"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... not so simple. A man may fall into habits which are no indication of what he regards as useful to him. Such habits have not been formed independently of his will, and yet they may appear to be purposeless, or even detrimental. Who wishes to have the inveterate habit of cracking the joints of his fingers or of biting his finger-nails? What purpose do ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... sit up in my bed and, from the open window, see the white tilts of the waggons, as the train rolls over a neighbouring hill. I hear the cracking whips and the deep-toned "wo-ha" of the teamsters; I see the traders mount and gallop after; and I turn upon my couch with a feeling ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... submerged by his life. All his powers had shot up and grown too fast, all at once, suddenly. Only his will had not grown with them: and it was dismayed by such a throng of monsters. His personality was cracking in every part. Of this earthquake, this inner cataclysm, others saw nothing. Christophe himself could see only his impotence to will, to create, to be. Desires, instincts, thoughts issued one after another like clouds of sulphur from the fissures of a volcano: and he was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the contents of the treatise, which was to be printed in lieu of this treatise, and to which reference has been made in the preceding treatise, and we must write on this 4th of July, 1859 in the midst of great noise and continuous cracking and thunder of guns and so much smell of powder, that it becomes very tedious. This morning it appeared in newspapers, that Samuel Jackson's pyrotechnical establishment on 10th and Reed Streets in Philadelphia was yesterday afternoon destroyed ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... grieved him sair, that day, I trow, Wi' Sir George Hearoune of Schipsydehouse; Because we were not men enow, They counted us not worth a louse. Sir George was gentle, meek, and douse, But he was hail and het as fire; And yet, for all his cracking crouse[147], He rewd ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... in it on returning to Chalons, which, if it had seemed packed on our previous visit, was now quivering and cracking with fresh crowds. The stir about the fountain, in the square before the Haute Mere-Dieu, was more melodramatic than ever. Every one was in a hurry, every one booted and mudsplashed, and spurred or sworded ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... Instantly a dense vapour arose, and the cave was filled with choking fumes that prevented us from seeing anything while the deadly acid (for I presume it was some tremendous preparation of that sort) did its work. From the spot where the body lay came a fierce fizzing and cracking sound, which ceased, however, before the fumes had cleared away. At last they were all gone, except a little cloud that still hung over the corpse. In a couple of minutes more this too had vanished, and, wonderful ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... who wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave becomes discursive—incoherent. The secretary ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... youthful Jehu of the light vehicle behind. He came desperately on, cracking his whip, shouting "G'lang, Gee'p," rattling down hill, and galloping up, and whirling round corners, in spite of the warning "Steady, whoa!" addressed to him by our careful escort. Once the rattling behind entirely ceased, and we stopped, our driver being anxious for the safety of his own team, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... When, after much cautious circumlocution, he arrived at the crisis of the story, she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, and seemed stupefied. Then she threw herself into his arms, and they wept, wept, wept, till their heads seemed cracking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... monks of middle ages, to lonely sages, men of science, reformers; the revelations of the world's superficial judgment, shocking to the souls concentrated upon their own bitter labour in the cause of sanctity, or of knowledge, or of temperance, let us say, or of art, if only the art of cracking jokes or playing the flute. And thus this general's daughter came to me—or I should say one of the general's daughters did. There were three of these bachelor ladies, of nicely graduated ages, who held a neighbouring farm-house in a united and more ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... development of the new process, also originating in Minneapolis, was the abandonment of the old system of cracking the millstone, and substituting in its stead the use of smooth surfaces on the millstones, thus in a large measure doing away with the abrasion of the bran, and raising the quality of the flour produced at the first ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... at full speed across the lake that spread its floor of dark glass within a stone's throw of the vicarage, he had a sense of never having lived before. The spaciousness of the house and the pleasant evenings spent cracking nuts and eating apples in front of the blazing fire-place were also revelations that filled his mind with many new thoughts. Why was his own home ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... of it when next we sing; We shall not waste our soft romantic airs, But the glad street with warlike strains shall ring Of blood and armaments and Fritz's whacking, And he shall hammer till the walls are cracking, And the whole suburb joins ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... they could see to right and left, from the outer wall of the Tower on the one side, to where the rising ground on the left was hidden under the thick foliage in the foreground. There was a murmur of talking and laughter, the ringing of hand-bells, the cracking of whips and the cries of children. The backs of the crowd were turned to the steps: there was plainly something going on higher up the slope, and it seemed somewhat away to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... ways in which inserted joints may be made. The first method is the easier, and works well with flint glass; but when one comes to apply it to soda glass there is a danger of the glass becoming too thick near the joint, and this often leads to a cracking of the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... the poor little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table and danced to ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... directing the others' attention to the picture by a sprightly glance. The ladies uttered faint cries the moment they brought their noses close to the painting. Then, blushing deeply they turned away their heads. The men though kept them there, cracking jokes, and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... relinquished his digging and, after a long, stealthy glance towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic. He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hour they could hear a most terrific contest raging; and Scott said he'd bet a million dollars that bull-dog would eat up any two bears in the Rocky Mountains. Then everything became still, and a few moments later they could hear the bear eating something and cracking bones with his teeth; and Bartholomew said that the Indian out in Colorado told him that the bear was particularly fond of dog-meat, and could relish a dog almost ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to be present at the moment of victory, it would be difficult to witness any assemblage of young women placed under circumstances of such striking interest. The mirth and song and general murmur diminished by degrees, until they altogether ceased, and. nothing was to be heard but the perpetual cracking of the reels, the hum of the rapid wheels, and the voices of the reelers, as they proclaimed the state of this enlivening pool of industry. As for the fair competitors themselves, it might have been observed that even those among them who had no, ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... comes over the landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds sweep across the scene. Ruodi, the fisherman, comes out of his cottage. Werni, the huntsman, descends from the rocks. Kuoni, the shepherd, enters, with a milkpail on his shoulders, followed by ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... by side," he went on, and this was also arranged. The Putnam Hall drum-and-fife corps led the march, and each player strode forth with a rival at his side. The march brought forth a wild round of applause and a veritable shrieking of tin horns and cracking of wooden clappers. ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... Mark in a serious position. He found the thin ice cracking loudly under his feet. He glanced ahead. There was a streak of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... wind brought to his keen nostrils a familiar, pungent odor close at hand, and a moment later there loomed beneath him a huge, gray-black bulk forging steadily along the jungle trail. Tarzan seized and broke a small tree limb, and at the sudden cracking sound the ponderous figure halted. Great ears were thrown forward, and a long, supple trunk rose quickly to wave to and fro in search of the scent of an enemy, while two weak, little eyes peered suspiciously and futilely about ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dazzling sparks, and streamers of green and violet fire. There was a snapping, cracking sound that could be heard above the whir of the craft's propellers, for the motor was ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... anything to-night. In fact, I didn't expect to find in you what I've been looking for. I thought that old fool of a stepfather of yours was cracking up his goods beyond their merits. But he wasn't. My dear, you suit me from the ground up. I've been looking you over carefully. You were made for the place ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... without hitting at the other. Osborne has not had the strong health which has enabled Roger to work as he has done. I met a man who knew his tutor at Trinity the other day, and of course we began cracking about Roger—it's not every day that one can reckon a senior wrangler amongst one's friends, and I'm nearly as proud of the lad as you are. This Mr. Mason told me the tutor said that only half of Roger's success was owing to his mental powers; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... increase of temperature; heating &c v.; calefaction^, tepefaction^, torrefaction^; melting, fusion; liquefaction &c 335; burning &c v.; ambustion^, combustion; incension^, accension^; concremation^, cremation; scorification^; cautery, cauterization; ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ebullition, estuation^, elixation^, decoction; ebullioscope^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had lingered a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Order me to remain! But Thou art silent. Thou art ever silent. Lord, Lord, is it for this that in grief and pains have I sought Thee all my life, sought and found! Free me! Remove the weight; it is heavier than even mountains of lead. Dost Thou hear how the bosom of Judas Iscariot is cracking ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... a sharp corner, showing two more zigzags, forming a long acute angle which carried us smoothly to the rocky plateau on which the city stands, and we bowled in through the old gate-way at a round trot, with the usual cracking of whips and rattling and jingling of harness which announces the arrival of travelers at minor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... say, nor sing, Nor troll a lilting stave; And when the rest are cracking jokes He's ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters, cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand. The very nails had dropped ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the morsel and swallowed it, and soon was cracking for himself all the snails his comrades gave him. But that was not enough, for their eyes were only the eyes of children and his bright bird eyes could find them twice as fast. So he waded in the river, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... appropriation had been denied again and again; but at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison, towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun. Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of building, when the Hon. Horatio ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... stuff had fallen from Denny, too—enough, at least for him to struggle to his feet and hasten its cracking by tearing at it with partially loosened hands. As Jim reached him, he freed himself entirely save for the last few bits that stuck to him as bits of shell cling to ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... Israel came out of Egyptian servitude and dropped chains from wrists and left taskmasters cracking their useless whips behind them, and the brick kilns and the weary work were all done when they went forth. Ah, brethren, whatever beauty and good and power and blessedness there may be in this mortal life, there are deep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... by the hand, led her into the next room and opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady's saddle, while he carefully examined all the buckles. As he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his sleep, he rose and donning his clothes, went to his daughter's chamber and opened the door. Whereupon the Vizier's son arose forthright and coming down from the bed, fell to donning his clothes, with ribs cracking for cold; for that, when the Sultan entered, it was no great while since the genie had brought them back. The Sultan went up to his daughter, the Lady Bedrulbudour, as she lay abed, and raising the curtain, gave her good morning and kissed her between the eyes and asked her how she did. ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... the effects of her cold ride, alternately nodding and rousing herself to a vain effort to keep her eyes open. And all the time the storm was increasing, the wind rocking the house with its rough blasts, until it seemed to utter loud groans, and the sharp cold snapping and cracking the shaking timbers with short volleys of sound like gun-shots. Frightened mice scurried about in the low roof over the kitchen; and rats, lonely rats, seeking company, came to the top of the cellar stairs, pushing the door open with their pointed noses, and blinking in beseechingly ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... said. "Since this talk of Home Rule began they've been cracking up the glories of the British Empire like—like ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... his wound and an attack of small-pox kept Rogers quiet for a time. Meanwhile the winter dragged slowly away, and the ice of Lake George, cracking with change of temperature, uttered its strange cry of agony, heralding that dismal season when winter begins to relax its grip, but spring still holds aloof; when the sap stirs in the sugar-maples, but the buds refuse to swell, and even the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... candles, they were gone! "Where are the candles?" cried [Mama]. "Somebody has carried them off, and I can't light the [Christmas tree]." Betty, the littlest girl, began to cry—two [tears] ran down her cheeks. [Pepper the parrot] sat on her perch cracking a [nut]. When she heard the outcry, she dropped it and screamed "Jimmy Crow, Jimmy Crow! Oh, oh! Oh, oh!" "Oh, naughty [Jimmy Crow]!" said Mama. "He has hidden them. Pepper is telling tales. Run, [children], and hunt! We'll play a new game, 'Hunt ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster
... languor they once cultivated, and walk the street with stout step, and swing the croquet mallet with a force that sends the ball through two arches, cracking the opposing ball with great emphasis. Our daughters are not ashamed to culture flower beds, and while they plant the rose in the ground a corresponding rose blooms in ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Catharine, "the fine pink mussel-shell that Hec. picked up in the little corn-field last year; it had a hole in one of the shells too; [FN: This ingenious mode of cracking the shells of mussels is common to many birds. The crow (Corvus corone) has been long known by American naturalists to break the thick shells of the river mussels, by letting them fall from a height on to rocks and stones.] and when my uncle saw it, he said it must have been ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... those four or five occasions when Tom, having put down a hole into one of the large pieces, called out to us to get to cover, when, running for shelter, we crouched behind some friendly rock until a sharp, cracking explosion told us that another of the big obstructions was out of ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... the fish was a matter of more interest, and it was striking to observe that the angel-fish and groupers were able to recognize their respective summons to food, for when the keeper tapped one portion of the bridge it gave a sharp cracking sound to which the angel-fish came flocking, while in calling the groupers and other fish, he hit another portion of the bridge, which reverberated in a different tone, and the larger fish dashed through the water to the appointed places. After this performance was over the keeper ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to be led down the stairs, and so came to the porter's lodge, where he beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled round a table, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing, cursing, and cracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner as he entered. The place was in a litter. A lamp had been smashed, and there was a puddle of wine on the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. On a bench against the wall were ranged a number of prisoners, others ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... cracking melon seeds, saying nothing but simply pursing up her lips and smiling, when, strange coincidence, Hsueeh Yen, Tai-yue's waiting-maid, walked in and handed her mistress ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... revealed on any good authority; but it appears clearly from experiments to be the coal of fish bones, or some other vegetable substance, mixed with isinglass size, or other size; and most probably, honey or sugar candy to prevent its cracking. A substance, therefore, much of the same nature, and applicable to the same purposes, may be formed in the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... what seemed to be a perpetual promenade, and the men outside waited patiently and silently. This silence oppressed Woodward. He knew that but for his presence the mountaineers would be consulting together and cracking their dry jokes. In spite of the fact that he recognised in the curious impassiveness of these people the fundamental qualities of courage and endurance, he resented it as a barrier which he had never ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... been introduced by the candidate, and "Spread" been suggested by the committee. Still she thought that her guest, upon the whole, looked and bowed more like a member of the Upper House,—perhaps one of the amiable though occasionally prosy peers who devote the teeth of wisdom to the cracking of those very hard nuts, "How to educate the masses," "What to do with our criminals," and such like problems, upon which already have been broken so many jawbones tough as that with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... met with repulse, did not hesitate to tell a committee of the House of Commons, which summoned him to appear as a witness, that the range was impassable. It seemed that Nature had tumbled down an impenetrable bewilderment of rock, the hillsides cracking into deep, dark crevices, and the crests of the mountains showing behind and beyond a massed confusion of crags and hollows, trackless and untraversable. Governor King declared himself satisfied that the effort to cross the range was a task "as chimerical as useless," an opinion strengthened ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... no further hesitation, he silently closed the door—on the inside!... How could there be burglars in the house? The suspicion was folly. What he had heard could be naught but the nocturnal cracking and yielding of an old building at night. Was it not notorious that the night was full of noises? And even if burglars had entered!... Better, safer, to ignore them! They could not make off with a great deal, for the main item of prey happened to be in his ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... sudden closing of a door, are events to be remarked. Once a day, however, a huge gong sounds, the glass doors of the inner courtyard are thrown open with a flourish, and enters the huge bus fairly among those peacefully sitting at the tables, horses' hoofs striking fire, long lash-cracking volleys, wheels roaring amid hollow reverberations. From the interior of this bus emerge people; and from the top, by means of a strangely-constructed hooked ladder, are decanted boxes, trunks, and appurtenances ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... no corresponding marks on the opposite sides of the walls or partitions. Portions of the paper-hangings were stripped off, and small slivers ripped up from the floors. It struck the frames of looking-glasses, cracking off small pieces of the wood, but only in one instance breaking the mirror. It cut a velvet band by which one was hung; and it was found on the floor, the mirror downward and unbroken, as if it had been ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... whispered, cracking the table with his fist. "Russ, you sure rung true to me. But never ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... had really a commendable share of common sense for a lord, and the discretion of my conduct was not unnoticed by him; in so much, that after the major part of the council had become, as it may be said, out o' the body, cracking their jokes with one another, just as if all present had been carousing at the Cross-Keys, his lordship wised to me to come and sit beside him, where we had a very private and satisfactory conversation together; in the which conversation, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... rumbill; master aloan in the inside, as grand as a Turk, and rapt up in his fine fir-cloak. Off we sett, bowing gracefly to the crowd; the harniss-bells jinglin, the great white hosses snortin, kickin, and squeelin, and the postilium cracking his wip, as loud as if he'd been drivin her majesty ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... huge, open vat. A cup and saucer are brought for you to taste the juice, which is dipped out of the boiling vat for your service. It is very like balm-tea, unduly sweetened; and after a hot sip or so you return the cup with thanks. A loud noise, as of cracking of whips and of hurrahs, guides you to the sugar-mill, where the crushing of the cane goes on in the jolliest fashion. The building is octagonal and open. Its chief feature is a very large horizontal wheel, which turns the smaller ones that grind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... now his play. {70c} 1. He bore all in hand by Swearing, and Cracking and Lying, that he was as well to pass, as he was the first day he set up for himself, yea that he had rather got than lost; and he had at his beck some of his Companions that would swear to confirm it as ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... horse started again, he will find that the free horse has made another jump, and again flown back. And now he has them both badly baulked, and so confused that neither of them knows what is the matter, or how to start the load. Next will come the slashing and cracking of the whip, and hallooing of the driver, till something is broken, or he is through with his course of treatment. But what a mistake the driver commits by whipping his horse for this act! Reason and common sense should teach him that the horse was willing and anxious to go, but ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... "jefecitos," or straw bosses, of the hundred or more peons still lined up before the shaft. With the last batch of these in the bucket, we white men stepped upon the platform below it and dropped suddenly into the black depths of the earth, with now and then a stone easily capable of cracking a skull bounding swiftly with a hollow sound past us back and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the impressive procession with pride unutterable; very soon I also should walk two and two in the sunshine, my dome crowned with figurative laurels, cracking scientific witticisms with my fellow inmates, or, perhaps, squeezing the pretty fingers ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... never fret, or plunge and kick, but thou wouldest have whisked thy old tail, and spread abroad thy large chest, with pith and power, till hillocks, where the earth was filled with tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and the clods fallen gently over." The latter part of this paraphrase is taken from Chambers. What pure English words could have rendered these things ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... meditated against the perfidious host one of those hearty vengeances which offer consolation while they are hoped for. He entered the hostelry with his hat pulled over his eyes, his left hand on the pommel of the sword, and cracking his whip with ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cold that the country had known for many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed by the frosty rigor, and sentinels had been frozen to death in our neighborhood. The deep snow on which we made our beds, the icy covering of the streams near us, the limbs of the trees above us, had been cracking with loud noises all night, from the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... from one corner of the pyre—the flames licked upward, crackling. La stood there like a beautiful statue of despair gazing at Tarzan and at the spreading flames. In a moment they would reach out and grasp him. From the tangled forest came the sound of cracking limbs and crashing trunks—Tantor was coming down upon them, a huge Juggernaut of the jungle. The priests were becoming uneasy. They cast apprehensive glances in the direction of the approaching elephant and then ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... courage." Now she looked bravely in Mobei's face. It was the toilet dealer's turn to show confusion—"Honoured lady, is nothing known?"—"Known?" answered O'Iwa in some surprise. "What is there to know? When this Iwa left Samoncho[u] to be sure the house was cracking apart everywhere. The light poured in as through a bamboo door.... Ah! Have matters gone badly with the Danna in Iwa's absence?" Mobei shook his head in dissent. "Alas! Ito[u] Sama, Akiyama or Kondo[u] San, has misfortune come to them, without a word of condolence from ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... get home," cried Hugh John, cracking his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place for Donald ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Pavilion, Mile End, on a Saturday night, when every gentleman sits in shirt-sleeves, with his arm round the waist of a lady, and the faggots and sausage-rolls and stone-gingers are going off like smoke, and the orange-peel rains from the upper circle back-benches, and the nut-cracking runs up and down the packed rows like the snapping of the breech-bolts in the trenches ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... ahead. He dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had the predominance in guns and munitions that could smash their way through by sheer weight of metal, and force a passage through which to pour their troops, taking section by section by a series of flanking and encircling movements, threaten their line of communication, finally cracking up the whole line and compel a further extensive falling back ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... speech, I saw in the doubtful twilight a post- chaise and four come out of the gateway of the Red Horse inn, heard the whips cracking and the horses pawing the ground when the driver stopped on the highroad, close to the tree on the roots of which Friar Ange was sitting. It was not an ordinary post-chaise, but a very large, clumsy vehicle, having room to seat four, and a small coupe in front. I ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... and loins strained almost to cracking, the men worked cheerfully. Their General had ridden forward with his staff: they knew that close by the head of the pass their camp was already being marked out for them, and before sleeping they would be ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the whip buried itself in the fleshy part of the arm, and there came around it a festering sore. He suffered greatly with it, until one night his brother took out the knot, when the poor fellow was asleep, for he could not bear any one to touch it when he was awake. It was awful to hear the cracking of that whip as it was laid about Riley—one would have thought that an ox team had gotten into the mire, and was being whipped out, so loud and ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... with her beneath high trees, But as I lean to kiss her face, She is blown aloft on wind, I catch at leaves, And run in a moonless place; And I hear a crashing of terrible rocks flung down, And shattering trees and cracking walls, And a net of intense white flame roars over the town, And someone cries; and darkness falls . . . But now she has leaned and smiled at me, My veins are afire with music, Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light; I shall dream to her ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... fire, while the white men crept under the canoes and were soon fast asleep. In the morning it was still snowing, but about noon it cleared up. It was freezing hard, and the snow glistened as the sun burst through the clouds. The stillness of the forest was broken now by sharp cracking sounds as boughs of trees gave way under the weight of the snow; in the open it lay ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed winds that struck it, sails and sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress him most; and the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... dark forms were seen by the best-sighted of the men on watch, creeping cautiously up the ravine towards the hiding-place. The cracking of twigs and an occasional grunt were heard, and we knew the Indians were approaching. Word was passed not to fire until our leader gave the signal, which was finally given. Two of the old flintlocks went off, the others missed ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... he moved, at last, it was a convulsive jerk of his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened. Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking lash ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... that the treasure in question must be concealed nowhere but in his own humble kail-yard at home, to which he immediately repaired, in full expectation of finding it. Nor was he disappointed; for after destroying many good and promising cabbages, and completely cracking credit with his wife, who considered him as mad, he found a large potful of gold coin, with which he built a stout castle for himself, and became the founder of a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a sour grin. "There's worse ways o' hurting a proud man than touching his pocket. If you dinna ken what's going on, it's time you watched young Kit. I'll say nea mair, but aw t 'oad wives are cracking and you can ask ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... and with good reason. A strange creaking and cracking sound had reached his ears, followed by a bump and a jar which nearly pitched him headlong. Sam was thrown ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... the great wolves, I think," said Roka, "and your arrow sped true. The others are devouring him now. Listen, you can hear his big bones cracking!" ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... rushed to his head, and his mouth grew feverish at the thought. As he licked his cracking lips, he caught a faint, tinkling, rumbling sound of falling water somewhere to the right. Of a sudden his sufferings of mind and body were merged into one burning desire to drink, and he turned eagerly ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... fever took her and seemed to stretch her skin to cracking-point, she would not go to bed, and nobody could persuade her. She huddled by the fire, rocking herself, until the evening; but directly it was dusk she was restless. The wind used to moan about the house, and she ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... a gloomy dungeon, dimly, lighted by torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or tender virgin—was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench. Water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws—all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up its ghost, was now put into operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... woodcutters always came and felled some of the largest trees. This happened every year; and the young Fir tree, that had now grown to a very comely size, trembled at the sight; for the magnificent great trees fell to the earth with noise and cracking, the branches were lopped off, and the trees looked long and bare: they were hardly to be recognized; and then they were laid in carts, and the horses dragged them out of ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... out the old woman, her thin voice cracking on its too high key, "Sally, wait thar ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... hailstones were flat, and one was ten inches in circumference, and another weighed two ounces. They ploughed up a gravel-walk like musket-balls, and passed through glass-windows, making round holes, but not cracking them. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... inter-planetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a watch was being kept on the rocket-ship, to be sure, but it was becoming a matter-of-fact sort of vigilance, pending the arrival of the rest of the Fighting Force and the cracking of the dome of force by the scientists who worked on it ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... walk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood aloof from the rest, pushed open a door ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... expanding, had recourse to encircling chains of iron, which bind it at the weakest parts of the curve." These chains, it may be mentioned parenthetically, were strengthened by Poleni, after the lapse of some years, when the second of the two shells showed some signs of cracking. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... now put in place. They are formed of strips of well seasoned elm or hickory, soaked in boiling water until they bend without breaking or cracking. Each rib ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... prophets—humour. A man must be very full of faith to jest about his divinity. No Neo-Pagan delicately suggesting a revival of Dionysus, no vague, half-converted Theosophist groping towards a recognition of Buddha, would ever think of cracking jokes on the matter. But to the Hebrew prophets their religion was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. So it was ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... noise than Inga was likely to make, and such a breaking and cracking among the bushes. Mildrid turned pale, got up, and saw something hairy and a pair of eyes below it—it must be a bear's head! She wanted to scream, but no voice would come; she wanted to run, but could not ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the beetling crags, the bushrangers turned like hunted wolves, and stood at bay. Now the fight became general and confused. All about among the ferns and flowers men fought, and fired, and cursed. Shots were cracking on all sides, and two riderless horses were galloping ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... meantime the big touring car was leaving Crumville rapidly behind. On the front seat, beside Mr. Porter, sat Phil, waving an Oak Hall banner and cracking all kinds of jokes. In the back were the two girls with Dave and Roger. All were well bundled up, for the air, ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next. Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes. Sometimes they sing. Often they are asleep. Wreckage indescribable. Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by. Enormous and magnificent H.E.'s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts slowly and solidly away to limbo. Poor dead men lying about, and dead horses, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere was different from that of the first interview. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... something on which to repose, that was preferable to a plank. As for the men, they were accustomed to hard fare, and enjoyed their present good-luck, to the top of their bent. It was quite late, before they had done "spinning their yarns," and "cracking their jokes," around the pot of turtle-soup, and the can of grog that succeeded it. By half-past twelve, however, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... his nose pinched between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from time to ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... again and gave a long, quavering cry that sounded like a call. He listened, but everything was silent except for the rumbling and cracking of the ice in the distance. Again he called, and this time there was an answering cry, and another, and another. Sprawley stood up and waved his paws, and then Teddy saw that the open water was dotted with heads of ice-mermen; there must have been ten or twelve ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... he has us'd in such Perfection, that it is said [104] none can ever be weary of reading them, tho they be never so long. Nor could Death it self, in immediate view before his Eyes, suppress his merry Humour, and hinder him from cracking Jests on the Scaffold; tho he was a Man of great Piety and Devotion, whereof all the World was convinced by his Conduct both in his Life and ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade; and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran, and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tired he was, Sir Charles found that it was quite impossible for him to sleep. The cracking of the rain upon his windows, the groaning trees in the park, and the wail of the wind among the chimneys and about the corners of the house were no doubt for something in a Londoner's sleeplessness. But the mysterious disappearance of Major Lashley was at ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... fragile bridge by the torrent of wild eloquence and ungovernable enthusiasm which Patience had accumulated in his desert. The vicar had to give way and fall back terrified upon himself. There he discovered that the shrine of his own science was everywhere cracking and crumbling to ruin. The new sun which was rising on the political horizon and making havoc in so many minds, melted his own like a light snow under the first breath of spring. The sublime enthusiasm of Patience; the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... delightful chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and Richard his one, and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and his old look of despair deepened as he tried to answer; but no word passed his parched lips, cracking now with fever and exhaustion. He only looked wildly in the Doctor's imploring eyes and shook ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the inflammable material to start an incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond badly scorching the door, and cracking a few of the stones by reason of the intense heat that was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... brought all his weight to bear upon it. There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of rasping. The ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... me, boys, if I hear cracking o' nuts, Or see you flicking acorns and what not While folks from other parishes observe, You'll hear on it when you don't look to. Tom And Jemmy and Roger, sing as loud's ye can, Sing as the maidens do, are they afraid? And ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... gunnery-lieutenant in her forward turret; and that this individual was doing his duty well was proved by the frequency with which his guns boomed out, sending shell and solid shot spattering against the heavily-armoured sides of the Chinese battleships, where they splintered and burst, cracking and starring the thick steel, but very seldom penetrating to their vitals, close ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... made the household jubilant till the stars came out, and were its only sentries, save the bright lights at its window-panes as of a camp-fire, and the suppressed chorusses of the domestic bivouac within, where apple toasting and nut cracking and country games shortened the winter shadows. Yet in this house, so peaceful by moonlight, murder had washed its spotted hands, and ministered to its satiated appetite. History—present in every nook in the broad ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... the indefinite continuance of war, threaten the future of our political horizon. We may see in a few months' time the very men who are leading the armies and the councils of the Southern confederacy again cracking the whip of their sharp and arrogant logic about the ears of the men who had conquered them in the field of battle; claiming to dictate every political measure; forcing the mould of their thought upon every form of opinion, and, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... haitians scatter way from in front dis store. Dis ain't no place for chillen, nohow. (gesture of shooing) Gwan! Thin out! Every time a grownperson open they mouf y'all right dere to gaze down they throat. Git! (The children exit sullenly right. In the silence that follows the cracking of Walter's peanut shells can be ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... descended, the dome vibrated beneath their feet. As long as the vibration remained they were safe, but when it felt like a thud—the metal would be cracking! ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... down in front of her. He stood and looked at her, involuntarily listening to the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds from the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping, being shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of ice as they broke against each other ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... than the examination of the leading characteristics of individual families as displayed through a series of generations. But it is a subject that from its very nature is more or less unapproachable, since it is but little that we know even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancing at the cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, the joys and griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals of those hard daubs and ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... substitute for gutta percha is even more acute than for artificial India rubber. A compound used in its stead for many purposes is known as French gutta percha. This possesses nearly all the properties of gutta percha. It may be frequently used for the same purposes and has the advantage of not cracking when exposed to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... inflation. However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the regions. The country is pinning its hopes for long-term growth ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... never fought a duel! He must have a fight with someone to prove his courage. It was a disgrace that he had no enemies, but he would try to make some when he returned to the Peninsula. Continuing these vagaries of his imagination, excited by the cracking detonations, he pretended an affair of honor. His adversary wounded him with the first shot and he fell. He still had his pistol in his hand; he must defend himself while stretched on the ground; and to the great scandal of his mother and of Mammy Antonia who thought him crazy as they ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the tattered tramp: "Ah, thin, step inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes, whose earth-coloured skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within; and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, on to the chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be the fire there, and git a taste of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... into foam and fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders, brandishing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery arrows, and cracking their whips amid thunder and lightning. They are the comrades of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the Howler, a fighting ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... been having short talks together at one time or another during the passage. I dare say he had read me like a book. There ain't much to me, except that I have never been tame, even when walking the pavement and cracking jokes and standing drinks to chums—ay, and to strangers, too. I would watch them lifting their elbows at my expense, or splitting their side at my fun—I can be funny when ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... told shall ... for over the battered masonry, in through the splintered doors, felling shadowy foes on every hand.... When well within-side ... the prowess of each unto himself ... tempest of pistol cracking ... bleeding deathfully ... ah, the killing is fast and desperate ... and not a candle over the pitiless fray.... Huddled together for a brief last stand, the Cossacks ... panic, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... performers could be content to risk their lives for the benefit of such a small and such an undistinguished audience. There was a trapeze troupe, however, who interested me. There was a girl with a stereotyped smile—like cracking nuts. There was a young man whose conceit took one's breath away. It was so hard to reconcile such preposterous vanity with the courage that he must have had. And there was a large, modest man who interested ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... afraid of going to Grandmamma, and I was most of all afraid of staying where I was. It seemed to be years and years before the light began to come a little; and the noises left off creaking, and dropping, and cracking, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... observed to Dr. Johnson, that it seemed strange that he, who has so often delighted his company by his lively and brilliant conversation, should say he was miserable. JOHNSON. 'Alas! it is all outside; I may be cracking my joke[928], and cursing the sun. Sun, how I hate thy beams[929]!' I knew not well what to think of this declaration; whether to hold it as a genuine picture of his mind[930], or as the effect of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... moment. Yes, that's right. And how can you say that my nose went in the air? I'm sure Mr. Taynton will agree with me that that is really libellous. And as for your being afraid to tell me you had bought a motor-car yourself, why, that is sillier than cracking nuts ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... rude awakening; his war-whoops gave place to yelps of dire distress, as he wheeled and made for home. But the Coyote could run all around him, and nipped him, here and there, and when he would, and seemed to be cracking a series of good jokes at Chink's expense, nor ever stopped till the ambitious one of boundless indiscretion was hidden under his ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rattled down the street, the driver standing at the back, cracking a whip; he wore an immense geranium flower stuck in the lapel of his coat. Firm as a rock he stood, bending back a little in the swaying cart. Andreas craned his neck to watch him all the way down the road, even after he had gone, listening ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... Thus, a certain fungus has the property of ejecting its seeds with great force and rapidity, and with a loud cracking noise, and yet it is no bigger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... malicious amusement, if he chose to take the trouble of climbing a tree to watch her, she would keep him employed up there as long as possible and see which would tire first. He was evidently getting cramped already, for the branches were cracking quite loudly, but she would not look up or show that she was in the least aware of him. And then suddenly a heavy body fell with a flop on the open book in her lap—and she realised with terror that it ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... surface an "all japan color" would, before night, resemble a map of the war in Egypt, but by adding varnish and a very little raw oil to the "japan color," making it of the same nature as the under surface, will prevent cracking. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... dread than I of catch-cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through darkness, wind, and rain,—the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disintegrate into a thousand flying timbers and twisted sheets of tin which soared upward and outward over their heads and into the night. As the rocking hills ceased echoing, the sound of the Vigilantes' rifles recurred like the cracking of dry sticks, then everywhere about the defenders the earth was lashed by falling debris while the iron ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Norton finds out that Davy hasn't dined; and then he orders up everything in the house he can think of, that is good, and makes him eat; and when he has eaten everything and drunk wine and they are cracking nuts, then Norton begins again about the piece of land; and the poor man is so comfortable now he is willing to sell anything he has got; and Norton gets it for his own price. Won't it ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... tumbled from my horse and tethered him stoutly to a tree. Over the wall and to the chapel door took another instant, and there, inside, at the rail, she knelt. I paused, as a sinner might, hesitating to mar with heart profane the devotions of a saint. My foot struck a cracking board in the entry, and drew her glance toward me. She sprang up as I entered, with a swift cry of surprise, and, as I fancied, some whit of gladness ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the knitting of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and the big piece of cake. She remembered how the two Sarahs had always been at daggers drawn. Her sister was much older than Sally Bolling and had always been critical of the lively girl who had repaid her by laughing at her and cracking ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... of the sunny weather and the springtime lassitude that is a luxury to masters but that slaves must overcome. The gangs went forth to clear the watercourses in advance of floods, whips cracking to inspire zeal. Wagon-loads of flowers, lowing milk- white oxen, white goats—even a white horse, a white ass—oil and wine in painted cards, whose solid wooden wheels screamed on their axles like demons in agony-threaded the streets to the temples, lest the ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy |
