"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... precious stones pounded up to make a sea beach. On the north side only was there barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the bright things of life—what ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
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... pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens yet longer to hold out, reminding ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
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... Lizzie read them a chapter 'of suthin' outer the Bible,' if they could have the rest of the day for their usual Sunday recreations—euchre or kangarooing. I never thought Lizzie would turn out to be a crank, but a crank she is, and I'm afraid Westonley is not at all a happy man, though he yields to ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
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... set in firm determination, and she obeyed instructions without a word. After she had stalled the car several times, and Bob had gotten out to crank ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
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... hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me. Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I hev. An' beggin' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
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... to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green coat. From cigarette ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
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... tool steels, in which it has been used as a partial or complete substitute for tungsten. Its steel-hardening qualities are more effective than those of tungsten, but it is more difficult to control metallurgically. It has been used in piston rods and crank shafts for American airplanes. Its use in tool steel is mainly confined to Europe, where its metallurgical application is in a more advanced stage than in the United States. Molybdenum is added to steel either as powdered ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
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... on, "no intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
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... I've asked myself a hundred times. Was it a sliding panel or a secret door? Or was he simply some antiquarian crank who wanted to prove that the Abbey was of Norman origin, or built on a Roman foundation? How I wish I hadn't forgotten his name! When I heard that Pendlemere had been turned into a school I begged my aunt to send me ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
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... re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
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... cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat ...
— Gold • Stewart White
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... burning personal conviction. But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort of crank—certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vegetarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant something quite other than was meant ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
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... eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdroeckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
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... was awakened by hearing some music. He looked out in the street, and there he saw a hand-organ man grinding away at the crank which made the nice music. Mappo liked it very much. It reminded him a ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
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... single voice is pitched one sixteenth of a note too high. For me, I lean out of my window on summer nights enraptured over the organ-man who turns poor lost Lilian Dale round and round with his inexorable crank. It does not disturb me that his organ wheezes and sputters and grunts. Indeed, there is for me absolutely no wheeze, no sputter, no grunt. I only see dark eyes of Italy, her olive face, and her gemmed and lustrous hair. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
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... Deford will be here, too. She has heard I entertained lords and ladies in London and is anxious to see how I do it. I'll show her how I don't. I'm an old crank who tries to ride rough-shod over everybody, she says, and I spend much too much money on my table; but if I do it she don't mind eating my good things. Don't she? Well, she'll get a chance to-night. In Miss Patty Moore's millinery ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
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... not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
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... always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow came ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
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... "What a crank the old chap must have been!" continued Guy. "Why didn't he leave it in his will to be ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
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... Paul, seizing an oar, prepared to attack. Russ called to his rowers to be ready to rescue the girls and the young actor if necessary, and then, with the desire for a good film ever uppermost in his mind, he continued to grind away at the camera crank. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
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... been surrounded, especially that portion thereof which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the one in which she appeared on the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
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... "'You cold-blooded crank,' I said to him, as I waved the torch. 'I admire your devotion to science, but are you waiting for that thing to ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
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... imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a "notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the headline writer who announced her as a "modern ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
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... before, Ashe Marson had realized that he must forego those morning exercises which had become a second nature to him, or else defy London's unwritten law and brave London's mockery. He had not hesitated long. Physical fitness was his gospel. On the subject of exercise he was confessedly a crank. He decided ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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... vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
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... one thing more than another that hardens the lot of the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
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... "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get back ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
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... measures for the advancement of manufactures. The following resolution was passed: "Resolved that the introduction of spinning-jennies, as is practiced in England, into private families is strongly recommended, since one person can manage by hand the operation of a crank that turns ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
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... than any one else about this matter," Nigel urged,—"more, even, than I thought it advisable to mention at the inquest—and I beg you to listen to me, Mr. Mervin Brown. I know that you considered my uncle to be in some respects a crank, because he was far-seeing enough to understand that under the seeming tranquillity abroad there is a universal and ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
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... lips, invariably his dollars; We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, my common ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
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... an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It's the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—never the crank. This ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
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... British capitalists owned all the money in the world and that at a given signal they would draw the money out of America and the working men here would starve to death in twenty-nine days. It seemed that some crank had fasted that many days in order to get accurate statistics showing just how long the working man could hope to last after England pushed the button ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
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... humanity as well. He also presented very practical estimates of the cost of establishing the line under consideration. The committee again recommended that $30,000 be appropriated for the construction of a Washington-Baltimore line. The politicians had come to look upon Morse as a crank, and it was extremely difficult for his adherents to secure favorable action in the House. Many a Congressman compared Morse and his experiments to mesmerism and similar "isms," and insisted that if the Government gave funds for ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
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... assassin's knife were spoken of by approvers as persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their 'removal.' In Sussex it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may be 'tight,' or 'primed,' or 'crank,' or 'concerned in liquor,' nay, it may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: 'Pransus' and 'potus,' in like manner, as every Latin scholar ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
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... the range on the road where the trucks had to pass, and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no chance if he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done for. A man driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and stopped his truck, to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a shell struck his truck and smashed ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
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... the crew like pedlers with their packs Altho' it were too dear to pay for eggs; Walk crank along with coffin on their backs While in their arms ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
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... your prehistoric races, Professor!" he growled. "A whole car-load o' rubbish like this wouldn't be worth a nickel t' anybody but a scientific crank like you. If this is th' sort o' stuff that that old king o' yours thought was worth hidin', I guess he must 'a' been off his head. But that pot may 'a' got in by mistake. Before I get too much down on ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
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... motive. The majority took it as an eccentric move, and expressed regret in one form and another that a man of such marked intellectual power as Mr. Strong seemed to possess lacked balance and good judgment. Some called him a crank. The people in the tenement district were too much absorbed in their sufferings and selfishness to show any demonstration. It remained to be seen whether they would be any better touched by him ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
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... says she won't marry me if she has to live with you. She's afraid of you. I told her you wouldn't interfere with her, but she wasn't satisfied. It's your own fault, Eunice. You've always been so queer and close that people think you're an awful crank. Victoria's young and lively, and you and she wouldn't get on at all. There isn't any question of turning you out. I'll build a little house for you somewhere, and you'll be a great deal better off there than you would be here. So don't ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
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... the stars came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment is, I can not forbear saying that this talking to the dead ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
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... not at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
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... alleyway into the engine-room, and striking on a grating, dropped directly in front of the forward engine, where it burst, neatly fracturing both the bolts that held the connecting-rod to the forward crank. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
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... you can, Tom!" begged Mr. Damon. "We'll catch the scoundrels now. Speed up the motor! Oh, if I only had my automobile now. Bless my crank shaft, but one can go so much faster on land than ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
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... only one side of it," Cressler went on, heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes, I know I am a crank on speculating. I'm going to preach a little if you'll let me. I've been a speculator myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am talking about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
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... use asking me hypocritical questions, Rashkin?" Abe replied. "Mawruss would no more touch it as I would. You don't know what a crank I got it for a partner, Rashkin. If I would just hint that I wanted to buy real estate, y'understand, that feller would go all up in the air. And even if he would buy it with me yet, and we should lose maybe a little money, I would ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
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... a few steps from the door, and he noticed that a private automobile was speeding down the street from the same direction as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was starting with the crank. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
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... wandered here and there, And picked of the bloomy brere, She chanced to espy A shepherd sitting on a bank, Like chanticleer he crowed crank, {94f} And ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
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... the moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate, the entrepreneurs of discord—every crank in the world had something to say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the United States would put itself ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
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... situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
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... you, then. There's your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
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... over and began carelessly working the grindstone with his left foot on the treadle. "I know what I'll do," he thought. "Each night I'll come out and tie the crank of this thing to the stand with a piece of thin black cotton; then I shall soon find out if any one comes and works here at night, for if they do, the thread will be ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
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... well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
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... the guv'nor said it was important, too. You boobs had better crank up your skates and make fast time. Guv'nor won't be at his ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
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... rejoicing, as at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules or horses; another is ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
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... mind, the spell of their singing raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
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... abstinence. Won't allow any literature with the least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid came to me, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
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... "Oh, he's a crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn't! Ah, he's ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic press operated by one man, who does nothing ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
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... man with the camera began turning a crank on one side, and a low whirring noise blended softly with the roar of the rushing water. Hiram saw dripping men and women dancing about like maniacs before the ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
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... Jarley Bangs had but little more to say. The boys had left the touring car, and now the man jumped inside, saw to it that everything was in order, and then asked Spouter to crank ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
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... 'phone.) Some crank tried to shoot him up. Mr. Fallon fired back and killed him. (Pause.) No! Mr. Fallon killed him! (Pause.) Of course, in self-defense, you fool, of course, in self-defense! (KELLY slams back the receiver, and rising quickly, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
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... observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
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... exactly what is the matter. Their bellwether is an old deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a forty-horsepower crank." ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
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... dun'no'! She's an awful crank. She just loves them Injuns, they say. But I, fer one, draw the line at holdin' 'em in my lap. I don't b'lieve in mixin' folks up that way. Preach to 'em if you like, but let 'em keep ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
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... actor, a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he conveyed left his ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
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... He would do that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had somehow suggested himself ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
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... afternoon. All such afternoons are, for the average American knows truly nothing about his own Army. When he sees it actually at work he becomes, for the time at least, an "Army crank." ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
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... church were exasperating to a degree. There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp lookout for cranks, the arrangement ought by rights to have ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
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... of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine. As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side, and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small car. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
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... Bracher knocked at the door, and shook it. But there was no answer. The house carried that silent horror of a deserted and dangerous place. It seemed good to her to come away from it, and return to the motor. She bent her back to the crank, and set the engine chugging. It was good to travel along to the sight ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
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... To crank it and leap to the driver's seat required but a moment. The big car moved smoothly forward. A turn of the steering wheel brought it around headed toward the wide gates. Barney shifted to second speed, stepped on the accelerator and the cut-out simultaneously, and with a ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
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... You raise a genius—laugh at him, pity his family—till you learn how the outside world respects him. Then—hurrah! Strike up the band, boys! When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds looking down on him as a crank—I get so blamed sore at the place that I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when you wrote me ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
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... to say that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
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... the pitiful diversions of the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for Kenny and by nine he ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
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... to regard such movements as merely mechanical and artificial. You will be tempted to think they are just the ideas of some crank. Put all this aside. Begin your exercises joyously and happily, for the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
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... supplied fuel to the consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly he began to read books professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming and of mental phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of every crank or half-crazy philosopher became a living germ of unrest in the fertilising soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and positively all things began to work to a common end. Not the least of his disturbing causes was Saft Tammie, who had now ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
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... good results, and save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This device, one style of which ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
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... contrivance does not differ in principle from the common winch, or from the key which winds a clock. The motion of the piston-rod backwards and forwards turns such a winch. At each termination of the stroke, the piston, from the peculiar position of the crank, loses all power over it. To remedy this two cylinders and pistons are generally used, which act upon two cranks placed on the axle at right angles to each other; so that at the moment when one of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
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... reconstruct all their work to make it intelligible—a labour which was the more distasteful as it was forced upon them by one who, although expert enough in experimentation, was not a mathematician, and who boasted that the most complicated mathematical work he ever did was to turn the crank of a calculating machine; who did all his work, formed his conclusions, and then said—"The work is done; hand it over to ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
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... when touched in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like it. It was some kind of a machine, and the turning of a crank made it draw together in such a way, that if a person were once within its embrace, the pressure would soon arrest the vital current, and stop the breath of life. Around the walls of the room were chains, rings and hooks, almost ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
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... to work with such earnestness and success, that in a few months Mrs. Greene had the satisfaction of being able to invite a gathering of gentlemen from different parts of the State to behold with their own eyes the working of the newly invented cotton-gin, with which a negro man turning a crank could clean fifty pounds of cotton ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
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... it all was, he thought—the up and down stroke of the piston in and out of the cylinder, which oscillated from side to side guided by the eccentric; with the steady systematic revolution of the shaft, borne round by the crank attached to the piston-head, all working so smoothly, and yet with such ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
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... old crank Wes Brannigan shooting off his mouth again. Gosh, but he loves to hear himself talk! They ought to run ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
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... envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head on ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
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... wish the cows would stop a minute," said Nancy. "I can't seem to think with such a racket going on." Eben turned on the spark of the engine. He had done it before, but it seemed different to do it when his father wasn't standing near. Then he took the crank. "I hope she doesn't kick tonight," he wished fervently. He planted his feet firmly and grasped the handle! Round he swung it, around and around. Only the bellowing of the cows answered. He began again. Round he swung the handle; around and around. "Chug, chug-a-chug, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
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... coming down to drink—the entire remnant of a prehistoric and almost extinct race of human creatures was coming to quench its thirst at this water-hole. How I wished for James Barnes at the camera's crank! He alone could do justice to this golden ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
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... knew that steam could be used as a motive power long before it was so applied; and because he employed a good deal of his time in trying to discover the principle, he was ridiculed by his neighbors and friends, and the more thoughtless among them didn't know whether he was a crank, a half-wit, or a "luny." From all accounts, he was a modest, shy, retiring man, though a merry one. He had but little money to devote to the experiments he wished to make, and in this was not different from the great ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
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... Haymarket.—As the plot turns upon the doings of the Society of Friends, you may extract a jest by saying "that many of the characters trembled with anxiety before its production—in fact, were quakers!" The name of the Manager of the Haymarket has frequently been the subject of a quip, if not a crank; still it may yet serve as a peg for slyly observing that, "At the fall of the Curtain, TREE, naturally ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
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... reflected. "All those sails, all that weight! Boxes heaped one on the top of the other—cubes to catch the air—a man sitting inert in a basket, with his hand on a lever and a crank: it's as though one tried to make a stuffed bird fly! And what becomes of the man in all that: the back push, the daring stroke? The man has got to be the backbone of the machine, with his quick balancings, his bendings, which are worth more than ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
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... kind in the hands of the medical profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
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... became a man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
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... them are worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At night a flickering ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
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... immediate remarks that the Senior Surgeon addressed to any one were addressed distinctly to the crank of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
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... minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: "Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"—which ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
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... sharply. "Anybody'd know it wasn't an automobile crank. I don't want to look like a fool! Well, why ain't ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
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... him a secret eccentric bearing through which the crank shaft operated. When this bearing was properly adjusted the engine worked perfectly, when it was out of adjustment, it ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
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... patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
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... your debts?" he said, coming close to the organ-grinder. The man stopped turning his crank and taking a silver coin handed it to the officer, but slyly, so that no one saw. Then the big man turned to Gabriel. "Now be off from here!" he said sternly. "If you hang about a minute longer, ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
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... Where the crank-shafts pitch in the iron ditch, Where the main-shaft swims and glides, Where the boilers keep, in the sullen deep, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
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... Moses Pennel," said Miss Roxy, who, with her press-board and big flat-iron, was making her autumn sojourn in the brown house, "I tell ye Latin ain't just what you think 'tis, steppin' round so crank; you must remember what the king of Israel said to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
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... a crank and I suppose he got a lot of satisfaction out of concealing his money. But this hunt for it isn’t funny. I supposed, of course, we’d dig it up before Glenarm got here or I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to send for him. But it’s over there somewhere, or in the grounds. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
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... a most suitable vessel. The log states she was a little crank, but an admirable sea-boat. Her rate of sailing was of course, with her build, slow, but her strength and flat bottom stood her in good stead when she made acquaintance ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
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... Farman speed plane is a biplane of small wing area, the upper plane overhanging the lower. It is equipped with a new type of Renault-Mercedes eight-cylinder motor, giving 240 horsepower at the highest crank shaft speed. The Morane-Saulnier and the Spad are both monoplanes, but of different shape and construction from the original Morane; it is of the so-called monocoque type, made familiar to Americans by the Duperdessin monocoques which ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
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... To grind out a song of cheer I set to the crank my ancient muse. Will somebody kiss that bride for me? I fling with my blessing, both ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
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... a dreamer born, Who with a mission to fulfill Had left the muses' haunts to turn The crank of an ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
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... there, bathing the head that tossed restlessly to and fro. He heard the delirious lad mutter, "Curse the pious crank! He'll get Jane yet!" then half rise, and say with a strange look in his eyes, "Stand fast, boys! Stand, ye cowards! It's justice we want!" and fall back exhausted. Yes, it was Job who stood by, praying with all his heart, as at daylight the doctor did what seemed inevitable if Dan's life ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
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... demeanor was still enigmatic, and I anxiously wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely as an adventurer, a crank, or even a crook ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
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... coupe can be afforded. Do you suppose it is for the use of the weary breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to the "elevated." The carriage is to take his wife to teas or the park. In a year or two she will go abroad, leaving him alone to turn the crank that produces the income. As it is, she always leaves him for six months each year in a half-closed house, to the tender mercies of a caretaker. Two additional words could be advantageously added to the wedding service. After "for richer for poorer," I should like to hear ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
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... velocipede With springs of burnished steel; He knew the way to work it— The treadle for the wheel, The brake to turn and twist it, The crank to make it stop, My! hadn't he been riding For ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
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... elevation, the flywheel and head rest being in section. Fig. 2 is a side view, with the air reservoir and distribution valve in section through the line 1-2. Figs. 3 and 4 represent the same apparatus, but without support, as where it is to be used on the table of a sewing machine, with the crank of the motor directly fastened to the flywheel of the sewing machine. Fig. 5 is a plan or horizontal section at the level of the line 3-4, and Fig. 6 is a section passing through the same line, but only including the cylinder and axis of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
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... artillery equipment during the war, but was not much used. Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its 10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe it became more popular ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
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... "History of Frederick the Great," book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, "that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice," is still remembered by mankind,—this and no other of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
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... beauty. Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses. No boat I have ever tried runs so lightly as a well-made tulip pirogue, or dug-out, and nothing under heaven is so utterly crank and treacherous. Many an unpremeditated plunge into cold water has one caused me while out fishing or duck-shooting on the mountain-streams of North Georgia. If you dare stand up in one, the least waver from a perfect balance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
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... unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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... the warning cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear of "cold pig"—having ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
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... the gear, D, forms a crank which is connected to a bar at the rear end of the sieves, G, pivoted to an arm at H, by which the sieves have a shaking or reciprocating motion as the machine operates. The blower drives out the hulls and the motion of the sieves with their inclined ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
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... appliance is forced by the ethics of his profession either to commercialize it and lose his professional standing, or to abide the convenience of his colleagues and their learned organizations in testing it. Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
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... well at just about the same time as usual, and when he started to raise the bucket with the windlass, he found it was terribly heavy. He thought some one must have been putting rocks in it to play a joke on him, so he kept on turning the crank around until the bucket was nearly to the top, and then he saw what ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice
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... at last, the party lost no time in re-embarking, and soon the big Ajax, given a new lease on life by reason of a sharp turn of the crank in front, was again speeding ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
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... his chair, and the menial works the apparatus in the background. It is entirely superseding the old-fashioned method of picking the vegetable up and taking a snap at it. But I suspect that to be a successful Asparagus Adjuster requires capital. We now come to Awning Crank and Spring Rollers. I don't think I should like that. Rolling awning cranks seems to me a sorry way of spending life's springtime. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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... jeep and wrecked it and them, how when our haul turned out to be unexpectedly big the four of us left from the kill chummied up and padded down together and amused each other for a while and played games, you might say. Why, at one point we even had an old crank phonograph going and read some books. And, of course, how when the loot gave out and the fun wore off, we had our murder party and I survived along with, I think, a bugger named Jerry—at any rate, he was gone when the blood stopped spurting, ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
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... crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally, and pulled the lever that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get up the proper speed, and the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
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... isn't anybody; that's the trouble. If he had been, he would never have stayed with that old crank Judge Hollis. The judge thinks he is appointed by Providence to control this bright particular burg. He is even attempting to regulate me of late. The next time he interferes he'll hear ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
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... is a crank, though!' said Louie. 'Why, if you make free with her things a bit, or if you call 'em by the wrong names, she'll fly at you! How's anybody to know what ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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... salesmen in this office! The only persons who have not tried to sell me automobiles are George Washington, Jack Dempsey and Billy Sunday! I'm quite sure every one else has been here. The air has been filled with magnetos, self-starters, sliding gear transmissions, aluminum crank cases and all that other damnable technical stuff that goes with automobiles! You need not open your mouth—I know exactly what your sales talk is, they're all alike, more or less. Your car is far and away the best on the market, of ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
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... time he hurled it at the Leaguers' heads, but they bore him no malice; the worst they did was to call him a crank. I often think that when Murty died on the gallows for a crime he hated, it was a sacrifice of more than his life. Well, God be ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
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... marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education's sake, because she won't have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity—THEY have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
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... no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
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... I suppose, out here. Well, you can raise some kind of a light to trot round by, can't you? I'm a crank on ancient houses and furniture. Wish you had some old mahogany—that's what you need ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
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... they gained on us fast. As we had taken out the dollars from the prizes and had them on board the Pallas, the thought of losing them was even more vexatious than the idea of seeing the inside of a French prison. The Pallas was a very crank vessel, and her lee main-deck guns were under water, and even the quarter-deck carronades were at times immersed. However, the Frenchmen came up so fast that it was necessary, at any cost, to crowd on more sail. Cochrane had all the hawsers ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
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... as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing at all of me; but they devoted us to the execration ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
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