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More "Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exactly as Jean said and as quickly as possible. He reached the door in two jumps with Tam leaping after him and nipping his heels at each jump, and in another instant found himself on the doorstep with the door shut ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... stole was o'er her shoulders thrown; A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air; 'Twas simple russet, but it was her own; 'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair! 'Twas her own labour did the fleece prepare; And, sooth to say, her pupils ranged around, Through pious awe, did term it passing rare; For they in gaping wonderment abound, And think, no doubt, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one of the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio announcing ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... upon the hillside was the little pasture in which the old mare was grazing, moving slowly about and nipping at the short grass as if that which lay directly under her nose could not be nearly as choice as that which she ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... replied. "I'm taking Miss Spangles up on the hill to get her warm—'tis a nipping and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... been made in the construction of the nippers. In the ordinary Heilmann's comber, the upper blade has a groove in its nipping edge, and the cushion plate is covered with cloth and leather, the fibers being held by the grip between the leather of the cushion plate and the edges of the groove in the upper blade, or knife, as it is called. The objections ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... and looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to put in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the last of those happy autumn days. Winter fell upon the country suddenly with nipping cold. The mountains, always sombre, lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in torment, and the voice of its rage ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... so as to pull up the plate, but wide enough to allow the teacher to put a very narrow key in, when he desires to pull up the plate to put the lesson-post in the socket. No. 3, is a front view of the lesson-post, containing the slides nipping the lessons between them; the other figure represents a side view of the lesson post, and the small figure at the left hand side represents the groove of the two sliders to receive the lesson, and the back part of it the dovetails to clip, which come down behind the post; these ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... preference of her husband, and was weak enough to feel and show jealousy. But her complainings were ineffectual, for we can no more scold people into loving us than nature could make buds blossom by daily nipping them with frost. And yet she made her children uncomfortable by causing them to feel that it was unnatural and wrong that they did not care more for their mother. This was especially true of Edith, who tried to satisfy her conscience, as we have seen, by bringing costly presents and delicacies ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... quote hee to his fellows, marke the stand, and so separating themselves walked aloofe, the Gentleman going to the nether steppe of the staires that ascend vp into the Quire, and there he walked still with his client. Oft this crew of mates met together, and said there was no hope of nipping the bong because he held open his gowne so wide, and walked in such an open place. Base knaves, quoth the frolik fellowe, if I say I will have it, I must have it, though hee that owes it had sworne the contrarie. ...
— The Third And Last Part Of Conny-Catching. (1592) - With the new deuised knauish arte of Foole-taking • R. G.
... schooner lay to with backed forestaysail, tumbling wildly on a dim, grey sea. Half a mile away the ice ran back into a dingy haze, and there was a low, grey sky to weather. Now and then a fine sprinkle of snow slid across the water before a nipping breeze. As Wyllard glanced to windward Dampier ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... utterly incredible, though on the other side only too unmistakable, took place. The old man suddenly felt that, instead of telling him some interesting secret, Nikolay had seized the upper part of his ear between his teeth and was nipping it rather hard. He shuddered, and breath ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... These earthly affections that bind me to her by custom, sympathy, or what I fondly call parental love, would direct me to study her present happiness, and leave her to the care of those whom she thinks her dearest friends; but they are friends only in the sunshine of fortune; in the cold nipping frost of disappointment, sickness, or connubial strife, they will forsake the house of care, although the very house which they ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... vtmost, set in comely rowes equally distant with faire Allies twixt row and row to auoide the boisterous blasts of winds, and within them also others for Bees; yet wee admit none of these into your Orchard-plat: other remedy then this haue wee none against the nipping frosts. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... the condition of all strong life. If you keep nipping the buds off a plant you will kill it. If you never say a word to a human soul about your Christianity, your Christianity will tend to evaporate. Action confirms and strengthens convictions; speech deepens conviction; and although it is possible for any ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... time while the men above moved the first load to the edge. The sunshine had gone and it was getting cold; the shadows in the dale had faded from blue to dusky gray and the frost was keen. All was very quiet, but now and then distant voices and the musical rattle of chains came down through the nipping air. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... keen! How the nipping wind does drive Through yon tree-tops, bare and lean, Till their shadow seems alive,— Patters through the bars, and falls, Shivering, ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... all, perhaps there's none: Suppose there is no secret after all, But only just my fun. To-day's a nipping day, a biting day; In which one wants a shawl, A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: I cannot ope to every one who taps, And let the draughts come whistling through my hall; Come bounding and surrounding me, Come buffeting, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... been named, and, were it not for the vast parish of Saint Pancras which once comprised all the northwestern part of London, their names as well as their history would be, to Protestants at least, entirely unknown. They have, however, the evil reputation of commonly bringing with them a nipping frost, and are abhorred in Burgundy as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... with brilliancy, with robustness, with delicacy, with qualities that were immature and required development, with absence of qualities that were desirable and required implanting, with unfortunate tendency to qualities that were undesirable and needed repression and nipping in the bud. He placed these children, thus handicapped or endowed, before the principals of selected schools; he desired that terms and full particulars might be placed before him to assist him in the anxious task of right selection. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss was cute and spry enough to keep out of his reach, though, and he made ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... in every business office, at the railway stations, and on street corners, large placards placed with "Do not slouch" printed thereon in distinct and imposing characters. If ever there was a tendency that needed nipping in the bud (I fear the bud is fast becoming a full-blown flower), it is this ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... these bargains, as there are generally many other merchants present at the bargain, the broker and the purchaser have their hands under a cloth, and by certain signals, made by touching the fingers and nipping the different joints, they know what is bidden, what is asked, and what is settled, without the lookers-on knowing any thing of the matter, although the bargain may be for a thousand or ten thousand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... wanted to know whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the young buds of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... patroon and his companion alone on the broad portico. Sweeping from a distant grove of slender poplars and snowy birch a breeze bore down upon them, suddenly bleak and frosty, and she shivered in the nipping air. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... growing girls eat more than either; and father says he loves to see us slice away at the cob-loaf; it does him goode. What a kind father he is! I wish my step-mother were as kind. I hate alle sneaping and snubbing, flowting, fleering, pinching, nipping, and such-like; it onlie creates resentment insteade of penitence, and lowers y'e minde of either partie. Gillian throws a rolling-pin at y'e turnspit's head, and we call it low-life; but we looke for such unmannerlinesse ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority. The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck, according to the established fashion of that country, for his pains. The Whigs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... her husband, calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and caressing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... hodypeak wretch to be found, And Ragan my man, is not that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward? In play or in pastime so jocund, so merry? In work or in labour so dead or so weary? O, that I had his ear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... fireboxes. The punks in these were lighted, and when all were very hot they were wrapped in flannels and distributed about their persons inside their sealskins. With this arrangement, Jack Frost's chances of nipping their persons were very ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... which the human being lives and dies without joys and without sorrows, like a vegetable. A man shall be possessed of florid, youthful blooming health till, it matters not what age—thirty; forty; fifty—then comes some nipping frost, some period of agony, that robs the fibres of the body of their succulence, and the hale and hearty man is ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... in the cold, nipping air and the wild life. There were discomforts, it is true, but he did not think of them. He looked only at the comforts and the joys. He knew that his muscles were growing and hardening, that eye, ear, all the five senses, in truth, were growing keener, and he felt within ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... chapel moved to a lot on a side street in town within the week. However, when a hunter comes suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a preliminary bullet that seemed to graze father, though it ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... light snows but nipping airs, were the winters of this country of the cave men, and there were articles of food essential to variety which were, necessarily, stored before the cold season came. There were roots which were edible and which could be dried, and there were ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... would run to meet the Kings so near, with our fougasso and our figs and our hay for the hungry camels. The day would be waning rapidly, the sun dropping down into a great cloud-bank above the mountains, the wind nipping us more shrewdly as it grew still more chill. Our hearts also would be chilling. Even the bravest of us would be doubting a little this adventure ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... to meet them. I had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to her stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, and I felt very glad; though just how to manage Dr. Sandford I did not know. I thought a great deal about ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ready to burst myself, so jumping up, I took one leg under each arm and rammed into her with all the strength I was capable of; my God, how she heaved to meet my attack! Her vagina seemed as stiff as my pintle, closing upon it with an extraordinary grasp, such as few women are capable of, nipping and squeezing the head of my affair each time it reached to the ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... makers, alarmed at the competition which this threatened, cunningly devised a stratagem for nipping it in the bud. They freighted a large worn-out ship with an enormous quantity of pipes of their own make, sent it to Ostend, and wrecked it there. By the municipal laws of that city the wreck became public property; the pipes were sold at prices so ridiculously low that the town was glutted with ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... or five dogs ran out and scared my team. I managed to hold them in the road, but they refused to quiet down, kicking, rearing, and plunging in spite of their load; and once as they jerked me forward, I noticed there was a dog or two under the wagon, nipping at their heels. There was a six-shooter lying on the seat beside me, and reaching forward I fired it downward over the end gate of the wagon. By the merest accident I hit a dog, who raised a cry, and the last I saw of him he was spinning like a top and howling like a wolf. I quieted the team as ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; there was always a ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... rape, the cruell aspectes of spoyle, breach of order, treason, ill lucke and ouerthrow of States and other persons. Wherein also be intermixed, pleasaunte discourses, merie talke, sportinge practises, deceitfull deuises, and nipping tauntes, to exhilarate your honor's minde. And although by the first face and view, some of these may seeme to intreat of vnlawfull Loue, and the foule practises of the same, yet being throughly reade ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... deale, then ydle lokyng on before tyme had done. Shortly crepte in sickenes, and diseases, and the broyling heate and the nipping cold began to assaile their bodyes. Their first sonne was Cayin, and the seconde Abell, and then many other. And as the world grewe into yeares, and the earth began to waxe thicke peopled, loke as the nombre ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... autumn when the last yellow leaves are fluttering in the chill breeze? The young ladies in Milby would have told you that the Miss Linnets were old maids; but the Miss Linnets were to Miss Pratt what the apple-scented September is to the bare, nipping days of late November. The Miss Linnets were in that temperate zone of old-maidism, when a woman will not say but that if a man of suitable years and character were to offer himself, she might be induced to tread the remainder of life's vale ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... professor threw open the door giving egress to the deck, and the whole party passed outside into the raw, nipping morning air. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was to be exterminated root and branch. Whether thorough consideration was given to that which should have been considered above everything else must remain in doubt; for the conception of culture is extremely relative, and just as the most disgusting intoxication follows the nipping from every bottle, so superficial encyclopedical knowledge, which at the most can be made broad, engenders precisely the most repulsive kind of arrogance. It will no longer bow to any authority and yet never penetrates to the depths in which the multifarious logical inconsistencies ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... keyed up. But he went right at the operation without faltering and with a sort of doggedness. As if nothing should stop him. I myself was doing rather mistily what he wanted. The chloroform, the smell of antiseptics, the shiny instruments, the cutting, the nipping of blood-vessels with forceps and tying them, the clipping with scissors, the sewing—all went to my head. And I constantly had to tell myself, 'Don't be silly! You're not going to faint. He might fail if you did. That tray, those ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... way but I do not seem to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and the river ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and "Festus" and "Cromwell," with dips into the dramatists. I am sorry such good men have no better reader at this present, but trust they find some somewhere. The weather is vile. We are pinched with "nipping" airs which do not remain clear and steady, but unbend themselves in a dirty slush called snow in the papers. And just now I have no business to write you a letter, for I am torn every way by longings and doubts, not at all of a moral nature. This copy of verses, written last summer, is somewhat ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... been capable of sending him away! If he would do such things as these for an acquaintance, at best a "pal," what would he not do for a woman beloved? I should have liked to duck that creature under the pump in the court, on just such a nipping night as this. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Cockerell by any means, but a merchant who would have a couple of trucks of "Derby Brights" down at a time, and sell them round the village by the hundredweight. No doubt he was a very thrifty man, and to the extent, so some people said, of nipping the poor in their weight. And once he nearly lost the contract for supplying the coal-gifts at Christmas on that account. But he made it a rule to attend church very regularly as the season came round, and so did Mrs. Josiah Snooks; and it will require a great ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... having made a little oasis in the dismal desert of their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp of the foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood, blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might be sinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead of desolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me; I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... was a carpenter by trade, and a leader in his church which was to him a club, a forum and a commercial exchange. He was a native of Maine and proud of the fact. His eyes were keen and gray, his teeth fine and white, and his expression stern. His speech was neat and nipping. As a workman he was exact and his tools were always in perfect order. In brief he was a Yankee, as concentrated a bit of New England as was ever transplanted to the border. Hopelessly "sot" in all his eastern ways, he remained the doubter, the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Speech and the wind-swift speed of counsel and civic wit, He hath learnt for himself all these; and the arrowy rain to fly And the nipping airs that freeze, 'neath the open winter sky. He hath provision for all: fell plague he hath learnt to endure; Safe whate'er may befall: yet for death he hath found ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... fluttered about the warm room in search of her mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind, the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with herself, too, and with the ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... ration was a decided improvement on those of the Pemberton building; we had left the snow and ice behind at Richmond—or rather at some place between Raleigh, N. C., and Columbia, S. C.—and the air here, though chill, was not nipping, but bracing. It looked as if we would have a plenty of wood for shelter and fuel, it was certainly better to have sixteen acres to roam over than the stiffing confines of a building; and, still better, it seemed as if there would be plenty of opportunities to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... away at breakneck speed. Her show of fright gave courage to the toucans. They immediately took up the pursuit, their white throats flashing a sharp contrast to their black bodies as they hurtled after the fleeing monkey, easily keeping pace with her and nipping her ears and back and tail. At each pinch Myla emitted a scream and increased her speed until she seemed to fly through the branches handicapped though she was by the cub securely tucked under one arm. And Warruk, unable ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... my animal, and me top of her, the biggest fool dug out, up the same canyon. The rocks on the sides was pecked smooth as a beaver-skin, ribbed with the grain, and the ground was covered with bits of cedar, like a cavayard of mules had been nipping and scattering them about. Overhead it was roofed, leastwise it was dark in here, and only a little light come through the holes in the rock. I thought I knew where we was, and eeched awfully to talk, but I sot still and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... purposely delayed. They were walking slowly, breathing their mustangs, when his companion suddenly uttered a cry of alarm, and sprang from his horse. For on the trail before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush. He was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow from a riding-whip; happily the last idea was only in Peter's mind. As they ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Bald-heads, Ietans, Sauxs, Foxes, and Ioways. And who had such eyes for the trail and the chase as he? He could show you where the snake had crawled through the hazel leaves; he could trace the buck by his nipping of the young buds; he could spring to the top of the tallest pine with the ease of the squirrel, and from thence point out unerringly where lay the hunting-lodges and grounds of all the tribes of the land; he could endure as ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... pasture, trotted straight up to the right horse, coaxed and coquetted with him for a minute, and then trotted back. Snowfoot followed, leering and nipping, and trying to get the ear ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... together, irresolute about further lingering. "Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and traveling companion, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off, or is it the nipping air?" ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... t'other?" asked Phoebe, with round eyes of reproach. And spreading her clean kerchief on the grass she laid her Bible and Prayer-book and class card on it, and set vigorously and nattily to work, picking one flower and another from the fragrant confusion, nipping the stalks to even lengths, rejecting withered leaves, and instructing ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... for them on the parlour sofa when Crow brought them in out of the nipping early dark of December, Elmore staying behind in the yard with the horses. She sat on the sofa in her best black dress with the bead trimming on the neck and sleeves, a good deal pushed up and wrinkled across ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the angel bark, and bud, and leaf, And soft green moss suffused it o'er and o'er. He lingered near it for a moment brief, Plucked off a bud, which he to heaven bore; And now the rose smiles at the raging storm, Defies the wind and nipping frost as well; Its fragrance still retains, and lovely form, While nestling budlets this old ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers and let ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... underneath, his left shoulder, and trying to peep over or past it, he beheld a small portion of a most woe-begone little face, heavily swathed against the nipping March wind. Through the beclouding veil he could dimly make out that the eyes were swollen, the cheeks were mottled; even the nose—with regret I state it—was red and puffy. An unsightly, melancholy ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but fitfully, for the night air was nipping, and the bunkhouse nigh as open as a cage. A bonny morning it was, and the sun warmed me nicely, so that over breakfast I was in a cheerful humour. Afterwards I watched the gang labouring, and showed such an injudicious ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... become nipping, and the blaze on the hearth was reassuring. Besides, the wind was querulous, and I didn't fancy a ride at midnight, even if my lady's quest were ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Basin itself the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste, dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand, which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... from the trees—she watched with the keen avidity of love for the white snow and the wail of wintery winds, for the long, dark nights and gray, cold dawn. Each one brought her nearer and nearer; every day was a pain past and a nearer joy. Welcome to the nipping frost and the northern winds; welcome the hail, the rain, the sleet—it brought him nearer. How she prayed for him with the loving simplicity of a child. If Heaven would but spare him, would save him from all dangers, would send him sunny skies and favorable winds, would work ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... terrible on women. And now, Dick, my lad, we'll get our supper. This nipping air makes me hungry, and the Northern troops do not suffer ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... into a trench out of view of certain stakes and pickets that were obviously used by Mere Popeau as a drying-ground. To divert attention he gave a vivid demonstration of bombing along a C.T. with clods of earth, with myself as bayonet-man nipping round traverses and mortally puncturing sand-bags with a walking-stick. It must have been a pretty nervy business for the Major, for any minute we might have come across a notice-board about the hours of working ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... The snow was two feet deep, in the streets, and the air was nipping chill. The streets were deserted, as evening settled down and Charley neared home. Now when he passed an open stairway, leading up into a building, he saw a huddled figure just inside ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... Princess Louise at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... January month, beware Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast. From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north, And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods. Full many an oak ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... powerful enough to send the sweet sap of the rock and sugar maples rushing through all the delicate bark veins up toward the branches and twigs. At night, when the sun has set, and the air is full of a nipping frost, the sap does not run; so, as it must be collected during the daytime, the boiling is very ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... themselves' so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps—'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's olives swart'—(Kiss me, my Siren!)—Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee—he seemed so instantly from the teaching ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... whole day we had determined on a visit to the burial-place of William the Norman—the death-place of Joan of Arc; we had devised little tours and detours all over the mysterious land that sent forth the conquerors of England; but soon there cane "a frost, a nipping frost,"—are we to be boxed up in an hotel in a French town the whole time? No, we must go somewhere, where we can get a country-house—a place on the swelling side of some romantic hill, where we can trot about all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and family, who, I trust, have all safely weathered the rough winter lately past, as well as the east winds, which are still nipping our spring in Yorkshire,—I am, my ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... clear, but the frost mingled the freshness with an "eager and nipping air," and Walter unconsciously quickened his step as he paced to and fro the straight walk that bisected the garden, with his eyes on the ground, and his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hats, with the wool next our heads, and thus were able to bear the weight, day after day, which might otherwise have worn off our hair, and borne hard upon our skulls. Upon the whole ours was the best berth, for though the water was nipping cold, early in the morning and late at night, and being so continually wet was rather an exposure, yet we got rid of the constant dust and dirt from the beating of the hides, and, being all of us young and hearty, did not mind ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... hoped to gain predominance in the imperial councils. But they found a determined mistress in the person of Tsi An, the Eastern Empress, as she was also called, who took vigorous action against them, punishing their leaders with death and effectually nipping in the bud all their projects for making ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... freely of the ordinary white wine. After their meal they set out once more across the fields, in a blithe spirit of companionship. In neither was there any equivocal thought. They were thinking only of the pleasure of their walk, the singing in their blood, and the whipping, nipping air. Anna's tongue was loosed. She was no longer on her guard: she said just whatever came into ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years! ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... his at some reception of Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings—Vivie as the child of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's circle—he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of inductive science. Besides in 1912, if I mistake not, Dr. Smith-Woodward and Mr. Charles Dawson made that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... be understood as one part of this to twelve parts of water. In many cases, however, much greater weakness than this is necessary, owing to the tenderness of the parts treated. As a general rule, the dilute acid should only cause a gentle nipping sensation and heat in the sore. If it is painful, no good is done. Frequent gentle applications are always much better ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... throwing wistful glances out of the window, watching the play of sunshine on the water, and longing to be out in the fresh air—for such a day as this was too good to be wasted indoors. Tomorrow belike the sun would not shine, and the wind would be cold and nipping. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... went through the fleshy part of his arm, and sped twenty feet beyond, nipping several branches and twigs before its force was spent. No doubt the American race as a rule is hardy and stoical, but the stricken Pawnee acted like a schoolboy. Dropping his gun, he clasped his hand over the wound, and emitted a yell ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the hard ground was covered with withered leaves; icicles depended from leafless branches; he heard the sweet low note of the robin, who familiarly approached him; and he felt his fingers numbed by the nipping frost. Father Cuddy found it rather difficult to account for such sudden transformations, and to convince himself it was not the illusion of a dream, he was about to arise, when, lo! he discovered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as his rider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that time on. He would follow hard at her heels, edging her constantly toward the flank of the herd, at times nipping her hide as a reminder of his own superiority. In spite of herself the cow would gradually turn out toward the edge, and at last would be swept clear of the crush, the calf following close behind her. There was ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... young, the lean will break on being pinched, and the skin will dent by nipping it with the fingers; the fat will be white, soft, and pulpy. If the skin or rind is rough, and cannot he nipped, it ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... opportunity, and tucked Mathilde's hand within his own arm, nipping it closely to ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... the Southern Cross began to lift to the long heave of the ever restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus he had not noticed a change coming over Harry and Billy. Suddenly a groan fell on his ear. Startled, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Amphioxus—in which the actual condition which I had supposed to exist in the Vertebrata was shown to occur, namely, the formation of the mesoblast as paired pouches in which a narrow lumen exists, but is practically obliterated on the nipping-off of the pouch from the archenteron, after which process it opens out again ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed portions of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of fire, through fur and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... came to reveal steadily increasing courage and independence. Oftentimes he would be the first to reach the box, and, what was more to the point, would hold his position against the other horses—hold it against rough shouldering from the family horse, savage nipping from the saddler, even vigorous cursing and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... place to a long and cheerless winter, which all too slowly yielded to a late and nipping spring. The wild March wind swept across the moors, roaring loudly around the old conventicle, chasing the last year's leaves in a mad whirl among the rows of headstones, and hissing, as though in anger, through the rank grasses growing on the innumerable mounds that marked the underlying dead, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the Foam about midnight; and next morning at daybreak weighed and worked out of the roadstead with the first of the sea- breeze, nipping sharp round the point as soon as we could weather it and keeping close along to windward of the Palisades until we were abreast of Plum Point; when, being fairly clear of the shoals, we braced sharp up for Yallah's Point. Once abreast of this, we were enabled to check our weather-braces ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... of thorns, of how his face was bluft[23] with blows and blood; also how he was wounded, pierced, and what pains he felt while life lasted, as he suffered for our sins; though these things are also prefigured in the old law, by the nipping or wringing of the head, the cutting of the sacrifice in pieces, and burning it in the fire (Lev 1). Now, you must know, that as the high priest was to offer his sacrifice, so he was to bring the blood thereof to the mercy-seat or throne of grace, where now our Jesus is; he was to offer ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to spiritual life," wrote George Meredith in one of his recently published letters, "lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his passions. ... To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through the healthy exercise ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... thoughtfully off in the direction he had seen his mother take, with short, nipping steps, like a meditative chickabiddy's. He had not a doubt that he should come to some member of his numerous family before long, but meanwhile he was thinking less of that than of the sights by the way. Two boys were racing ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... showed their high spirits with comical sporting. The mules frolicked together, pitching hind quarters, rearing to box and nipping at Simon. Fully as gay was he, though his shaggy flanks were gaunt. He played at goring them, or frisked in ungainly circles. Occasionally, however, he gave signs of ill-humour, lowered his broad horns threateningly, even at Dallas, pawed up ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... bought the place, had been used as a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and nipping winds of winter. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death. By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not. The skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... everybody's garden. But it is her garden because she tends it, and every morning goes around among her flowers lovingly, giving a little dig of dirt here, and tying some frail sisters up there and then, with her scissors, clipping, snipping and nipping away. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... wherever one looks it would be a nice place to sit down and begin fishing. Class ladies [Translator's Note: I.e., School chaperons, whose duty it is to sit in the classroom while the girls are receiving instruction from a master.] wander about on the banks, nipping at the green grass. The shepherd's horn can be heard now and then. White gulls, looking like the younger Drishka, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... with the air of a man nipping a fraud in the bud. "It's one fifty four. Didn't know but what Ike Flanders would be coming over, an' trying to bum his way with me as usual. Well, climb aboard, an' we'll get ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... Since the nipping colds of December, Christine only came in the afternoon, and it was about four o'clock, when the sun was sinking, that Claude escorted her back on his arm. On days when the sky was clear, they could see the long line of quays stretching away into space directly they had ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... opened his eyes again he contemplated the sun through the veil of bushes and reeds. It was great and red, but it had a chilly effect, and he knew the day was quite cold. The willows began to shake and quiver and the wind that stirred them was nipping. He did not care. Cold stimulated him, and, making ready for new endeavors, he dipped for his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through, the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... The wood-pile was a great mound of snow. He cleaned a wide space and a path to the side of the cabin. Working in snow was not unpleasant for him. He liked the cleanness, the whiteness, the absolute purity of new-fallen snow. The air was crisp and nipping, the frost crackled under his feet, the smoke from his pipe seemed no thicker than the steam from his breath, the ax rang on the hard aspens. Wade swung this implement like a born woodsman. The chips flew and the dead wood smelled sweet. Some logs he chopped into three-foot pieces; ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... seated when Julia's innocent voice was heard calling "Mamma, mamma!" and soon she came bounding into the drawing-room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as red as fire and her eyes wet with happy tears; and there confronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, and now, with one hand nipping the back of the chair convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in time to see old Sam nipping round the corner. He pulled the lodger up like a flash, and, telling Peter to take hold of the other side of him, they ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... lay unread. If Pelle laid down his work a moment in order to glance at it, there was Ellen nipping his ear with her lips; his free time belonged to her, and it was a glorious distraction in work-time, to frolic as carelessly as a couple of puppies, far more delightful than shouldering the burden of the servitude of the masses! So the paper was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... intermission to the 24th February; some of the days in the middle of February being from 15 deg. to 18 deg. below the average. From the 24th February to the 6th March the weather was more moderate; but on that day the cold again set in, and the weather continued to the 26th June to be cold, nipping, and miserable beyond record. In January, on several days, the mercury was as low as 13 deg.. In February it was, on many days, as low as from 3 deg. to 10 deg.. The coldest day in London was the 18th, when the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... floundering bodies aside and kicked and struck at floundering legs and arms. Coming to the surface and sinking his feet to the deck at the same moment, he grasped a step of the companionway and hauled himself out of the water, as if the devil were nipping at his heels. Turning on an upper step, he reached down, clutched two of the struggling fellows by the collars and dragged them up from the battling smother. One of them sprang on up the companion without so much as a glance at his ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... and manifold sort of vermin, flying, crawling, hopping, hungry, and ever biting, were in the full rampancy of their young vigor. It was not only spiteful enemies in human form, that sent crashing shells and piercing bullets, but every kind of nipping, boring, sucking, and stinging creatures in the air and on the earth, that our brave soldiers, and especially our wounded, had to face. Even to the swallowing of a mouthful of coffee, or the biting ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... 'tis nipping cold. [Blowing his fingers.] I long for news of our brave Comrades; Lacy Would drive those Scottish Rovers to their dens If once they blew a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... lack of romantic incident at any stage of the story. The prowess of the four Vikings is always potent; they fall in love; Ivar fights a duel, and then wins the loveliest of brides. There is throughout the volume the stimulating air which blows through the Sagas, the nipping salt air ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the wheels, and but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery the glare of the lamps and the capers of the mountebanks were, and how satisfied ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the bank below the parapet of the old fort, hidden from observation. He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping her throat, conscious of his warmth and power, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... lip curled like an opening rose-bud; she gave a nipping laugh, and I just heard "old fogy" break through it so saucily that ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... quiverings, appeals to heaven, upturned eyes, sudden blushings and clutchings at her hair. In fact, no ingredient of temptation was lacking in the dish, and at the bottom of all these words there was a nipping desire which embellished even its blemishes. The good knight fell at the lady's feet, and weeping took them and kissed them, and you may be sure the good woman was quite delighted to let him kiss them, and even without looking too carefully ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... delicate attention. Keep them talking for a few minutes while I pay a visit to the kitchen," cried Nan, deftly nipping up the roll of umbrellas, and disappearing from the hall, to return with the meekest of meek faces, and bid a fond adieu to the parents for whose confusion she had ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fore-paws, with sundry bites in the air, at once announced that he had met with greater resistance than he had anticipated. In a minute, all the bears were on their hind-legs, beating the air with their fore-paws, and nipping right and left with their jaws, in vigorous combat with their almost invisible foes. Instinct supplied the place of science, and spite of the hides and the long hair that covered them, the bees found the means of darting their stings into unprotected places, until the quadrupeds ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... dashed up to the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... presently he will be busily directing his attentions in another quarter, until the day may come, after he is successful and triumphant, well pleased with himself and his choice, when he will heartily thank Dora there for having administered to him the cold bath of a rejection, so nipping his first raw aspirations ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... the northwestern part of London, their names as well as their history would be, to Protestants at least, entirely unknown. They have, however, the evil reputation of commonly bringing with them a nipping frost, and are abhorred in Burgundy as the great enemies of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... added pathos; and the tears came into her eyes as she noted that under the ragged coat was only a flimsy cotton shirt, so bereft of buttons that the whole chest was exposed to the cold which but a little while before the girl, clad in furs and sheltered by the carriage, had yet found so nipping. She raised her free hand and laid it gently on the exposed breast, and slightly shivered as she felt how little warmth ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... believe it? When the shooting began, the infernal idiot must rush round to our assistance, so, of course, Mortimer and Co., nipping out by the secret door, got clear away down the drive. But that is not the worst. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... young clambring hops. Now digs then sowes his herbs, his flowers & roots And carefully manures his trees of fruits. The Pleiades their influence now give, And all that seemed as dead afresh doth live. The croaking frogs, whom nipping winter kil'd Like birds now chirp, and hop about the field, The Nightingale, the black-bird and the Thrush Now tune their layes, on ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... that haue knowledge in Iewels buy any, if they buy them deere, it is their own faults and not the brokers: yet it is good to haue knowledge in Iewels, by reason that it may somewhat ease the price. [Sidenote: Bargaines made with the nipping of fingers vnder a cloth.] There is also a very good order which they haue in buying of Iewels, which is this; There are many Marchants that stand by at the making of the bargaine, and because they shall not vnderstand howe the Iewels be solde, the Broker and the Marchants ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... the merry Indian-summer husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared fields;—golden corn, golden pumpkins, gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad change, indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens, and squirrels and mice that ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... in the open air; the stir of the camp in preparation for a flitting; canvas sinking to the ground, bales and boxes heaped together, mule-bells tinkling through the grove, horses refreshed by their long rest whinnying and nipping at each other in play—all these are charming variations and accompaniments to the old tune ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Mr. Douglas. It was situated in a wild sequestered nook, formed by a little bay at the farther end of the lake. On three sides it was surrounded by wooded hills that offered a complete shelter from every nipping blast. To the south the lawn, sprinkled with trees and shrubs, sloped gradually ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... seen whether my poems would succeed. But, with those exceptions, the dean had it all his own way; and he could not be expected to forego his own literary labours for my sake; so, through all that glaring summer, and sad foggy autumn, and nipping winter, I had to get my bread as I best could—by my pen. Mackaye grumbled at my writing so much, and so fast, and sneered about the furor scribendi. But it was hardly fair upon me. "My mouth craved it of me," as Solomon says. I had really no other means of livelihood. Even ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... mortified pride, and dread of exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her), sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her, and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ships were lying was not one floe, but formed by the close junction of two, so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had supposed for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case of ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of "nipping" us between the floes which formed it. I therefore determined on immediately removing the ships in-shore, and went in a boat to look out for a place for that purpose, there being no alternative between this and our returning some distance to the eastward, into the larger space of clear water ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... altogether abstained from taking any part in any of the proceedings of this meeting. He being a mushroom reformer, raised his head for a short season, and was cut off and disappeared from the political world almost as quick as a mushroom disappears after a nipping frost. The effect produced by this meeting did indeed rouse him again for a moment; but it was only that he might fall still lower, and be totally buried in the lap of corruption, mingling with its basest tools and dependants. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... you, but there is none warm.' The clothing was to guard against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and its failure to answer its purpose points to a real sorrow and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years! ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... dory dancing on the waves like mad, is no easy task. The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory rheumatism. But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or in a nipping winter's wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman's lot ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the Anywhere Man, gazing upon the pasture, where the fleecy ewes were nipping grass between the rocks and the eager lambs nuzzled ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Tegeloo!" cried Hope, stroking the parrot, who grunted with satisfaction, and informed her many times that he was still, "Poor Texas, pretty Texas!" nipping her finger gently as he sidled and snuggled, while Andy leaped to Faith's lap, and was so determined to stay that he had to be removed by force, soft-hearted Faith looking back at the crying baby with the expression of a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and said to ourselves,—at ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... monastery of Innisfallen, and he now felt in every sight and sound the dreariness of winter; the hard ground was covered with withered leaves; icicles depended from leafless branches; he heard the sweet low note of the robin, who familiarly approached him; and he felt his fingers numbed by the nipping frost. Father Cuddy found it rather difficult to account for such sudden transformations, and to convince himself it was not the illusion of a dream, he was about to arise, when, lo! he discovered that both his knees were buried at least ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... Abraham Dixon. The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather nipping. To ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, for keeping ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... scent of roses—a time when the young can sit out-of-doors in the moonlight, and the middle-aged may venture forth without risk of catching cold. But even on such a night in Thorhaven there is a nipping freshness at sunset which keeps the mind alert instead of lulling the senses—giving an exquisite clearness to the thoughts of lovers: at any rate, to the thoughts ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... paused, removed his hat, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Although it was nipping cold, he seemed to be burning with the heat of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... were about three thousand of them—began without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked top. If one clambered up on that tomb ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lay to with backed forestaysail, tumbling wildly on a dim, grey sea. Half a mile away the ice ran back into a dingy haze, and there was a low, grey sky to weather. Now and then a fine sprinkle of snow slid across the water before a nipping breeze. As Wyllard glanced to windward Dampier strode up ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of November I had an opportunity of observing the method pursued when culling the tea, which is performed by black slaves, chiefly women and children. They carefully selected the tenderest and pale-green leaves, nipping off with their nails the young leaf bud, just below where the first or second leaf was unfolded. One whole field had already undergone this operation; nothing but tea shrubs stripped of their foliage remained. The inspector ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; there was always a distinction, a chic, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... brought the chill whisperings of an early winter through the Northland. Farther south autumn was dying, or dead. The last of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost-bitten on naked twigs, freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the wilderness were filled with a new note and the winds held warning for every man and beast between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave and from the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea. Seven years before there had come such a winter, and the land had not ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the final thinning when all danger from bugs and other vermin is past. The dwarfs may be planted four feet apart; but the running sorts should not be less than six or eight. The custom of cutting or nipping off the leading shoot of the running varieties is now practised to some extent, with the impression that it both facilitates the formation of fruitful laterals and the early maturing of the fruit. Whether the amount of product is increased ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... near by the coyotes kept up ventriloquistic clamor, and from far off the bawling of great bulls and the bleating of the calves brought news of a huge herd of cattle, but these sounds only made his solitary vigil the more impressive. The sleepy chirp of the crickets and the sound of his horse nipping the grass, calmly careless of the wolves, were the only aids to sleep; all else had the effect to keep his tense nerves vibrating. As the cold intensified, the crickets ceased to cry, and the pony, having filled his stomach, turned tail to the wind and humped his back in drowse. At last, no friendly ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... getting us into a trench out of view of certain stakes and pickets that were obviously used by Mere Popeau as a drying-ground. To divert attention he gave a vivid demonstration of bombing along a C.T. with clods of earth, with myself as bayonet-man nipping round traverses and mortally puncturing sand-bags with a walking-stick. It must have been a pretty nervy business for the Major, for any minute we might have come across a notice-board about the hours of working parties knocking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... yourself and family, who, I trust, have all safely weathered the rough winter lately past, as well as the east winds, which are still nipping our spring in Yorkshire,—I am, my ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... we been trained in this that we are all a good deal more concerned about the things we ought not to do than about the things we ought to do. We spend our days nipping off the buds of evil inclinations, pulling up the weeds of evil habits, wondering how it happens they multiply so fast, forgetting altogether the wiser plan we would adopt with weeds ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... shone brightly upon the hills and plains of Monmouth. Over the meadows lay the snow, and on the streams a thick coating of ice; but the pines were green in the woodlands, and the air—though sharp and nipping—still breathed of spring and hope. The land was fair to see in its winter garb. Man alone was the discordant ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... suspicious look, and being roused by even the slightest whisper. During the voyage it ate corn and fruit, and when these became scarce, took to cockroaches; of which it cleared the vessel. It would dispatch twenty large, besides smaller ones, three or four times in each day, nipping off the head of the former, and rejecting the viscera, legs, and hard wing cases. Besides these, it fed on milk, sugar, raisins, and bread-crumbs. It afterwards made friends with a cat, and slept and eat with this animal, but it never ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Miss May. I declare, if you don't hop about through the snow like a robin; there—she's gone. Now, I should like to know what business old Stillinghast's niece has to be doing such work as this,—the nipping old miser; and I'd like to know what she ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the sun frizzled you alive; here, where it couldn't rain without at once being a flood; where the very winds blew contrarily, hot from the north and bitter-chill from the south; where, no matter how great the heat by day, the night would as likely as not be nipping cold: here he was doomed to end his life, and to end it, for all the yellow sunshine, more hopelessly knotted and gnarled with rheumatism than if, dawn after dawn, he had gone out in a cutting north-easter, or groped his way ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... that pleasant but Puritanical State. Certainly, in a moral point of view, it is better to be in a Puritanical State than in a State of Punch; but Massachusetts, it is said, is very sly about the liquor business, and takes her "nips," regularly, behind the door. This may account, probably, for the "nipping air" by which so many of her denizens are characterized. The Bostonian further states of the inhabitants of the "Hub," that "liquor finds little favor in their eyes." Now, we are acquainted with three thousand four hundred ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... the promise of the year, Serene thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone I ncognit ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... new milk, the pleasant sound of animals stepping about in the stable, the old mare reaching her long head over the stanchion to welcome me, and nipping at my fingers when ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and nipping winds of winter. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... went out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not,' wrinkling her forehead; 'but then, you see, Witch Etta consults me: she makes a point of finding out all my little plans and nipping them in the bud. She says she really cannot allow me to go so often to the White Cottage; Mr. Cunliffe and Mr. Tudor are always there, and it is not proper. She is always hinting that I want to meet Mr. Tudor, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a pleasant thing Nipping daisies in the spring; But what chilly nights I pass On the cold and dewy grass, Or pick my scanty dinner where All the ground is ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... fight, do you?" he cried: "you shall have it then," and, grinning with delight, he sprang upon the other's back, nipping him with his knees, and beginning to slap and ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... some cold, sufficing for different purposes: the cold are the softer, and the easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw—thread. Other machines are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of rivet-holes all along the edges of huge iron plates. These animated creatures of the mill, performing their tasks like child's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... blustering storms and drifting snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the heaviest furbelows that ever maiden wore," I thought as I watched them strain at the cases, both hauling and pulling, with many men to the ends to get them through the hatch, then ease them to the deck, with regard to the nipping of fingers. I noted, too, an order given somewhat privately by Captain Tabor to put out the pipes, and noted that not one man ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... MacVeigh, without lifting his head. "If you're ready, Pelly, open the door." He rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. He did not seem like the old MacVeigh; but the dogs were nipping and whining, and there was no time for ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... and clear, but the frost mingled the freshness with an "eager and nipping air," and Walter unconsciously quickened his step as he paced to and fro the straight walk that bisected the garden, with his eyes on the ground, and his hat ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they had had their tea and Huldah was ready to start, it was already growing light out of doors. The night had been cold, and there was a thin layer of ice on the puddles in the road, and a nipping little wind made Huldah glad to wrap her old shawl snugly about her,—the shawl which Mrs. Perry had lent her, to save the new cloak. Dick bounded along delightedly; it was not often now that he had a walk at that hour of the morning, and he rejoiced in every inch of it; though ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and they saw that she had slipped off her garment of skins, and stood before them, a gaunt white figure armed with a gleaming knife. Next she put the knife to her mouth, and, nipping it between her teeth, slid into the water silently as a diving bird. A minute passed, not more, and they saw that something was climbing up ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and rammed into her with all the strength I was capable of; my God, how she heaved to meet my attack! Her vagina seemed as stiff as my pintle, closing upon it with an extraordinary grasp, such as few women are capable of, nipping and squeezing the head of my affair each time it reached to the bottom of ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... night is keen! How the nipping wind does drive Through yon tree-tops, bare and lean, Till their shadow seems alive,— Patters through the bars, and falls, Shivering, on the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... horse backed in wrong, and she got the harness all twisty-ways, and everything went bewitched. And wasn't she provoked, though? Served her right, I say. A little woman beside her was the first to jump into her buggy, and drive off with a strong inhalation of breath, and that nipping together of the lips that says: "A-a-ah! I tell ye!" The little girl that we picked out was hopping around like a scared cockroach, and her pa seemed to be saying: "Now, keep cool! Keep cool! Don't get flustered," but when another woman drove off, I know she almost cried, she felt ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... woods. To Stumpy and Ebenezer, who nosed affectionately at his legs, he paid no attention beyond a careless touch of caress. Even to Ananias-and-Sapphira, who had hurriedly clambered from MacPhairrson's shoulder to his and begun softly nipping at his ear with her dreaded beak, he gave no heed whatever. He knew that the evil-tempered bird loved him as she loved his master and would be scrupulously careful not to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... are coming through the ground, and support them with sticks immediately the growth begins to run. Scarlet Runners may be kept dwarf by pinching off the tops when the plants are about 1 ft. high, and nipping off the subsequent shoots ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... and it is all well enough, in its way—if you don't happen to get dismasted. But I find the morning air rather nipping, so I will get my bath and go below again. Will you kindly allow one of your men to play upon me with the head-pump, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... another nip, and another great Miaw! The Landcrabs went on nipping, until they had nipped a big round hole in the side of the Cat. By this time the Cat was lying down, in great pain; and as the hole was very big, out walked the Landcrabs, and scuttled away. Then out walked the King, carrying his bride; and out walked the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... beckoned to my sisters to follow her. They whispered to their husbands, who, however, only nodded and laughed. My uncle's object was rather to guide than to suppress the hilarity, and when he observed anything like a dispute arising, he put in a word or two nipping it in the bud in a calm, determined way, to soothe irritated feelings. In a short time Dan Bourke came in, and, putting his hands on the back of my father's chair, said, "By your leave, gentlemen, I'm come to wheel the master away;" ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost—a nipping-frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age. I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of that colossal cataclysm; I shall take all those for granted at present: ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... it would be a nice place to sit down and begin fishing. Class ladies [Translator's Note: I.e., School chaperons, whose duty it is to sit in the classroom while the girls are receiving instruction from a master.] wander about on the banks, nipping at the green grass. The shepherd's horn can be heard now and then. White gulls, looking like the younger Drishka, hover ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the tin pans on the pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death. By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not. The skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at my ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... been from a well-to-do patient who fostered a half-fancied illness, he might have been more put out than he certainly was when, upon turning into the street, he felt the keen east wind nipping his ears; but it was from a poor house lying in the midst of a very labyrinth of squalid back streets and foul courts, and yet but a mere stone's-throw from ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... the camp for weeks. The meals were good, the men respected her, and she went her way to and from her shack at the canyon as regularly as the world went around. The autumn slipped by, and the nipping frosts of early winter and the depths of early snows were already daily occurrences. The big group of solid log shacks that formed the construction camp were all made weather-tight against the long mountain winter. Trails were beginning ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... his wife, and Sister Susan and her daughter, and three of my wife's kin had come in from the country, all to make a merry Christmas with us. I felt sorry, but it was quite impossible, so I wished Mr. Bluff a "Merry Christmas," and hurried homeward through the cold and nipping air. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed portions of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of fire, through fur and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced his reluctant comrades to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was a ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... business is a good deal like bear hunting. You get on a fresh track, either in politics or bear hunting, and follow the game with dogs, or politicians, as the case may be. The trail keeps getting fresher and by and by the game is in sight, and the dogs are nipping its hind legs, if it is a bear, or chewing big words if it is an opposing candidate, and nipping him in exposed places. You ride like mad, your clothes or your reputation torn by briars if it is a bear, or by opposition newspapers if it is a political campaign, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... bull, grazing in a meadow, and, watching his herd, like the faithful guardian he was. Robert called to him cheerfully. The big fellow looked up, shook his horns, not in hostile fashion but in the manner of comrade saluting comrade, and then went back, with a whole and confident heart, to his task of nipping the grass. Robert was pleased. It was certain that the bull no longer regarded him with either fear or apprehension, and he ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Dennison, our first camp of instruction. Through most of the year there was no ground for complaint. In winter, and especially on winter nights, it would be impossible to keep up anything like a steady temperature, and the thin shell of the building would soon chill through in a nipping and frosty air. We had to meet this difficulty in all winter quarters for troops, and there seemed to be no way to remove it. If one could be heavily clad, it was generally more healthful to endure a steady low temperature, than to meet the alternations of heat and cold which came ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and curiously rigid trees. They were not large, and though from a distance they looked much the same, Nasmyth recognized some as spruce ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sunshine had gone and it was getting cold; the shadows in the dale had faded from blue to dusky gray and the frost was keen. All was very quiet, but now and then distant voices and the musical rattle of chains came down through the nipping air. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... staunch the deadly flow by nipping the vein between my thumb and forefinger, whilst Voigtman hastily tried to tie it. Thinking it was tied, I released it, and alas! the flow at once started again; once more I seized the vein, and once again ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the great toe, as if it had been suddenly seized with a pair of red-hot pincers. Whew! There they are at it! nipping and tearing the flesh, and then rubbing the lacerated joint with aquafortis, or a solution of blue vitriol. And now, the pain shoots along the nerves on that side, till my head bumps and bumps as if a legion of imps were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... barber. "You WILL get it, though, if you don't sit stiller," he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the part of his patient to think ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... atrophies and no longer puts the ligamentum mucosum on the stretch; and the infra-patellar pad of fat, not undergoing the normal compression during extension, is readily nipped between the femur and tibia. Each nipping implies a fresh sprain, with return of the effusion, and so a vicious circle is set up which terminates in what has been called a villous arthritis, with fringes and loose bodies; in time, the articular cartilage at the line of the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... not heard?" As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. "Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. "It's known ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... car-driver decidedly, with the air of a man nipping a fraud in the bud. "It's one fifty four. Didn't know but what Ike Flanders would be coming over, an' trying to bum his way with me as usual. Well, climb aboard, an' we'll ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... presented a dreary appearance, sunk in snow, the dogs shivering between the wheels, and but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through, the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... down, rending the mist asunder, as a man rends carded wool. And behind the wind slid Chieftain, who know the value of a hidden descent. He shot through the rent, racing down with the sun's rays to earth, and surprised a cock-grouse at his breakfast, nipping off the tender heather-shoots daintily one by one. So swiftly did Chieftain fall that the grouse never knew what had killed him; he was dead—in a flash. The great eagle swept on with the grouse in his claws, and, without ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... with his whip and turned them toward the barn, leaving the patroon and his companion alone on the broad portico. Sweeping from a distant grove of slender poplars and snowy birch a breeze bore down upon them, suddenly bleak and frosty, and she shivered in the nipping air. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with little nipping scissors in a garden of alternatives. "Or by shipping HER off. Will you help me to save her?" she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true," she continued, "that she has any aversion ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Unmindful of the nipping air, the ladies flew to the windows and raised them, while the gentlemen, in a body, rushed out upon the porch, many to the lawn—the scene ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... boy came in from a concert, and was passing the open door of his step-mother's room when she called him. He found her standing by one of the big windows, a very girlish figure in her trim walking-suit and long furs. The face she turned to him, under her wide hat, was rosy from contact with the nipping spring air. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... glances out of the window, watching the play of sunshine on the water, and longing to be out in the fresh air—for such a day as this was too good to be wasted indoors. Tomorrow belike the sun would not shine, and the wind would be cold and nipping. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Everybody has exchanged his or her summer clothing for warmer vestments. The ladies appear no more in light muslin dresses, and without any head covering. The gentlemen have eschewed their suits of white drill and Panama hats, and have assumed heavy over-coats and flannel under-clothing. It is a 'nipping and an eager air,' closely resembling winter, and reminding everybody of the fact, that in one short hour we have tripped lightly from the perpetual summer of the tropics into the coldest season of the north. Some sea water which had been hauled up in a bucket half an hour ago was perfectly ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the very thought of danger. Even if the enemy were expecting us, he urged, a man could clear that space in quicker time than a bullet would take to travel from the opposite side of the pass, and it was just as likely as not that by nipping across quickly we might fail to draw Are at all. This had an air of reason about it, but I was not nearly so curious to see the fortifications as I had been. I represented that the two journals for which I was ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... very prettily branched or creased, which was easily discoverable by the Microscope. This drop, after I had thus ground it, without at all impairing the remnant that was not ground away, I caused to fly immediately all into sand upon the nipping off the very tip of its ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in relation to the ship, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be at the ship's radio, but actually weaving back and forth across the rocket's course, just nipping it at ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... brightest skies a forecast of the tempest. To such a one, there can be no new dawn of the heart; no sun can gild its cold and cheerless horizon; no breeze can revive pulses that have long since ceased to throb with any chance emotion. I am too old to feel freshness in this nipping air. It chills me more than the damps of night, to which I am accustomed. Night—midnight! is my season of delight. Nature is instinct then with secrets dark and dread. There is a language which he who sleepeth not, but will ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wet seas had quenched that holocaust, That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost Had withered up those lilies white and red Which, while the boy would through the forest range, Answered each other in ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... paramount to everything else. And yet the pet game of the day never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight,—the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for salmon,—when the summer comes round I do really believe that they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I'm sure they never catch any. So they ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... vivid scarlet-tipped fins and tail, a perfectly defined circle of the same colour round the eyes, and protruding teeth of a dull red. These we especially detested for their villainous habit of calmly swimming up to a pendant line, and nipping it in twain, apparently out of sheer humour. Well have the Samoans named the ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Douglas rode around the corner of the stable. Rosa shied and snorted and reared, and Belle used the rein-ends for a whiplash until Rosa decided that she would better submit to authority and keep her hide whole. She stood fairly quiet after that, with little nipping dance-steps in one spot, while Belle fastened buckles and snaps and trace chains. Subrosa, having had his tantrum, contented himself with sundry head-shakings and snorts. When the team was "hooked ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... whether of the tub-carriers or the troopers' horses it was not for me to guess. The mare knew, however, for as the slope grew easier, she whinnied and slackened her pace to give them time to come up. This also gave me a chance to shift my seat a bit, for the edges of the kegs were nipping my calves cruelly. The beach below us was like the wicked place in a priest's sermon—black as pitch and full of cursing—and by this time all alive with lanterns; but they showed us nothing. There was no more ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time and a few knock-out cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss was cute and spry enough to keep out of his reach, though, and he made such a nuisance of ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... we are born in a state of warfare with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink. But you, oh you, by nature formed of gentler kind, can you endure the biting storm? shall you be turned to the nipping blast, and not a door be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, the stars winking and blinking, and the wind nipping and whistling around the grocery, Sanders notified Jake and others that he was going to shut up the concern, and the crowd must be "putting out." Jake made a break for his nag, but she was gone. "Why," says Jake, "she's broke der pridle and gone home, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... downstairs, his casual glance through the window caught a desolate picture of blackened dahlia stalks and shrivelled blooms. The gayety and color of the garden were gone, and in their place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung the sash up and leaned out. The nipping autumn air was good to breathe. He looked about him, surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... before him to herald Fulkerson's cheery person. "Well, I suppose you've got the glorious success of 'Every Other Week' down pretty cold in your talk by this time. I should have been up sooner to join you, but I was nipping a man for the last page of the cover. I guess we'll have to let the Muse have that for an advertisement instead of a poem the next time, March. Well, the old gentleman given you boys your scolding?" The person ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... perhaps there's none: Suppose there is no secret after all, But only just my fun. To-day's a nipping day, a biting day; 10 In which one wants a shawl, A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: I cannot ope to every one who taps, And let the draughts come whistling through my hall; Come bounding and surrounding me, Come buffeting, astounding me, Nipping and clipping ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... world round Such another hodypeak wretch to be found, And Ragan my man, is not that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward? In play or in pastime so jocund, so merry? In work or in labour so dead or so weary? O, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... them are keyes To vnlocke Chastitie vnto Desire; Come in Ofelia, such men often proue, "Great in their wordes, but little in their loue. Ofel. I will my lord. exeunt. Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus. Ham. The ayre bites shrewd; it is an eager and An nipping winde, what houre i'st? Hor. I think it lacks of twelue, Sound Trumpets. Mar. No, t'is strucke. Hor. Indeed I heard it not, what doth this mean my lord? [C3] Ham. O the king doth wake to night, & takes his rowse, Keepe wassel, and ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... and mysterious threat, Thorny slammed the doctor's gate in the faces of the mercenary youths, nipping their hopes in the bud, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip concerning ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Southern Cross began to lift to the long heave of the ever restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus he had not noticed a change coming over Harry and Billy. Suddenly a groan fell on his ear. Startled, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... hillside and the pines, with lower branches bent, rose in somber spires against the dazzling background. The river had shrunk and the dark water rolled in angry turmoil between ice-glazed rocks. Streaks of gray haze rose a foot or two into the nipping air, and the clash of shovels had a new, harsh ring. It was nearly dinner time, and Festing noted that his men had not done much since breakfast as he walked down the beaten hollow in the middle of the track. One could not tell how long ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... market, alone disturbed the quiet of the adjoining streets. In a dark angle might be seen the houseless wanderer, or the abandoned profligate, 341gathered up like a lump of rags in a corner, and shivering with the nipping air. The gloom which surrounded us had, for a moment, chilled the wild exuberance of my companions' mirth; and it is more than probable we should have suspended our visit to the Finish, at least for that night, had not the jocund note of some uproarious Bacchanalian assailed our ears with the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... divided against itself and yet stood. Metaphysics, commerce, social aspirations—all lived together in harmony. Mr. Ansell had done much, but one was tempted to believe in a more capricious power—the power that abstains from "nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read! If business worried him, if ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
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