with a shabby wardrobe, and that, in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and he banged from his seat and bounced to the door. "Miss West! the very woman in the nick of time. Stay, Miss West, and thank your stars; here's an old friend come a long way to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he first saw the light, and so indeed continued with ever-increasing intensity, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... brute, so I was none the worse save for a good fright. It was high time to kill him, for he began charging at the beaters, and threatened to make it lively for us; and if Count Metternich had not, in the nick of time, sent a bullet into him, I doubt whether I should be writing this little account to you at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and then her gratitude, need hardly be described,—nor the astonishment of the husband, which by no means decreased on reflection, at the opportune re-appearance in the nick of time of the man whom three minutes before the attack he had left in the act of going ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Why walks Nick Flimsey like a malcontent! Is it because his money all is spent? No, but because the dingthrift now is poor, And knows not where i' th' ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... kids," said one of the scoutmasters. "We've got the cup but we had to wait a couple of hours for it. The merchants in the great metropolis of Bridgeboro are so slow that a turtle would be arrested for speeding there. Poke up the fire, Nick, we're cold, and I'll tell you all about our adventures. We've made ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... aiming at the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and that friendly interference is not quite ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... trying to hit that mark so far away?" grumbled Bristles; which expression of defeat was something strange to hear from his lips, because the owner of the shock of heavy hair that stood upright, and had gained him such a peculiar nick-name, was as a rule very stubborn, and ready to stick to the ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... in a tight fix," answered Dick, with a shiver. "You came in the nick of time, and I owe you ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... once. He laid aside his austerity, and was no longer a butler but a good-looking chap of thirty-five who had the "very Old Nick" in him. It was the sort of kiss that has nothing in common with mistletoe—the sort that DOES lead to future complications. It proved something to Melissa, and she uttered a little sigh of happiness. Mr. Diggs kissed her because he was in ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... herself, "you're going to hurt me,—don't sir, it hurts," all in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, but felt an impediment. She had never been opened by man. I then put my prick carefully in the nick, and gave the gentlest possible movement (as far as I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' Said St Cuthman, 'To me it is perfectly clear, If you talk of the devil, he's sure to appear!' 'With my spade and my pick I am come,' said old Nick, 'To prove you've no power o'er a demon like me. I'll show you my power— Ere the first morning hour Thro' the Downs, over Poynings, shall roll in the sea.' 'I'll give you long odds,' Cried the Saint, 'by the gods! I'll stake what you please, only say what your wish is.' Said the devil, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... how he seemed to stumble into the business just in the nick of time. I say, seemed; but, in truth, he had been prepared for success in it by a long course of experience and training. He was a poor widow's son, born on the coast of Massachusetts, a few miles from Plymouth Rock; his father having died in early ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... some other relation than that he must ever have to the Anglo-American. The present slave-holder, then, by declining to emancipate his bondman, does not place himself in the guilt of the man-stealer or of those who had complicity with him; but he stands exactly in that NICK of time and place, in the course of Providence, where wrong, in the transmission of African slavery, ends, and ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... in the matter, Nick Alwyn," returned Marmaduke, sturdily; "if a girl likes me, well; if not, there are too many others in the wide world for a young fellow to break his heart about one. Yet," he added, after a short pause, and with a sigh,—"yet, if thou hast not seen her since she ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the attempt by putting on our "civies" first and then drawing our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended, dropping each piece back into the pit as we ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... now, and I know it, and dad knows it," Nick assured him. "I'm going home! You'd better be glad you are not mixed up in this thing," he said, turning to the third boy. "You are safe awhile yet, you ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... do anything yet half so difficult." So he prepared his fire, and put his gridiron upon it, and lays the salmon fairly and softly upon the gridiron, and then he roasts it, turning it from one side to the other just in the nick of time, before the soft satin skin could be blistered. However, on turning it over the eleventh time—and twelve would have settled the business—he found he had delayed a little bit of time too long in turning it over, and there was a small, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... River blacks, who pronounce it to-day exactly as it is spelled in the great navigator's journal, but they use it now only for the big toe. Either the blacks in Cook's time called the kangaroo 'big toe' for a nick-name, as the American Indians speak of the 'big horn,' or the man who asked the name of the animal was holding it by the hind foot, and got the name of the long toe, the black believing that was the part to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... that he has but eleven cents in his pocket. Of course, he has coppered and won. But why—tell me why, could he not have given me the sentiment, which I had a right to expect from him? He bears the stamp of a bad Kopper; a regular old Nick, and has done that unbecoming thing so often that it is becoming monotonous And General X——— and Mr. K——— are types of a large class who come before me to take acknowledgments and the like, for whom I have no liking; who may as well acknowledge now, severally each for himself, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... comes just in the nick of time. He is well acquainted with this part of the jungle, having lived here all his life, and he offers to guide us to a place where we can get mules to transport ourselves and ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back with no little difficulty by the royal troops from mutilating the corpses of women, bishops and princes. Monsignore Natale himself was hanged, and in his case the public executioner—"Masto Donato" as he was nick-named by the populace—gave vent to many pleasantries concerning the episcopal rank of his victim. Blindfolded and with the cord of infamy depending from his neck, the Bishop was led up to the fatal ladder ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... because I am a little mad, I suppose," she said, good-humouredly, in answer to Clara's cautiously-worded question as to how she came by so strange a nick-name. "You see, I never do what sane people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains, (talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station—I've something to tell you about that), and I never play ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... audience. Several years ago I published Cloud Boat Stories. Later The Wonderful Land of Up. A syndicate editor saw these books and asked me to start a children's department for the five hundred papers he served. That was the beginning of the 'Twins.' Nancy and Nick were born two years ago. They still visit their little friends every day in the columns of many newspapers. What a vast audience I have! A million children! No wonder one ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... he brought, And said he feared nought Of the Devil being brewed in his copper: He'd as quickly believe Nick would sit in his sieve, Or dance 'mong the ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... imperfect illustrations of this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon my humble attempt to embellish with the pencil the sweet ideas to which ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... "It would take three such as thou art to make me captive! Mabel Lyndwood, in your grandfather's name, I command you to come with me, and let Nick Clamp look to himself if ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... unknown woman, who has electrified my imagination and my passions. Is there, perhaps, more safety in meeting her and laying the ghost? Imagination plays us such damnable tricks. She may have a raucous voice, or too sharp a wit; or she may love another by this. I'll ask Nick to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sweetness and nobility of Nature, and to live joyously, like birds, in union and communion with God. I am sure, he concludes, that barbarous people that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and the Angels, in the simplicity of their wealth, than do many among us who partake of what we nick-name civility and mode.[36] The entire work of redemption is, thus, to restore man to himself, to bring him once more to the Tree of Life, to enable him to discover the glory all about him, to reveal to him the real values of things, and to bring to birth within him an immortal love. The ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... families are in the two elevens, mingled with the yeomen and whoever can best do the business. Fallow field and Beckley, without regard to rank, have drawn upon their muscle and science. One of the bold men of Beckley at the wickets is Nick Frim, son of the gamekeeper at Beckley Court; the other is young Tom Copping, son of Squire Copping, of Dox Hall, in the parish of Beckley. Last year, you must know, Fallow field beat. That is why Nick Frim, a renowned out-hitter, good to finish a score brilliantly with a pair of threes, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is no revolution," answered Terry. "War has probably broken out between Chili and some other country—I wonder which. Peru, I expect. And it seems to me, my lad, that we have just arrived in the very nick of time. Here is the chance of our lives, and we shall be foolish if we don't make the ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... sir, as any one would ha' thought," said Peter. "And seeing him like that I thought I'd just go down and fetch myself a cup o' tea; but no sooner was I out o' the room than he must have slipped out and dressed hisself—shamming, you know—and if I hadn't come back in the nick o' time ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... of mind, with the result that officials acquire the methods of those who deal with the mentally unhinged; show themselves prepared for any display of eccentricity. Ever, as in life, you remark the people who arrive too soon, or too late; a few lucky ones come in the very nick of time. The last named are favourites, selected with no obvious reason by Fortune, and greatly envied by their contemporaries; it is usual for them to claim the entire credit to themselves. Apart from these, at the terminal stations where no barriers exist, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... any danger of changing my mind, the good lawyer would have saved me in the nick of time. The extract that follows contains the pith of his letter; and shows how he encouraged me when I stood in sore need of a few ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What have you done ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... him good," Captain Doolan said disdainfully. "I have no patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... electrically perfect; an imperfect splice may cause considerable trouble. In telegraph and telephone cables the conductors should be of very soft copper, for in stripping the conductor of insulation it is very easy to nick the wire, and if of hard drawn copper open wires ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... all the public press has been induced to represent you as a monster of this description? The answer is easy. For this plain reason: because all those who belong to the public press, the liberal press, have been the agents or the, tools of one or the other of the two great political factions, nick-named Whigs and Tories; because throughout the whole of my political life, I have honestly opposed the peculations, the plunderings, and frauds of the borough-mongers of both those two factions upon the people, upon the earnings of the poor; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... these negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bornoos[371] have no proper names; individuals are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have nick-names merely. But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into countries, where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals and man-stealers; ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea for admission ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... the height of this particularly mischancy posture of affairs the meddlesome Fates had elected to dispatch Cock-eye Flinks to serve as our deus ex machina. And just as in the comedy the police turn up in the nick of time to fetch Tartuffe to prison, or in the tragedy Friar John manages to be detained on his journey to Mantua and thus bring about that lamentable business in the tomb of the Capulets, so Mr. Flinks now happens inopportunely to arrive upon our ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... high as you can, fellow!" ordered Hal. Just in the nick of time he remembered Captain Foster's instructions, and spoke in English instead of Spanish. But his gesture was eloquent enough for no words ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... our time under two different aspects. The Nixa of the Germans is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible being, and believes him the author of almost all the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... might presume to come to your assistance. And, as my intervention can be of no use unless it remains secret, I did not hesitate to make my way in here ... without walking through the gate. I came in the nick of time, as you said. Your enemy ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... thousand papers-at least there were six—so I suppose Russell sent to some one in the city to do it for him; but the whole thing was awfully womanish. The address was in the most correct, copy-book-y handwriting, every point turned just so, every loop according to rule. But it came just in the nick of time, and saved me and your money. Bless your ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... I never seen her a-gwine on myse'f; not that they was any hidin' out 'mongst the Bivinses er the Sanderses—bless you, no! bekaze here's what wa'n't afeared er all the Wornums in the continental State er Georgy, not if they'd 'a mustered out under the lead er ole Nick hisse'f, which I have my doubta if he wa'n't somewheres aroun'. I never seen 'er, but I heern tell er how she was a-cuttin' up. You mayn't think it, but that 'oman taken it on herse'f to call up all the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Arab's sword again, Ken saw the glitter in his savage eyes, and thought it was all over when, in the very nick of time, a revolver spat and turned the fierce face into ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. Peter and Paul must cover all this with their holy names, so that no more infamous cover ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... with my whole body alongside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes from their look, which was not good. They lowered their forks, and, "Wilt thou that I touch him on the rump?" said one to the other, and they answered, "Yes, see thou nick it for him." But that demon who was holding speech with my Leader turned very quickly and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... is laid, never to rise again' — Insensible of this check, she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the meet was; well, they drew Ballytowngal, and found no fox there. It was not expected, and nothing happened there. The people did not come into old Nick Bodkin's demesne, but we had heard by the time that we were there that we should come across a lot of Landleaguers at Moytubber. There they were as thick as bees round the covert, and there was one man who had the impudence to tell Tom Daly that draw where he might, he would draw in vain ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... queer-looking couple could possibly be,— Asking each other in whispers, whether, It wasn't the likeliest thing that she, Was a Western Actress, and he an Editor; And some were terribly frightened, because They couldn't help thinking there certainly was, The Old Nick to pay, and that ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... pretended speculation involved in the third receivership which was operated by Nucingen in 1826. [The Firm of Nucingen.] In 1833 M. du Tillet advised Nathan, then financially stranded, to apply to Gigonnet, the object being to involve Nathan. [A Daughter of Eve.] The nick-name of Gigonnet was applied to Bidault on account of a feverish, involuntary contraction of a leg ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... spite of her, and now send it to you, hopping you will put a letter in the newspaper of Lundon cleering the karacter of me and my wiffe Peggy, and my Inn of the Golden Arms. As for Miss Jeny ye may mak her as black as auld nick, for over and above Peggies half pund of tea, and your Bowa, Jeny (I hae good reason to believe) is no better than she should be. I am, Madum, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... satisfactory to learn that the ladle itself, the only substantial relic of this curious custom, is, in all probability preserved at the present time. A footnote in W. McDowall's valuable "History of Dumfries," says: "The Dumfries hangman's ladle is still to be seen we believe among other 'auld nick-nackets' at Abbotsford." It was for many years lost sight of, till in 1818, Mr. Joseph Train, the zealous antiquary, hunted it out, and, all rusty as it was, sent it as a ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... knows," said her brother. "I lost count—and lost some of the knives, too. I've an idea Bill Beresford picked up one I dropped—the one Lance Western gave me; it's got a tortoise-shell handle, and a nick out of the big blade—and gave it to me ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... after what had been said to her. Lizzie was sure that, a month since, her cousin would have yielded himself to her willingly, if he could only have freed himself from Lucy Morris. But now, just in this very nick of time, which was so momentous to her, the police had succeeded in unravelling her secret, and there sat Frank, looking at her with stern, ill-natured eyes, like an enemy rather than ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... dear Felix,—I have just received your note; it came in the nick of time, for I was, as they say, in a fury with you. You tell me that you were guilty of that abuse of confidence (about which I intended to write you a piece of my mind) in order to give a knock-down blow ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... grasped the rigging with one hand, and leaning forward as far as possible stood with the hook poised. At first it seemed as though the object would escape them, but a touch of the helm in the nick of time just enabled the mate to reach. The hook caught in the jacket, and with great care he gradually shortened it, and drew the body close to ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... exertion. As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper—is 'pressed down, and shaken together, and running over;' but his 'mission' and Cooper's in the tale-telling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... was a nick name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from then using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with Calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and I shall mark ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... professor of gymnastics. He has seen years of army service, and is thoroughly imbued with the military spirit. The boys are more afraid of him than of the president and entire board of trustees,—as afraid as they would be of old Nick, himself, in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me. To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley's name, that consummate villain would suffer ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... thickly overgrown with rushes and reedy grass, which furnish cover for thousands of ducks, geese, and wild swans. We reached, before night, a native village called Harchina (har'-chin-ah) and sent at once for a celebrated Russian guide by the name of Nicolai Bragan (nick-o-lai' brag'-on) whom we hoped to induce to ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... ridiculed the Partition Treaty with exquisite humour and ingenuity. Everybody must remember his description of the paroxysm of rage into which poor old Lord Strutt fell, on hearing that his runaway servant Nick Frog, his clothier John Bull, and his old enemy Lewis Baboon, had come with quadrants, poles, and inkhorns, to survey his estate, and to draw his will for him. Lord Mahon speaks of the arrangement with grave severity. He calls it "an iniquitous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... And considering how bold he was the day I was out with him, I put it down that he must have had a few drinks when he took me for a— Well, I never saw him, but how else can you account for it? Drink will make a man drive like old Nick, and get away with it, too, sometimes, though the stuff'll get 'em sooner or later. But that's how I ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... corrosion to which they are subject; and the nuts should be made large, and should be square, so that they may be effectually tightened up, even though their corners be worn away by corrosion. It is a good plan to give the thread of the paddle bolts a nick with a chisel, after the nut has been screwed up, which will prevent the nut from turning back. Paddle floats, when consisting of more than one board, should be bolted together edgeways, by means of bolts running through their whole breadth. The floats should ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... more apparent became the gravity of his responsibility. Why had he yielded to her reckless whim? Only this morning he had been thanking his lucky stars that he was well rid of women of the world for a month at least. And now—Shades of Pluto! He had one hanging around his nick more securely than any millstone. And this one—Hermia Challoner, an enthusiast without a mission—a feminine abnormity, half child, half oracle, wholly irresponsible and yet, by the same token, wholly ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "you will forgive me, sir, I know; but I must beg of you for the sake of the ladies to give up this out-of-the-way place, and come close, up to the settlement. We feel that we cannot leave you out here unprotected. Think of what would have happened if we had not arrived in the nick of time." ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... him," she resumed. "He is not young; he is not handsome; he is not funny. I did not fancy him one bit; and, if I had only known where to find shelter for the night, I'd soon have sent him to the old Nick,—him and his brilliant position. But, not having enough money to buy myself a penny-loaf, it wasn't the time to put on any airs. So I tell him that I accept. He goes for a cab; we get into it; and he brings me right ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... good sense utterly. Still it is possible for even the wisest of women to lose her judgment at times. But as for my trusty steward Thomas Salthouse, the steadiest man I have ever had in my employ, if even old Nick himself has managed to bewitch him, he must be a cleverer ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... see you, Nick," said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. "Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be nabbed. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... for it, let me go. And last year I was almost caught when I passed off French counterfeit notes for fifty roubles on Korovayev, but, thank God, Korovayev fell into the pond when he was drunk, and was drowned in the nick of time, and they didn't succeed in tracking me. Here, at Virginsky's, I proclaimed the freedom of the communistic wife. In June I was distributing manifestoes again in X district. They say they will make ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... all got together at this sale of fineries and nick- nacks. You call them goods; but if you do not take care they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them they must be dear to you. Remember what poor Richard says— ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at leeavs abaat nooin; E'e, gow! that'll be a gooid trick! An aw'st get a gooid dinner for gooin, An th' foir can goa to old Nick. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... honest, considerate German soldiery; and, if he can help it, he will not in any similar case leave so much as a wooden spoon to be carried off to the Fatherland, and added as yet another trophy to the hundred thousand French clocks and the million French nick-nacks which are still preserved there as mementoes ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... encounters them boldly alone. The courtiers hide "like frightened little girls", and the king betakes him to a "narrow shelter", an euphemism evidently of Saxo's, for the scene is comic. The king comes forth when the hero is victorious, and laughing at his hairy legs, nick-names him Shaggy-breech, and bids him to the feast. Ragnar fetches up his comrades, and apparently seeks out the frightened courtiers (no doubt with appropriate quip, omitted by Saxo, who hurries on), feasts, marries the king's daughter, and begets ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... only a few little unavoidable words afloat, by which the curious public of Ottawa could surmise why Honor Edgeworth had so coldly rejected her handsome suitor at the last moment, and why Guy Elersley had come back in the nick of time, to be reinstated in his ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... him. Andrew once catched him alone reading, and then told him, that if he did not find some way to earn his bread, he would turn him out of doors in a very short time; and so he would have done, sure enough, if my Lord Fitz-Owen had not taken him into his service just in the nick." ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik,) "old Nick burn him!—thinks I've got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad,—I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves,—that's clear; and boy slaves if he can,—that's equally certain. This ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... needs find fault, to shew his wit: Then, for his sake, ne'er stint your own delight; Throw boldly, for he sits to all that write; With such he ventures on an even lay, For they bring ready money into play. Those who write not, and yet all writers nick, Are bankrupt gamesters, for they damn ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... harbor after our many voyages," he continued. "Shipmates we were, shipmates we'll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! Do you remember the Dutch brig, and ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would not openly ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them ...
— Twas the Night before Christmas - A Visit from St. Nicholas • Clement C. Moore
... battle of. Valence de, the English cognomen of the Lusignan family. Valence, Aymar de, his contest with Bruce; his pursuit of him; defeated by Bruce at Loudon Hill; Gaveston's nick-name for him; unites with other nobles against Gaveston; his character; his conduct at the death of Gaveston; sent by Edward II. to Scotland against Bruce. Valence, William de, half-brother to Henry III., opposition between him and the Barons. Varangian ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... "If she is ill she would rather see the old Nick himself than Miss Stetson. I'll run ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... code. She evinced no curiosity about the past of this boy-man who had come into her life at the nick of time. None the less she was eager to know what connection lay between him and the renegade her brother had killed. She had heard Jim Clanton say that he had waited four years for his revenge and had followed the man all over the West. Why? What motive ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... he was a woman," added Montigny with a sneer. "Sit up, can't you?" he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. "Tread out that fire, Nick!" ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but it seems that I came down just in the nick of time," replied the little fop. "The fact is, I drank too much wine last night, and it makes me thirsty to-day. I was almost choked, and the ladies had seated themselves on a rock, to enjoy a view ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... scientifically as were the facts with the Crisis and la Dame de Nantes; for so, as we afterwards ascertained, was our antagonist called. Neither party aimed at any great advantage by manoeuvring; but we came up alongside of "The Lady," as our men subsequently nick-named the Frenchman, the two vessels delivering their broadsides nearly at the same instant. I was stationed on the forecastle, in charge of the head-sheets, with orders to attend generally to the braces and the rigging, using a musket in moments that were not otherwise employed. Away ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... it," he said, "and just in the nick of time. The soldier was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't give it enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now it won't ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... "No," he said. "We'll keep Nick informed but he ought to remain where he is. We'll still want our men in the basic positions ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... cup," said the Story Girl impressively. "Isn't it an amazing thing? That cup has been here for forty years, and hundreds of people have drunk from it, and it has never been broken. Aunt Julia dropped it down the well once, but they fished it up, not hurt a bit except for that little nick in the rim. I think it is bound up with the fortunes of the King family, like the Luck of Edenhall in Longfellow's poem. It is the last cup of Grandmother King's second best set. Her best set is still complete. Aunt Olivia has it. You must get her to show it ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... laborious breathing, eyes darting humid fires: all faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy. It came on at length: the baronet led the extasy, which she critically joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he shewed all the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly that she answered it down with all effusion of spirit ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... you came in the nick of time," she said, looking up with kindly eyes. "It's just frozen. I'll dish you up some now, if you will run up to the pantry and fetch ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Divine were elated at the luck which had brought them to Honolulu in the nick of time, and at the success of Theriere's mission at that port. They had figured upon a week at least there before the second officer of the Halfmoon could ingratiate himself sufficiently into the goodwill of the Hardings to learn their plans, and now they were congratulating themselves ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Nick Razorblade a barber was, A strapping lad was he; And he could shave with such a grace, It was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... "impression" here While yet his heart was warm, Just in the "nick" closed his career, And death ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Richard's mind, alas for the returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... teeth; So easily may all things be destroyed! But 'tis not in the power of mortal man To mend the fracture of a filbert shell. There were two great men once amused themselves Watching two maggots run their wriggling race, And wagering on their speed; but, Nick, to us It were no sport to see the pampered worm Roll out and then draw in his folds of fat Like to some barber's leathern powder bag Wherewith he feathers, frosts or cauliflowers, Spruce beau, or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... glad I am to see you! I have been dreaming about you the whole night, the whole night, and I was afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you only knew how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of time! You will be my salvation! You are the only person who can save me! There is to be a most original wedding here tomorrow," she went on, laughing, and tying her husband's cravat. "A young telegraph clerk at the station, called Tchikeldyeev, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... very much, except one boy who was a little sick and choked a good deal. He was rather greedy, and that's the truth, and I believe it went the wrong way, which I say served him right, and I hope you will say so too. Nick has had his roast lamb, as you said he was to, but he could not eat it all, and says if you do not mind his doing so he should like to have the rest hashed to-morrow with some greens, which he is very fond of, and so ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... square in the nick B, attach the rubber bands and pull the trigger. The top rubber band will fly off and drive ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... not have been of the slightest use, for it would have been lost in the sea, had I not come with my boat just in the nick of time." ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... "After my wife died, if I saw another girl with her name, and I was talking to her, I'd speak another woman's name, and call her by another name; that's to say, I'd take some nick-name, such as Polly or Sukey. And it was the same thing with my father's name—if I saw a man with a name that was the same as his (literally, 'that samed his'), I'd call him by another name. For 'twould make any ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night of that,—and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had sense enough to keep ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... fairly shows himself as an original and delightful author. His boys are always masterly. Nothing could be truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas, or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and everybody's way till he finds his natural vocation as an aid to a dealer in horses, is a capital sketch. The hypochondriac Squire Plumworthy is very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... their hats, and bowed very low. Mr. Aubrey went up and entered into conversation with them for some minutes. Their families and farms, he found, were well and thriving. There was quite a little crowd of women about the shop of Nick Steele, the butcher, who, with an extra hand to help him, was giving out the second ox which had been sent from the Hall, to the persons whose names had been given in to him from Mrs. Aubrey. Farther on, some were ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... In the nick of time, however, the waves moderated, and after a weary voyage and many adventures Columbus dropped anchor in the harbor at Palos from which he had sailed months before. He then sent word to Ferdinand and Isabella of his discovery, and was received ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... united in small parties, and were styled by the Skinners, in derision, the 'Cow-boys.' One of the most active and energetic of these bands, ever ready for any species of patriotic duty, was led by Nicholas Odell. Nick, as he was familiarly termed, though entirely uneducated, was one of the shrewdest men to be found; for Nature had gifted him where cultivation was wanting, and he became, in consequence, a most formidable and dangerous enemy in the service he had chosen. But fifty ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Jasper with a quiet smile, as he reloaded his gun; "this is not the first time that you and I have helped one another in the nick of time, Arrowhead; we shall be brothers, and good friends to boot, I hope, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... Minna. Before she could say a word, her face told me the joyful news. Before I could congratulate her, Fritz himself burst headlong into the hall, and made one of his desperate attempts at embracing me. This time I succeeded (being the shorter man of the two) in slipping through his arms in the nick of time. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Why, most assuredly, if I am any sort of teacher. Otherwise I ought to be dealing with inanimate things and leave the school work to those who can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... and Norah and I had been out riding, and we came home, past the back yard, in the nick of time. We couldn't hear what the fellow was saying to Mrs. Brown, but his attitude was enough to make us pull up, and as we did so we saw him try to shove her aside. She was plucky enough and banged the door in his face, but he ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... Sellick, is an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... fellow to have in a sick-room. Get something and dry that off the floor there, please.—Well, March, I understand you got there in the nick of time to-day. Mr. Remsen says you ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... as a Russian spy. On this occasion a large Japanese fishing fleet was entirely destroyed. I was, of course, soaked to the skin and got badly bruised, and was once all but washed overboard, one of the Fijians catching hold of me in the nick of time. We cast anchor for the night, though we had only a few miles yet to go, but this short distance took us eight or nine hours next day, as this channel is nearly always calm. We had light variable breezes, and tacked repeatedly, but gained ground slowly. These waters seemed full of ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... It was the same with Richard. She seemed to know when he quitted her side, and her eyes watched the door eagerly till he came back to her again. At the doctor's suggestion, all were at last banished from the sick-room except Aunt Barbara, and Richard, and Nick Bottom, as she persisted in calling poor Andy, who was terribly perplexed to know whether he was complimented or not, and who eventually took to studying Shakspere to find out who Bottom was. Those were trying days to Richard, who rarely ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... bazaars of Cairo. For we haven't hired from Cook, but from an Egyptian millionaire of Alexandria called Mahmoud Baroudi, whom we met coming out, and who happened to want a tenant for his boat just in the nick of time. It isn't my money he needs, though I'm paying him what I should pay Cook for a first-rate boat, but he doesn't like leaving his crew and servants with nothing to do. He says they get into mischief. He was looking out for a rich American—like ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... more freely. As her short, round figure moves down the aisle and back, and Susie gets a good look at her, she says to herself, "Why surely this is Mrs. Santa Claus! How glad I am!" and it is not a strange conclusion, for her figure and expression are like the poet's description of dear Saint Nick. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... Book II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... take my oath in his presence that those cheques are forgeries. You will find alterations in my banker's book, too, I expect. We'll look into it all to-morrow. Come along, Dickson, my sly little weasel; I've a gay night's work for you; I'm going to leave all my property to my cousin Nick, my bitterest enemy, and a lawsuit with it that'll break his heart. There's fun for ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ends ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... yur claws, Charley. May the Almighty stan' your frien' and keep you out o' Ole Nick's clutches. Don't hev' any dubiousness 'bout us. Tho' we shed kum across Satan hisself wi' all his hellniferous host, Sime Woodley 'll take care o' them sweet gurls, or go to grass trying." With this characteristic wind-up, he puts the spur to his horse, and closes ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... little tin soldiers, my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there is ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings to her ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Mr. Birkenfeld drew his chubby five-year old boy to his knees. The child's name was Hulreich, but as he had always called himself Hunne, the other children and the parents had adopted the nick-name. Moreover, Julius, the eldest brother, declared that the baby's little stumpy nose made him look like a Hun, and so the name was very appropriate. But his mother would ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard marching in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... eager strenuous press To sow good seed; There was that saving from distress In the nick of need; There were those words in the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... and exile loaded with the most precious spoil; should it chance to slumber, "it does but recoup its strength." It tempers the body itself and makes it tougher; it does not consume life, however long it lives; it rules over man like a pinioned passion, and allows him to fly just in the nick of time, when his foot has grown weary in the sand or has been lacerated by the stones on his way. It can do nought else but impart; every one must share in its work, and it is no stinted giver. When it is repulsed ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... be scared at him, mum; that's only old Jock; he's as ugly as old Nick himself, but he knows better than to be very ugly to me. I can throw him in the gutter as easy as I could them young ones, and he knows it. That's Dirk's father, that is! Ain't ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... who, hanging on our skirts, caused Simon Fleix no little apprehension. Notwithstanding the contempt which M. d'Agen, whose bearing throughout was admirable, expressed for them, we might have found it necessary to turn and teach them a lesson had we not reached M. de Rambouillet's in the nick of time; where we found the door surrounded by half a dozen armed servants, at sight of whom our persecutors fell back with the cowardice which is usually found ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new- born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I ain't slep'. I only jest 'appened to close me eyes, sir. Ye see, I don't need much sleep, I don't,—four hours is enough for any man,—my pal Nick says so, and Nick knows a precious ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Lady Julia, but never again. Not that I mean to quarrel with her. I'm not such a fool as to quarrel with a girl because she can't like me. I know how it all is. If that scoundrel had not come across my path just when he did,—in that very nick of time, all might have been right betwixt her and me. I couldn't have offered to marry her before, when I hadn't as much income as would have found her in bread-and-butter. And then, just as better times came to me, he stepped ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the execution of this scheme with deliberation, prudence, and intelligence. On the frontiers, or lines, as it is the custom to term the American boundaries, he had become acquainted with a Tuscarora, known by the English sobriquet of "Saucy Nick." This fellow, a sort of half-outcast from his own people, had early attached himself to the whites, had acquired their language, and owing to a singular mixture of good and bad qualities, blended ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... were made to the Succession by other Princes, and particularly by a certain Potent Prince call'd the Eagle, of an Ancient Family, whose Lunar Name I cannot well express, but in English it signifies the Men of the great Lip; whether it was Originally a sort of a Nick Name, or whether they had any such thing as a great Lip Hereditary to the Family, by which they were distinguisht, is not worth ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... determined bailiffs from amongst the tribe, and to their care was committed the keeping of the supposed body in the old barn. Associated with these worthies were a couple of ill-conditioned country blackguards, who, for the sake of a bottle of whisky, would keep company with Old Nick himself, and who expected, moreover, to hear "a power o' news" from the "gentlemen" from Dublin, who, in their turn did not object to have their guard strengthened, as their notions of a rescue in the country parts of Ireland ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... we came in in the nick of time for them—in very truth. If we hadn't, their exchange would have gone down soon and they know it. I shall never forget the afternoon I spent with Mr. Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law on that subject. They ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... heavy sums, that were spent in a few days. He borrowed from everybody, and never paid them back; he lived like a real Indian, and was as cowardly as a half-drowned chicken. His light-coloured hair, sallow complexion, and beardless face, gave him the nick-name among the Indians of Onela-Dogou, Tagalese words, that signify "one ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... that "The Skipper," as his father always called him, was Bob, otherwise Robert Trevor; and Dot, so nick-named for reasons plain to see, was by rights Dorothy, and they had that morning been excused from lessons, because Captain Trevor had sent a message from Portsmouth that he was going to run over ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... said Waring, closing the discussion with a mighty yawn. 'I say, Spirit, take yourself off. Something is coming ashore, and were it old Nick in person I should be glad to see him and shake his ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... me owld eyes not to seen it, whin me own fingers sewed it, an' me own han's hoong it aboot the little crather's nick?" ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals themselves, whose statements had never been ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... voice boomed. "Big Olaf is the greatest traveller in the Yukon. I'd back him against Old Nick himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel. He brought in the government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilkoot and the third drowned in the open water of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... to her first belief in the personal existence of Saint Nick, and although Tess had some doubts as to his real identity, she would not for the world have said anything ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... but, owing to a marvellous tale that he was in the habit of relating, concerning the length of time he had to labor to keep his ship from sinking after Rodneys victory, he had universally acquired the nick name ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... very nick of time, George came walking leisurely by, hatchet in hand; who, upon seeing how matters stood, without a moment's hesitation, ran up to his father, and, dropping his hatchet, caught him round the leg, just as the first stroke of the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... last we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory rang ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... I felt sure that in the nick of time her lady friend would step out from somewhere and say that ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... (for that is my time, When the days are at shortest) to get it in rhyme; Till then it was lock'd in my box at Parnassus; When that subtle companion, in hopes to surpass us, Conveys out my paper of hints by a trick (For I think in my conscience he deals with old Nick,) And from my own stock provided with topics, He gets to a window beyond both the tropics, There out of my sight, just against the north zone, Writes down my conceits, and then calls them his own; And you, like a cully, the bubble can swallow: Now who but Delany that ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's suggestion of appointing Tipu ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... by the nick-name Silguero,[40] six blows of the best sort for the lady whom he compelled to leave her necklace in pledge with him. Secutor, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The wind died down in the nick of time, giving the men a chance to control the blaze. When it was evident the danger was past, the operator set up his apparatus again and prepared to continue his duties, as though ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... Arch. Why, Nick Marrabone, a professed pickpocket, and a good bowler; but he makes a handsome figure, and rides in his coach, that he ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... the ashes from his pipe, moved into action. He plucked a double handful of the tall, dry grass, touched a match to it, and thrust it in the nick. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Blooms, I was on my way to grandpa's, thought I would come to take mother back to-morrow, and, as it was a fine afternoon, I concluded, to walk up from the station. Happened by just in the nick of time, didn't I? Funny ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... Oddly enough, you are in the nick of time to help materially. Will you ring off, and find out from the exchange who 'phoned here two minutes ago? I don't mean Fenley's Bank, which is just trying to get through. I want to know who made the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... against, but for the opposite, as when a rib or portion of it has from some cause—perhaps fracture or thinness—bulged outwardly. It will be perceptible at once that for direct pressure against a part of the ribs, situated near the upper block, that the little joist will slip unless a nick is made for its reception in the large support or beam. This is so evident that a ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... tables all the while like she expected to see tigers and lions acrouchin' there, ready to take a bite out of her. And she's even got to callin' my little Nicodemus bad names. She says he's sure a chip of the Ould Nick. That's what she told me this morning, when I was getting a big pie she made for me yesterday, and which is safe in a box in ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... to the ground by the thud of a frantic tentacle against the vine. His movement had been seen. Again the tentacle struck with crushing force. The great vine swayed. He managed to reach the shelf again in the very nick ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... scattered small possessions that seem to ooze from the pores of little boys, Margaret set her lips distastefully as she brought order out of chaos. It was all wrong, somehow, she thought, gathering handkerchiefs and matches and "Nick Carters" and the oiled paper that had wrapped caramels from under the pillows that would in a few ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... all. I would have wagered my reputation against a hospital assistant's pay, that our friend had not sixty seconds of life in him, when that young lady appeared, like a fiery whirlwind, and caught him back to earth in the nick of time.' ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... message to you from Captain Lenoir, who is at present discussing with Senor Morillo the matter of the expected arrival of the cauffle this afternoon. We find ourselves in something of a difficulty over that matter; and your arrival in the nick of time proves most opportune. For you must know that when the Psyche was cut adrift and came ashore, her crew were compelled to camp on the beach, yonder; and Senor Morillo considered that the opportunity to give the English a thorough drubbing was ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... is truth, if the devil spoke it," said the knight; "and I thank Heaven I can follow good counsel, though old Nick gives it. And so, friend, touching these same Commissioners, bear them this message; that Sir Henry Lee is keeper of Woodstock Park, with right of waif and stray, vert and venison, as complete as any of them have to their estate—that is, if they possess any estate ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. Peter and Paul must cover all this with their holy names, so that ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... Mac. But, say, that isn't the worst. The Old Nick himself is shot up, and hitting the high spots with fever. We're afraid ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Neither is this all the injury which is occasioned by the ceremonies, they make godly and zealous Christians to be mocked and nick-named Puritans, except they can swallow the camel of conformity. Our consciences bear us witness, how without all reason we are branded with the name of those ancient heretics, from whose opinions and manners, O, how far are we!(326) And as for ourselves, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the church over the way," answered Roderick; "and some how or other I have mist this hour every evening since we have been here. Today it comes just in the nick: I can cover my dress with your cloak, hiding my mask and turban under it; and so, when the music is over, I may go ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... two or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... used to five per cent from a certain quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... or homely appellative. The propensity to approach a meaning not directly and squarely, but by circuitous styles of expression, seems indeed a born quality of the common people everywhere, evidenced by nick-names, and the inveterate determination of the masses to bestow sub-titles, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes very apt. Always among the soldiers during the secession war, one heard of "Little Mac" (Gen. McClellan), or of "Uncle Billy" (Gen. Sherman.) "The old man" was, of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... ends well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... gilt lined, the cover thrown back, laden with music; on the music-stool a woman's cloak was lying, on the piano a woman's cap. A great book-case reached from ceiling to floor, filled with books, its shelves fringed with some scalloped red stuff. Everywhere were nick-nacks in china, in glass, in terra-cotta, in carved woods, in ivory; photo frames; medallions. On the walls, bright with striped hangings, were some dainty pictures. Half concealed by the hangings was another door. Lying about on the table, here and there on low shelves, were more ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... if he warn't," he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... war-whoop, and made a show of descending upon the besiegers, those precious friendlies would assuredly have turned tail and bolted. But the Matabele in the security of their caves made no such sign, and Baden-Powell called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims in the nick of time. In a few minutes the guns were in position on what looked like inaccessible crags, and the Cape Boys shouting and cheering were floundering through bogs, leaping over boulders, and firing with firm hand wherever firing was of use. The ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... up on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped a butt-kerf. Not a stroke was ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a pretty close call," answered Phil. "My friend here jumped overboard just in the nick of time." ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "rat, black-coat" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must do it. He is ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... nabob who asks how the devil any one should be able to mix spices so well "as one who has been where they grow;"—his little ragamuffin who indignantly denies that he has broken his promise not to gamble away his sixpences at pitch-and-toss because he has gambled them away at "neevie-neevie-nick-nack,"—and similar figures abound in his tales,—are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as we read. But he has a much higher humour still, that inimitable power of shading off ignorance into knowledge and simplicity into wisdom, which makes his picture of Jeanie Deans, for ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Robinson," Mollie quoted, as she took the reins and tactfully directed Long John's attention to an extra juicy patch of grass. Between his greed and her excitement they nearly overturned into the ditch, but a kindly boulder saved them in the nick of time. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... whose much-stained and smeared silk facings bore testimony to the good cheer it had seen. As if in contrast to the light airiness of this garment, Quod had on a tremendously large shaggy brown waistcoat, with horn buttons, a double tier of pockets, and a nick out in front. With an unfair partiality his nether man was attired in a pair of shabby old black, or rather brown, dress trousers, thrust into long Wellington boots with brass heel spurs. Captain Seedeybuck had on a spruce ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Mr. Slope first to secure the bishop. He specially felt that it behoved him to do this before the visit to the archbishop was made. It was really quite providential that the dean should have fallen ill just at the very nick of time. If Dr. Proudie could be instigated to take the matter up warmly, he might manage a good deal while staying at the archbishop's palace. Feeling this very strongly, Mr. Slope determined to sound ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... shutter, and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!— To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!" As ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back of necessity ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and six drachms of rose-water. With this mixture wet the corns night and morning for three days. Soak the feet every evening in warm water without soap. Put one-third of the acid into the water, and with a little picking the corn will be dissolved. 2. Take a lemon, cut off a small piece, then nick it so as to let in the toe with the corn, tie this on at night so that it cannot move, and in the morning you will find that, with a blunt knife, you may remove a considerable portion of the corn. Make two or three applications, and great ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... is something supernatural about this!" said he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick of time? Did any one ever see the like! ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... the short third hole at Mt. Agel in three. (His first had cleverly dislodged the ball from the piled-up tee; his second, a sudden nick, had set it rolling down the hill to the green; and the third, an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... gloomily, "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns up from San Francisco or Australia, having taken his own time to get here,—gets ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... second advanced, and again a third, for it was impossible to surround the place in full force, as it was encircled by a river. Presently Xenophon came up with the rearguard, consisting of both light and heavy infantry, whereupon Cheirisophus halted him with the words: "In the nick of time you have come; we must take this place, for the troops have no provisions, unless we take it." Thereupon they consulted together, and to Xenophon's inquiry, "What it was which hindered their simply walking in?" Cheirisophus replied, "There is just ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... that they was any hidin' out 'mongst the Bivinses er the Sanderses—bless you, no! bekaze here's what wa'n't afeared er all the Wornums in the continental State er Georgy, not if they'd 'a mustered out under the lead er ole Nick hisse'f, which I have my doubta if he wa'n't somewheres aroun'. I never seen 'er, but I heern tell er how she was a-cuttin' up. You mayn't think it, but that 'oman taken it on herse'f to call up all the niggers on the place an' give 'em her forbiddance ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. Ladies, forgive the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hurt me,—don't sir, it hurts," all in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, but felt an impediment. She had never been opened by man. I then put my prick carefully in the nick, and gave the gentlest possible movement (as far as I can ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... a means of gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction. "Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... an imp of evil brook to lie hidden in the Holy Hole behind the very altar?" said Mrs. Woodford. "But I hear Nick bringing in supper, and I must leave you for the present. God in His mercy bless you, His poor child, and lead you in ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... relationships and such things, and our hearts pause as the moment approaches when the captain ventures his ship in order to save the interloper's life. That is a moment with all romance in it. As the ship swerves round into safety just in the nick of time, we have a story transfigured into the music of the triumphant soul. Mr. Conrad, as we see in Freya of the Seven Isles and elsewhere, is not blind to the commonness of tragic ruin—tragic ruin against which no high-heartedness seems to avail. He is, indeed, inclined rather ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... "Homesick, just at the nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... intimate knowledge of the people and their secret customs. Then he put on long hair and a venerable beard, stained his limbs with henna, and called himself Abdullah of Bushire, a half-Arab. In this disguise, with spear in hand and pistols in holsters, he travelled the country with a little pack of nick-knacks. In order to display his stock he boldly entered private houses, for he found that if the master wanted to eject him, the mistress would be sure to oppose such ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... distance, he heard the farmer say: "Here he comes now, the one I was telling you about and I don't think you will have any trouble in teaching him anything you want to, for he seems very smart and not afraid of 'Old Nick' himself." ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... Houssas up in the nick of time, when one wing of Bosambo's force was being thrust back and when Bizaro's desperate adventurers had gained the Ochori bank. Hamilton came through the clearing, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... whose stall was opposite the house. The cobbler, when once started on the quest by the Vicomte, discovered many other letters, sketches, and unfinished novels, which had been picked up by the neighbouring shopkeepers, and were only saved in the nick of time from being used to wrap up pounds of butter, or to make bags for other household commodities. It was an exciting chase, requiring patience and ingenuity; and Balzac's former cook held out for ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Peace, Nick, I'll see he shall use thee well; Go to, peace, sirrah: here, Nick, take this letter, Carry it to him to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... vehicle for moral instruction. "Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies "Scurra ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... on beholding it, shivered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "God help me from ugly old Nick!" ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... is in it!" he said to himself as he crossed the court-yard. "That man's wandering memory comes back to him in the nick of time,—just when he needed it to hinder us from taking precautions against him! I have cracked my brains to save the property of those children. I meant to proceed regularly and come to an understanding with old Conyncks, and here's the end of it! I ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He seemed fully sensible that he had done ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... morning gave Ziffak his first knowledge of the mistake they had made, and, leaping into his canoe, he drove it across the stream with resistless speed, reaching the spot in the nick of time, and barely doing that, since he was forced to raise his voice while yet on the river, in order to hold the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... this one reflects upon the minutiae of life. We were walking through a field this afternoon, which was dotted with rough granite rocks. I fancy he must have hitched his foot in one of them; at any rate, he would have fallen heavily but for Captain Springfield, who just in the nick of time helped him up. But he showed no signs of light-headedness, not the slightest. We were all acting like a lot of children, and romped as though we were boys home from school. The happening seemed perfectly natural to me at the time, and but for ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... be made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... knives and saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens about—disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big station motor—pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. But a certain formality must be gone through; every ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... one of the large transports. This darky throughout the trip had been very fearful of submarines, and when the actual moment of danger came he acted upon a predetermined course, and shinned up the mainmast as though Old Nick himself were at his heels. When the excitement was over an officer ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... has never known, and what I hope no reader will be fool enough to tell her—that Orlando was for the moment hopelessly and besottedly faithless to his wife, and that my services had been bespoken in the very narrowest nick of time. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... was sadly degenerated when I saw him for the last time, and several months after, in a mainland camp, he quarrelled with his half-brother Willie—the same Willie who many years ago in honourable encounter cut a liberal nick out of one of Tom's ears with a razor. Willie probed Tom between the ribs with a spear. While he lay helpless and suffering representatives of the police force visited the spot and the sick man was taken by steamer to a hospital, where he passed away—peradventure, in antagonism to his own personal ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... said the dwarf, whose breath was coming in great sobs, "then make a little nick in the ice with the blade of the spear, and when next I pull, try to set some of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... think they loves him like winkey, all the time they ruins him. They kisses money out of the miser, and sits in their satins, while the wife, 'drot her, sulks in a gingham. Oh, they be cliver creturs, and they'll do what they likes with old Nick, when they gets there, for 'tis the old gentlemen they cozens the best; and then," continued the Corporal, waxing more and more loquacious, for his appetite in talking grew with that it fed on,—"then there be another set o' queer folks you'll ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... get that horse?" called Nick Hammond as he approached his father and Dr. Morris, as they were talking at ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... face turned my way. Every soul—men, women, and children—were looking at those girls, who whirled, and moved, and tangled themselves up in some sort of a wild, wicked dance, that must have been the work of Old Nick himself, for nothing less could have made me look on. My whole heart rose right up against those beautiful creatures, but somehow they seemed to hold me to my seat. Really, sisters, you have no idea how very enticing a woman can be who puffs a lot of gauze around her waist, throws ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... small blame to her that's, that it was lyin' to her he was. 'Ye're a thafe, so ye are, dhrinkin' up me dhrink, wid a lie on yer lips about the purse, an' insultin' me into the bargain,' says she, thinkin' how he called her a shkeleton, an' her a load fur a waggin. 'Yer impidince bates owld Nick, so it does,' says she; so she up an' hits him a power av a crack on the head wid a bottle; an' the other felly's, a-thinkin' sure that it was a lie he was afther tellin' them, an' he laving thim to pay fur the dhrink he'd had, got on ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... 1902, the only unmarried member of the family. The Princess Maud was, as a girl, merry, pretty and clever; a capital all-round sportswoman and fond of horses, dogs, birds, yachting and riding; possessed at home of the nick-name "Harry," and said to be the Prince's favourite daughter; fond of incognito experiences, charities and amusements. The Princess Louise was a quieter and less striking character, and, like her younger sister, was afterwards allowed to marry the man of her choice, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... her young host with an enigmatical flash of her own. But she made no answer in words. Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... George. You know I said I'd stick by you to the bitter end; and nobody ever knew Nick Longfellow ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... the only substantial relic of this curious custom, is, in all probability preserved at the present time. A footnote in W. McDowall's valuable "History of Dumfries," says: "The Dumfries hangman's ladle is still to be seen we believe among other 'auld nick-nackets' at Abbotsford." It was for many years lost sight of, till in 1818, Mr. Joseph Train, the zealous antiquary, hunted it out, and, all rusty as it was, sent it as a present to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... time for spinning now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... shouted Sir Reginald, as his eyes fell upon the newcomer. "You are just in the nick of time. George, a cup of coffee for Herr von Schalckenberg! So you have made a start, Professor; but you must have done it very gently, for none of us was awakened by the movement of the ship. Where ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... almost wholly ignorant of military matters and utterly incapable of handling such a situation, he leaped on his horse and, spurring his way across the frozen ground to the sound of the firing, confronted the huddled and beaten division just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, General Lew Wallace—afterwards famous as the author "Ben Hur"—had arrived and thrown forward a brigade to cover the confused retreat, so that for the moment the Confederate advance was held in check. But despite this, McClernand's men continued ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped a butt-kerf. Not a ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the Brethren's creditors, in a state of panic, pressed hard for their money. The little Church of the Brethren was now on the brink of ruin. At one moment Zinzendorf himself expected to be thrown into prison, and was only saved in the nick of time by the arrival of money from Germany. But the English Brethren now showed their manhood. The very men whom Zinzendorf was supposed to have robbed now rose in his defence. Instead of thanking Whitefield for defending them in their supposed distresses, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... we've a mind. Aw'm capt whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... out laughing. Like me, he now saw this mysterious young lady for the first time. Like me, he wondered what the extraordinary nick-name under which she had presented herself could ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... just about gettin' my second wind and was puttin' in some heavy licks when I hears somebody tootin' a motor horn out in the road. I looks up to find that it's that sporty neighbor of mine, Nick Barrett, who now and then indulges a fad for an early spin in his stripped roadster. He has collected his particular chum, Norris Bagby, and I expect they're out to burn up the macadam before the ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... burn Miss Rusha; she too ugly for dat. S'pose fire burn de ole Nick? Den he be done dead and gone, which ain't so; derefore nuthin' ever fall Miss Rusha; she never sick, nor die, nor drown, nor burn up. Miss Ellice she sick, she die, 'cause she be an angel; she go home to glory; but Miss Rusha she live, jes to trouble ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... his Indian Evidence Act. This subject brought him further occupation. He had more or less succeeded in making a convert of Coleridge. 'If this business with Coleridge turns out right,' he says (October 2), 'I shall have come home in the very nick of time, for there is obviously going to be a chance in the way of codification which there has not been these forty years, and which may never occur again.' Had he remained in India, he might have found the new viceroy less favourable to his schemes than Lord Mayo had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... impetuous young woman," Frederick went on, "the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose's husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved to ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... while leaning on his shoulder his diamond scarfpin got caught in her teeth. She being a bashful young thing—then. Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home. But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff. Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next day and declare ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... cent from a certain quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... right shade of deference about using the first name—big wheel to bigger wheel. "Has Nick Emmert been talking to you about ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... stage or in books something always happens just in the nick of time to put things right; but that ain't life, or ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Brown, I think, always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, crawled back into ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the gaily patterned chintz on the couches and chairs, the water-colour sketches of Venice, and coloured terra-cotta plaques embossed on high relief with views of the Forum and St. Peter's at Rome on the walls, and numerous "nick-nacks"—an alabaster model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a wood carving of the Lion of Lucerne, and groups of bears from Berne—all of which were not only souvenirs of her wedding-journey, but witnesses to Continental ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... long, should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... to know a kind old fellow who loved to linger, his hands resting on his staff, watching their play, listening to their laughter; whose ample pockets were storehouses of good things. Their elders, passing by, would whisper to one another how like he was in features to wicked old Nick, the miser of Zandam, and would wonder where he came from. Nor was it only the faces of the children that taught his lips to smile. It troubled him at first to find the world so full of marvellously pretty girls—of pretty women also, all more or less lovable. It bewildered him. Until he found ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... malignant marine monsters known as Nicors, from whose name has been derived the proverbial Old Nick. Many of the lesser water divinities had fish tails; the females bore the name of Undines, and the males of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... arrived the Japanese had already discovered that a Chinese camp had been quietly established less than a quarter of a mile away. Half an hour afterwards a breathless Japanese sailor brought in a report that snipers had been seen stealthily approaching. I was just in the nick of time, as Colonel S—— immediately decided on a reconnaissance in force; any one who liked could go. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... rich with heavy sums, that were spent in a few days. He borrowed from everybody, and never paid them back; he lived like a real Indian, and was as cowardly as a half-drowned chicken. His light-coloured hair, sallow complexion, and beardless face, gave him the nick-name among the Indians of Onela-Dogou, Tagalese words, that signify ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the more apparent became the gravity of his responsibility. Why had he yielded to her reckless whim? Only this morning he had been thanking his lucky stars that he was well rid of women of the world for a month at least. And now—Shades of Pluto! He had one hanging around his nick more securely than any millstone. And this one—Hermia Challoner, an enthusiast without a mission—a feminine abnormity, half child, half oracle, wholly irresponsible and yet, by the same token, wholly and ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... written a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen. ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... recovering from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife of Nick Crown's son,—Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been known to beat his wife,—Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick the feet of the horses ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... travelling by rail. I didn't mind the rail or anything else, so that I didn't come in for the tar and feathers. I found that man at Ujiji—a place you may remember if you have ever been there—and it was a very great satisfaction that I found him just in the nick of time. I found that poor old man deserted by his niggers and by his geographers, deserted by all of his kind except the gorillas —dejected, miserable, famishing, absolutely famishing—but he was eloquent. Just as I found him he had eaten his last elephant, and he said to me: "God knows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been a Union man, but later was disposed to accept secession as an accomplished fact; then, on the Union occupancy of Northern Alabama, he boldly advocated a restoration of the State to the Union. Colonel Nick Davis, likewise an original Union man, at first opposed secession; then, after Bull run, accepted a colonelcy in an Alabama rebel regiment; then declined it, and thereafter tried to remain loyal to the Union. The conduct of such strong men as Clemens and Davis is not to be wondered ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... I am not afraid of the Old Nick himself. I'll give this man McQuade the biggest fight he has ever had. Bolles will have his pains for nothing. Any scandal he can rake up about my past will be pure blackmail; and I know how ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... nigger," (we are pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik,) "old Nick burn him!—thinks I've got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad,—I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves,—that's clear; and boy slaves if he can,—that's equally certain. This ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, or ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... suffered exquisitely, maddened by the defamation imposed upon his nick-name of a ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the car, caught and carried forward and jostled in such a manner that she lost her footing and fell almost beneath the wheels of the Candy Wagon, and dangerously near the hoofs of a huge draught horse, brought by its driver to a halt in the nick of time. ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... spoke English with too perfect an accent to be that; and then he knew him, Sir Norman, as if he had been his brother. In short, there was no use driving himself insane trying to read so unreadable a riddle; and inwardly consigning the mysterious count to Old Nick, he swallowed another glass of sack, and quit ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... two which had become unserviceable. With the exception of the howitzers the whole of these guns were taken from forts. Carriages for them were improvised by the Ordnance department. The use by the Boers of the 37 m/m Vickers-Maxim Q.F. guns,[305] nick-named "pom-poms" by the men, was met by the despatch of forty-nine of these weapons from England. Another important change was the introduction of a longer time-fuse for use with field guns. The regulation time-fuse at the outbreak of the war burnt in flight for twelve seconds only, suited to ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... a boy at our school lately imported from the East Indies. We nick-named him Johnny Pagoda. He was remarkable for nothing but ignorance, impudence, great personal strength, and, as we thought, determined resolution. He was about nineteen years of age. One day he incurred the displeasure of the master, who, enraged at his ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tears were flowing freely; for to her, being a woman, this portrait of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. Ladies, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... story is told here lived in the beautiful country of "Once upon a Time." His name, as I heard it, was Tommy Trot; but I think that, maybe, this was only a nick-name. When he was about your age, he had, on Christmas Eve, the wonderful adventure of seeing Santa Claus in his own country, where he lives and makes all the beautiful things that boys and girls get at Christmas. In fact, he not only went to see him in his own wonderful city ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... bird for his years, and did not, or pretended not to hear their siren voices, and sheered off into the open just in the nick of time. Whereupon the Misses Redwood redoubled their clamour, and could only be allured back to the shelter of my fatigued wing by my going to them and audibly bawling in their faces, "Bravo, Redwood! go ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... help!" roared Tom Fillot just in the nick of time; and, striking out fiercely with his dirk, Mark returned to his men and released poor Dance, who was one of the weakest, by giving his assailant a ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... the office about business all the morning, so to the Exchange, and there met with Nick Osborne lately married, and with him to the Fleece, where we drank a glass of wine. So home, where I found Mrs. Hunt in great trouble about her husband's losing of his place in the Excise. From thence to Guildhall, and there set my hand to the book before Colonel King ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... always felt that, among the countless evidences of the ordering of Providence by which the war for the preservation of the Union was signalized, not the least striking was the raising up of this remarkable man, to accomplish alone, and in the very nick of time, a work which at once became ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... take sandwiches of chick, And go off on a merry pick-a-nick; Sometimes we in hammocks idly swing, At other times ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... and their chums, as well as many other cadets and boys and girls from that vicinity, had been using the hill for a couple of hours when the race between the Blue Moon and the Yellow Streak was proposed by Nick Carncross, the new friend ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... pass swiftly to each in turn, keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick of time. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... (f) Henry Vaughan's account of his brother's disappearance in the archives of the Supreme Dogmatic Directory of Charleston (p. 114); (g) Masonic rituals in the archives of Masonic chapters at Bristol and Gibraltar (p. 200); (h) Rosicrucian rituals drawn up by one Nick Stone in the hands of Dr. W. W. W[estcott] of London (p. 141). The documents in Masonic hands are presumably, like the Valetta talisman, now out of Miss Vaughan's reach. A communication signed Q. V. in Light for May 16, 1896, denies, on Dr. Westcott's authority, that ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... last "impression" here While yet his heart was warm, Just in the "nick" closed his career, And death ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... way, Miss Dexie, I have been wondering what your name is, ever since I came. Is it an abbreviation or a nick-name?" said Plaisted, anxious to turn the conversation. "I have never met with a young ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... good fortune as this," she began heartily. "I had no idea you were within miles, and was repining bitterly that I had let you get so far out of the way. Now you appear in the very nick of time, just when I was almost in despair. But wait. Can I ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Verona, on November 4th, 1812. He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... were now history, I collected what I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era. Many of these people were still around, "Red" Honnacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others. Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred out by ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... of their small hoofs on the smooth ground was so swift and even that it was more like a rustle than a rush. To and fro flew the ball, now almost at the blue wicket, then reached and sent back in the very nick of time by one of the red champions. Candace was so fascinated that she had no eyes for any one else till, turning her head by accident, her eye lighted upon a face in the crowd near the carriage; and with a flash of recognition she knew that it was ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... it seems that I came down just in the nick of time," replied the little fop. "The fact is, I drank too much wine last night, and it makes me thirsty to-day. I was almost choked, and the ladies had seated themselves on a rock, to enjoy a view of the boundless ocean, you see; and it looked to me just ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... delicacy?' The question was so utterly unpractical that I took no note of it whatever, and should not have mentioned it if it had not been for its extraordinary effect upon our Paris Correspondent.... My friend Nick, who has all the sensitive temperament of genius, seemed inexplicably struck by this word delicacy, which he kept repeating to himself. 'Delicacy,' said he—'delicacy—surely I have heard that word before! Yes, in other days,' he went on dreamily, 'in my fresh ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... never clapped eyes on in a day's run than Cap'en Jarvis! He stood a trifle taller than me, and had a jolly bearded face with merry blue eyes; but with all that and his good-humoured manner when everything was up to the nines and all plain sailing, he had old Nick's temper and could show it when he liked! We left Mobile short-handed; and when you leave port to cross the Atlantic short-handed at this time of the year, I guess, mister, you've got your work cut out for you, you have! There ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... cannot describe The delight I am in with this Perceval tribe. Such capering!—Such vaporing!—Such rigor!—Such vigor! North, South, East, and West, they have cut such a figure, That soon they will bring the whole world round our ears, And leave us no friends—but Old Nick and Algiers. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hat against his thigh. He laughed, without mirth or geniality. "If you don't beat Old Nick, Brad. I wonder was you ever out an' out straightforward ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... her, as they walked on, that Diodoros had always been born to good luck; and it was clear that this had never been truer than now, when Galenus had come in the nick of time to restore him to life and health, and when he had won such a bride as Melissa. Then she sang the praises of Agatha, of her beauty and goodness, and told her that the Christian damsel had made many inquiries concerning Alexander. She, the speaker, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not mention, came running up to us with his clothes torn to tatters, and his hat and gun gone. He presented a curious picture. I heard the burghers jeer and chaff him as he approached, and called out to him: "What on earth have you been up to? It looks as if you had seen old Nick with a mask on." ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... do him good," Captain Doolan said disdainfully. "I have no patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... beside and between two cellars, each deeper than the last. He knew instantly that he could not survive these, and, with every ounce of his strength, drove across the broken river to the head of the chute. Making it in the nick of time, he plunged in, with the water sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into the long, spume-flecked swells at the foot ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... jubilantly, while the hand that held the steering wheel shook with relief. "You darling, wonderful house. Gracie, dear, I think it showed on the horizon just in the nick of time. Look ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... was the foremost, although the others were older. When he was twenty-five years old his hair was grey, whence they nick-named him Greyhead. His mother Thordis married again, taking as her second husband Audun Skokull. They had a son named Asgeir of Asgeirsa. Thorgrim Greyhead and his brothers had a large property, which they managed together without ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... punctuality, promptness, immediateness. V. be prompt, be on time, be in time; arrive on time; be in the nick of time. Adj. timely, seasonable, in time, punctual, prompt. Adv. on time, punctually, at the deadline, precisely, exactly; right on time, to the minute; in time; in good time, in military time, in pudding time^, in due ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... classic Pattycake had been much in favour. Chellalu's Attai (the word here and hereafter signifies Mrs. Walker, "Mother's elder sister") had taught it to her; and whenever and wherever Chellalu saw her Attai, she immediately began to perform "Prick it and nick it" with great enthusiasm. But after she could walk, Chellalu would have nothing more to do with such childish things. "Show us Edward Rajah!" the older children would say; and instead of standing up with a regal dignity and crowning ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... answered he; "the devil take my father for sending me thither! The old put wanted to make a parson of me, but d—n me, thinks I to myself, I'll nick you there, old cull; the devil a smack of your nonsense shall you ever get into me. There's Jemmy Oliver, of our regiment, he narrowly escaped being a pimp too, and that would have been a thousand pities; for d—n me if ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... dagger at the same time. I was half-surprised at my own success in turning away his blade, but after I had guarded myself from three or four thrusts, I took to mind that offence is the best defence, and ventured a lunge, which he stopped with his dagger only in the nick of time to save his breast. His look of being almost caught gave me encouragement, making me realize I had received good enough lessons from my father and Blaise Tripault to enable me to practise with confidence. So I pushed the attack, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... moment of declaration to be got over. From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you shall not play with us; nay, we will take care how we come into your company. Having spoken thus, they left him, scoffing and laughing among themselves, which mortified Agib so much that he wept. The schoolmaster, who was near, and heard all that passed, came just at the nick of time, and speaking to Agib, says, Agib, do not you know that the vizier Schemseddin is not your father, but your grandfather, and the father of your mother, the lady of beauty? We know not the name ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... credible, though they are decidedly more tolerable. The daughters of Spanish Governors who carry on flirtations on the sea-shore with the captains of English men-of-war, who are carried off by pirates and rescued in the nick of time, whose papas not only consent to their marriage with the heretical object of their affections but send boxes full of gold doubloons, together with their blessing, are so much better than life that we need not quarrel when ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... the northwest of Sezanne, distant a few miles. If the young aide could find something to eat and get a few hours' sleep, he could be at Sezanne before the Emperor arrived and his information would be ready in the very nick of time. With that thought, after staring hard at the chateau in some little wonderment, he turned aside from the road that led to its entrance ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... obeyed, and the two went off to the Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the man who went by the nick-name of The Dancing Master. By that time Mrs. Mallowe was awake ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... schoolin', victuals, an' a heap o' clothes. I've knocked some horse sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't agoin' ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... iniquities seems well deserved, and having ascertained the movements of that formidable ruffian, he returned to Naplouse to take the command of 1500 half-tamed, undisciplined savages, with whom to oppose his retreat. Luckily, the ratification of the convention come in the nick of time; for it is very evident that the best cudgels that were ever cut in "the classic woods of Hawthornden," could not have awakened a spark of military ardour in the wretched riff-raff assemblage appointed for this service—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... there. Mrs. Wilders tells me she has come up alone, and in the very nick of time. But now be off, McKay, and lose no time. Be gentle with her: it will be a great ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... beach he dumped me, wi'oot my dunnage, and wi'oot a cent o' the siller was due me. Och, he is a bad mon, yon Carew, wi' many a mon's blood on his hands! He has sold his soul to the deil, and Old Nick saves his own. He is a wild mon wi' women, and he is mad aboot the sweet lassie aft. Didna' he try to make off wi' her in Dutch Harbor, three years ago? And didna' the old mon stop him wi' a bullet through the shoulder? And now he tries again ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, just above Columbia and in the fork ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... yawl, called The Leaf Turned Upside Down, rather heavy, but spacious and comfortable. I shall not describe my companions to you. There was one little fellow, called Petit Bleu, who was very sharp; a tall man, with a savage look, gray eyes and black hair, who was nick-named Tomahawk, the only one who never touched an oar, as he said he should upset the boat; a slender, elegant man, who was very careful about his person, and whom we called Only-One-Eye, in remembrance of a recent story about Cladel, and because he wore a single ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... schoolboys asked for "Nick Carter" she gave them those classics, "The Rollo Books"; and to the French-Canadians she gave, reasonably enough, the acknowledged masters of their language, Voltaire, Balzac, and Flaubert, till the horrified priest ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... found in their adventures some far-fetched parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... E. That's from Cape Bajoli straight for Marseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... strong-armed bully, who kept on thrusting and driving the boy sideways as, lithe and agile, he avoided or parried every thrust. At last his fate seemed sealed, for his arm was growing weak and his defence being beaten down, when with a quick movement and just in the nick of time Leoni made a sudden dart forward and turned aside ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... cattle of the boy ranchers were saved, and the rustlers captured. Tired horses were staked out near grass and water, and while the cavalry established their camp, Bud and his friends began to wonder how it was the troopers had arrived in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards, or drawing lines with ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... all to rest, assuring us that she had told God everything, and that He would send us plenty in the morning. Next day, with the carrier from Lockerbie came a present from her father, who, knowing nothing of her circumstances or of this special trial, had been moved of God to send at that particular nick of time a love-offering to his daughter, such as they still send to each other in those kindly Scottish shires—a bag of new potatoes, a stone of the first ground meal or flour, or the earliest homemade cheese of the season—which largely supplied all our need. ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... sine qua non of his continuance in office. The violence of these disputes, and the peril in which the existence of the Government seemed to be placed, brought Melbourne up to town, and Lord John came to meet him, and imparted to him his intentions. Just in the nick of time, however, arrived the news of the Emir's flight, which seemed to be almost conclusive of the Syrian question. On this, Palmerston took courage, and, no longer insisting upon supporting Ponsonby ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... to sight land was a boy named Nicholas Young, hence the point was called "Young Nick's Head," which may be seen on our maps to-day, covering Poverty Bay. The natives here were unfriendly, and Cook was obliged to use firearms to prevent an attack. The Maoris had never seen a great ship before, and at first thought it was a very large ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... head into a shottle in a door like, and your hands are clasped ahint ye, and swee gangs the door, and you upset headforemost, and in below the axe, and hangie just taps you on the neck to see that it's in the richt nick, and whirr, whirr, whirr, touch the spring, and down comes the thundering edge, loaded with at least a hunder weight o' lead—your head's aff like a sybo—Tuts, that's naething—onybody might mak up their mind to be justified ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... is Bulamatadi, a State Post is Bulamatadi, a State steamer is Bulamatadi, anything indeed belonging to the State is Bulamatadi. White men traders and hunters, not State officials, are mundellas, but the native at once has a nick name for everyone which describes his chief characteristic. Lord Mountmorres usually wore long hunting boots and was named big boots. and as I wore eyeglasses, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it! It's just infernal, The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society. All shoddy slyness, And moneybags; a "blend" as might kontamernate a Ryal 'Igness, Or infry-dig a Hemperor. It won't nick JEAMES though, not percisely; Better to flop in solitude than to demean one's self unwisely. Won't ketch me selling myself off. I must confess my 'art it 'arrers To see the Strorberry-Leaves go cheap—like strorberries on low coster's barrers! Tuppence a pound! Yes, that's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... deliberation that they remained the standard authority on the outlines of the islands for some seventy years. He took possession of the country in the name of George the Third. Some of its coast-names still recall incidents of his patient voyaging. "Young Nick's Head" is the point which the boy Nicholas Young sighted on the 6th of October, 1769—the first bit of New Zealand seen by English eyes. At Cape Runaway the Maoris, after threatening an attack, ran away from a discharge of firearms. At Cape ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... exclaimed Mr. Stanley, looking out from time to time, "we got in our potatoes just in the nick of time." ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... and generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... condition of mind, with the result that officials acquire the methods of those who deal with the mentally unhinged; show themselves prepared for any display of eccentricity. Ever, as in life, you remark the people who arrive too soon, or too late; a few lucky ones come in the very nick of time. The last named are favourites, selected with no obvious reason by Fortune, and greatly envied by their contemporaries; it is usual for them to claim the entire credit to themselves. Apart from these, at ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... on the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could hardly ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Old Nick, like most healthy boys," he answered. "He and my boy Joe went to school together, got into trouble together and got out of it again. What was it the boys used to call you, Jack?" he said to me, a twinkle ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly through life he trotted, Along ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... and was walking in the direction of the cab-rank he spoke to one of the former occupants of the gallery. This was a man known to the police and his associates as "Kincher." His name was Kemp, and how he had obtained his nick-name was not known. He was a criminal by profession and had undergone several heavy sentences for burglary. He was a thick-set man of medium height, about fifty years of age. Apart from a rather heavy lower ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... nothin' round here that's wuss'n myself," returned Ann, proffering the ancient witticism with a jocose certainty of its worth. "I ain't very darin', neither. Not much like father, I ain't, nor what brother Will used to be. Either o' them'd face Old Nick an' give him as good ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... being wholly obsessed by the one thought of escape, Sally flew on down the drive until, on the point of leaving the grounds by the gate to the highway, she pulled up perforce and jumped back in the nick of time to avoid disaster beneath the wheels of a motor-car swinging inward ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... that," answered Wendot, faintly smiling, "for thou broughtest aid in the very nick of time. And how came it that our father and our guest were with thee? Methought it must surely be a ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... struck the earth not far from the bank of the pond toward which Peggy was at that moment valiantly struggling, the two young aviators leaped out and set out at a run to the rescue. They reached the bank in the nick of time to pull out the two ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... dedicated my imperfect illustrations of this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon my humble attempt to embellish with the pencil the sweet ideas ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... a quiet smile, as he reloaded his gun; "this is not the first time that you and I have helped one another in the nick of time, Arrowhead; we shall be brothers, and good friends to boot, I hope, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... this time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly as this happened it had gone, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... start a smart game, or a paying one—something as knocks 'em, dear boy, No matter, mate, whether it's mustard, or rhymes, or a sixpenny toy; They'll be arter you, nick over nozzle, the smuggers of notions and nips, For the mugs is as 'ungry for wrinkles ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Felix wouldn't consent—for which nobody blamed him— Squire Philip and Miss Cicely agreed to go off together one dark night. But the old man found them out and stopped them in the nick of time and got six inches of cold steel for his pains. However, he kept his girl, and Squire Philip had to fly the country. He went off that same night, they say: and wherever he went, he never ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was out in Faalelei's boat, an accident occurred that came very near to being the end of Jack. They were pursuing a school of bonito, and Pulu, the chief's brother, was standing in the bow with a stick of dynamite and was in the nick of letting it fly when it exploded prematurely in his hand. Pulu was killed, the rickety old boat parted and sank, and Jack, with his shoulder laid open to the bone, was towed in by a neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on the floor, pale and groaning, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, the deadly fire of the two machine-guns began to tell their tale, and odd Turks here and there suddenly remembered ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... down the aisle and back, and Susie gets a good look at her, she says to herself, "Why surely this is Mrs. Santa Claus! How glad I am!" and it is not a strange conclusion, for her figure and expression are like the poet's description of dear Saint Nick. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... the part of my companions; and without dropping a hint to the other party, it was at once resolved that the design should be carried into execution. It was carried into execution. An 'up-river' boat chanced to pass in the nick of time. A messenger was forthwith, despatched to Covington, and before twelve o'clock upon the following day another boat on her down trip brought the howitzer, and we had it secretly landed and conveyed to a place in the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... round? My dear girl, if it had rested with me, we should both be lying in smithereens at the present moment, on the rocks below. She realised the drop just in the nick of time, and wheeled before we ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... such other like games, cutting at the nick, is a great aduantage, so is cutting by Bumcard, finely vnder or ouer: stealing the stock ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... come just in the nick of time. I had almost forgotten you while I was looking after my horses, and I wanted to hand you over to an acquaintance. I was thinking of asking you, good friend," he continued, turning towards the dealer, ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... stimulated to be really vicious. "I call Heaven to witness," it said, "that my sole desire was to be genial and beneficial. But what can one do when one is taunted and provoked, abused and nick-named like this? Very well then, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... Never neniam. Nevertheless tamen. New nova. News sciigo, novajxo. Newspaper jxurnalo. New Year's Day novjartago. Next sekvanta. Next (near) plejproksima. Nibble mordeti. Nice agrabla. Niche nicxo. Nick (notch) trancxeti. Nickel nikelo. Nickname moknomo. Nicotine nikotino. Niece nevino. Niggard avarulo. Nigh proksima. Nigh (time) baldauxa. Night nokto. Nightly nokta. Night, by nokte. Nightingale ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the conqueror's bidding, should have laid down its arms without striking a blow, would before the event," says an English military authority, "have seemed impossible. It set the investing force free to crush the new-made Army of the Loire, and it occurred in the nick of time to prevent the raising of the siege of Paris, which the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Sganarelle is a blockhead who will spoil everything. However, as we have nobody else, we must make use of him. But where shall we find him?—Ah! here he is in the very nick ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... got back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... itself, and his eyesight much keener than the old man's. The result was highly satisfactory. No less than a dozen ripe pears were twitched off, just in the nick of time, so far ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillion brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels Put life and mettle in their heels. At winnock-bunker[74] in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;— A towzie tyke,[75] black, grim, and large; To gi'e them music was his charge: He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl,[76] Till roof and rafters a' did dirl![77] Coffins stood round, like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... the young...My wife has ailed a good deal nearly all the time; so that I loathe the place, with all its beauty. I was glad to hear what you thought of F. Muller, and I agree wholly with you. Your letter came at the nick of time, for I was writing on the very day to Muller, and I passed on your approbation of Chaps. X. and XI. Some time I should like to borrow the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," so as to read Colenso's article. (229/1. Colenso, "On the Maori Races of New Zealand." "N.Z. Inst. Trans." ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Eeny's life; and you nursed him, and fell in love with him, and married him, and his old uncle dies and leaves him a fortune in the nick of time. It sounds like a fairy tale; you ought to finish with—'and they lived happy ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... costumes and dominos. Emilie Melville was my customer for her concert and opera robes; so was Mme. Mulder and Mme. Elezer. I made the robes for Signora Bianchi in the opera of "Norma," for Mrs. Tom Breese and Mrs. Nick Kittle. Mrs. Tom Maguire and Mrs. Mark McDonald were regular customers for years. Mrs. Maynard, a wealthy banker's wife, who lived on Bush street, and her daughters justly appreciated my work, and I found in Mrs. Maynard a lifelong friend. I continued in this busy way, always ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... shipping, she could gratify any reasonable ambition, and might virtually dictate her own terms. With an engine in his hands as formidable as Russia's adhesion to his commercial policy, he could act at the nick of time,—which, as he declared at this very season to Joseph, was the highest art of which man is capable,—could destroy England's commerce, and in a long peace could consolidate the empire he had already won. His empire thus consolidated, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was old enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, when my father came to fetch me away. ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... how bold he was the day I was out with him, I put it down that he must have had a few drinks when he took me for a— Well, I never saw him, but how else can you account for it? Drink will make a man drive like old Nick, and get away with it, too, sometimes, though the stuff'll get 'em sooner or later. But that's how I ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... borrowed from everybody, and never paid them back; he lived like a real Indian, and was as cowardly as a half-drowned chicken. His light-coloured hair, sallow complexion, and beardless face, gave him the nick-name among the Indians of Onela-Dogou, Tagalese words, that signify "one ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... army, like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, just above Columbia and in the fork of the two rivers, was settled by German refugees, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... a Pasteur pipette, nick the capillary stem just above the sealed end with a glass cutting knife, and snap off the sealed end with a quick movement so that the fracture is clean cut and at right angles to the long axis of the capillary stem—cut ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... like very old bronze, with certain metallic gleams in it—like time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red devil in ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... as he returned the smile. "Just a while back, my young daughter was in sobs, and I coaxed her out here to amuse her. I am just now without anything whatever to attend to, so that, dear brother Chia, you come just in the nick of time. Please walk into my mean abode, and let us endeavour, in each other's company, to while ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... he was a remarkable young man, who had been in the West Indies, and had seen many wonders by sea and land, so that he could charm the ears of Grimworth Desdemonas with stories of strange fishes, especially sharks, which he had stabbed in the nick of time by bravely plunging overboard just as the monster was turning on his side to devour the cook's mate; of terrible fevers which he had undergone in a land where the wind blows from all quarters at once; of ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... o' yur claws, Charley. May the Almighty stan' your frien' and keep you out o' Ole Nick's clutches. Don't hev' any dubiousness 'bout us. Tho' we shed kum across Satan hisself wi' all his hellniferous host, Sime Woodley 'll take care o' them sweet gurls, or go to grass trying." With this characteristic wind-up, he puts the spur to his horse, and closes upon the rest already ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... was my patron, fell into decay and disorder; and the bonny yew-trees that were cut into the shape of peacocks, soon grew out of all shape, and are now doleful monuments of the major's tack, and that of Lady Skimmilk, as Miss Girzie Gilchrist, his sister, was nick-named by every ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... soon known through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which purchase—so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the facts—would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. The duke ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... ground they gained. They fought as must have fought their ancestors of the Roman legions. And, thanks to their tenacity and pluck, they held their opponents on the five-yard line. Then, just in the nick of time, the whistle blew. The game was over. The Austrians had to hurry home. They had staked everything on a sudden and overwhelming onslaught by which they hoped to smash the Italian defense and demoralize the Italian armies in time ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... if the fates were propitious. But the foe declined to oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... you see a dozen false suns blotting the heavens with purple in every direction. You bury your eyes in a handkerchief, with your back carefully turned upon the west, and meantime the spectacle you were waiting for takes place and disappears. You promise yourself to nick it better to-morrow. The soul withdraws into its depths. The stars arise (offering two or three thousand more impracticable suns), and the night ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... to perform wonders, but I am sure your dilatory ways are unparalleled. Had not my good genius inspired me, my happiness had been already wholly overthrown. There was an end to my good fortune, my joy. I should have been a prey to eternal grief; in short, had I not gone to this place in the very nick of time, Anselmo would have got possession of the captive, and I should have been deprived of her. He was carrying her home, but I parried the thrust, warded off the blow, and so worked upon Trufaldin's fears as to ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... her in the nick of time. She read the wrong side of the envelope first, and was evidently puzzled. Then she turned it over. A look of surprise, a look of thankfulness, rendered her still more fascinating. I perceived ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... that Whitefoot saw all that happened. He saw Whitey suddenly sail out on silent wings from that stump and swoop with great claws reaching for some one. And then he saw who that some one was,—Shadow the Weasel! He saw Shadow dodge in the very nick of time. Then he watched Whitey swoop again and again as Shadow dodged this way and that way. Finally both disappeared amongst the trees. Then he turned just in time to see Jumper the Hare bounding away with all the speed of his ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... is in warm, but not in cold. My second is in deck, but not in hold. My third is in lady, but not in man. My fourth is in meal, but not in bran. My fifth is in nick, but not in batter. My sixth is in din, but not in clatter. My seventh is in fright, but not in scare. My eighth is in stallion, but not in mare. My ninth is in county, but not in State. My tenth is in manner, but not in gait. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... one of me knows," said her brother. "I lost count—and lost some of the knives, too. I've an idea Bill Beresford picked up one I dropped—the one Lance Western gave me; it's got a tortoise-shell handle, and a nick out of the big blade—and gave ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... wow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillion brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels Put life and mettle in their heels. At winnock-bunker[74] in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;— A towzie tyke,[75] black, grim, and large; To gi'e them music was his charge: He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl,[76] Till roof and rafters a' did dirl![77] Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shawed the dead in their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically expressed by Dr. Tyler on the occasion of the celebration of the centenary of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... that our proper names, when familiarised in English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas in other modern languages they receive a softer turn on this occasion, by the addition of a new syllable.—Nick, in Italian, is Nicolini; Jack, in French, Janot; and ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... give a loose to genial thought, 670 Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught: There the blithe youngster, just returned from Spain, Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main; The jovial Caster's set, and seven's the Nick, Or—done!—a thousand on the coming trick! If, mad with loss, existence 'gins to tire, And all your hope or wish is to expire, Here's POWELL'S [101] pistol ready for your life, And, kinder still, two PAGETS for your wife: [xlix] Fit consummation of an earthly race 680 Begun in folly, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... are made of sheets of note-paper, the fold of which forms the shoulder pieces. The doll is laid on the paper, with head and neck lapping over the fold, and the line of the dress is then drawn a little larger than the doll. A small round nick to form the collar is cut between the shoulders of the dress, and a slit is made down the back through which the doll's head can be passed. After the head is through it is turned round. (Of course, if the dress is for evening ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... desperado's arm just in the nick of time, thus preventing a terrible crime. But the end was not yet. There were five more bullets in the cylinder of the weapon, as ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick"; follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet "loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the Shearers' Knowe, those ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... a universal welcome on the part of my companions; and without dropping a hint to the other party, it was at once resolved that the design should be carried into execution. It was carried into execution. An 'up-river' boat chanced to pass in the nick of time. A messenger was forthwith, despatched to Covington, and before twelve o'clock upon the following day another boat on her down trip brought the howitzer, and we had it secretly landed and conveyed to a place ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... that some of you have been waiting for this story of the Tin Woodman, because many of my correspondents have asked me, time and again, what ever became of the "pretty Munchkin girl" whom Nick Chopper was engaged to marry before the Wicked Witch enchanted his axe and he traded his flesh for tin. I, too, have wondered what became of her, but until Woot the Wanderer interested himself in the matter the ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... above water. I could easily slide up the staff without taking out a single button; but once up, how could I remain there? I should certainly come slipping down again. Oh! that there was only a notch—a knot—a nail—if I only had a knife to make a nick; but knot, notch, nail, knife, nick—all were alike denied me. Stay! I was wrong, decidedly wrong. I remembered just then that while attempting to get over the barrel, I had noticed that the staff just under it was ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... room, intending to make a clean breast. Thrice her courage failed her, and she left the room with her tale untold, excusing herself on various pretexts. Her aunt had seemed to be not quite so well, or had declared herself to be tired, or had been a little cross;—or else Martha had come in at the nick of time. But there was Brooke Burgess's letter unanswered,—a letter that was read night and morning, and which was never for an instant out of her mind. He had demanded a reply, and he had a right at least ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... loud, rolling thunder, I speed swiftly over the last few miles, and dash beneath the porch of the post-office just in the nick of time to escape a tremendous downpour of rain. How it pours, sometimes, in India, converting the roads into streams and the surrounding country into a shallow lake in the space of a few minutes. Hundreds of youths, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... about their going to France. He hasn't money for travelling. She spent all hers in nick-nacks—to propitiate people, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... offended dignity. "No, sar; these yar decorations come off a lady ob i cibilisation: Missy Beresford donated 'em me. Says she, 'Massah Black'—yah! yah! She always nick-nominates dis child Massa Black— 'while I was praying Goramighty for self and pickaninny, I seen you out of one corner of my eye admirationing my rings; den just you take 'em,' says dat ar aristocracy: 'for I don't admirationise 'em none: I've been shipwrecked.' So ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time! Own up that you like—a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... awkwardness of a man of the people who long remains under the yoke of respect to a great lord, though he admits no barriers after he has once jumped them, and regards the aristocrat as an equal only, "this," he said, "and you have come in the nick of time to hear it. I am no speaker of gilded phrases, and I shall say things plainly. I commanded five hundred men during the late war. Since we have taken up arms again I have raised a thousand heads as ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... used to drive his sleigh-load of toys up to our housetops, and then bounded down the chimney to fill the stockings so hopefully hung by the fireplace. His friends called his Santa Claus, and those who were most intimate ventured to say "Old Nick." It was said that he originally came from Holland. Doubtless he did, but, if so, he certainly, like many other foreigners, changed his ways very much after landing upon our shores. In Holland, Saint Nicholas is a veritable saint and often appears in full costume, with his embroidered robes, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... not to be done out of this piece of indulgence, which now seemed desirable beyond words, although I crawled back into my blanket, and found for a while oblivion in sleep. I was no sooner up in the morning than I planned a new banquet. But in the nick of time, Mr. G., who had gone a march farther, returned with his escort of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... lad chasing through the undergrowth as if the very Old Nick was after him, swinging his cap as he ran, and shouting out some words which ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... but I'm Bell Haggard still; And will be to the day I die, and after: Though, happen, there'll be marriage and giving in marriage In hell; for old Nick's ever been matchmaker. In that particular, heaven would suit me better: But I've travelled the wrong road too ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... refinement and good taste. And it is worthy of remark that the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... towed her down, He's gien her a richt down fa', Till every rib i' the auld wife's side, Played nick nack on the wa', wa'; Played ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... riddance to you," he muttered; "and now for Matthew Brook. You'll sleep sound enough to-night, Stephen Plumpton, I'll warrant. So sound that if Old Nick himself went through your room ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... one for Derues, whose brain was occupied by a confusion of criminal plans. The chance which had caused his acquaintance with Madame de Lamotte, and even more the accident of Brother Marchois appearing in the nick of time, to enlarge upon the praises which gave him so excellent a character, seemed like favourable omens not to be neglected. He began to imagine fresh villanies, to outline an unheard-of crime, which as yet he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily—a ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... we take sandwiches of chick, And go off on a merry pick-a-nick; Sometimes we in hammocks idly swing, At other times we only sit ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... of famous men, Rashi's influence was carried on and increased by the work of his sons-in-law and grandsons. Of these, Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam, 1100-1160) was the most renowned. The devoted attention to the literature of Judaism in the Rhinelands came in the nick of time. It was a firm rock against the storm which was about to break. The Crusades crushed out from the Jews of France all hope of temporal happiness. When Alfassi died in 1103 and Rashi in 1105, the first Crusade had barely spent its force. The Jewish schools in France ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... there; but it seems that I came down just in the nick of time," replied the little fop. "The fact is, I drank too much wine last night, and it makes me thirsty to-day. I was almost choked, and the ladies had seated themselves on a rock, to enjoy a view of the boundless ocean, you see; and it looked ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... must have had wealthy friends, and as this chest must have belonged to them, it would have been worth my while to get hold of her. As, however, they have never appeared, I have been saved the trouble and expense she would have been to me, and now this store comes just in the nick of time when I want it most. The only difficulty will be to dispose of all these things without raising suspicion as to how I came by them. Still, at the worst, I can but tell the truth should questions be asked, and prove that I got them from a wreck. At all events, there are ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... South Carolina politician, who, ever and anon, is ready to war with the Britishers, because the fools obstinately refused to admire slavery. Nicholas had got himself into an interminable fix. Mr. Pierce, merely to please the youthful democracy, would like to lend Nick a hand to unfix himself, but the hitherto dormant power of the nation quickens to action, and says, 'It won't do, Mr. General Pierce!' Forced to submit, the General consoles himself with the fact that his friend Nicholas will draw himself into his invulnerable shell, sing the Te Deums, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when— 170 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts—you're ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... worthy Advice, I do not look upon our Danger to be so great from the Indians, as from young Bacon, whom the People have nick-nam'd Fright-all. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... them fish cakes burn, gal," the old man drawled. "If Tunis ain't here mighty quick he can eat his cold. Oh! Here he is—right to the nick o' time, like the second mate's watch comin' ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... her good schoolin', victuals, an' a heap o' clothes. I've knocked some horse sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't agoin' ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... me nick ah keeng e mah me quom ah kik e kewh me zeh ah mik e newh me squeh ahn doohm e qua me tigk ah nungk I yahdt nah maih ah owh kah yawsk ne gigk ah pa ke tahn ne peh ah pweh ke quis ne peeng ah sin ke nwazhe ne sing ah tick ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... to the young...My wife has ailed a good deal nearly all the time; so that I loathe the place, with all its beauty. I was glad to hear what you thought of F. Muller, and I agree wholly with you. Your letter came at the nick of time, for I was writing on the very day to Muller, and I passed on your approbation of Chaps. X. and XI. Some time I should like to borrow the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," so as to read Colenso's article. (229/1. Colenso, "On the Maori Races ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... continued Mr. Colquitt, "except that the missing infant had a small v-shaped nick on the outer edge of his right ear. Probably with the boy's growth, if he is still alive, the nick has become so small as to be barely noticeable, like the nick in Holmes' right ear. Mr. Hibbert came to Gridley only yesterday, and it happened that one of ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Southampton acquiescence in his proposal. It was far more sensible to come direct to Reading than to make a detour through London. Rooms were got ready. In the one destined for Liosha, we had already stowed the cargo of trunks which the Great Swiftness had delivered in the nick of time. The next day I took the car to Reading and waited for ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... dashed to pieces? But that, as I accept it, is easy of elucidation. Imagine a vast crescent moon, with a downward nick from the end of the tail. This form the fissure took, in one enormous sweep and drop towards the mouth of the valley. Now, as we rushed headlong, the gentle curve received us from space to substance quite ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... to her to admit the truth and be done with proud pretence. And indeed the pride had gone out of Rachel at sight of him; a delicious sense of safety filled her heart instead. She was as one drowning, and here was a strong swimmer come to her rescue in the nick of time. What did it matter who or what he was? She felt that he was strong to save. Yet, as the nearly drowned do struggle with their saviours, so Rachel must fence instinctively ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to extricate itself from its swaddling-clothes ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... backward just in the nick of time. The Koeln flagship of the German commodore, was soon staggering off in a blaze, and was later sunk with her total complement of 380 officers and men. The Ariadne, steaming at high speed across the bows of the British flagship Lion, was put out of action by two well-placed salvos. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... point, and his messenger was sent to tell the prophet that the king would not 'wait for the Lord any longer.' That was the moment chosen to speak the promise. It came, as God's helps, both of promise and act, so often come, at the very nick of time, when faith is ready to fail and human aid is vain. Before we had learned our hopeless state, they would come too soon for our good; after faith had wholly parted from its moorings, they would come ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... connection with Mr. Holymead was that after he had left the ladies and was walking in the direction of the cab-rank he spoke to one of the former occupants of the gallery. This was a man known to the police and his associates as "Kincher." His name was Kemp, and how he had obtained his nick-name was not known. He was a criminal by profession and had undergone several heavy sentences for burglary. He was a thick-set man of medium height, about fifty years of age. Apart from a rather heavy ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... already picked over by the host. But this disposition to share everything was not without its other aspect; we also were expected to share everything with them. We were asked to bestow any little trinket or nick-nack exposed to view. Any extra nut on the machine, a handkerchief, a packet of tea, or a lump of sugar, excited their cupidity at once. The latter was considered a bonbon by the women and younger ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... sent down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; any way, you can see somethin' white ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand! Stand!" The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds were still desperate—for he brought but six—the enemy were still three to one. But the thunder of ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer a few suggestions. The reinauguration must ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... had the narrowest escape possible of intruding myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... diminishing like a fish's dorsal fin. I had conned it often enough from the other side; had looked right across it on the day when she stood beside me on the bastion and pointed out the smoke of Swanston Cottage. Only on this side the fish-tail (so to speak) had a nick in it; and through that nick ran the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happy engine of his art, Which triumph'd o'er the female heart, Credulity, the child of Folly, Begot on cloister'd Melancholy, Who heard, with grief, the florid fool Turn sacred things to ridicule, And saw him, led by Whim away, Still further from the subject stray, Just in the happy nick, aloud, In shape of Moore[213], address'd the crowd: 560 'Were we with patience here to sit, Dupes to the impertinence of Wit, Till Trifle his harangue should end, A Greenland night we might attend, Whilst he, with fluency of speech, Would various ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... door, a sharp little voice would say "Good-morning! walk in." That is the gray parrot, Nick. As you walked into the kitchen, Pansy and Pickwick would come up to you and purr, and put up ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... scarcelins tell yo', but we melted it—we melted it. It was share an' share alike, for Mulvaney said: 'If Learoyd got hold of Mrs. DeSussa first, sure 'twas I that renumbered the Sargint's dog just in the nick av time, an' Orth'ris was the artist av janius that made a work av art out av that ugly piece av ill-nature. Yet, by way av a thank-offerin' that I was not led into felony by that wicked ould woman, I'll send a thrifle to Father Victor ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... ill of these good people! But you have come in the nick of time. It seems as if Providence has sent you to my aid, Pinzon. I have a terrible project on hand, an adventure,—a plot, if you wish to call it so, my friend,—and it would have been difficult for me to carry it through without you. A moment ago I was in despair, wondering how I should manage, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Lord God was rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be sure ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... low-ceilinged room above a baker's shop in the village, and had strewn it about with books and photographs and nick-nacks until the drab surroundings seemed to reflect a little of her dainty personality. Thither, later in the day, she took Betty off to tea and introduced her to a tall fair girl with abundant hair and a gentle, rippling ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the Sauk had departed in that manner, and the Shawanoe knew where his village lay, he purposely avoided his trail, and followed a course that diverged so far to the right that he first reached the village passed by Jack in his canoe. His arrival, as sometimes happens in this life, was in the very nick of time. From the red men, who showed a friendly disposition toward him, he learned that not only had a pale face youth passed down the stream in a canoe, but a young warrior aflame with ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... been in that inlet before; had never seen it, probably never thought of it before, yet there they were, quietly seated in it— and, just in the nick of time! ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... allow that. She's got that build, an' them lines about the neck an' waist, an' them red-ripe lips, that I feels no care to look 'pon any other woman. That's why I took up wi' her, an' offered her my true heart. But strike me if I'd counted 'pon her temper; an' she's got the temper of Old Nick! Why, only last evenin'—the very evenin' before I sailed, mark ye—she slapped my ear. She did, though! Says I, down under my breath, 'Right you are my lady! we'll be quits for that.' But, you see, I couldn' ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... haunt of Mike Mills, a noted smuggler, whom his Satanic Majesty had often endeavoured to carry off in vain. He therefore determined on attacking him in his strong hold; and accordingly met Mike one night accompanied by other more congenial spirits, when old Nick challenged Mike as his property. Mike, nothing daunted, set down his tubs, took advantage of Nick's old age, and challenged him to a race. "If you can catch me, Nick, before I get to the end of the avenue, you shall have me; if not, you'll have nothing more to do with me."—"Agreed," says Nick. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... together with Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z. "mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with Talleyrand brought him. His return ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... Peter," ses Bill. "I wanted some more money to escape with, and 'e wouldn't lend it to me. I 'aven't got as much as I want now. You just came in in the nick of time. Another minute and you'd ha' missed me. 'Ow much 'ave ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... elusive vultures lurking in the shadow of the temple of justice, or perching upon it, Nicholas Frye, or "Old Nick," as many called him, was the most cunning. Nor did his looks belie the comparison, for he had deep-set, shifty, yellow-gray eyes, a hooked nose, and his thin locks, dyed jet black, formed a ring about his ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both rolled helplessly ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... been just as well if the rattlesnake coiled in his path at that moment had ended his existence, but the snake was indeed an honorable highwayman, and sounded a gentlemanly warning in the nick of time. Collins would have killed it for its pains, but killing had upset his nerves that day. So he left the reptile to try its fangs on a better man. Besides, he reflected that he could not consistently advocate capital ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... from insult, many of the whigs had united in small parties, and were styled by the Skinners, in derision, the 'Cow-boys.' One of the most active and energetic of these bands, ever ready for any species of patriotic duty, was led by Nicholas Odell. Nick, as he was familiarly termed, though entirely uneducated, was one of the shrewdest men to be found; for Nature had gifted him where cultivation was wanting, and he became, in consequence, a most formidable and dangerous ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me. To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley's name, that consummate villain would suffer the royal frown. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... sugar, the rind of a lemon being rubbed with some lumps of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... a boat with Nick Mollet in the bay below here," said Bernel. "But he's generally out ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... the apostles, especially St. Paul, who did not allow it to trouble them whether the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... Whate'er we want from his hands will flow! "Ah, what do you say?-'that won't be fair'? You're conscientious, I do declare! I thought so once, when I was a boy, But since I have been in this employ I've practised it, and many a trick, By the advice of my friend, Old Nick. I thought 't was wrong till he hushed my fears With derisive looks, and taunts, and jeers, And solemnly said to me, 'My Bill, If you don't do it, some others will!' "If I don't sell it, some others will; So bottles, and pitchers, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... sons," says Bergthora, "have got one gift between you all. Ye are nick-named 'Dung-beardlings,' but ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... ha, ha, she has nick'd you, Sir George, I think, Ha, ha, ha: Have you any more Hundred Pounds to throw away upon Courtship, ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... window beyond which the girl could see a rope dangling from above. The sight of it partially solved the riddle of the king's almost uncanny presence upon her window sill in the very nick ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and I haven't read it right, And the text of "Love your neighbor" must be somewhere written "Fight"; But I want ter tell yer, church folks, and ter put it to yer strong, While you're fighting Old Nick's fellers pull tergether right along: So yer'd better stop your squabblin', be united if yer can, Fer the Pokus way of doin' ain't no use ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Peg was the nick-name which had followed Percy Egbert Grant all the way from the Chicago suburb, where, for some years, he had played the part of both dude and bully. His father was very wealthy, and Peg always had more money ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... but, in six days more, I think I shall find with more certainty what humor they are in with me; if kind, I will profit of, but not abuse their kindness; all things have their bounds, 'quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum'; and I will endeavor to nick that point. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... that would reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a deep sorrow for ourselves ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... sorry for her, because she is one of those people who just can't stand losing. When Miss Thompson reached the place where she was about to ask Anne to step up and get the prize, Miriam half rose in her seat. Mrs. Nesbit pulled her back in the nick of time. I honestly believe she would have reached the stage before Anne did, if her mother hadn't stopped her. Hippy told me they left before the benediction. I suppose Miriam was not equal to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... In the very nick of time he slipped aside, and thus avoided the inconvenience of being crushed to pulp between two locomotives under full steam. It appeared that they had not met for some years, Sally having been ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... put on long hair and a venerable beard, stained his limbs with henna, and called himself Abdullah of Bushire, a half-Arab. In this disguise, with spear in hand and pistols in holsters, he travelled the country with a little pack of nick-knacks. In order to display his stock he boldly entered private houses, for he found that if the master wanted to eject him, the mistress would be sure to oppose ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... or other got out of the hotel and followed us to the meeting without being noticed. Poodles are all as cunning as Old Nick. He lay quite low in some corner or other, until Colonel CHORKLE was in the middle of a tremendous appeal to "the stainless banner which 'as so often been borne to triumph by Billsbury's embattled chivalry." The Colonel thumped on the table very hard, and Carlo, I suppose, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hetty appeared, and she came in the very nick of time, too, for that same day up rolled the stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine (grandmamma's sister) from Philadelphia. The two old ladies had so much to tell one another that they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings', where the club was to hold a meeting, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... the right on't, a man that must raise himself, I knew he would couzen 'em, and glad I am he has: he watched occasion, and found it i'th' nick. ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... to give an opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... a thousand times for your last letter, and the money enclosed. It came in the nick of time, for I was run almost to my last penny. I did not write before, because I didn't feel in the humour to do anything. Thank goodness! I'm not sick any more, though I don't know that it isn't counterbalanced ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... left New York forty-eight hours when the vessel stopped. I sprang out of my berth, and was soon on deck, fearing some accident to our Phantom, as we had nick-named the ship. In front of us a French boat had raised, lowered, and again raised its small flags. The captain, who had given the replies to these signals, sent for me, and explained to me the working and the orthography of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... supernatural; steadfastly and determinedly look out for it, and—you will have your reward. These are precisely the lines on which a spiritual seance is conducted, only instead of plaster, which is not always so obliging as to fall in the nick of time, you have a paid medium who supplies the material for your fancy to work upon. Mrs. Mallet, you see, has discovered all this for herself—that woman is a born genius. Just think what she might have been and seen if she had lived in a sphere ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... July, after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must beat in his veins till the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tongues, and the aid of the ever-welcome angels. Toth Janos the poultry-dealer, who could not vote in his own name, voted as Toth Janos, the potter, but he had a great sacrifice to make. The deceased potter was nick-named the "gap-toothed," because he had lost his front teeth in a brawl. Now the poultry-dealer's front teeth were as sound as ivory, yet so great and effective were the persuasions of the "angels" that, in ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and I had to threaten to set Bock at him. It was all ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... Use of grandiose handles is characteristic of {warez d00dz}, {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry. Compare {nick}. 2. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with minimal impact on the (possibly multiple) ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the ways in their places, loosened the cradle, and wedged up the fore part of the vessel; then the stays were hastily removed; it was Begmand who had taken away the last from the stern amidst the fire and smoke, and so away went the ship just in the nick of time. Tom Robson ought really to have all the praise, since everything was ready to hand, and ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... daughter on the trifling events that had marked the morning just passed; such as that the cow had got out of the paddock into Miss Power's field, that the smith who had promised to come and look at the kitchen range had not arrived, that two wasps' nests had been discovered in the garden bank, and that Nick Jones's baby had fallen downstairs. Sir William had large cavernous arches to his eye-sockets, reminding the beholder of the vaults in the castle he once had owned. His hands were long and almost fleshless, each knuckle ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... supplied by a negro roustabout on one of the large transports. This darky throughout the trip had been very fearful of submarines, and when the actual moment of danger came he acted upon a predetermined course, and shinned up the mainmast as though Old Nick himself were at his heels. When the excitement was over an officer ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone asked me how come we're friends, I couldn't exactly say. We're just together most ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... Mr. Osborne, I am not afraid of the Old Nick himself. I'll give this man McQuade the biggest fight he has ever had. Bolles will have his pains for nothing. Any scandal he can rake up about my past will be pure blackmail; and I know how ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... a boy—and your father's tale just now put me in mind of him—paid half a crown to a conjurer, one time, to have his fortune told; which was, that he would marry the ugliest maid in the parish. Whereby it preyed on his mind till he hanged hisself. Whereby along comes the woman in the nick o' time, cuts him down, an' marries him out o' pity while he's too weak to resist. That's your Future; and, as I say, I keeps en ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a few inches with copper wire — all the parts where the hands grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture, though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... In spite of the perilous rocking of the little craft he rested on his oar to watch her for a moment in sheer admiration of her skill. But the maid knew well the danger of every instant's delay. In the very nick of time she seemed almost to throw herself between him and the rocks while, with a strength he would have believed impossible in one so small, she pulled the boat around. Then, still swimming and without a word to him, she began to push it ahead of her toward the shore. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... the young man wandered restlessly about the room, looking at and sometimes touching the nick-nacks lying here and there. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Grace confidently. "I am going to become a combination of Nick Carter and Sherlock Holmes, and my first efforts will be directed toward finding out who and what Mr. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Ardross Castle that would reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... strong wine, given in the nick of time, reassembled Nature's scattered forces, and rekindled the flame of life. Upon my soul, sweet young lady, I believe thou hast saved him! All the drugs in Bucklersbury could do no more. And now tell me what symptoms you have noted since you have watched ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... 25.—Edmond Montgomery died on Nick Jordan's place, near the county line of Schley, aged 102 years. He was an African chief of the Askari tribe, and was taken to Virginia from Africa in 1807, when he was a young man. He had a large family in Virginia, and when he died he left his third wife and 25 children in Georgia. His ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... Jack, in great joy, as the face of the faithful old negro showed itself at the doorway. "You came in the nick of time!" ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... secret pride in her friendly familiarity towards him. Several times a week he would meet her in the lane, and they would loiter a moment together; she would admire his dogs, though he assured her earnestly that they were but sorry curs; and once, laughing at his staidness, she nick-named him ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... how Peter Grimm had eked out his $8 a month pension for the past forty years and had made it possible for him to live in comfort. A crippled woman who, with her four children, had at one time seemed likely to become a public charge and who had been relieved in the nick of time by a legacy, now told the real source of that ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... shakin' of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he had been supplied with dozens of uncles and aunts he would have gone first to Agnes anyhow, having a mighty regard for her keen judgment, even though her clear gaze rested now and then all too critically upon himself. Just as he came whirling up the avenue he saw Nick Allstyne's white car, several blocks ahead of him, stop at her door, and a figure which he knew must be Nick jump out and trip up the steps. Almost immediately the figure came down again, much more slowly, and climbed into the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... it if they air, lad. Dave wanted to look for you, an' wouldn't stay by the game nohow. Can't blame him, nuther, seein' as we came up jest in the nick o' time," ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... a creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... convulsive gasps, burning sighs, swift laborious breathing, eyes darting humid fires: all faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy. It came on at length: the baronet led the extasy, which she critically joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he shewed all the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly that she answered it down with ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... needs turn ever and anon for blessed sight of her where she flitted lightly to and fro, she bidding me take heed lest I cut myself. Cut myself I did forthwith, and she, beholding the blood, must come running to staunch it and it no more than a merest nick. And now, seeing her thus tender of me who had endured so many hurts and none to grieve or soothe, I came very near weeping for ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, (or stab you whenever he saw occasion)—but yet those of the army, who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all: and as he rode along the lines to battle or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... n. An {IRC} version of the venerable trivia game "20 questions", in which one user changes his {nick} to the initials of a famous person or other named entity, and the others on the channel ask yes or no questions, with the one to guess the person getting to be "it" next. As a courtesy, the one picking the initials starts by providing a 4-letter hint of the form sex, nationality, ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating manner which was ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six inches, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... rider—but nothink like wot Brad used to be in his best day. Christine's getting a bit biggish for 'im to 'andle; I daresay this is the last season for their double act. But for four seasons she's been doing amazing fine work with old Tom. She seems to like it, and she's as daring as the very old Nick. Don't know wot fear is, I might say. She's so fairy-like and so purty that the crowds just naterally love 'er to death. She's going to be a wonnerful 'ansome woman, David, that gal is, take it from me. 'Ere ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... N. punctuality, promptness, immediateness. V. be prompt, be on time, be in time; arrive on time; be in the nick of time. Adj. timely, seasonable, in time, punctual, prompt. Adv. on time, punctually, at the deadline, precisely, exactly; right on time, to the minute; in time; in good time, in military time, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... real well-behaved child for the most part. But her father did spank her once. She got two bottles of pills out of his office and dared Alice Clow to see which of them could swallow all the pills first, and if her father had not happened in the nick of time those two children would have been corpses by night. As it was, they were both sick enough shortly after. But the doctor spanked Rilla then and there and he made such a thorough job of it that she never meddled with anything in his office ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of infantry and a part of a battery!" was the announcement. "They are coming along as though they were followed by the Old Nick himself!" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... undiscovered, the likely lad made up his mind, as he should have done long before, to leave those colossal emeralds where they were and have nothing further to do with the lean, high house of the gnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retire from business at once and buy a place in the country. Then he descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him though knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the unearthly silence gave ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... names should never be given in baptism? A. These and similar names should never be given in baptism: (1) The names of noted unbelievers, heretics or enemies of religion and virtue; (2) the names of heathen gods, and (3) nick-names. ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... wur naw Owd Nick, he wur th' orderer on't, to be shure——. Weh mitch powlering I geet eawt o' th' poo, 'lieve[57] meh, as to list, I could na tell whether i'r in a sleawm or wak'n, till eh groapt ot meh een; I crope under ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... smoothly. He carried a gleaming axe to prove he was a woodman, but seldom had cause to use it because he lived in a magnificent tin castle in the Winkie Country of Oz and was the Emperor of all the Winkies. The Tin Woodman's name was Nick Chopper. He had a very good mind, but his heart was not of much account, so he was very careful to do nothing unkind or to hurt ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... while I looked at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Bible; very few even learnt writing. I recollect, however, that some men were ignorant of book-keeping; our baker, for instance had a wooden tally, in which he made a notch for every loaf of bread, and of course we had the corresponding tally. They were called nick-sticks. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... Faulkner, Esaw de la Ware, William Cornie, Thomas Curtise, Robert Brittaine, Roger Walker, Henry Kersly, Edward Morgaine, Anthony Ebsworth, Agnes Ebsworth, Elinor Harris, Thomas Addison, William Longe, William Smith, William Pinsen, Capt. William Tucker, Capt. Nick Martean, Leftenant Ed. Barkly, Daniell Tanner, John Morris, George Thomson, Paule Thomson, William Thomson, Pasta Champin, Stephen Shere, Jeffery Hall Rich. Jones, William Hutchinson, Richard Apleton, Thomas Evans, Weston Browne, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat fast ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... down at my gate, I did not go at once to the house; I did not wish, then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... He next tried the daring plan of running straight into the harbor, where there might still be a chance. But the Spaniards sank four of their own valuable vessels in the harbor mouth—guns, stores, and all—just in the nick of time, and thus completely barred ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given that ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Henry, with quiet steps and a sober, thought-ful look. He had been taught to read and write, and for that reason he was nick-named Beau-clerc, or ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or may not have been intended to drown any noise in the cupboard; but, after some delay, she was found ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the upper stories; and others on the pavement itself. But one of the most important discoveries was the skeleton of a woman, near the entrance of the tablinum. She appears to have been in the act of flight, and had with her a small box containing her valuables and nick-nacks. Among the most curious of these was a necklace composed of amulets, or charms, which, it will be observed, are all attributes of Isis and her attendant, Anubis, or of her husband Osiris, here considered as Bacchus. The ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... little avalanche of snow, icicles, dirt and stones that frightened the milk-white horse so that he all but overturned the pung, Nick Matthews tobogganed down the bank on his overcoat and landed beside them on ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... to work just in the nick of time. The gathering of tramps, scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed dislocations, were getting into their places. Zavorotny, at a distance, with his keen eyes caught sight of Platonov and began to yell over the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... wise men fools sit on the bench, or we should hev none of this," continued Matthew. "I reckon some one that's here is nigh ax't oot by Auld Nick in the kirk of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... had failed to bring enough at the last rendezvous[68] to go round. Then they were compelled to resort to the substitutes of the Indians. Among some tribes the bark of the red willow, dried and bruised, was used; others, particularly the mountain savages, smoked the genuine kin-nik-i-nick, a little evergreen vine growing on the tops of the highest elevations, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... for the night. Despite his precautions, it was a wild night. There was continued tumult in the streets and, at one time, shortly before dawn, a gang of rioters actually broke into the palace and groped about in search of the queen's apartments. Just in the nick of time the hated Marie Antoinette hurried to safer quarters, although several of her personal bodyguard were killed in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... by some been supposed traceable to 'Old Nick'; but this is not probable, since St. Nicholas has been the patron-saint of sailors for many centuries. It was during the time of the Crusades that a vessel on the way to the Holy Land was in great peril, and St. Nicholas assuaged a tempest by his prayers. Since then he has been ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... and vulgar waste of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough- Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation, officially known as "all the Russias." Nick has a nice easy job at a salary considerably in excess of ye average country editor, and he gets it all in gold roubles instead of post-oak cord-wood and green watermelons, albeit his felicity is slightly marred by an ever-present fear that he may inadvertently swallow a ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... nicarie, deuory. "Nick," female pudendum: hence nickery, copulation. Deuory may either be Fr. devoir, duty; or devoure, to ravish, ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash
... there came no sound at all from the new lodger's rooms. At twelve, however, the drawing-room bell rang. Mrs. Bunting hurried upstairs. She was painfully anxious to please and satisfy Mr. Sleuth. His coming had only been in the nick of time to save them ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... indented like a Saw: which inequality of their limbs, I have further observ'd, not to remain always the same, but to be continually chang'd by a kind of fluctuating motion, not unlike that of the waves of the Sea, so as that part of the limb, which was but even now nick'd or indented in, is now protuberant, and will presently be sinking again; neither is this all but the whole body of the Luminaries, do in the Telescope, seem to be depress'd and slatted, the upper, and more especially the under side appearing neerer to the middle then really they ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... fifteen years of age before I stole any money, or got into any trouble; but I used to 'nick' little things, such as fruit, &c., when I was a kid. My father kept a small shop, but I was bound an apprentice to a very peculiar branch of the Sheffield trade; and before I had finished my apprenticeship I committed my first crime. I was playing at ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... not denied exactly, but it was pointed out that an intermediary—the protector himself—had come on the scene just in the nick of time. The entire article concluded with this phrase, pregnant perhaps ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... who received it respectfully. Then she went out, feeling very much better and brighter because of a sadly needed dinner. She was bewildered, and excited; but she wasn't afraid. She accepted her miracle, which had come just in the nick of time, gratefully, with a childlike simplicity. But she used her blue eyes, and one day they met Peter Champneys's, regarding her with a good and kind satisfaction; for indeed she looked much better and brighter, now that she was no longer ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... annoyance. The slim little girl with a wistful smile underwent a rich variety of hazards, each threatening a terrible death. Through them all she came unscathed, leaving behind her a trail of infuriated scoundrels whom she had thwarted. She escaped from an underworld den in a Chicago slum just in the nick of time, cleverly concealing herself in the branches of the great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by, while her maddened pursuers scattered in their search for the prize. Again she was captured, this time to be conveyed by aeroplane, a helpless prisoner and subject ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... or all of a sudden rich with heavy sums, that were spent in a few days. He borrowed from everybody, and never paid them back; he lived like a real Indian, and was as cowardly as a half-drowned chicken. His light-coloured hair, sallow complexion, and beardless face, gave him the nick-name among the Indians of Onela-Dogou, Tagalese words, that signify "one ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... and makes him think they loves him like winkey, all the time they ruins him. They kisses money out of the miser, and sits in their satins, while the wife, 'drot her, sulks in a gingham. Oh, they be cliver creturs, and they'll do what they likes with old Nick, when they gets there, for 'tis the old gentlemen they cozens the best; and then," continued the Corporal, waxing more and more loquacious, for his appetite in talking grew with that it fed on,—"then there be another set o' queer folks you'll see in Lunnon, Sir, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Caprona,[1] seeing themselves among so many enemies. I drew with my whole body alongside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes from their look, which was not good. They lowered their forks, and, "Wilt thou that I touch him on the rump?" said one to the other, and they answered, "Yes, see thou nick it for him." But that demon who was holding speech with my Leader turned very quickly ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star fails you in the nick of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... been in his place. The "old girl" wasn't behaving well; but in Dan's experience, so many people did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be put right. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in the emergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time. As for himself and his chance—his last chance—well! He looked across at that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck together through ill report and good, had helped each other out of many a scrape, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... say!" answered the chimneysweeper, sturdily; "Hark'ee, my duck," chucking Cecilia under the chin, "don't be cajoled, nick that spark! never mind gold trappings; none of his own; all a take-in; hired for eighteenpence; not worth a groat. Never set your heart on a fine outside, nothing within. Bristol stones won't buy stock: only wants to ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... came from, he then had no idea; but come it did, in the very nick of time, and helped him to dry his tears. The day of destiny also came, and his courage was put to the test. He knew well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing. But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... at his heels his old sister who kept house for him, and two of the maids, and all four began capering about round the fire. He was a douce, quiet man, as all the country knew, and here he was like old Nick at the carlin's dance, hobbling around and waving his drink above his head. We both set off running, and he waved the more ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the rescue!" shouted Mr. Blades as he dashed across the street; "come on, Pet! here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick of time!" and, closely followed by Charles Larkyns, Mr. Fosbrooke, Mr. Smalls, Mr. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... felt certain, was one of elopement and seduction; and, superstitious as usual, I was sure that my good genius had sent me in the nick of time to save her and care for her, and in short to snatch her from the hands ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... eminence some eighth of a mile below the falls, was in old times regarded as a princely chateau of the once powerful lords of the North West Fur Trade, but is now in a decayed and ruinous state. It was nick-named "Hotel Flanagan." Dilapidated as it was, there was a good deal of room under its roof, and it afforded quarters for most of the officers' families, who must otherwise have remained in open tents. The enclosure had also one or two stone houses, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... spontaneously as a result of the Venizelist movement, and on this expectation being disappointed they were, as we have seen, sequestered under the pretence of security for the Allied armada. Another excuse was needed for their appropriation; and it came in the nick of time: two Greek steamers at that moment struck mines, presumably sown by an enemy submarine, in the Gulf of Athens. With the promptitude that comes of practice, Admiral Dartige announced to the Hellenic Government his decision to employ, at a valuation, its ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... floundering among the plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving for their breakfast of small fish. At times it seemed as if nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race against the rocks which, now that the river was low, jutted out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, Tuba passed the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole turned the canoe a little aside, and we glided swiftly past the threatened danger. Never was canoe more admirably managed: once only did the medicine seem to have lost something of its efficacy. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... the occasional advantage of a nick-name. Dickson thought he was being addressed as "Dogson" after the Poet's fashion. Had he dreamed it was Leon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows, and so missed a piece ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... be no sleep the night!" said Alan. "From now on, these weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none will get out of Appin but winged fowls. We got through in the nick of time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? Na, na, when the day comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cheers, when FEILDING's plan Of levelling (moneyed) Woman up to Man Wins "Constitutional" support and votes From a "majority" of Tory throats! Mrs. LYNN LINTON, how this vote must vex, That caustic censor of her own sweet sex! Wild Women—with the Suffrage! Fancy that, O fluent Lady, at tart nick-names pat! Girls of the Period? They were bad enough, But what a deal of skimble-skamble stuff Will Mrs. FAWCETT's Middle-aged Ones talk When these eight hundred thousand hens o' the walk Cackle ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... argued, "them hain't no natural, ordinary 'eathen, indeed not, sir. They are the very h'old Nick 'isself, sir." ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... millions of unsaleable collateral, would have become involved; many big institutions would have failed and a run on savings banks would have begun. It is idle to speculate upon what the final outcome might have been. Suffice it to say that these grave consequences were prevented in the nick of time by the prompt and determined action of the Stock ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... Now, if Jingoss just thinks we're coming some time, and not to-morrow, he ain't going to pull up stakes in such a hell of a hurry. He'll pack what furs he's got, and he'll pick up what traps he's got out. That would take him several days, anyway. My son, we're in the nick of time!" ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife of Nick Crown's son,—Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been known to beat his wife,—Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick the feet of ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... grown-up sons that looked just alike. The eldest could gulp up the ocean at a mouthful; the second was hard enough to nick steel; the third had extensible legs; the fourth was unaffected by fire; the fifth lived without breathing. They all concealed their peculiar traits, and their neighbours did not even guess that they ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... piece from an annealed bar, cut off with a hack saw, milling cutter or circular saw. Cut clear through the bar; do not nick or break. To cut a piece from an unannealed bar, cut right off with an abrasive saw; do not nick or break. If of large cross-section, cut off hot with a chisel by first slowly and uniformly heating the bar, at the point ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... the comfortable mother that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back of necessity ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... forefathers did, who worshipped a kind of Devil so called, and named a day of the week after him, which name we still retain in our hebdomadal calendar like those of several other Anglo-Saxon devils. We also say: Go to old Nick! and Nick or Nikkur was a surname of Woden, and also the name of a spirit which haunted fords and was in ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... I saw in Belfast was a fearful foolish piece, with a lot of love and villainy in it. The girl was near drowned in real water, and then the villain tied her on to a circular saw, and if it hadn't been for the hero coming in the nick of time, she'd have been cut in two. No man would treat a woman that way, tying her on to a saw! I'm afeard some of these pieces nowadays are terribly foolish, John, so I never want ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in his ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Pattycake had been much in favour. Chellalu's Attai (the word here and hereafter signifies Mrs. Walker, "Mother's elder sister") had taught it to her; and whenever and wherever Chellalu saw her Attai, she immediately began to perform "Prick it and nick it" with great enthusiasm. But after she could walk, Chellalu would have nothing more to do with such childish things. "Show us Edward Rajah!" the older children would say; and instead of standing up with a regal dignity and crowning her curls with the appropriate gesture, Chellalu ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... many of the whigs had united in small parties, and were styled by the Skinners, in derision, the 'Cow-boys.' One of the most active and energetic of these bands, ever ready for any species of patriotic duty, was led by Nicholas Odell. Nick, as he was familiarly termed, though entirely uneducated, was one of the shrewdest men to be found; for Nature had gifted him where cultivation was wanting, and he became, in consequence, a most formidable and dangerous enemy in the service he had chosen. But fifty men composed his entire force, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... was rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be sure to think ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... remnants and bones already picked over by the host. But this disposition to share everything was not without its other aspect; we also were expected to share everything with them. We were asked to bestow any little trinket or nick-nack exposed to view. Any extra nut on the machine, a handkerchief, a packet of tea, or a lump of sugar, excited their cupidity at once. The latter was considered a bonbon by the women and younger portion of the spectators. The attractive ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... my name, but indeed it is a nick-name that is given me by some that cannot abide me: and I must be content to bear it as a reproach, as other good men ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... machines set in motion. At the required number of yards the spools stop revolving. The ordinary spool of cotton thread contains 200 yards, and when this has been wound on, the thread is cut with a knife by an attendant, who also cuts the little nick in the rim of the spool and fastens therein the end of the thread. Thread mills commonly print their own labels, and these are affixed to the spools by special machinery with remarkable rapidity. From the labeling machine the spools go to an inspector, ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... French at Amherst. But when I was in Newfane in 1899 I was informed by a dear old lady in bombazine, who remembered their visits distinctly, that "Eugene and Roswell were wild boys. Not bad, but just tew full of old Nick for anything." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from my neck five minuts, bekaze the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are above ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... might go on with it if he would leave it just as it was. The joke was on him, after all, for there was nothing in it about my fight with Buck Gowdy, or of my robbing him of the team and sleigh and harness and robes and Nick, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... consent—for which nobody blamed him— Squire Philip and Miss Cicely agreed to go off together one dark night. But the old man found them out and stopped them in the nick of time and got six inches of cold steel for his pains. However, he kept his girl, and Squire Philip had to fly the country. He went off that same night, they say: and wherever he went, he never ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "I knew a man made out of tin, who was a woodman named Nick Chopper. But he was as alive as we are, 'cause he was born a real man, and got his tin body a little at a time—first a leg and then a finger and then an ear—for the reason that he had so many accidents with his axe, and cut himself up ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... They were full of nicks as well as wood-knots, and the appearance of some of the former gave Code an idea. He went carefully over the boards, sticking his thumb-nail into them and lifting or pressing down as the shape of the nick warranted. For they resembled very much the depressions cut in sliding covers on starch-boxes whereby such covers can be pushed ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... a colored man by the name of Joe Nick, called Old Nick by a great many white people of me city. Joe was owned by Rueben Rogers, a lawyer and farmer of Howard County. The farm was situated about 2-1/2 miles on a road that is the extension ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... with righteous hopes, Prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, To bend the stiff-neck'd sinner; But should they sink in coming over, Old Nick may fish 'twixt France and Dover, And catch a ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... you're stupid," said the wife angrily. "You ought to have cut a nick in the right one ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... extolled like a spoiled child, though Miss W. did not fail to carry the intelligence, far and near, that Miss Monson's much-talked-of pocket-handkerchief was nothing after all but the THING Miss Halfacre had brought out the night of the day her father had stopped payment. Some even began to nick-name me the insolvent pocket-handkerchief. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... comedy. It was supplied by a negro roustabout on one of the large transports. This darky throughout the trip had been very fearful of submarines, and when the actual moment of danger came he acted upon a predetermined course, and shinned up the mainmast as though Old Nick himself were at his heels. When the excitement was over an officer called up ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys; (Both I remember ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... delicate, and at length two or three of the elder women (for the girls were somewhat diffident and bashful) began to assail Raymond with various pungent witticisms. Some of the men took part and an old squaw concluded by bestowing on him a ludicrous nick name, at which a general laugh followed at his expense. Raymond grinned and giggled, and made several futile attempts at repartee. Knowing the impolicy and even danger of suffering myself to be placed ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... he said, "she has got a capital constitution; but I'll tell you what it is—if she had lain another five minutes in that draught there would have been an end of her. You came in the nick of time. And now if I were you I should go to bed. You can do no good here, and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... comes to you asking you to be his wife, just at that nick of time in which he finds that you,—the right owner,—are to have the fortune of which he has vainly endeavoured to defraud you! Is it ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... question. See, here he comes. He was not in the way when I did not want him, and now he arrives in the nick of time. Ah! he will make pretty little Suzanne a ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... various sorts of baskets; some are made of the same materials as their mats; and others of the twisted fibres of cocoa-nuts. These are not only durable but beautiful; being generally composed of different colours, and studded with beads made of shells or bones. They have many little nick-nacks amongst them; which shews that they neither want taste to design, nor skill to execute, whatever they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and took down the half-knit stocking, but the spare needle was missing. She felt with her hand upon the chimney-piece, but could not find it. Then she mounted a chair and searched. It was nowhere to be seen. "It may have slipped into the nick at the back," she thought, and she got a skewer and poked it into the narrow groove. Out fell the needle—and something else which made a clinking sound as it fell upon the brick floor. She stooped to see what it was, and there glittering ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and that friendly interference is not quite unknown even in these more prosaic days. The Fortunatus' ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... beholding it, shivered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "God help me from ugly old Nick!" ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... voice, an unspoken appeal to her to admit the truth and be done with proud pretence. And indeed the pride had gone out of Rachel at sight of him; a delicious sense of safety filled her heart instead. She was as one drowning, and here was a strong swimmer come to her rescue in the nick of time. What did it matter who or what he was? She felt that he was strong to save. Yet, as the nearly drowned do struggle with their saviours, so Rachel must fence instinctively ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... are pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik,) "old Nick burn him!—thinks I've got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad,—I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves,—that's clear; and boy slaves if he can,—that's equally certain. This lot would suit ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... me to his back door, whence, as from every point of Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could be seen towering in the air. There, in the nick, just where the eastern foot-hills joined the mountain, and she herself began to rise above the zone of forest—there was Silverado. The name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more. I began ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls As ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... his incomparable swordsmanship. Yet what I saw makes me regard as fairly adequate the current praises of him emanating from those wealthy enthusiasts who were reckoned the best judges of such matters. By the reports I heard they said that Palus never cut a throat, he merely nicked it, but the tiny nick invariably and accurately severed the carotid artery, jugular vein ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... leaving this place till morning, but it suddenly appeared like the most woful waste of time. The master of this tremendous affair should be abroad and active; who knew what his keen eyes might detect, what loss his absence might occasion in this nick of time? And here he was, shut up and locked in a wine-cellar! I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation to discover the thief, if I never regained the diamond. A distant ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... of bed and strode dazedly to his tent door. At the mine below him his fellaheen were as busy as so many dirty and gaudy bees. Even the lordly lazy Turkish soldiers were lending a hand at windlass and crane. Over the nick of the pass, leading toward Jerusalem, the last animal of a mule train was vanishing. Najib, who had as usual escorted the departing shipment of ore to the opening in the pass, was ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... freight. Ruin stared in the face every Texan drover whose cattle were unsold. Only a few herds were under contract for fall delivery to Indian and army contractors. We had run from the approaching storm in the nick of time, even settling with and sending my outfit home before the financial cyclone reached the prairies of Kansas. My last trade before the panic struck was an individual account, my innate weakness for an abundance of saddle horses asserting ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... nice-looking young fellow, isn't he? His father has a small station away among the hills, and Poss and Binjie help him on it. Those are only nick-names, of course. Poss's name is Arthur, and Binjie's is George, I think. They're nice young fellows, but very bushified; they have lived here all their lives. Their father—well, he isn't very steady; and they like to get over here when they can, and each tries to come ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... guarding their patient's slumbers, the ladies idly examine his weapons, and make the momentous discovery that the bit of steel found in Morolt's head exactly fits a nick in Tristram's sword. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... United States Army officer. His figure would probably fall short of the standard, but he was no less strong and healthy than his brother knights of the sword. His strength was more to be compared to that patient animal after which he was nick-named, the mighty carabao, but he lacked the grace of form and dignity of bearing that the average wearer of shoulder-straps in Uncle Sam's army is ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... peasant and another soldier, a father of a large family, nick-named "uncle," threw up their arms and fell heavily upon ...
— The Shield • Various
... awakened and had seized many of the weapons of their opponents, a fresh statement of belief, a new enthusiasm, a reformed ethical standard. The Council of Trent, the Jesuits, the other new orders, were only symptoms of a still more widely prevalent Catholic revival that came, in France, just in the nick of time to deprive the Protestants of many of their claims to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 'em. Our garden ain't much this year. Pa has had to work out all the time. The kids and me put in some seed—all we had—with a hoe. We ain't got no horse; our team died last winter. We didn't have much feed and it was shore a hard winter. We hated to see old Nick and Fanny die. They were just like ones of the family. We drove 'em clean from Missouri, too. But they died, and what hurt me most was, pa 'lowed it would be a turrible waste not to skin 'em. I begged him not to. Land knows the pore old things was entitled ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... marked sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the favourite, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... means of gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction. "Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies "Scurra ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... authority on the outlines of the islands for some seventy years. He took possession of the country in the name of George the Third. Some of its coast-names still recall incidents of his patient voyaging. "Young Nick's Head" is the point which the boy Nicholas Young sighted on the 6th of October, 1769—the first bit of New Zealand seen by English eyes. At Cape Runaway the Maoris, after threatening an attack, ran away from a discharge of firearms. At Cape Kidnappers they tried to carry ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... approve of the turn affairs had taken. "I had a trap for them at the House-of-the- Eight-Half-brothers, and some hillmen in there ready to rush out and seize them as they passed. But a fool Afridi murdered one, and I only got there in the nick of time to save the other's life. I meant that Ranjoor Singh, who is a buffalo, should be troubled about his troopers and suspected on his own account, for he and I have a private quarrel. I did not mean to catch him, or make use of him. But he walked into the trap. What shall be done ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... it ain't often Nick Grylls travels by the stage," continued Smiley, addressing the bystanders impressively. "He hires a rig and a team and a driver to take him to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... they found a Belgian Army Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... spread to Umbria and Etruria, and the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote: General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its absolute extinction, and some embers of it still ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... possessed of green teeth. The male is called nix, the female nixie, the generic term for both being nicker, from a root which perhaps means 'to wash.' There is perhaps some truth in the statement which would derive the Satanic patronymic of 'Old Nick' from these beings, as spirits extremely familiar to the Teutonic mind. On fine sunny days the nixies may be seen sitting on the banks of rivers, or on the branches of trees, combing their long golden locks. Previous to a drowning accident the nixies can be seen dancing on the surface of the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... like a kid—pretty sure to fire a bit wide at first—not being used to it—we was all kids once, sir, remember! But a bit of correction here an' there'll put that right as a rule. On the other hand there's rifles as Old Nick himself nor nobody else could make shoot straight—ready, George? And it's just the same with kids! Now, if you'll stick your eyes to that glass, and watch the target, you'll see how near she'll come this time—all right, George!" As he speaks the rifle speaks also, and observing the ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... diversion occurred just in the nick of time. It was Joyce, the new member, the owner of the canneries, who had just built a new house with electric appliances, and owned the best car in town. He was a stickler for proprieties, but he was a great admirer of the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... there,—we have learned that from the doctors. They say decisively that she is curable, but that she needs very delicate treatment. My opinion is that we have a lovely bit of rescue-work sent directly into our hands in the very nick of time. All those in favour of opening the garden gates a little wider for Marm ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at the foot of Giggleswick Scar, alongside which our road passed. We visited the Ebbing and Flowing Well, where the much-worn stones around it proclaimed the fact that for many ages pilgrims had visited its shrine; but how "Nevison's Nick," a famous highwayman, could have ridden his horse up the face of the rock leading up to it—even with the aid of his magic bridle—was more than we could understand. Another legend stated that a nymph pursued by a satyr was so afraid ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... boomed. "Big Olaf is the greatest traveller in the Yukon. I'd back him against Old Nick himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel. He brought in the government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilkoot and the third drowned in the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
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