"Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... February; some of the days in the middle of February being from 15 deg. to 18 deg. below the average. From the 24th February to the 6th March the weather was more moderate; but on that day the cold again set in, and the weather continued to the 26th June to be cold, nipping, and miserable beyond record. In January, on several days, the mercury was as low as 13 deg.. In February it was, on many days, as low as from 3 deg. to 10 deg.. The coldest day in London was the 18th, when the thermometer marked 7 deg.; the lowest temperature recorded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... She'll take all his time now." He rubbed his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned to go Watts said: "My Heavens, how time does fly! It just seems like yesterday that all you boys were raking over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in and nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and I'd have to douse you with water to get rid of you. I got a quirt hanging up in the shop now that Johnnie Barclay dropped one day when I got after him with a pan of water. It's a six-sided one, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... ruffled by the magistrate's persistently overbearing manner, inquired with something of dudgeon in his voice: "Begging your pardon, sir, what was that I heard the young lady call out just now? 'Gold!' she cries. Is it guineas that nipping young man is a taking over seas, if I may make so bold? Now you see, sir, we haven't had no orders about no gold on this station—that sort of thing is mostly done down south. But what I wants to know is: Why, if you knew all ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... saw this preference of her husband, and was weak enough to feel and show jealousy. But her complainings were ineffectual, for we can no more scold people into loving us than nature could make buds blossom by daily nipping them with frost. And yet she made her children uncomfortable by causing them to feel that it was unnatural and wrong that they did not care more for their mother. This was especially true of Edith, who tried to satisfy her conscience, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Louie went out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers and let her ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the vast parish of Saint Pancras which once comprised all the northwestern part of London, their names as well as their history would be, to Protestants at least, entirely unknown. They have, however, the evil reputation of commonly bringing with them a nipping frost, and are abhorred in Burgundy as the great enemies of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... toward the fence at the other end, she could hear the steady pounding of the mare's hoofs, though she did not dare to glance over her shoulder. Her thoughts worked busily, trying to figure out a way to climb over or under the fence, and she had a lively fear of those terrible teeth nipping her as she tried to climb. As the fence seemed to her strained vision to rise suddenly from the ground and come to meet her, a way ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... because Mrs. Crawfurd had her fancies like Mrs. Primrose. Thus Joanna was frequently abroad before breakfast, and, like most persons of healthy organization, was rather tempted to court the stinging air as it blew across the heather, bracing her whole frame, nipping her fingers and toes, and sending blush-roses ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... rather underneath, his left shoulder, and trying to peep over or past it, he beheld a small portion of a most woe-begone little face, heavily swathed against the nipping March wind. Through the beclouding veil he could dimly make out that the eyes were swollen, the cheeks were mottled; even the nose—with regret I state it—was red and puffy. An unsightly, melancholy little ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... had about ceased. The snow was two feet deep, in the streets, and the air was nipping chill. The streets were deserted, as evening settled down and Charley neared home. Now when he passed an open stairway, leading up into a building, he saw a huddled ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... the lad had been attracting notice more and more. The Bible students had cast up his reckoning unfavorably: he was not of their kind—they moved through their studies as one flock of sheep through a valley, drinking the same water, nipping the same grass, and finding it what they wanted. His professors had singled him out as a case needing peculiar guidance. Not in his decorum as a student: he was the very soul of discipline. Not in slackness of study: his mind consumed knowledge ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... you browse your way through the forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young winter-green, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam-fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what you have done, but the enchantment ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... and his house was only a short half mile from my friend's. After breakfast, we set out for it through the woods. The day was cold for the season, with a sharp, nipping air, and our overcoats were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they too were lilting their favourite songs, Logan Water, the Flowers of the Forest, and the Broom of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe—what I kent to be true for all that—that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;—the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;—and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus he had not noticed a change coming over Harry and Billy. Suddenly a groan fell on his ear. Startled, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... wet seas had quenched that holocaust, That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost Had withered up those lilies white and red Which, while the boy would through the forest range, Answered each other in a ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... month, beware Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast. From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north, And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods. Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells, And strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... herein, to show what fortune befell at our departure, I will turn my pen a little to Master Captain Fenton, and those gentlemen which should have inhabited all the year in those countries, whose valiant minds were much to be commended, that neither fear of force, nor the cruel nipping storms of the raging winter, neither the intemperature of so unhealthful a country, neither the savageness of the people, neither the sight and show of such and so many strange meteors, neither the desire to return to their native soil, neither regard of friends, neither care of possessions ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... road home through the darkened woods the restless hurrying leaves frightened the boy so that, with his weariness from walking against the wind, his hunger from being all day without food, and with the cold nipping at his body, he began to cry. The father took the boy in his arms and holding him across his breast like a babe went down the hill ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... the nipping air had been a severe test of endurance, and all were glad, when the ranch was reached, to "thaw out" before the roaring fire, and sit down to the hot and hearty meal that had been prepared in anticipation of ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and caressing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... forthcoming. But perhaps you will let me postpone what I have to say till we see the Duke. What a charming morning;—is it not? How sweet it would be down in the country." March had gone out like a lamb, and even in London the early April days were sweet,—to be followed, no doubt, by the usual nipping inclemency of May. "I never can get over the feeling," continued the Duke, "that Parliament should sit for the six winter months, instead of in summer. If we met on the first of October, how glorious it would be to get away ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... they set out once more across the fields, in a blithe spirit of companionship. In neither was there any equivocal thought. They were thinking only of the pleasure of their walk, the singing in their blood, and the whipping, nipping air. Anna's tongue was loosed. She was no longer on her guard: she said just ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... elusive mark, discovered the appetite of atmosphere for lead. Nevertheless it was the most exciting, breathless, tingling game he had ever played. The air was biting cold, especially after the sun began to sink through the trees, but it had the effect merely of nipping Bobby's nose and cheeks red—his little body was tingling and aglow. On his banner day he brought down two fox-squirrels, and one of the beautiful black squirrels, then not uncommon, but now practically extinct. In the process he used up ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... "A nipping frost was in the air, On flowers and grass it fell; And the leaves were still on the eastern hill As if touched ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Mr. Douglas. It was situated in a wild sequestered nook, formed by a little bay at the farther end of the lake. On three sides it was surrounded by wooded hills that offered a complete shelter from every nipping blast. To the south the lawn, sprinkled with trees and shrubs, sloped ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... More.—Good Flesh and Blood, that was a nipping reply! And happy man is his dole who retains in grave years, and even to grey hairs, enough of green youth's redundant spirits for such excursiveness! He who never relaxes into sportiveness is a wearisome companion, but beware of him who jests at everything! Such men disparage ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... everything else. And yet the pet game of the day never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight,—the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for salmon,—when the summer comes round I do really believe that they suffer a ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... for the rigging, for without my bag I would have been worse off than on deck, and at such a move he would have jumped on me. But in the morning he had his first convulsion, and it left him a wreck. While he lay gasping and choking on the deck, with equally afflicted rats crawling over him and nipping where they felt flesh, I managed to get a bite from the steward's storeroom, and it roused me up and strengthened me. I came out, resolved to bind him down, but I was too late. He was on his feet, the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... rubber ponchos, were scattered about marking the places where each cowboy that night would sleep. The herd was bunched a quarter of a mile away in a little cove backed by the rim of sand-hills. Captain Jack and Silver Tip, riderless but with their saddles still on, were nipping the grass near the camp—the Ramblin' Kid and Chuck were to take the first watch, until midnight, at "guard mount." Parker and the cowboys were squatted, legs doubled under them, their knees forming ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... Since the nipping colds of December, Christine only came in the afternoon, and it was about four o'clock, when the sun was sinking, that Claude escorted her back on his arm. On days when the sky was clear, they could see the long line ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... most agile, adjustments of the muscles of the eye. He caught at the edges of things—the white line of foam against the shore, the lip of the shell, and he could compare whiteness as no other poet ever did to "the bitten lip of hate." He once saw with delight "a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole."[73] Browning's joy in form was as little epicurean as his joy in colour; it was a banquet of the senses in which the sense of motion and energy had the largest part. Smooth, flowing, rounded, undulating outlines, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink. But you, oh you, by nature formed of gentler kind, can you endure the biting storm? shall you be turned to the nipping blast, and not a door be open to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... saw with anxiety and alarm this sudden change; but she was an invalid—and the poor suffering one strove to hide her sickness of the heart, and mother though she was, Mrs. Layton discovered not the canker-worm which was nipping her bud of promise, but would whisper, "You confine yourself too much to my room, my child, and must go out into the bright sunshine, so that the smile may come back to your lip, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... short is, when the Earth is parched, and scorched with Vehement Heat, and Drought; benummed and frozen with Cold, Frost, and Snow; or refrigerated with Spring Hoar-Frosts; or blasted with the sharp, bitter, nipping, North, or East Winds: Or when blustring Boreas disorders your well guiding your Tackling; or the Sheep-shearers Washings glutted the Fish, and anticipated your Bait; when the withdrawing of your Sport, foretells a Storm, and advises you to some shelter; or ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... up for themselves' so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps—'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's olives swart'—(Kiss me, my Siren!)—Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee—he seemed so instantly from the teaching of God! AElian says that ... ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... lay to with backed forestaysail, tumbling wildly on a dim, grey sea. Half a mile away the ice ran back into a dingy haze, and there was a low, grey sky to weather. Now and then a fine sprinkle of snow slid across the water before a nipping breeze. As Wyllard glanced to windward Dampier strode up ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... got up the next morning, dawn was breaking across the muskeg. There was frost in the air, the freight-cars on the side-track and the roofs of the shacks were white, and a nipping breeze swept through the camp. It was already filled with sounds of activity—hoarse voices, heavy footsteps, the tolling of a locomotive bell, and the rattle of wheels—and Prescott's new friends were eating in a neighboring shed. Going in, he was supplied with breakfast, and when ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the tyrant who had come to de Sigognac's rescue, and now suddenly roared out in his stentorian voice, "What the deuce is nipping me? Is it a viper? I felt two sharp fangs meet in the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... minutes, the pleasant village returned to its former tranquility, it was "allowed" at more than one saloon that "Mexicans'll know enough to let white men's stock alone after this." One and another exchanged the belief that this sort of thing was more sensible than "nipping 'em on sight." ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... is none warm.' The clothing was to guard against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and its failure to answer its purpose points to a real sorrow and insufficiency of a life lived without God. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... doubt that Margaret Shields was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates ("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... under bare blue skies, out of which the sun frizzled you alive; here, where it couldn't rain without at once being a flood; where the very winds blew contrarily, hot from the north and bitter-chill from the south; where, no matter how great the heat by day, the night would as likely as not be nipping cold: here he was doomed to end his life, and to end it, for all the yellow sunshine, more hopelessly knotted and gnarled with rheumatism than if, dawn after dawn, he had gone out in a cutting north-easter, or groped his way through the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss was cute and spry enough to keep out of his reach, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... lay there helpless as an infant. On then swept the floe, crashed into the fixed ice, shattered its edge, rose up out of water over it, which is called "rafting," forced itself on the unfortunate ship, rose over her bulwarks, crushed in her sides, and only by nipping her tightly avoided sinking her immediately. Seeing that all was lost, Captain Kean got the men and boats onto the pans, took all they could save of food and clothes, but before he had saved his own clothing, the ice ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... silk-lined and padded sealskin suits, he had brought a large number of Japanese fireboxes. The punks in these were lighted, and when all were very hot they were wrapped in flannels and distributed about their persons inside their sealskins. With this arrangement, Jack Frost's chances of nipping their persons were ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... sagebush and low stone held a blanket. A few of these blankets were of solid color, most of them had bars of white and gray and red, the last color predominating. The mustangs and burros filed out among the cedars, nipping at the sage and the scattered tufts of spare grass. A group of fires, sending up curling columns of blue smoke, and surrounded by a circle of lean, half-naked, bronze-skinned Indians, cooking and eating, completed a picture which afforded Hare the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... of November I had an opportunity of observing the method pursued when culling the tea, which is performed by black slaves, chiefly women and children. They carefully selected the tenderest and pale-green leaves, nipping off with their nails the young leaf bud, just below where the first or second leaf was unfolded. One whole field had already undergone this operation; nothing but tea shrubs stripped of their foliage remained. The inspector assured me that ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... eyes again he contemplated the sun through the veil of bushes and reeds. It was great and red, but it had a chilly effect, and he knew the day was quite cold. The willows began to shake and quiver and the wind that stirred them was nipping. He did not care. Cold stimulated him, and, making ready for new endeavors, he dipped for his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... man' shows that either she did not know Jesus' name, or thought Him too far beneath her to be named by her! The time during which Peter had been left outside alone, repenting now of, and alarmed for what might happen to him on account of, his ill-aimed blow at Malchus, and feeling the nipping cold, had taken all his courage out of him. The one thing he wished was to slip in unnoticed, and so the first denial came to his lips as rashly as many another word had come in old days. He does not seem to have remained with John, who probably went up to the upper end of the hall, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... when they are beforehand, and when they are otherwise and thereby incense and incite them to the duel, and make an art of it. I hope I shall meet with some of them too; and I am sure, my lords, this course of preventing duels, in nipping them in the bud, is fuller of clemency and providence than the suffering them to go on, and hanging men with their wounds bleeding, as ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... June brings to the mind of most people soft airs—the scent of roses—a time when the young can sit out-of-doors in the moonlight, and the middle-aged may venture forth without risk of catching cold. But even on such a night in Thorhaven there is a nipping freshness at sunset which keeps the mind alert instead of lulling the senses—giving an exquisite clearness to the thoughts of lovers: at any rate, to the thoughts of lovers like ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... whisper. During the voyage it ate corn and fruit, and when these became scarce, took to cockroaches; of which it cleared the vessel. It would dispatch twenty large, besides smaller ones, three or four times in each day, nipping off the head of the former, and rejecting the viscera, legs, and hard wing cases. Besides these, it fed on milk, sugar, raisins, and bread-crumbs. It afterwards made friends with a cat, and slept and eat with this animal, but it never entirely ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... laden with vegetables for the ensuing market, alone disturbed the quiet of the adjoining streets. In a dark angle might be seen the houseless wanderer, or the abandoned profligate, 341gathered up like a lump of rags in a corner, and shivering with the nipping air. The gloom which surrounded us had, for a moment, chilled the wild exuberance of my companions' mirth; and it is more than probable we should have suspended our visit to the Finish, at least for that night, had not the jocund note of some uproarious Bacchanalian ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... after day, as if the deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and frost,—not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum of ice on ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... found his strength and skill taxed to the utmost to humour the brig along through that wild sea, the perspiration streaming from every pore of him as he stood there, fully exposed to the keen and nipping fury of the blast; and it was perfectly evident that, unless something were speedily done, disaster ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... stood near her, nipping the tips of the grass that grew at her feet. Beyond the animal—a little to her right, and perhaps fifty feet from her—were other horses, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... home without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the dog that never misses a trail, the dog ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... waiting here? And what is the meaning of all that nipping and tugging at your dress? Have you broken another dish? No? Then have done with that cursed head-shaking, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inspections with a view to discovering the guilty parties, who will be proceeded against under section A, subsection 2, paragraph 1,769 of Part III. of King's Reg's.—I mean, the Defence of the Realm Act. I particularly wish you to understand," I went on ruthlessly, nipping an indignant protest in the bud, "that I do not for a moment allege, suggest or insinuate that you specifically are one of these potato-swindlers; nevertheless I have my duty to do, and I must ask you here and now to lay out your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... and cast down, according as the vicissitudes of light and heat, of plant and animal life, ministered to his comfort or threatened his existence. In autumn when the withered leaves were whirled about the forest by the nipping blast, and he looked up at the bare boughs, could he feel sure that they would ever be green again? As day by day the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, could he be certain that the luminary would ever retrace his heavenly road? Even the waning moon, whose ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... one party of red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... A most delicate attention. Keep them talking for a few minutes while I pay a visit to the kitchen," cried Nan, deftly nipping up the roll of umbrellas, and disappearing from the hall, to return with the meekest of meek faces, and bid a fond adieu to the parents for whose confusion she had ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wind in February Snowflakes float still, Half inclined to turn to rain, Nipping, dripping, chill. Then the thaws swell the streams, And swollen rivers swell the sea:— If the winter ever ends ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... with light snows but nipping airs, were the winters of this country of the cave men, and there were articles of food essential to variety which were, necessarily, stored before the cold season came. There were roots which were edible and which could be dried, and there were nuts in abundance, beyond all ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... with jealousy, mortified pride, and dread of exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her), sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her, and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... might well regard with pride the luxury and splendor that crowned a turbulent career begun in nipping poverty. The round table, glowing beneath the lights of the long crystal chandeliers, sparkled with cut-glass, and shone with antique silverware, while in the center a mass of pale purple orchids spread their fragile crepe-like petals from a fringe of fern. Opposite him, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... avowal is uncommon. If unbelievers and doubters were more courageous, believers would be less timorous. It is because they live in an enervating fool's paradise of seeming assent and conformity, that the breath of an honest and outspoken word strikes so eager and nipping on their sensibilities. If they were not encouraged to suppose that all the world is of their own mind, if they were forced out of that atmosphere of self-indulgent silences and hypocritical reserves, which is systematically poured round them, they would ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... awoke the air was nipping cold. Her eyes snapped open clear and bright. The tips of the cedars were ruddy in the sunrise. A camp-fire crackled. Blue smoke curled upward. Joan sat up with a rush of memory. Roberts and Kells ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... gazing on its elegant tower. My mind, filled with melancholy fancies, flew to centuries long past, when the philosophic Hamlet mused, perhaps, on calm evenings like this, pacing to and fro the very ramparts I was looking on, or sought, on that night of "a nipping and an eager air," the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... put into the syrup. So also must soda. If you use nuts, be careful to remove every particle of shell and skin before putting them into the syrup. Almonds are blanched by letting them stand in boiling water for a few minutes and then nipping off the skins between the fingers. They should be warmed in the oven before being put into the syrup. Dessicated cocoanut should be steamed a few minutes before being used; put in a dish in a colander over boiling water. Use the fresh cocoanut if you can get ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... came back to her, bringing all the contrasts which spring alone can bring to add to the heaviness of the soul. The little winged creatures filled the air with bursts of joy; the vegetation came bright and hopefully onwards, without any check of nipping frost. The ash-trees in the Bradshaws' garden were out in leaf by the middle of May, which that year wore more the aspect of summer than most Junes do. The sunny weather mocked Jemima, and the unusual warmth oppressed her physical powers. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... up, superstition was to be exterminated root and branch. Whether thorough consideration was given to that which should have been considered above everything else must remain in doubt; for the conception of culture is extremely relative, and just as the most disgusting intoxication follows the nipping from every bottle, so superficial encyclopedical knowledge, which at the most can be made broad, engenders precisely the most repulsive kind of arrogance. It will no longer bow to any authority and yet never penetrates to the depths in which the multifarious logical inconsistencies and contradictions ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... whatever elevation, however small, presented itself, and their feet half buried in the embers of the fires they had with difficulty kindled on the frozen ground, from which the snow had been removed—all, sanguine of success, and all, more or less endeavouring to snatch, even amid the nipping frost to which their upper persons were exposed, a few hours of sleep prior to the final advance, which was to take place an ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... I was ready to burst myself, so jumping up, I took one leg under each arm and rammed into her with all the strength I was capable of; my God, how she heaved to meet my attack! Her vagina seemed as stiff as my pintle, closing upon it with an extraordinary grasp, such as few women are capable of, nipping and squeezing the head of my affair each time it reached to the ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one of the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio announcing that ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... of you, Tegeloo!" cried Hope, stroking the parrot, who grunted with satisfaction, and informed her many times that he was still, "Poor Texas, pretty Texas!" nipping her finger gently as he sidled and snuggled, while Andy leaped to Faith's lap, and was so determined to stay that he had to be removed by force, soft-hearted Faith looking back at the crying baby with the expression of a mother ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... daughter, and three of my wife's kin had come in from the country, all to make a merry Christmas with us. I felt sorry, but it was quite impossible, so I wished Mr. Bluff a "Merry Christmas," and hurried homeward through the cold and nipping air. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the promise of the year, Serene, thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone, Thy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... wrinkling her forehead; 'but then, you see, Witch Etta consults me: she makes a point of finding out all my little plans and nipping them in the bud. She says she really cannot allow me to go so often to the White Cottage; Mr. Cunliffe and Mr. Tudor are always there, and it is not proper. She is always hinting that I want to meet Mr. Tudor, and it is no good telling her that I never think of such ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... approached it stealthily, and with an adroit movement inverted the glass upon it, so as to inclose both bee and flower; at the same instant one of his hands—upon which was a strong buckskin glove—was slipped under the mouth of the glass, to prevent the bee from getting out; and, nipping the flower stalk between his fingers, he bore off both the bee ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... bear from behind, nipping it slightly. The huge beast stopped and whirled in clumsy astonishment. For a moment it looked almost curiously at the white-fanged fury leaping away. Then turning lumbered on again toward the mound. The monster had lived so long on Kon Klayu undisturbed by man or beast that it ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... them, in the matter of intelligence, with Andrew Hedger and Company. They sank to the level of the temperature in his esteem—as regarded their intellects. He approved their warmth of heart. The nipping of the victim's toes and finger-tips ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the cold, nipping air and the wild life. There were discomforts, it is true, but he did not think of them. He looked only at the comforts and the joys. He knew that his muscles were growing and hardening, that eye, ear, all the five senses, in truth, were growing ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... drifting snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and the flames danced high, casting ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... the mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost—a nipping-frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age. I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... footsteps left upon the pavement, is quite beyond our conception. Equally incomprehensible to us are the keenness of sight and wide range of vision of the eagle, which enable him to discover the rabbit nipping the clover amid the thick grass at a distance at which a like object would be to us altogether imperceptible. The chameleon is enabled to seize the little insects upon which it feeds by darting forth its wonderfully constructed tongue with such rapidity and with such delicacy of perception that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation as this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of an ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... above moved the first load to the edge. The sunshine had gone and it was getting cold; the shadows in the dale had faded from blue to dusky gray and the frost was keen. All was very quiet, but now and then distant voices and the musical rattle of chains came down through the nipping air. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... thy reign, And frame a fairer Athens than of yore In these blest bounds of Baltimore, — Here, where the climates meet That each may make the other's lack complete, — Where Florida's soft Favonian airs beguile The nipping North, — where nature's powers smile, — Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands Spread wide with invitation to all lands, — Where now the eager people yearn to find The organizing hand that fast may bind Loose straws of aimless aspiration fain In sheaves of serviceable grain, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... The few passers-by strode rapidly along, wrapped up in comforters; naturally enough one does not care to tarry when the cold is nipping at your heels. However, Gervaise perceived four or five women who were mounting guard like herself outside the door of the zinc-works; unfortunate creatures of course—wives watching for the pay to prevent it going ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... face close to his again, felt the whole weight of the man crushing him, felt the bite of teeth through cloth and flesh, nipping down on his shoulder as the man lay on him, striving to hold him down until he regained the strength that the blow in the groin had ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to her stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, and I felt very glad; though just how to manage Dr. Sandford I did not know. I thought a great deal about the whole matter as we went through ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... grappling-iron is furnished with three or four feet of chain, a precaution which is absolutely necessary; for a voracious shark will sometimes gobble the bait so deep into his stomach, that he would snap through the rope as easily as if he were nipping the head off ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... which the ships were lying was not one floe, but formed by the close junction of two, so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had supposed for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case of ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of "nipping" us between the floes which formed it. I therefore determined on immediately removing the ships in-shore, and went in a boat to look out for a place for that purpose, there being no alternative between this and our returning ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... command, in Polly's voice, Dr. Dudley endeavored to obey. He did succeed in slamming the door in front of pussy, though at the risk of nipping her little black nose; but when he stooped to snatch her she slipped between his feet, and dashed into his office. Polly flew after, and the door went together just as ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... and he now felt in every sight and sound the dreariness of winter; the hard ground was covered with withered leaves; icicles depended from leafless branches; he heard the sweet low note of the robin, who familiarly approached him; and he felt his fingers numbed by the nipping frost. Father Cuddy found it rather difficult to account for such sudden transformations, and to convince himself it was not the illusion of a dream, he was about to arise, when, lo! he discovered that both his knees were buried at least six inches in the solid stone; for notwithstanding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... The nipping air began to infiltrate his dressing gown, and Roger returned to the kitchen, his small, lively face alight with zest. He opened the draughts in the range, set a kettle on to boil, and went down to resuscitate ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... her into the big bed. She curled up there under the shelter of the raised hip and shoulder. Mamma's face was dry and warm and smelt sweet like Jenny's powder-puff. Mamma's mouth moved over her wet cheeks, nipping her tears. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... faire Allies twixt row and row to auoide the boisterous blasts of winds, and within them also others for Bees; yet wee admit none of these into your Orchard-plat: other remedy then this haue wee none against the nipping frosts. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... and they saw that she had slipped off her garment of skins, and stood before them, a gaunt white figure armed with a gleaming knife. Next she put the knife to her mouth, and, nipping it between her teeth, slid into the water silently as a diving bird. A minute passed, not more, and they saw that something was climbing up the cable of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... scheme is adopted by a number of the public schools; suppose that by a steady process of attack, this new and very powerful piece of machinery is captured by the State, as a means of imposing orthodoxy on the nation and nipping in the bud a great part of our potential vigour and independence; have you not then defeated most disastrously your own object, and desiring above everything more liberty in thought and more self-reliance in action, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... fair weather after foul, nor warm weather after cold, nor a sweet and beautiful spring after a heavy and nipping and terrible winter, so comfortable, sweet, and desirable and welcome to the poor birds and beasts of the field, as this day will be to the church of God. Darkness! it was the plague of Egypt; it is an empty, forlorn, desolate, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... carting office and Harrow Inn, a resort of country carriers. The man would have gone in there where he was quite unknown or, indeed, he might even have lain down in the bleak court that gave access to the tenements above, but for Bobby's persistent and cheerful barking, begging and nipping. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste, dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand, which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers of a ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Europeans in this portion of the continent. They were, consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that has been made ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... amiss to relate how they geld their Cattel. They let them be two or three years old before they go about this work; then casting them and tying their Legs together; they bruise their Cods with two sticks tied together at one end, nipping them with the other, and beating them with Mallets all to pieces. Then they rub over their Cods with fresh Butter and Soot, and so turn them loose, but not suffer them to lye down all that day. By this way they are secured from breeding ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... I cried, and without stopping to close the doors against the nipping cold, I led the way ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... it is true, but joyless orgies to look back upon. Their pleasures gave but a pinchbeck joviality after all, were but a thin lacker spread over mercenary cares and heart-aching jealousies—not the jealousies of passion, but the nipping vulgar vexation with which a shopkeeper trembles lest a customer should go to his rival over the way. Still there was excitement—the excitement of outdoing a rival in shamelessness of apparel, in reckless abandonment ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... was very friendly and full of anxiety to help, though it was also obvious that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... compassion; O then, poor Corin, scorned and quite despised, Loathe now to live since life procures thy woe; Enough, thou hast thy heart anatomised, For her sweet sake which will no pity show; But as cold winter's storms and nipping frost Can never change sweet Aramanthus' hue, So though my love and life by her are crossed. My heart shall still be constant firm and true. Although Erynnis hinders Hymen's rites, My fixed faith ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... incontinencie and rape, the cruell aspectes of spoyle, breach of order, treason, ill lucke and ouerthrow of States and other persons. Wherein also be intermixed, pleasaunte discourses, merie talke, sportinge practises, deceitfull deuises, and nipping tauntes, to exhilarate your honor's minde. And although by the first face and view, some of these may seeme to intreat of vnlawfull Loue, and the foule practises of the same, yet being throughly reade and well considered, both old and yonge may learne how to auoyde the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... to do exactly as Jean said and as quickly as possible. He reached the door in two jumps with Tam leaping after him and nipping his heels at each jump, and in another instant found himself on the doorstep with the ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... already, and his struggles were carrying him down stream. Preston seized him by his calico frock, and tried to drag him toward the bank; but that dreadful baby had always had a habit of nipping at everything like a snapping-turtle, and now he caught Preston's throat between his thumb and forefinger, half strangling him. And, oh, the current ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... hysterical lamentations and outpourings with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her declaiming to ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... preceding winter had been mild, but this bade fair to break some records for severe and variegated weather. Now came the true test for Albert. To trudge all day long in snow, icy rain or deep slush, to paddle across the lake in a nipping wind, with the chilly spray all over him, to go for hours soaking wet on every inch of his skin—these were the things that would have surely tried the dwellers in the houses of men, even ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... would have been amazed to see how Mary V refrained from bullying her mount that night. There was no mane-pulling, no little, nipping pinches of the neck to imitate the bite of a fly, no scolding—nothing that Tango had come to take for granted when Mary ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... place if she might see Abraham Dixon. The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather nipping. To him ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... brightly upon the hills and plains of Monmouth. Over the meadows lay the snow, and on the streams a thick coating of ice; but the pines were green in the woodlands, and the air—though sharp and nipping—still breathed of spring and hope. The land was fair to see in its winter garb. Man alone was the discordant note ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... called, stumbling toward the farther window, while Flounce the terrier and a wonk puppy ran nipping at his heels. "Come, look at them! Out on ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... whirligig farce was that the mosquitoes determined to come in for a share. These little, nipping, biting creatures preferred settling upon young blood, full of life and activity, existing under artificial circumstances, to the carcase of a dead horse lying in the knacker's yard. To prevent these little stingers drawing the sap of life from the sweet ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... but we always have hay fever when we get near those grass skirts. Grass widows is what the profession calls the Hawaiian ladies. Hope the temperature isn't going up again. We love the old-fashioned Christmas and all that sort of thing. Nipping air makes cheeks pink; we love to see them nestled in fur coats on Chestnut Street. This is the time of year to do unexpected kindnesses. We know one man who stands in line for hours in front of movie ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; there was always a ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the lean will break on being pinched, and the skin will dent by nipping it with the fingers; the fat will be white, soft, and pulpy. If the skin or rind is rough, and cannot he ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... this minute." He threw a furtive glance in Polly's direction, over the rose he was nipping again; but she was occupied with the tendrils of a vine that ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... tearing along and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, for ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... Three plants are sufficient for a hill; to which number the hills should ultimately be thinned, making the final thinning when all danger from bugs and other vermin is past. The dwarfs may be planted four feet apart; but the running sorts should not be less than six or eight. The custom of cutting or nipping off the leading shoot of the running varieties is now practised to some extent, with the impression that it both facilitates the formation of fruitful laterals and the early maturing of the fruit. Whether the amount of product ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... fer sale at no price," Uncle Billy emphatically announced, nipping all negotiations right in the bud. "It's too pesky hard to sneak this here licker in past Marge't, but I reckon it's my treat, gents. Ye ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... meadow, and, watching his herd, like the faithful guardian he was. Robert called to him cheerfully. The big fellow looked up, shook his horns, not in hostile fashion but in the manner of comrade saluting comrade, and then went back, with a whole and confident heart, to his task of nipping the grass. Robert was pleased. It was certain that the bull no longer regarded him with either fear or apprehension, and he ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... than that for he was Gray Wolf's mate. In an instant more he would have leaped over her body to have fought for her, more than for the right of leadership. But the big husky turned away sullenly, growling, still snarling, and vented his rage by nipping fiercely at the flank ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood |
