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More "Cracked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quarter of a century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is merely cut "The burial place of" so and so; on others there is a long list of half-readable names; on some few a laudatory epitaph, out of which, however, it were far too tedious to pick the meaning. But it really is interesting ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the French 3" Creusot gun, it seems to me that the kind of axle used with it is first class and should be used in our field carriages for quick-firing guns; it must certainly take the strain of recoil off the centre of the axle, which recoil we found cracked our axles as we used them (once in my own guns) so badly that the whole thing had to be shifted and replaced. Another advantage it has is to lower the whole gun and mounting, and the centre of gravity of the ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?' Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the upper deck, fetched a lifebuoy, and rammed it over the injured man's shoulders. "God forgive me for taking it," said the latter gratefully, "but my fibula's cracked to blazes, an' I love my wife ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... What in the world has a travelling half-cracked ranting old evangelist to do with the MacDonald family? He'll land on the Mission for a week or two free like the rest of 'em! He'll likely preach Hell-fire to Indians, who'll not know a word of what he says till Mr. Williams gives him a call ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... be cracked up, sir,' retorted Chollop, in a tone of menace. 'You are not now in A despotic land. We are a model to the airth, and must be ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... This room was of irregular shape, one end being narrower than the other, and nearly fitting the space at this end was a kind of projecting shelf or mantelpiece (only, of course, there was no fireplace under it, open fireplaces being unknown in Germany), upon which rested an old cracked looking-glass, made in two compartments, the frame of which, black with age and fly-spots, was fastened against the wall. The shelf was supported by two pilasters; but the object of the whole structure was a mystery; so far as appeared, it served no purpose but to support the looking-glass, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... strength, but it was slow going with so many boats in tow. A pistol cracked from the shoal, a second, and a third; then a regular fusillade began. The bullets spat and spat all about us; but thick clouds had covered the moon, and in the dim darkness it was no more than random firing. It was only by chance that ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... peck of morella cherries, and a peck of black hearts. Stone the morellas and crack the stones. Put all the cherries and the cracked stones into a demi-john, with three pounds of loaf-sugar slightly pounded or beaten. Pour in two gallons of double-rectified whiskey. Cork the demi-john, and in six months the cherry-bounce will be fit to pour off and bottle for use; but the older ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... bureaucratic body, composed of former Premiers, Cabinet Ministers, and other high officials, formally demanded that the Czar take steps to make the government responsible to the popularly elected assemblage. This was a small revolution in itself. The fabric of Czarism had cracked. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... clutching at his victim, he raised the cane. Whereupon, with a serene and cheerful countenance, up rose the mighty form of Amyas Leigh, a head and shoulders above his tormentor, and that slate descended on the bald coxcomb of Sir Vindex Brimblecombe, with so shrewd a blow that slate and pate cracked at the same instant, and the poor pedagogue dropped to the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... punchers and trappers assembled to meet the incoming stage. When I scrambled off the top of the old-fashioned coach, and before I had time to shake the alkali dust from my clothes, or moisten my dry and cracked lips, a typical western bully approached me roaring the verses of a song with which he ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Rifles cracked along the line while those sappers and patrols sent out by the enemy—who hardly believed life still possible in the shattered trenches—were shot down or driven back to cover. Henri then, peering over the trench, turned of a sudden ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... stakes. He made a severe attack on Lord George Bentinck, who, he asserted, was the real party in the cause. Witnesses for the plaintiff described the horse at various periods of its career; it was of a bay colour, with black legs, and a little white on the forehead; its heels were cracked, and, in 1842, it broke the skin on one leg, which left a scar. George Hitchcock, a breaker of colts, employed to break Running Rein in October, 1842, was cross-examined to ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... designed to yield an exact determination of the precise nature of the data at hand. The scientist attempts to prevent "reading-in" of meanings. "Reading-in" of meanings may be due to various causes. In the first place there may be purely physical causes: a dim light, a fog, a cracked window-pane are examples of how ordinary observation may lead us astray. Again, physiological causes may be at work to distort sensations: imperfection's in the sense organs, fatigue, illness, and the like are examples. But not least among the causes of error ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... stream, and on the other side a hillock. Leaving the others to feed as well as they could, he mounted his best horse, and rode across. The ice bent under him as he went, and he accordingly rode gently; but just as he reached the middle, it cracked violently right across, and sank visibly under him. Ivan looked hurriedly round him. The ice was everywhere split, and the next minute his horse, plunging violently, fell through. Instead, however, of falling ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... servants the most impudent set of extorting varlets I ever encountered! To keep from starving, I did as others—bribed a waiter to keep my plate supplied. At night they had what they called 'hops!' in other words, dances, shaking the whole house, and raising such a noise and hullabaloo, with cracked horns, squeaky fiddles—bawling and yelling, that no sailor boarding house could be half so disturbant of the peace. By banks of Brandywine, I got enough of such folderols; at the end of the week I asked for my bill, augmented by some few sundries—it made my hair stand ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... however. I found the window and opened the lower sash. With the rush of air from outside my oppressed lungs got relief for a second or two, but the draught drew in the flames that rioted through the hall; the glass in the transom, already cracked, burst with a loud explosive sound, and a torrent of fire and smoke poured in through ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... walls and the hanging portions swayed in the same current of air that waved the cobwebs. There was no furniture of any description in the room, except the heavy, gilt-framed mirror over the mantel. It was cracked and much of the gilt frame had fallen away. She went into the next room, then into the one beyond that, which seemed to stretch across the back of the house, and so through the door at the left of the room into the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the grimy and tattered state of her dress. The drawing-room was tenanted by half-a-dozen Manx cats. In the other rooms, rats and mice made havoc with hoarded drawings and engravings. Many of the pictures in the gallery were warped and cracked, and mildewed by neglect and damp. At Sandycombe Lodge, a few of the academicians, including Mr. Mulready, had once been regaled with tea; and Mr. Pye, the engraver, had been treated to cheese and porter; but of the hospitalities of Queen Anne Street there are no ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the first of Germany's terrible surprises, were brought into action against these forts, and their concrete and armored steel turrets were cracked as walnuts are cracked between the jaws of a nut-cracker. The Army of the Meuse then made its way like a gray-green cloud of poison gas through Belgium. A cavalry screen of crack Uhlan regiments preceded it, and it made no halt worthy of note ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... into even more violent action. She leaped into the air and then took off at a rapid trot, then a run. Her hands were tearing at her clothes and her mouth seemed to be working violently. She was halfway to the top of the nearest dune before a rifle cracked. She dropped, to twitch once ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... anything so dismal as the damp little parlor into which Donald escorted her. The closed blinds, the mouldy, bumpy sofa, the faded-green table-cover, the stained matting, the low-spirited rocking-chair with one arm broken off, and the cracked, dingy wall-paper oppressed ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... green screen? I, too, Doctor Theodore Plonnies, assisted at the trial as high-sheriff, Anton Petersdorf was protonotarius to the criminal court, and Johann Caude, the notarius, conducted the protocollum. Besides, when I look back and think of her shrieks, and how the dry withered limbs writhed and cracked upon the wheel, till the black blood poured forth from her nails and teeth, my head swims and the sight leaves my eyes—therefore, away with it! This only will I notice, that her advocate, Doctor Elias Pauli, preserved her in truth for a year and a day from the rack ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry. But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must have cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of the internecine strife which was proceeding so briskly in Russia. Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... said nothing; neither did she purr. They must have smelt her, though. Anyway, she seemed to be a little island in the mist—the faint, faint, ethereal dew-mist—where nobody walked. You could hear them—a rustle here, a squeak there, a thud somewhere else, a displaced leaf, a cracked twig—this only once—a drumming, a patter, a sniff, a snuffle, a sigh; but they all passed by on the other side, so to say, and gave the silver tabby room to think. Apparently cats are not considered good company in the wild; lonely creatures, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... already threatening to tumble down. It was a small place, a couple of storeys high, and would have been dear—I should think!—at thirty pounds a year. The windows had surely never been washed since the house was built,—those on the upper floor seemed all either cracked or broken. The only sign of occupancy consisted in the fact that a blind was down behind the window of the room on the ground floor. Curtains there were none. A low wall ran in front, which had apparently at one time been surmounted by something in the shape of an iron railing,—a rusty ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... I care?" said the other, scornfully. She leisurely cracked and ate as many as she pleased of the nuts, bestowing the rest in the bosom of her frock. Ellen watched fearfully for her next move. If she should open the little door and get among ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was not going under that tree. I stopped dead, pulling my hat brim down behind to divert the rivulet coursing down the back of my neck, calling to the others in a voice rather cracked from embarrassment. They looked back at me curiously, and Alice began to twit me, standing in the rain, while Tristan desired to know whether we thought we were a pair of goldfish; in his estimation, we might belong to the piscine ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... much attention to his toilet as a debutante when arraying herself for her first cotillion. After struggling into a remarkably obstinate shirt he selected the highest collar he could find, put it on, and admiringly surveyed the general effect in a cracked mirror, turning his head this way and that as he did so. Suddenly, with a gasping cry, he lurched forward, and ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... por soprannome."—Gimma, Italia Letterata, p. 196. There is a very curious engraving by Bosse, representing the Italian comedians about 1633, as they performed the various characters on the Parisian stage. The cracked voice and peculiarities of this "great invention" are declared by Fiorillo and Signorelli to be imitations of the peculiarities of the peasants of Acerra, an ancient city in the neighbourhood of Naples. For a curious dissertation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... from under our very feet as it seemed there were explosions of a strange stinging metallic kind—not angry and human as the battery had been, but rather like some huge bottle cracking in the sun. These huge bottles—one could fancy them green and shining somewhere in the corn—cracked one after another; positively the sound intensified the heat of the sun upon one's head. There were too now, for the first time in our experience, shrapnel. They were not over us, but ran somewhere on our right across the valley. Their sound was "fireworks" and nothing ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... fascinating subject, and I could have pursued it all along the line of poor Armour's rejected canvases, but the need to get away from Kauffer with his equal claim upon my sympathy was too great. To have cracked my solemn mask by a single smile would have been to break down irrepressibly, and never since I set foot in India had I felt a parallel desire to laugh and to weep. There was a pang in it which I recognize as impossible to convey, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... at once, and the powerful bodies, shining from olive oil, formed one mass; bones cracked in their iron arms, and from their set jaws came an ominous gritting of teeth. At moments was heard the quick, dull thump of their feet on the platform strewn with saffron; again they were motionless, silent, and it seemed to the spectators that they had before them a group chiselled ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the leopard was alert again. Timokles climbed cautiously. He was nearing the roof. There was a cracking sound, such as he had heard, before. The leopard moved vehemently. Suddenly the branch cracked so that it swung Timokles against the wall. The leopard's movement sounded like ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... from the Speaker by the soles of his boots .... After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call the 'gemman' to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... and with one concerted blast every pupil blew his or her nose in clarion notes. "Three," came again after a few seconds, and the handkerchiefs were replaced. At "four" the student body sank back to their seats without even smiling, or without having "cracked a smile." You could search the world over and not find a prototype. It goes without saying that the teacher was a wit and wag, but the lesson of handkerchiefs and ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... blue-checked sunbonnet; she carried a large basket filled with blackberries, and her lips as well as her hands were stained. She saw the man lying in a shaft of the sunset, and started back, then, tiptoeing past, bent forward slightly to examine his face. In that lingering gaze a twig cracked beneath her foot. He sat up instantly, tense, expectant; then for a silent space their eyes caught and clung. Thus the first pair might have gazed when Adam wakened to find her who was bone of his bone, flesh of his ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... be patient, dear thing, or you may be found out, and then there will be such a piece of work. Though I'm sure, Major, you would not betray me.' The major smiled till he cracked the paint upon his cheeks. 'And I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... belt, and is armed with a Winchester rifle. He is a crack shot and has taken charge of the deputies in the wrecked portion of the city. Yesterday afternoon he discovered two men and a woman cutting the finger from a dead woman to get her rings. The Winchester rifle cracked twice in quick succession, and the right arm of each man dropped, helplessly shattered by a bullet. The woman was not harmed, but she was so badly frightened that she will not rob corpses again. Some five robbers altogether ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... everybody invariably ended or began by calling him an ancient Roman. He was sarcastic, satiric, and very strong. Indeed, on one occasion, he absolutely broke the feathers on a hand-screen, and on another he cracked three walnuts in succession without looking up. But, oh, the sufferings that young heart had undergone. Slapped by his nurse, reproved by his mother, expelled by his schoolmaster, and shunned by the society of the country-side, it was small wonder that the brave soul revolted against ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... fighting vessels knew very well that the first one of them which should float would have a great advantage over the other, and would probably be the conqueror. In came the tide, and still the cannons roared and the muskets cracked, while the hearts of the pirates and the South Carolinians almost stood still as they each watched the other vessel to see if she showed ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... cracked in the heat of the voyage, were much in need of repair. After cruising around the south and west shore, Looking in vain for a harbor where he could patch up his ships and take on water, he at last found a suitable spot near Point Alcatraz. Here the necessary repairs were made, and, as the Spaniards ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... his; as yet it had not been greatly distorted by manual labor, but the nails were dull and cracked and ragged and they were inlaid in deep mourning. "I don't believe you'll like that mounting," he said, gently. "It's what we call a man's ring. This is the kind women usually wear." He held up a thin platinum band of delicate workmanship which ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... all the road. As for your linch-pin, I trust it will serve till I get home, when I will take it out and keep it in remembrance of you all the days of my life:" then giving the horses a jerk with his reins, he cracked his whip and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... wrangling, the Sunday School plucked up courage and flourished like a green bay tree. She managed the deacons, she braced up the missionary societies, she captivated the parish, she cheered the depressed and depressing old ladies and cracked jokes with the invalids. ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Autocrat" we recognize the dingy wall-paper of the dining-room, the well-worn furniture, the cracked water-pitcher, and the slight aroma of previous repasts; but we soon forget this unattractive background, for the scene is full of genuine human life. The men and women who congregate there appear for what ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... sires; And the balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly Blazed the fires; As the roar On the shore Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded acres Of the plain; And louder, louder, louder cracked the black gunpowder, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... clear of the black particles and Carr saw that the outer surface of the glass was cracked and darkened from the heat of the blast. He understood, remembering the black band and the flash they had seen across the cloud layer from afar. And in the instant of remembering he saw that the ground was very near, rushing ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... Virginian squire had often a barefooted valet, and a cobbled saddle; but there was plenty of corn for the horses, and abundance of drink and venison for the master within the tumble-down fences, and behind the cracked windows of the hall. Harry had slept on many a straw mattress, and engaged in endless jolly night-bouts over claret and punch in cracked bowls till morning came, and it was time to follow the hounds. His poor brother ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little disorganised getting into Momouk, the pack-ponies' backs were the worse of wear, and our Boy had fallen out with sore feet—the poor fellow had been working up to his collar. He crept in hours after the others and collapsed, his bare soles cracked and legs in pain. Silly fellow won't wear shoes for some caste or religious superstition; he is more fitted for his clerks work than for tramping. I held his pulse and tried to look as if I knew what to do with a sick Hindoo, tucked him up in his blanket under the bungalow and left him in charge ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... artificial bird was singing its best, and the Emperor lay in bed listening to it, something inside the bird said, "Whizz!" Something cracked. "Whir-r-r!" All the wheels ran round, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and thin, and by no means reassuring of aspect. With his low, narrow forehead, sunken nose, and hard mouth, he looked like a Kalmuck Tartar; a pair of small, wide-awake black eyes, the crabbed irregular outline of his countenance, a voice like a cracked bell—the man's whole appearance, in fact, combined to give the impression that this was a consummate rascal. A honeyed tongue compensated for these disadvantages, and he gained his ends by talk. Cavalier, a stout, thick-set young fellow, looked more ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... are they cracked through and through (Oh, dingle dong dangle ding dongle ding dee,) Or deaf to the discord like Germany, too? For whether their changes be many or few, The worst of them is that they never ring true, (Oh, dangle ding dongle dong ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... restraint. A rare fault. You haven't let yourself out." For a space he drummed and mused. Suddenly a knuckle cracked loudly. Mr. Gordon flinched and glared at it, startled as if it had offended him by interrupting a train of thought. "Here!" said he brusquely. "There's a Sewer-Cleaners' Association picnic to-morrow. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... old cracked voice! Whose money you refuse, because she reminds you of your opera singer! She is again here, and with ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laughable in the extreme. Her eldest son, who had been confined to his bed by a hurt received in his back, was up, and had got the unfortunate driver, who was rather old, wedged in between the dresser and the wall, where his cracked voice—for he was asthmatic—was raised to the highest pitch, calling for assistance. Beside him was a large tub half-filled with water, into which the little ones were emptying small jugs, carried at the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Inachus the Egyptian had thus taught the Pelasgians the art of building, and had founded a city called Ar'gos, there came a terrible earthquake. The ground under the people's feet heaved and cracked, the mountains shook, the waters flooded the dry land, and the people fled ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... High street of Upton stood a small old-fashioned saddler's shop, the door of which was divided across the middle, so as to form two parts, the upper one always thrown open. Above the doorway, under a low-gabled roof, hung a cracked and mouldering sign-board, bearing the words "Ann Holland, Saddler." All the letters were faded, yet a keen eye might detect that the name "Ann" was more distinct than the others, as if painted at a later date. Within the shop an old journeyman was always to be seen, busy at his trade, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... your master,' she said; but as she spoke the glass cracked and the poison spurted over the horse, and it was so powerful that the poor creature sank down dead. The servant ran after his master and told him what had happened, and then, not wishing to lose the saddle as well as the horse, he went back to fetch it. When he ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... especially on one side, where great buttresses had been built to keep it up. It leaned against them like a weary old thing that wanted to go to sleep. It had a short square tower, like so many of the churches in England; and although there was but one old cracked bell in it, although there was no organ to give out its glorious sounds, although there was neither chanting nor responses, I assure my English readers that the awe and reverence which fell upon me as I crossed its worn threshold were nowise ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... of some kind of acacia. It was not always used in the same manner. Some painters varnished the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing. This varnish has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the work it was intended to preserve. Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... in amazement. 'Drunk!' ejaculated the officer I had addressed. 'Cracked, I should say,' suggested another. 'Now,' spoke up Mr. Minturn, 'I do not understand what I have just heard,' he said. 'What is a Water-devil? I am astounded.' 'You never said a word of this to me!' exclaimed Miss Minturn. 'You never told me that we were in the grasp of a Water-devil, and ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... Milvains sat down to breakfast the clock of Wattleborough parish church struck eight; it was two miles away, but the strokes were borne very distinctly on the west wind this autumn morning. Jasper, listening before he cracked an egg, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Oilcloth That is Cracked.—Linoleum that is badly cracked may be improved by a filler made of ochre and boiled flour paste. After the filling is dry ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... swung himself up from branch to branch. Quickly he reached the overhanging bough. At its juncture with the trunk he paused for a second to catch his breath, then swung himself out on it cautiously, hand over hand. The bough creaked and cracked ominously, but did not break. Near the end of the limb he stopped, and throwing a leg over to free his hands, he knotted one end of the rope to the branch and flung the other end to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... wise, sir, for it is a puzzler, and many have cracked their heads over it. But have we not been here long enough? We can pursue our researches into the higher realms ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering these remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from a rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the Captain's voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the great Atlantic, see God take The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream, The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break, The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,— And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam 'Twix the Old World ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... Soot streaks and a thousand pits gave Neptune the distinction, at least, of leprosy, which the mermaids associated with him had been consistent in catching; and his trident had been so deeply affected as to drop its prongs. Altogether, this heavy work of heavy art, smoked dry, hugely scabbed, cracked, and crumbling, was a dismal sight to the distracted eye of George Amberson Minafer, and its present condition of craziness may have added a mite to his own. His own was sufficient, with no additions, however, as he stood looking at the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... The biggest, but it was too hard and high; The middle one she scarcely seemed to fit in, But in the smallest chair sat easily; And rocked herself, her ease and comfort taking, Singing the pretty songs she knew so well; When, oh! the little chair cracked loud, and, breaking, Gave way all suddenly, ...
— Mother Hubbard Picture Book - Mother Hubbard, The Three Bears, & The Absurd A, B, C. • Walter Crane
... begin to speak; passive now, will begin to act. The stone comes down, and the fall of it will be awful. I remember, away up in a lonely Highland valley, where beneath a tall black cliff, all weather-worn, and cracked, and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the greensward that creeps round its base, a huge rock, that has fallen from the face of the precipice. A shepherd was passing beneath it; and suddenly, when the finger of God's will touched ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Humphrey Dexter? Why, may I perish if it is not the same swashbuckling ruffler I once knew in London town! I thought I had seen his gallows face before! Why, Humphrey, my lad, dost thou remember how I cracked thy skull at quarter-staff a year since in Finsbury Fields, and how thy Jack 'prentices groaned to see thee bite the dust? I liked thee none the less for it, though I beat thee. For 'twas a fair fight! Come, since 'tis thou, give us thy hand, and tell me how thou ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... heavy squall of wind and rain came on suddenly, and my mistress sent me round the corner of the house to empty a large earthen jar. The jar was already cracked with an old deep crack that divided it in the middle, and in turning it upside down to empty it, it parted in my hand. I could not help the accident, but I was dreadfully frightened, looking forward to a severe punishment. I ran crying to my mistress, "O mistress, the jar has come ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... little feet bestowed in a capacious foot-muff, as she carefully tucked her new gown around her and sat beside Clarissa. Gulian, in full evening dress, with small clothes, plum-colored satin coat and cocked hat, took possession of the front seat. Pompey cracked his whip, and the spirited horses were off with a plunge and bound, as Peter, the irrepressible, shouted from the doorway, where with grandma he had been an interested spectator of proceedings, "A Happy New Year to us all, and mind, Betty, you ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... course "affected" or "aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she did not possess, no less than of those She did. On the sacred subject of the suffrage, for instance, which with Mrs. Fotheringham was a matter for propaganda everywhere and at all times, Diana was but a cracked cymbal, when struck she gave back either no sound at all, or a wavering one. Her beautiful eyes were blank or hostile; she would escape like a fawn from the hunter. As for other politics, no one but Mrs. Fotheringham ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and spoke no more. Farina could not get a word further from him. By the mastery he still had over his rein, the Goshawk alone proved that he was of the world of the living. Schwartz Thier, rendered either sullen or stunned by the latest cracked crown he had received, held his jaws close as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... long before Albert fell asleep; for the cold kept up a continual fusillade, as of musketry, during the entire night. The woodwork of the walls snapped and cracked with loud reports; and a little after midnight a servant came in and stuffed the stove full of birch-wood, until it roared like an angry lion. This roar finally lulled Albert to sleep, in spite of the startling noises ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... dogs had crept in close to the blazing logs and lay as still as though life no longer animated their tawny bodies. From far away there came the lonely howl of a wolf; a great white man-owl fluttered close to the camp and chortled his crazy, half-human "hello, hello, hello;" the trees cracked with the tightening frost, but neither wolf howl nor frost nor the ghostly visitant's insane voice ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... and as the wheelwright stood with the group of labourers, who were just beginning to comprehend the new alarm, the two lads went off stroke for stroke over the ringing ice, which cracked now and again but did not yield, save to undulate beneath them, as they kept gathering speed and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... queerness of this impression when there came a faint, momentary glow from the hall—mysterious, phosphorescent, unreal; and then it vanished. Both young men were huddled upon the sofa, which was placed facing the open door. A huge Spanish screen was drawn before them; but the black leather was cracked in places; and through these they had a clear ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... On she came. I felt sure that our last moments had arrived. There was no use shouting. The other men looked up. Terror kept them dumb. Had we indeed strained our voices till they cracked, no one would have heard us on board the ship. The dark pyramid of canvas seemed to reach up to the very clouds as she flew ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... wouldn't live in this old rattle-trap of a place another year for any man that ever stepped into shoe-leather. No, indeed, not I. Out of repair from top to bottom; not a single convenience, so to speak; walls cracked, paper soiled, and ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... English-man's helmet had let most of the air out, and his own blood pressure had done the rest. He would carry the marks for days. A few more moments and all air and all heat would have been gone, with fatal results. Fortunately, bubbles didn't shatter easily when cracked. To destroy them took a good blow that knocked ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... sound of Mowbray better than that of Scrogie; young Scrogie was mad, not to like it as well. The old Earl of Etherington was not sane when he married a French wife in secret, and devilish mad indeed when he married an English one in public. Then for the good folk here, Mowbray of St. Ronan's is cracked, when he wishes to give his sister to he knows not precisely whom: She is a fool not to take him, because she does know who he is, and what has been between them; and your friend is maddest of all, who seeks her under so ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... A cracked bell rang within, and the Chamberlain perceived an odour of cooking celery. Inwardly he cursed his forgetfulness, because it was plain that the hour for his call ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the thunder of authority, the lightning of royalty," she said; and then, thinking she had done enough to placate his passion, she turned to whisper to Lysidice, "Let us tickle this fool like a cracked lute." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... where the old ones were decayed, and upstairs two of the rooms were being made into one by demolishing the parting wall and substituting an iron girder. Some of the window frames and sashes were so rotten that they were being replaced. Some of the ceilings and walls were so cracked and broken that they had to be replastered. Openings were cut through walls and doors were being put where no doors had been before. Old broken chimney pots were being taken down and new ones were being taken up and fixed in their places. All the old whitewash had ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... crossed the stream straight on a sheet of ice An' now, God help me! There it was, churned up an' cracked to dice, The flood went boiling past—I stood like one shut ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... diverting herself with burning a bundle of matches which had fallen from the chimney-piece as she restored the tea-canister to its place. The former, when he had deposited his burden, took a critical survey of the room, and in cracked tones grated out—'Aw wonder how yah can faishion to stand thear i' idleness un war, when all on 'ems goan out! Bud yah're a nowt, and it's no use talking—yah'll niver mend o'yer ill ways, but goa raight to t' divil, like yer ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... be told, of course," went on Frank, "that we lost little time making preparations. One of the sailors disputed my right to take my kit into the small boat. I objected and he cracked me on the jaw. When I recovered I was alone on the vessel. The boats were at some little distance away, with the ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... panic-stricken second the whole world seemed to turn black before Barton's eyes. His heart stopped beating. His ear-drums cracked. Then suddenly, astonishingly, he found himself grinning into that honest little face, ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... apart, like so many separate pieces of mosaic puzzle, and he had taken his place on the old cloth cushion rather dubiously. But the driver gayly, and with every appearance of confidence in himself and his equipage, had cracked his whip and shouted all the names in the calendar to the horses, whose muscles gradually became sufficiently taut to impel them onward. A few dozen yards having been made without mishap, Derby felt that the special ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... out for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had been dismantled, and in place of the former drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places; and there were three lugubrious sofas ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... her feeling that nothing at all had been expected. "Jo, do you remember that time you were running from Captain Joshua Wilson's cow, in his pasture over there beyond the college, and you fell over a fence and cracked a tooth, and how you bawled about it? And I suppose that gold tooth is a memento of the occasion. We used to be the maddest of harum-scarums ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... one of her infectious trills of laughter, "so far the French have the best of it, anyway! Papa Roussillon knocked the Governor's cheek nearly off, then Rene cracked the Irish Corporal's head, and now Father Beret has taught Captain Farnsworth a lesson in fisticuffs that he'll not soon forget! If the good work can only go on a little longer we shall see every English ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... was a familiar landmark came into focus. He padded on, his chest heaving, his breath whistling through parched, sun-cracked lips. He did not know that his face was now a mask ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... I could have cracked my silly pate at the sight of her weeping. I felt a hand on my arm, and found her mother standing at my side, laughing softly. Seeing that I regarded her with unfeigned astonishment, she laughed the louder. "You are the first that has ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... to see Tanno fight. Every swing of his pole cracked on a skull. Men fell about him by twos and threes, one ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... cried shrilly at the 'bus door, and within they laughed like mothers as they answered. And Jimmy Sturgis cracked his whip, and ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... seen them in a year and a half, Bryce. Last time I was up, I slipped between the logs on the old skid-road and like to broke my old fool neck. But even that wasn't warning enough for me. I cracked right on into the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... moment the ship was relieved. They felt her lifted up, and for an instant she hung in the air, then she leaned over and fell back on the ice, and then she rolled so heavily that her planks cracked. What ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... and drummed at the Reception Dance. "Now you good Kaw—Good Injun you be—all same me," said the chief. Hassard and Lamborn cracked time with their whips, and, in short, we made a grand circular row; truly it was a wondrous striking scene! From that day I was called the Kaw chief, even by Hassard in his letters to the Tribune, in which he mentioned that in scenes of excitement I rode and whooped like a savage. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... styled it a furnished apartment, in virtue of a rickety table, a broken chair, a worn-out sheet or two, a dilapidated counterpane, four ragged blankets, and the infirm saucepan before mentioned, besides a few articles of cracked or broken crockery. For this accommodation the landlord charged ninepence per day, which sum had to be paid every night before the family was allowed to retire to rest! In the event of failure to pay they would have been turned out into the street ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... who, as the night fell, worked, many of them, altogether naked, their glossy bronze figures gleaming in the red lamplight, and both men and women singing over their work in wild choruses, which, when the screaming cracked voices of the women were silent, and the really rich tenors of the men had it to themselves, were not unpleasant. A lad, seeming the poet of the gang, stood on the sponson, and in the momentary intervals of work improvised some story, while the men below took up and finished each verse with a ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the rubbish clear with clawed hands, then straining and heaving till their loins had almost cracked, they levered up the table at length, and released not only the Admiral, but the two remaining magistrates, whom they found pinned under its weight, one unharmed, but in a swoon, the other moaning feebly with the pain of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Flint handed Tilly Marsden into it with his habitual deference, gave a street and number to the driver, and, jumping in himself, slammed to the half doors with a clang which echoed along the silent street. The driver cracked his whip over the horse's head as if he were about to drive him at a desperate pace; but the animal, familiar with the noisy demonstration and recognizing it as intended for the encouragement of the passengers within the vehicle and not conveying any special warning to himself, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... His voice was cracked and broken, age had touched his vocal chords, And nearly every Sunday he would mispronounce the words Of the hymns, and 'twas no wonder, he was old and nearly blind, And the choir rattling onward ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... &c, are smaller in size, partly of an opaque character, and partly translucent (or, as it is technically called "bright"), and harder and more cracked, but those from Siam and the neighbouring countries are very "bright," soft, and fine grained; they are much sought after for carvings and ornamental work. Tusks from Mozambique and the Cape of Good Hope seldom exceed ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... bunch of sage colored the dull rust-yellow. He saw where, to the right, this uneven flow of stone ended in a blunt wall. Leftward, from the hollow that lay at his feet, mounted a gradual slow-swelling slope to a great height topped by leaning, cracked, and ruined crags. Not for some time did he grasp the wonder of that acclivity. It was no less than a mountain-side, glistening in the sun like polished granite, with cedar-trees springing as if by magic out of the denuded surface. Winds had swept it clear of weathered shale, and rains had washed ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the voice was stilled— That single rounded mound cracked lengthliwise And one came forth in grave-clothes. For a space He stood and gazed about him with a smile Superior; then laying off his shroud Disclosed his two attenuated legs Which, like parentheses, bent outwardly As by the weight of saintliness ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... entered, and peered out of the court window in the rear. Helene's suggestion about the dust was applicable here, for he found all the windows coated except the one opening upon the areaway. Below he observed a stone paving with a cracked surface. It was semidark, but his electric pocket-light enabled him to observe one piece of the rock which seemed entirely detached. Shirley investigated the closets of the empty apartment. In one of them he discovered the object of his search. It was a knotted rope. He first observed ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... relief at getting out into the open, and feel that they were no longer like rabbits in their burrows. Helter, skelter, we went across the open ground, some carelessly and indifferently, others with stern, set faces. Here one cracked a joke with his pal, while there another stopped suddenly, staggered, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... this was jesting. He later learned that the "old man" was regarded as "cracked" on this topic. Every spring he prophesied war, but it had not come. The Kaiser failed to rush to Paris and there dictate terms to an astounded and cowed universe. People politely laughed in their sleeves. Yes, Anderson was a fine fellow, but they wearied of his dismal forebodings that ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... to a dead stop in the dim, dull, wood-panelled hall. In front of them rose the stairs with old-fashioned banisters, cracked, warped, and dusty. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... the curse of my life. Stucco white elephants! Beastly cracked stucco with stains of green—black and green. Conferva and soot.... Property, they are!... Beware of Things, Dick, beware of Things! Before you know where you are you are waiting on them and minding them. They'll eat your life up. Eat up your ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... was not hurt to one half the extent that his feelings were, for he heard Sam Harper roaring with mirth, loud enough to be heard half a mile; and as Nick hastily clambered upon his feet, he was certain Herbert's cracked laugh was ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... out of the road, first to the right, then to the left. Of all heart-breaking experiences this was the worst. I could not leave the animal to die by the wayside; the farm was only a few miles further on, where he would find water, food, and rest. I mounted again, shouted, cracked my sjambok—blows he could no longer feel—flourished my arms, jerked my body up and down in the saddle, and finally got him into a walk—but such a walk! slow, mechanical, ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... a priest, sir, and was in Maynooth a couple of years, but he took in the knowledge so fast, that, bedad, he got cracked wid larnin'—for a dunce you see, never cracks wid it, in regard of the thickness of the skull: no doubt but he's too many for Mat, and can go far beyant him in the books; but then, like Mat, he's still brightest whin he has a sup ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... one hand, that Miss Husted had put on the mantelpiece, struck the hour with its old cracked bell, and it startled him. He had heard it hundreds of times, but now its weird, metallic tone jarred on the harmony of his feelings. He counted the strokes; five, six, seven, eight. Eight o'clock! He started up, for his dream had come to an end, and he came ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... smoothed the bows of ribbon, and brushed a speck from the skirt, while there came to her eyes a rush of glad tears as she put it on, with a thought that he would like her in it, and then tried to see its effect in the little eight by twelve cracked glass upon the wall. All she could see was her head and shoulders, and so she asked the opinion of Mandy Ann, who answered quickly, "You done look beautiful—some like de young ladies in Jacksonville, and some like you was gwine ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... and she rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic analogy between the instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read The ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... The Major was quite certain that it was all over with himself. He had broken so many of his bones and had his head so often cracked that he understood his own anatomy pretty well. There he lay quiet and composed, sipping small modicums of brandy and water, and taking his outlook into such transtygian world as he had fashioned for himself ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... itself, filled with all these flaming masses, became so heated that it could no longer be breathed. The atmosphere itself was burning, the glass of the windows cracked,' and apartments became untenable. The Emperor stood for a moment immovable, his face crimson, and great drops of perspiration rolling from his brow, while the King of Naples, Prince Eugene, and the Prince de Neuchatel begged him to quit the palace, whose entreaties he answered ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... speaking of his confinement in the Castle of Wartburg, he says, "Among other things they brought me hazel-nuts, which I put into a box, and sometimes I used to crack and eat of them. In the night-times, my gentleman, the Devil, came and got the nuts out of the box, and cracked them against one of the bedposts, making a very great noise and rumbling about my bed; but I regarded him nothing at all: when afterwards I began to slumber, then he kept such a racket and rumbling upon the chamber stairs, as if many ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... faltering amongst the others; but they still came on. At this critical moment, Wharton and myself, with the reserves, showed ourselves on the bank. "Slow and sure-mark your men!" shouted we both. Wharton on the right and I on the left. The command was obeyed: rifle after rifle cracked off, always aimed at the foremost of the dragoons, and at every report a saddle was emptied. Before we had all fired, Fanning and a dozen of his sharpest men had again loaded, and were by our side. For nearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... side of this incident was entirely lost upon the highly entertained audience. Many and loud were the coarse jokes cracked at the expense of Bass and Miller and after the rude door had closed upon them similar remarks were addressed to Steele's jailer and guard, who in truth, were just as disreputable ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... it did if Doctor Kirby hadn't gone clean crazy. His back was to the fence, and he cleaned out everything in front of him, and then he give a wild roar jest like a bull and rushed that hull gang—twenty men, they was—with his head down. He caught two fellers, one in each hand, and he cracked their heads together, and he caught two more, and done the same. But he orter never took his back away from that fence. The hull gang closed in on him, and down he went at the bottom of a pile. I was awful busy myself, but I seen that pile moving and churning. Then I made a big mistake myself. ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... Marquis de Monpavon, but a Monpavon who in no wise resembled the mottled spectre whom we saw in the last chapter; a man of superb physique, in the prime of life, with a long, majestic nose, the haughty bearing of a great nobleman, displaying a vast breastplate of spotless linen, which cracked under the continuous efforts of the chest to bend forward, and swelled out every time with a noise like that made by a turkey gobbling, or a peacock spreading his tail. His name Monpavon was well ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... on parchment a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Aunt Izzie. She would better have explained farther. The truth was, that Alexander, in putting up the swing, had cracked one of the staples which fastened it to the roof. He meant to get a new one in the course of the day, and, meantime, he had cautioned Miss Carr to let no one use the swing, because it really was not safe. If she ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... hands and tense, uplifted face, said in a queer cracked voice: "He promised us not to speak. He ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... It is best I drop the mask to-day; the half-cracked shield Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield. Laugh—or I'll hug it closer to my breast. So ... I can be as mawkish as I choose And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose For one last rambling stroll before—Now look! ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... step closer to her, raising his chair, gazing at her with the eye of a madman, and laughing a cracked laugh. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... see," he began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "Now, let's see. You leave it to me. I know Carter. He's going to be at a stag dinner where I am ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a point marked by a shallow angle, there was a cracked stone bench, offering seawardly a view of the Isles of the Princes, and the Asian domain beyond Broussa to the Olympian heights; westwardly, the Bucoleon and its terraced gardens were near by, and above them in the distance the Tower of Isaac ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... was a well-read man and superior to those around him; and perhaps this was the cause of his holding himself aloof from most of the villagers. They termed him "cranky and cracked," but his goods were always acceptable, and he was thoroughly successful in his business. When his shop was closed he would go out on the hills, and there spend his time studying geology and botany. He knew the name of every plant and insect, and the strata of the earth for many miles round; ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... disappointed, but he said nothing more. He tucked Josephine among the furs, cracked the long whip Metoosin had given him, and they were off, with Miriam and her husband waving their hands from the door of Adare House. They had scarcely passed out of view in the forest when with a sudden sharp command ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... wrappers. The god grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller; and the wonder of the travelers what he could be, larger and larger. At last, the very innermost of all the coverings fell off, and the great heathen god was revealed in all his native majesty. It was a cracked soda-water bottle! This indicates—what is beyond all question the fact—that the heathen mysteries had their foundation in gas. Indeed, the whole composition of these impositions was, gammon, deception, hypocrisy—Humbug! Truly, the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Twelfth-tide: "Now Christmas arrives, and young and old go up to greet the little child Jesus, lying on his bed of straw at the Virgin Mother's feet and smiling to all the world. Overhead the old cracked bell clangs exultant, answering to other bells faint and far on the midnight air; a hundred candles are burning and every church window shines through the darkness like the gates of that holy New Jerusalem 'whose light was as a stone most precious—a ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... his cabin, as he never heard of his having anything but what was there. So we went to his cabin, and there we found five or six penny prints against the wall, two pair of old canvas trousers, and an old hat, six cups and saucers, cracked and mended; and this was all his property, altogether not worth (with the three shillings) more than seven or eight at the outside, if so much. You may guess the disappointment of his nephews and nieces, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... why that mystic core Was sweet Venus' meed of yore? Dante dreamt (while spirits pass As in wizard's jetty glass) Each black-bossed Briarian trunk Waved live arms like furies drunk; Winsome Will, 'neath Windsor Oak, Eyed each elf that cracked a joke At poor panting grease-hart fast— Obese, roguish Jack harassed; At Versailles, Moliere did court Cues from Pan (in heron port, Half in ooze, half treeward raised), "Words so ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... there was the jaunting-car trundling over the rough cobblestone street, or bumping in and out of dangerous holes. Whips cracked, and the loud voices of jarveys shouted blatant humour and Irish fun at horse and passenger. Here and there, also, some stately coach, bedizened with arms of the quality, made its way through the chief streets, or across the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... see old ruins whitened by the sea-wind—ruins about which no grass ever grows. The dismal melancholy of deserts prevails over this arid land, whose cracked surface can barely nourish a few shriveled mimosas, cacti, and dwarf palms. Twenty yards away, along the course of a ravine, stones were gleaming whitely like a long line of scattered bones. They told me that was the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... plays; along the wall, trunks instead of closets; in the centre of the room a rude table, with legs of green wood, and with the bark still upon them, looking as if they grew out of the ground on which they stood; but on this table a tea-pot of British ware, silver spoons, cracked ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... for the opinions of others, and his religious disbelief, are illustrated by an incident related of him, that, having in a moment of weakness made a promise to some friends that he would offer a sacrifice to Diana, he repaired the next day to her temple, and, taking a louse from his head, cracked ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... man was driving wrong, once or twice, and was on the point of cursing him to that effect, from the window. But at last, with an anxious throb at his heart, he recognised the dingy archway, and the cracked brown marble tablet over the keystone, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... two girls. They meant to do something, and, in a fever of excitement, they got the drum and took the cracked fife from the bureau drawer. Mrs. Bates, intent on the scene outside, did not heed them, and they slipped out by the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... eastern door of the church of San Ildefonso, built round a patio, or courtyard, after the fashion of Spanish and South American mansions. Like the church, it seemed to have been much damaged by the earthquake; the outer walls were cracked, and the gateway was ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... or old tin vessels that are out of use; put them in a dry closet and keep them covered over; if they are put in the cellar, they are liable to mould, which spoils them entirely. Do not put in any cracked ones, or they will injure the rest. In this way they have been known to keep a year, and were nearly as good for puddings, or batter cakes, as fresh eggs. They do not do to boil, or make pound or sponge cake, as they lose ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... a large gloomy house, which likewise belonged to the cacique of Moyahua. The previous occupants had already left strong evidences in the patio, which had been converted into a manure pile. The walls, once whitewashed, were now faded and cracked, revealing the bare unbaked adobe; the floor had been torn up by the hoofs of animals; the orchard was littered with rotted branches and dead leaves. From the entrance one stumbled over broken bits of chairs and other ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... snarl: "Is it my fault that the country is in arms? Military necessity compels me to remain here. I consider myself magnanimous. I—" His voice cracked, and he made a despairing, violent gesture. "Go, before I ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... with a scant two yards of river-bank to spare upon the outer side, up and up till, leaning forward and aside with outstretched arm, La Mothe could feel the pressing of the Dauphin's back, and the hand closed in upon the ribs. "Now," he cried, his voice cracked and hoarse. "Now, Christ help us, now, now," and gripping the boy he reined back as tightly as he dared, reined back to feel the slender boy slip from the bay's back, hang helpless in the air an instant, then fall sprawling ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... stinging metallic kind—not angry and human as the battery had been, but rather like some huge bottle cracking in the sun. These huge bottles—one could fancy them green and shining somewhere in the corn—cracked one after another; positively the sound intensified the heat of the sun upon one's head. There were too now, for the first time in our experience, shrapnel. They were not over us, but ran somewhere on ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... give a tolerably full account of the manner in which the obsidian knives, &c., were made by the Aztecs. It will be seen that it only modifies in one particular the theory we had formed by mere inspection as to the way in which these objects were made, which is given at p.97; that is, they were cracked off by pressure, and not, as we conjectured, by a blow of some ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the tawdry hotel parlour on the morning after the ball at Ellisville was no mere four-square habitation, but a chamber of the stars. The dingy chairs and sofas were to him articles of joy and beauty. The curtains at the windows, cracked and seamed, made to him but a map of the many devious happinesses which life should thenceforth show. The noises of the street were but music, the voices from the rooms below were speech of another happy world. Before him, radiant, was that which he had vaguely sought. Not ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... looking down at Mr Bayfield as he had looked down on the lamb a year ago, 'dead. His skull is cracked, I'll warrant.' ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... exciting, and Dorothy, quite forgetting the rain, ran down the street a little way so as to keep the Admiral in sight. "It's precisely like a doll going traveling all by itself," she exclaimed as she ran along. "How he rattles! I suppose that's his little cracked legs—and goodness gracious, how he smokes!" she added, for by this time the Admiral had fired up, so to speak, as if he were bound on a long journey, and was blowing out such clouds of smoke that he presently quite shut himself out from view. The smoke smelt somewhat ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... coffee. She grunted out yes, after some hesitation, and while she was making it, I washed my face and hands. When she handed me my drink she said, "This is no rye; it is real coffee." And so it was and I enjoyed it, brass spoon, thick, dingy, cracked ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... on full power, and the thing simply melted within its case. All I saw was a surge of white-hot metal pouring over the plinth, a glimpse of Salad's inscription, 'To the Eternal Memory of the Justice of the People,' ere the stone base itself cracked and powdered into ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... infection of his daughter's anger. Placed between Cristel and his money, he really acted as if he preferred Cristel. He hobbled up to his lodger, and shook his infirm fists, and screamed at the highest pitch of his old cracked voice: "Let her be, or I won't have you here no longer! You deaf adder, let ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... plainly boiled, they should be placed over the fire after the water has been strained; the potatoes should be lightly shaken to allow the moisture to steam out. This makes them mealy and more palatable. Potatoes which have been baked in their skins should be pricked when tender, or the skins be cracked in some way, otherwise they very soon become sodden. A very palatable way of serving potatoes, is to peel them and bake them in a tin with a little oil or butter, or vege-butter; they should be turned occasionally, in order that they should brown evenly. This is not a very hygienic way of preparing ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... a dead stop in the dim, dull, wood-panelled hall. In front of them rose the stairs with old-fashioned banisters, cracked, warped, and dusty. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... empire. You have left at home only the blind and the lame, the old women and the little children. Your size is not big enough to match the Germans; they will at the first blow throw you on your back (this remark is wonderfully prophetic). And Russia, do you know what that is, you cracked head? Six hundred thousand longbeards have been enlisted, besides 300 thousand soldiers with bare chins, and 200 thousand veterans. All these are heroes; they believe in one God, obey one Tzar, make the sign with one cross, these ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... lightly down to have her little feet bestowed in a capacious foot-muff, as she carefully tucked her new gown around her and sat beside Clarissa. Gulian, in full evening dress, with small clothes, plum-colored satin coat and cocked hat, took possession of the front seat. Pompey cracked his whip, and the spirited horses were off with a plunge and bound, as Peter, the irrepressible, shouted from the doorway, where with grandma he had been an interested spectator of proceedings, "A Happy New Year to us all, and mind, Betty, you ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... the Saints, no. To hear of her was enow. They say she has a face like a cankered oak gall or a rotten apple lying cracked on the ground among the wasps. Mayhap though ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... jeered the Stakes in the hedge; "you don't know the world, not you, but we know it, there are knots in us!" and then they cracked ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... lips Of the ledges, split By the thunder fit And the stress of the sprites of the forked flame, Anon break out, With a shriek and a shout, Like a hard, bitter laughter, cracked and thin, From a ghost with a sin ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... at Hugh gave them new life. Singing on, they halted at opposite ends of the beat, patted thighs, called figures, leaped high, crossed shins, cracked heels, cut double-shuffles, balanced, swung round the bottle, lifted it, drank, replaced it, and resumed their elliptical ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... torture described in the dream of Dante,—two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the victory have ached through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he were occupied over his ordinary affairs; but it could not be done. He looked dusty as to his boots and trousers; there was a bloodshot appearance in his eyes; his cheeks were hollow, and his lips feverish and cracked. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... way beyond Cecilia Metella's tomb, the road still shows a specimen of the ancient Roman pavement, composed of broad, flat flagstones, a good deal cracked and worn, but sound enough, probably, to outlast the little cubes which make the other portions of the road so uncomfortable. We turned back from this point and soon re-entered the gate of St. Sebastian, which is flanked by two small towers, and just within which is the old triumphal ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... work. He was such a nice man, so gentlemanlike and quiet, so long as she stayed away. But I didn't tell you: I found 'em in Peory in a place not fit for hogs to live in, and I watched my chance and gave it to the woman. But Ducharme came in and he pushed me out, and I fell, and guess I cracked my head. That's when my eye began to hurt. The kafe business ran out, and I followed them to Chicago. And here I been for three months, doing most anything, housework generally. But I can't keep a place. Just so often I have to up and out on the road and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... airlock, and Stevens admitted air until their suits began to collapse. Then, face-plate valves cracked, he sniffed cautiously, finally opening his helmet wide. Nadia followed suit and the man laughed as she wrinkled her nose in disgust as two faint, but unmistakable ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... is at the rate of two inches in three months.—Raymond, Mineral Statistics, 1870, p. 480.] Frisi's experiments were tried upon rounded and polished river-pebbles, and prove nothing with regard to the action of torrents upon the irregular, more or less weathered, and often cracked and shattered rocks which lie loose in the ground at the head of mountain valleys. The fury of the waters and of the wind which accompanies them in the floods of the French Alpine torrents is such, that large blocks of stone are hurled out of the bed of the stream ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... of the ammunition wagon cracked his long whip over the oxen and they tugged at the yoke. The wheels were now down to the hub, and the wagon ceased to move. The driver cracked his whip again and again, and the oxen threw their full weight into the effort. The wheels slowly rose from their sticky bed, but then something ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at a gallop, and did not stop till they reached a huge rock in which there was a hole as large as the gate of a city. The horses plunged into the darkness, the earth trembled, and the rock cracked and crumbled. Marienka ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... captured proved to be one of the richest laden of the whole fleet, and not only in the heart of Pierre and his men, but among his sympathizers in Europe and America, there was great disappointment at the loss of that mainmast, which, until it cracked, was carrying him forward to fame ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... coming up with us. It was now blowing a stiffish breeze, and I saw the captain and Peter often casting an anxious glance aloft, to see whether the masts and spars would bear the heavy strain put on them. Happily there was not much sea; and though the studden-sail-booms bent and cracked again, they held on bravely. Our great hope was, that we might be able to keep well ahead of the stranger till night came on; and then that, by hauling our wind, he might pass us in the dark. We had already ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... of an old Flemish inn—faith, but a handsome chamber it was as you'd wish to see; with a brick floor, a great fire-place, with the whole Bible history in glazed tiles; and then the mantel-piece, pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a whole regiment of cracked tea-pots and earthen jugs paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great Delft platters hung about the room by way of pictures; and the little bar in one corner, and the bouncing bar-maid inside of it with a red calico cap and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... digging the rubbish clear with clawed hands, then straining and heaving till their loins had almost cracked, they levered up the table at length, and released not only the Admiral, but the two remaining magistrates, whom they found pinned under its weight, one unharmed, but in a swoon, the other moaning feebly with the pain of ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... began again with such violence that the painted canvas trembled. The clown, having seized the sticks of a drum fixed on one of the beams of the scaffolding, mingled a triumphant rataplan with the bombardment of the bass-drum, the cracked thunder of the cymbals, and the distracted wail of the clarionet. The ringmaster, roaring again with his heavy voice, announced that the show was about to begin, and, as a sign of defiance, he threw two or three old fencing-gloves ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... sat and loafed with the soles of their boots turned up for the inspection of the ladies in the galleries. Their language and gestures as they expectorated hither and thither were often as coarse as their positions, while they ranted about the "laws and Constitution," and cracked their slave-whips over the heads of the dough-faces sent ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... morella cherries, and a peck of black hearts. Stone the morellas and crack the stones. Put all the cherries and the cracked stones into a demi-john, with three pounds of loaf-sugar slightly pounded or beaten. Pour in two gallons of double-rectified whiskey. Cork the demi-john, and in six months the cherry-bounce will be fit to pour off and bottle for use; but the ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... threw the dog a handful of the white confectionery, which it at once began to crack in the proper way. The white cat attempted to do the same, but the first cracked kernel of the maize stuck in her teeth, and she did not try it again. She shook the paw with which she had touched it, and sprung up to the hearth, where she blinked with much interest at an unglazed pot which was simmering ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... were full of breezy sunshine and at all times the Eager Army watched the rotting ice with anxious eyes. In places it was fairly honeycombed now, in others corroded and splintered into silver spears. Here and there it heaved up and cracked across in gaping chasms; again it sagged down suddenly. There were sheets of surface water and stretches of greenish slush that froze faintly overnight. In large, flaming letters of red, the lake was dangerous, near to a break-up, a death trap; yet every day the reckless ones were going ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the few of Millet's works which have changed with time. The color has grown dark and the canvas has cracked somewhat, owing to the use of bitumen in ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... remote should he have the fortune to reach their base; but with another canyon hope was dead. Above them Ska still circled, and it seemed to the ape-man that the ill-omened bird hovered ever lower and lower as though reading in that failing gait the nearing of the end, and through cracked lips Tarzan growled out ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were flattering the Miss Falconers, and abusing their absent friends, those especially who were expected to bear a part in this concert; for instance—"Those two eternal Miss Byngs, with voices, like cracked bells, and with their old-fashioned music, Handel, Corelli, and Pergolese, horrid!—And odious little Miss Crotch, who has science but no taste, execution but no expression!" Here they talked a vast ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of the cloaks being disturbed; but Madame Beck told me afterwards she thought they hung much as usual: and as for the broken pane in the skylight, she affirmed that aperture was rarely without one or more panes broken or cracked: and besides, a heavy hail-storm had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me very closely as to what I had seen, but I only described an obscure figure clothed in black: I took care not to breathe ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... all, who settled that for him. He came with his afternoon offering of cracked ice just then and stood inside the screen, staring. Perhaps he had known all along how it would end, that this, his saint, would go—and not alone—to join the vanishing circle that had ringed the inner circle ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from his pocket a couple of long, strong cords, bits of old fishing-line. He cracked a couple of clams, one against the other; tied the fleshy part firmly to the ends of the cords; tied a bit of shell on, a foot or so from the end, for a sinker; handed one to Ford; took the other himself, and laid the long-handled scoop-net he had brought ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... masterpieces of design and execution. Unhappily, proper instructions for loading had not accompanied them from England, and on the occasion of the first round being fired from one of them, the gun not being properly loaded, cracked at the breech, and was rendered useless; the other, however, did good service, throwing shot with accuracy at great distances. I saw much that was interesting here, but more able pens than mine have already described fully the details of that long siege, where on one hand all modern ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... startled the other occupants of the room, Balt and Clyde jumped to their feet and began to caper about in a frenzy. Even "Fingerless" Fraser's expressionless face cracked in a ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... from a tiny spruce tree, piling them inside the old stove. When they had cracked and blazed with a fierce, sudden heat, Ann could only break bread-crumbs into a cupful of boiling water and put a few drops of rum in it. She woke Bart and fed him as she might have fed a baby. When he lay ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... to tell! But it can't be! It isn't possib—" His voice cracked, split on the word, and the rest came in an agonized squeak, "A man can't just vanish into ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... avalanche cracked and roared, and rattled itself into an inert mass at the base of the incline. Yellow dust like the gloom of the cave, but not so changeless, drifted away on the wind; the roar clapped in echo from the cliff, returned, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the opening of the organ shutters cracked above her head and reverberated through the building. While she waited, none of the sacred associations of the church spoke to her heart; her soul was bruised with pain, rendering her incapable of being moved by the ordinary suggestions of the place. Then Trivett played. Mavis's ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... wall, in order to protect the windows from the rain of winter and the summer's sun. The walls, straight and wholly unornamented, were covered with a coating of white plaister, which time had soiled and cracked. The vestibule was reached by ascending five stone steps, surmounted by a rustic balustrade of rusty iron. A yard surrounded by outhouses, where the harvest was gathered in, presses for the vintage, cellars for the wine, and a dove-cote, abutted on the house. Behind was ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... experience and shifting surroundings. The kitchen-middens give graphic details. The bottom layer, as has been said, is but of shells. Above it, in another layer, counting thousands of years in growth, appear the cracked bones of then existing animals and appear also traces of charred wood, showing that primitive man had learned what fire was. And later come the rudely carved bones of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros and the Irish elk; then come rude flint instruments, and later the age of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... from Argentina and countries as far off as Finland, we get a flood of imported and domestic Swisses of all sad sorts, with all possible faults—from too many holes, that make a flabby, wobbly cheese, to too few—cracked, dried-up, collapsed or utterly ruined by molding inside. So it will pay you to buy only the kind already marked genuine in Switzerland. For there cheese such as Saanen takes six years to ripen, improves with age, and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal pressed into his shoulder with her weight upon it. It was nothing less than this that was spurring ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... he said, "and that's just partly cracked. I'll hurry into the house with it and she can put it in a dish and save it. 'Tisn't ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... woodpile. With stiff steps—his one hand leaning on the hoe, his other reached as to unseen hands, that draw him—he totters toward the sunlight and the green lawn, at back. As he does so, his thin, cracked voice takes up the battle-hymn where ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... there was a sound—very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches disturbed the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... hard at me. "I more than once," said he, "have thought you a little cracked, but now I perceive you are mad—downright mad; don't be angry, I couldn't help saying so, and if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... so that my chair cracked under me. The solemn, ponderous sound vibrated through the empty country house as through a vault. I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was just two in the morning. Who could be coming at such ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... eleven were great chums; they chased wild bees together, putting honey on the stone wall, getting a line on the bees; shelled beechnuts and cracked butternuts for the chipmunks; caught skunks in a trap, just to demonstrate that a skunk can be carried by the tail with impunity, if you only do it right (and, though succeeding one day, got the worst of the bargain the next); and waged war early and late on the flabby woodchucks ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... on, and as the wheelwright stood with the group of labourers, who were just beginning to comprehend the new alarm, the two lads went off stroke for stroke over the ringing ice, which cracked now and again but did not yield, save to undulate beneath them, as they kept gathering speed ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. The sea lies dark and clear below, ever tideless, often still ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... staggered, With the old wolf inside of him unfed; And Savage roamed, with visage lean and haggard, Longing for bread. And next in note, Dear worthy Goldsmith with his gaudy coat, Unheeded by the undiscerning folks; There Garrick too has sped, And, light of heart, he cracked his playful jokes— Yet though he walked, on Foote he cracked them not; And Steele, and Fielding, Butler, Swift, and Pope— Who filled the world with laughter, joy, and hope; And thousands, that throw sunshine on our lot, And, though they die, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... going on excellently," he shouted in his little cracked voice. "Once let them have the water from the Trolls' well in their eyes, they'll never be contented again!" and he upset the bucket in which he was standing over the feet of the Bride's mother, who had to run home hastily ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... for it, neck or nothing! She is within sixty yards of us, and she keeps advancing. We turned the horses' tails to her. I knelt on one side, and, taking aim at her breast, let fly. The ball cracked loudly on her tawny hide, and crippled her in the shoulder, upon which she charged with an appalling roar, and in the twinkling of an eye she was in the midst of us, At this moment Stofolus's rifle exploded in his hand, and Kleinboy, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... the glass because now she had no better place before which to arrange her curls than in one of the larger pieces left, which, being cracked, gave her such a resemblance to a certain old fisherman with a broken nose, who was her special aversion, that she hated to look at herself, which was, possibly, not a bad thing, for she was in danger of growing vain of her ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... into a chair. Left to herself, she looked around the plain little room. Her eyes took in the pitiful details—the uneven boards of the floor, the sagging ceiling, the cracked window panes. How sharply the room contrasted with her own, and yet this was the room of Rose—with eyes like hers. A girl who had thoughts and dreams and aspirations the same as she had. As these thoughts went through Gloria's mind she leaned back. The strain of excitement had told on ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—a region of savannahs and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the sceptre of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... forest somewhere, a bough cracked, and fell crashing, then all was silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering leaves to life for a moment, passed away; then again a silence, deeper than ever, so ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... quickly evaporated, the clay becomes baked, and the heat is reflected from the hard heated surface quite sufficiently to raise a thermometer to 110 degrees in the shade. The wind is now driven towards the colony laden with heat from the cracked, baked, clay-plains in the interior; and thus it is, that at different seasons the same country produces such opposite effects. But although the general state of the interior is barren and unproductive, as I imagine, I do not suppose that it is entirely so. I believe there are many cases ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... considered that our molar teeth clearly indicated grain, roots, and nuts as our food, and the incisors as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... suffered during the tenancy of a series of Congested Districts Board officials. An engineer, who went to sleep in the evenings over the fire, had burnt a round hole in the hearthrug. An instructor in fish-curing, a hilarious young man, had cracked the mirror over the mantelpiece, and broken many ornaments, including the fellow of the large china dog which now mourned its mate on the sideboard. Other gentlemen had been responsible for dislocating the legs of two chairs and a disorganization ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... jobbed a few more holes between other boards, so as to make it look as if the shrinking of the wood had cracked the paper in more than one place, carefully closed the door and dipped the heads of the screws in vinegar to darken them. The whole looked rusty, and as we hoped when we had done no one would ever guess the game we had been up to. We swept up dust from the carpet, and pushed ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... rather the air of Danube, Levant, or Spanish villages. In one, named Marrick, I saw that the street had become the scene either of a great battle or a great massacre; and soon I was everywhere coming upon men and women, English and foreign, dead from violence: cracked heads, wounds, unhung jaws, broken limbs, and so on. Instead of going direct to the mines from Reeth, that waywardness which now rules my mind, as squalls an abandoned boat, took me somewhat further south-west to the village of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... here, the fugue was there, The fugue was all around; It cracked and growled and roared and howled Like noises in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart, which was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and imprisoned in the well." Again and once again while they were on their way something cracked, and each time the King's son thought the carriage was breaking; but it was only the bands which were springing from the heart of faithful Henry because his master was set free and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... like a forest fire, and may mean the whole reserves at the station. The thing to do is to crack every fighting head that you see, before there are so many fighting heads that you cannot crack any of them. There is but scant account kept of cracked heads in back of the yards, for men who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families, between times. This makes it a cause for congratulation ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... subject, and I could have pursued it all along the line of poor Armour's rejected canvases, but the need to get away from Kauffer with his equal claim upon my sympathy was too great. To have cracked my solemn mask by a single smile would have been to break down irrepressibly, and never since I set foot in India had I felt a parallel desire to laugh and to weep. There was a pang in it which I recognize as impossible to convey, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... got—in the desert. You're going to ask forgiveness for all your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the spirit to come down. You ain't a scoundrel at heart—a friend of mine says so. You're a weak vessel, cracked, perhaps. You've got to be saved, and start right over again—and 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!' Pray—pray, Scranton, and tell the whole truth, and get it—get religion. Pray like blazes. You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert, and Mary Jewell, and your mother—did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... road in the black storm, his young wife by his side, with desperate purpose. She remembered his words in the orchard, his wistful desire for another kind of life. "The Adams woman, too," as John expressed it, and "he couldn't hold his horses." This nature had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the swift revolution of life. To her husband it was only one of the messes recorded in the newspapers. But her mind was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had known the man, she had felt an interest in him altogether ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Victoria; a good deal of a journey, if I remember rightly, but pleasant. Horsham sits in a plain which is as level as a floor—one of those famous dead levels which Australian books describe so often; gray, bare, sombre, melancholy, baked, cracked, in the tedious long drouths, but a horizonless ocean of vivid green grass the day after a rain. A country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing-rooms, throwing over all their dainty little ornaments, upsetting their choicest Dresden, that nobody guessed was cracked till it fell with the mended side uppermost, and keeping every one in incessant tremor lest the next snap should be at their braids or their boots, of which neither the varnish nor the luxuriance ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to Fairham, and reached the hotel just as it was about to be shut up, the stage-coach having passed a few minutes before. They had some refreshments, and then took their seats in the chaise. At once the postilions cracked their whips, and the four horses started ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... at the age of about seventy (!!!!), was induced to come forward to sing again at the oratorios. "I had the curiosity to go, and heard her sing He was despised and rejected of men in The Messiah. Of course her voice was cracked and trembling, but it was easy to see her school was good; and it was a pleasure to observe the kindness with which she was received and listened to; and to mark the animation and delight with which she seemed to hear again the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... step-mother and the children, he was the most agreeable fellow in the world. He was always ready to do everything for everybody. When he was not doing some special act of kindness, he told stories or 'cracked jokes.' He was as full of his yarns in Indiana as ever he was in Illinois. Dennis Hanks was a clever hand at the same business, and so was old Tom Lincoln." It was while Lincoln was salesman for Offutt that he acquired the sobriquet of "Honest Abe." Says Mr. Arnold: "Of many ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Consort was shocked at the "liberty." Frederick William, however, being more broad-minded, cracked ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... they thought it a great triumph. They had "cracked their sides" laughing over its construction, as Howells once said, and they thought the world would do the same over its performance. They decided to offer it to Raymond, but rather haughtily, indifferently, because any number of other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it "mug-bread" because Gram always started it in an old porcelain mug; a tall, white, lavender-and-gold banded mug, that held more than a quart, but was sadly cracked, and, for safety's sake, was wound just above the handle with ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... tacked also, and time it was we did so, for the rising moon now showed us a large schooner with a crowd of sail. We edged down on her, when finding her manoeuvre detected, she brailed up her flat sails and bore up before the wind. This was our best point of sailing, and we cracked on, the captain rubbing his hands—"It's my turn to be the big un this time." Although blowing a strong north-wester, it was now clear moonlight, and we hammered away from our bow guns, but whenever a shot told amongst the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... chill wind the colour remained. And above the coloured lower slopes this new view of Table Mountain suggested a serried rank of sphinxes staring out across the desert sea. The nearest peak of the mountain is weathered, cracked and scarred, and it in are two chimneys that appear accessible only for the oreads who block the way with their smoky clouds. In the far north-eastern distance the grey headlands melted into the grey ocean. But beneath me were the tender ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... to pick his way across and back, after a good deal of floundering, and we decided to try the ford. First they hitched up ten mules to one of the heavily loaded baggage-wagons, the teamster cracked his whip, and in they went. But the quicksand frightened the leaders, and they lost their courage. Now when a mule loses courage, in the water, he puts his head down and is done for. The leaders disappeared entirely, then ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... young chap, from Sydney, except when he got drunk—which was seldom—and then he was a customer, from all round. He was cracked on the subject of spielers. He held that the population of the world was divided into two classes—one was spielers and the other was the mugs. He reckoned that he wasn't a mug. At first I thought he was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was a mug. He used to say that a man ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... lively genius but of high mettle, and of vigorous animal spirits. Like master Dick, in Murphy's farce of the Apprentice, they had their heads stuffed with scraps of plays, with which they interlarded their discourse, cracked their jests, praised their favourites, and satirized their enemies, among which last the very worst, in their opinions, were their parents, guardians, and masters. "The character of Dick," said Hodgkinson more than once to this writer, "is not ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... regained his consciousness,—and the carrying of the young man to the upper flat, Sam curtly instructed May-may-gwan to gather balsam for the dressing of the various severer bruises. She obtained the gum, a little at a time, from a number of trees. Here and there, where the bark had cracked or been abraded, hard-skinned blisters had exuded. These, when pricked, yielded a liquid gum, potent in healing. While she was collecting this in a quickly fashioned birch-bark receptacle, Sam ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... voice was like the dull sound of a cracked earthenware pot when flipped by thumb ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... room utterly miserable. Nobody took the slightest notice of him, only one person asked his name, and that was a small person of one term's standing who wanted to show that he was a power in the land. At last, however, the old cracked bell rang out for supper, and very thankfully he took his place among the new boys at the bottom of the day-room table. Evening prayers in the School House had once been rather a festive occasion, and a hymn chosen by the head of the House was sung every night. It had been the custom to ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... wooden table, in front of a cracked and steaming mirror, the contents of his make-up box laid out before him, and (save for one private dress rehearsal carried out in surroundings of greater coolness and comfort) transformed himself, for the first time, from General Lackaday into the mountebank clown, Petit Patou. The ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
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