"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colored man by the name of Joe Nick, called Old Nick by a great many white people of me city. Joe was owned by Rueben Rogers, a lawyer and farmer of Howard County. The farm was situated about 2-1/2 miles on a road that is the extension ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... rent for the village hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out, or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant himself upon the ruins ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a pretty close call," answered Phil. "My friend here jumped overboard just in the nick ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Clam Gallas had the misfortune to lose his artillery reserve, and sent everywhere to ask if anyone had seen it. The Prince of Hesse, acting without orders, or against orders, separated his division from Schwarzenberg's and brought it up at the nick of time to save the Austrians, when they were threatened with actual destruction, at two ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... don't turn me forth, Auld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You've let in worse I'se wager!' 60 'Na, nane has knockit at the yett But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won't ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the brandy-casks; drank every thing they could find; and paid no sort of regard to the clamorous outcries of the passengers for help! help! except that here and there a voice replied—Help? There is no help: Old Nick will swallow us all; so let us ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Nicholas Young, the servant of Mr. Perry, surgeon's mate. The boy's name is omitted from the early muster sheets of the ship, but appears on 18th April 1769, entered as A.B. in the place of Peter Flower, drowned. Cook named the point seen, the south-west point of Poverty Bay, Young Nick's Head. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... courteously military—that of an established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knee and supporting their principals on the other by their sides they had little vessels of water, and bundles of rags to answer for sponges. Another corner was occupied by the umpire, a foul-mouthed, loud-tongued Tombs shyster, named Pete Bradley. A long-bodied, short-legged hoodlum, nick-named "Heenan," armed with a club, acted as ring keeper, and "belted" back, remorselessly, any of the spectators who crowded over the line. Did he see a foot obtruding itself so much as an inch over the mark in the sand—and the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... "Uncle Nick" Wilson was always begging him to tell about pioneer days in the Northwest. When "Uncle Nick" was eight years old, the Wilson family crossed the plains by ox team. When he was only twelve, he slipped away from ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... availing themselves of the striking local peculiarities in various parts of the country. A marked illustration of this now before the public is Edward Milton Royle's "Squawman," recently at Wallack's Theatre. The dramatist has caught his picture just in the nick of time, just before the facts of life in the Indian Territory are passing away. He has preserved the picture for us as George W. Cable, the novelist, preserved pictures of Creole life of old New Orleans, made at the ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... did not allow it to trouble them whether the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. Peter and Paul ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... thumb that carried it. But I omitted this course, as the red ants floating on the surface of the broth rendered the dish a questionable delicacy. The boarders had adjourned to the parlor, and were busy reading "Diamond Dick," "Nick Carter," and the other five and ten cent favorites. A heavy rain had set in, as I drew my chair up to the light and tried to lose myself in the adventures of the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory rang around us, and the earth shook, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... with his cheque from a cut-out shed, gloriously drunk and happy, in love with all the world, and ready to subscribe towards any creed and shout for all hands—including Old Nick if he happened to come along. There's the shearer, half-drunk and inclined to be nasty, who has got the wrong end of all things with a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation Army ring. Then he glares ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead. "You have come just in the nick of time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has written a 'hugeous' novel, and she is going to read ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the light, And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance, Nae light cotillion new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. As winnock-bunker, in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge; He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— Coffins stood round like ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay to ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... was unquestionably noble, which permitted him to enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily—a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... he most certainly would have been drowned, had it not been for Lilian Rosenberg, who, being quite by chance, in front of the house, perceived he was drunk, the moment he came on the stage. She flew to the wings, and, just in the nick of time, got two of the supers to haul him out of the tank. Of course, it was announced—with a pretty apology—by Mr. Hamar, that Mr. Curtis had been taken ill. Kelson immediately came on with his animals, and the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... them—the scouts. But for Stannard the hostiles would have gotten away, not only with Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the race was rocked— All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked. Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet, Played the children by canals, up and down the street. Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,— Little Nick of ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... thus unmolested by the native tribes, but our safety consisted chiefly in the rapidity of our movements, and their terror of strangers wholly unknown, perhaps unheard of, arriving on the backs of huge animals, or centaurs whose tramp they had only heard at nightfall. Like Burns's "Auld Nick," ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... per cus'sion, requiring to be struck; the act of striking. per'fume, scent or odor of sweet-smelling substances. pe'ri od, portion of time; an interval. per'ished, died; were destroyed. per mis'sion, the act of allowing; consent. pic'nick ing, having an outdoor party. pier, a landing-place for vessels. pierce, force a way into or through an object. pil'lars, columns; huge masses. pin'cers, jaws; pinchers. pit'e ous, fitted to excite pity; sorrowful. pit'falls, pits slightly covered for ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... saved a life," declared Ulyth, then explained briefly how Dorothy had fallen on to the hearth and had been caught back from the fire in the very nick of time. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... narve of Old Nick, as we all knows," cried a miner, and this intended compliment was acquiesced in ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... be done out of this piece of indulgence, which now seemed desirable beyond words, although I crawled back into my blanket, and found for a while oblivion in sleep. I was no sooner up in the morning than I planned a new banquet. But in the nick of time, Mr. G., who had gone a march farther, returned with his escort of policemen, moonshees, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... eleven, somewhat after the fashion of the Hawkshaws of "yellow back" fame, who, if our memory serves us right, were so punctual that their appearance anywhere was described as being in the "nick o' time," only in this instance he was expected and did not "drop from the sky," ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the breath out of him for the moment. The poacher leapt up, and aimed a terrific kick at his fallen opponent. The man would have received a severe injury had not the scouts swept into action at the very nick of time. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... British heads. In the meantime, other engineers had traced out the road from the bay to the battery. Led by their officers the French regulars set to work with such goodwill that the road was ready next day for the siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed in the nick of time. ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... once again over the partition, and guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair had become a sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost: and at the nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that the train ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... you know," said Mason, "it looks as if you had been quarrelling. I guess I came just in the nick of time." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... at Stradella. The First Consul received him with twofold joy. In the first place, he regained a man without ambition, an intelligent officer and a devoted friend. In the second place, Desaix arrived just in the nick of time to take charge of the division lately under Boudet, who had been killed. Through a false report, received through General Gardannes, the First Consul was led to believe that the enemy refused to give battle and was retiring to Genoa. He sent Desaix and his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... and all such nick-nacks, boy, to a good plateful of clam-soup? Well made, as you say—made as a cook of Jennings used to make it, thirty years since. Did I ever mention that fellow's soup ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... of about two or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending the money, the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dexterity, flung himself between them, just in the nick of time to avert from Mole ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the reporter; "besides, if by chance you had met with some deliverer there, just in the nick of time, why should he have abandoned you after having ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... 'Practically all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and haversacks of our soldiers. One of them snatched a bayonet from a dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself...The feature of the action was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.' So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body. It was four hours before ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting, upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur, having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point of the platform, but, my end achieved, I was callously indifferent to the outrageous ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... beach of Manatomana! And he sneered at my failing for religion, and at my going to prayer- meeting, and, most of all, at my sugar-planting. He challenged me to fight, and I kept off of him. He threatened me, and I learned in the nick of time of his plan to have me knocked on the head. You see, he wanted the Princess just as much as I did, and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... tell you he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... belfries of the town. About the stable all else was silent but the stamping of stalled horses and the rattle of halters. Otto dismounted; and as he did so a memory came back to him: a whisper of dishonest grooms and stolen corn, once heard, long forgotten, and now recurring in the nick of opportunity. He crossed the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled. Presently a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man's head ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had a small desert of Numbers to have pick'd and Criticiz'd upon, had he not been interrupted just upon his Delivery; nay, after the Preliminary Sigh had made Way for his Utterance. But so was his Fortune, Don Mario was coming towards the Door at that very nick of Time, where he met with a Priest just out of Breath, who told him that Lorenzo was just breathing his last, and desired to know if he would come and take his final Leave before they were to administer the Extream Unction. Don Mario, who had been at some Difference with ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... engaged to this woman—this Mrs. Truslove—who has a nice little income. He hears that her income is to be halved; and we know that if an allowance begins by being halved, as likely as not it will be stopped altogether before long. He saw that clearly enough. Then in the very nick of time this cheque comes along. He sends it to the bank with this letter of instructions, and murders Lord Loudwater so that he cannot disavow them. What more of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... reached me to-night, just in the nick of tune, and I enclose a letter which I was just about to send to the Editor of the London 'Standard.' Please send it to that or any other paper you like, barring the 'Times,' 'Saturday Review,' or 'Pall Mall Gazette.' I wrote another letter to the 'Times,' by which ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... what way yuh go thar," replied Jim, "but I guesses as Nick he likes the three mile carry best. Start ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... that my master was cute with the cards, and that few was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, there it was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... on his rigid shoulder. "Quit it, Mig. We would do a lot for the outfit; that's the God's truth. And I played the game right up to the hilt, I admit. But nobody's killed. I told Happy to play dead. By gracious, I caught him just in the nick uh time; he'd been setting up, in another minute." To prove it, he bent and twitched the handkerchief from the face of Happy Jack, and Happy opened his eyes and made shift ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Good-fellow, true man and honest man, do acknowledge to have received of Nick and Froth, the cheating tapster, the sum of twenty pounds, which money I have bestowed (to the tapster's content) among the poor of the parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid tapster had picked the aforesaid sum, not after the manner of foisting, but after his excellent skill of ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards, or drawing lines with chalk round ye, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... cause—perhaps fracture or thinness—bulged outwardly. It will be perceptible at once that for direct pressure against a part of the ribs, situated near the upper block, that the little joist will slip unless a nick is made for its reception in the large support or beam. This is so evident that a reminder ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... said she, "and just in the nick of time. He was on the inside in the campaign of '96, and I remember one night he came to dinner at our house and told us that the Republican party had raised ten or fifteen million dollars to buy the election. 'That's the end of silver,' he ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... consequence of his pridefulness towards me; for, observing me standing in serenity at the window, he came, and in a vehement manner cried to me for the love of heaven to come to his assistance, and pacify the people. It would not have been proper in me to have refused; so out I went in the very nick of time: for when I got to the door, there was the soldiers in battle array, coming marching with fife and drum up the gait with Major Blaze at their head, red and furious in the face, and bent on some bloody business. The first thing I did was to run to the major, just as he ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Sept. 25.—Edmond Montgomery died on Nick Jordan's place, near the county line of Schley, aged 102 years. He was an African chief of the Askari tribe, and was taken to Virginia from Africa in 1807, when he was a young man. He had a large family in Virginia, and when he died he left his third wife and 25 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... wrapped round it a great woollen shawl from his own shoulders, and in one moment put out the deadly fire which was snatching at the sweet young life. Who was this gentleman, do you think, thus arrived at the very nick of time? Why, no other than Lady Bird's own Papa, come home from China a few weeks ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... from Batson Reeves. But we seem to have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... the stage or in books something always happens just in the nick of time to put things right; but that ain't life, or ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... legion from the puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching within a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shut, Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off To some safe bench behind, not letting go The palm of her, the little lily thing That spoke the good word for me in the nick, Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say. And so all's saved for me, and for the church A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence! Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! 390 The street's hushed, and I know ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... his own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... in her line," says Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but philanthropic manufacturers, (p. 111) liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards or ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... farther, and proceeded to make camp by the roadside, not far from a couple of yurts. A light shone out, and there was the sound of angry voices and wrangling, but I could not find out what was the matter. Nicolai's German always gave out, as the Indian babu said his presence of mind did, "in the nick of time." Finally, the Russians sulkily turned their horses loose and set up the little shelter tent where the three men were to sleep. Apparently there was no fuel to be had, and we all went ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... "them hain't no natural, ordinary 'eathen, indeed not, sir. They are the very h'old Nick 'isself, sir." ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... like your cretonne; it is so frightfully common!" said she. "Where did you buy that abominable pink stuff? There's a chair that would be nice if the wood weren't covered with gilding. Not a picture, not a nick-nack—only your chandelier and your candelabra, which are by no means in good style! Ah well, my dear fellow; I advise you to continue laughing at my ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Te Whangoa and Kirsty Lammergaw are present but Lily Chen and Likofo Komom'baratse and Jean LeBrun are not; we have Cray Patterson who is one of my special enemies but not Blazer Weigh or the Astral Cad; the rest are P. Zapotec, Nick Howard, Aro Mestah, Dillie Dixie, Pavel Christianovitch, Lennie DiMaggio and ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... taking out the young lady to whom he was engaged, to such entertainments. Ultimately, of course, he was found out, and, when starving on the road, determined to commit suicide. The Salvationists found him in the nick of time, and now he is foreman ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Buildings, immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... classic Pattycake had been much in favour. Chellalu's Attai (the word here and hereafter signifies Mrs. Walker, "Mother's elder sister") had taught it to her; and whenever and wherever Chellalu saw her Attai, she immediately began to perform "Prick it and nick it" with great enthusiasm. But after she could walk, Chellalu would have nothing more to do with such childish things. "Show us Edward Rajah!" the older children would say; and instead of standing up with a regal dignity and crowning her ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Myles would observe on these occasions—Ah! ah!"—I told you they'd soon find the fair lady was shaded by her fine laces. I daresay now she's on the look-out for a good match, poor thing! Not that Helen is handsome—don't look in the glass, Helen, child! My grandmother always said that Old Nick stood behind every young lady's shoulder when she looked in the glass, with a rouge-pot all ready to make her look handsomer in her own eyes than she really was; which shows how wicked it is to look much in a ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... stock-in-trade—swains languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless ramifications. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile burden of sentiment—so much, and no more. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... to tell which are the dairy-maids and which are the kindly animals with the crumpled horns which furnish the lacteal supply which is so particularly sought after. Of course every body wants as much cream as possible, and all have faith that, at the nick of time, it will be given to them to milk instead of the other thing. There is a pleasant amusement known among juveniles as "SIMON says up," etc. This is the very milk in the stock-market cocoanut. When some great member of the big Clique family ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... gave me a thrashing, but, bless them for it, let me go. And last year I was almost caught when I passed off French counterfeit notes for fifty roubles on Korovayev, but, thank God, Korovayev fell into the pond when he was drunk, and was drowned in the nick of time, and they didn't succeed in tracking me. Here, at Virginsky's, I proclaimed the freedom of the communistic wife. In June I was distributing manifestoes again in X district. They say they will make me do it again.... Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have compelled ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... human interest of the book is absorbing. The descriptions of life in India and England are delightful. ... But it is the intense humanity of the story—above all, that of its dominating character, Nick Ratcliffe, that will win for it a swift ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... upon him; some distant kinswoman, whose very name was unknown to Tchertop-hanov, left him in her will a sum immense in his eyes—no less than two thousand roubles! And he received this sum in the very nick, as they say, of time; the day before the Jew was to come. Tchertop-hanov almost went out of his mind with joy, but he never even thought of vodka; from the very day Malek-Adel came into his hands he ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the gaugers and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I wish that you ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the year St. Nick, as he was commonly called, was busy manufacturing and preparing wonderful toys to be distributed throughout the country among the children who were deserving. In order to know to whom the presents were to go, he sent out his elves into the homes to take an inventory of the lives of die children. ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... exactly, but it was pointed out that an intermediary—the protector himself—had come on the scene just in the nick of time. The entire article concluded with this phrase, pregnant ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... much the aggregate amount of which they have despoiled you—it is the knowledge that every other person in Paris is seeking and planning to nick you for some sum, great or small; it is the realization that, by reason of your ignorance of the language and the customs of the land, you are at their mercy, and they have no mercy—that, as Walter ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... though they are decidedly more tolerable. The daughters of Spanish Governors who carry on flirtations on the sea-shore with the captains of English men-of-war, who are carried off by pirates and rescued in the nick of time, whose papas not only consent to their marriage with the heretical object of their affections but send boxes full of gold doubloons, together with their blessing, are so much better than life that ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... of your father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of babiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, more ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... circumstances Evan would rather have been called Old Nick than "old man," but he nodded obedience to the manager's wishes and went ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Hess smiled grimly. "Old Nick has more influence with York than I have. He crosses the street when he sees me. I like him about as much as he likes me. He's boss of his own show—his directors cut no ice. Anyway, it's none ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... forth in my defence, in the person of Haxell, the taciturn carpenter. This individual seldom spoke to any one unless previously addressed; so his voluntary testimony on my behalf was all the more striking and effective, especially as it was given in the very nick of time. ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... failed to realize more than sufficient to pay commission charges and freight. Ruin stared in the face every Texan drover whose cattle were unsold. Only a few herds were under contract for fall delivery to Indian and army contractors. We had run from the approaching storm in the nick of time, even settling with and sending my outfit home before the financial cyclone reached the prairies of Kansas. My last trade before the panic struck was an individual account, my innate weakness for an abundance of ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... puppy, ha! ha! ha!—Well, but Mrs. Malaprop, as the girl seems so infatuated by this fellow, suppose you were to wink at her corresponding with him for a little time—let her even plot an elopement with him—then do you connive at her escape—while I, just in the nick, will have the fellow laid by the heels, and fairly contrive to carry her off in ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... took down the half-knit stocking, but the spare needle was missing. She felt with her hand upon the chimney-piece, but could not find it. Then she mounted a chair and searched. It was nowhere to be seen. "It may have slipped into the nick at the back," she thought, and she got a skewer and poked it into the narrow groove. Out fell the needle—and something else which made a clinking sound as it fell upon the brick floor. She stooped to see what it was, and there glittering in the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... opportunity, not to lift it out in the ordinary way, but to clap the net upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it most cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without accident. It was only done in the nick of time; two yards farther down would have been ruin. Everybody said it was a perfectly shaped specimen of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... him!" murmured Tom, when he could get back his breath. "Now who in the name of Old Nick can ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... had risen instinctively, and stood looking with crimson cheeks and quicker-coming breath at this young man who came upon her in the nick of time. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... this place till morning, but it suddenly appeared like the most woful waste of time. The master of this tremendous affair should be abroad and active; who knew what his keen eyes might detect, what loss his absence might occasion in this nick of time? And here he was, shut up and locked in a wine-cellar! I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation to discover the thief, if I never ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... mark about them by which they were stamped as the devil's own. This mark was always insensible to pain. Those who had not yet been marked received the mark from the master of the ceremonies, the devil at the same time bestowing nick-names upon them. This done, they all began to sing and dance in the most furious manner until some one arrived who was anxious to be admitted into their society. They were then silent for a while until the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... homeliness that jarred upon her. The teapot was real silver, but it was of old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles as they may be, repelled her. It was a bitter cup ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Debray, "you have come in the nick of time. There is madame overwhelming me with questions respecting the count; she insists upon it that I can tell her his birth, education, and parentage, where he came from, and whither he is going. Being no disciple of Cagliostro, I was wholly unable to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... any kind of action for your money. Geysers, hell-spouts, fuming fissures, cunning little craterlets with half-portions of molten lava ready to serve hot; more gases than you could create in all the world's chemical laboratories: in fact, everything to make the place a paradise for Old Nick—and Dr. Schermerhorn. He brought along in his precious chest, besides the radium, some sort of raw material: also, as near as I could make out, a sort of cage or guardianship scheme for his concentrated essence of cussedness, when he should get it ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... must needs find fault, to shew his wit: Then, for his sake, ne'er stint your own delight; Throw boldly, for he sits to all that write; With such he ventures on an even lay, For they bring ready money into play. Those who write not, and yet all writers nick, Are bankrupt gamesters, for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... her father. "And we are to be fellow-passengers, so it was very lucky that we were there in the nick of time." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and yet it was soon known through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which purchase—so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the facts—would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. The duke ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... says: "How quick the lad was! His courageous leap saved him." Another says: "Bless the child! He was in awful danger, and he just barely saved himself." Another says: "That man's word just reached the boy's ear in the nick of time, and saved him." Another says: "God bless that man! He saved that child." And yet another says: "That boy was saved by blood; by the sacrifice of that ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... gammon about their going to France. He hasn't money for travelling. She spent all hers in nick-nacks—to propitiate people, the sneak! They're ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... musically its waters murmured like the streams of windward Hawaii! We lost our way over and over again, though the "innocent" young men had been there before; indeed, it would require some talent to master the intricacies of that devious trail, but settlers making hay always appeared in the nick of time to put us on the right track. Very fair it was, after the brown and burning plains, and the variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees were green and bright, aspens shivered in gold tremulousness, wild grape-vines ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... him, and goes softly up to him, shakin' of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase for it back again, seven miles more. By this time, I presume, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper—is 'pressed down, and shaken together, and running over;' but his 'mission' and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... ous sheaf stew'ing a miss' pre'vi ous guile, yeo'man as sess' im'pi ous chyle chlo'ral ab'scess a'que ous rend know'ing sick'le par'ti cle wrench go'ing nick'el crit'ic al dearth con dole' tal'ents dil'i gent worth con trol' bal'ance el'e gant mirth en roll' si'lence fal'li ble earth dis pel' com peer' prel'a cy spurt fore tell' ad here' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Claude was excusing himself further, begging to be allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time. Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to shade it from the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would learn at last that he, Mortimer, had ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer a few suggestions. The reinauguration must ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... you, Nick," said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. "Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be nabbed. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various |
