"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... admiral would plump himself down with a great rattling of scabbard to await the infrequent tick of the little instrument ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... lives in peril, and what might have been their fate Had I sprung to the points that evening a tenth of a tick too late; And a cold and ghastly shiver ran icily through my frame As I fancied the public clamor, the trial, and bitter shame. I could see the bloody wreckage—I could see the mangled slain— And the picture was seared for ever, blood-red, on my heated brain. That moment my nerve was shattered, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... tick infests the small bamboo, and a more hateful insect I never encountered. The traveller cannot avoid these insects coming on his person (sometimes in great numbers) as he brushes through the forest; they get inside his dress, and insert the proboscis deeply without pain. Buried ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the gulf of time as I sit in my grandfather's chair and listen to the tick of my grandfather's clock I see a smaller but more picturesque London, in which I shot snipe in Battersea Fields, and the hoot of the owl in the Green Park was not yet drowned by the hoot of the motor-car—a London ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... chests, rude, low bedsteads, with home-made ticks filled with straw or pine needles. The best room may have had a carved oak chest, brought from England, a tent or field bedstead, with green baize, or white dimity curtains, and generous feather bed. The stout tick for this, the snow-white sheets, the warm flannel blankets, and heavy woollen rugs, woven in checks of black, or red, and white, or the lighter harperlet, were all the products of domestic wheel and loom. There were no carpets. The floors were sprinkled with fine, white sand, which, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... at Pepper hill, north of Verdun, where a battery of Rhode Island artillery rigged a twenty-foot rope to the lanyard of a .155 cannon, and every man in the company, from the captain to the cook, laid hold of it and waited. At the tick of eleven o'clock they gave that rope one mighty yank, all together, and the gun roared out the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick, said my friend, but thatd mean inquiries for you and for me, and Ive got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... could, past the Chinese cabinet and the pot-pourri jar till she got to the ante-room door. It was open, and now, knowing her way better, she hurried in. But what was the use? All was silent, save the tick-tick of the cuckoo clock in the corner. Oh, if only the cuckoo would come out and call the hour as usual, what a weight would ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... that hour of the afternoon when even the most industrious of grammar-school pupils feels his zeal for learning grow less with every tick of the clock. Isabel and Phebe, however, were never remarkable for their zeal. In fact, their teachers had never been able to decide whether they were more bright or more lazy. Both characteristics were so well developed that the hours they spent in the schoolroom were chiefly devoted to exploits ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Tick, tack! went the clock. Click, clack! went my tongue. I fear that quite half-an-hour must have passed, when a big boy, with an open face, blue eyes, and closely curling fair hair, burst in. On seeing us he exclaimed, "Hulloh!" and then stopped, I suspect in obedience to Weston's eyes, which ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... slave—black as ebony, where her skin was discoverable through its perfect incrustation of dirt—with a thick mat of frizzly wool upon her skull, which made the sole request she preferred to him irresistibly ludicrous:—'Massa, massa, you please to buy me a comb to tick in my head?' Mr. —— promised her this necessary of life, and I promised myself to give her the luxury of one whole garment. Mrs. —— has sent me the best possible consolation for the lost mutton, some lovely flowers, and these will ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... everything the doctor had said, an' green things, an' a whol' basket o' fruit an' two bottles o' port, an' more things besides. They was lots o' fixin's, too, that there wa'n't a mite o' nourishment in—for he wa'n't no more practical nor medicinal'n a wood-tick. But I knew how ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer. Two species of shorebirds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by devouring the North American fever tick. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... appreciate what a torment the different parasitical species of acarus or ticks are. On my first journey in Northern Brazil, I had my legs inflamed and ulcerated from the ankles to the knees from the irritation produced by a minute red tick that is brushed off the low shrubs, and attaches itself to the passer-by. This little insect is called the "Mocoim" by the Brazilians, and is a great torment. It is so minute that except by careful searching it cannot be perceived, and it causes an intolerable itching. If the skin were thickly ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... his meaning. He proceeded to tick off upon his ringers those particular instances in which he knew her to have had a share, and mentioned the names of the gentlemen. He omitted Drake's, however, and Clarice noticed the omission. For the rest she listened quite patiently until he came to an end. Then she asked gravely, 'Do you ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Undine of De La Motte Fouque. In his next novel, The Fortunes of Nigel, Scott formally renounced the mystic and the magical: "Not a Cock Lane scratch—not one bounce on the drum of Tedworth—not so much as the poor tick of a solitary death-watch in the wainscot." But Scott cannot banish spectres so lightly from his imagination. Apparitions—such as the Bodach Glas who warns Fergus M'Ivor of his approaching death in Waverley, or the wraith of a Highlander in ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... significance, and pregnant with immortal issues, he, too, in some measure may share in the prerogative of the timeless God, and to Him 'one day may be as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It is not the beat of the pendulum or the tick of the clock that measure time, but it is the deeds which we crowd into it, and the feelings and thoughts which it ministers to us. This passing life draws all its importance from the boundless eternal issues to which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... give me mine hat. [Alice gives it.] Now, take care of de house till I comes back: if de old woman comes before I gets home, tell her I am gone out mit de burgomaster on [par—par—tick—partickler](100) business.(101) ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... Instead, she was in Mrs. Newbolt's spare room, looking dreamily at the old French clock on the mantelpiece, whose tarnished gilt face glimmered between two slender black-marble columns; sometimes she counted the tick-tock of the slowly swinging pendulum; sometimes, toward dawn, she watched the foggy yellow daylight peer between the red rep curtains; but counting, and looking, and drowsing, she was glad to be alive. It was not until the next afternoon that she began to be faintly mortified at being alive. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... call that mean of father,' said Desmond indignantly. 'You can't go tick with a secretary. It means cash. There'll never be anything for you, Pam, and nothing for the garden. The two old fellows that were here last week have been turned off, Forest ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kinds of Beans are cultivated by farmers. The principal are the Horse-Bean or Tick-Bean; the Early Mazagan; and the Long-pods. Beans grow best in stiff clayey soils, and in such they are the most convenient crop. The season for planting is either the winter or spring month, as the weather affords opportunity. They are either drilled, broad-cast sown, or ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... with our wholesale department (of course—ha! ha! my wife's father ought to know how I'm getting on), so you're welcome to look over my books. Our trade is a cash trade so far as our retail trade goes, and we're mighty careful who gets tick from us on the wholesale trade. We're developing ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... William,' cried the excited soldier. He threw himself on the legs of the bound man, and managed to fasten the knees. Then again there was stillness. They could hear the clock tick. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... surely than frenzy, and it should be preferable to think him sound of heart, sincere though mistaken. Cecilia could not decide upon what she dared wish for his health's good. Friend and foe were not further separable within her bosom than one tick from another of a clock; they changed places, and next his friend was fearing what his foe had feared: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man I should like to marry when I am forty-three. Do you know what I mean? He would be quite charming if one were forty-three. He's quite charming now, if it comes to that, and I'm dreadfully fond of him, but he thinks about me too much; he's too devoted. I hear his devotion going on tick, tick, all the time, like the best clocks. That's one reason for not ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... gave a sardonic smile. "Don't," he said, "again allude to any such thing as selling on tick! Some time back a partner in our establishment got several ounces of goods for his relatives on credit, and up to this date the bill hasn't as yet been settled; the result being that we've all had to make the amount ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... would have served for a bridge. In a sombre corner on the first landing, stood a gruff old giant of a clock, with a preposterous coronet of three brass balls on his head; whom few had ever seen—none ever looked in the face—and who seemed to continue his heavy tick for no other reason than to warn heedless people from running into him accidentally. It had not been papered or painted, hadn't Todgers's, within the memory of man. It was very black, begrimed, and mouldy. And, at the top of the staircase, was an old, disjointed, rickety, ill-favoured ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... I hain't got no home, no father, no mother, no nothin', just me, and I wants to learn the tick tick business. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... form is the tick-tick-tick of a watch or metronome. But such mechanical regularity is comparatively rare, and in general the temporal rhythms are all highly complex composites of sounds and silences. Their highest manifestations are music and language. The ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... sank into the rocker, with a deep feather cushion in the seat, and a thinner feather cushion tied half-way up the back. After the more active duties of her housekeeping were done, she sat every day in this chair with her knitting or sewing, and let the clock tick the long hours of her life away, with no more apparent impatience of them, or sense of their dulness, than the cat on the braided rug at her feet, or the geraniums in the pots at the sunny window. "Are you pretty well to-day?" ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... this request to some person in authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness that one would much rather have sat on ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Tick, tack, tock! Only look at the clock. He works away the whole day long, And every hour he sings a song. Ding, dong, ding! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... deep den of all. There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall: Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate, 530 Yet all is still within and desolate. Beset with plainful gusts, within ye hear No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won. Just when the sufferer begins to burn, Then it is free to him; and from an urn, Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught— Young Semele such richness never quaft ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... was pulled down over the foot-board, an' I could see the slit in the tick where they poke in their hands to stir up the straw. I put the trap with the mouse in it, in there among the straw, an' then I went down just as quiet as I could, an' got old Tom ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... darkest days, de sun ob joy an' peace hab broke fru de clouds, an' sent him blessed rays down inter our hearts. We started jess like two young saplin's you's seed a growin' side by side in de woods. At fust we seemed way 'part, fur de brambles, an' de tick bushes, an' de ugly forns—dem war our bad ways—war atween us; but love, like de sun, shone down on us, and we grow'd. We grow'd till our heads got above de bushes; till dis little branch an' dat little branch—dem war our holy feelin's—put out ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... twenty-one years of age, but what a difference between us! He was accustomed to an existence regulated by the graduated tick of the clock; never having seen anything of life, except that part of it which lies between an obscure room on the fourth floor and a dingy government office; sending his mother all his savings—that farthing of human joy which the hand of toil clasps so greedily; having no thought ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... 'Whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'Tis worse than whistlin' the Dead March in barricks. An' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all! I take shame for you. You're no better than a Pagin—you an' your firin'-parties an' your glass-eyes. Won't ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... room stood out clearly to his uncaring sight; the snap of the fire, the tick of the clock smote like separate reports upon his hearing; and while he lived he was to recall, when he smelled burning pine, this tense moment. Presently he rose unsteadily and reached out for his coat and hat like a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in the manor-house, we spent our last hour at Brandon; for Gadabout was to sail away next day. It was a colonial hour; for Brandon clocks tick off no other, nor would any other seem ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Brace," rejoined the Coromantee, whose opposition had been only slight. "Dar am troof in wha you hab 'ledged. Ef you say set de sail, I say de same. Dar am a lubbly breeze bowlum. 'Pose we 'tick up de mass dis berry ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... sulkily in the great open fireplace, throwing out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an old and pompous clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of the birds beyond the closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedale with its chin on the head of a lion ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... over all that a million times? My mind's sore workin' with it; there ain't a thought in me that don't ache from it. But David's right. We've got to part. I put your things in this poke here," she said, and she gave him a bag made from an old pillow tick, with a few clothes lumping it half full. "I'll carry the baby, Laban." She pulled back from him with the child in her arms. "Or no, you can carry her; you'll have to leave her, too, and you've got a right to all the good you can get of her now. Don't touch anything. I'll stay ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... lanterns explode, stoopid. Ships' lanterns don 't. Captain, I feels as mournful as when Flint's clock did n't tick no more and we knowed he was took by the ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... in that cursed room?" he mutters, striding wildly among the sand-hills. "The very tick of the clock was enough to drive one mad in those long fearful pauses—solemn and silent as death! Can't the fools do anything for her? What is the use of nurses and doctors, and all the humbug of medicine and science? My darling! my darling! ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... was silence. Teresa had returned to the kitchen, the door closing with a bang to demonstrate her displeasure. Nothing could be heard but the tick-tack of the clock, and the sound of the turning pages, as Paula, in spite of her tears, looked ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to Dickey to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts exactly as if he were considering whether he should answer 'yes' ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... an ostrich egg tops the conical roofs of the huts, from Damerghou to this place. I showed the people my watch, and put it to their ears that they might hear it tick, tick; and I may observe a singularity on this. The people did not say, "Oh! how it ticks!" but "Kal, kal!" so that kal, kal, is the sound which we express by tick, tick, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... bright enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest, slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white horse stood between the banks of the arroyo. There was ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... you are well again, though I never looked on that deafness very seriously; but if you like hearing watches tick, and boots creak, and plates clatter, so be it to you, for many and many a year to come. I think I should so like to be deaf, mostly, not expected to answer anybody in society, never startled by a bang, never tortured by a railroad whistle, never hearing the nasty cicadas in ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of her Brown. Some months afterwards, Alick met another ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Visiting every open blossom, he loads up with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the blossoms of their sweets. He passes on undismayed; there are more flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red, show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open the wing petals from the standard. Instantly ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... odd fellows, I confess," added the beer-swigger; "and you stick to your opinions like a tick." ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... clock, tick it never so slowly, must bring round the hour when she may go down to the river to meet her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em'ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward, his body rigid, danger written large in his burning ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... papers arrived and was counted, and the name of a subscriber scribbled in an abbreviated form on each copy. Some copies had to be delivered by the errand boy; these were handed to the errand boy, and a tick made against each subscriber in the column for the week: other copies were called for by the subscriber, and as each of these was taken away, similarly a tick had to be made against the name of its subscriber. Some copies were paid for in cash in the shop, some were paid in cash to the office ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... as he did every thing, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... think he'll do? The neighbors are comin' for fifty miles round, two is comin' up a hundred miles, and you can't—Jinny, you can't do it. I bin sick of answerin' questions all these years 'bout you and Jake, an' I ain't goin' through it again. I've told more lies than there's straws in a tick." ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... time we'll have, what a rich new life." Her deep sweet voice was a little unsteady. "Listen, dearie, how quiet it is." And for some moments nothing was heard but the sober tick-tick of the clock on the mantle. "I wonder what we're ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... single plant, not even a lichen, grows on this islet; yet it is inhabited by several insects and spiders. The following list completes, I believe, the terrestrial fauna: a fly (Olfersia) living on the booby, and a tick which must have come here as a parasite on the birds; a small brown moth, belonging to a genus that feeds on feathers; a beetle (Quedius) and a woodlouse from beneath the dung; and lastly, numerous spiders, which I suppose prey on these small attendants and scavengers of the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the old, quiet parlour (as if he could not have found the way thither himself), and there left him. It was very still. Nothing broke the silence but the sleepy tick of the clock, and the sound of some one (Jakes, perhaps) raking gravel on the garden path. Everything was unaltered. There was the little bust of Minerva that Barbara had once adorned with a paper bonnet; the fretsaw bookcase that the two boys had made at school; and the quaint little glass-fronted ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... disobedience"—I've heard it attributed, dammy, to Milton. Well, it's lucky for them that it's not worth my while, as I may say, to break spears With the hirelings, forsooth, of the press who assert that Othello was Shakespeare's. When he that can run, sir, may read—if he borrows the book, or goes on tick— In my poems the bit that describes how the Hellespont joins the Propontic. There are men, I believe, who will tell you that Gray wrote the whole of The Bard— Or that I didn't write half the Elegy, Bill, in a Country Churchyard. When ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... dined, and supped in one has not cheery visions of its thrift, its warmth, its coolness? The noon-mark on its floor was a dial that told of some of the happiest days; thereby did we right up the shortcomings of the solemn old clock that tick-tacked in the corner, and whose ticks seemed mysterious prophecies of unknown good yet to arise out of the hours of life. How dreamy the winter twilight came in there,—as yet the candles were not lighted,—when the crickets chirped around the dark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... didn't disturb us, after all," remarked Eva Allen. "It's a wonder those boys didn't put tick-tacks on the windows ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... get our host to understand that we are much in want of fresh meat. Sam Baker is making himself agreeable to the young people, and the plan he has hit upon to amuse them is to show them his watch, and let them hear it tick. Truly, I have seldom seen a happier family group than this Eskimo household, under ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... fall, and my hold of you were to give way, I should be down after you in a less moment than a lady's watch can tick, and catch you long before you had reached ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... located the slumbering Watts, and turning toward the opposite side of the room, proceeded cautiously through the blackness until her feet came in contact with her "shake-down," which consisted of a pair of blankets placed upon a hay tick. The odor of the blankets was anything but fresh, but she sank to the floor, and with much effort and torturing of strained muscles, succeeded in removing her boots and jacket and throwing herself upon the bed. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... sureness of touch. A dozen of Mendelssohn's pupils could have done as well or better. In the andante their is neither grace nor feeling: the music does not flow spontaneously, but is got along by a clockwork tick-tick rhythm. The best stuff is in the finale. Here we find at least sturdiness ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... come back to my peaceful, if narrow, quarters, if it is too late to write to you, I always do a little counting. On the full list of the Academie I tick those of whom I am sure, and those who stand by Dalzon. Then I do various sums in subtraction and addition. It is an excellent amusement, as you will see when I show you. As I was telling you, Dalzon has the 'dukes,' but the writer of the 'House of Orleans,' who is received at Chantilly, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Him for it all—heights of glory, depths of tribulation; thanked Him for whatsoever Infinite Love had given in the days of that dark, dark year now ending. The clock gave a warning tick—it was going; a moment, and it would be gone forever. Into his heart came a great purpose—the purpose to leave the past with the past, and in the new year go out to a new life—a life of love for all the world, of service for ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... had something to show but Danny. Tommy had his mouse's nest; Patsey had the hawk's nest; Bugsey had a fungus. Danny was the only empty-handed one, but Pearlie cheered him up wonderfully by predicting that he would get the very first wood-tick ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... great lady once," said she, "though I don't look like it, my dear. These fal-lals have been over as dainty a body as your own in their day; and that was fifteen years ago to a tick. She gave 'em all to me when she took to the black, and now they shall go to my son's wife. Think of that, you who come from who knows who or where. If they fit you not like a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... quite true that a hundred years are but as a day in the life of a nation, are but as a tick of the clock to the long-drawn aeons in which this planet hardened itself for the habitation of man, and man accommodated himself to his habitation; but they are all we have, and we must make the best of them. Perhaps, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... [Symbol: tick mark] A Chapter on Provincial or local organization is to be inserted under Chapter ..., providing for certain powers and rights to be given to local governments with the residual power left in the hands of the central government. The exact text ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... backwards and forwards by the lakeside. Encouragement was all very well; but... "Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not?" The eternal question went tick-tack, tick-tack, to the rhythm of his march. He glared at vacancy, and tried hard to make ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... searchlights swept the sea and sky, shut themselves off, and opened anew. Signals in Morse sparkled with their dots and dashes. From the distant trenches star-shells rose in the air, and seemed to hang suspended for a space, while we caught the rapid tick-tick of far-away ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... it for ten years more. Then your Aunt Hattie's hens are so obliging that they keep me from the worry of finding ticks at shearing time. All the year round, I let them run among the sheep, and they nab every tick they see." ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... its own silk, and then constructs a lid that closes inevitably, as the insect leaves its house. Here too are the scorpions. The last table of the series (12) is covered also with varieties of the spider, including the land and shepherd spiders; the African scarlet tick, and the centipedes. The visitor has now completed his survey of the contents of this room, and should at once pass forward in an easterly direction, traverse the British zoological room, which he has already ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... the doings of the sun upon the sky—and then there was pushing, and probing, and tossing, and pulling, and thumping, and kneading of knuckles, till the rib of every feather was aching; and then (like dough before the fire) every well-belabored tick was left to yeast itself a while. Winnie, the maid, was as strong as a post, and wore them all out in bed-making. Carroway heard the beginning of this noise, but none of it meddled at all with his comfort; he lay back nicely in a happy fit of chair, stretched ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... resigned smile, but it made Elinor visibly nervous; not actively nervous as in the case of annoyance, but mournful and weary, as one often becomes after many days of rain, when all one's gloomy thoughts seem to pour down upon one with the rain; or as at the idiotically consoling tick-tack of a clock, when one sits and grows incurably tired of one's self; or at watching the flowers of the wall-paper, when the same chain of worn-out dreams clanks about against one's will in the brain and the links are ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, the lights and colours, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... when I see it," pursued Farr. He did not look at Citizen Drew. He was talking as much to himself as to his companion. "Spirit of a crusader harnessed by every-day habit! Righteousness in a rut! Achievement timed to the tick of the clock. But, once in, how ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... cruel, unexpected, unmerited desertion. At first Lysbet tried to talk to her; but she soon saw that the effort to answer was beyond Katherine's power, and conversation was abandoned. So for an hour, an hour of speechless sorrow, they sat. The tick of the clock, the purr of the cat, the snap of a breaking thread, alone relieved the tension of silence in which this act of suffering was completed. Its atmosphere was becoming intolerable, like that of a nightmare; and Lysbet was feeling that she must ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule time on the tick of the watch, as she had done from Seattle. All Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru which sailed the following morning, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... brave smiles, hand in hand. And now their chatter became fast and furious, to drown the clock's impatient tick. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... raise in. It was jis' a one-room log house. Dey was a ol' Geo'gia hoss bed in it. It was up pretty high and us chillun had to git on a box to git in dat bed. De mattress was mek outer straw. Sometime dey mek 'em in co'n sacks and sometime dey put 'em in a tick what dey weave on de loom. I had a aunt what was de weaver. She weave all de time for ol' marster. She uster ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... high above them, driving them with a lash that their chained limbs may not resist. Such men, if they try to explain that torment, can often point to the very day and even hour of their sudden slavery; at such a tick of the clock the clouds gather, the very houses and street are weighted with a cold malignity, thoughts, desires, impulses are all checked, perverted, driven and counter-driven by a mysterious force. Let no man who has not known such hours and the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... he nothin'. All go tee tick—oh, dis pic'nee no keep till one minit. Me no t'ink about ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the train would soon be in, not merely that she might soon have a letter; nor even that it, the clock, had seen Mr. Linden since she had. All these thoughts mingled, but with them something else. They would tick on, those minutes, relentlessly, no matter what they were to bring or take away,—steady, unalterable, unchecked,—like the old idea of Fate. She tried to be steady too—tried to have that fixedness ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... up their emetic, And thirty thousand muskets flung their pills Like hail, to make a bloody diuretic. Mortality! thou hast thy monthly bills; Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come;—but all may yield To the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... ye, Boyes; Tis but a chiding. Let the plough play to day, ile tick'lt out Of the ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... Oh, merry was I that winter night, And gleeful our little one's din, And tender the grace of my darling's face As we watched the new year in. But a voice—a spectre's, that mocked at love— Came out of the yonder hall; "Tick-tock, tick-tock!" 't was the solemn clock That ruefully croaked to all. Yet what knew we of the griefs to be In the year we longed to greet? Love—love was the theme of the sweet, sweet dream I fancied might ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... thus enabled to understand the allusions I had already heard to Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," or vice versa. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... into sympathetic hands. Today Queen Anne chairs and piecrust tables grace the parlor. From the hall comes the vibrating tick-tock of a fine old clock. Logs blaze cheerfully in open fireplaces, the flames reflected in old and polished silver. The hall window frames Catherine Brown's garden, which is divided into three sections, one shut off from the other by wall or fence, making private ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... the little girls gazed speechlessly at the wreck; there was silence in the room, except for the steady tick-tack of the clock. Then Ethelwyn turned a terrified ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... drew up the worn gold chain that hung around her neck, under her gown, and, with the key that dangled from it, wound the watch. In an hour or so, probably, it would stop, but it was pleasant to hear the cheerful little tick while she waited. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by "old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... ideas were running through his head and troubling him greatly, there came a "tick, tick" from the other side, then more of them, but they meant nothing. Some one was there who could not ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... left where they fell, to the probable loss of some poor musician. The clock occupying the center of the mantelpiece alone gave evidence of life. It had been wound for the wedding and had not yet run down. Its tick-tick came faint enough, however, through the darkness, as if it too had lost heart and would soon lapse into the deadly quiet of its ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... a clock, so tall that it was almost impossible to get it into the house. The old man was extremely proud of it, and found it very good company. He would lie awake nights to hear it tick. One night the clock got out of order, and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "Tick," sounded the wheel and the sound reverberated like sudden thunder in his ears. His hand was iron, and he raised it slightly. "Six," said the wheel—his ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... his chair as though electrified. Watch how, regardless of the laws of buttons, he frantically tears his trowsers from his limbs; he has him! no he hasn't!—yes he has!—no—no, positively he cannot get him off. It is a tick no bigger than a grain of sand, but his bite is like a red-hot needle boring into the skin. If all the royal family had been present, he could not have refrained from tearing ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... softly that she did not hear him. There was no sound but the drowsy tick of the great clock in the hall and the low song ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... "I've Irish blood in me, old chappie," said he, "and that means a natural taste for amateur conspiracy and general devilment. But don't let's stay jawing here any longer. We're both due for a good jaunt ashore, and there's a bran-new tick here to guarantee us every mortal thing (bar one) which we want. And for that one, which is almost always a ready-money commodity, it will do us good to wait till we've tapped ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... laboured breathing of the spent bronco, the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch of wind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. But through all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, Lockwood had heard, and yet distinguished, the click of a horse's hoof drawing near, and the horse was at ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... far To every opening mind Than Trade, or Shares, or Peace, or War, To senior humankind; When ribbons of outrageous hues Were worn with honest pride, When much was talked of boats and crews, When Proctors were defied: When Tick was in its early bloom, When Schools were far away, As vaguely distant as the tomb, Nor more regarded—they! When arm was freely linked with arm Beneath the College limes, When Sunday grinds possessed a charm Denied to College Rhymes: When ices were ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... shaking the ground with its tread; but so implicit was the travellers' trust in the vigilance of their mechanical and tireless watch, that they slept on as calmly and unconcernedly as though they had been in their beds at home, while the tick was as constant and regular as a sentry's march. The wires of course did not protect them from creatures having wings, and they ran some risk of a visitation from the blood-sucking bats. The far-away volcanoes occasionally sent up sheets of flame, which in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Shirley's straining ears came the tick-ticking of an alarm clock, from the corner of the room to his right. He dare not look at it. Warren's eyes grew ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... whispered, picking out carefully the trails of four pairs of footsteps which had passed to where they stood, evidently coming to an end. "Yes, sah; dose niggah foots. Carry Massa Allen. All 'tick down ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... come home from Muldro and they try give you sumpin to make start on like cow and ting. They ain't treat you like a beast. Ain't take no advance o' you. What the Cap'n do he do for you good. I b'long Dr. Ward. I entitle to bring him two string o' bird. Rice bird come like jest as tick as dat (thick as that) ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... between the beams. A gray squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera's mother had removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in the house. Ameera's room and the other one where Tota had lived were heavy with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... over the judge's seat—lined with scarlet baize and surmounted by the royal arms—the scarlet cushions of the bench, and the large, circular clock in the gallery, which was embellished with a gilded border and asserted its importance by a loud, aggressive tick. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Herschels, with their charts Of all those fire-mists, those faint nebulae, Those hosts of drifting universes, led Our new discoverers to yet mightier laws Enthroned above all worlds. We have not found them, And yet—only the intellectual fool Dreams in his heart that even his brain can tick In isolated measure, a centre of law, Amidst the whirl of universal chaos. For law descends from law. Though all the spheres Through all the abysmal depths of Space were blown Like dust before a colder darker wind Than even Lucretius dreamed, yet if one thought, One gleam of law ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... Virginia Richmond walked up and down the floor of her home filled with vague alarms. Although on the next day she discovered, through an inquiry made by the town marshal, on what adventure the boys had gone, she could not quiet herself. All through the night she lay awake hearing the clock tick and telling herself that Seth, like his father, would come to a sudden and violent end. So determined was she that the boy should this time feel the weight of her wrath that, although she would not allow the marshal to interfere ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... the evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the tick of a little clock worked themselves into ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains; One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there in half a tick." ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... What held her scared, I saw a man— A fat man with dull eyes aleer— Within the shadow of the van; And I was on the point to rise To send him spinning 'mid the wheels And stop his leering grin with mud ... And would have done it in a tick ... When, suddenly, alive with fright, She started, with red, parted lips, As though she guessed we'd come to grips, And turned her black eyes full on me ... And as I looked into their light My heart forgot the lust of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of the clock, whose pendulum and wheels stopped one day, appalled by the discovery that they would have to move and tick over three million times a year for many wearisome years, but resumed work again when reminded that they would only have to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... sick, He slept, and dreamt that the clock's "tick, tick," Was one of the Fates, with a long sharp knife, Snicking off bits ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... tick in the up-stairs hall forty years ago—I remember—" Grandma stopped as if a sudden thought had struck her. She dropped an old faded lamp mat and a rag rug and came over to look at the face of what had been an old friend. Many and many a time ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... travels with me everywhere And chirrups like a cricket; As if it said with anxious air, "Don't lose your tick-tick-ticket!" ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the Blue Ridge, no matter how humble the fare, where man, woman, or child offered apology for anything, their surroundings or the food and hospitality given to the stranger under their roof. "You're welcome to what we've got," is the invariable greeting—though the bed be a crude shuck tick shared with the children of the family, the fare cornbread ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... worth to venture even to knock at the door. So, yawning heavily, he dozed on his bench in the hall,—woke with a start and dozed again,—while the clock slowly ticked away the minutes till with a dull clang the hour struck One. Then on again went the steady and wearisome tick-tick of the pendulum, for a quarter of an hour, half an hour,—and three- quarters,—till the utterly fatigued valet was about to knock down a few walking-sticks and umbrellas, and make a general noise of reminder to his master as to how the time was going, when, to his great ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... silence followed. I could hear them slowly dripping out of eternity in the tick of a watch near me. I felt the stare of many eyes invisible to me. A broad beam of bright light shot through the gloom, resting full upon my face. I started back upon the strong hands behind me. Then I felt my muscles tighten as I began to measure the ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... apparently blank wall of steel and deftly manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface. "This is to keep the passengers where they belong," he explained, as a section of the wall swung backward in a short arc and slid smoothly aside. "We will now proceed to see what makes it tick." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... with the whiskey, I told you before. Not a sound could we hear of Godfrey or of my father. Only the rapid, calling and calling,—I mind it well that night. Ay, and well I mind the striking of the great clock,—tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,—I listened and I dreamed on it till I doubted but it was the beating of ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... wept my eye to see the timber planks That hid our ruins; many a day I cried, Ah me! I fear they never will rebuild it! Till on one eve, one joyful Monday eve, As along Charles-street I prepared to walk. Just at the corner, by the pastrycook's, I heard a trowel tick against a brick. I looked me up, and straight a parapet Uprose at least seven inches o'er the planks. Joy to thee, Drury! to myself I said: He of the Blackfriars' Road, who hymned thy downfall In loud ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... gun. Not a breath was drawn in the room. Hands remained frozen in air in the midst of a gesture. Lips which had parted to speak did not close. The steady voice of the clock broke into the silence—a dying space between every tick. For the second time in his life Tex ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... seed carried in a pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. Theirs is indeed a by hook or by crook system. The scalloped, jointed pod, where the seeds lie concealed, has minute crooked bristles, which catch in the clothing of man or beast, so that every herd of sheep, every dog, every man, woman, or child who passes through ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Lightship before the Agnes begins that monotonous heave-and-drop stunt. Course, it ain't any motion worth mentionin', but somehow it sort of surprises you to find that it keeps up so constant. It's up and down, up and down, steady as the tick of a clock; and every time you glance over the rail or through a porthole you see it's quite a ride you take. I didn't mind goin' up a bit; it's that blamed feelin' of bein' let down ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... matter. He was sent out again directly. After that, with Aunt Lucy to assist, they hurriedly packed what few things might be taken. The costly relics of Arlington Street were untouched, and the French clock was left on the mantel to tick all the night, and for days to come, in a silent and forsaken room; or perhaps to greet impassively the King's officers when they broke in at the door. But I caught my lady in the act of wrapping up the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... George, "what makes you call that great clumsy dog 'Watch'? A watch goes 'tick, tick,' as busy as can be all the time; and this dog is a ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... Labradormen put out at this season for the northerly fishing. And while, sheltered from the rising wind, the kind men-folk of our harbor talked with my uncle and me on Eli Flack's stage, there came into the tickle from Topmast Harbor, in quest of water, a punt and a man, being bound, I think, for Jimmie Tick's Cove. 'Twas by him reported that a maid of gentle breeding had come alone in a punt to Topmast in the night. And her hair? says I. She had hair, and a wonderful sight of it, says he. And big, blue eyes? says I. She had eyes, says he; an' she had a nose, so far as he could ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... bar-room of their village for exactly three days; when, "dead broke," they took to the gulches again, to search for more. "Yer oughter hev happened through here with that instrumint of yourn about that time, young fellow; yer might hev kept as full as a tick till they war busted," remarked a slouchy-looking old fellow whose purple-tinted nose plainly indicated that he had devoted a good part of his existence to the business of getting himself "full as a tick" every time he ran ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
