"Rasping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some are emetic and vermifuge in their medicinal properties. The root of garden or red beet is exceedingly wholesome and nutritious, and Dr. Lyon Playfair has recommended that a good brown bread may be made by rasping down this root with an equal quantity of flour. He says that the average quality of flour contains about 12 per cent. of azotized principles adapted for the formation of flesh, and the average quality of beet contains about 2 per cent. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... few days ago Emile had stormed at her in his rasping French, because she had, with the vehemence of youth, denounced the Anarchist leader ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... to be so in Russia, the first Socialist State, as yet unindustrial, able to draw on the industrial experience of the whole world, were it not that one discovers with a certain misgiving in the Bolshevik leaders the rasping arid temperament of those to whom the industrial machine is an end in itself, and, in addition, reflects that these industrially minded men have as yet no practical experience, nor do there exist men of goodwill ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... for the fatal messenger. It came the next moment. True to its aim, the tiny sphere of lead entered the head of the bear at the most vulnerable point, and the life went out from that huge mass. A rasping growl, a few spasmodic throes, ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... in a voice which showed that he was agitated. "Yes, sir. Quite sure. But no one's been up there." "There must be a spy," said the Duke. The two voices spoke together for a moment in whispers. I could not hear what they said; but a moment later I heard the rasping, clinking noise of two swords being drawn. "Come out of that," said Mr. Jermyn's voice. I felt that I was discovered; but I dared not stir from my covert. I heard the two men walking swiftly to the door. A hand plucked it from in front of me. I shrank ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... of the grass fire had driven him; nor did he know why he went steadily to meet the horse, nor why his nostrils stretched and his arms strained and his hands clenched, nor why there was a fierce eagerness in him; a rasping thirst for something dried his tongue. The horse came on, and the boy, perfectly calm, as fatally went to meet him. There was no calculation of results, yet the lad knew that a horse's teeth and hoofs may be deadly. He knew only that he was not ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... oxen, sheep that bleat, And the joiner's hammer-beat, Softened are above their will, Take tones from groves they wandered through Or flutes which passing angels blew. All grating discords melt, No dissonant note is dealt, And though thy voice be shrill Like rasping file on steel, Such is the temper of the air, Echo waits with art and care, And will ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... this sentence was interrupted by a sharp, rasping sound of Big Jim clearing his throat and shuffling to his feet. He, too, looked the minister full in the face with a searching gaze, shook his head sadly, and walked leisurely down the aisle and out of the door. The minister paused again and frowned. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the Katydids' rasping chant was repeated again and again: Katy did, Katy did; she did, she did! But since in any crowd there are always a few that want to be different from the rest, now and then some member of Kiddie's clan insisted that Katy ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... she said, toward the end of the lesson, in a voice so rasping as to make the girls fairly shiver, "go to the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... The low rasping went past close at hand, then to the right, then back, and seemed going away. Rag felt he knew what he was about; he wasn't a baby; it was his duty to learn what it was. He slowly raised his rolypoly body on his short fluffy legs, lifted his little round head above the covering ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... character began when mowers brought their clattering machine, and with rasping noise and confusion dire laid low the grass which had isolated him from the rest of the world, and that impertinent world poured in. First came crows, from their homes in the woods beyond the pasture, to feast on the numerous ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... more necessary for children to recite in that horrible, rasping tone sometimes heard, than it is to sing with harsh tone; and if the same principles are applied to the speaking-voice as are herein given for the management of the singing-voice, in so far as they ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... the Indian Devil, and he held her in his clutches on the broad floor of a swinging fir-bough. His long sharp claws were caught in her clothing, he worried them sagaciously a little, then, finding that ineffectual to free them, he commenced licking her bare white arm with his rasping tongue and pouring over her the wide streams of his hot, fetid breath. So quick had this flashing action been that the woman had had no time for alarm; moreover, she was not of the screaming kind; but now, as she felt him endeavoring to disentangle his claws, and the horrid sense of her fate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... London; but the case of those who dwell in the black manufacturing cities is even worse. What is Oldham like on a blistering midsummer day? What are Hanley and St. Helen's and the lower parts of Manchester like? The air is charged with dust, and the acrid, rasping fumes from the chimneys seem to acquire a malignant power over men and brain. Toil goes steadily on, and the working-folk certainly have the advantage of starting in the bright morning hours, before the air has become befouled; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... boys for quite a distance, keeping well out of sight behind the timber. It had a shrill, rasping voice that was very aggravating. Jerry declared it to be a lynx or wolverine, and Hamp agreed with him. A little later something more serious occurred. Three hungry wolves stole out of the forest and down to the ice. They evidently scented the carcass of the deer. They followed the little ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... been pressed into service, and was stoning raisins, or eating them, a close observer would have found it difficult to discover which. She was certainly rasping the nerves of her sister in a variety of those endless ways by which a thoughtless, restless, questioning child can almost distract a troubled brain. Ester endured with what patience she could the ceaseless drafts upon her, and worked at the interminable cookies with commendable zeal. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... she came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... wide open, he heard the rasping of the lynx's claws on the boards behind him. He dashed outside, threw both flat-irons wildly at his pursuer, and jumped as far as he could to one side. The lynx kept straight on, headed for the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... with other girls in a long dreary room, where giants sat pounding wool into a long thread-like strip with iron, rasping hands. And all day long they roared as they sat at their soulless work. But the work of Mary Jane was not with these, only their roar was ever in her ears as their clattering iron limbs went to ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... whose recently published book upon the prophet Daniel had been painfully exercising the minds of the editor and readers of the Church Times; and it was then that the curate's friend, without moving a muscle of his face, suddenly leaned forward and said, in a rasping voice: ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... mopin' out thar an' come along in, I'll clear off the dishes!" called his mother again in her rasping voice which sounded as if she were choking in a perpetual ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... away there by the tiller, and it displeases him. "You would do better," he growls in a voice like the rasping of a file, "instead of plucking the saint's flowers for that child, to burn a holy willow-wand at the lamp, for if the Lord drives us on to these stone monsters, even His own Son won't ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... "Esther," she said, in a voice which must naturally have been rasping, but which she had apparently learned to control like a violin—"Esther dear, if you could ever understand what offices have done for me! On the East Side—always it was work and work and watch all the pretty girls in our block get T. B. in garment-factories, or marry fellows that weren't ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... did not even turn to look at him, but the thin lips almost opened and a rasping voice said: "Got anything to say ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... said, after reading out the orderly array of items, in a tone of rasping irony, to convince her brother he was well rid ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shame and humiliation, and all because of the look on the face of the girl at the edge of the crowd. He sat in the shadow of the big box and fought his fight. The coffee and the excitement no longer kept him up; he was faint, and his breath came short. Above him he heard Ricks's rasping voice still talking to the few customers who were left. He knew, without glancing up, just how Ricks looked when he said the words; he knew how his teeth pushed his lips back, and how his restless little eyes watched everything at once. A sudden ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... emerged with a smile of welcome and bade us enter. In a small courtyard a German N.C.O., with a loud rasping voice, ordered the prison guard to take us to our quarters. After much jangling of keys we were separated, to our amazement, and each one of the party locked in a cell by himself. Near the ceiling was one small window about two feet square. On examination this exit proved to be guarded ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... perverse attempt at loquacity, Skipper Billy lifted his voice in song—a large, rasping voice, little enough acquainted with melody, but expressing the worst of the rage of those days: being thus quite sufficient ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... thrilling adventure of this happy journey. In the darkest hour before dawn Mat awoke, heard a suspicious noise in the middle room, and asked if Lavinia was on the rampage again. No reply, and, listening, a low, rasping, rustling ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... fever, and bloody flux, and dreadful details. He would wear his sackcloth, and rarely change it, though it caked into knots which chafed him fiercely. But, though the rule allowed, he would not go soft to his end, however much his friends might entreat him to put off the rasping hair. "No, no, God forbid that I should. This raiment does not scrape, but soothe; does not hurt, but help," he answered sternly. He gave exact details of how he was to be laid on ashes on the bare earth at ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Perry's love affairs, and he felt the matter must be repaired, and put in running order. For he knew that love affair was the mainspring of his life. And the mechanic in him—the Yankee that talked in his rasping, high-keyed tenor voice, that shone from his thin, lean face, and cadaverous body, the Yankee in him, the dreaming, sentimental Yankee, half poet and half tinker, fell upon the problem with unbending will and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... well-built dwellings whose new roofs brightened the old-fashioned village. An avenue of trees rose above these new houses, and from among them came the confused sounds of several industries. He heard the songs peculiar to busy toilers, a murmur of many workshops, the rasping of files, and the sound of falling hammers. He saw the thin lines of smoke from the chimneys of each household, and the more copious outpourings from the forges of the van-builder, the blacksmith, and the farrier. At length, at ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... but the ships ran foul; With a gnarring shudder and growl— He gave us a deadly gun; But as he passed in his pride, (Rasping right alongside!) The Old Flag, in thunder tones, Poured in her port broadside, Rattling his iron hide, And ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... perfectly well there was not, but she reached for a small pile of letters in a pigeonhole on her right and glanced over them rapidly. Her sour visage and rasping voice softened perceptibly as she smiled on the little ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... tall man with grey hair emerged, with a crooked figure dragging on his arm. Field looked over the paper for a moment, and then ducked down again as he saw Carl Sartoris. Evidently the cripple had lost no time. He was saying something now in a low and rasping ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... relative—like everything else in the world, don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitterness that was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, yourself, are compounding ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... is perfectly uniform and consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on hazel nuts; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one would wonder how ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... waste of sand intermixed with plashy pools to seaward, and a desert of sand-hillocks on the land side. But now the brown, weather-hardened donkey-women haunt people that stray along the reaches, and delicate persons face the cold, rasping, ill-tempered blast on the promenade, and children dig in the sands; and, for want of something better, it seems to be determined that this shall ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... set forth upon their journey over the Great Divide. All Nature seemed conscious of the burden weighing to the earth every Indian thought, and trailing in the dust every hope of the race. The birds remembered not to sing—the prairie dogs ceased their almost continual and rasping chatter. The very horses seemed to loiter and fear the weary miles of their final day of travel. The hills, the sky, the very light of the noonday sun gathered to themselves a new atmosphere and spread it like a mantle over this travelling host. Tired feet ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... needle, he sprang several feet in the air, and began frantically clutching at the tormenting substance. The second or third attempt secured the spark, which clung to his hand, burning his fingers to that extent that he emitted a rasping exclamation, bounded upward, and by a particularly vigorous flirt of his hand freed it of the spark, ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... this gloomy place the sexton keeps his dismal apparatus,—the hearse, with its curtains of rusty sable, the bier, the spades and shovels for digging graves; and in a corner lies a coil of soiled ropes, whose rasping sound, as they slipped through the coffin-handles, while the bearers lowered the corpse into the earth, has grated harshly on many a shuddering mourner's ear. The leaves of the hearse-house door are fastened together by a hasp and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... amphora. It is the common drink of the carters at every wine-house on the country roads. I longed for a glass of my own rich Falernian or the mellow Coan that was bottled in the year that Titus took Jerusalem. Is it even now too late? Could we not wash this rasping stuff from ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... admiration as I did for those of Ivan Tourgueneff, and none in whose personality I felt so profound an interest. Tourgueneff is far from being a model novelist, but his tales are written with wonderful power, and yet are neither indecent nor melodramatic nor rasping to the nerves. That the burden of strong natures is in proportion to their strength, that human nature in general is weak, and that the Devil still sometimes appears incarnate in the person of lovely woman, seem to form his theory of life. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... demanded, in a harsh, rasping voice. "Is it not sufficient that thou hast failed thy destiny, but in the same hour thou must close thine eyes and dream, like a child on whose shoulders rest no duty, no responsibility? Awake! I have more ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... bones—and words, The proud music in the throat?... Not a note, not a note? Doubtless they were not so pleasant As the brains of a young pheasant, Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty Never was to utter beauty. But they sang, but they fluted And your rasping lies confuted, And your ugliness laid bare With a lyric in the air. So you bought them on a string, Dangling balls that used to sing, And you gave them to the cook With a fat ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... schooner, which had sheared through the port-side of The Bonita. The bowsprit hung far over the smaller ship, a wand of doom. The beating of the waves against the boat's side came gently under the rasping, crunching complaint of timber against timber in combat. The schooner's sails flapped softly in the light breeze. Zeke, watching and listening alertly, despite bewilderment, heard the roaring commands of a man invisible, somewhere ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... and glanced back. The opaque white mist was dense about him, and he could see nothing. As he stood still, he heard a muttered oath, and after a time the man cleared his throat in a rasping fashion, as if the oath had stuck ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... file. Cawing rooks streamed back from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and old fashioned, and Dick had considerable trouble in moving it into its socket. It made a rasping sound, but this was not noticed by the two ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... getting the supper, which she said was all but ready. When it was all ready, without the but, they sat down, though the poor Prince, hungry as he was, found it hard work to swallow the dry red herring, the rasping oaten cakes, and the brackish water of which the meal consisted. When he had finished the meal,—which, as you may suppose, did not take long,—he set his box upon ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... whole comfortabler then she had entered it, and finished buttoning that glove in the passage. As she stood reflecting that papa would really be very nice if he would shave more carefully—for the remains of his adieu was still rasping her cheek—she was aware of the voice of the carpet; she heard it complain, through the medium of its layer, or stretcher, who seemed to mean to pass the remainder of his days scratching the head of perplexity on the scene of his recent failure to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... are more noticeable now than at any other time of the year. Although not by any means a rare bird, with us jays are shy and wary. In Florida their southern cousins are as familiar as robins, without a trace of fear of mankind. What curious notes our blue jays have—a creaking, wheedling, rasping medley of sounds coming through the leafless branches. At this time of year they love acorns and nuts, but in the spring "their fancy turns to thoughts of" eggs and young nestlings, and they are accordingly hated by the small birds. Nevertheless ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... harsh. The sound, so irregular, at such wide intervals, sounded through the house. Morel, in his room, slept on. Paul and Annie sat crouched, huddled, motionless. The great snoring sound began again—there was a painful pause while the breath was held—back came the rasping breath. Minute after minute passed. Paul looked at her ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... of the darkness, came sound after sound as if someone was busy at work. Now it was the creaking of a hinge; then a faint rap, as of a lid escaping too soon from a person's hand, and after that, for quite an hour, the rasping and cracking of wood, till Stratton came out bathed with perspiration, and looking more ghastly ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... us. We see the crisp, erect figure, bristling with aggressive vigour, the coarse, red hair, the keen, grey eyes, piercingly fixed on his opponent's face, and reading at a glance the knavery he sought to hide; we hear the rasping voice, launching its dry, cutting sarcasms one after another, each pointed with its sting of truth; and we can well believe that the dislike was intense, which could make an enemy provoke the terrible armoury of the old ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... words of Lamon: "The judge never could whisper, but in this case he probably did his best. At all events, in attempting to whisper to Mr. Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words, and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court room: 'Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don't make ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... hushed pause. Then, "Arthur, Arthur," whispered an inexpressively peevish, rasping voice, "is that you? ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... for Wilmot's train was suddenly slid wide open with a horrid, rasping noise, and people began to press upon the man who examined the tickets. It was then that Barbara's roving and troubled eyes came to rest, you may say, in Wilmot's, with a look so sweet, so confiding, so trusting, that it seemed to the young man that the pain ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... reviles The almost whispered warble from the hedge, And takes a locust's rasping voice and files The silence to ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... importance to stop the grinding, rasping process in the brain at night and to keep from wearing life away and wasting ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... had expected that realization of the facts would produce these symptoms in him, but now that they had presented themselves she was finding them rasping to the nerves. "I should have thought the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... while, as he went through the day's particular and general business, the wild words in the rasping, incoherent voice haunted Christopher so persistently that he heard them through the enthusiastic platitudes of congratulations, the calm official statements of plain facts, behind even Patricia's healing voice of love. It was not till the following Sunday he awoke to find ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Robot was moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us. I thought I heard its voice—and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... his musical efforts were abortive. There was no music in him. A moment before his heart had been full of harmony; but when he found a man instead of his sweetheart, the harmony quickly turned to rasping discord. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... from the neighborhood of the door had cut into the babble like a knife into butter; a rough, rasping voice, loud and compelling, which caused the conversation of the members of the ensemble to cease on the instant. Only Mr Saltzburg, now in a perfect frenzy of musicianly fervor, continued to assault the decrepit piano, unwitting of an unsympathetic ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... were then cut adrift. The Webb passed up following the Queen. The latter, having gained sufficient distance, turned and charged down, but as the Indianola was turning up at the same moment the blow on the starboard bow glanced, the vessels rasping by each other; and as the Queen cleared the stern of her enemy, the latter planted two IX-inch shot successfully, killing 2 and wounding 4 of her crew and disabling two guns. During all this time the Indianola kept firing her guns whenever they could be made to bear, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the rasping hurt at her heart remained—a hurt so cruel it seemed to her the end of all peace ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Providence had blessed her with only one child, a daughter was surely the most fitting companion for a widowed mother. The house Mrs. Meadowsweet lived in fitted her requirements to perfection. In short, she was fat and comfortable, both in mind and body; she never fretted, she never worried; she was not rasping and disagreeable; she was not fault-finding. If her nature lacked depth, it certainly did not lack affection, generosity, and a true spirit of kindliness. If she were a little too well pleased with herself, she was also well pleased with her neighbors. She was not especially appreciated, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... with a rasping vigour that recalled a machine-gun firing, brought Robin to his feet in an instant. He crossed over to the desk on ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Acme Film Company cleared his throat with a rasping noise that sounded very loud, coming as it did after fifteen minutes of complete silence. Luck, smoking a cigarette absent-mindedly by the window while he stared out across two vacant lots to a tawdry apartment house,—and saw a sage-covered ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... neck, I watched the grotesque high-breasted white figures about the doorway, they were tittering to each other in some tongue I did not know, a strange sound like the rasping of corn husks under squeaking wagon wheels. Suddenly the whole palace shook terribly, the floor seemed to reel, an unbearable sound raged at my ears. I cringed from the pain of the sound. When I opened my eyes, the whole mass of ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... better than he had a right to expect, for the leaden pellet bored its way through the skull of the wolf, who, with a rasping yelp, made a sidelong plunge, as if diving off a bank into the water, and, striking on the side of his head, rolled over on his back, with his legs vaguely kicking at the moon, and as powerless to do harm as a ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... before the sahib has breakfasted. Through the long heats of the day he will be the life and soul of the hunt, urging on the beaters with voice and example, climbing trees, peeping under bushes, carrying orders, giving advice, changing the line, until that supreme moment when shots are fired, when the rasping growl tells that the shots have taken effect, and when at length the huge cat lies stretched out dead. And all this on a handful ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... into that squalid dance-hall in the first place and submit to the test he had subjected her to! How must the dressing-room conversation of her colleagues in the chorus have revolted and sickened her? What must it mean to her to take his orders—sharp rasping orders, with the sting of ridicule in the tail of them when they had to be repeated;—to be addressed by her last name like a servant? Why, this very afternoon, how must she have felt, standing there like a manikin, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... that she put the cradle. The water on the floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the house. Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... are always my fault! Jimmie turned to glare at me, and the treacherous barrel-head gave way, letting him down most ungently into its middle, and rasping his shins in the descent in a manner which must have been particularly trying to one of ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... more of those infernal skeletons hanging on the poles by the fire?" he concluded in a rasping whisper. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... The wind began to roar, and great masses of snow, dislodged from the tall trees above the cabin, fell upon its roof with sounds like those of soft, slow footfalls. Strange noises of creaking and groaning and rasping penetrated to Alice's ears, and she cowered half in fear, half in joy of her shelter and her male protector. Men were fine animals for ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... But snatches of hideous sound came wafting on the evening air as music; concertina, fiddle, mouth-organ, with here and there a cornet, a mandolin, a guitar, many breathing individual melody, merged into one vast harmony. Rasping voices lifted themselves in song. No laughter, no shouting—only the sounds of men whose memories are more sensitive than their feelings, who live in the past or the future, never in the present. Evening was fluttering gently ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... No. 124 Constantine Road. As she did so, a high, rasping, and fretful voice screamed to her ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... Strange. He was a huge man, gaunt and haggard, moulded with the hunched shoulders and heavy arms of a gorilla. His face seemed to be unconsciously twisted into a snarl. His greeting, which came only after he had stared at us intently, for nearly a minute, was curt and rasping. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... Springs, so named because the burros common to this region come there to drink. Just as we drew rein to allow our horses to quench their thirst, the sultry silence was shattered beyond repair. Such a rasping, choking, jarring sound rolled and echoed back and forth from crag to crag! "What's that?" I gasped, after I had swallowed my heart two or three times. The Chief pointed to a rock lying a few feet away. Over the top of this an enormous pair of ears protruded, and two big, solemn eyes ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... their attention was the ships themselves. These, being lashed together by means of the grapnels, were grinding and rasping each other's sides so alarmingly, as they rolled and plunged in the sea that was running, that they had already inflicted upon each other an appreciable amount of damage, and threatened to do a great deal more ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... bottom of the dunes, I observed a Goumier encampment in the distance. At that moment there came a rasping ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... street, without an objective point; he passed the group of village jokers, sitting in front of the drug store, with their chairs tipped back against the wall; he passed the planing mill, with its rasping noise, and in his whimsical fancy it sounded like the Town Council snoring. He loitered near a garden where plum trees were in bloom; he looked over at a solemn child digging in the dirt; he caught sight of a pale man with the mark of death upon him, ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... body which Rosendo and Don Jorge carried that his human endurance had been strained so far beyond the elastic limit that there could now be no rebound. Every thought that touched his sore mind made it bleed anew, for every thought that he accepted was acrid, rasping, oppressive. The sheer weight of foreboding, of wild apprehension, of paralyzing fear, crushed him, until his shoulders bent low as he walked. How, lest he perform a miracle, could he hope to extricate himself and his loved ones from the meshes of the net, far-cast, but with unerring ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... over the saddle-horn and was riding sidewise, smoking a meditative cigarette and staring out between the ears of his horse. They were tired; horses and men, they were tired to the middle of their bones. But they went ahead without making any complaints whatever or rasping oneanother's tempers with ill-chosen remarks; and for that Luck's ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... right hand man to the left hand said, As down in the vale we went, "Harden your heart like a millstone, Ned, And set your face as flint; Solid and tall is the rasping wall That stretches before us yonder; You must have it at speed or not at all, 'Twere better to halt than to ponder, For the stream runs wide on the take-off side, And washes the clay bank under; Here goes for a pull, 'tis a madman's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... audience for coming late. He scolded them for leaving early. Once he scolded them for coughing. They continued the rasping noise. After the intermission, on Stoky's orders, the 100-odd men of the orchestra walked out on the stage barking as if in the last stages ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Admiral Bruix,' cried the Emperor, in the same terrible rasping voice, 'that you did not obey my ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anchored submarine became more acute. A weird grating sound—the noise made by the hull rasping over the bed of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side—Purdy, the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man, who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... with expletives that came splutteringly from their lips, so that altogether it was a scene of confusion and excitement which was taking place in front of the old building. One particularly rasping voice Jack fancied must belong to the general himself. He pitied those two wretched chauffeurs, who would be apt to feel the displeasure of their superiors in ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... grew in fury. It shrieked around our illy built shack, drifting the snow in through the holes and crevices until we could not find a place to sit or lie that was free from it. On the night of the third day the weather cleared and settled, cold and rasping. I took the rifle and looked about for game, but the snow was now so deep that walking far in it was out of the question. I did not see the track or sign of any living thing save a single whisky-jack, but even he was shy and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... (Jabolenus de Cosmographia Purgatorii.) Quaestio subtilissima, utrum Chimaera in vacuo bonbinans possit comedere secundas intentiones; et fuit debatuta per decem hebdomadas in Consilio Constantiensi. The Bridle-champer of the Advocates. Smutchudlamenta Scoti. The Rasping and Hard-scraping of the Cardinals. De calcaribus removendis, Decades undecim, per M. Albericum de Rosata. Ejusdem de castramentandis criminibus libri tres. The Entrance of Anthony de Leve into the Territories of Brazil. (Marforii, bacalarii cubantis Romae) de peelandis aut ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nobody was word-perfect and a rasping prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people could then do it so slackly. Then a certain sudden warmth in the applause about me quickened my ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Something resembling rotten wood formed a deposit at the bottom of his glass, while the servers were handing round dishes of prunes with their thumbs washing in the juice. Now and again, amid the rattle of plates, the rasping voice of the reader, a lad of seventeen, reached the usher's ears. He caught the name of Cleopatra and some scraps of sentences: "She was about to appear before Antony at an age when women unite with the flower of their beauty every charm of wit and intellect... her person more compelling ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... foot, an' knowed it tu, A-rasping on the scraper; All ways at once her feelin's flew ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... his eyes were more sombre, and beneath them there were heavy, dark stains of sleeplessness and care, his very voice, when presently he spoke, seemed to have lost the musical timbre that had earlier distinguished it; it was grown harsh and rasping. Disappointment after disappointment, set down to ill-luck, but in reality the fruit of incompetence, had served to sour him. The climax had been reached in the serious desertions after the Philips Norton fight, and the flight of ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... that our landlady, who has good sense and experience, thinks G. will not get well. Sometimes, in awful moments, I think so too; but then I cheer up and get quite elated. Last night as I lay awake, too weary to sleep, I heard a harsh, rasping sound like a large saw. I thought some animal unknown to me must be making it, it was so regular and frequent. But after a time I found it was a dying young soldier who lives farther from this house than Miss H. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... which nothing more moving is to be found in our English speech. The preacher's voice was throbbing with all the pathos of the tale. Motionless, the little group hung hard upon the story-teller, when the door opened quickly, a red head appeared, a rasping voice broke in: ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... fingers together and the palms of his hands gave out dry, rasping sounds. His attitude seemed inconsistent with the immobility of his face, but Dick surmised that he was trying to regain control of his emotions. He had a keen desire to know more of the particulars of the tragedy, but sensed from the storekeeper's ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... cheeks grew thinner, her cough more rasping. But after the campaign against Troy was over, she turned with the same intensity of interest to the National Convention of the American Federation of Labor which was to meet there in November. For ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... dead, and in this small grave were her fragile bones to rest for twenty-four months under three feet of Christian law. Interest tempered the fright which Romulus and Moses felt when from the forward carriage came the sound of rasping oboes, belly-less fiddles, brazen tom-toms, and harsh cymbals, playing a dirge for little Wang Tai; playing less for godly protection of her tiny soul than for its exemption from the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... to us directly from our neighbors, but authoritatively from a friend of theirs, who was also a friend of ours, and we could not very well hold back. So, in the cool of the early evening, when I had quite finished rasping my lawn with the new mower, I left it at the end of the swath, which had brought me near the fence, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... saucepan, and making a Saint Lawrence of himself by wasting his life on a series of gridirons. Ah, if I were only a man, I would do something better than that, and prove that heroes are not all dead yet. But, instead of that, I'm only a woman, and must sit rasping my temper with absurdities like this." And Di wrestled with her knitting as if it were Fate, and she were paying off the grudge ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... notice his scrutiny, leaning forward, now with his palms spread out to the grateful warmth, now rubbing them slowly together. But at last he suddenly whirled his chair around, rasping on the floor, and faced his stepbrother. He thrust his hand into his capacious coat pocket and brought out a pipe which he proceeded to fill from a skin of tobacco. "Well, Hi," said he, "d'ye see I've ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle |
