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More "Snap" Quotes from Famous Books



... the hole, and then, with the light full upon it, Edward Gunning's face being thrust out of the opening into the cellar where we were, and his eyes gleaming curiously before they seemed to shut with a snap. For, all at once—perhaps it was me being a butler and so used to wine—my hand closed upon the neck of one of those bottles, which rose up sudden-like above my head, and came down with a crash upon ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... finished supper; the sheep were quiet below them on the hillside. The silence of the sheeplands, almost oppressive in its weight, lay around them so complete and unbroken that Mackenzie fancied he could hear the stars snap as they sparkled. He smiled to himself at the fancy, face turned up to the deep serenity of the heavens. Charley blew the embers, stirring them with a brush ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... paper's aid, but to be patient does not afford the posturing which youth loves. So it was a comfort to wreck all magnificently: and I knew that, too, as we three drew back upon the western bank and watched the writhing twigs splutter and snap ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... got just a glimpse of a grey dress in the misty depths of the box, the whiteness of a gloved hand lying upon the box's edge—"Count Poltavo is the only interesting man in London. He is a genius." She shut her lorgnette with a snap. "It delights me to talk with him. He smiles and murmurs gay witticisms and quotes Talleyrand and Lucullus, and all the while, in the back of his head, quite out of reach, his real opinions of you are being tabulated ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... instantly, the moment that a breeze touches the brim of the hat. A hunting guard, fastened at the back of the hat brim and between two habit buttons is better than an elastic caught under the braids of your hair, for when an elastic does not snap outright, it is always trying to do so, and in the effort holds the hat so tightly on the head so as sometimes to give actual pain. The hunting guard is no restraint at all unless the hat flies off, in which case it keeps it ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... the lapse of ages, it must continually have been undergoing minor changes, but without at all losing its identity. Mr. ——— says that this old oak wood, though it looks as strong and as solid as ever, has really lost its strength, and that it would snap short off, on application of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... God's sake, not again! Raoul, I swear I'm going to do something about this phobia of yours; it's getting to be not so funny any more." With a show of exasperation, Arnold propelled him through the door. "I give you my absolute word our pet won't snap at you. Not today. It's going to be far too busy ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... we all looked up to him! We were but young savages, and had a savage's respect for power. There was Tom Carndale of Appleby, who could write alcaics as well as mere pentameters and hexameters, yet nobody would give a snap for Tom; and there was Willie Earnshaw, who had every date, from the killing of Abel, on the tip of his tongue, so that the masters themselves would turn to him if they were in doubt, yet he was but a narrow-chested lad, over long for his breadth; ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of white and tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from the big throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a low growl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as a couple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement. At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached her gingerly, half-suspicious, half ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... before the meanest of his own dependents as a self-deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, ipso facto, a suppliant for his own mercy. The stern and haughty Cassius, who had so often tightened the cords of discipline until they threatened to snap asunder, now found, experimentally, the bitterness of these obvious truths. The trembling sentinel now looked insolently in his face; the cowering legionary, with whom "to hear was to obey," now mused or even bandied words upon his orders; the great lieutenants of his office, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... watch, while he held Anthony's wrist between his fingers. "We are one hundred and fifty miles out of New York. The first officer told me you were considerably intoxicated when you came aboard, but," he continued brusquely, rising and closing his watch with a snap, "you will remember it all in a little while, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... against it by causing two little folds of the lining of the blood pipes to stick up both where the vena cava enters the heart and where the aorta leaves it, so as to form little flaps which act as valves. These valves allow the blood to flow forward, but snap together and close the opening as soon as it tries to flow backward. While largest and best developed in the heart, these valves are found at intervals of an inch or two all through the veins in most parts of the body, allowing the blood to flow freely ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... in divers wavy lines; and into these arabesques one may excellently well insert the figures of little birds and different animals, by which the good taste of the artist is displayed. Some hints for creatures of this sort can be observed in nature among the wild flowers, as, for instance, in snap-dragons and some few other plants, which must be combined and developed with the help of fanciful imaginings by clever draughtsmen. Such arabesques are called grotesques by the ignorant. They have obtained this name of grotesques among the moderns ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often only the choice of the whirlpool or ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... "That's the idea. And the truth of the matter is that I am a superstitious man. I really believe, childishly, that the mechanics and motions of the galaxy may turn themselves upsidedown just to snap man out of his apathy and give him some ...
— No Moving Parts • Murray F. Yaco

... who have read the two former books in this series, entitled, "Four Boy Hunters" and "Guns and Snowshoes," the lads getting ready for a swim will need no special introduction. The lad called Snap was Charley Dodge, the son of one of the most influential men of that neighborhood, who was a school trustee and also part owner of the saw mill and a large summer hotel. Charley was a brave and wide-awake youth and was often looked up to as ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill

... teeth and grayish eyes of this American muleteer, who always had a stick of barley sugar to give them or an amazing trick to perform for them with a handkerchief or coin that vanished under their very noses at the magic snap of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... laugh as they go, Whirling about in the maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one, Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights on the face and sparkles the eye! And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around, The town is alive, and its heart is aglow! To welcome the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... speak to me of pride. That is all right for you. If my father had left me a house in the Kochstrasse, I would snap my fingers at everyone, and go my own way, as it pleased me best. Or put it the other way round, if you were the middle son in a Brandenburg family of nine, I tell you that you would attribute a certain importance to seeking the favor of influential people. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... already gotten some splendid pictures," returned Powell, who possessed a good snap-shot camera, now lying on the stern seat of the boat. "I'm going to ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... 'I will,' says I. An', sure enough, when the brown critter came for'id at a walk an' stopped sudden wi' a look o' surprise as if it hadn't expected to see me, bang went my Winchester four times, like winkin', an' up went the deer four times in the air, but niver a bit the worse was he. Snap I went a fifth time; but there was no shot, an' I gave a yell, for I knew the cartridges was done. By that time the critter had reached the crack in the hill I told ye of, an' up in the air he went to clear it, like an Indy-rubber ball. ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... man would respond to the proffered civility; but his hand dropped again to his side, and Amy had the mortification of one who is repulsed. However, she had little time for thought. The master of the mill passed onward into his "den" and closed its door with a snap. On the ground glass which admitted light through the upper half the door, yet effectually screened from observation any who were within, was printed in ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... fellow," said Whalley, patting him on the back; "why should you care so much because two such fellows as White-feather and Varnish try to be impudent. I shouldn't care the snap of a finger for anything ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... have received the name tucano from the noise they make, which resembles "tok-kan" very sharply pronounced and with a snap at the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... that an attempt should be made to photograph any phantasm seen, but Mr. Vincey had not the instant presence of mind to snap the camera that lay ready on the table beside him, and when he did so he was too late. Greatly elated, however, even by this partial success, he made a note of the exact time, and at once took a cab to the Albany to inform Mr. Bessel of ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... front door and hearing the spring lock snap into its socket, most people go off with a childlike faith in the safety of their goods and chattels. But the cold fact is that there is scarcely any locking device which affords less protection than the ordinary spring lock. It is the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... saddle-bow, Two aged pistols he did stow, Among the surplus of such meat As in his hose he cou'd not get. These wou'd inveigle rats with th' scent, 395 To forage when the cocks were bent; And sometimes catch 'em with a snap As cleverly as th' ablest trap. They were upon hard duty still, And ev'ry night stood centinel, 400 To guard the magazine i' th' hose From ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... everything before I leave, and the sale will be held immediately. The furniture first, and then the place." Her mouth closed upon the words like a steel snap. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... chief trait was lovableness—nobody ever knew him to fight, to snap at anything, or to get angry; after lovableness, it was politeness. If he wanted something to eat, if he wanted Dinnie to go to bed, if he wanted to get out of the door, he would beg—beg prettily on his haunches, his little red tongue out and his funny little paws hanging loosely. ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... to get mixed up in a Twosome one day with a walking Rameses who had graduated from the Stock Exchange soon after the Crime of '73. This doddering Shell of Humanity looked as if a High Wind would blow him into the Crick. When he swung at the Pill, you expected to hear something Snap. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... the vestibule closed with a vicious snap. Then I heard the crunch of sabots on the gravelled court, and the next instant caught a glimpse of the stout, brutal figure of the peasant Le Gros, the big dealer in cattle, as he passed the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... awoke, they found a change had taken place during the night. So warm was it, that Shorty and Smoke, still in their mutual blankets, estimated the temperature at no more than twenty below. The cold snap had broken. On top of their blankets lay six ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... mint julep [U.S.]; near beer, 3.2 beer, non-alcoholic beverage. eating house &c. 189. [person who eats] diner; hippophage; glutton &c. 957. V. eat, feed, fare, devour, swallow, take; gulp, bolt, snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... from time to time, as if the warm sun had wakened recollections of summer flies. Amy sat on the outskirts of the company, where Sunbeam could eat from her hand; a privilege he was accustomed to on such occasions. One of the men had brought a camera, and he took a snap-shot at the entire company, just as they had grouped themselves on the sunny slope. Amy and Sunbeam were conspicuous in the group, but when, some days later, the plate was developed, it was found that Mr. Stephen Burns ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... will not bear examining, with which he gently hints at what cannot be directly insisted on, with which he half conceals, and half draws aside the veil from some of the Muses' nicest mysteries. His Muse is, in fact, a giddy wanton flirt, who spends her time in playing at snap-dragon and blind-man's buff, who tells what she should not, and knows more than she tells. She laughs at the tricks she shews us, and blushes, or would be thought to do so, at what she keeps concealed. Prior has translated several of Fontaine's Tales from the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... silent, with the sealed packet she had just received lying before her. She took it passively, and opened it—a beautiful row of pearls, not very large, but wonderfully perfect, lay within— clasped by a small, curiously designed diamond snap. She looked at them with half-wondering, half-indifferent eyes—then closed the case and gave it ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... ceiling. I caught myself gripping the sheets and listening. Only there was nothing to listen to. The night was absolutely still. There were no frogs, no owls, no crickets even. The firm old adobe walls gave off no creak nor snap of timbers. The world was muffled—I almost said smothered. The psychological effect was that of blank darkness, the black darkness of far underground, although the moon was sailing ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... on a sledge. Through the air-holes in his prison he heard the scraping of strap-thongs as they were laced through the runner-slits and over the box, the restless movement of dogs, a gaping whine, the angry snap of a pair of jaws. Then, slowly, the sledge began to move. A whip cracked loudly above him, a voice rose in a loud shout, and the dogs were urged to a trot. Again there came to Philip's ears the wheezing notes of the accordion. By a slight effort he found that he could turn his ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... In the night a gale sprang up, blowing fiercely in shore toward an apparently solid cliff. One after another the cables to her three anchors parted, and my father said it was with a feeling of relief that they heard the last one snap, the suspense giving way to what they believed to be the end of all. But there proved to be an unsuspected sandspit at the base of the cliff, and the "Paragon" at high tide plowed her way to a berth she never left. Her bones long marked ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage laughter. "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he said. "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown, though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me. And," he added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... is not his name,' said he, 'and Grand Street is not where you are to go to find him. I threw out a bait to see if you would snap at it, but I find you timid, and therefore advise you to drop ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... grey man made an effort to raise his voice above a dull mutter, and fixed his chief mate with a cold gaze, piercing like a dart.—"Get sail on the ship," he said, speaking authoritatively and with an inflexible snap of his thin lips. "Get sail on her as soon as you can. This is a fair wind. At once, sir—Don't give the men time to feel themselves. They will get done up and stiff, and we will never... We must get her along now"... He reeled to a long heavy roll; the rail dipped into the ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... rowed along the shore, and as my host was contributing a pig, we had the animal with us. With legs and snout tightly tied, the poor beast lay sadly in the bottom of the boat, occasionally trying to snap the feet of the rowers. The sea and the wind were perfect, and we made good speed; in the evening we camped on the beach. The next day was just as fine; my host continued the journey by boat, while I preferred to walk ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... heard the cry of Greeks in panic fear, Sprang forth those two, before the gates to fight. As when two boars, upon the mountain side, Await th' approaching din of men and dogs, Then sideways rushing, snap the wood around, Ripp'd from the roots; loud clash their clatt'ring tusks, Till to the huntsman's spear they yield their lives; So clatter'd on those champions' brass-clad breasts The hostile weapons; stubbornly they fought, Relying on their strength, and friends above: For from the well-built ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... the strident activities going forward on every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp, save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position to snap at the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... at the displacement of his kapa and his consequent exposure, that he turned and bit several of the crowd, while the shark-mouth opened and shut with a snap, and a clicking sound was heard such as a shark is supposed to make when ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... boy," she cautioned, with a maternal note in her voice which was very sweet to bachelor ears from such a maiden mouth, "you must not let Nature snap. You have a wonderful physique but you ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... man made this speech he would have punctuated its termination with a clenched fist. But the scion of an intriguing aristocracy bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile as he unsheathed his sword-cane an inch or two, to snap it back into place, with a snarling smile ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... see men of high ability and undoubted scholarship toil and struggle at translation under a needless restriction to literality, as in intellectual handcuffs and fetters, when they might with advantage snap the bonds and fling them away, as Dr. Welldon has done: more melancholy still, if they are at the same time racking their brains to exhibit the result of their labours—-a splendid but idle philological tour de force ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... people have heard the story of the little girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: "Our family has all the modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... phrases in our conversations now that are used so often that they seem to be in some danger of losing their meaning. The snap goes out of them by too much handling, like an elastic band which has been stretched too far. One of these is ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... courtesy," answered the reporter, shutting his book with a snap like that of a steel trap. "I have now about all the points I wish to get here. I understand that Mr. Patrick M'Cabe is no longer under any obligations to you, and from him I can ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... trail wound over sharp-nosed hills and through deep, narrow coulees, with occasional, tantalizing glimpses of the river and the open land beyond, that kept Beatrice in a fever of enthusiasm. From riding blithely ahead, she took to lagging far behind with her kodak, getting snap-shots of the ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... I tried to break, by grinding away the blunt end, and though I took a seemingly good one, and had ground away neer two thirds of the Ball, yet would it not fly to pieces, but now and then some small rings of it would snap and fly off, not without a brisk noise and quick motion, leaving the Surface of the drop whence it flew 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 ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... together, but Borgson did not cry out. His body writhed mutely, and down his back appeared a red mark. The whip whirled again and fell, this time bringing a stifled curse for a response. Once more it whirled, and this time merely cracked in the air. Again and again an idle snap in the air. Broken by that grim suspense, Borgson yelled ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... dressed in his sky-blue coat, silver-laced hat, white breeches, polished jack-boots, and ringing spurs, leaps from his prancing quadruped, and bids them welcome in their mother-tongue. Every African rushes to "snap fingers" with his equestrian brother, who, according to orders, forthwith preaches an edifying sermon on the happiness of being a white man's slave, taking care to jingle his spurs and crack his whip at the end of every sentence, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... wrath. There were grim stories about those who had yielded to the luxury of slaying these white men—stories of villages razed to the ground and destroyed, of a King himself who had been shot, of vengeance very swift and very merciless. He closed his mouth with a snap and sat up with drunken dignity. Oom Sam, in fear and ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... own Earth there are, we learn, hundreds of varieties of insectivorous plants: the Venus fly-trap, known otherwise as the Dionaea Muscipula, which has a leaf hinged in the median line, with teeth-like bristles. The two portions of the leaf snap together with considerable force when an insect alights upon the surface, and the soft portions of the catch are digested by the plant before the leaf opens again. The pitcher plant is another native ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... board the cars, and the train was under way, he felt considerably relieved. He was speeding fast away from the man he had robbed, and who was interested in his capture, and in a few days he might be at sea, able to snap his fingers at his miserly uncle and the boy whom he determined some day to meet and settle ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... against our charge; but, you see, we do not understand these fellows. One knows what regular infantry can do against cavalry, and it may be we shall find that these Arabs are not to be ridden over as easily as we think. When you have got to reckon with men who don't care the snap of a finger whether they are killed or not, you never can count upon an easy victory however badly they may be armed, and however undisciplined ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... with the other nine. They seemed to be working as though in a nightmare. An incubus weighed them down. Their thoughts were with their absent comrades and with the altered prospects of the team. They played without snap or dash, and the coach ground his teeth as he noted the lifeless playing so strongly in contrast with that of ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... the laity, while reverend men of grace, Like Father Joe, we're told, might snap their fingers in his face, Or order him to take a dip all in the sea so red; Wherefore, when holy men he saw, he turn'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... held bat. These commonly roll slowly in the direction of third-baseman, who, in order to get them to first-base in time to put the runner out, must run in, pick them up, usually with one hand, so as to be in position to throw without the loss of an instant, and "snap" them to the first-baseman, i.e. throw them underhand without taking time to raise his body to an erect position. Many of these bunts can be fielded either by the pitcher or, if they drop dead in front ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... Jana repeat this manoeuvre, and at the third onslaught I saw to my horror that the roots were loosening. I heard some of them snap, and a crack appeared in the ground not far from the bole. Fortunately Jana never noted these symptoms, for abandoning a plan which he considered unavailing, he stood for a while swaying his trunk and ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... make sense, then." He absented himself in thought, then came to life with a snap. "Okay! The next thing on the agenda is a crash-priority try at a peyondix team. Tuly, you organized a team to generate sathura. Can you ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... of the horses before he commenced to unfasten the traces, and he worked swiftly, dexterously, while the girl watched him, directing him sometimes from her seat in the buggy. Presently he lifted the remaining strap, but before he could snap the hook in the ring, the colt's ears flattened back, and he gripped Tisdale's hand. Instantly Miss Armitage snatched the whip and was on her feet. "Whoa, Nip," she cried, and cut the vixen lightly between the ears. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... bent as swiftly as Loob's, and the two arrows sped together, both into the monster's gaping gullet. Amazed at this reception it shut its jaws with a loud snap, halted and came on again. Then a stab of Grom's great spear caught it full in the eye, and this wound struck fear into its dull mind. It rolled back hastily into the water and sank, leaving a foamy ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... strong brine for two weeks, or until convenient to use them, small cucumbers, very small common white onions, snap beans, gherkins, hard white cabbage quartered, plums, peaches, pears, lemons, green tomatoes and anything else you may wish. When ready, take them out of the brine and simmer in pure water until tender enough to stick a straw through—if ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... dilatoriness, which is so freely ridiculed in Paris, is full of treachery, secret stabs, hidden victories and defeats. These worthy men, particularly when their interests are at stake, kill at home with a snap of the fingers, as we, the Parisians, kill with cannon in the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... laughing matter'—the irrelevant and idiotic embryo of a pun dangled itself for an instant in my brain. What other horrible thing would come out of the bag? Perhaps some gleaming instrument?... He closed the bag with a snap, laid it beside him. He took off his top-hat, laid that beside him. I was surprised (I know not why) to see that he was bald. There was a gleaming high light on his bald, round head. The limp, black thing was a cap, which he slowly adjusted with both hands, drawing it down over the brow and ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... been a wife and a mother for fifteen years, to be snuffed out at one snap of the marital snuffers. As Mr. Skratdj leaned forward in his chair, she leaned forward in hers, and defended ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... needn't get so stiff around the gills about it," said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. "Business is what I've come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the short-sighted ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... assembly of men eager to do his bidding, but that it was his firm grasp on the realities of life and his supreme command of everything which makes for true statesmanship. His policies were not based on snap judgments, they were the result of serious thought. All this showed in his speeches, and made him one of the most powerfully ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... The passengers were unprepossessing; most of them ragged, all of them unclean, generally with extremely bad teeth, much-pimpled faces, emaciated, and of undeveloped physique, their eyes still possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... not get dark in the other world till about noon, that day; and about seven, when it was dark in both worlds, Ed heard the jangle of the tin can alarm, followed by the snap of one of the ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... uproots, spiky new growths, and old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be compelled, through all the vicissitudes of making his way, to hold it always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse is wary, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost before the roar of its wings has aroused the echoes. Through that veil of branches a man must shoot quickly, instinctively, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... his will and contract for the funeral. Well you can't cure it, you know, but you can prevent it. How? Turnips! that's it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap your fingers at the plague. Sh!—keep mum, but just you confine yourself to that diet and you're all right. I wouldn't have old McDowells know that I told about it for anything—he never would speak to me again. Take some more water, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... as he ran. Behind him ran a pack of persons whose faces he could not see; they ran like hounds, murmuring as they came in a terrible whining voice. Then Jack understood that he could save Frank; he brought his gun to the shoulder, aimed it at the brown of the pack and drew the trigger. A snap followed, and he discovered that he was unloaded; he groped in his cartridge-belt and found it empty.... He tore at his pockets, and found at last one cartridge; and as he dashed it into the open breach, his gun broke in half. Simultaneously the quarry vanished over an ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... so much disordered by this sudden snap, which tortured him to the bone, that, forgetting all other considerations, he roared aloud, "Murder! a fire! a trap, a trap! help, Christians, for the love of God, help!" Our hero, confounded by these exclamation, which he knew would soon fill the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... "that sneak will get in ahead of you, and then a snap of your little finger for your chance of ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... to follow with his gun that red-ruffed cock; many a long snap-shot he tried, but somehow always found a tree, a bank, or some safe shield between, and Redruff lived ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... revelation of the delicate gentleness of the Lord! "The bruised reed"—is it the impaired musical reed, that cannot now emit a musical sound, and can only be thrown away? He will not snap it and cast it to the void. The discordant life can be made tuneful again: He will put "a ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... a moment. A faint color rose to her face. She leaned back so that the firelight did not reach her. There was a silence, during which Maggie unclasped a bracelet with a little snap of the spring. Catrina did not hear the sound. She heard nothing. She did not appear to be aware of her surroundings. Maggie unclasped another bracelet noisily. She was probably regretting her former kindness of manner. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... at present labor under: for the darkest is before the break of day. My brethren, let us remember what a dark day it was with our African brethren six years ago, in the French West Indies. Nothing but the snap of the whip was heard from morning to evening; hanging, breaking on the wheel, burning, and all manner of tortures inflicted on those unhappy people, for nothing else but to gratify their masters' pride, wantonness, and cruelty: but blessed be God, the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... at sight of the steam and smoke. A fire was the very thing he had defied the gipsies again and again to make on his land. He cracked his whip with a vicious snap, and rushed upon ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... beginning of October, a bright clear morning. The red and yellow leaves come swiftly to the ground with a sudden snap from the twigs that held them: the rabbits move about briskly, and a couple of field-mice in search of winter stores run across the road nearly under Marie's feet. Marie's cheeks are rosy with the fresh, crisp air, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... wicked hand against a heart I love? Were it for you to mourn your wilful death, With such a bitterness as would be ours, The wish would ne'er have crossed you. While we're bound Life into life, a chain of loving hearts, Were it not base in you, the middle link, To snap, and scatter all? Shame, brother, shame! I thought you ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... gave a start of terror, for beneath the trees came stalking two great beasts, either one big enough to crush the little Daughter of the Rainbow with one blow of his paws, or to eat her up with one snap of his enormous jaws. One was a tawny lion, as tall as a horse, nearly; the other a striped tiger ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the higher mammals, put out a hand and said something,—at least, it opened that part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of some great bag,—and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... refused to be dressed. So Sara, who was really a very young mother, and had not yet trained herself to be firm and self-willed and contrary, put the Baby's clothes in her pocket with the yarn and knitting needles and a ginger-snap she had brought, and set the stubborn Baby down on the blue plush grass, where it rolled around quite happily again in its red sash ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... that tooth. Also, Martin wanted a snap-shot of me getting it. Likewise Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were stopping at what had been the club-house when Stevenson was in the Marquesas on the Casco. On the veranda, where he had passed so many pleasant hours, the light was not good—for snapshots, I mean. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... forward, downward, and outward, and when near at arm's length, suddenly snap the fingers from the thumb as if sprinkling water. (Wyandot I.) "To throw away contemptuously; not ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... pursuit of his captain. This would, indeed, be very fatal, was it not for one circumstance; that the sailor is seldom provided with the proper bait for these harpies. However, the contrary sometimes happens, as these harpies will bite at almost anything, and will snap at a pair of silver buttons, or buckles, as surely as at the specie itself. Nay, sometimes they are so voracious, that the very naked hook will go down, and the jolly young sailor is sacrificed for ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... almost colourless, but for two bright red spots, the size of quarters, beneath either cheek-bone. He was half a head shorter than the shipping clerk, and apparently about half as wide; but there was sincerity in his manner and an ominous snap in the unflinching stare of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... man is one that goeth wyth the trunchion of a staffe, which staffe they cal a Flitchm[a]. This man is of so much authority, that meeting with any of his profession, he may cal them to accompt, and comaund a share or snap vnto himselfe of al that they have gained by their trade in one ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... sat still through it all, his eyes expressing first astonishment and then a certain snap of admiration, as he saw the color rising and falling in her cheeks. It was not the only time in his experience that he had had to face similar outbursts. It was the first time, however, that he had not felt like striking ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the curtain,—the piece meeting with the full approval of Chorus, who applauded till I thought he would snap his hands off ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... to. It's very unfortunate, but they've really got no tact. Catherine's so high-handed, and Helen's nearly as bad. They snap the girls up for the least trifle. The result is the juniors have got it into their tiresome young heads that monitresses are a species of teacher. They weren't intended to be that at all. A monitress is just one of ourselves, only with ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... I illustrated with a bang. The latch still remained open. "I must close it by hand." I pushed the hasp into the keeper, and, snap—the lever shot back and it ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... Honour knows him well, and too well!" she snapped at him, looking up his long length to his handsome, good natured face, much as a minute female cur-dog might look and snap, presuming on her sex, at a Great Dane. "It's the new little docthor, Danny Aherne, that your Honour is afther putting ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... but with golden-yellow fins and tail. Its body is greenish gray, with spots of the prettiest rainbow colors, which grow brighter as the fish dies. These fish bite easily, but as soon as caught begin to rush back and forth, fighting and trying to snap the line. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... laugh, took hold of the handle and essayed to pull out the point of the sword, but he could not, and his face went hot and angry. Then King Nentres of Garlot took his place with a jest, but though he heaved at the sword with all his burly strength, till it seemed like to snap, he could not move it, and so let go at last with an angry oath. All the others essayed in like manner, but by none was it moved a jot, and all stood about discomfited, looking with black looks at one ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... the sound, and other moments when the music was all absorbed in the soul of the performer. Finally the old man drew himself up, threw his head backward, ran his fingers raspingly up towards the bridge and made a desperate plunge with his bow. A loud snap was heard like the report of a pistol. The string had broken. Batoche quietly lowered the instrument and looked around him. Little Blanche was sitting up in the bed gazing about with wide vacant eyes. The black cat stood ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... ability; perhaps in his veins, all unknown, there flowed a taint of the heroic blood of some forgotten sea-dog. Be that as it may, something did swell in his breast when Mr. Gibney spoke of the flag and his scorning to hide behind it, and Scraggs's snaggle teeth came together with a snap. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... those state-parasites, who have their feet So constantly beneath the emperor's table, Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they Snap at it with dogs' hunger—they, forsooth, Would pare the soldiers bread ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... to immerse his hands in the decoction which is now cool. If you are not the thief, nothing would happen to you, but to the one who has stolen my money," he added with emphasis, "the doctor said that the medicine will snap the thief's fingers clean off and leave him only with ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... to rest. Byron was our English Sentimentalist and Power-man; the strongest of his kind in Europe; the wildest, the gloomiest, and it may be hoped the last. For what good is it to 'whine, put finger i' the eye, and sob,' in such a case? Still more, to snarl and snap in malignant wise, 'like dog distract, or monkey sick?' Why should we quarrel with our existence, here as it lies before us, our field and inheritance, to make or mar, for better or for worse; in ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... is a serious matter," she told him angrily. "For Richard," he acknowledged, closing his snuffbox with a snap. "Tell me, what would you ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... said he, "but it's a particular swell I'm after, and he hangs out up here in the season. They expect him back from a big trip any moment, and I really ought to be on the spot to snap ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... variety of lap-dog, and among them the tiniest little Italian greyhound,—not more than eight inches long. This last was like a porcelain toy dog, and looked brittle, as if its thin legs would snap if much handled. I did not think it a pretty pet; it seemed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... Still she persevered, and at last, I am bound to confess it, her finger, essaying, proving every atom of the casket, touched its secret spring, and for a moment the lid sprung open; she laid her hand on the jewel within; whether she stole and broke it, or whether the lid shut again with a snap on her fingers, read on, and you ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... endeavours to keep the dog close to him in shelter, he escaped from him to bound about, barking savagely, and the next minute, as a couple of shots came through the door, he uttered a peculiar snarling snap, and threw himself with a heavy thud ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... because of the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he would snap ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... forest-growth beyond, the air was rent with yells, the thickets before him were filled with Indians, and one of them, a Caughnawaga chief, sprang upon him, hatchet in hand. He had time to cock his gun and snap it at the breast of his assailant; but it missed fire, and he was instantly seized and dragged back into the forest, as were also a lieutenant named Tracy and three private men. Then the firing began. The French and Indians, lying ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... step along the corridor outside, which made him snap off his sentence hurriedly and turn listening and apprehensive. Again the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... kind word for Evan? Diana felt as if her heart would snap some one of its cords, and give over its weary beating at once and for ever. No kind word for Evan? her beloved, her betrayed, her life-treasure once, towards whom still all the wealth of her heart longed to pour itself out; and she might not send him one kind ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... stew 'em and then bake 'em. My mother wouldn't eat them. There was plenty of rabbits, too. Sometimes when they had potatoes they cooked 'em with 'em. I remember one time they had just a little patch of blackhead sugar cane. After the freedom, my mother had a kind of garden and she planted snap beans and watermelons ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... to observe what tenacity of life was exhibited by the turtles. For some time after the head was cut off it would snap at everything near it. Even the tail wriggled about after it was severed from the body. Captain Crump gravely asserted that, cut up a turtle as we might, it would not die until the moon rose. No doubt the heads still retained ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... be barbered every day at the "Montcalm Shaving and Shampooing Saloon," so called because they say Montcalm held his last council of war there. It is a queer little steep-roofed house, with a flowering bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full of snap-dragons, before it. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... quoted from that justly celebrated compendium of personal opinions and broad-shaft wit called "Nat Goodwin's Book": "The average author and manager of today are prone to advertise themselves as conspicuously as the play (as if the public cared a snap who wrote the play or who 'presents'). I doubt if five per cent of the public know who wrote 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' 'In Mizzoura,' or 'Richelieu,' but they know their stage favourites. I wonder how many mantels are adorned with pictures of the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... rushed over him the matrimonial bureau zeal with which he had done his best for Miss Martha. The combination reminiscence was too much. If it severed his connection with the law offices at Seaton forever, his self-control must snap, and all at once he threw back his head with a laugh which woke every echo that side the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... cabin, overhearing us, understood him as well as I, and called out to me that William was right, and it was our best way to change our course, and stand away for the bay, where it was ten to one but we should snap her ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... his note-book with a snap. "That is final, Dr. Munro," said he. "Of course I must see Dr. Porter as a matter of form, but if his opinion agrees with yours I can only apologise to you ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... to which my mother's loving fingers had carefully fastened feathers; putting up a flower-pot on a stand as a mark, and trying to hit it. But the arrows did not go very far after all, and I leant down upon the bow and tightened the string, and then tightened it again, until there was a sudden snap, and a collapse—it had broken in two pieces! I threw the bow aside in disgust, and went off into the shrubbery, and then down the carriage drive, hoping to meet my mother; but she happened to be detained that afternoon at one of the cottages ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... closed with a snap, but Tredgold and Chalk made no move. Glued to their seats, they stared blankly at the door, until the rigidity of their pose and the strangeness of their gaze began to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... wrong. I knew I was wrong th' minyit I see a pitcher iv Abdul Hamid in th' pa-aper—a snap-shot, mind ye! Think of that, will ye? D'ye suppose a sultan or a king that knew his thrade wud iver let anny wan take a snap-shot iv him? Did ye iver hear iv Alexander th' Gr-reat or Napoleon Bonyparte havin' a snap-shot took iv him? No, sir. Whin they wanted to satisfy th' vulgar ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... said, "as you have been doing, that the old methods are passes, and compare the crude new ideas with them for effectiveness, as working theories, I snap my fingers ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... shoot, because we all lay in the shadow of a great rock as soon as we could see a ragged stone wall uplifted against the purple sky, and Kagig whistled half a dozen times. We plainly heard the snap ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... bog of the sands of gold. We stand before them and sing Fol de rol de rol. Pickpockets hover about us And honour us with covetous glances. We shake our empty pockets and sing Fol de rol de rol. When death, the old hag, steals to our doors We snap our fingers at her face, And we sing in a chorus with gay flourishes Fol de rol de ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... no other—unless—unless my grandfather consents to acknowledge those checks, and declares that the alterations were made with his knowledge. But that he will not do—because he knows who did it—and he is merciless. I don't care a snap of my finger for the world. You are my world, Dora. If you approve, then I am game. I shall be all right in a few days, and then—then I'll go and do my bit of time, and see the inside of Sing-Sing. It'll be amusing. There's a cab. That's ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... skarf from month that skimmeth Of the man who speaks in song Never will I catch, though surely Wealthy warrior it hath sent; Tender of the sea-horse snorting, E'en though ill deeds are on foot, Still to risk mine eyes are open; Harmful 'tis to snap at flies.[53] ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... one can snap a Kodak effectively without putting into practice the first of these conceptions: nor understand the "new music" and "free verse" without reckoning with both the second and the third. The value to the student of poetry of some acquaintance with ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... invading our liberties; and likewise a fine to be laid on all such bachelors as shall be married to widows. The great disadvantage it is to us maids, is, that the widows, by their forward carriages, do snap up the young men; and have the vanity to think their merits beyond ours, which is a great imposition upon us who ought ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various

... great many things count with you above me. The child comes first! God knows that I have idolised you. Perhaps this is my punishment! but I worshipped you, and today you are deliberately straining the cord that binds us together. The strands will presently be so weak that they will snap altogether. Then all the splicing afterwards will never restore it to its original strength. It will be a patched-up thing—its perfection gone. Remember, a big breach between husband and wife may be mended—but never again is there restored what has been lost!" He lifted her chin and kissed her ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... in the pocket of her dress and found the golden key. And when she had put it into the hole of the rock, and turned it, a sudden sharp snap was heard; then, with a solemn creak that made the shivers run down the child's back, the face of the rock fell outward, like a door on hinges, and revealed a small dark ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... became the sly, supple, watchful creature nature had made her. By a hole in the granary she crouched and waited with unwearied patience one, two, almost three, hours. Then she gave a sudden spring, there was one sharp little shriek from the victim, a snap of pussy's jaws, and her object was accomplished. She appeared again on the piazza, and, laying a dead mouse on the floor, crouched beside it in an attitude of perfect grace, and looked beseechingly in ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... gather and laugh as they go, Whirling about in the maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one, Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights on the face and sparkles the eye! And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around, The town is alive, and its heart is aglow! To welcome the coming of the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... I were home now," said Freddie. "I want to get my dog Snap out of the baggage car, and have some fun with him. I guess he's lonesome ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope

... Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these—are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!—Hurra!—Hurra!—for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... was swiftly lowered over the side and the slack end of the cable fastened to the after thwart. Cock Badding and his comrades pulled as if they would snap their oars, and the little vessel began slowly to lurch forward over the rollers. But the next moment a larger skiff had splashed over the side of the Frenchman, and no less than four seamen were hard at work under ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it's a lovely idea, and I'll carry out my plan. But I won't tell what it is yet; you'd all shout, and say I couldn't do it, but if you were trying also, that would keep me up to the mark," said Lizzie, with a decided snap of her scissors, as she trimmed the edges of a plush case for ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... "I'll never call Braceway off! They're gossiping, are they? They can gossip until they're blue in the face. What do I care for public opinion, for gossip, for their leers and whispers? Nothing—not a snap of the finger! To hell with what they say! What I want is vengeance. I'll have it! Call Braceway off? Not while ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... b![69] Very often, however, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below through the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... kill you, you duffer! Do you think my father would return to England without thanking the man who was kind to his dear lad? And you would give the whole snap away. Yes; I'll call upon him as Cartwright, the administrator of the late Tudor Crisp's estate. If it were not for that confounded grave and marble cross, I could fix him in ten minutes. Don't frown. I tell you, 'Bishop,' you're not ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... Carette's skirts disappear over the brow of the Common at the Sercq end, with thankfulness past words. For myself, I was safe enough. No shot could reach me so long as I kept cover. From no point on Little Sercq could they snap at me by any amount of climbing. I was as safe as if in a fortress, and Carette was speeding to rouse the neighbours, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... with tentless heed How never-halting moments speed, Till fate shall snap the brittle thread; Then, all unknown, I'll lay me with th' inglorious ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... were saved. Will those timbers which bore us here so miraculously hold together till morning? I should think not. What are the iron bolts and fastenings of weak man, compared with the force of God's elements: they will snap as yarns; and by to-morrow's dawn, the fragments of the stout ship will be washing and tossing on the wild surf. Well, it will be a kindness to us, for the waters will perform the labour which we could not; they will break up the ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... his friends. He was fond of good fare, especially cheese, truffles, and grated radish with hemp oil; while in Paris he had eaten, so he said, baked but unwashed guts. He spoke smoothly, fluently, without hesitation, and only occasionally, for the sake of effect, permitted himself to hesitate and snap his fingers as if picking up a word. He had long ceased to believe in anything he had to say in the law courts, or perhaps he did believe in it, but attached no kind of significance to it; it had all so long been familiar, stale, ordinary. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... lay down at night in apathetic sullenness, but when the rancher who slept beside him awoke in the morning he had gone, and by way of ironical farewell somebody had hung a pair of rusty handcuffs whose snap-spring was evidently defective upon a neighbouring tree. One man had kept watch beside the fire, which he had left for a few minutes to bring in more wood, and another by the horses; but while neither of them ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament was sometimes obliged to snap his fingers, to cast away his garments, and to leap or dance with real or affected transport. [50] If a citizen pursued any stolen goods into a neighbor's house, he concealed his nakedness with a linen towel, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... close to the surface of the sea, rising and sinking with the swelling of the billows, eagerly searching for some eatable object on the surface of the water, or swim in the wake of the vessel in order to snap up any scraps that may be thrown overboard. It is the Arctic stormfogel[60] (Fulmar, "Mallemuck," "Hafhaest," Procellaria glacialis, L.). The fulmar is bold and voracious, and smells villanously, on which account it is only ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... she told her husband, "but that manner of his does not impress me. As a matter of fact, he doesn't care a snap of his finger about any of them. He does it too well. It's a stencil. Only the outside of him does it. He's just as bad as you are; only he doesn't hold up a corner of the doorway all the evening, and beam vaguely in general, like a ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... begins the hemlock-branch, Snap, snap! the chestnut stick; And up the wide old chimney now The ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... said, "I'm lost, lost! worse than lost! I can't say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it's not over. I'm an overstrained string that must snap. But it's not ended yet...and it will ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... the animals made straight for the canoe, and the watchers trembled as they looked, for it was evident that one snap of the creatures' huge jaws would cave in the side of the canoe as if it were ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... nibble. The tautog is a shy fish. He doesn't swallow hook, line, and sinker like a hungry cod. You must snap him quick when he takes the hook, for his mouth is small and you must get him ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... may be broken, yet abide they friends at heart; Snap the stem of Luxmee's lotus, and its fibres will ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... sewing, that the machine would get, as you say, bewitched. It wouldn't feed, the thread would break or the needle would snap, and the whole work go wrong. Put the machine away, take a rest, and the next day, without doing anything at all to the machine, you find that it runs perfectly. The trouble was with yourself. It is so with the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... of thing, and, besides, she'll have the dickens of a tantrum if we try to thwart her now she's set her heart on this trick. She'd be equal to slipping anchor with the Countess on board and leaving us in the lurch. Let's see the little girl through on her own lines, and if the snap doesn't come off, she can't blame us. Anyway, it's rougher on me than on you, for Virgie's put me up to do the agreeable to the Countess and keep her from getting restless before we attempt to spring our mine. A while ago I wouldn't have asked anything ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... been half an hour later that Flatray heard a twig snap under an approaching foot. He had been scanning the valley with his glasses, having given West instructions to keep a lookout in the rear. He swung his head round sharply, ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... with a snap of the fingers. "I did not suggest that it could be a matter of importance. It was all a bagatelle, a fairy-tale, that should not have had so serious an end. And your husband—he has heard the fairy-tale ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... and 21. — The Chancellor is now crowded with all the canvas she can carry, and at times her topmasts threaten to snap with the pressure. But Curtis is ever on the alert; he never leaves his post beside the man at the helm, and without compromising the safety of the vessel, he contrives, by tacking to the breeze, to urge her on at her ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... to the other, darkly. In a kind of dull fierce passion he had made up his mind to clear himself before the world, to rend to tatters his garments of romance, to snap his fingers at the stars and destiny and such-like deluding toys, to stand a young Ajax defying the thunderbolts. Here came ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... me so much glory. Did you know the resolutions of that meeting were read on the floor of Congress?—that pleased me greatly. I am very proud to stand maternal sponsor for the whole string. I wish our Albany resolutions had more snap in them. The Garrison clique are the only men in this nation that know how to write ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... short. In spite of her tears, her pleadings, her caresses, Louis made no concealment of his intention to be rid of her. "No sorrow, no humiliation was lacking in the death-struggle of love. The King spared her nothing. He did not even spare her those harsh words which snap the bonds of the most vulgar liaisons." And the climax came when he told the heart-broken woman, as she cringed pitifully at his feet, "You must go away this very day." "My sacrifices are finished," she sobbed, a little later to the "Judas," Richelieu, when, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... predecessors had been; and notwithstanding all the couthy jocosity and curry-favouring of his demeanour towards us before the election, he was no sooner returned, than he began, as it were, to snap his fingers in the very faces of those of the council to whom he was most indebted, which was a thing not of very easy endurance, considering how they had taxed their consciences in his behalf; and this treatment was the more bitterly felt, as the old member had been, during the whole of ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... from her run, "come at once beyond the great gate! Bois DesCaut,—Oh, brute of the world!—whips that great grey husky leader of his team, because it did but snap at his heel beneath an idle prod! Hasten, M'sieu! He drags it, glaring, along the shore to where lie those ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... I think—at first, at least—but she could wear away a stone in the end, as you know. The arranging of this place is still amusing her, so she may decide to spend a good deal of time here. She closed her mouth with that firm snap this morning that I have described to you often, and said that it was going to be her delight to make them put themselves out and come so far away from London for her. "Them," for the moment, are Mr. Derringham and Mr. Hanbury-Green, almost ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... not longer, to go on the way he's been going," said John M. Gibbs, with a vicious snap of his teeth. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... two "seconds," Corporal F.H.J. Spencer, M.M., one "first" and one "second," in the individual competitions, while Serjt. Clancy and Pte. F. Bindley won the assault course and individual "pools." On the second day "A" and "B" Companies each got third place in the Company Assault Course and Snap-shooting Competitions, and "C" was second in the Company "Knock-out" and third in the "running man" competitions. In this last Pte. Pepper won third place in the pool. Finally our officers' team won the revolver ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... were making all the noise they could, suddenly—open flew the door! and out jumped a TREMENDOUS DOG!!! right into the middle of them, growling, and barking, and making his great white teeth snap together like ...
— Baby Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... hold of him somewhere—I think it was one of his fins—and dug and slashed at him until I was out of breath, when I was obliged to let go and come to the surface. The shark sheered off, seeming to have had enough of it, but in going he gave me a blow with his tail across the leg and I felt it snap like a pipe-stem." ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... breath of the fight, Salt to the palate and stinging to sight; Muskets are pointed they scarce know where, No matter: Murder is cluttering there. Reel the hollows: close up! close up! Death feeds thick, and his food is his cup. Down go bodies, snap burst eyes; Trod on the ground are tender cries; Brains are dash'd against plashing ears; Hah! no time has battle for tears; Cursing helps better—cursing, that goes Slipping through friends' blood, athirst for ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... your recollection. One person says to another, "If that wild horse there was conscious of the amount of his strength, his owner could have no business with him in that vehicle; such light reins and harness, too; if he knew he could snap them asunder in a minute and be as free as the air we breathe;" and, "that horse yonder that is pawing and fretting to follow the company that is fast leaving him, if he knew his strength he would not remain long fastened to that hitching ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid

... first felt the wire tugging at his leg. Just as before, he was thrown flat on his face. He scrambled to his feet and jumped again, only to be thrown just as before. Just then Bowser the Hound saw him and opening his mouth sent forth a great roar. Peter made one more frantic jump. Snap! The stake had broken! Peter pitched forward on his head, turned a somersault, and scrambled to his feet. He was free at last! That is, he could run, but after him dragged a ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess

... Lucy, can't you look and feel as I do—buoyant, courageous, and fit to defy all the nuns and flirts in Christendom? I would give gold on the spot just to see you snap your fingers. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... had bent his bow, and came so near to the king's chariot that he could be heard exclaiming in a hoarse voice, as he let the bowstring snap, "Now I will reckon with you—thief! robber! My bride is your wife, but with this arrow I will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... man cast from him his half-whittled piece of pine. He closed his jack-knife with a snap and thrust it in his pocket. He brought to earth the front legs of his chair with a thump, and jammed his ruffled plug hat to ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... scrutinised. The great bit—a Mameluke—was carefully examined, lest there might be some flaw or crack in the steel. The head-strap was buckled to its proper tightness, and then the reins were minutely scanned. These were of the hair of wild horses' tails closely and neatly plaited. Leather might snap, there was no fear of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... in the shoulder. "Baldy," he said, "in your own way, you have had an idea! But we won't leave the meat box open. When Kinmarten wakes up, I want him to show me how to bait this cubicle with a piece of sea beef, so it'll snap shut if the Hlat goes inside. Meanwhile it won't hurt if it ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz

... tied about her eyes, Nurse led Effie up some steps, and placed her on a high platform, where something like leaves touched her head, and the soft snap of lamps seemed to fill ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... fish in the sea known as the "Devil Fish." It lies on its back with open mouth and covers itself with sea moss. Over its open mouth is a bait. When an unsuspecting fish nibbles at the bait, with a quick snap it is caught and devoured. Do you see any analogy between this fish and a certain business that hides itself behind painted windows or green blinds and hangs out a bait of "free lunch" or "Turtle Soup"? A fish that sets ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... up, Flinders," interrupted Gashford, swallowing his wrath. (Paddy brought his teeth together with a snap in prompt obedience.) "You know well enough that we haven't got him, and you know you're not sorry for it; but mark my words, I'll hunt him down yet. Who'll ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... This room was full of stiff bookcases, letter files, severe chairs. The colonel's desk stood near the fireplace in a strong light, with nothing ever unfinished left upon it. It was one of the colonel's greatest satisfactions in life that he always was ready to snap down the cover of that desk at a moment's notice and march away upon a campaign to the world's end—and his own—leaving everything clear ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... presently. "The water's getting so high that it's hard to find a place where you can look out over the whole valley. And I've fetched my camera along, too, hoping to snatch off a few pictures to remember this flood by. Tell you what, fellows, I've got a good notion to go out on the bridge, and snap off some views." ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... and main, until you fear he will shatter his beak or strew his brains on the bark. Sometimes, too, he thrusts his long, slender beak into a crevice and pries with it in a way that threatens to snap ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... objects. [They were taken for the latter, there being only about 7s. in hand.] Two chains and crosses of soap beads, an amber necklace, a bead necklace, a gold Maltese cross and chain, a Brazilian gold chain, a pearl hair brooch, a pearl cross, a mother-of-pearl buckle, 2 rings, a necklace snap, a moonstone brooch, a brooch of Ceylon stones, a pair of bracelet snaps, a gold brooch, a gilt vinaigrette, a pair of buckles, and a box. [The money which was obtained for the greater part of these trinkets, supplied our ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller

... there but a little while, when—snap! buzz! buzz! buzz! ziz! ziz! and electricity began to pull my hair and hum around my ears. The electricity passed off shortly, but in a little while it caught me again by the hair for a brief time, and this time my right ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... need glasses any more than you need a crutch." The denial came out with a snap. Persis Dale, patient to the point of weakness, enduring submissively for twenty years the thankless exactions of her brother, proved herself wholesomely human by her prompt resentment. "My eyes are as good as they ever were," she insisted, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... brisk vermilion note; coils of line, from the thickness of a pencil, spun to hold the sullen plunges of a jew-fish off the Catalina Islands, down to the sea-green gossamers that a vigorous fingerling might snap; hooks, snells, guts, leaders, gaffs, cartridges, shells, and all the entrancing munitions of the sportsman, that savored of lonely canons, deer-licks, mountain streams, quail uplands, and the still reaches of inlet and marsh grounds, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... two hundred thousand billions of times larger than the sun. Oh, be at peace with the God who made all that and controls all that—the wheel of the constellations turning in the wheel of galaxies for thousands of years without the breaking of a cog or the slipping of a band or the snap of an axle. For your placidity and comfort through the Lord Jesus Christ I charge you, "Seek Him that maketh the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... on the horn of his saddle. Thompson's right hand hung at his side. Racey had told the truth when he spoke of Thompson as a good snap shot. He was all of that. And he was fairly quick on the draw as well. It would seem that, taking into consideration the position of Thompson's right hand, that Thompson had a shade the better of it. Racey thought so. But he hoped, nevertheless, by shooting through the bottom ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... game," I said bitterly. "What is 'home'? When you speak to the station-master at London, I suppose? I've a good mind to say 'Snap!'" ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... the jolly-boat fortunately had in his pocket that first evening of our landing. Then we wanted a fire badly, and couldn't build one until he got ashore, and this box was expended up to the last match; so, on the second occasion, Mr Macdougall had to snap off nearly all the caps he had for his gun before he could get a light, the snow having damped them. Oh, yes, I remember Pat's ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... positive chilliness coupled with the disheartening feeling that he was enduring nothing extraordinary. The general exaltation of spirit and suspension of the conventionalities for the time being, which an extraordinarily, hot or cold snap produces in a community, especially in the country, is noteworthy. During that run of mine to the post-office every man I met grinned confidentially, as if to say, "We 're hearty fellows to stand it as we do." We regarded each other ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... and caught a fleeting glimpse of a white flag waving arrogantly on the edge of a wall of rock nearly a mile above his head. Then his eyes closed with a snap, and his face wrinkled spasmodically. Gus threw him the towel, and uncommiseratingly watched him wipe out the offending soap. He felt too blue himself ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... growing to be more like their mother, too. Decidedly, this was the type of woman he should have married, not someone soft and eager and full of silly sentiment like Rose. Why didn't she hold her own as Nellie did? Have more snap and stamina? It was exasperating—the way she frequently made him feel as if he actually were trampling ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... She started forward, and her foot caught in her habit so that she made an awkward stumble and came down on her knee. In rising she stumbled again, and his quick arm was necessary. Looking down at her, he saw that she was crying bitterly. The tension had lasted long, and the snap had come when she least ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... had left him passive. Before his uncle spoke the last words, his silent prayer was offered, and Shamus had jumped upon his assailant. They struggled and dragged each other down. Shamus felt the muzzle of the pistol at his breast; heard it snap—but only snap; he seized and mastered it, and once more the uncle was at the mercy of his nephew. Shamus's hand was raised to deal a good blow; but he checked himself, and addressed the almost senseless ears ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... If you take cuttings of scarlet geraniums or common verbenas, and pot them in moist soil, they bud out apace into new plants like their parents. Certain special types can even be propagated from fragments of the leaf; for example, there is a particularly vivacious begonia off which you may snap a corner of one blade, and hang it up by a string from a peg or the ceiling, when, hi, presto! little begonia plants begin to bud out incontinently on every side from its edges. A certain German professor went even further than that; he chopped up a liverwort very ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... grinder or crammer, and they would soon cram the necessary portion of Latin and Greek into him, and they would get him through the university for us readily enough; and a degree once obtained, he might snap his fingers at Latin and Greek all the rest of his life. Once in orders, and he might sit down upon his fat living, or lie down content, all his days, only taking care to have some poor devil of a curate up and about, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... produce a succession of motions, circle following circle in order, and extending the radius until they disappear in the distance. The political movements of nations are circular. Under the severe pressure of despotism the people rise in their fury, and snap their chains asunder. A republic follows; degenerating first into a rude and wild democracy; and thence into a cruel and more turbulent anarchy. As a relief from the evils of this, the people, sighing for repose, fly back again into the ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes. He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap of a bull-dog. He would detect you an old blackletter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and find an editio princeps under the mask of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... Carlyle. "It strikes me as the absurdest notion that the Englishman can't see a joke. To the mind that is accustomed to snap judgments I have no doubt the Englishman appears to be dull of apprehension, but the philosophy of the whole matter is apparent to the mind that takes the trouble to investigate. The Briton weighs everything carefully before he commits himself, and even though a certain ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... at last rewarded by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind a bush. At the same moment, from another bush opposite me out burst one of the cubs and galloped back toward the burned-out pan. I whipped round and let drive a snap-shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay helpless but glaring. Tom afterward killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of the gun and hurriedly pulled out the old case, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... mere wandering voice in the air: one hears its call or carol on some bright March morning, but is uncertain of its source or direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no cloud is visible; one looks and listens, but to no purpose. The weather changes, perhaps a cold snap with snow comes on, and it may be a week before I hear the not again, and this time or the next perchance see this bird sitting on a stake in the fence lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his mate. Its notes now become daily more frequent; the birds ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... won; here was an adorable woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I fancy she would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate recovery of my senses?—or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved would snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she saw the best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her handiwork. After the years of humiliation from me, she had found herself courted by a young nobleman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... particularly cold, wet and rough day. According to an article which appeared in the "Westminster Gazette," and was reprinted in our local "War Office Telegram," there is always a cold rough snap from October 20 to October 25. The first date was correct, and I trust the latter, which is to-morrow, will be as accurate, for we are miserable. Geese are crossing in very large ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... faster pursuers and pursued raced across level meadows, over straight, white roads and rolling grain fields. Wind whistled madly in Nelson's ears, filled his eyes with tears, and made his short, dark hair snap, but two huge allosauri were now not twenty yards behind ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... of the difficult words from his mouth with a snap, as if he were discharging them from ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... cried Kate, "it is just as likely that I shall meet my father's ship as any other, and then we can snap our fingers at all orders and all captains. My father shall be brought here and the good Governor will make him safe, and free him, as he best knows how, from the terrible straits into which his disturbed reason has ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... at him. "Marko, you're not to snap me up like that. I've noticed it two or three times. I mean it doesn't matter what a man does. It's what ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... the man within the coach, coldly. 'Leave the young man to his choice; he's old enough to make it, and to snap your apron-strings. He knows, without your telling, whether he wears the sign of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... followed on the track through the broken valley of the Atbara, during which we several times disturbed the tetel, but could not obtain a good shot, on account of the high grass and thick bushes. Several times I tried a snap shot, as for a moment I caught sight of its red hide galloping through the bush, but as it ran down wind I had no chance of getting close to my game. At length, after following rapidly down a grassy ravine, I presently heard it pelting through the bushes; the ravine made a bend ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... exclaimed Olive. "I should have been a great deal better satisfied if I had heard he was sick, provided it was nothing dangerous. I think my uncle is treating me shamefully. It is not that I care a snap about his visitor, one way or another, but it is his want of confidence in me that hurts me. Could he have supposed I should have wanted to stay with him if I had known ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... nothing had yet taken place; that Kitty had still kept her miserable secret. If Miss Sherrard knew nothing she would of course give her an excellent character; and she herself would leave Middleton School that afternoon and forever. Then indeed she might snap her fingers at Kitty and her distress. She would be saved just at the very moment when she ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade

... dear Landor, and I will not thank you in words any more. Believe me, I receive the dedication like a great dignity, the worth of which I hope I thoroughly know. The Queen could give me none in exchange that I wouldn't laughingly snap my fingers at. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... struggling burden, Farnsworth pulled shut the door of the Cartwrights' house, shook it to make sure it closed with a snap lock, and then gently but firmly carried Mrs. O'Brien to ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... were those of my classmate Quinet! An involuntary start of mine rustled a fallen dry branch, and the snap of a dry twig of it seemed to dissolve his determination; the hand dropped, he sprang off—and rushed quickly ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... perched himself on the forward rail, where he could survey the scenery. Will had his camera in his hand, and seemed ready to snap off any remarkable picture that presented itself to his vision. He was keen on taking some views that would embrace the weird, hanging Spanish moss, though Frank told him to have patience, and any number of ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... with him, implied service. It pleased him to please with service. And the foundation-stone of service, in his case, was obedience. Yet it strained him sore for a time to refrain from snarl and snap when the legs of strange and presumptuous blacks passed near him along the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... can he be at? Is it a cat? Ah, my poor little brother, He's caught in the trap That goes-to with a snap! Ah me! there was never, Nor will be for ever— There was never such another, Such a funny, funny bunny, Such a frisking, such a whisking, Such a frolicking brother! He's screeching, beseeching! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... I must," he would assure her gayly; "but, I tell you, the snap is gone out of it. When there was a chance that every cap was YOUR cap, the mere progress along a corridor became thrilling." He had a foreign trick of throwing out his hands, with a little shrug of the shoulders. "Cui bono?" he said—which, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the guise of an angel—the singing of chansonettes with such a devil in the body—and at the same time a complexion, a look, a smile, which scatters a kind of mystic, lily perfume. This is precisely that dissonance, that snap, that mystery with which she has conquered Europe. This rouses curiosity; it excites; it is opposed to rules, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... this hunter had patience and perseverance and had not yet given up hope of getting near enough to shoot Lightfoot. He moved forward slowly, setting each foot down with the greatest care, so as not to snap a stick or rustle the leaves. He was watching sharply ahead, ready to shoot should he catch a glimpse ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess

... temptation, to the fathers and to the great past, to the history and the teachings which in times of soberness have ever had the nation's highest honor. No nation which is virtuous and vital will ever be slave to the past; at the command of virtue and of vision it will snap precedent like a reed. But every people of seriousness, stability, and character is a reverent people; and when a people's reverence for its noble ancestors, its sacred oracles and its venerable charters ceases to be sturdy and becomes sentimental, much ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... hear them. The Beaver soon found that he was out of the otter's reach, and with his fears relieved on that point he set to work to free himself from the trap. Round and round he twisted, till there came a little snap, and the bone of his arm broke short off in the steel jaws. Then for a long, long time he pulled and pulled with all his might, and at last the tough skin was rent apart, and the muscles and sinews were torn out by the roots. His right hand was gone, and he was so weak and ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... into the crimson west. The difficulty in my elegant villa is to find oil, OLEUM, for the dam axles. But I've paid my rent until September; and beyond the chemist, the grocer, the baker, the doctor, the gardener, Lloyd's teacher, and the great thief creditor Death, I can snap my fingers at all men. Why will people spring bills on you? I try to make 'em charge me at the moment; they won't, the money goes, the debt remains. - The Required Play ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... white gloves that were quite unspotted from the world. The raw February winds had whipped roses into her cheeks; her pure ultramarine eyes made the blue of her suit look commonplace and dull. Dusk had fallen over the city, and Queed cleverly bethought him to snap on an electric light. It revealed a very shabby, ramshackle, and dingy office; but the long table in it was new, oaken, and handsome. In fact, it was one of the repairs ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... reason at all, he would at the last moment prevent me from taking some particular walk, one so regular and so consecrated to my use that to deprive me of it was a clear breach of faith; or again, as he had done this evening, long before the appointed hour he would snap out: "Run along up to bed now; no excuses!" But then again, simply because he was devoid of principles (in my grandmother's sense), so he could not, properly speaking, be called inexorable. He looked at me for a moment ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Professor Young's bearing and address did anything but meet the president's idea of scholarliness; and West had no difficulty in convincing himself of the man's incompetence. Details came to his attention from time to time during the autumn which served to strengthen his snap-shot judgment, but he made the mistake, doubtless, of failing to communicate his dissatisfaction to Professor Young, and so giving him an inkling of impending disaster. West knew of just the man for this position, a brilliant young assistant superintendent of schools ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... various machines that put the metal under bending stress, cross-breaking, hammering, drifting, shearing, elongation, contraction, compression, deflection, tension, and torsion stresses. The best of the steels had their elastic limits; there was none that did not finally snap. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... go to him at the very last, just before we are reaching Paris. Tell him, threaten him with arrest, then give him his chance of escape. No fear that he won't accept it; he must, whatever he may have settled with the others. Altro! I snap my fingers at them. He has most ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... no sign of any ape other than the strange she and a young balu playing near by. His wicked, blood-shot eyes half closed as they rested upon the charms of the former—as for the balu, one snap of those great jaws upon the back of its little neck would prevent it from ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... this account he was put out of his living in the country, and here he came to me to help him in again, and was very highly offended because I did not do it. Secondly, it is not that I would invalidate his witness, but give me leave to tell you, it is his way to snap and catch at every man, which is the complaint of the people in his own country. I know that same which is spoken is false; I speak it in the presence of God, I profess, I never had any near converse with Oliver Cromwell about such things; I speak this ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... most unmoral O'er cakes and puddings they would quarrel. I don't believe that either chapkin E'er thought at lunch to fold his napkin, And if one biscuit graced the platter 'Twas ever less than fighting matter, Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em— They failed to snap a few at Adam. I fear me as they ate their salade They hummed some raw primeval ballad, And when the Serpent came to dinner, They made remarks about the sinner. No doubt they criticised the cooking And hooked the fruit when none was looking, And when they'd soup—O my! O ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... it, and I'll give ye a sup of milk with it." Up she gets with the tow-cards and the tailor with the goose, and the two 'prentices, the one with the big shears, and the other with the lawbrod; but it dodged them, and ran round about the fire; and one of the 'prentices, thinking to snap it with the shears, fell into the ashes. The tailor cast the goose, and the goodwife the tow-cards; but it wouldn't do. The bannock ran away, and ran till it came to a wee house at the roadside; and in it runs and there was a weaver ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... of the Borgo, she would be beyond the last fringe of Florence, the sky would be broad above her, and she would have entered on her new life—a life of loneliness and endurance, but of freedom. She had been strong enough to snap asunder the bonds she had accepted in blind faith: whatever befell her, she would no more feel the breath of soft hated lips warm upon her cheek, no longer feel the breath of an odious mind stifling her own. The bare wintry morning, the chill air, were welcome in their ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... the junior boys had no touch-holes. Mine was delivered to me in this innocent state. Oh! that was a great mortification on field-days, when we were allowed to incorporate with the —- and —- Volunteers, whilst all the big lads actually fired off real powder, in line with real men, to be obliged to snap a wooden flint against a sparkless hammer. A mortification I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... "Snap went the disselboom of the cart beneath the transverse strain put upon it. Had it not broken the cart would have overset; as it was, in another minute, oxen, cart, trektow, reims, broken disselboom, and everything were soon tied in one vast ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard

... hadn't money that I objected to him—it wasn't that, for I have a place in my business where I need a smart, up-to- date chap, and I'd have put him there quick, but he didn't seem to have any snap in him—too polite, you know—the kind of a fellow that would jump to pick up a handkerchief like as if he was shot out of a gun. I don't care about money, but I like action. Now, if she had taken a fancy to a brown-faced chap like you I wouldn't have cared if he hadn't enough money ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... a box which one of the men in the jolly-boat fortunately had in his pocket that first evening of our landing. Then we wanted a fire badly, and couldn't build one until he got ashore, and this box was expended up to the last match; so, on the second occasion, Mr Macdougall had to snap off nearly all the caps he had for his gun before he could get a light, the snow having damped them. Oh, yes, I remember Pat's fire ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... in my making myself look as attractive as possible under the circumstances. As I am to be an adventuress, I must do the best I can for myself. Nice feelings are for people who have money to live as they please. If I had ten thousand a year, or even five, I would snap my fingers at all men, and say, "No, I make my life as I choose, and shall cultivate knowledge and books, and indulge in beautiful ideas of honor and exalted sentiments, and perhaps one day succumb to a noble passion." (What grand words ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... upon the ground. They had come to the end of hope, they were possessed with a lethargy of despair. Feversham thought not at all of the pine trees on the Surrey hills, nor did Trench have any dread that something in his head would snap and that which made him man be reft from him. They walked slowly, as though their fetters had grown ten times their weight, and without a word. So stricken, indeed, were they that an Arab turned and kept pace beside them, and neither noticed his presence. In a few ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... to the wall, stood for an instant, then stepped back, as we heard a slight clicking sound, like the snap of a spring on an old box-lid. At the same time a part of the wainscoting rolled away, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... he tore into the boy before him, jabbing him swiftly with his left glove and suddenly sending over his right with a snap. The ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... Ayrton," replied Paganel. "By going on we may come across the traces of Captain Grant. In returning south, on the contrary, we turn our backs to them. I think with you, then, and I don't care a snap for these escaped fellows. A brave man wouldn't care a ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... get so stiff around the gills about it," said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. "Business is what I've come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the short-sighted ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... cold to read—I'm awful cold. I wisht that cove in there'd get a move on him, an' get better. He's got a snap. Some one sent him a bottle of milk to-day, too," he concluded, with a solemn wink, the tongue again appearing on the scene to bear internal witness—"but I forgot—I'll read them words to you myself," which he proceeded ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... the hyenas of the sea," said Howard, "although I believe some kinds are stupid and harmless. I think I have heard them called that by somebody, I don't remember who. They will snap up anything ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... went on, never altering his easy saunter. The wolf came out of the ferns and paced up to Hedulio like a house dog. Hedulio patted his head, pulled his ears and the wolf not only did not attack him nor snap at him, nor even snarl, but showed his pleasure as plainly as any pet dog. When Hedulio had stopped petting him, I reached them. We two went on as if we were alone, leaving the wolf standing looking after us as if he were watch-dog at the house of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... First we buy a film, then we open the kodak and place the film. Now pull the paper over to the empty roll and fasten, close the kodak and begin to wind. Oh, here you are, No. 1. The day is clear, for we must have a clear day to get the best picture. We hold the kodak very steady, then snap, we have it. Next we pull a little slide in the back, take a pencil and write down the date and name. Let me see, what was that picture? Oh, yes, "Chrysanthemum (is that the way to spell it?) exhibition." Next the films are developed, and the kodak pictures are complete, ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... wicket-gate she ran against Cyril, who was throwing stones in the air for the dog to snap ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner

... of some discretion, somebody she would not dare to snap at. Her expressions are so reckless, that a young man would not suit her. She ought to have some one to look up to; and you know how she raves about fame, and celebrity, and that. She really seems to care for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... completely different from his actions on the long space flight. He was a man of firmness and immediate decision. Shooting from one project to another in a jet boat, he would listen to the supervisors' complaints, make a snap decision, and then head for another project. Once Tad Winters and Ed Bush, who had taken over Astro's jet barge, had hesitated when trying to transfer a four-hundred-ton lift. A bank of atomic motors from ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... whirring for half an hour and I sat and ate my frugal meal, listening eagerly to the talk going on about me. Sometimes the girls made me the butt of their jests, for they were envious of me, because of my easy job, and hinted that I was not getting this snap for nothing. All of this I did not in the least understand, for I was not much more than ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... Uncle Sam's. For reasons that can soon be explained only small-sized flags are ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year, straight from the wild pass to the west, there comes sweeping down a gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that whips even a storm-flag threadbare ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... your mother for new clothes!" Filomena would snap at him, when his toes came through his shoes and the rents in his jacket-sleeves had spread beyond darning. "These you are wearing are my Giannozzo's, as you well know, and every rag on your back is mine, if there were any law for poor folk, for not a copper of pay for your ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... or snap before dinner: so called from its damping, or allaying, the appetite; eating and drinking, being, as the proverb wisely observes, apt to take away ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... to that end he desired that they would come over to him. Well, his creditors appoint him a time and come over, and he, meanwhile, authorizes another to treat with them, but will not be seen himself, unless it was on a Sunday, lest they should snap him with a writ. So his deputed friend treats with them about their concern with Mr. Badman, first telling them of the great care that Mr. Badman took to satisfy them and all men for whatsoever he owed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... feet, the sky between the trees was like damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... not a complete fool. I put two and two together at random. I only guess, as you know. I have guessed all my life. And as often as not I have guessed right, as you know. Ah! you think I am interfering in that which is not my business, and I do not care a snap of the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and forms connections, be sure he will snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Private Scholar (Privatsirender), living by the grace of God in some European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in the neighborhood of Mecca. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... rotten to you about that oil nonsense. It was nonsense, nothing on earth but nonsense. I tell you frankly I was a fool. I didn't care the snap of my finger for Corliss, but—oh, what's the use of pretending? You were always such a great 'business man,' always so absorbed in business, and put it before everything else in the world. You cared for me, but you cared for business ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... the consummation of the allotted era, the bands of human society are to be dissolved, and a new principle of association is to determine men's place. Their moral and religious affinities will bind them together or separate them, and all other ties will snap. This marshalling according to religious character is the main thought of the solemn closing words of the parable and of its interpretation, in which our Lord presents Himself as directing the whole process of judgment by means of the 'angels' who execute His commands. They are 'His angels,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... most brutally, scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and have nobody ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... Congress proposing to array the fundamental law of the land against the multitude of American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a whole sex. To this injustice we object totally! Such an amendment is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted upon the most tender and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics. If the present Congress is not called to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... nothing anywhere seems settled save clouds, dun and dreary, drooping low over a dreary earth; came when the minister was struggling hard with a nervous headache and sleeplessness and anxiety over a sick child; came when every nerve was drawn to its highest tension, and the slightest touch might snap the main cord. It didn't snap, however. He read that long, wise, carefully-written, sympathetic letter through twice, without the outward movement of a muscle, only a flush of red rising to his forehead, and then receding, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... sixty at a time. First the date gets stamped on the bottom, then partitions are fitted in. "Here's your sample. Under the table you'll find the candies, or else ask Fannie, there. You take the paper cups so, in your left hand, give them a snap so, lick your fingers now and then, slip a cup off, stick the candy in with your right hand." And ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... he added, as he went down the steps of the porch, and told the servant to turn him loose. He called him up with a snap of his thumb and finger as he entered the yard and patted his head which was stretched out to receive the caress. "Poor fellow! he is not so young as he was then, though he has had good care. The gray hairs are beginning to show on his muzzle, and I can detect, though no one else might ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... not be what you want, but I'm just going to show you this proposition and see what you think of it. It ain't going to last—somebody's goin' to snap it up before ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... took up the sewing an my lap and made a few stitches. "Tell me some more of your mother's garden. Did she have winter pinks and bachelor's buttons and snap-dragons and hollyhocks in it? I used to hate grandmother's ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... fellers is talkin' now? Nix. You go into the village gay with these Schwabs by the sewer line, I guess." Truxton pricked up his ears. "The old man has had a hole chopped in the sewer here, they tell me, and it's a snap to get into the city. Not very clean or neat, but it gets you there. Well, so long! They're ready, I see. They don't monkey long when they've got a thing to do. I'd advise you not to be too stubborn when they get you to headquarters; it may go easier with you. I'm not so damned ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... at this game, and did not know that the master was in the next field, watching what was going on; over the hedge he jumped in a snap, and catching Dick by the arm, he gave him such a box on the ear as made him roar with the pain and surprise. As soon as we saw the master we trotted up nearer to see ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell

... and things he could love. And then Wapi would whine, and perhaps the whine would bring him the blow of a club, or the lash of a whip, or an Eskimo threat, or the menace of an Eskimo dog's snarl. Of the latter Wapi was unafraid. With a snap of his jaws, he could break the back of any other ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... almost anywhere in this country," replied the rancheman. "I'd give it to you, for one, and I know of a dozen others who stand ready to snap up the first man that comes along, no odds whether he ever herded cattle or not. You have made precious fools of yourselves, and you'll get a fool's reward. You'll have mean grub, hard work and poor pay, and be niggers to every little snipe ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... November 1 we transplant the plants into cold frames, six inches apart each way, as we wish to keep them growing a little all winter. The glasses are kept on at night and through heavy rains. In case of a cold snap, we cover the glasses with mats; but that is not often necessary, for we seldom have a temperature colder than 16 deg. above zero. Everything depends on good plants and an early start in the spring, for we raise two crops the same season, and an early ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... not want him to snap at me," thought Rose. "And if I went near enough I guess he would snap. I'll keep away from the poor dog, for I would not dare try to get the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... throughout the twelve days of Christmas, provided everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... hand forward, downward, and outward, and when near at arm's length, suddenly snap the fingers from the thumb as if sprinkling water. (Wyandot I.) "To throw away contemptuously; ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... be convinced that I have more resolution than you give me credit for. I will not torment you. If I am destined always to be disappointed and unhappy, I will conceal the anguish I cannot dissipate; and the tightened cord of life or reason will at last snap, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... good air and to commune with her heart's desires and designs. There was one hazard beside which foul air and stray shots were negligible, a siege within this siege. To be insured against the mere mathematical risk that those designs, thus far so fortunate, might by any least mishap, in the snap of a finger, come to naught she would have taken chances with the hugest shell Grant or Porter could send. For six weeks Anna and Hilary—Anna not knowing if he was alive, he thinking her fifty leagues away—had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... in thus moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get to it in time. Let us only be clear ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... amongst some people; then again some didn't like him, he was a mean man, all for himself. He was a man that didn't care anything about his servants, except to get work out of them. When he came where the servants were working, he would snap and bite at them and if he said anything at all, it was to hurry the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... Anguish. Then he proceeded to take a snap-shot of the castle from the middle of the street. He also secured a number of views of the mountain side, of some odd little dwelling houses, and two or three interesting exposures of red-robed children. Everybody, from the children up, wore loose ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... saved him. Yet one of the racing cow ponies struck the boy and his horse a glancing blow. For the moment, Tad felt sure his left leg must have been broken. He imagined that he had heard it snap. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... and the forest together. But first promise not to interrupt me. If you snap the golden threads of thought, they will float away on the air like the film of the gossamer, and I shall never be ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... the month. There will be a spell of mild weather about the 13th and 14th. After a brief interval of mild weather, during which more snow will fall, the third quarter of the month will probably see blustering and cold weather—a cold snap with heavy snow storms and consequent good sleighing. Very cold weather may be expected during this quarter. The last quarter of the month will bring milder weather, but will terminate, probably, with heavy snow-falls and stormy ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... have handed out the double cross many a time, and stand ready to do it again if it promises the slightest advantage to them. They have run off in the hope of taking care of their own hides, without caring the snap of a finger ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... stranger. By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at once Tatpan's eyes ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... fireplace, as proud as Queen Victory,—I don't blame her, Johnny,—O no, I don't blame her; she had the right of it there, I ought to have been ashamed of myself; but a man never likes to hear that from other folks, and I put my pipe down on the chimney-shelf so hard I heard it snap like ice, and I stood up too, and said—but no matter what I said, I guess. A man's quarrels with his wife always make me think of what the Scripture says about other folks not intermeddling. They're things, in my opinion, that don't concern anybody else as a general thing, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... you little varmints!" he would snap. "God knows I'd be glad to get a rap at you—keeping an old man down in the water half ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... with his weight. But in a moment, just as the boat with a swoop plunged over the fall, he rose, clutching securely and hauling himself inch by inch out of the torrent. To Fisher, who watched breathlessly, it seemed as if every moment the branch would snap and send the senior back to his fate. But it held out bravely and supported him as he gradually drew himself up and finally perched high ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... "Take em both together; they go in lots." I saw the old Union—the bold, shivelrous Southner a guidin, controllin, and directin the machine, and assoomin to hisself the places uv honor, and the Dimokrat uv the North follerin, like a puppy dog, at his heels, takin sich fat things ez he cood snap up; the Southerner ashamed uv his associations, but forced to yoose em; the Northerner uncomfortable in his presence, but tied to him by self-interest. I saw a comin back the good old times when thirty-four States ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... for him," said the Spaniard. "He was with me in Cuba, but has no reputation in London. There are hotels that would snap him up." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... snap shots of my little kitty. We call her "Antoinette" after the aeroplane, for she makes a noise like ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous

... go, Whirling about in the maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one, Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights on the face and sparkles the eye! And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around, The town is alive, and its heart is aglow! To welcome the coming ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... attitude, as though grieving over the depravity of man. The Senator looked around helplessly, but there was no aid in sight, so he climbed down from the wagon and walked around to the bridle. The General may have suspected another attempt at dragging, for a vicious snap of his yellow teeth caused the Senator to step back out of reach, completely baffled. He stared an instant at the solemn face before him and then shaking ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled himself close up to his work. The air of the narrow cell took a ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... woman of us is indeed a self pluviometer, or rain-gauge; or, in plain terms, our nerves are like so many musical strings, affected by every change of the atmosphere, which, if screwed up too tight, are apt to snap off, and become useless; or, if you please, we are like so many barometers, and our animal spirits like their quicksilver; so "servile" are we to all the "skyey influences." Take, for example, the same man at three different periods of the year: on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... Chamberlain at court, a Privy Councillor, and the Tsar himself on this side of the world, but when his inspections and reforms are concluded, and he is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, he will return to St. Petersburg and become so high and mighty that a princess would snap at him. And you aspire! I never heard ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... coming, and looked up, expecting to see a wall of flying snow, and continued looking, seeing nothing of the kind. There I stood, in the air of an ice-house, when a gust of that wind struck me. A miracle! In a snap of your fingers I was bathed in genial warmth. All about me rode the scent of spring and flowers! It was as if the doors of a ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... time, we decided to get along as we were. A strange sight we must have presented to the tidy little officer in his uniform and black tie: a haggard, unshaven lot of men, none too clean, all suffering from strain and lack of sleep, with nerves ready to snap; a white yacht, motionless, her sails drooping,—for not a breath of air moved,—with unpolished brasses and dirty decks; in charge of all, a tall youth, unshaven like the rest, and gaunt from sickness, who hardly knew a nautical phrase, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... oyster to be again opened, and he knew,—no one better,—that this oyster becomes harder and harder in the opening as the man who has to open it becomes older. It is an oyster that will close to again with a snap, after you have got your knife well into it, if you withdraw your point but for a moment. He had had a rough tussle with the oyster already, and had reached the fish within the shell. Nevertheless, the oyster which he had got was not the oyster ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... at the quiet little French inn everything suddenly changed color. It was quick, it was quiet. There was a complete change in the snap of a finger. All the chauffeurs and the porters and the waiters—men who had been there for years and with whom we who visit there Summer after Summer have grown familiar—suddenly stopped work, gave up their jobs, were turned into soldiers. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... the sides and upon the top, to conceal (as you think later in life) his diminutive height; and he steps very springily around behind the benches, glancing now and then at the books,—cautioning one scholar about his dog's-ears, and startling another from a doze by a very loud and odious snap of his ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... make a nice little item for our society girl. Usually she disdains people who do not live on the Lake Shore Drive, but she will have to admit there is snap in this 'Dr. and Mrs. Karl Ludwig Hubers,'"—pounding it out on a copy of Walden as typewriter—"' but newly returned from foreign shores, entertained last night at a book dusting party. Those present were Dr. Murray Parkman, eminent surgeon, and ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... where grew the apples which sometimes gave her an "upset"; the garden where grandpa spent hours and hours "cultivating" his vegetables; and grandma's own particular garden, which was given over to tall gaudy hollyhocks, and prim rows of verbena, snap-dragon, phlox, spicy pinks, heliotrope, and other flowers such as all grandmothers ought ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... hut, his canoe, his fence, his cart, woodwork of any kind—indeed, everything to be made fast, from a bundle of sticks to a broken-down carriage, is lashed together with this split material, which must, when so employed, be bent with the shiny skin outside, otherwise it will infallibly snap. The demand for this article is ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... a master here," says the tyrant. "I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers." Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband's knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... another the treacherous roots yielded to my grasp, and fell into the torrent, my heart sunk within me. The branches on which I was suspended over the yawning chasm swang to and fro in the air, and I expected them every moment to snap in twain. Appalled at the dreadful fate that menaced me, I clutched frantically at the only large root which remained near me, but in vain; I could not reach it, though my fingers were within a few inches of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... Gashford, swallowing his wrath. (Paddy brought his teeth together with a snap in prompt obedience.) "You know well enough that we haven't got him, and you know you're not sorry for it; but mark my words, I'll hunt him down ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... microbes against it—the heavy front door, with its cherry panels and brass fittings, had no fear of draughts or cold. It had limitless resistance. The stocky stove, on its four squat legs, could hold its own and snap its fingers at time. They were all so arrogantly indestructible, so fearfully permanent—they had no sympathy, no common meeting ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... convened but irregularly and for brief periods, their existence was a source neither of embarrassment to the Government nor of benefit to the people. "I also have my Estates," declared the Emperor upon one occasion. "I have maintained their constitution, and do not worry them; but if they go too far I snap my fingers at them or send them home." The Diet of Hungary was not once convened during the years 1812-1825. On the side of administration Metternich did propose that the various executive departments, hitherto gathered under ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... environment and are solvable by methods similar to those used to remedy such conditions among white people, if prejudiced presuppositions, which conclude without experiment or inquiry that Negroes have innately bad tendencies, give place to open-minded trial and unbiased reason. Snap-shot opinions should be avoided in such serious questions and statesmen, philanthropists and race leaders should study the ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes

... shelves, or on clean well-ventilated barn floors, or lofts. They should be spread out thinly and turned occasionally from day to day until completely cured. When this point is reached, in perhaps three to six weeks, the roots will snap readily when bent. If dried out of doors they should be placed under shelter at night and ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... Their bareness and boldness startled the convent-bred girl, even horrified her. She was the last to leave the omnibus, and then, instead of pushing in with her fellow-passengers to secure a room before others could snap up everything, she lingered a moment ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... not again! Raoul, I swear I'm going to do something about this phobia of yours; it's getting to be not so funny any more." With a show of exasperation, Arnold propelled him through the door. "I give you my absolute word our pet won't snap at you. Not today. It's going to be far too busy for the ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... travellers thought, upon the little circular garden near Durham Terrace, where every brightness of fall flowers abounded,— marigold, coxcomb, snap-dragon, dahlia, hollyhock, and sunflower. It was a substantial and hardy efflorescence, and they fancied that fainter- hearted plants would have pined away in that garden, where the little fountain, leaping up into the joyless light, fell back again ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... remain where he was, lest he betray himself. Clutching the dollar as he had never clung to anything in his life, he picked up his cane and slowly began to worm his way backward, on his belly, from the thicket. With the utmost caution, an inch at a time, he moved, lest he snap a stick or strike a stone with his foot. As soon as he was clear of the brush, he faced about, ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... a snap for her as long as you are alive," retorted the old lady. "I'm sorry now that I ever let you go with him so much. He seems to be getting more and more determined to make you marry him whether or no. He is jealous of Mr. Westerfelt." Mrs. Floyd lowered ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... enlarges, louder grows the singing, rousing shouts of encouragement come in, half bacchanalian, half devout, "Wake 'em, brudder!" "Stan' up to 'em, brudder!"—and still the ceaseless drumming and clapping, in perfect cadence, goes steadily on. Suddenly there comes a sort of snap, and the spell breaks, amid general sighing and laughter. And this not rarely and occasionally, but night after night, while in other parts of the camp the soberest prayers and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... interests when the religious cry is raised, and the fidelity of our troops is being tampered with. Pay, pensions, and orders of merit may, and would, be cast to the winds when the honour of the faith was in the scale; but to snap the associations of years, and to turn in his hour of need against the man whom he has proved to be just and worthy, whom he has noted in the hour of danger, and praised as a hero to his family, is just what a Pathan will not do—to his honour ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... likely to see will not be over twelve feet long; and you will find ten little ones to one of this size. None of them will meddle even with a child; though if you should lie on the edge of a boat, with a hand or foot in the water, and went to sleep, they might snap at it." ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... ninety pounds and Fieldmouse is a cinch. That little sleight-of-hand stunt between Murphy and your nigger is working fine. They not only put it over on the judges, but none of the other owners are wise. I'd try it myself some day if I wasn't afraid somebody would fumble and give the snap away." ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... plan to do all the basting and hand work first and keep the machine stitching for a rainy or a damp day, as the thread is then less apt to break. A current of air or a breeze from an open window on a dry day will often cause the thread to snap. For the same reason the machine should never stand near the ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... ancient rifle at the little animal preparing to snap off a quick shot. It would be a cinch at this distance. Even Lindy wouldn't have missed, if she hadn't ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser

... mothers and children, for whom Win backed humbly into a corner, and then, just as the doors were about to snap shut once more for a downward plunge, a young man and woman hurried laughing in. Winifred Child shrank farther into her corner, plastering herself against the wall of the elevator, and turning her face away, for the newcomers were ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... to themselves. Others may at an earlier period have been lives of great promise and fulfilment. In the case of the latter, how sad to think that they should be dragged out into worthlessness or dishonour, all for want of a friendly hand to snap them short! In the lower form of life the process of preying upon animals whose work is accomplished—that is, of weeding—goes on continually. Man must, of course, be more cautious. The grand function of the Society is to find out the persons who have a claim on it, and in the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie

... a world fate should befall England. The trees do not grow up to heaven. England, through her criminal Government, has stretched the bow too tight, and so it will snap." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... which had stricken his worn nerves; but the adulterated spirit merely maddened his brain with the vision of new depths of horror, while his body lay below, a mean, detestable thing. Had he known how to pray he would have begged that something might snap. But no man may win to faith by means of hatred alone, and his heart was cold as the marble table against which he leant. There was no more hope in ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... sugar and water into a saucepan, and boil them until the sugar becomes brittle, which may be ascertained by taking up a small quantity in a spoon, and dipping it in cold water; if the sugar is sufficiently boiled, it will easily snap. Peel the oranges, remove as much of the white pith as possible, and divide them into nice-sized slices, without breaking the thin white skin which surrounds the juicy pulp. Place the pieces of orange on small skewers, dip them into the hot sugar, and arrange them in layers round ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... the club and other places—and naturally I have something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... ago, but what are you doing here, right in the jaws of our army? They might close on you any minute with a snap. You ought to be with ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... haven't eaten as much as us can, Duke, for you know downstairs us could eat Grandmamma's treat. I could—I could snap it up in a minute, and the tea too, and yet I can't eat any more bread and milk!" and she gazed at the bowl with a puzzled as well as doleful expression. "I'm afraid—yes, I'm afraid, Duke, that us is ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... Kilton Hall? Oh, splendid! You'll be down on the three o'clock train? Meet you? Of course. Yes, I'll tell the boys. Mother sends love? Give her ours and tell her we are all right and have been as good as gold. Good-by!" and the phone was hung up with a snap as Beverly spun round and catching the one nearest at hand who happened to be Archie, turkey trotted him the length of the big hall before she'd end ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... to the light. Madame Binat looked over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground. Then he shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his elbow. 'Show me,' he whimpered. 'I too was once an artist, even I!' Dick showed him the rough sketch. 'Am I that?' he screamed. 'Will you take that away with you and show all the world that ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... win, I think—at first, at least—but she could wear away a stone in the end, as you know. The arranging of this place is still amusing her, so she may decide to spend a good deal of time here. She closed her mouth with that firm snap this morning that I have described to you often, and said that it was going to be her delight to make them put themselves out and come so far away from London for her. "Them," for the moment, are Mr. Derringham and Mr. Hanbury-Green, almost a Socialist person, who is on the other side—very ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... refugees—and his summary arrest ordered. But fortune favoured him. A bare quarter-of-an-hour before the police began their search he had embarked with his family on a Japanese steamer lying in the Tientsin river and could snap his fingers at ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... Skratdj had not been a wife and a mother for fifteen years, to be snuffed out at one snap of the marital snuffers. As Mr. Skratdj leaned forward in his chair, she leaned forward in hers, and defended ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... strident activities going forward on every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp, save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position to snap at the all too ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... monstrous stroke of humor; for, at this crisis, Strepsy is made to exclaim, "Some magic is it, O Socrates, about the moon? Well! since you are up to that sort of thing, what do you say, now, to a spell by which I could snap the old monster out of her course for a generation or so?" Now for the parallel case from De Quincey. It is from his paper on "California," a politico-economical treatise. The author's object is to illustrate the fact that scarcity of gold is not due ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... watching of either frog or toad will show exactly how the legs are used and wherein they differ from, and also resemble, the child's own legs. The little hands of the frog and toad, their way of sitting, leaning on their short arms, their eagerness to snap up a tempting fly, the queer tongue fastened the other way round from ours, and its lightning-like speed which is a result of this same position in the mouth,—a hundred interesting things can be learned ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... heads that have played upon the passions of the public, this is one [takes the head'] that did cut a capital figure in that way. This is the head of Jonas, or the card-playing conjuring Jew. He could make matadores with a snap of his fingers, command the four aces with a whistle, and get odd tricks. But there is a great many people in London, besides this man, famous for playing odd tricks, and yet no conjurers neither. This man would have made a great figure in the ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... that, right enough," said the fisherman; "we mean business this time. The last war wasn't a war, it was a snap. We weren't prepared and they were. That won't happen again, bless you. I know what I'm talking about. I go up and down the country, and I ...
— When William Came • Saki

... country peasants and tradesmen of humble rank. But already the noble and mighty were pressing in. As the eyes of Gregory closed in death, a new party was rising to power. Already the Brethren were strong in numbers, and already they were longing to snap the fetters that Gregory had placed upon their feet. From Neustadt in the North to Skutch in the South, and from Chlumec in the West to Kunwald in the East, they now lay thickly sprinkled; and in all the principal towns of that ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... idea that he would have gained anything by flattening it with a bit of silk thread is absurd. What he would have gained would have been a feeling of physical inconvenience during the quiet passages, and terror during the tremendous scenes of passion at the thought that the string might snap. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... up from the bottom of the basin, with his hard shells and heavy claws, as if he was the greatest fish alive. But for all that he opened his mouth so wide, and shut it upon a little crumb with a snap loud enough for a loaf of bread, his throat was so small that that little crumb nearly choked him. All these fishes the Prince fed from golden baskets filled with crumbs, and placed around the basin for the convenience of those who ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... fast they seemed to be coming! How the spray from their oars glittered in the sun, and how their wake lengthened with every stroke! No spectator from the shore (if there had been any) could have doubted that the boat was in pursuit of the skiff, and would snap it up presently. Rolf saw that he had five determined foes gaining upon him every instant; and yet he was not alarmed. He had had his reasons for thinking himself safe near Vogel islet; and calculating for a moment the time of the tide, he was quite at his ease. As he took ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... Again she searched by the feeble light of her candle, but could see no exit. Suddenly she saw something else, however, for stepping on what she took to be a rock, to her horror it moved beneath her. She heard a snap as of jaws, a violent blow upon the leg nearly knocked her off her feet, and as she staggered backwards she saw a huge and loathsome shape rushing away into the darkness. The rock that she had trodden on was a crocodile which ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... also and looked after William Craft. I inspected his weapons; "his powder had a good kernel, and he kept it dry; his pistols were of excellent proof; the barrels true, and clean, the trigger went easy, the caps would not hang fire at the snap. I tested his poignard; the blade had a good temper, stiff enough and yet springy withal; the point was sharp."[213] After the immediate danger was over and Knight and Hughes had avoided the city, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... swarm selecting its victim; so that not only Ossaroo, but Karl and Caspar as well, now danced over the ground like acrobats. Even Fritz was attacked by a few—enough to make him scamper around, and snap at his own legs as if he ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of Marathon, all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit over the swelling waves of the sea, come hither to hear the tidings; let all the tribes ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... and falling into deep water, promptly dived. About twenty yards from the shore he came up for a moment, then dived again heading for the island. I dare say I could have potted him through the head with a snap shot, but somehow I did not like to kill a man swimming for his life as though he were a hippopotamus or a crocodile. Moreover, the boldness of the manoeuvre appealed to me. So I refrained from firing and called to the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... placed it close to the sheet. In a moment, a large, bright circle of light appeared on the sheet—and in a moment more, we saw a splendid picture of Daniel in the Lions' Den; the lions with their fierce-looking mouths wide open, and their sharp claws spread out as if they would snap up Daniel the very next instant—upon which the children raised such a shout that I thought my head was coming off—and it was quite fortunate that the picture was changed to one of Moses in the Bulrushes, which delighted the children beyond every thing; ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... moment the Forward threatened to snap her cables; there was danger, too, lest the mountain should be driven by the wind and crush the brig. The officers kept on the alert, owing to their extreme anxiety; besides the snow, large lumps of frozen spray were blown about by ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... your reference to the thing," the detected doctor said, with a grim laugh, "that made me open it. Forty fears ago, sir, I—Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet." He closed the locket with a snap. "I hope you have come back, Dishart, to speak ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... with it pounded a stake into the mud floor. Then he fastened the chain of the trap to the stake, and afterward opened the iron jaws of the cruel-looking thing and set them with a lever, so that the slightest touch would spring the trap and make the strong jaws snap together. ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... the next morning her whole being seemed gathered into a tense strain that made her feel as though the least thing might snap the taut nerves in her body and leave her broken and stranded on some far, emotional shoal. Her heart beat unevenly, while her lips and hands felt dry and hot, as if she had spent hours in a desert wind. She did not experience the bitter ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... as if the liquid expanse were stirred by the rush of a tempest instead of lying as motionless as a country congregation during the rector's sermon. Suddenly Captain BABBIJAM closed his binoculars with an angry snap, and turned to me. His face showed of a dark purple under his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... circumstances, and in view of the fact that your majesty will soon call upon the city for a loan to make up the Lady Mary's dower, it would be wise not to antagonize them in this matter, but to allow Master Brandon to remain quietly in confinement until the loan is completed and then we can snap our fingers at them." ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... hardly help wondering why it took the trouble to strike at all, the single door of the room was opened and a man entered, advancing toward the body. As he did so the door closed, apparently of its own volition; there was a grating, as of a key turned with difficulty, and the snap of the lock bolt as it shot into its socket. A sound of retiring footsteps in the passage outside ensued, and the man was to all appearance a prisoner. Advancing to the table, he stood a moment looking down at the body; then with a slight shrug of the shoulders walked over to one of the windows ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... one who is just putting up his white clay pipe, and uses all the fingers of his right hand to snap the box, like ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... pass—the horses breathless, and requiring to stop every few yards, though their riders, except myself, were afoot. The gloom of the dense, ancient, silent forest is to me awe inspiring. On such an evening it is soundless, except for the branches creaking in the soft wind, the frequent snap of decayed timber, and a murmur in the pine tops as of a not distant waterfall, all tending to produce EERINESS and a sadness "hardly akin to pain." There no lumberer's axe has ever rung. The trees die when they have attained their prime, and stand there, dead and bare, till the fierce ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... with some success, but on which they know that only a very small audience can be found; as if it were quantity more than quality, noise rather than appreciation, which their mistaken desires sought. Unhappily for them, they lose the substance, and only snap at the shadow. The audience may be large, but it will not listen to them. The novel may be more popular and more lucrative, when successful, than the history or the essay; but to make it popular and lucrative ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... Snap is the only individual who has passed away at Woodford Cottage; in all things else there has been an increase, not a decrease. The peaches and nectarines cover two walls instead of one, and the clematis has mounted in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... human lives when the storm-spent mind, tossing on the waves of heaving emotion, tugs and strains at the ties which moor it to reason, until they snap, and it sweeps out into the unknown, where blackness and terror rage above the fathomless deep. Such a crisis had entered the life of the unhappy priest, who now held in his shaking hand the garbled ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... A cold snap had frozen over the Argono River, on the pleasant banks of which was located Deepdale, the thriving town where our friends lived. And they were out enjoying the sport when Amy overheard the cruel words that sent her ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope

... came at intervals to sway the tepee and snap the loose flaps. Sometimes a lamb bleated in a sleepy tremolo; occasionally, instead of puffing, Bowers snorted; but mostly it was as still as an uninhabited world up there on ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... forget that there was such a thing as party politics, except in the distribution of minor offices, when the claims of good and faithful jackals on either side would have to be considered. And my heart grew sick within me, and I longed for a Man to arise who, with a snap of his strong fingers, would snuff out the Little Parish-Pump Folk who have misruled England this many a year with their limited vision and sordid aspirations, and would take the great, unshakable, triumphant command ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... men waited, huddled together behind the hastily-formed breastwork of the zareba. "Swabs" occasionally peered through a loophole in the boxes to get a snap-shot at any figure that might be seen creeping about among the distant bushes. Jack, worn out with the night march, stretched himself upon the sand, and, in spite of the constant zip of bullets and discharge of rifles, sank ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... do more than snap; his fangs are poisoned. Listen, my brother. This tree of friendship is dear to me. I have given labor to preserve it; I have watered it; I have killed the insects and small pests that would have nibbled at its branches. Now that I see its roots threatened, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... for a better grip. Baptiste the Red gave the sign, and the spear hurtled full against his breast. Sturges Owen saw the ivory head stand out beyond his back, saw the man sway, laughing, and snap the shaft short as he fell upon it. Then he went down to the river, that he might carry to the Russians the message of Baptiste the Red, in whose country ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... Only a snap resulted. Leo had forgotten to load! Benjy gasped with anxiety. Oolichuk, who had held himself back with a sparkling smile of expectation at the prospect of seeing the Kablunet use his thunder-weapon, looked surprised ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... the question was Aristide. For once in his adventurous life resource failed him. He stared at the woman for whom he cared not the snap of a finger, and who, he knew, cared not the snap of a finger for him, aghast at the havoc he had wrought. If he had set out to arouse emotion in these two sluggish breasts he had done so with a vengeance. He had thought he was amusing himself ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... was, in certain preponderating respects, much to be preferred to the stalworth fireworker, Mr. Lieutenant O'Flaherty. And the two gentlemen were upon her list. Two strings to a bow is a time-honoured provision. Cupid often goes so furnished. If the first snap at the critical moment, should we bow-string our precious throttles with the pieces? Far be it from us! Let us waste no time in looking foolish; but pick up the gray-goose shaft that lies so innocently at our feet among the daisies; and it's odds but the second plants it i' the clout.' The ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... time he had finished drinking and faced about, the little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at once Tatpan's eyes ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... observe how the same features and style of person and character descend from generation to generation, we can believe that some inherited weakness may account for these peculiarities. Little snapping-turtles snap—so the great naturalist tells us—before they are out of the egg-shell. I am satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, character is distinctly shown at the age ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... grace, My gills outflapping right and left, Ol. pin. sylvest. I am bereft Of a great deal of charm by this— Not quite the bull's eye for a kiss— But like a gnome of olden time Or bogey in a pantomime. For ladies' love I once was fit, But now am rather out of it. Where'er I go, revolted curs Snap round my military spurs; The children all retire in fits And scream their bellowses to bits. Little I care: the worst's been done: Now let the cold impoverished sun Drop frozen from his orbit; let Fury and fire, cold, wind and wet, And cataclysmal mad reverses ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... upon your governessing as a farce, you know, Bluebell, though any one would gladly snap you up for your music alone. But when this war is over, the mysterious husband will return, and you will pay me a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... any more. Wa'al, 'Bijah he fixed it all complete, and he sot it at half-past five, But he hadn't mor'n got into it when—dear me! sakes alive! Them wheels began to whiz and whir! I heered a fearful snap! And there was that bedstead, with 'Bijah inside, shet up jest like a trap! I screamed, of course, but 'twan't no use, then I worked that hull long night A-trying to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a fright; I couldn't hear his voice inside, and I thought he might be dyin'; So I took a crow-bar ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... back, and then, straightening up, he raised the gun to his shoulder. Up to that moment the cat had stood so still that I had been unable to distinguish it, but just as Joe raised the gun it bolted. My partner fired a snap-shot, and down came the cat, tumbling ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... after another the treacherous roots yielded to my grasp, and fell into the torrent, my heart sunk within me. The branches on which I was suspended over the yawning chasm swang to and fro in the air, and I expected them every moment to snap in twain. Appalled at the dreadful fate that menaced me, I clutched frantically at the only large root which remained near me, but in vain; I could not reach it, though my fingers were within a few inches of it. Again and again I tried to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... ragged hips; and gray "Lady Suffolk," queen, in her day, not of the turf but of the track, "extending" herself till she measured a rod, more or less, skimming along within a yard of the ground, her legs opening and shutting under her with a snap, like the four ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... where they never would think to search for her. She knew a place in which to hide. From Doppelkinn she would go straight to Dresden and seek the protection of her old governess, who would hide her till the duke came to his senses. If only she had an independent fortune, how she would snap her ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... fighting," said Johannes seriously, for he did not comprehend Mr Handscombe's allusion; "but very often they snap off the points through digging, them ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... that for the first time I encountered the kodak. The next morning the "Press," of Philadelphia, illustrated its report of the speech with several "snap shots" presenting me in various attitudes in different parts of the speech. I thought this one of the most remarkable inventions of this inventive age, and do not yet understand how the pictures ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... many a hasty one, Whether quadruped or gun, Or a mother's wayward son Given to disaster, Harry's gun was rather quick; And it had a naughty trick,— It would snap itself, and kick Fiercely at ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... Gunner, bare-headed and clad only in a shirt and trousers, was, single-handed, loading and firing a twelve-pounder as fast as he could snap the breech to and lay the gun. His face was distorted with rage, and his black brows met across his nose in a scowl that at any other time would have suggested acute melodrama. Half a mile away the shots were striking the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... right; I know it as well as you. I am only talking to ease my conscience. I know I ought to snap these cords, and I know I can. But I also know that I am grinding here in this devil's mill while every bad man makes sport and every good man weeps! And I know that I shall keep on grinding while you and thousands ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... of white sugar, half a cupful of water, half a cupful of vinegar, or half a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, a tablespoonful of butter and eight drops of extract of lemon. Boil without stirring till it will snap and break. Just before taking from the fire, add a quarter of a teaspoonful of soda; pour into well-buttered biscuit tins, a quarter of an inch thick. Mark off into inch squares ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... luckless sweeper-boy (in those days such dwarfed lads were forced to climb chimneys) sidled up to one of the fore horses, and sought to detach a pink bow from his mane. The creature felt his honours diminishing, and turned to snap at the blackee. The sweep screamed, the horse neighed, the mob shouted, and Sir William turned on his pivot cushion to learn what the noise meant; and thus we were enabled to gaze on a Lord Mayor's face. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... and has a fascinating way of curling round in it, for it is just large enough to hold him comfortably when he curls round like a kitten. It is brown inside, of course, but outside it is mostly green, being woven of grass and twigs, and when these wither or snap the walls are thatched afresh. There are also a few feathers here and there, which came off the ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... once he was dead I could no more escape, and with the stopping of the machinery of the great plant I should die with all the other inhabitants of the planet—all, even Dejah Thoris were she not already dead. For the others I did not give the snap of my finger, but the thought of Dejah Thoris drove from my mind all desire to kill ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind a bush. At the same moment, from another bush opposite me out burst one of the cubs and galloped back toward the burned-out pan. I whipped round and let drive a snap-shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay helpless but glaring. Tom afterward killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... seemed to snap then. The long-pent strain of months gave way. With one agonized cry of "Dad, it's come—it's come!" he sprang from the bed, then stood motionless in the middle of the room, his arms outstretched. But when his father and Susan reached the room he had fallen ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... father came in for a share of blame, for if he had not insisted upon his taking it Will never would have entered Splinter's room. He might have taken German under "Dutchy," or English under Professor Jones, as many of his classmates were doing, and every one declared that the work there was a "snap." ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... Was it his imagination, or did a branch snap, a twig rustle down the road? The hunchback had ears like a fox, and in an instant he was at the window, peering out into the darkness. At first he could see nothing; but gradually the lilac bushes ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... personages in these inimitable books are not merely snap-shots, they are living pictures; and, more than that, the people are moving about amid fluttering leaves and flickering sunlight and waves of shadow and rippling brooks. One neither misses the colours of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... his camera down beside the bellows and closed the box with a snap. "I wonder what old Reeve would say to that ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower

... yourself up," he said, "for a lot of people who don't care a snap of the finger for you. It seems to me," he added, "that you'd be doing better to make one man happy who loves you, than try to please a thousand women ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... field," said the old woman Alokotan to them. Awig and Aponibolinayen did not answer for they were ashamed. When the old woman had finished to talk to them she put saliva around the cut on Linongan and caused it to join. When she finished joining it, "I use my power so that when I snap my perfume [286] which is called dagimonau ('to wake up') she will wake up at once." When she snapped her perfume Linongan woke up at once. "I use my power so that when I use my perfume alikadakad ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... more than ever before, since we were upon foreign soil, orders were to be obeyed to the letter. We were told to be careful in all that we did because by our actions the French people would judge the American nation. He advised us to do everything commanded of us by our officers with snap and thoroughness, so as to show the French people that we were not raw recruits; that we were real soldiers; that we could do as well at any task, if not better, than the soldiers of Europe. The boys, to a man, lived up to those instructions, and it was not long before the world knew ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... waited for Peter at the soda fountain, with a lemon soda and a pretty girl to smile at his naive remarks. Peter's heart had given a jump and a flutter when the young man walked in, fearing some one else might snap at the chance to buy a relinquishment of a homestead in New Mexico. And yet, how did Peter expect to buy anything of the sort? If Peter knew, he kept the knowledge in the back of his mind, telling himself that there would ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... more meliosity. But, sirs, mark my cauled countenance, when I begin. But yonder is a fellow[206] that gapes to bite me, or else to eat that which I sing. Why, thou art a fool; canst thou not keep thy mouth strait together? And when it comes, snap at it, as my father's dog would do at a liver. But thou art so greedy, That thou thinkest to eat it before it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... its acquired taste, and it can corrupt because it can speak with an authority unknown in Philistia. Because it pretends to care about art, artists are not indifferent to its judgments. Culture imposes on people who would snap their fingers at vulgarity. With culture itself, even in the low sense in which I have been using the word, we need not pick a quarrel, but we must try to free the artist and the public too from the influence of cultivated opinion. The liberation will ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... on my neck to get him out of the thing. I must do it! I must not let them harm him! And all that kind of thing. She seems to think that I've got a heavy drag with the police, and all there is for me to do is to snap my fingers and they'll sit up and perform. I tried to persuade her that this was a dream; but I couldn't convince her. And the result was that I had to promise to see her right away." Bat looked dolefully at his friend. "I'm on my way there now," he said, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... through the same performance and his master had again to go the blacksmith. The same thing happened several days running, till at last the farmer decided to keep watch and see what really happened. So he hid himself and saw the Strong man snap the ploughshare in two; but in view of such a display of strength he was much too frightened to let his servant know that he had found out the trick that was being played on him. He took the pieces to the blacksmith as usual and at the smithy he found some of his friends and told them what had ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... wondering how you managed to get a likeness of her on the back of an envelope," said Leslie sarcastically. "Must have had a good long look at her, my boy. It isn't a snap-shot, you know." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... feelimageeries like hen's taes are genna be to you, but I howp they'll no' be learnin' ye to gie fowk jimp wecht, or it'll juist be the ruin o' your trade. I've nae objections to you haein' a hobby; but shurely you cud get a better ane gin a lot o' thae blethers o' Bandy Wobster's. Get ane o' thae snap-traps, or whativer ye ca' them, for takin' photographs; get on for the fire brigade or the lifeboat, join the Rifles or something. There wud be some sense in the like o' that. But fykin' an' scutterin' awa' amon' exyems, as you ca' them, an' triangles, an' a puckle ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond

... came together with a snap. "Then the thing for us to do is to get set and wait for ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... down below her keel. Well, as I was a-saying, on she came, roaring away like a young porpoise, and heaving the foam right over our mast-heads. I knew what would happen, and so it did. Just as easily as the big shark in Port Royal harbour would swallow a nigger boy, she made a snap at the ship and bolted us all, masts and spars and hull, and I felt as how we was all a-being crunched up in her jaws. I woke with a start, which made me almost jump clean out of my hammock, all over in a cold sweat, and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... Shaving and Shampooing Saloon," so called because they say Montcalm held his last council of war there. It is a queer little steep-roofed house, with a flowering bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full of snap-dragons, before it. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... to that astute animal must have struck a physiognomist. His head was shaped like that of a fox, and his hair and beard were of a reddish-tawny hue. His manner was stealthy, cowering, suspicious, as if he feared a blow from every hand. Yet Lupo Vulp could show his teeth and snap on occasions. He was attired in a close-fitting doublet of russety-brown, round yellow hose, and long stockings of the same hue. A short brown mantle and a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... size, in crevices of tree trunks in the forest. Sometimes Geckos are found with forked tails; this results from the budding of a rudimentary tail at the side, from an injury done to the member. A slight rap will cause their tails to snap off; the loss being afterwards partially repaired by a new growth. The tails of lizards seem to be almost useless appendages to these animals. I used often to amuse myself in the suburbs, whilst resting in the verandah of our house during the heat of mid-day, by watching ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... was, large and bright, and sunny, and furnished so tastefully. The canaries were singing blithely; the Persian kitten was rolled up into a furry ball on the rug; a small Skye terrier, who I afterwards discovered went by the name of Snap, was keeping guard over me from a nest of cushions on the big couch opposite. Now and then he growled to himself softly, as though remonstrating against my intrusion, but whenever I spoke to him gently, he sat up and begged, so I imagined his animosity ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... now, Cloudy Jewel, I think they're putting it over on you. I'll bet not half of them are sincere in that sacrifice stuff they put over. It may have been so long ago; but ministers have a pretty soft snap nowadays, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... great was the fear of him, indeed, that the people in the neighbourhood he frequented scarcely dared stir out of doors, except in parties of five or six. We had had several hunts after him, but, like all man-eaters, he was old and awfully crafty; and although we got several snap shots at him, he had always managed to ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... I said. "At this rate we shall soon be self-supporting, and then we can snap our fingers at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various

... baby, naughty baby! Hush, you squalling thing, I say! Hush this moment, or it may be Wellington will pass this way. And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you, And he'll beat you into pap; And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you, Gobble you, gobble you, snap, snap, snap. ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... Justice has refused to pay his customs! The President proposed to have an expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has none! I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent subject, up to then; but now I snap my fingers at their MALO. It is damned, and I'm damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last 'WAINIU,' when I sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief Justice is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed my way of thought to ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to make up the lost time except by diminishing the intervals for rest which he had allowed for before starting. It was, at any rate, important to lose no more. He had just come to this conclusion when there was a sudden snap in the framework of one of the planes. Looking round anxiously, he at once reduced the speed, feeling very thankful that the mischief had not developed during the storm, when the aeroplane must have inevitably crumpled up. Now, however, the weather was fair, and he could choose ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... turtle. They found him near the creek when they were feeding. They would come right up to him (they always did everything in concert) then look at him at close range. The turtle would thrust out his head and snap at them; then they would snort wildly and plunge all over the prairie, returning again and again to repeat the performance, which only ended when the turtle disappeared ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... of the mule, and drawing himself up to a perfect perpendicular, advanced with his head dressed to the front, but with the wary side glance of a cur passing through hostile grounds, and ready for a snap ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... is the Tilchester child, Muriel Harley," he said, carelessly. "We snap-shotted her paddling in the burn in Scotland a year or two ago. Come, it is dressing-time. I must send you up-stairs." And then, as we left the room, "You look so comfortable in that tea-gown! Don't bother to ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... soon to produce a pair of formidable winter hose. Their son, a stout, healthy young peasant of three-and-twenty, was sitting in the spacious chimney corner, sharing his frugal supper of bread and cheese with a large, shaggy sheep dog, who sat on his haunches wistfully watching every mouthful, and snap, snap, snapping, and dextrously catching every morsel that was cast ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... cleaner-shaped legs on a horse?" someone was heard to say, and instantly his neighbor in the crowd joined the chorus of praise, and added: "What a snap and spring there is in every bend of her knee and turn of her neck and flash of ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... one of them; but the modest maidens said never a word! It was not their way to speak; only the gay calico ponies pranced about and sportively threw back their ears to snap at the horses of the ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... handkerchief was tied about her eyes, Nurse led Effie up some steps, and placed her on a high platform, where something like leaves touched her head, and the soft snap of lamps ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... beyond question delightful to taste the excitement of it. But, on the other hand, there is all the difficulty of getting under way. One cannot possibly enjoy the occasion until one has reached that delightful point when one has lost all sense of risk, when recklessly we pile the bonfire, snap our fingers in the nose of poor Mr. Gregg who is terrific enough when he marches solemnly into Chapel but is nothing at all when he is screaming with shrill anger amongst the lights and fury ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... and that others would not have it ready till three P. M. This was anything but encouraging to a cold and hungry man; but I at length obtained admission to the house of a German tailor, and, explaining my condition, offered to pay him liberally for the privilege of becoming his guest until the cold snap was over. He examined me closely, and having made, as it were, a mental inventory of my features, dress, &c., exclaimed, "Mine friend, in dese times nobody knows who's which. I say, sar, nobody knows ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... sent a cart to Cocksmoor to bring Cherry herself, and how many slices everybody had eaten, and how the bride's health had been drunk by the children in real wine, and how they had all played, Norman and all, and how Hector had made Blanche bold enough to extract a raisin from the flaming snap-dragon. It was not half told when Dr. May came home, and Ethel went up to dress for her dinner at Abbotstoke, Mary following to help her and continue her narration, which bade fair to entertain Margaret the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... some way after it was dead, and there were always soda biscuits on the table. They used to have a brand of soda biscuits in those days in the Toronto boarding houses that I have not seen since. They were better than dog biscuits but with not so much snap. My contemporaries will all remember them. A great many of the leading barristers and professional men of Toronto were fed ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... gave me as a last shot: "The confusion of your religion is, it boasts only one God and numberless creeds. Each creed claims superiority. This brings inharmony and causes Christians to snap at each other like a pack of wolves. We have many gods and only one creed. We have knowledge and enlightenment which finally ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... the kasumbha[D] out of a brass bowl and through a woollen cloth into their hands, out of which they lap it up. Then a cardamum to take away the acrid after-taste. One hums drowsily two or three bars of an old-world song; another clears his throat and spits; the Chief yawns, and all snap their fingers, to prevent evil spirits skipping into his throat; a late riser joins the circle, and all, except the Chief, give him tazim—that is, rise and salaam; a coarse jest or two, and the party disperses. A crowd of ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... wet and rough day. According to an article which appeared in the "Westminster Gazette," and was reprinted in our local "War Office Telegram," there is always a cold rough snap from October 20 to October 25. The first date was correct, and I trust the latter, which is to-morrow, will be as accurate, for we are miserable. Geese are crossing in ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... in snap-shooting," observed Ferrall; "that is, everybody except Stephen Siward with his unholy left barrel. Crack! and," turning to Alderdene, "it's like taking money from you, Blinky—which reminds me that we've time for a little ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... he observed, with a sympathetic wink. He cared little how his visitor took his remark. He was used to the vagaries of his customers, and cared not a snap of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... despots of the earth, Since Freedom had her birth, Have to their subject nations said, "Stand still;" So, from the Polar Bear, Comes down the freezing air, And stiffens all things with its deadly chill. He who doth God resist— God's old antagonist— Would snap the chain that binds all things to him; And in his godless pride, All peoples would divide, And scatter even ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... us at last, and a proper old April we've 'ad, Though the cold snap as copped us at Easter made 'oliday makers feel mad. Rum cove that old Clerk o' the Weather; seems somehow to take a delight In mucking Bank 'Oliday biz; seems as though it was out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... forward into his arms, probably actually believing that he was shot. Keller had hold of the pistol now. Hippolyte was immediately placed in a chair, while the whole company thronged around excitedly, talking and asking each other questions. Every one of them had heard the snap of the trigger, and yet they saw a live and apparently unharmed man ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... on, and no outward change took place. Ned continued to live at home. Mr. Mulready never addressed him, and beyond helping him to food entirely ignored his presence. At mealtimes when he opened his lips it was either to snap at Charlie or Lucy, or to snarl at his wife, whose patience astonished Ned, and who never answered except by a smile or murmured excuse. The lad was almost as far separated from her now as from his stepfather. She treated him as if he ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... they ran, he saw her level the pistol and snap the hammer twice, thrice, with no result. The little dead click sounded like ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... shooting party arrived Wargrave and Raymond, having sent their syces on ahead with their guns, rode at dawn to the Residency. In front of the building a group of camels lay on the ground, burbling, blowing bubbles, grumbling incessantly and stretching out their long necks to snap viciously at anyone but their drivers that chanced to come near them. At the hall-door Mrs. Norton stood, dressed in a smart and attractive costume of khaki drill, consisting of a well-cut long frock coat and breeches, with the neatest ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... had got settled on Bass Rocks, and just as we commenced catching fish, and I had a mighty fellow slashing my line about and trying to snap the pole, we heard the voice of some one calling to us in distress, and, turning, saw Juno hurrying towards us as fast as her old limbs and breathless state would allow. She was chattering all the while, but it was impossible for us to understand the cause ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... convulsive shudder ran through his frame. This was repeated at rapid intervals, with more or less violence. He next passed his hands alternately over his forehead, as if he were wiping it, and throwing some invisible, sticky substance, with a vicious snap, to right and left. At last, after a final shudder, which stiffened him into the image of death for a moment, he rose to his feet and, leaning on the railing, began to intone, in a dismal whine, a speech of which we need give ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... self-deposed officer, liable to any man's arrest, and, ipso facto, a suppliant for his own mercy. The stern and haughty Cassius, who had so often tightened the cords of discipline until they threatened to snap asunder, now found, experimentally, the bitterness of these obvious truths. The trembling sentinel now looked insolently in his face; the cowering legionary, with whom "to hear was to obey," now mused or even bandied words upon his orders; the great lieutenants ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... the front door and hearing the spring lock snap into its socket, most people go off with a childlike faith in the safety of their goods and chattels. But the cold fact is that there is scarcely any locking device which affords less protection than the ordinary spring lock. It is the simplest thing in the world ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... could understand, and things he could love. And then Wapi would whine, and perhaps the whine would bring him the blow of a club, or the lash of a whip, or an Eskimo threat, or the menace of an Eskimo dog's snarl. Of the latter Wapi was unafraid. With a snap of his jaws, he could break the back of any ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... encouragingly in the shoulder. "Baldy," he said, "in your own way, you have had an idea! But we won't leave the meat box open. When Kinmarten wakes up, I want him to show me how to bait this cubicle with a piece of sea beef, so it'll snap shut if the Hlat goes inside. Meanwhile it won't hurt if ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz

... the merry whistling of the starlings on the thatch above, it would not have been possible to face the gloom and the teeth of Reynard, ever in the act to snap, and the mystic noises, and the sense of guilt—for the gun was forbidden. Besides which there was the black mouth of the open trapdoor overhead yawning fearfully—a standing terror and temptation; for there was a legend of a pair of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... bonnet and undo yer plaits," she said, opening and shutting the bright scissors with a snap, as though ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... fitting its figure. It has a solid feel. The flesh of a good apple is crisp, breaking, melting, coolly acid or mildly sweet. It has a fracture, as one bites it, possessed by no other fruit. One likes to feel the snap and break of it. There is a stability about it that satisfies; it holds its shape till the last bite. One likes to linger on an apple, to sit by a fireside to eat it, to munch it waiting on a log when there is no hurry, to have another ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... brighter, wench," said the Countess. "Thou shalt wear it thyself for penance' sake; and I promise thee the gold buttons, being somewhat massive, will comfort thy father, and reconcile him to the cherry-coloured body. See that he snap them not away, Janet, and send them to bear company with the imprisoned angels which he keeps captive in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... madness my brain devote— In robes of ice my body wrap! On billowy flames of fire I float, Hear ye my entrails how they snap? Some power unseen forbids my lungs to breathe! 35 What fire-clad meteors round me whizzing fly! I vitrify thy torrid zone beneath, Proboscis fierce! I am calcined! I die! Thus, like great Pliny, in Vesuvius' fire, I perish in the blaze while ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the great white forearm, and the spear only glanced along the hair. Like the stroke of a serpent the long neck shot upward, the furious jaws crunched into the shaft, and with a sharp side-shake, snap! snap! in three pieces flew the splintered ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... to interest is the idea that to make a subject interesting you must so popularize it that you cheapen it. This idea is typified in the "snap" courses in school—courses made interesting at the expense of painstaking application. As a matter of fact, to cheapen a thing is ultimately to kill interest in it. Genuine interest of real worth is born of effort and devotion to ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... land of "Why Not?" The magic has nothing to do with one's age; I feel it now even more than I did twenty years ago, and Grandmother felt it at eighty just as I did at eighteen. Ulysses could have himself lashed to the mast and snap his fingers at the Sirens, but I know of no protection against the Southwest except to somehow close the shutters of your imagination. However, let me not be a Calvinist; because it is enchanting, why ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... impossible a short time previously, from the ugly way in which the shrouds tightened, and the after-stays sung, as if they were stretched to the last limit, showing that the slightest increase of the strain on them would snap them ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to be again opened, and he knew,—no one better,—that this oyster becomes harder and harder in the opening as the man who has to open it becomes older. It is an oyster that will close to again with a snap, after you have got your knife well into it, if you withdraw your point but for a moment. He had had a rough tussle with the oyster already, and had reached the fish within the shell. Nevertheless, the oyster which he had got was not the oyster which he wanted. So he told himself ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... that tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to the driver, ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... hert, my bairn," replied Janet; "but na; siller's but a deid horse for onything 'at smacks o' salvation. Na; the puir fallow maun warstle oot o' the thicket o' deid roses as best he can—sair scrattit, nae doobt. Eh! it's a fearfu' an' won'erfu' thing that drawin' o' hert to hert, an' syne a great snap, an' a stert back, an' there's miles atween them! The Lord alane kens the boddom o' 't; but I'm thinkin' there's mair intill't, an' a heap mair to come oot o' 't ere a' be dune, than ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... in and helped to carry the twenty-two little bags of precious metal over to the camel, which was kneeling and chewing stolidly. Jack stepped too near with his burden, and the vicious head swung about to snap. He leaped back amid the laughter of the rest, who remained at ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... chamber, Jonas soon returned with a small screw-driver from Rollo's mother's sewing-machine. With this he set to work so diligently that there was soon a sharp snap, and Rollo saw that the shaft of the screw-driver had ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell

... episode, in which Silas sat studying the various expressions that flitted across Oliver's face, Mr. Grant shifted uneasily in his chair. At last his jaws closed with a snap, while the two tufts of cotton-wool, drawn together by a frown, deeper than any which had yet crossed his face, made a straight line of white. Oliver's enthusiastic outburst and the gesture which accompanied ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... broken the windpipe, an' he wasn't dead yet. It was him 'at made the floppin' sound. Oh, it was sickening! Brophy was a fine lookin' man—I recognized him from his description right at once—an' he hadn't been even grazed. He looked around cool but quick, an' just about took it all in, in the snap of a finger. Then he loaded both his guns before us an' made the feller with the lantern do the same. After which he looked into Monody's eyes—looked into 'em until Monody's ugly black face turned ashy; but Brophy hadn't ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... lap, and read a story to divert him. We got tolerably cheerful and went down to tea; but as soon as my brother took up his bread and butter, the thoughts of Hector always jumping up to him for a bit, and how he would bark and snap in play at his fingers, quite overcame his firmness, and he could not touch a morsel. Well, to make short of the story, the next morning John came in and told father that Squire Sutton's gamekeeper, not knowing to whom he belonged, had shot him for running after ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... Nick, quickly. "None of that lost in the swamp for me. Just think how awful it would be, boys, wandering around day after day with snakes and alligators waiting to snap ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... glass tops should go down with a good spring. If it does not, remove the bail and bend it into shape by taking it in both hands and pressing down in the middle with both thumbs. Do not bend it too hard, for if it goes down with too much of a snap it will break the jar. This testing of the bails should be done every year. The bails on new jars are sometimes too tight, in which case remove the bail and spread it out. After the bail has been readjusted, ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... but Herbert Cary," he said with honest courage. Then, as the General turned his back on him with a contemptuous snap of his fingers— ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... face, were those of my classmate Quinet! An involuntary start of mine rustled a fallen dry branch, and the snap of a dry twig of it seemed to dissolve his determination; the hand dropped, he sprang off—and rushed quickly away ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... finders, one for vertical and one for horizontal exposures; and is also provided with two sockets for tripod screws, one for vertical and one for horizontal exposures. Fitted with improved rotary shutter, for snap-shots or time exposures. Can be loaded in daylight. Handsomely finished and covered ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 31, June 10, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... of a clever grinder or crammer, and they would soon cram the necessary portion of Latin and Greek into him, and they would get him through the university for us readily enough; and a degree once obtained, he might snap his fingers at Latin and Greek all the rest of his life. Once in orders, and he might sit down upon his fat living, or lie down content, all his days, only taking care to have some poor devil of a curate up and about, doing duty ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... was an Indian, and that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... they go, Whirling about in the maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one, Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights on the face and sparkles the eye! And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around, The town is alive, and its heart is aglow! To welcome the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Thirteenth. He was, in fact, born just six hundred years too late. From his childhood he had thirsted for battle as other children thirst for milk: and now he rode anything on hoofs and threw a knife like a Mexican—with either hand—and at short range he did snap shooting with two revolvers that made ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... now," said Freddie. "I want to get my dog Snap out of the baggage car, and have some fun with him. I guess ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope

... intellectual, with a character developed far beyond her years and isolated home by the cruel sufferings of an early marriage, reared by a woman whose independence and energy had triumphed over the narrow laws of the Island of her birth, given her courage to snap her fingers at society—we know that this woman, inevitably remarkable, met and loved a stranger from the North, so generously endowed that he alone of all the active and individual men who surrounded her won her heart; and that the result of their union was one of the stupendous intellects ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... common proportion almost everywhere, I presume, except in engineering and dentistry. However, there are four or five men. I've been pretty careful, and they still treat me with respect. I'm afraid my course is regarded as a 'snap.' Everybody, it seems, can grasp English literature (and produce it). And almost anybody, I begin to fear, can teach it. Judging, that is, from the pay. I'm afraid the good folks at Freeford will find themselves ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... supreme in his indifference to man or fish, would swim lazily round until he had discovered the cause of all this commotion among the smaller fishes, and then, opening wide his jaws would take the bait with one voracious snap. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... git married at no time of life. Sam'l's a good pervider; why don't yew snap him up ter-day? We'll miss yew ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... "A ginger-snap prize to the first fellow who spots the academy," cried Sam, as they made the last turn in ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... mischief to one's appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly for a photographic portrait of myself that I was unable to refuse him. The thing was a snap taken of me one morning at Chaynes-Wotten by Higgins, the butler, as I stood by his lordship's saddle mare. It was not by any means the best likeness I have had, but there was a rather effective bit of background disclosing the driveway and the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... now the moment has come, for on one side there foams along a mad surge of water, and on the other the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth green hollowing curves round an axis of air, whirling round it with a strength that would snap our birch bark into fragments and suck us down into great depths below. All that can be gained by the back-current has been gained, and now it is time to quit it; but where? for there is often only the choice of the whirlpool ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... Brown's compliments to Mrs. Fidgets, and would she permit the little Fidgets to stay just ten minutes longer?" No!—the Fidgety footman is only to depart with them; so he is sent to the servants' hall, there to wait, whilst snap-dragon is being prepared in the library—that the evening may end with a grand blue-fire tableaux. The room resembles the Black Hole of Calcutta!—Hundreds of little itching fingers are longing to be amongst that pound of raisins, in spirits—all eager, as imps, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... irresolution, ennui, mild disgust of the world and of himself. He took down Homer, brushed the dust from the covers, and then replaced the volume on its shelf. He gave the glass cylinder of his electrical machine a turn or two, and was for the moment gratified to elicit a faint spark, a feeble snap of blue fire, which clicked from the "receiver" to his knuckles. His eye dwelt fondly for a few seconds on the air-pump, but wandered from that to the telescope, and finally took cognizance of an apparatus for weighing ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... he said, as Max threw himself back in his chair and inhaled a first deep breath of smoke. "You feel that that little white curl from the end of your cigarette is the last puff of smoke from the boats you have burned; and that, with your own four walls around you, you can snap your fingers at the world. I know! God, don't ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... a rather smart pull at the line. I thought it was another little one, and I went to jerk it up. Hang me, if I could move the rod! It took me half-an-hour - half-an-hour, sir! - to land that fish; and every moment I thought the line was going to snap! I reached him at last, and what do you think it was? A sturgeon! a forty pound sturgeon! taken on a line, sir! Yes, you may well look surprised - I'll have another three of ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... him around—at the club and other places—and naturally I have something to do with him at the office. I like him. If Evie can snap him up she'll be doing well for herself. I'm sorry for Billy, of course; but he'll have time to break his heart more than once before he'll have money enough to do anything else with it. If I'd married ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... from New York. The elderly Bostonian who shared his section had thought so from the first. He had guessed it when Smith took out for the second time his watch and replaced it with a snap; he had felt his belief strengthened when his fellow traveler raised the sash and looked impatiently up the idle track; and he had dismissed all doubt when Smith, conversing with the apathetic brakeman, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... pass through the garden with its army of children and nurses, leaning on my stick with halting step, how I regret my General's cocked hat, my paper plume, my wooden sword and my pistol. My pistol that would snap caps and was the cause of ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... frozen stiff in that position," remarked Sterry. "He may have been caught in the first snap several weeks ago and has been acting ever since as ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis

... heard Rodolphe snap his fingers, which usually meant that he was satisfied with his work, Mimi suddenly sat up in bed and passing her head through the curtains ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... short, uneasy laugh. She had a desire to laugh loudly and wildly, and by so doing to snap the nervous tension, which seemed to grow tighter and tighter every minute. Her wretchedness had become so exquisite that she could begin to enjoy it, to savour it like ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... of a low hill, a wind from the dawn struck him, and the paper in the bottom of the buggy began to snap against the dashboard. He reached down to keep it from being whisked into the road, and he saw again that Judith Page had come home. When he sat up again, his face was quite changed. His head fell a little forward, his shoulders drooped slightly and, for a moment, his ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... take this chalk and mark the places where to saw;" and in a few moments Winifred with a small sharp saw was endeavoring to cut through the strips of hard wood selected for table legs, while Ruth with a sharp knife tried in vain to make some impression on the square of mahogany. Snap! ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis

... inhabitants of the commune might wander hither and thither in search of the sweetest herbage, the deepest shade, or the coolest pool in which to stand on the hot days, and lazily switch their dappled sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn imaginary bounds, beyond which if they strayed, any one might snap them up, and kill them, reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, but graciously restoring the inferior parts to their original owner. Any damage done by the sheep was, however, fairly appraised, and the Cagot paid no more for it than any ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell

... to hear it—I was afraid you had given me the slip altogether. I want some of your sketches enlarged to double-page drawings, and I am thinking of issuing a photographic album of the snap-shots you took ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon

... but also because the idea pleases me. Sniatynski says that if a man gets accustomed to put down his thoughts and impressions it becomes gradually one of the most delightful occupations of his life. If it should prove the contrary, then the Lord have mercy on my diary; it would snap asunder like a string too tightly drawn. I am ready to do much for my community; but to bore myself for its sake, oh, no! I could ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... do. Really, I don't wish to take advantage of my cloth, but, really, you know, Charity, you have been taught better than to snap ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... of astonishment and contempt in face and voice. "Of course we don't want you to get sick, for your own sake; but if you do we'll do everything in this world to make you comfortable and cure you. And the house won't be upset at all; and we don't care a snap what the servants think. You must put that perfectly ridiculous idea right out of your head, and turn over and try to go ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... our boatmen lost his hat, his only garment, into the river, and overboard he went, like a dog, and soon had it and climbed on board again. I wondered why some of the big alligators did not make a snap at him. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... first to introduce rifles into Ceylon, which were then regarded by the highest authorities in the island as impractical innovations, too difficult to sight, whereas an ordinary gun could be used with ball more quickly in taking a snap-shot. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... So great was the fear of him, indeed, that the people in the neighbourhood he frequented scarcely dared stir out of doors, except in parties of five or six. We had had several hunts after him, but, like all man-eaters, he was old and awfully crafty; and although we got several snap shots at him, he had always managed to save ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... above your head,' said the Gnat, 'and there you'll find a snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson. That's everdent. I ain't in on that side of the play. I'm just here to say that, so far as he's concerned hisself, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any minute of his life ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... see his way clear to try again." Short's lips thinned. "He may snap out of it yet.... We could use a ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells

... to look over its shoulder, and at once Guph ran to the bridge and leaped over the sentinel's back before it could turn back again. The scarlet monster made a snap at the Nome's left foot, but missed it by ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... blossoms. As she walked between the rows the tall lilies laid their heads against her breast and kissed traces of their gold hearts on her hands and bare arms, while on the other side a very riot of blush peonies crowded against her skirts. Long trails of pod-laden snap beans tangled around her feet and a couple of round young squashes rolled from their stems at the touch of her fingers. She was the very incarnation of young Plenty in the garden of the gods, and she reveled ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... question to him about his relations with his men. He tried to make it tactful and sensible-sounding, but as he said the words, he knew just how flat and parlor-reformerish they sounded; and it didn't surprise him a bit to have the business-man bristle up and snap his head off. It had sounded as though he didn't know a thing about business—he, the very marrow of whose bones was soaked in a bitter knowledge that the only thing that could keep it going was the fear of death in every ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... from nothing for the delectation of his companions. Until he was thirty-four years old he spoke no word and was employed in tending his father's cattle. At this time a Brahman was sent for to get him to speak, and on confessing his failure, Jhambaji showed his power by lighting a lamp with a snap of his fingers and spoke his first word. He adopted the life of a teacher and went to reside on a sandhill some thirty miles south of Bikaner. In 1485 a fearful famine desolated the country, and Jhambaji gained an enormous number of disciples by providing food for all who would declare ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... to both these generous outbursts, was comprised in a snap of his fingers in the direction supposed to have been taken by the Colonel, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... but do not pause, perhaps because the rest would force them to move forward. They step down upon the stones and continue their march round the pit, planting their feet squarely and firmly on each stone. The cameras snap, the crowd surges forward, the bystanders fling in great bundles of green leaves. But the bundles strike the last man of the procession and cut him off from his fellows; so he stays where he is, trampling down the leaves as they are thrown to line the pit, in a dense cloud of steam from the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Bohemian songs I used to play with you and Johanna. But here's one that will make Clara pout. You remember how her eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?" Nils lifted his flute and began "When Other Lips and Other Hearts," and Joe hummed the air in a husky baritone, waving his carpet-slipper. "Oh-h-h, das-a fine music," he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. "Now 'Marble ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... forwards along the outer side of the foot, somewhat in front of the calcaneo-cuboid joint, which lies midway between the outer malleolus and the end of the fifth metatarsal bone. This incision should go down at once upon the bone, so that the tendon should be felt to snap as the incision is commenced. It should be as nearly as possible on a level with the upper border of the os calcis, a point which the surgeon can determine, if the dorsum of the foot is in a natural state, by feeling ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... and "Hrumph," snapped Foxy-woxy, and Ducky- daddles' head was off and Ducky-daddles was thrown alongside Turkey- lurkey and Goosey-poosey. Then Cocky-locky strutted down into the cave and he hadn't gone far when "Snap, Hrumph!" went Foxy-woxy and Cocky- locky was thrown alongside of ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... goddess, calm and inscrutably imposing as the Venus of Milo; but she could also play Perdita, and dance with her enslaved ones like a veritable little witch. Robert Cassall was captured—there could not be much error about that. He asked, with a sudden snap of teeth and lips which made his niece start: "And how much do you want to coax out of me, Miss Molly. Give me an idea. Of course I'm to be the uncle in the play, and 'Bless you, me chee-ill-dren,' and the rest. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... the future, to take much notice of Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it sometimes. 'You never take notice of the child,' she'd say. 'You could surely find a few minutes of an evening. What's the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a lesson. You'll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise that you had a child once. Then it will be ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... cried, laughing. "I am a pig! A nice big elder sister I am, to set you such an example! I'm cross, dear. Everything has gone wrong the whole day long. You had better run off and leave me alone, or I'll snap again. I feel all churned up inside! This ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... straight towards me. At first I could make out only a great cloud of steam, a whirl of flying snow, and here and there the angry shake of wide antlers or the gleam of a black muzzle. The loud clacking of their hoofs, sweeping nearer and nearer, gave a snap, a tingle, a wild exhilaration to their rush which made one want to shout and swing his hat. Presently I could make out the individual animals through the cloud of vapor that drove down the wind before them. They were going at a splendid trot, rocking easily from side to side like pacing ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... people to invest money and make new products, new industries, and new jobs. We must clear away obstacles to new growth: high taxes, high regulation, red tape, and yes, wasteful government spending. None of this will happen with a snap of the fingers, but it will happen. And the test of a plan isn't whether it's called new or dazzling. The American people aren't impressed by gimmicks. They're smarter on this score than all of us in this room. The only test of a plan is, It is sound ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Nothing of love beside the face was seen; But every inch of her you now uncase, And clap a vizard-mask upon the face. For sins like these, the zealous of the land, With little hair, and little or no band, Declare how circulating pestilences Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences. Saturn, even now, takes doctoral degrees; 30 He'll do your work this summer without fees. Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace, And, ah! preserve the eighteen-penny place! But for the pit confounders, let 'em go, And find as little mercy as ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... so stiff around the gills about it," said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. "Business is what I've come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... "Crack-snap!" went Mr. Tisbett's whip. Off pranced the two black horses, and round went the wheels. He never made such a fine start in his life, Mr. Tisbett decided, when suddenly, "Stop! oh, stop!" screamed Joel, and the stage-driver, looking around at him, saw his face ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... brewing kettle, and it sighed so deeply! Each sigh was like a little shot. So the children ran to where it lay and sat down before the fire, and peeped in at the blaze, and shouted "Piff! paff!" But at every snap there was a deep sigh. The Tree was thinking of summer days in the wood, and of winter nights when the stars shone; it was thinking of Christmas Eve and Klumpy-Dumpy, the only fairy tale it had heard and knew how to tell,—and so ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... whether he obeyed or not, as just then I made my last double, and felt Jill's teeth cut through the fur of my scut and heard them snap. I had dodged Jill, but Jack was right on to me and the wood ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... the fore part of the vessel. The revolver shooting had ceased, for the convincing reason there were no more cartridges. Courtenay's double barrelled gun was being fired as quickly as he could reload it, and the sharp snap of one of the rifles in the Indians' possession was recognizable as coming from the poop, the remaining marksmen having preferred to fire wildly from their canoes. But Christobal knew that a deadly struggle was in progress ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... extreme levity. Messieurs are of confessed promptitude to fight; and their talent for it, in some kinds, is very great indeed. But this treating of battle and slaughter, of death, judgment and eternity, as light play-house matters; this of rising into such transcendency of valor, as to snap your fingers in the face of the Almighty Maker; this, Messieurs, give me leave to say so, is a thing that will conduct you and your PREMIERE NATION to the Devil, if you do not alter it. Inevitable, I tell you! Your road lies that way, then? Good morning, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... acid meets the alkali, How they sputter, snap, and fly! Such a crackling, such a pattering! Such a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... to array the fundamental law of the land against the multitude of American women by ordaining a denial of the political rights of a whole sex. To this injustice we object totally! Such an amendment is a snap judgment before discussion; it is an obstacle to future progress; it is a gratuitous bruise inflicted upon the most tender and humane sentiment that has ever entered into American politics. If the present Congress is not ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and then march on again. He had youth in his heart, and love and curiosity; also he had some change in his trousers' pocket, and a ten dollar bill, for extreme emergencies, sewed up in his belt. If a photographer for Peter Harrigan's General Fuel Company could have got a snap-shot of him that morning, it might have served as a "portrait of a coal-miner" ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... man dances he should laugh and crow and snap his fingers and make faces; otherwise, he is not dancing at all, he is taking exercise. No person should be allowed to dance without first swearing that he feels only six years of age. People who admit to feeling more than ten years old should be sent to hospital, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... have liked to sit perched up there and watching all that went on, but I had to move to let Ike drag back the baskets; then I had to help handing out bunches, till at last the crowd melted away, and the busy man closed his book with a snap. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... lay down the book in disgust when I confess to a weakness for frogging. I admit that it is not high-toned sport; and yet I have got a good deal of amusement out of it. The persistence with which a large batrachian will snap at a bit of red flannel after being several times hooked on the same lure and the comical way in which he will scuttle off with a quick succession of short jumps after each release; the cheerful manner in which, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... With nothing between it and me but some chicken wire and an old gentleman in a dressing gown! It would have seemed a snap to some people, but I never made a dishonest dollar in my life—except in the way of trade, and then it was to natives (who water copra on you and square the difference); and he was in no more danger of harm than if it had been ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... traveler. The light of Mon's lamp showed this holy man to be large and heavy of face, with the narrow forehead of the fanatic. With such a face and head, this could not be a clever man. But he is a wise worker who has tools of different temper in his bag. Too fine a steel may snap. Too delicately fashioned an instrument may turn in the hand when suddenly ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... morning when he came again she did try, holding out as inducements why he should be married the night before starting for Boston, the "white hen, turkey, the 'lection cake, and the gay old times the young folks would have playing snap-and-catchem; or if they had a mind, they could dance a bit in the kitchen. She didn't believe in it, to be sure—none of the orthodox did; but as Wilford was a 'Piscopal, and that was a 'Piscopal quirk, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... and closed the box with a snap, a strange pallor coming over her white, set face. The general looked gravely at her, and then, raising his hat, with a "Till we ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... is as unwarranted as it is unprecedented. It reads cruel enough on paper, but we wish that the reader had accompanied us on one journey, say, during the cold snap in the first week in August, when we travelled from Potchefstroom to Vereeniging, and seen the flocks of those evicted Natives that we met. We frequently met those roving pariahs, with their hungry cattle, and wondered if the animals were not ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... undo, unbind, unchain, unlock &c (fix) 43, unpack, unravel; disentangle; set free &c (liberate) 750. sunder, divide, subdivide, sever, dissever, abscind^; circumcise; cut; incide^, incise; saw, snip, nib, nip, cleave, rive, rend, slit, split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, tear, burst; rend &c, rend asunder, rend in twain; wrench, rupture, shatter, shiver, cranch^, crunch, craunch^, chop; cut up, rip up; hack, hew, slash; whittle; haggle, hackle, discind^, lacerate, scamble^, mangle, gash, hash, slice. cut up, carve, dissect, anatomize; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... shure, ey'm nah afeerd," returned Jennet. "Boh whot mays ye so inqueesitive? Ye want to get summat out'n me, ey con see that plain enough, an os ye stand there glenting at me wi' your sly little een, ye look loike an owd fox ready to snap up a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... win them. Colonel House is an interesting but not unfamiliar type in politics. Extremely courteous, mild mannered, able, quickly sympathetic, he listens with undistracted attention to your request. His round bright eyes snap as he comes at you with a counter-proposal. It seems so reasonable. And while you know he is putting back upon you the very task you are trying to persuade him to undertake, he does it so graciously that you can scarcely resist liking it. He has the manner ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... quite to realize," he writes in the letter before me, "that uniformity of pace leads inevitably to languor. You should deliver a pistol-shot or two. Remember Philippa is a fiery girl; she can snap. If only for variety, she should snap James' head off when she says, 'Do I speak as if ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... old lady. Perhaps not so easy to deal with as he had hoped. But how wealthy. Only the consciousness of great wealth would make her snap her fingers in this manner at the Droitwiches. Lotty, on being questioned, had been vague about her circumstances, and had described her house as a mausoleum with gold-fish swimming about in it; but now he was sure she was more than very well off. Still, he ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim

... best. There should be no shirking. Yet I need hardly say that here, because shirking people, lazy people do not worry. They haven't enough snap about them to worry. But it steadies one to put the thing just as Dr. Deems put it. "Do your best, and, then leave all the rest to God." And when ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... you are wrong, Mr. Brasher. There is a great deal to it. One thing, seems certain. If Mr. Miller killed himself, it is reasonably certain that it was an accident; that he did not intend to do so. And, off hand, although I am not prone to giving snap judgment, I should say that the chances are enormously against his either having shot himself by ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... Gallia's devices, found to answer well In wary onset and in finish slow, Old Attic swiftness, seen in hold and throw. Supplement or supplant. When AJAX stood Before ULYSSES, neither seemed in mood For long manoeuvring. To the clutch they came With sinews of snap-steel and souls of flame. "Close lock'd above, their heads and arm are mix'd; Below their planted feet at distance fix'd: Like two strong rafters, which the builder forms Proof to the wintry winds and howling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various

... and then my forcing her to go through the ceremony at the point of a cold steel weapon will not have the effect of endearing me to her ladyship. She is sure to hate me, but that won't bother me a snap ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... felt to be getting ludicrous, and was given up. P——, now a popular preacher, was in the habit of entertaining the boys that way. He was a regular wag; and would snatch his jokes out of the very flame and fury of the master, like snap-dragon. Whenever the other struck him, P. would get up; and, half to avoid the blows, and half render them ridiculous, begin moving about the school-room, making all sorts of antics. When he was struck in the face, he would clap his hand with affected vehemence ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... father, chuckling maliciously the while, led the way across the trees. Now it was that my ambitions ebbed away, and I became timid, holding tightly to my mother as she climbed and swung through space. I remember when the branch broke with her weight. She had made a wide leap, and with the snap of the wood I was overwhelmed with the sickening consciousness of falling through space, the pair of us. The forest and the sunshine on the rustling leaves vanished from my eyes. I had a fading glimpse of my father abruptly ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... in a little game the other day," said he, "and it fell into my possession." He dropped the ring into his purse, which he then closed with a snap. "I have been trying for several days to see your father and give him a chance at the ring before I turned it in to the pawnbroker's. If your mother has any feeling in the matter, tell her she can get the ring for ten dollars," he added as ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... he was somewhat encouraged. After the first shock Cartwright had been inclined to make light of the difficulty, and by the time Allen Parker reached Pine Hills his stride had the usual swing and snap. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... myself than I saw, from the lay of the ground, that if the tiger should happen to break at a point in a line with my bush he would probably gallop on to the top of me before it would be possible to make more than a snap shot. I at once left the spot and climbed a small tree on the opposite side of the depression, and this enabled me to have my feet some five feet from the ground. Presently the beat began, and with a roar, and an evident determination to charge ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... with a new and peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of the internal ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap in the middle of the head, which proved to him that he ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... half an hour later that Flatray heard a twig snap under an approaching foot. He had been scanning the valley with his glasses, having given West instructions to keep a lookout in the rear. He swung his head round sharply, and ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... Parliament (18 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve three-year terms) elections: last held 26 April 2008 (next to be held in 2011) election results: percent of vote - NA; seats - independents 18; note - President Marcus STEPHEN called a snap election to break a parliamentary stalemate blocking ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and requiring to stop every few yards, though their riders, except myself, were afoot. The gloom of the dense, ancient, silent forest is to me awe inspiring. On such an evening it is soundless, except for the branches creaking in the soft wind, the frequent snap of decayed timber, and a murmur in the pine tops as of a not distant waterfall, all tending to produce EERINESS and a sadness "hardly akin to pain." There no lumberer's axe has ever rung. The trees die when they have attained their prime, and stand ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... breaks down, there are all sorts of chances of escape open to the traveller. The engine may not quit the rails, or it may bound off alone, snap the coupling chains and leave the carriages to run until they come to a gradual standstill; or, the concussion may be so modified that no serious injury may result; or, should it come to the worst, the traveller may be among ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... attention to the chaste beauty of this line, and the imperative necessity of the chord of the diminished seventh for the word "rose." Also "school-house" in the last line must be very loud and staccato. Snap ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... nothing know on earth—am misinformed On every circumstance. The very terms, Scope, rate, and merits of my own transactions Are all to me unknown, or falsified, Of which most potent proof can be adduced. Then the important thump upon the board, Snap with the thumb, and the disdainful 'whew!' Sets me and all I say at less than naught. What can a person do?—To knock him down Suggests itself, but then it breeds a row In a friend's house, or haply in your ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various

... And that in fashion most unmoral O'er cakes and puddings they would quarrel. I don't believe that either chapkin E'er thought at lunch to fold his napkin, And if one biscuit graced the platter 'Twas ever less than fighting matter, Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em— They failed to snap a few at Adam. I fear me as they ate their salade They hummed some raw primeval ballad, And when the Serpent came to dinner, They made remarks about the sinner. No doubt they criticised the cooking And hooked the fruit when none was looking, And when ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... this last time in an awful state. Before he left some one sent him a load of money, and he did nothing but drink and gamble whilst it lasted. I used to tell him that he ought to take care of his money, and he'd snap his fingers and laugh. He used to say that he owned the goose that laid the golden eggs, and could have money whenever he wanted it. Well, as I was a saying, he went; and when he came back he had an awful attack of delirium tremens, and then he took the typers. Oh, laws mercy!" continued ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... him. The animal slunk back. The Captain advanced among the pack, still calling the hound in the most threatening voice. But the hound slunk further, growling and showing his teeth. The Captain sprang forward and brought down his whip. The dog, mutinous, made a snap at the Captain. The latter, now deeply enraged, threw aside the whip, caught the animal by the neck, lifted it high, and, with a swift contraction of his fingers, caused its eyes and tongue to protrude and its body to writhe and hang powerless. He then flung the dead creature to a ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... country be to-day without the corporations, the railroads? Without the Atlantic and Pacific, right here in St. Louis? And all the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and trying to put into jail? Why, if the President had his way, he'd lock up every man that had enough sense and snap in him to do things, and he'd make this country like a Methodist camp meeting after the shouting is over! There's no sense ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... clever, quick-moving plot is unusual. ANNABEL is that kind. The heroine is a lovable girl, but one with plenty of snap—her red hair testifies to that. Her friend, Will Carden, too, is a boy of unusual qualities, as is apparent in everything he does. He and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... with an inoffensive snap, and Rex frowned. But he had not the slightest intention of relinquishing his purpose. With incredible coolness, he went to a corner of the room and took a box of perfectly fresh cartridges from the drawer where he kept his ammunition; after carefully removing the charges from the revolver, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... bear, singing as he went, and calling upon the forest-god Tapio and his wife to grant him success in his hunt. He had not gone far before he heard his dog bark, and hurrying up to the spot he found Otso standing facing the dog and trying to snap him up, and before the bear perceived him, Wainamoinen was able to end Otso's life with a single thrust of his ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... seized the flimsy rings with both her hands To snap it, but they held with odd persistence. Her eyes were blinded by two wind-blown strands Of hair which had been loosened. Her resistance Melted within her, from remotest distance, Misty, unreal, his face grew warm and near, And giving way she knew ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... hid her face among Smiler's rags. And three times, with all the force of a young blacksmith's arm behind it, that whip rose and fell across the shoulders of Vernock's Mayor, ere it was broken with a snap and tossed by Phil among ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... Have to their subject nations said, "Stand still;" So, from the Polar Bear, Comes down the freezing air, And stiffens all things with its deadly chill. He who doth God resist— God's old antagonist— Would snap the chain that binds all things to him; And in his godless pride, All peoples would divide, And scatter ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... a moment. I raised my voice to its highest pitch, and called the animal by name. I knew that he would come at my call. I had tied him but slightly. The cactus limb would snap off. I called again, repeating words that were well known to him. I listened with a bounding heart. For a moment there was silence. Then I heard the quick sounds of his hoofs, as though the animal were rearing and struggling to free himself. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... stars above me danced in swarms like yellow bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;— But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... room and dressed there. But he had never slept in the bed. At night he put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a haircloth sofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed—lay but hardly slept, so afraid was he that the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to its slenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once in every night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lamp in his hand, watching for the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... was heard upon the other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock! This time his skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Christian feeling, and damn yours and your impudence too, you half-drowned church rat! Why don't you call her Jezebel at once, and have done with it? One of the things I like about her is that she has the pluck to snap her fingers at such as you and all your ignorant superstitions. What are you getting at? That is what ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... combat your resolution, Jack," returned Thames, after a pause. "But I dread the effect your departure may have upon your poor mother. Her life hangs upon a thread, and this may snap it." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... on the rough side with a smooth piece of pumice stone; this wears off the burr and makes the stamping come out cleaner and finer. When patterns are so large that they have to be folded, iron out the creases before using them. After using the patterns for powder stamping, snap the pattern to shake the powder from the perforations. After using the patterns for paint stamping they should be washed thoroughly with naphtha until the perforations are all perfectly clear. Keep the naphtha away from the fire. After the ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... formed in three or four years. It is as well to allow this fine pea a good broad space, in the midst of which several iron standards, 6ft. high, should be firmly fixed; to these, fresh twiggy branches might be secured every spring; if the old ones are left in, their rottenness will allow them to snap off during strong winds when the tendrils have laid hold of them; but fresh branches, used as suggested, will bend but not break, and will withstand the strongest winds. This is very important, as, if the mass of foliage heads over, it is spoilt ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... it's going to be different. That's all I say. I've got it all planned out. The idea popped into my head when I came away last night. Not that they had a word of blame—not they. They understood all about the children, and the cold snap, and Ed's being under the weather, and Oliver's wife's neuralgia, and Ralph's girl in the West, and all that. But that didn't make the thing any easier for them. As I say, next year—But you'll all hear from me then. Meanwhile—run ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond

... the chance has come to snap our fingers in the faces of that ugly crowd!" observed Jimmy, who could hardly keep his ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... owl, he is so ugly. When we find an owl we get in a circle around him and snap our great beaks, and jerk our tails up and down and scream. He is very much ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... caper in connection with taking snap shots these days is to buy a developing outfit and upset the household from pit to dome while you are squeezing out pictures of every dearly beloved friend that ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh

... ceased to follow with his gun that red-ruffed cock; many a long snap-shot he tried, but somehow always found a tree, a bank, or some safe shield between, and Redruff lived and ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... on a piece of bread very carefully, laid it open beside him, and threw the crust to a lean dog that appeared suddenly from beneath the table, as though it had come up through a trap-door; the half-famished creature bolted the bread with a snap and a gulp and disappeared again as suddenly and silently, just in time to avoid the fat man's slow, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... whose lives depend on their efforts. They succeeded in getting afloat for a moment, but again struck and remained fast. Meanwhile the brig was lifted by each wave and let fall with a thundering crash; her timbers began to snap like pipe-stems, and as she worked nearer and nearer, it became evident that destruction was not far off. The heavy seas caused by the increasing storm flew over the lifeboat, so that those in her could only hold on to the thwarts for their lives. At last the brig came so near that ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the German craft was caught off his guard. He dashed upon the hydroplane. But as he neared it he swerved to the left to avoid a collision. It was what Jack had expected. Standing up in his precarious position, Jack took a snap shot at the pilot as the German ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... official status for you. But just mark, how many inmates of the principal branch and main offspring have to endure privation, and suffer the pangs of hunger! So beware you, who are the offshoot of a bond-servant, lest you snap your happiness! After enjoying so many good things for a decade, by the help of what spirits, and the agency of what devils have you, I wonder, managed to so successfully entreat your master as to induce him to bring you to the fore again and select you for office? Magistrates may be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... these preparations were completed, the sharp-starred winter night had settled down upon the solitude. In all the vast there was no sound but the occasional snap, hollow and startling, of some great tree overstrung by the frost, and the intimate little whisper and hiss of Pete's fire down in the trench. Disposing a good bunch of boughs under his head, Pete lighted his pipe, rolled himself in his ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... nodded, picked his men, and rode away. Brian led his seventy closer to the rise of ground, and as they waited they could hear the creaking of wagons and the snap of whips. It was a Royalist convoy, and since there was no love between the Scots and the Irish of any party, Brian's men ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... Dane, and I am English; There is a pleasant fable in old books, Ye take a stick, and break it; bind a score All in one faggot, snap it over knee, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... sharp snap of the conversation's thread, and at the same time our three friends realized that they had been careless in not keeping a better look-out. They let fall the meat they had not yet finished eating and seized ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... recollections of summer flies. Amy sat on the outskirts of the company, where Sunbeam could eat from her hand; a privilege he was accustomed to on such occasions. One of the men had brought a camera, and he took a snap-shot at the entire company, just as they had grouped themselves on the sunny slope. Amy and Sunbeam were conspicuous in the group, but when, some days later, the plate was developed, it was found that Mr. Stephen Burns ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... only a Chamberlain at court, a Privy Councillor, and the Tsar himself on this side of the world, but when his inspections and reforms are concluded, and he is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, he will return to St. Petersburg and become so high and mighty that a princess would snap at him. And you aspire! I never ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... had a snap shot. The creature bolted into the forest when it saw the lantern. We didn't get here any ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... color which stamps the property as Uncle Sam's. For reasons that can soon be explained only small-sized flags are ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year, straight from the wild pass to the west, there comes sweeping down a gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that whips even a storm-flag threadbare in ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... one to the other, darkly. In a kind of dull fierce passion he had made up his mind to clear himself before the world, to rend to tatters his garments of romance, to snap his fingers at the stars and destiny and such-like deluding toys, to stand a young Ajax defying the thunderbolts. Here ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... give a snap whether he pays his debts or not. You simply don't want me to associate with him. No, it has not occurred to me that I am not showing you proper respect and neither is it true. Margaret, do you know what is the most absurd and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... when he did, leaned on the pusher of her go-cart, studying him calmly. Chewing something with a slow, rotary movement of the lips and chin, she broke the action with a snap before quite completing the circle, to begin all over again. "Oh, you do, do you?" ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... the midnight find him in his solitary hangar in the moonlit woods, a deeply desponding figure again. Beside him, swung the huge machine which represented a life of power and luxury; but he no longer saw it. It called to him with many a creak and quiet snap,—sounds to start his blood and fire his eye a week—nay, a day ago. But he was deaf to this music now; the call went unheeded; the future had no further meaning, for him, nor did he know or think whether he sat in light or in darkness; ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... ghost-swish above, and his brother had vanished skywards from within an inch of his side. He had turned to stone before two ice-cold eyes, and realized the honest yard of snake behind them. A stoat had passed him with its mouth too full to snap—and ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... efforts to keep from speaking about it yesterday and the day before! You would open your lips to say something every five minutes, and then suddenly recollecting yourself, you would close them again with a determined snap, but it was hard work to keep them closed, I could ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden

... over there. They are good friends with us, and Gibraltar gets most of its supplies from there. But once through the Straits we give that coast a wide berth; for the Algerine pirates are nearly as bad as ever, and would snap up any ship becalmed on their coast, or that had the bad luck to be blown ashore. I hope, some day, we shall send a fleet down, and blow the place about their ears. It makes one's blood boil, to think that there are hundreds and hundreds of Englishmen working, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... firemen were only too glad of the offered aid. To have a score of husky boys appear so readily on the scene, ready for business, was in the line of a "snap." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... brutally, scratching away savagely on each other's hard shells, without doing a great deal of damage, however. But one of them had lost one eye in the fight, and so we seized him and made off, leaving the other to snap his tongs together in anger because he had nobody to pinch. It must be a dreadful thing to want to hurt somebody and ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... guess—never effective. Yet he was moving toward that tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to the driver, asking—but fearful ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... the place of the Victory Bond salesman," Abe exclaimed, "which if you want to give me any hypocritical cases for the sake of argument, Mawruss, I have seen the way you practically snap the head off a collector for a charitable fund enough times to appreciate how you would behave towards a Victory Bond salesman, so go ahead on the basis that you are the ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... saplings along the bank of the stream bend and snap under the force of the water. Some were uprooted. Chicken houses and other small structures were snatched from their places and flung wildly along with the ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... the idea that he would have gained anything by flattening it with a bit of silk thread is absurd. What he would have gained would have been a feeling of physical inconvenience during the quiet passages, and terror during the tremendous scenes of passion at the thought that the string might snap. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... other—unless—unless my grandfather consents to acknowledge those checks, and declares that the alterations were made with his knowledge. But that he will not do—because he knows who did it—and he is merciless. I don't care a snap of my finger for the world. You are my world, Dora. If you approve, then I am game. I shall be all right in a few days, and then—then I'll go and do my bit of time, and see the inside of Sing-Sing. It'll be amusing. There's a cab. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... back, prepared himself for cutting the Indian in two, when I saw Captain Nemo rise suddenly, and then, dagger in hand, walk straight to the monster, ready to fight face to face with him. The very moment the shark was going to snap the unhappy fisherman in two, he perceived his new adversary, and, turning over, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... and Stevenson to be the absolute test of capacity for earnest novel-reading. Neither cares a snap of his fingers for anybody's prejudices, but goes the way of stern truth by the light of ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... thought: they suffered, but they are no more! a reflection I frequently summon to calm my mind when sympathy rises to anguish. I therefore desired the driver to hasten to the hotel recommended to me, that I might avert my eyes and snap the train of thinking which had sent me into all the corners of the city in ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... their own against a foreign power as in the days of Waterloo, but whether all these British commonwealths can be made to work together in some sort of federal union, or whether the present ties are to dissolve or snap asunder and girdle the globe with independent states like the American republic, where each may be free to develop under its peculiar conditions the genius ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... support is given we are likely to get up some morning after a heavy rain, or a sudden wind, and find our plants broken down, and in attempting to save them we are pretty sure to complete the wreck, as a slight twist or turn in the wrong direction will snap the stalk off at its ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... told that one saucer had fallen into a mountain lake. This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I didn't ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... instinctive response to the vacancy of our social life, and I shall not make haste to blame it. There are few places, few occasions among us, in which a novelist can get a large number of polite people together, or at least keep them together. Unless he carries a snap-camera his picture of them has no probability; they affect one like the figures perfunctorily associated in such deadly old engravings as that of "Washington Irving and his Friends." Perhaps it is for this reason that we excel in small ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the doors leading to the yard, and almost pushing me over he rushed to the black dog with great leaps and the most blood-curdling growls, jumping straight over him, then around him, then over him again and again, and so like a whirlwind, the poor black beast was soon crazy, for snap as fast as he might, it was ever at the clear, beautiful air. Hal was always just ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... Africans in whose possession they may be found after importation."[14] Then, too, when foreigners smuggled in Negroes, "who then ... could be operated on, but the purchasers? There was the rub—it was their interest alone which, by being operated on, would produce a check. Snap their purse-strings, break open their strong box, deprive them of their slaves, and by destroying the temptation to buy, you put an end to the trade, ... nothing short of a forfeiture of the slave would afford ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... such. But relief the King refused. "Why want you Fox? What—Grenville and his friends?" He harped. "You are sufficient without these— Rather than Fox, why, give me civil war!" And fibre that would rather snap than shrink Held out no ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... was his conclusion, "but I never heard anything like it, and she looks as if she'd snap in two, she's ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... concerned," answered Vickers, with a snap of the jaw which showed Copplestone that he was a man of determination. "Warn them, if necessary, that the man they have known as Marston Greyle is an impostor, and that everything they are handling belongs to Miss ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... wincing in response to them. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw her blink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blink followed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flash follows the snap of the trigger. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... Smith. 'Tis snip snap, Sir, as you say, but methinks not pleasant nor to the purpose, for the play does not go on. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... I don't mean now, but when my hair is really up. If I should ever have a—a Margaret of my own, come in and see me, Daddy, in my white bed, and say 'snap'—and I'll have the ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... commit the most extraordinary acts when under its influence. I have observed it, and, all things considered, it has no advantages over the Chinese method of attaining the marriage state. The wisdom of some older person is certainly better than what the American would call the "snap judgment" of two young people carried away by passion. One might find the chief cause of divorce in America to lie in ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... uncomfortable season for spending one's nights in an ill-made hut, and one's days on the brink of a cliff, without companionship, gazing seaward through a heavy telescope for some vessel in distress. But the skipper had made his plans and did not care a snap of his finger for discomforts for himself or his friends. He knew that out of every ten wrecks that took place on the coast within twenty miles of Chance Along, not more than one profited the people of his harbor. They never went afield in search of the gifts of the treacherous sea. They took ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... tiny baby in her arms, while the tears ran down her cheeks. He was such a beautiful baby, so strong and fair and healthy; but the king's order was that he was to be thrown into the river, where the cruel, hungry crocodiles were waiting to snap up everything they could find for a meal. Jochebed, the poor mother, held her baby closer in her arms. No, she could not obey the king's order. She would try and hide the baby for a little ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman

... moralising, merely taking the mean advantage the author is apt to imagine he has established over his reader when he ends off a chapter with a snap, and hopes the said reader will not dare to skip? No, we are not. We really mean something, and shall get to it in time. Let us only be clear ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... cigarette case with a snap that was almost human in its irony, dropped it back into his pocket, and lighted a match—but the flame was arrested halfway to the tip of his cigarette, as his eyes fixed suddenly and curiously on a woman's form hurrying down the street. She had turned the corner ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... rose to his feet with an elasticity and snap denoting decision. His wife standing close by laid hand upon his arm. He turned to meet her frightened questioning look. He spoke reassuringly. "Don't be afraid. Such things so near the suzerain's honoured dwelling are not to be permitted. This Saburo[u]zaemon goes to learn the facts ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... Rachel's lips came together with a snap. "It's coming berry time, and there's our chickens, and the garden did beautifully last year. Then there's your lace work and my knitting— they bring something. Sell? Oh—we couldn't do that!" And she abruptly left the room and went out into the yard. There she lovingly trained a wayward vine ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... caught it with a snap of his fingers. "Got it!" he triumphed, and the two men turned square upon him. "They ran him to earth in Australia. That was the year I was there—'96. I got a snapshot of him at ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of Marathon, all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit over the swelling waves of ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... One moment Nikky was smiling, with a cut lip, and hair in his eyes, and the next he was dropped like an ox, by a blow from behind. Landing between his shoulder-blades, it jerked his head back with a snap, and sent him reeling. A second followed, delivered by a ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... presented himself at the New Era, and waited for Peter at the soda fountain, with a lemon soda and a pretty girl to smile at his naive remarks. Peter's heart had given a jump and a flutter when the young man walked in, fearing some one else might snap at the chance to buy a relinquishment of a homestead in New Mexico. And yet, how did Peter expect to buy anything of the sort? If Peter knew, he kept the knowledge in the back of his mind, telling himself that there would be some ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... disclosed a series of neatly-folded papers, all laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs. Lecount took out one of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud snap of the spring ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie: your true love-knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose, or not, Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their knot Endures ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... institution, and talks of Toleration and Equal Rights, and calls the Duke of Tuscany a broth of a boy, and a light to illumine heretical darkness, don't talk this nonsense to please the outs or ins, for he don't care a snap of his finger for either of them, nor because he thinks it right, for it's plain he don't, seeing that he would fight till he'd run away before Maynooth should be sarved arter that fashion; but he does it, because he knows it will please ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... I had flown across, picked up my sabre where it lay by the fire, and hurled myself on to the saddle of poor Vidal's horse. Yes, for all my wounded ankle, I never put foot to stirrup, but was in the seat in a single bound. I tore the halter from the tree, and before these villains could so much as snap a pistol at me I was beside ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... In the rougher hedges, dogwood, honeysuckle, pyracanth, and acacia made a network of white bloom and blushes. Milk-worts of all bright and tender tints combined with borage, iris, hawkweeds, harebells, crimson clover, thyme, red snap-dragon, golden asters, and dreamy love-in-a-mist, to weave a marvellous carpet such as the looms of Shiraz or of Cashmere never spread. Rarely have I gazed on Flora in such riot, such luxuriance, such self-abandonment to joy. The air was filled with fragrances. Songs of cuckoos ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... "I snap my fingers at your evil powers and your God of Love. I don't believe in either of them. I'm not afraid of either of them. Evil powers! Ha! Let them come if they want to. Here! We'll drink defiance to the powers of evil. ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... would think. Wherever you are, you've got to be the Boss. You've never been in any kind of a party for fifteen minutes without taking it over. When you snap the whip everybody jumps—or else—and you swing a wicked knife. For your information I don't jump, I am familiar with knives, and you will never run this project or ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... she should ask Dr. Linton to allow Bess to play with him some time in the Abbey. She wondered whether she dared. His temper was still decidedly irritable, and it was quite uncertain whether he would receive the suggestion graciously, or snap her head off. She thought, however, it ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... it, fitting its figure. It has a solid feel. The flesh of a good apple is crisp, breaking, melting, coolly acid or mildly sweet. It has a fracture, as one bites it, possessed by no other fruit. One likes to feel the snap and break of it. There is a stability about it that satisfies; it holds its shape till the last bite. One likes to linger on an apple, to sit by a fireside to eat it, to munch it waiting on a log when there ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... ceased with a snap of his teeth. His lips set in a thin, bitter line. The agitation of his face preceded a convulsive wrestling of his shoulders. All this swift action denoted an inner combat, and it ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... words written in Hebrew, and this talisman will keep me from losing my heart and head. Or does one need nothing but consciousness of freedom, because, when one is free, one wants nothing, nothing, nothing. Snap the thread then. I embrace you and your sister warmly. ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds. Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule, Mr. Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub- overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... certain amount of control was exercised over it; even up to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the use of sharps and flats was frowned upon in church music. But gradually music began to break loose from its old chains, and in our own century we see Beethoven snap the last thread of that powerful restraint which had ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... to send all the children scampering with fear. And even the curs and other domestic animals, seem to have an instinctive knowledge that his visits portend no good to their master's domicil. It is curious to see those domestic animals how they bark and snap, and then shrink away at his approach, uttering signs of their dislike. In truth, my son, he has a bad reputation among these worthy farmers, whose farms he quietly takes possession of, and then indulges ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams

... weight. But in a moment, just as the boat with a swoop plunged over the fall, he rose, clutching securely and hauling himself inch by inch out of the torrent. To Fisher, who watched breathlessly, it seemed as if every moment the branch would snap and send the senior back to his fate. But it held out bravely and supported him as he gradually drew himself up and finally perched high ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... but the short-story must be original and varied in its themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion. The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in The Man Who Was; it may be a mental surrender of habits ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... and such individuals may seem to sacrifice the substance for the shadow: to adopt a homely comparison, they are like the dog in the fable who dropped the real leg of mutton, from his mouth in order to snap at its reflection in the water. Be that as it may, where such beliefs and hopes are entertained in full force, the whole activity of the mind and the whole energy of the body are apt to be devoted to a preparation for a blissful or at all events ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... them in the evening. I began the term tired out, and nearly collapsed before the end. Teaching is nerve-racking work, and if you don't get a good spell off, it's as bad for the pupils as yourself. You snap their heads off for the smallest trifle. Besides, it's folly to wear oneself out any sooner than one need. It's bad enough to think of the time when one has to retire. That's the nightmare which haunts us more ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... to snap at Leothric, but ran before him to avoid the stick, for his nose was sore and shining; and in the gloaming the villagers came out and danced to cymbal and psaltery. When Tharagavverug heard the cymbal and psaltery, hunger and anger came upon ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... them crap-leens! I giv one to Pardman and Sharks. Hit gobbled me up like snap-beans In a patch full o' old fiel'-larks. But I thought I could fool the crap-leen nice, And I hauled my cotton to Jammel and Cones. But shuh! 'fore I even had settled my price They tuck affidavy without no bones And levelled upon me fur all ther loans ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... an old turtle! Not exactly a reptile, for there is food in him. But of a devilish flat head and cruel snap of ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... night. The sensation was eerie in the extreme. The night was still, with a tang of approaching autumn in the air to set the nerves a-tingle. Straight in the golden path of moonlight the boat sped. The snap that comes from exerting every muscle to the full quickened the boy's eagerness and the tense excitement ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... cold, wet and rough day. According to an article which appeared in the "Westminster Gazette," and was reprinted in our local "War Office Telegram," there is always a cold rough snap from October 20 to October 25. The first date was correct, and I trust the latter, which is to-morrow, will be as accurate, for we are miserable. Geese are crossing in ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... beautiful day, with just enough snap and coolness in the air to make it perfect for football. The game was to take place on the Rally Hall grounds, and Big Sluper, the janitor, with his assistants, had outdone themselves in getting the gridiron into ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... advocate closed the book with a snap and laid it back on the table. "I respectfully contend that Colonel Baker's testimony is necessary before this case is closed. Here is the colonel's note, Mr. President," and he passed the paper to Colonel Andrews, who, ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... much!"—"Mrs. Brown's compliments to Mrs. Fidgets, and would she permit the little Fidgets to stay just ten minutes longer?" No!—the Fidgety footman is only to depart with them; so he is sent to the servants' hall, there to wait, whilst snap-dragon is being prepared in the library—that the evening may end with a grand blue-fire tableaux. The room resembles the Black Hole of Calcutta!—Hundreds of little itching fingers are longing to be amongst that pound of raisins, in spirits—all eager, as imps, for the fiendish sport; ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there: his nearer friend would say 'Screw not the chord too sharply lest it snap.' Then left alone he pluck'd her dagger forth From where his worldless heart had kept it warm, Kissing his vows upon it like a knight. And wrinkled benchers often talk'd of him Approvingly, and prophesied his rise: For heart, I think, help'd head: ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... adding to their numbers. The trail ran over great boulders covered with icy slush, through which the weary brutes sank to their bellies. Struggling desperately, down they would come between two boulders. Then their legs would snap like pipe-stems, and there usually ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... absolute and Divine Law. So let the babes of the world play on, and let us not frighten them with stories of earthquakes; they are miserable enough as it is, believe it!—their toys are so brittle, and snap in their feeble hands so easily, that one is inclined to pity them! And Awning Avenue, with its borrowed verdure and artificial light, is frequently erected for the use of some of the most wretched among the children ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... sings its strange song amongst the ruins," says one of us, "what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!" "Bhuta, bhuta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase away ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... sally: "You'll find Hatboro' pretty exciting, after Rome, for a while, I suppose. But you'll get used to it. It's got more of the modern improvements, I'm told, and it's more public-spirited—more snap to it. I'm told that there's more enterprise in Hatboro', more real crowd in South Hatboro' alone, than there is in the Quirinal and ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... and settled in their uncomfortable pews with all suspicion of lurking heresy allayed. It was only on such Sabbaths as Mr. Dishart changed pulpits with another minister that they cocked their ears and leaned forward eagerly to snap the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... he see an evil kind o' smile on Ketury's face, and she rattled her necklace o' bones and snakes' tails; and her eyes seemed to snap; and she looked up the chimbley, and called out, 'Come down, come down! let's ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... were only for Mr. Latrobe I should not care a snap of my finger, but it's you—you! I thought you had more sense. I thought you fully understood that you couldn't afford to lose yourself a moment, and yet if ever a girl looked like yielding you did this very ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... Lancashire some ten or twelve years back, but is now, I believe, obsolete. The horse was played in a similar way, but the performer was then called "Old Balls." It is no doubt a vestige of the old "hobby-horse,"—as the Norwich "Snap," who kept his place in the procession of the mayor of that good city till the days of municipal reform, was the last representative of his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... from the hollow of his shoulder, "'tis just—Jarge!" The old man grew very still, his mouth opened slowly, and closed with a snap. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... have heard the story of the little girl who wanted to know what made her hair snap. After she had been informed that there was probably electricity in her hair, she sat quiet for a few minutes and then exclaimed: "Our family has all the modern improvements! I have electricity in my hair and Grandma has gas on her stomach!" Judged by this standard many ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... to Miss Haldin for not embarrassing me by an outward display of deep feeling. I admired her for that wonderful command over herself, even while I was a little frightened at it. It was the stillness of a great tension. What if it should suddenly snap? Even the door of Mrs. Haldin's room, with the old mother alone in there, had a rather ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... friends. He was fond of good fare, especially cheese, truffles, and grated radish with hemp oil; while in Paris he had eaten, so he said, baked but unwashed guts. He spoke smoothly, fluently, without hesitation, and only occasionally, for the sake of effect, permitted himself to hesitate and snap his fingers as if picking up a word. He had long ceased to believe in anything he had to say in the law courts, or perhaps he did believe in it, but attached no kind of significance to it; it had all so long been familiar, stale, ordinary. . . . He believed in nothing but what ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... five-dollar tips to the bell-hops—is sure to break into the prints. But it was a strange coincidence, when Rimrock jumped out of his taxicab and headed for the Waldorf entrance, to find a battery of camera men all lined up to snap him and a squad of reporters inside. No sooner had Rimrock been shot through the storm door into the gorgeous splendors of Peacock Alley than they assailed him en masse—much as the bell-boys had just done to gain his grip ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... short sticks of the fire. A two-foot stick is not the proper equipment for rattler hunting, except to those born with nerves so strong that they do not hesitate to catch Mr. Crotalus by the tail and snap his head off. ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... were like the snap of a steel rope. They made her flinch by their very ruthlessness. She had sprung from sleep with bewildered senses. She was not-prepared to do battle in ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... termination. For even while the Lad was in the midst of the swiftest execution, the hind legs of the chair in which he was sitting were whipped from their fastenings, his heels went into the air, he turned half a somersault backward and the music stopped with a snap. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... in midair, their powers of flight and endurance are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the nighthawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... low square buildings was barely visible in the haze. It was close to the Tiber, and the rush of the water against the piling of the bridge was distinctly audible. As the two drew near to a closed gateway, a number of mongrel dogs began to snap and bark around them. From within the building came the roar of coarse hilarity and coarser jests. As Pratinas approached the solidly barred doorway, a grating was pushed aside and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... a lady who is always polite, and doesn't snap a man's head off if he has a mind of his own; don't you, George?' asked Dolly, with his best smile for Bess and a Harvard stare of ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... commune with her heart's desires and designs. There was one hazard beside which foul air and stray shots were negligible, a siege within this siege. To be insured against the mere mathematical risk that those designs, thus far so fortunate, might by any least mishap, in the snap of a finger, come to naught she would have taken chances with the hugest shell Grant or Porter could send. For six weeks Anna and Hilary—Anna not knowing if he was alive, he thinking her fifty leagues ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... smooth piece of pumice stone; this wears off the burr and makes the stamping come out cleaner and finer. When patterns are so large that they have to be folded, iron out the creases before using them. After using the patterns for powder stamping, snap the pattern to shake the powder from the perforations. After using the patterns for paint stamping they should be washed thoroughly with naphtha until the perforations are all perfectly clear. Keep the naphtha away from the fire. After ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... minutes, when General Wilson rode into Coamo at the head of his staff and three thousand men. He wore a white helmet, and he looked the part of the conquering hero so satisfactorily that I forgot I was Mayor and ran out into the street to snap a picture of him. He looked greatly surprised and asked me what I was doing in his town. The tone in which he spoke caused me to decide that, after all, I would not keep the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General, it's too long a story to tell you ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... had preceded it, was possibly extending from here to the vicinity of Verdun, where the Crown Prince was said to be vainly endeavoring to break through, his army acting as a sort of a pivot on which the great advance had swung. I could not help wondering if, as often happens in the game of "snap the whip," von Kluck's right wing had got swung off the line by the very rapidity with which it must have covered that long arc in the great two ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... the jar caused by the gun falling on the ground, will cause the cap to explode. Again if the cock catch against the dress, or against A twig, it is liable to be lifted, when, on being released, it will snap down upon the cap. When a gun is at half-cock, the first of these accidents obviously cannot occur; and, as to the second, if the cock be pulled back and let drop, it falls, not down upon the cap, but to half-cock ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... England. The anticipated failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes for ever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension, without causing it to snap asunder. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... the snap and blaze might not betray him, he struck a wax match, warranted to burn a minute-and-a-half, and raised the lid of the desk. His unseen but wily coadjutor had guided him cunningly. In fingering a heap of envelopes in order to find one large enough for his purpose, he brought ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... had helped Britain to hold the land in the Black Year of the Mutiny would be the first to tear it from her now. In the Bengals outrages and open disloyalty were the order of the day. The curs that had fattened under England's protection were the first to snap at her heels. The Day of Doom seemed very near. Only the great feudatories of the King-Emperor, the noble Princes of India, faithful to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... her, with a grievous hurt and yearning of appreciation- -so delicate she seemed, so porcelain-fragile that a strong man could snap her in the crook of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... thick and sallow-grey on the willows across the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the hedges. My prison bars are but a sixteenth of an inch thick; I could snap them with a fillip—only the window-pane, to me as impenetrable as the twenty-foot wall of the Tower of London. A cart has just gone past bearing a strange load among the carts of spring; they are talking of poling the hops. In it there sat an old man, with the fixed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... like yellow bees, The shaken moonlight writhed upon the rocks;— But at the last I felt his breathing weaker grow, The tense limbs grow less tense, And with a bursting cry I bent his head right back, Back, back, until I heard his neck bones snap; His spine crunched in my grip; I flung him to the earth and knelt ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... first hatched, chickens look about for something to eat, and they at once snap at a fly or bug which comes in their way. Here we have the picture of three little chickens reaching for a spider that hangs ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... on racks or shelves, or on clean well-ventilated barn floors, or lofts. They should be spread out thinly and turned occasionally from day to day until completely cured. When this point is reached, in perhaps three to six weeks, the roots will snap readily when bent. If dried out of doors they should be placed under shelter at night and upon the approach ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... and undo yer plaits," she said, opening and shutting the bright scissors with a snap, as though she longed ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... The weasel is small, and any scar made upon its snow-white coat is doubly conspicuous. If the pelt is torn or injured it is rejected; so the trapper must take his captive clean and scarless. The weasel will not enter a cage trap, and the much used snap-jaw steel trap would tear the skin. But the weasel likes to lick a smooth surface, especially if it is the slightest bit greasy; so the trapper smears with grease the blade of a large knife and lays it on top of the snow, secured by a chain attached to the handle, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... written messages of Congress. But under circumstances so little ordinary as those of 186l-62, while Washington was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers, Congress was absolutely impotent. Mr. Seward could snap his fingers at Congress, and he did so. He could not snap his fingers at the army; but then he could go with the army, could keep the army on his side by remaining on the same side with the army; and this as it seemed he resolved ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... a hasty one, Whether quadruped or gun, Or a mother's wayward son Given to disaster, Harry's gun was rather quick; And it had a naughty trick,— It would snap itself, and kick Fiercely at ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... of a mind-reader, ma'am," said he, "that I know you don't care a snap of your finger for Dan Anderson. That's everdent. I ain't in on that side of the play. I'm just here to say that, so far as he's concerned hisself, he'd 'a' laid down and died cheerful any minute ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... two paces, and from his girdle snatched the Martian knife. He opened its longest blade with a snap. Varina Pemberton screamed. Then, above the commotion of battle, sounded the flat smack of an electro-automatic. Shanklin swore murderously, dropping his knife. His knuckles were torn open by ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman

... in the game he must play with the metal men would complete the circuit and send the biting needles through his frame. It was delicately gauged, a nerve-racking discomfort without definite pain, a thing to snap the dreadful tension of a man's endurance ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... sez Amen to that! Oh, Marser! Oh, Missus! come back to your poor old Joe soon! His heart will snap into ten thousand flinders, if you don't!" sobbed the poor negro, as he shook hands with ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... must continually have been undergoing minor changes, but without at all losing its identity. Mr. ——— says that this old oak wood, though it looks as strong and as solid as ever, has really lost its strength, and that it would snap short off, on application ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 'im—an seein' me give way might make her nervious. You take 'im to her, and lemme come in sort o' unconcerned terreckly, after she an' him've kind o' got acquainted. Dast you hold 'im that-a-way, doctor, 'thout no support to 'is spinal colume? I s'pose he is too sof' to snap, but I wouldn't resk it. Reckon I can slip in the other do' where she won't see ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... counts wrong, or what not. On the Congress we rarely had trouble, for the greatest number of guns is twenty-one—a national salute—and on our main deck we had thirty, any part of which could be ready. If one missed fire, the gun next abaft stepped in. If near enough, you might hear the primer snap, but the error of interval was barely appreciable—the effect stood. Laymen may not know that the manner of the salute was, and is, for the officer conducting it to give the orders, "Starboard, fire!" ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... Spencer, M.M., one "first" and one "second," in the individual competitions, while Serjt. Clancy and Pte. F. Bindley won the assault course and individual "pools." On the second day "A" and "B" Companies each got third place in the Company Assault Course and Snap-shooting Competitions, and "C" was second in the Company "Knock-out" and third in the "running man" competitions. In this last Pte. Pepper won third place in the pool. Finally our officers' team won the revolver shoot. The rifle shooting throughout ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... surely has a snap! If at a desk he works, he needn't roam, He needn't wander up and down the map— He knows the joy and comfort of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... cord, momentarily drawn tense, was relaxed with a snap, and the last smoky spark was quenched ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... that he was watching us. I noticed his tracks some distance back, and also noticed that just before we reached this point they turned abruptly into the underbrush. As we stood looking down that hole, I heard a twig snap, and knew he was close at hand. I thought I might surprise him, but, as I said, he was too quick for me, and I only caught a flying glimpse of him as ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... slender trees, but at last he gained the mastery, and swung himself down from the saddle. Already several mounted men were clustered about something, while just before he joined them there was another crash, and a little thin smoke drifted among the trees. Then, he saw one of them snap a cartridge out of his rifle, and that a horse lay quivering at his feet. A man stood beside it, and Grant was speaking to him, but Breckenridge scarcely recognized ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... the prophet saith, I will go before thee, and will make plain the mountains, and will break the gates of brass, and will snap in sunder the bars of iron; and will give thee dark, and hidden, and invisible treasures, that they may know that I ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... keep. Daughter of Rajputs though she was, she had her moment of very human shrinking when the sharp actuality of parting was upon them; when he held her so close and long that she felt as if the tightened cord round her heart must snap—and there ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... and in the night, after a terrific storm, a sharp, unexpected rat-tat-tat-tat, exactly like a machine-gun, would smash in on the silence, and two or three of the great grasses, which perhaps sheltered Dutchmen generations ago, would snap and fall. But the Indians and Bovianders who lived nearby, knew this was no wind, nor yet weakness of stem, but Sinclair, who was abroad and who was cutting down the bamboos for his own secret reasons. He was evil, and it was well to be indoors with all windows closed; but further details were lacking, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... girls they'll get, And some, about the beer; Some say they'll send their money home, And all begin to cheer. The games will soon be goin' Snap your fingers at the dice; With the canteen spigots flowin' 'Til the ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian

... station. The first stretch of water I came to, gad! I didn't like it. I kept prospecting for sharks very close before I swam it, with my clothes on my head. I was in awful luck all the way, though,—not one of them had a snap at me." ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... he volunteered nothing further, having again bent over his search. For several minutes we watched in silence. Then he sat up with a snap, as a steel ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... give it to Sary, and then you can look for trouble! She'll snap pictures of Jeb at dinner, of Jeb at the pump, and Jeb here, there, ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... no sooner at the landing stage than I found a code-flash summoning Dan Dean and me to Divisional Detective Headquarters. Dan "Snap" Dean was one of my closest friends. He was radio-helio operator of the Planetara. A small, wiry, red-headed chap, with a quick, ready laugh and a wit that made ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... Mr. Waters swung quite loose and free from his limb, and got down without much trouble, and it took him all the afternoon to go around from tree to tree and pry the rest of my ancestors loose, and unwind them, because those new-fangled tails would snap together like springs, and it took several days' steady practice and straightening before they were really useful at a moment's notice. By that time, another strange thing had happened: The fur on them had curled so tight at first that it was like very close wool; then it kept right on getting ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... knocking out his pipe. "Th' few shots av hootch ye had tu throw inta yu' last night tu get ye're Dutch up must be makin' ye see double, me man. If th' rough stuff he run inta there was on'y th' loikes av yersilf he must have shtruck a soft snap." He arose. "Put th' stringers on him agin, Ridmond, an' take um upstairs an' lock um up! Yu'll be escort wid um tu Calgary whin th' East-bound comes in—an' see here, look! . . . I want ye tu be back here agin as soon as iver ye can make ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... The President proposed to have an expensive house built for himself, while the King, his master, has none! I had stood aside, and been a loyal, and, above all, a silent subject, up to then; but now I snap my fingers at their malo. It is damned, and I'm damned glad of it. And this is not all. Last "Wainiu," when I sent Fanny off to Fiji, I hear the wonderful news that the Chief Justice is going to Fiji and the Colonies to improve his mind. I showed my way of thought to his guest, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... me in your letter that for "a day of life and love with me you would willingly give up the world and snap your fingers in the face of conventional society, and even face death with a laugh." It is easy for a passionate, romantic nature to work itself into a mood where those words are felt when written, and sometimes the mood carries a man and a woman through the fulfilment ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and hear in Dreamland. What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? What if a ray of light should flash through the darkened chambers of my soul? What would happen, I ask many and many a time. Would the bow-and-string tension of life snap? Would the heart, overweighted with sudden joy, stop beating for very ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... Collins was fairly in the seat, Ned gave the harness a quick snap, and the click of metal told him that the cuffs had closed about Collins' wrists, that the broad strap which held him down was in position. Then he pushed the button and the spark caught. The Vixen ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... he said to the man behind the bar, and then to me with a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resign this rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the business long enough to know that the average newspaper man is forever threatening to resign. Most of them—to hear ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... the halyards were let go, it was impossible to clew down the yards, owing to the enormous horizontal strain on the canvas. It now blew a hurricane. The spray flew over the ship in floods. The gigantic masts seemed about to snap under the world-wide strain ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... alarm, when a stealthy step was heard upon the other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock! This time his skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... under these and many other abuses we at present labor under: for the darkest is before the break of day. My brethren, let us remember what a dark day it was with our African brethren six years ago, in the French West Indies. Nothing but the snap of the whip was heard from morning to evening; hanging, breaking on the wheel, burning, and all manner of tortures inflicted on those unhappy people, for nothing else but to gratify their masters' pride, wantonness, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... deliberately, "you 'hold the keys of heaven and earth in Grelot,' and snap your fingers at 'this new young fool of a Seigneur who is away all ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... heard him. I was hearing twigs snap, and silent sneaking feet. I turned for a yell that would rouse the camp and Cuinn grabbed me hard, saying insistently, "Quick! Where's the girl! Go back and tell her it won't work! ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... of the paper, people read the Express—many staid ones surreptitiously—for it had a snap, a go, a tang, that at times almost took the breath. And despite the estimate of its editor as a charlatan, the people had yielded to that aggressive personage a rank of high importance in ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... at hand, from the thick shadow at the foot of the hill. What it was, he could not tell, but it did not belong to a single one of the infinite similar noises of the place with which he was so familiar. It was neither the rustle of a leaf, the snap of a parted twig, the drone of an insect, the dropping of a magnolia blossom. It was a vibration merely, faint, elusive, impossible of definition; a minute notch in the fine, keen ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... nose. It had a way of hanging protectingly over his heavy dark-brown mustache, which, in its turn, hangs protectingly over his thin, wide lips, so as to make it disagreeably certain that they can open and shut, laugh, snap, and sneer without ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... excited, with the captain's compliments, and would Mr. Crayshaw and the young ladies and Master Godfrey dine with him next day; and, please, she did hope they would come, for they were all going to have snap-dragon, and the captain had sent her out with such a lot of money to buy the raisins. And Angel wondered whether after all it was not surprising but right and natural that the captain should care for such things. Wasn't it the Christmas lesson that the ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham

... she was, Nan cried herself to sleep that night over the mystery. The loss of Beulah seemed to snap the last bond that held her to the little cottage in Amity street, where she had spent all ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell is on him; a giant is aroused within; and though you bind him with cables, they would part like thread; and though you fasten him seven times round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though you piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts and sermons, and on the top should set the cross of the Son of God, over them all the gambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... entities; nothing remains to create movement but the action of molecular force and of dead weight. In such a theory liberty is identified with caprice, and the collective reason and age-long tradition of an old society are nothing more than soap-bubbles which the smallest urchin may shiver with a snap of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he said, turning to Miss Wickham. "I distinctly thought I heard something like the snap of a lock, or a bolt ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... Guard, shutting the window with a snap, so that Rogers never knew whether the missing word used to be 'expire' or 'perspire'; 'and go on to your proper place on the tender.' Then she turned quickly to fix her big blue eyes upon the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... his life in his hand every hour, with trees falling in the wrong direction, log jams occurring in the spring rise and the lumber jacks risking death in the effort to free the king-pin that holds the jam. Oh, no, Eli has no fault to find with the way you've treated him; indeed, he's had a snap, and knows it. But we must be doing something, if you feel too anxious ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... stood up, holding the egg firmly with her fore paws, then, with a crisp snap of her sharp little teeth, she broke the shell, and cleverly sucked out the inside of it; not all, because she wanted her little ones to taste and see how good an egg really was. And very good they thought it—so good that in a few moments the egg was empty and the two young ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... as a vision flashed before me of thus verbally snap-shotting the scene with dear old Dickie as we stood against the rail of the ship and watched the waves fling back silvery radiance at the full moon, and I also wondered how I was to render in serviceable written ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the hind-leg, the clog comes trailing along and must needs impede the action of every limb. Sometimes, too, as it is whirled along it will come in contact with the forked branches of some tree, and then unless the animal can snap the rope in twain, she is fairly caught; there ends the chase. But even so, if caught in this way or overdone with fatigue, it were well not to come too close the quarry, should it chance to be a stag, or he will lunge out with his antlers and ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve it; and our mass of weight and wealth on the good side is so great, as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us. We have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which succeeded ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... echoed Jack, suddenly mindful of the implication. "Why! that's Snap Naab. Ah! I begin ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... snuff-box with a sharp snap and bowed low, though he quite understood the rebuke. Meanwhile Stradella led Ortensia forward, and the Queen turned to them as ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... strand in my left hand and fell to filing with my right so that at the snap there should be no noisy rebound of the spring-like wire. A post was at my right, and, the wire having been nailed to it, I was safe from this danger ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... circles Mrs. Gore's Dowager, Mrs. Grey's Flirt, Mrs. Trollope's Widow, and Boz's Mrs. Nickleby? Who can help thinking of his lawyer, when he makes acquaintance with those immortal firms Dodson and Fogg, or Quirk, Snap, and Gammon? Is not Wrexhill libellous, and Dr. Hookwell personal? Arise! avenge them both, ye zealous congregations! Why slumber pistols that, should damage Bulwer? Why are the clasp-knives sheathed, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Christopher, who surely has about as much on his hands as ever mortal had; but he knows how to handle ships and how to handle sailors, and so long as this ten-knot breeze lasts, he can walk the high poop of the Santa Maria with serenity, and snap his fingers at ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... then Toby, who had been standing very quiet and motionless behind Maurice, perceived a late, late autumn fly, sailing lazily by, within reach of his nose. That fly was too much for Toby; he made a snap at it, and the noise which ensued ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... them are to be expected in all subjects. This impression is strengthened, too, rather than destroyed, by the behavior of average parents. The conditions are, therefore, very favorable for the development of snap judgments and fixed attitudes among children, unless such influences are ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... then—can you imagine it?—the Company happen to come upon a broken-down carriage of the Z. line. They repair it at their depot, and all at once, bless my soul! see their own mark on the wheels What do you say to that? Eh? If I did it they would send me to Siberia, but the railway companies simply snap their fingers ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... a second time, to let the children sketch it; and even I, who could not draw a line, became with them the centre of popular interest. Half a dozen little people who had been playing "snap-the-whip" left off and crowded round, and one of the boys profited by the occasion to lock into the barn, near which we sat, a peasant who had gone in to fodder his cattle. When he got out he criticised the pictures, and insisted that one ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... those qualities which November- morning writers are so prone to bestow upon the month. But the words wine, and sparkle, and sting, and glow, and snap do not seem to cover it. Emma McChesney stood on the bottom step, looking up and down Main Street and breathing in great draughts of that unadjectivable air. Her complexion stood the test of the merciless, ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... between his sobs, sniffed and reflected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled himself close up to his work. The air ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... special government permit to sketch or photo in Pompeii. Nobody may take the slightest snap-shot or drawing without. I've been once before, so I know, Madam Doubtful. You'll see ever so many officials will ask to look at Miss Morley's ticket. Why? Because the place would get choked up with artists I suppose. And also they want to sell their own photos. You'll ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil









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