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More "Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tribe is regular and well proportioned, presenting no traces of negroid antecedents. Noses are slender and slightly retroussed, lips clean-cut, chins modestly assertive with lower jaws superbly adapted to cracking cocoanuts and oysters, foreheads low with sufficient projection at the eye-line for shade purposes. All in all, they are entitled to an A-plus in beauty and reminded me less of Polynesians than of a ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... and it is frightful so long as the cause does remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... and seemed to stretch her skin to cracking-point, she would not go to bed, and nobody could persuade her. She huddled by the fire, rocking herself, until the evening; but directly it was dusk she was restless. The wind used to moan about the house, and she heard in it the voices of the dead. She thought she could ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... was till he should set their meat in order. So he vanished behind, the barriers. Then, when he had prepared the beasts' horrid victual, though I saw not what, he opened the narrow gate, and the howling, clambering throng broke helter-skelter for the troughs, cracking and crunching the thigh-bones, tearing at the flesh, and growling at one another till the air rang with ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... up in the direction of the tree, and saw a big Kookooburra perched on a bough, with all the creamy feathers of its breast fluffed out, and its crest very high. The Kookooburra is one of the jolliest birds in the bush, and is always cracking jokes, and laughing, but this one was keeping as quiet as he could. Still he could not be quite serious, and a smile played all round his huge beak. Dot could see that he was nearly bursting with suppressed ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... attempts to embrace Helen she turns into a snake—and when he is finally carried off by the demon, Kasperle gives (what Euripides is accused of sometimes giving) a comic turn to the tragic catastrophe by cracking jokes. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... other with tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... every winter. I am not afraid of him, nor of his reindeer. And it is such fun to see him come dashing along, cracking his whip and calling out cheerily to his reindeer, who are able to run even swifter than we rabbits. And Santa Claus, when he sees me, always gives me a nod and a smile, and then I look after him and his big load of toys which he is carrying to the children, until he has ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a blue sky so deep that it looks black: the stars are steel points: the glaciers burnished silver. The snow rings and thuds to your footfall. The ice is cracking to the falling temperature and the tide crack groans as the water rises. And over all, wave upon wave, fold upon fold, there hangs the curtain of the aurora. As you watch, it fades away, and then quite suddenly a great beam flashes ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of grapes. Put them on the stove in a kettle, with a little water, and cook until tender. Strain through a flannel bag. Do not squeeze it. Return juice to the kettle, add sugar, and boil for five minutes. Seal in glass jars when boiling hot. Slant the jars, when filling, to prevent cracking. When serving, add nearly the same amount ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... civilization was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... intended to keep to their word, as they stood with their shirts off, handkerchiefs bound round their heads, and belts round their waists, ready to fire as soon as the order should be given. In a line behind where we stood were the powder-boys seated on their tubs, cracking jokes, and seeming altogether to forget that we should have, in a few minutes, showers of round shot rattling about our ears. Though we used to call Mountstephen Molly, he didn't look a bit like a Molly now, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... find that the free horse has made another jump, and again flew back, and now he has them both badly balked, and so confused that neither of them knows what is the matter, or how to start the load. Next will come the slashing and cracking of the whip, and hallooing of the driver, till something is broken or he is through with his course of treatment. But what a mistake the driver commits by whipping his horse for this act. Reason and common sense should teach him that the horse was willing ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... molecular bond won a Nobel Laureate. | | Read Watson's explanation of why Pauling | failed to crack the genetic code. | | Guenther Stent, the molecular biologist of | U.C. Berkeley is an avowed Kantian | who narrowly missed cracking the genetic | code, His philosophy of science is | highly relevant to the application of | neo-hermeneutics to contemporary biology. | | Today's philosophy of physics, as developed | by John Wheeler and David Bohm ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... south, yawing, of course, all the time. Each time she fell off her sails partly filled, and these brought her in a moment right to the wind again. I have said this was the worst thing possible for me; for helpless as she looked in this situation, with the canvas cracking like cannon and the blocks trundling and banging on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount of her leeway, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... place to sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... form offers the least resistance to wind pressure, and for a given height and sectional area requires less material to secure stability than the octagonal and still less than the square; on the other hand, there is more liability to cracking. Brick is the material commonly used, but many chimneys are now made of iron or steel. Reinforced concrete ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... slaves to inform anyone who wished to know, that they belonged to J.D. Ingram. "Once," said Pattillo, "my brother Willis, who was known for his gambling and drinking, left our plantation and no one knew where he had gone. As we sat around a big open fire cracking walnuts, Willis came up, jumped off his horse and fell to the ground. Directly behind him rode a 'paterroller.' The master jumped up and commanded him to turn around and leave his premises. The 'Paterroller' ignored ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... suit in a peaceful manner, Peter was morose and resentful at the thought of having sacrificed his career to his mother, and at Papa having done nothing of the kind—a by no means surprising circumstance, Peter probably said to himself. Next, I can see Papa taking no notice of this ill-humour, but cracking quips and jests, while Peter gradually found himself forced to treat him as a humorist with whom he felt offended one moment and inclined to be reconciled the next. Indeed, with his instinct for making fun of everything, Papa often used to address Peter ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... many of the "invincible" ships of Spain, came to America with Sir John Hawkins, to subdue the Spanish colonies with the heaviest fleet he ever commanded. Though wrangles between the commanders made this expedition a comparative failure, still wherever the head of a don was seen, a cracking blow was struck at it. War was a crueller business then than it is to-day, in spite of our high explosives, our armored ships, our mighty guns, and our nimble tactics, and things were done that no captain would dare in these times; at least, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... saw the cook-house disrupt itself and disintegrate into a thousand flying timbers and twisted sheets of tin which soared upward and outward over their heads and into the night. As the rocking hills ceased echoing, the sound of the Vigilantes' rifles recurred like the cracking of dry sticks, then everywhere about the defenders the earth was lashed by falling debris while the iron roofs rang at ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and sends post-haste for Justice Palmworm, her gossip indeed, and one of those trading magistrates that so disgraced our bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the writer stirred up Authority to put some order therein. The Justice comes; and he and the Gaoleress, after cracking a bottle of mulled port between them, poor Mother Drum was brought up before his Worship for mutinous conduct. The Justice would willingly have compounded the case, for Lucre was his only love; but 'twas vengeance the Gaoleress ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking quite five miles behind the line when a flare went up), the constant order to keep closed up, the whizz of bullets, at every one of which we ducked instantly, the cracking of rifles, the 'dead cow' smell which afterwards became so painfully familiar, the arrival at the trenches and the posting of sentries. Later the cautious creeping over the parapet to look at the wire and ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... may have been a portent either of good or of evil. As you know, I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. If this particular cat had been ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... almost midnight, but it seemed like a week to the boys, when the cracking of twigs and the crunch of feet warned of the approach of men. It proved to be the party, for they heard a low growling imprecation from Green as he stumbled over some object. Garry nudged Fernald, and immediately felt two sharp taps on his shoulder. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... 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, Cracking amain! ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... hinder me so in my work; if you want to turn double somersets, go and do it in your dear mamma's parlor; go and plague Mr. Sherwood, or Patrick, or, still better, torment Jane, and leave me to plant my cabbages." Do you know how he answers? By cracking me over the shoulders with his switch, and crying out, "Look out, old potato top, or I'll tumble you into the pond." I might as well ask the river to run up hill. And look here, ma'am, see this picture (shows picture) he drew of me, watering the garden in a thunder storm, as if I ever did such ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... where some soft-footed beast had just trod. And he heard the melancholy notes of birds, the twitter of grouse, the sough of the wind, the light dropping of pine-cones, the near and distant bark of squirrels, the deep gobble of a turkey close at hand and the challenge from a rival far away, the cracking of twigs in the thickets, the murmur of running water, the scream of an eagle and the shrill cry of a hawk, and always the soft, dull, steady pads of the hoofs of ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning trees. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... angles. The slope fell away beneath his hurrying feet; the sage-brush dwindled, and at length ceased; the sand gave place to a fine powder, white as snow; and an hour after he had fired the rifle his mule's hoofs were crisping and cracking the sun-baked flakes of alkali on the surface of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... hacking of dull knives and cracking of limbs, with the occasional swish of an armful into the camp. The boys worked like beavers for a while, and got thoroughly warmed again, and the air within was filled with resinous fragrance. That done and arranged to their experienced leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... oozing through the walls. However, they cast around them a glance of satisfaction, while eating on the little table on which a candle was burning. Their faces were reddened by the strong air. They stretched out their stomachs; they leaned on the backs of their chairs, which made a cracking sound in consequence, and they kept repeating: "Here we are in the place, then! What happiness! It seems to me that it is ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... it down to my barn and put it on the open rafters over the cow stalls. A cow stable is warm and not too dry, so that a hickory log cures slowly without cracking or checking. There it lay for many weeks. Often I cast my eyes up at it with satisfaction, watching the bark shrink and slightly deepen in colour, and once I climbed up where I could see the minute seams making way in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the struggle to save our stock. From early morning to night the ring of the ax was unceasing. The cattle, especially, soon learned the meaning of the cracking of a tree and bolted for the spot. To prevent them being killed by the falling trees, the smaller children were pressed into service to herd them away until the tree was on the ground. The stock soon began to thrive and cows gave an increased amount of milk which was hailed with delight ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... water, except what they had in their dinner-pails; and it's been three days and a half since the explosion! They are breathing bad air; their heads are aching, the veins swelling in their foreheads; their tongues are cracking, they are lying on the ground, gasping. But they are waiting—kept alive by the faith they have in their friends on the surface, who will try to get to them. They dare not take down the barriers, because the gases would kill ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... confidants of the king's flight, were at Varennes on his arrival, nor did they reach there until an hour after. The carriages had stopped at the entrance of Varennes. The king, surprised to meet neither M. de Choiseul nor M. de Guoguelas, neither escort nor relays, hoped that the cracking of the postilions' whips would procure them fresh horses to continue their journey. The three body-guards went from door to door, to inquire where the horses had been placed, but could ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... spluttered, cracking his fingers, 'so my Richard is the badger, ha? So then I have him, ha? If I do not draw him myself, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... and uprooted, lay prostrate on the ground, or, half suspended by the creepers entangled in their branches, were balanced like the formidable battering-rams of the ancients. Lucien was speechless at the sight before his eyes. A sudden cracking noise was heard, and another forest giant slowly bent over, and, describing a rapid curve, crushed its branches against the ground; ten seconds ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... coach; the wheels, the horses, the whip, the bridle, etc., may be chosen. These the leader jots down on a piece of paper and then begins to tell a thrilling story. "The stage coach left the old Stag Inn, amidst the thundering of the horses' hoofs and the cracking of the driver's whip." Some member will probably have chosen to be the horses, another the whip, and as their names are mentioned they must rise, twirl round and sit down again. Then the narrator continues: "For some miles all went well, then ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... then once more the earth had subsided and the waters of the ocean had rushed in. The edge of the rim-rock had been sheered by torrential floods, erosion had fashioned the far heights; until once more, with infinite groanings, the earth had risen from the depths. There it stayed, cracking and trembling, as the inner fires cooled down and the fury of the conflict died away; and boiling waters bearing ores in solution burst like geysers from every crack. And there atom by atom, combined with quartz and acids, the metals of the earth were brought to the surface and deposited ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... snapped, when the earth seems to reel and the mountains to shake, and the rivers are lashed into foam and fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders, brandishing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery arrows, and cracking their whips amid thunder and lightning. They are the comrades of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the Howler, a fighting god, to whom many hymns are addressed. In him a new character is evolved, that of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... and sat at the table a long time, talking of many things. Then said the old gentleman, My good landlord, while we are cracking your nuts, if you please, do ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... form, is the public opinion of Great Britain. Even the Times cannot deny this. It may not be generally known in the United States, but while the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement, and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who, as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. Here we have crystallized every phase of political opinion. ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... personal regrets, counting in the measure for fat, for, refusing food, the animals fall away in condition, so that the sorrows of two fat bullocks due to parting, enforced by determined men on horseback, cracking whips and using violent and threatening language, come home to the owner in terms of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... The cracking of a tree limb had reached their ears, followed by a cry of alarm. A limb upon which Pat Malone was standing had broken, causing the fellow to slip to ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed winds that struck it, sails and sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... into a gulley, where were walls of black rock and a river filled with snow, and a still blue sky above. Through a covered bridge they went, drumming roughly over the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then slowly up and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver cracking his long whip as he walked beside, and calling his strange wild HUE-HUE!, the walls of rock passing slowly by, till they emerged again between slopes and masses of snow. Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the afternoon, silenced by the imminence of the mountains, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... mud, move slowly, and after three hours, it seemed as though every man in the United States was under arms and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless, interminable; there were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers, Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... if it is not squirting bullets from a machine gun as it advances. Against infantry in the open this sort of thing is extremely demoralising. It is a method of attack still in its infancy, but there are great possibilities for it in the future, when the bending and cracking German line gives, as ultimately it must give if this offensive does not relax. If the Allies persist in their pressure upon the western front, if there is no relaxation in the supply of munitions from Britain ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... well as at other places that I have held to be the scenes of unrecorded, immemorial slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ratio of eight inches to the mile—the very quantity that science to-day admits to be the curviture of the earth—and accepts in surveying. It was their knowledge of this fact that kept the building sound, without the cracking of a joint, through centuries, though so high. The Egyptians did not use the sacred amma, or cubit, which is about twenty-five of our inches. They used a profane cubit, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... March 30 at a point near Baracoa, where many times in years gone by Maceo had seen the flash of machete and bayonet. True to the traditions of the place, hardly had he touched his foot on Cuban soil before Spanish rifles were cracking and bullets were singing all about him. The force of Spaniards numbered about fifty. Maceo had with him only nineteen men in addition to his brother Jose, Crombet, and Cabreco. There was a running fight along the road in ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... very power that women possess. They can wait round without wishing to strike back. Saving life gives them sufficient spiritual resource to stand up to artillery. They have no wish to relieve their nervousness by sighting an alien head and cracking it. ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of agony rang ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dark corner in a large deserted room, where we had stowed away bales and bales of goods we did not care to open. Climbing over the top of these stores, I landed on the other side, and went to the spot I had chosen. I had not prayed long before I heard master coming, cracking his whip, and saying, 'I'll teach you to pray.' This made me tremble exceedingly, and pray all the harder; but hearing that he was very near and coming after me, I opened my eyes, and to my surprise there was a beautiful silver ladder before me. As quick ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... C.! Their performance of TOM TAYLOR'S romantic, pathetic, melodramatic, crib-cracking, head- (though not always side-) splitting play, was an admirable one, carefully rehearsed, well stage-managed, and played with a fine feeling for the capital situations in which the piece abounds. Especially good was Mr. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... I detected the noise of padded feet and the scraping noise of claws on the wood. A shudder ran through me. Was a panther, a mountain lion, about to spring upon me? No, I abandoned the thought and instinctively I knew that it must be one of the black wolf pack. Then I remembered hearing the cracking and breaking of sticks or timber while I was trying to sleep in the bedroom, and I felt that Pluto had broken out of the pen and was creeping up on us slowly and stealthily as I have seen a fox creep up on a ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... sense or motion, more than a hundred feet below. As soon as we recovered from the shock, we found that we had been most mercifully preserved; strange to say, neither horse nor rider had received any serious injury. We heard, above our heads, the hissing and cracking of the fire; we contemplated with awe the flames, which were roaring along the edge of the precipice—now rising, now lowering, just as if they would leap over the space and annihilate all life in ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... eight or ten are breaking stones by the road-side, at which I somewhat marvel, since there is a compulsory school law in Germany; but perhaps to-day is a holiday; or maybe, after school hours, it is customary for these unhappy youngsters to repair to the road-sides and blister their hands with cracking flints. "Hungry as a buzz-saw" I roll into the sleepy old town of Rothenburg at six o'clock, and, repairing to the principal hotel, order supper. Several flunkeys of different degrees of usefulness come in and bow obsequiously from time to time, as I sit around, expecting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Wellsville, Paul had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear water ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... twinkling like so many golden candles. But the berlin, which had drawn them so stoutly over these rugged mountain-roads, failed them at the last. One of the hind wheels jolted violently upon a great stone, there was a sudden cracking of wood, and the carriage lurched over, throwing its occupants one ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... said at last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come—is it so?" "Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, sees even when one lies a dying they say—for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... he put out a trembling hand. For a moment he groped blindly for something tangible in the nothingness before him. Then, with a groan, he let his arm fall nerveless to his side. The vision disappeared, and Lem's presence and even Fledra's faded; for Lon again felt the agonizing cracking of his bones under the prison strait-jacket, and ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... successfully conveyed of a dim remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression as false as the medium that ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... Bob!" cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... opposed to any change. Francis E. Spinner, of New York, said he would never change his vote from me, and Thaddeus Stevens said he never would do so until the crack of doom. When afterwards reminded of this Mr. Stevens said he thought he "heard it cracking." ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... gaze was, however, attracted by an old dame, reclining alone on a divan. Behind her sat a girl, a regular beauty, clothed in gauze, engaged in patting her legs. Lady Feng was on her feet in the act of cracking some joke. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... cleared the robes and lit plump in the drift. The deacon's horse knew before the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally concluding that he was practically left standing, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 'Don't stand there cracking the glass,' said Psmith. 'I tell you I am practically a human three-shies-a-penny ball. My father is poising me lightly in his hand, preparatory to flinging me at one of the milky cocos of Life. Which one ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the cracking of the rifles working as regularly as punching-machines in a factory. Every soldier was seeing only his sight and the running figures under it. Mechanically and automatically, training had been projected into action, anticipation ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he bade me look out, that he ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... whistling wind bareheaded. We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chimneys rose up between. There were red roses all over the pillars and eaves of the porch. Seemed to me it was a good enough place. Fu Shan smoked scented and sugared tobacco in a porcelain pipe with an ivory stem. The fellows down by the creek ran away, feeling pretty good and cracking their revolvers in the air, and the Chinamen got bunched about ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Jeffrey excepted, no Whig could be found who was adapted to the office. The solicitor laid strict injunctions on Napier not to go if a Whig were not in office. No Whig was, and he stayed away. I think this is good?—bearing in mind that all the old Whigs of Edinburgh were cracking their throats in the room. They gave out that they were ill, and the lord-advocate did actually lie in bed all the afternoon; but this is the real truth, and one of the judges told it me with great glee. It seems ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... habit that I wear, that I saw pruning-hooks(22) fly: a thing that none would believe that had not seen it. Whereof be my witness that I lie not Maso del Saggio, that great merchant, whom I found there cracking nuts, and selling the shells by retail! However, not being able to find that whereof I was in quest, because from thence one must travel by water, I turned back, and so came at length to the Holy Land, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... bundle over one shoulder, and the torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... Cracking his whip, the new driver kept the four horses on a galloping pace, until very soon he called out "whoa," before the frowning high gateway ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... free from all troublesome feelings, So little encumbered by faith in my dealings (And that I'm consistent the world will allow, What I was at Newmarket the same I am now). When such are my merits (you know I hate cracking), I hope, like the Vender of Best Patent Blacking, "To meet with the generous and kind approbation "Of a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... adventure came about noon of the seventh day. Plenty of evidences of animals had been found, but they were not eager to hunt. The trail for home had far more fascination than all the animals on the island. It was the custom to stop at intervals for rest. During one of these stops the cracking of bushes was heard, as though produced by a cautious tread. The boys were alert at once and, with their guns in hand, moved in the direction of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and cracking of the poor churchyard trees ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... back his heartburn. He wanted to take a couple of his pills but not in front of Dorwin. The banker might think he was cracking up. These damned New Yorkers had no idea of the pressure under which he labored. He sipped a glass of ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... our few hands; we were almost at the mercy of the current, which appeared to increase in rapidity every minute; however, by exertion and good management, we contrived to keep in the middle of the stream until the wind sprung up and drove us on to the southern bank of the river, and then all was cracking and tearing away of the wood-work, breaking of limbs from the projecting trees, the snapping, cracking, screaming, hallooing, and confusion. As fast as we cleared ourselves of one tree, the current bore us ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... that monkeys do not eat you will seldom get poisoned. My men said that they had never seen the fruit before, but as it looked pretty they were going to eat it, and a lot of it. So they stopped some time cracking the nuts and eating them ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... as this meant a most energetic demonstration of savagery on his part, following a fawning and submissive manner, while madame, wearing a large sombrero and a man's coat, moved about in the cage, cracking ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... strong enough for our car to go over," said Mr. Brown. Slowly he steered the big machine on it. Hardly had it reached the middle when there was a cracking of wood, and the bridge bent down. The automobile ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... pools, their jagged edges piled with floe ice. For days at a time the big trees moaned ceaselessly; often the snow fell silently all through the day, all through the bitter cold of the night, until the knotted arms of the hemlock were cruelly laden to the cracking point, and the moose hopple and scrub pines lay smothered up to their tops. Always the crying wind ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... were the merry, cunning little squirrels to watch, cracking nuts on the branches of the old trees, and every now and then a rabbit would hurry away through the tall ferns, or a great bee come buzzing near her, and she would stop to watch it gathering honey from the flowers, and wild thyme. So she went on very ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... at the poor little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... silence; the log cracking; and just then the door swung on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the lowest branches of the tree, swaying and crackling while he looked at the anger frozen on their faces. Then he climbed swiftly up again, and crackling and cracking, chuckling to himself, he went off, leaping from fir tree to fir tree, this way and that through ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... motto for Arctic seamen. My faith in this axiom was soon put to the proof. After a short sleep I was called on deck, as the vessel was suffering from great pressure. My own senses soon made it evident; every timber and plank was cracking and groaning, the vessel was thrown considerably over on her side, and lifted bodily, the bulkheads cracking, and treenails and bolts breaking with small reports. On reaching the deck, I saw indeed ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... bent both his knees till they touched the ground, and remained kneeling until the director, cracking his ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... crook episcopal. Still borne before him since the Fall, Blackens with its ill-omened sign The old blue heaven of faith benign. Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? All ask at once, all wait reply. 80 Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; Life saddens to a mere conundrum Which once Religion solved, but she Has lost—has Science ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... match to the inflammable material to start an incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond badly scorching the door, and cracking a few of the stones by reason of the intense heat that was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... absolute that the ears felt dull and sealed. He tried, involuntarily, to listen more clearly, to know if this uncanny hush were really so. There was a sense of being imprisoned, but only most delicately, in a spell, which some sudden cracking might disrupt. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Pastinaca,[331] where I swear to you, by the habit I wear on my back, that I saw hedge-bills[332] fly, a thing incredible to whoso hath not seen it. But of this Maso del Saggio will confirm me, whom I found there a great merchant, cracking walnuts and selling the shells ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was two o'clock and they were pulling on their togs in the locker-room; and Danny Moore was circulating about in very high spirits, cracking jokes and making them laugh, and Coach Robey was dispatching Jim Morton and Jim's assistant on mysterious errands and referring every little while to his red-covered memorandum book and looking very untroubled and serene. And then there was a clamping ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... he pressed the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his face ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sphere of metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... finally heard from some teamster— "All's set," is directly responded from every quarter. "Stretch out!" immediately vociferates the captain. Then the "heps!" to the drivers, the cracking of whips, the trampling of feet, the occasional creak of wheels, the rumbling of the wagons, while "Fall in" is heard from head-quarters, and the train is strung out and in a few moments has started on ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Olaf. Twice Lugur moaned. At the end he screamed—horribly. There was a cracking sound, as of a stout ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... these are firmly stopped up (for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily bored through with a pocket knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learnt during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... noisy proclamation of peril. Swift as a wink of light, the beaver dropped his stick and dived head first into the pond. The Boy straightened up just in time to see him vanish. As he vanished, his broad, flat, naked tail hit the water with a cracking slap which resounded over the pond like a pistol-shot. It was reechoed by four or five more splashes from the upper portion of the pond. Then all was silence again, and the Boy realized that there would be no more chance that night for him to watch ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a loud cry and loosed the hold I had on my victim. A cracking in my left arm: one of the Tuareg had seized it and twisted until my shoulder ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... spent the money with the young artist. A common tap-room was an indifferent school of manners, whatever it might be for painting, and there this gifted lad was now often to be found late in the evening, carousing with hostlers and potboys, handing round the quart pot, and singing his song or cracking his joke. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... that this was the day of the Highland gathering of the county. A dance was going on as he approached, and four tall and stalwart Highlanders in complete national costumes, bonneted and kilted, were leaping and wheeling, cracking their fingers and uttering shrill cries as they danced with astonishing vigour and adroitness on a raised ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... young women placed under circumstances of such striking interest. The mirth and song and general murmur diminished by degrees, until they altogether ceased, and. nothing was to be heard but the perpetual cracking of the reels, the hum of the rapid wheels, and the voices of the reelers, as they proclaimed the state of this enlivening pool of industry. As for the fair competitors themselves, it might have been observed that even those among them who had no, or at ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... upheaval of spring with the ice-jams and terrors, the Moose roaring by untamable, the torrents rising, rising foot by foot to the very dooryard of her father's house. Strange spirits were abroad at night, howling, shrieking, cracking and groaning in voices of ice and flood. Her Indian nurse told her of them all—of Maunabosho, the good; of Nenaubosho the evil—in her lisping Ojibway dialect that sounded like the softer voices ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... let our fancy share the rest which seems to pervade all around, while we enjoy the perfect stillness. There is not a sound, except the ripple of the water. Houses, streets, ships, men, women, and children, all seem resting peacefully in the silent night. But, hark! there was a sound of cracking from the window! Again and again we hear it, and whispering too outside. A few moments more, and the window is opened, and two men have crept in. They are some of the guests of the evening come to recover thus what ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke from our engine. Frightened larks rose from the tall grain. We passed ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... for the materialism of our own days. "Never was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and directress. The natural heads of the nation, the priests and the great lords, thought ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... inclosing cement is porous, and admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers; and it may be truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell. [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch,—for such slight things; But he's such a very great musician Grimacing and fingering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... down the bank on to the ice; and she followed him. The ice cracked somewhat noisily at their weight, and at intervals it cracked again. Erebus paid no heed to its cracking beyond telling Wiggins not to go far from the edge. She skated round and across the pond several times, then settled down to make a figure of eight, resolved to have it scored deeply in the ice before the Terror came. Wiggins skated ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... crowded in the lee of the straw-stacks, their rough flanks crawling, and in the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly up and down, did not know that he had forgotten to fasten his shabby overcoat. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... and jostled, doing as little service with as much tumult as could well be imagined. At length, while the dinner was, after various efforts, in the act of being arranged upon the board, "the clamour much of men and dogs," the cracking of whips, calculated for the intimidation of the latter, voices loud and high, steps which, impressed by the heavy-heeled boots of the period, clattered like those of the statue in the Festin de pierre, announced the arrival of those for whose benefit the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Costigan. He knew me at once; and he says, 'Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name.' His highly respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter—"those were his very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy circumstances'—he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I heartily wish he'd ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... either copy, but that both are offered to you by a bookseller at precisely the same price. What will be your feelings as you handle the repaired copy? It is more than probable that you will sigh 'Poor thing' as you open it gently for fear of cracking the old piece pasted on to the back. But, 'What a nice clean copy' you will say as you take up the other; and it is improbable that you will hesitate long in ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... which he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... an incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by dividing their forces against ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... skipping and frisking into Nutham, as his manner was, both pockets full of corn which he had confiscated, he remarked significantly, from a field down yonder. He nodded jauntily right and left, and then disposed himself comfortably in a corner, and began cracking his dainties in a very free-and-easy manner, not noticing the woe-begone aspect of his friends. All at once, however, he awoke to a realizing sense of things, and showed his sympathy after his own fashion, by giving a sudden flirt with his ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and Richard his one, and they were about to pass in although Mrs. Fayal said it ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... on each side of the speaker's desk," Who wouldn't legislate, (and early, too,) if he could do it with his feet on the fender, his well-flavored Havana or best Virginia leaf in his mouth, and the privilege of cracking jokes and telling naughty stories ad interim? Go it, ye Buckeye lawmakers! Shall we hear of any sympathy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... thy life thou shedd'st For love. The ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell Alternate victory and defeat, and there 2475 The combatants with rage most horrible Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, And impotent their tongues they lolled into ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... flattened,—often bursting or cracking longitudinally before attaining its full dimensions; skin deep scarlet; flesh rose-colored, crisp, mild, and pleasant; neck small; leaves few in number, and of smaller size than those of the common Scarlet Turnip-rooted. Season quite early,—two ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... lurcher, terrier, spaniel—snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon. Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging. Behind came Sir Nigel himself, with Lady Loring upon his arm, the pair walking slowly and sedately, as befitted both their age and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inches on a side, and is fastened to the second layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.) The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon and are extremely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... shouting and laughing, made as much noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica shrieking ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... bark wound with a sharp knife so as to remove all frayed edges. Cover the exposed wood with oil and lead paint to prevent cracking, and the wound will soon be covered with new bark ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... They were cracking decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... his face felt cold, and opening his eyes, he found that it had good reason to be so. It was covered with snow, and upon the robe itself the snow lay deep. The whole forest was white, and, as he stood up, he heard branches cracking beneath the weight that had gathered on them in the night. It had come down in thick and great flakes, but so softly that it ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... recollect that some of us, faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking quite five miles behind the line when a flare went up), the constant order to keep closed up, the whizz of bullets, at every one of which we ducked instantly, the cracking of rifles, the 'dead cow' smell which afterwards became so painfully familiar, the arrival at the trenches and the posting of sentries. Later the cautious creeping over the parapet to look at the wire and at dawn stand-to, followed by the frizzling of bacon and the brewing of tea ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... there shot dazzling sparks, and streamers of green and violet fire. There was a snapping, cracking sound that could be heard above the whir of the craft's propellers, for ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... fear of suffocation. In one or two of the shop windows could be discerned a light glimmering feebly as through the thickest fog. All the ordinary sights and sounds of morning—the vehicles plying for hire, the cracking of whips, the cries of the fish and fruit vendors—all were gone. The deathly stillness was broken only by a clangour of the town clock, tolling the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... told myself that my pity ought to be kept for the real men who had been frequenters of the building, who now were waifs. I reviewed the gaping, glassless windows through which they had been wont to watch the human comedy. There they had stood, puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing women's reputations ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold to gain ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... older brothers couldn't understand about Stefan was why he was always laughing and joking. He did the work of two men but whether he was working or resting you could always hear him cracking his merry jokes and laughing his ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... the foremost Indian, and with the crack of his rifle saw the redskin drop his gun, stop in his mad run, stagger sideways, and fall. Then the borderman looked to see what had become of his ally. The cracking of the Indian's rifle told him that Wetzel had been ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... The king talks with his knights.] [Sidenote B: Gawayne,] [Sidenote C: Agravayn,] [Sidenote D: Bishop Bawdewyn,] [Sidenote E: and Ywain sit on the dais.] [Sidenote F: The first course is served with cracking of trumpets.] [Sidenote G: It consisted of all dainties in season.] [Sidenote H: Each two had dishes twelve,] [Sidenote I: good beer and bright wine both.] [Footnote ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... something of what the country was doing and had done, cracking a few jokes based on camp life, that almost sent the girls into hysterics—so finely balanced were they between laughter and tears. Then he ended with another eulogy of the Outdoor Girls and the hope that health and good fortune would follow them wherever ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... when I awoke. I felt all right except for a soreness under my arms and across my chest where the lasso had chafed and bruised me. Still I did not recover my good spirits. Herky-Jerky kept on grinning and cracking jokes on my failure to escape. He had appropriated my revolver for himself, and he asked me several times if I wanted to borrow it to ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... crawled quickly on. There were several branches below me, which, should the one I was on give way, would still afford me support, and there were many on either side. The bough bent with my weight, and as I reached the further end I every moment expected that it would break. I felt it giving way, cracking horribly. It broke! I endeavoured to seize another bough—in vain. With a crash, down I came, but it was to find myself on the opposite bank, and by making a few springs I reached the ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the house, in such an agitation that they declared—for it was their turn now—that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures, to not one of which they could give a name, and not one of ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... else to think of, and the smashing of porcelain and cracking of whips came to an end. The Archimandrite was summoned, and preparations, both religious and secular, were made for a funeral worthy the rank of the deceased. Thousands flocked to Kinesma; and when the immense procession moved away from the castle, although very ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... expression that it had in the Hebrew prophets—humour. A man must be very full of faith to jest about his divinity. No Neo-Pagan delicately suggesting a revival of Dionysius, no vague, half-converted Theosophist groping towards a recognition of Buddha, would ever think of cracking jokes on the matter. But to the Hebrew prophets their religion was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. So it was with Carlyle. His ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in the road, about two miles from home; and there, all in a moment, quite suddenly, when nobody was thinking about the frost or the danger, down came the poor horse on his side, his feet having gone quite from under him, and a dreadful cracking sound of broken timber gave notice that a shaft was smashed. A shaft at least was smashed; if only no ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the rafters and nailed down at the edges, so as to be considerably concaved between them, the joints on the rafters being covered by inverted caps or troughs. The concave form of the sheet is designed to prevent the sheet metal from cracking, to which it is subject by expansion and contraction ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly up and down, did not know that ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name, don't! I can't bear it, dear," ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... called back to his adversary, "Wish you joy of the bargain Ole Anderson. The peat bog won't beggar me, and the cattle at Ingvorstrup have all the hay they can eat." I could hear his loud laughter outside and the cracking of his whip. It is not easy to have to sit in judgment. Every decision makes ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... two Pepper hung at the extremity of the branch to which he was clinging, when all at once there came an ominous cracking and the end broke away, but fortunately it had swung so low toward the ground that he dropped at the foot of the tree, not much the ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be extinguished, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... one else—which answering, he walked off briskly, under press of filial obedience, to see what was wanted. As if hoping to force what would not come of its own accord, or by persuasion, Bushie now laid unauthorized hands on Grumbo's tail, and giving it a cracking pull, got his finger bitten; ditto, then, on Tom's tail, and giving it a cracking jerk, got his leg scratched. Evidently, quiet amusement at home to-day was a consummation quite out of the question, however ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of something which happened to a lady, a fellow-traveller of ours, a few weeks, ago. She came here to visit a lady whose husband owns one hundred and fifty slaves. The morning after she reached the plantation, as she told me, she was awaked by the cracking of whips. She listened; human voices, raised above the ordinary pitch, were mingling with the sounds. She lay till she could endure it no longer. Coming down to the piazza, she saw a white man mending a ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... rather staggered as well as we could, into the gallery, where the servants were already arranged on their knees, praying and crossing themselves with all their might. The shock lasted above a minute and a half, and I believe has done no injury, except in frightening the whole population, and cracking a few old walls. All Mexico was on its knees while it lasted, even the poor madmen in San Hepolito, which A—— had gone to visit in company with Seor ——-. I have had a feeling of sea-sickness ever since. They expect a return of the shock in twenty-four hours. How dreadful a severe ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... leafage, and struck the ground with a dull crash. It must have fallen under the very jaws of an unseen waiting monster; for there arose at once a strange, hooting roar, followed by the sound of rending flesh and cracking bone. Loob grinned over his feat, and Grom, glancing at A-ya, muttered quietly: "It is better to be up here than down there." As he spoke, and they all peered downwards, a dreadful head, with the limp body of the leopard gripped like a rat between its long jaws and dripping yellow ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the sleeper lay in a huddle. Taking little heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak. As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by a vivacious cracking. He looked up. Lines of fire were darting thither and yon, where dry wood, the debris of years of decay, had been caught in the thick clumps of underbrush and among the limbs of the trees. The fire had pushed briskly, and the uncanny glade was now an amphitheatre of crawling flames, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... aussi je suis pere de famille), a fat, double volume of himself—I could not see a trace of the young pere de famille we knew—round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey to Brazil, magnificently printed in ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... cracking a peanut and dexterously nipping the double kernel into his mouth. "We'll be there, though I don't believe we need much practice to beat that Barville bunch. We ate 'em up ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the guns which had been idle were all speaking. Every one by scattered practice shots had registered on the German first-line trench at the point where its shell-bursts would form its link in the chain of bursts. Over the wavy line of chalk for the front of the attack broke the flashes of cracking shrapnel jackets, whose bullets were whipping up spurts of chalk like spurts of dust on a road from ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the tramp of an armed man, coming ever nearer and nearer, and now close to the entrance of the cave. In vain did Froda strive to free himself from the trembling maiden. Already the branches before the entrance were cracking and breaking, and Froda sighed deeply. "Must I, then, fall like a lurking fugitive, entangled in a woman's garments? It is a base death to die. But can I cast this half-fainting creature away from me on the ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our Administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... little on the piano, I should long ago have lost patience with my work, but I like my instruments to respond to the player, and to be durable." His pianos do really last well. He warrants the sounding-board neither breaking nor cracking; when he has finished one, he exposes it in the air to rain, snow, sun, and every kind of devilry, that it may give way, and then inserts slips of wood which he glues in, making it quite strong and solid. He is very glad when ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... to any of the party, except the leaders. The prospect of a sharp fight had not in the least dampened the ardor of their hopes. With men of their craft it was a dull season, and the prospect of "cracking a crib" plentifully stored with valuables was quite ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... remains a mystery, and it is frightful so long as the cause does remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... his fingers, and flinging his plumed hat on the table, as who should say, Lie there, authority! he swallowed a hearty cup of wine to the happiness of the married couple, and began to amble about the room, mumping, laughing, and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company. Whilst his Majesty was in the midst of this gay humour, and a call to the banquet was anxiously expected, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... relates that the man to whom it was offered by the underground folk did not refuse to drink, but having drunk, he kept the vessel and took it home. A boy who was employed to watch horses by night on a turf moor near the village of Kritzemow, in Mecklenburg, annoyed the underground folk by the constant cracking of his whip. One night, as he was thus amusing himself, a mannikin came up to him and offered him drink in a silver-gilt beaker. The boy took the beaker, but being openly on bad terms with the elves, argued no good ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... their drawing after the games. Gesner affirms that an otter will wind a fish four miles distance in the water, and my Lord Verulam (cent. 8) speaks of that element's being also a medium of sounds, as well as air. Eels do manifestly stir at the cracking of thunder, but that may also be attributed to some other tremulous motion; yet carps and other fish are known to come at the call and the sound of a bell, as I have been informed. Notorious is the story of Arion, and of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... be boiling fast when the eggs are put in, that it may not be checked. They should have lain in warm water a few minutes before boiling, to prevent the shells cracking. Allow three minutes for a soft-boiled egg; four, to have the white firmly set; and ten, for a hard-boiled egg. Another method is to pour boiling water on the eggs, and let them stand for ten minutes where they will be nearly at boiling-point, though not boiling. The white and yolk are then ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St. John's Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it is doubtful whether they had ever enjoyed themselves more; until just as they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and said to him "If you pour milk every day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were anything but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room. In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused at the cold perspirations of the night before; but even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself like those historic ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of a cracksman," said Arthur Weldon, with a laugh. "If there are any safes out here that are worth cracking, I'd say ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... my remarks to the newer things that you haven't heard of. I will first note a shagbark hickory that stands in my own neighborhood, an outstanding variety we call Hand. This is very much like the Vest in shape and size and cracking quality. According to my tests, this variety cracks out 50% meat, and since it is a local variety and I know it is hardy and fruitful, I am placing it ahead of the Vest for the Middle West. It is certainly equal to it in every way and hardy and fruitful. While the Vest hasn't yet ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... which of these three passions stripped her this Amilcare naked? Naked he was now, and she found that she had never known him. The colour of his face was that of old white wax; his mouth seemed stretched to cracking point, neither turned up at the corners nor down, but a bleak slit jagged across his face. He fastened her with his hard eyes, which seemed smaller than usual, and had a scared look, as if he was positively disconcerted ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sharp air that cut their faces and the flying pace of the two outer horses alone gave them any idea of the speed they were making. Nicolas glanced back at the other two drivers; they were shouting and urging their shaft-horses with cries and cracking of whips, so as not to be quite left behind; Nicolas's middle horse, swinging steadily along under the shaft-bow, kept up his regular pace, quite ready to go twice as fast the moment he ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... were for this preparing Late last fall, Neither time nor trouble sparing To please you all, Zounds! these niggers raised the shindies, Cracking crowns and court-house windies, Sent us sharp to the West ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... distinctly in it on returning to Chalons, which, if it had seemed packed on our previous visit, was now quivering and cracking with fresh crowds. The stir about the fountain, in the square before the Haute Mere-Dieu, was more melodramatic than ever. Every one was in a hurry, every one booted and mudsplashed, and spurred or sworded or despatch-bagged, or somehow labelled as a member of the huge military beehive. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... complaining emptiness. We fell into a refreshing sleep; the hours passed away unheeded, until we were awakened by the rustling of the reeds bending in the breeze, whispering of the coveted blow. Heavy black clouds were gathering, and soon old Boreas came cracking out from the ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... her hair and wrung it till the last salt drop had fallen. Sitting there in the sands, idle fingers cracking the pods of gilded sea-weed, she glanced up at me and laughed contentedly. Presently she rose and walked out to a high ledge, motioning me to follow. Far below, the sun-lit water shimmered in a shallow basin of ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... city of Florence. My only consolation was to eat unnumbered cherries and apricots, for I did not as yet like the figs. My brother and I sometimes had a lurid delight in cracking the cherry and apricot stones and devouring the bitter contents, with the dreadful expectation of soon dying from the effects. Altogether I considered our sojourn in the town house, Casa del Bello, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... even this morning, in Padua, Verona, Milan, Chioggia, or wherever it was, whips were cracking, hoofs clattering, motor horns booming, wheels endangering your life. Farewell now to all!—there is not a wheel in Venice save those that steer rudders, or ring bells; but instead, as you discern in time when the brightness ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... early life. During the winter that had just passed, Frank, in company with his cousin Archie Winters, of whom more hereafter, paid a visit to Uncle Joe. One cold, stormy morning, as they sat before a blazing fire, cracking hickory-nuts, the farmer burst suddenly into the house, which was built of logs, and contained but one room, and commenced taking down ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... and round the heads of the commissioners, all the night long. On the eleventh, the demon ran away with their breeches; and on the twelfth filled their beds so full of pewter platters that they could not get into them. On the thirteenth night, the glass became unaccountably seized with a fit of cracking, and fell into shivers in all parts of the house. On the fourteenth, there was a noise as if forty pieces of artillery had been fired off, and a shower of pebble-stones, which so alarmed the commissioners that, "struck with great ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in riding and hunting. He rose early, ate his breakfast of corn-cake, honey, and tea, and then rode about his estates; his evenings he passed with his family around the blazing hearth, retiring between nine and ten. He loved to linger at the table, cracking nuts and relating his adventures. In personal appearance, Washington was over six feet in height, robust, graceful, and perfectly erect. His manner was formal and dignified. He was more solid than brilliant, and had more judgment than genius. He had great ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... slowly stirred a pot of stew. The little party of cowboys came thundering up. There was a chorus of shouts and exclamations, whistlings and good-natured chaff, as they threw themselves from their horses. Long Jim stood slowly cracking his whip and looking ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reach of his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted, generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure possession; he soars far above earth; he has ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... from morning till night; she herself would place the scant flowers that could be got in the guests' rooms. The steward of the Pioneer had undertaken to bring any number of things from Oban; Donald, the piper-lad, had a brand-new suit of tartan, and was determined that, short of the very cracking of his lungs, the English lady would have a good salute played for her that day. The Umpire, all smartened up now, had been put in a safe anchorage in Loch-na-Keal; the men wore their new jerseys; the long gig, painted white, with a band of gold, was brought ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and crawled ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... dark and, what is a rare occurrence under the tropics, very still. They could hear only the cracking of the burning thorns and the hissing of flames which illumined the overhanging rocks forming a semi-circle. The moon did not shine into the depths of the ravine, but above twinkled a swarm of unknown stars. The air became so cool that Stas shook off his drowsiness ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... severe frosts and the snow and ice came. There were several varieties, including large ones two inches long, and the fine little ones known to boys throughout the Mississippi Valley as the scaly bark. Paul procured two stones, and, cracking several of them, found them delicious to the taste. Already in his Kentucky home he had become familiar with them all. The hogs of the settlers, running through the forest and fattening upon these nuts and acorns, known collectively as "mast," acquired a delicious flavor. Boys ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... before the shaft. With the last batch of these in the bucket, we white men stepped upon the platform below it and dropped suddenly into the black depths of the earth, with now and then a stone easily capable of cracking a skull bounding swiftly with a hollow sound past us back and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the process of making steel tough after it has been hardened, so that it will hold a cutting edge and resist cracking. Tempering makes the grain finer and the metal stronger. It does not affect the hardness, but increases the elastic limit and reduces the brittleness of the steel. In that tempering is usually performed immediately after hardening, it might be considered as a continuation ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... detected the noise of padded feet and the scraping noise of claws on the wood. A shudder ran through me. Was a panther, a mountain lion, about to spring upon me? No, I abandoned the thought and instinctively I knew that it must be one of the black wolf pack. Then I remembered hearing the cracking and breaking of sticks or timber while I was trying to sleep in the bedroom, and I felt that Pluto had broken out of the pen and was creeping up on us slowly and stealthily as I have seen a fox creep up on a ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... for ever calculating, devising, and plotting for the future,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and more, and looking at the fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it: 'I am weary of such arts. If our inclinations are but good and open-hearted, let us gratify them boldly, though they bring upon us Loss instead ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... this moonbeam passed a sort of grey streak, for all the world as though some long thin shape had been withdrawn, snakelike, from the room, through the open window.... From somewhere outside the house, and below, I heard the cough again, followed by a sharp cracking sound like the lashing ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... immemorial slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded in my mind by a strange, overpowering, fascinating wonder and speculation as to what dismal ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the blue air, high above the wood which is now no longer visible. A thick black smoke ascends up into the clear air, where it rests like a cloud. Out of the flames, and even out of the smoke, the wind carries away large masses of fire, which, crackling and cracking, are borne on to the wood, and which fill the spectator with apprehension of their falling upon the nearest trees and burning up ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... the other side of the wall. He waited till the old lady was fairly over, and then commenced running. The old lady pursued with vindictive animosity, cracking the whip in a suggestive manner. Pomp doubled and turned in a most provoking way. Finally he had recourse to a piece of strategy. He had flung himself, doubled up in a ball, at the old lady's feet, and she, unable to check her speed, fell over ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... puddled and hardened, and then, after crop-picking is finished, lightly dig, or pick over and stir, the remainder of the soil, breaking, of course, all clods at the same time. By such a process we should prevent the central portion drying up and cracking, and aerate laterally the rest of the soil, and at the same time do as little damage as possible to the roots. I need hardly say that it is of great importance to begin with all those places where the soil is most hardened, as, should the planter not ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... for a moment silent there came the sound of approaching hoof-beats, and presently the cracking and popping of the feet of a galloping horse fell into a duller crunch on the hard ground before the door, and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the functionary, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... this time of the year to mention the fact that Lord SALISBURY always uses a poker in cracking walnuts. He says it saves the silver. The other day, whilst wielding the poker across the walnuts and the wine, Mr. GLADSTONE chanced to look in. The Premier, with his well-known hospitality, immediately ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... did not obey her command, she pressed the button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... other sounds, after a few moments. Rifles were cracking persistently; but it was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... silent, the pipe and the string between them began to question me. But I was neither in the mood nor the desire to gratify their curiosity. They therefore contented themselves with cracking jokes at my expense, and thus we journeyed together a mile or ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... captain and others were defending the breach, the battering-ram was withdrawn; why, we were not long left in doubt. To our great horror, the battering, cracking sound was heard in the rear of the house. Still we were not at once to be defeated, and some of our party hurried to defend the spot. The attack on the front-door had cost the negroes so many lives that they were more cautious in ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... distinctly within the field of the family case work agencies. It is time that these agencies began to find means of dealing, not with the dependent family alone but with the family in danger of becoming dependent—not with the family broken and estranged only, but with the one whose bonds, even if cracking and ill-adjusted, still hold. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured it ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... another report in the machine, which I believed was produced by the cracking of a cord. This new intimation made me carefully examine the inside of our habitation. I saw that the part that was turned towards the south was full of holes, of which some ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... other men were watching alertly at the loopholes. Occasionally they would fire at some partly exposed Indians, and then dodge back as a straggling volley of bullets pelted the stockade. Over on the east side muskets were cracking in the same desultory fashion. The storm showed no signs of abating. On the contrary, the snow was falling more thickly and in finer flakes, and a bitter wind was constantly heaping it in higher drifts, and blowing it in blinding, eddying showers ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... expected a thing of this kind to come so soon! Why, I'm a man of distinction! My doings have been noted; the admirable qualities of my style have drawn attention; I'm looked upon as one of the coming men! Thanks, I confess, in some measure, to old Barlow; he seems to have amused himself with cracking me up to all and sundry. That last thing of mine in The West End has done me a vast amount of good, it seems. And Alfred Yule himself had noticed that paper in The Wayside. That's how things work, you know; reputation comes with a burst, just when you're not looking for anything ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... angry cries stunned Timokles' ears. He clutched the palm branch tightly. From the swaying motion and the sound of a slight, though ominous, cracking, Timokles doubted if ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... western margin in closer contact with the eastern edge of the floe that lay within it. The movement could be seen merely by the closing of the channel through which the boat had come, and by the cracking and crushing of the ice on the edges of the two fields. So tremendous was the pressure, however, that cakes as large as a small house were broken off, and forced upward on the surface of the field, or ground into ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have to talk turkey to me on one point!" asserted Daunt, his veneer of dignity cracking wide and showing the coarser grain of his nature. "I made you a square business proposition and you insulted me—under the roof of a gentleman who had vouched ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Cafe des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a little allowed for waste in boiling, so that they must be just covered when done. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and set them by the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork; (place no dependence on the usual test of their skin's cracking, which, if they are boiled fast, will happen to some potatos when they are not half done, and the inside is quite hard,) then pour off the water, (if you let the potatos remain in the water a moment after they are done enough, they will become waxy and watery,) uncover the sauce-pan, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put up at corners of streets; associated with beadles, policemen, his own ugly wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and persons in a low station of life; earning a precarious livelihood by the cracking of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and halfpence extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius we spoke of anon: he cracks his jokes still, for satire must live; but he is combed, washed, neatly clothed, and ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... water striking out to catch hold of the youngster, who couldn't swim a stroke. At that moment the captain came on deck. He was in a great state of agitation when he heard who it was who had fallen overboard. Studden sail-sheets were let fly. No one minded the spars, though they were all cracking away; the helm was put down, the yards were braced sharp up, and the ship was brought ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... hot, red, and tender, and emit a disagreeable odor when secretions are retained. The skin becomes sodden by retained sweat, and may crack and bleed. The same redness and tenderness are seen in chapping of the face and lips, and cracking of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... recollected that this was the day of the Highland gathering of the county. A dance was going on as he approached, and four tall and stalwart Highlanders in complete national costumes, bonneted and kilted, were leaping and wheeling, cracking their fingers and uttering shrill cries as they danced with astonishing vigour and adroitness ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dream of the old oak: and while he dreamed, a mighty storm came rushing over land and sea, at the holy Christmas time. The sea rolled in great billows towards the shore. There was a cracking and crushing heard in the tree. The root was torn from the ground just at the moment when in his dream he fancied it was being loosened from the earth. He fell—his three hundred and sixty-five years were passed as the single day of the Ephemera. On the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the railroad station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week; he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home. Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he must have picked up off the Hyeres, he paused before the gateway of the house which had become ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... is a mud hearth, a wall of clay plastered over the stones of the fireplace. This will prevent the fire from cracking and chipping the stones, but clay is not absolutely necessary in this fireplace. When, however, you build the walls of your fireplace of logs and your chimney of sticks the clay is necessary to prevent the fire ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... no response for a few minutes, during which Murray contrived to moisten the parched and cracking membrane as if in vain, and he was about to try in despair to bathe the poor lad's temples when the lips softened, there was a choking gurgling sound, a gasp or two, and then with strange avidity the midshipman ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thought I knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking hailstones ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from time to ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the unfortunate man he faintly cried, "Help me, help me! Oh, God! men, help me!" After which the fearful beast got a hold of his neck, and then all was still, except that his comrades heard the bones of his neck cracking between the teeth of the lion. John Stofolus had lain with his back to the fire on the opposite side, and on hearing the lion he sprang up, and, seizing a large flaming brand, he had belabored him on the head with the burning wood; but the brute did not take any notice of him. The ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... potatoes, acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... howls of the whizzing bullets, the constant nerve-racking crashing and roaring overhead, the deafening cracking of splitting iron everywhere—that is war. And accompanying it all the hopeless sensation that this will never, never stop, that it will go on like this forever, until one's thoughts are dulled by some terrible, cruel, incomprehensible, demoralizing force. Those bounding puffs ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table and danced ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... for the manufacture of glass. The skilled Italian artisans sent over to put the works into operation were intractable and mutinous. After trying in various ways to discourage the enterprise, so that they could return to Europe, these men brought matters to a close by cracking the furnace with a crowbar. George Sandys, in anger, declared "that a more ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a large cue on the boarding half-way down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured picture of "Wombwell's Circus," a fine affair, with spangled ladies jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that there would be a "Cattle ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... rattan painted with a mixture of beeswax and pot black for preserving the rattan against atmospheric influences. No paint is applied to the sago sheath, but the beeswax is applied to the bamboo as a preservative against cracking. Neither are any decorative incisions or tracings used in this form of hat, it being primarily and essentially for protection against sun and rain. Two parallel strips of rattan fastened at the ends of a diagonal serve to hold the hat in position on ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... A pedal bass, a diapasonic tone, that came from the bowels of the firmament struck fear to his heart; the tone was of such magnitude as might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have held it without cracking and dying. This gigantic flood, this overwhelming and cataclysmic roar, filled every pore of Stannum's body. It blew him as a blade of grass is blown in a boreal blast; yet he sensed the pitch. Unorganized nature, the unrestrained cry of the rocks and their buried secrets; crushed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the board was cleared of the viands that the nuts and fruit were partaken of. The edible nuts mostly favoured before foreign supplies came into the market were the hazel, walnut, chestnut, and the famous Kent filberts. Although doubtless supplemented by any objects handy, the primitive method of cracking nuts with the teeth was generally practised by the common people. What more natural than for the early inventor to see in the human head the "box" in which to place his mechanical device and to give power ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... asked Mohammed. She answered, "Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jann." He kills the Bull as before. A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf of dry bread under her mattress. When its cracking gives rise to the idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides. She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates grow to the weight of half a cantar.[FN440] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... blow delivered. He ran up and, to be on the safe side, put both men under technical arrest. The sweeper, who had been bowled over by the clout he had got, made a charge of unprovoked assault against the stranger; the latter expressed a blasphemous regret that he had not succeeded in cracking the sweeper's skull. He appeared to be in a highly nervous, highly irritable state. At any rate such was the interpretation which the patrolman put upon his ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... are often spoiled by too much: they should merely be covered, and a little allowed for waste in boiling. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and place them on the side of the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork. The usual test of their skin cracking is not to be depended on, for if they are boiled fast this will happen when the potatoes are not half done, and the inside is quite hard. Pour off the water the minute the potatoes are done, or they will become watery and sad; uncover the saucepan, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... lack of embarrassment. Some men are of an assurance, of a sang froid! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their perplexity. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... as he rose from his cushion, cracking audibly, "so we're to have our coffee and what not over there, hey?... Well, my boy, I shan't be sorry, I confess, to have something to lean my back against—and a cigar, a mild cigar, will—ah—aid ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... by the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... is at the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. 'The cordial,' Raleigh says, 'will cure him or any other of a fever, except ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... snorings of the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded—an ineffectual concert! The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which words ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... eager for the chase. All was life, gaiety excitement, noise; the hounds, giving forth occasional howls and snappish yelpings, expressive of an impatience that was almost beyond endurance; the huntsman cracking his whip, and reproving his charges in language more forcible than polite; the spirited horses pawing the ground; the gentlemen exchanging the compliments of the season with the ladies who had come up to see ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself, for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs cracking as they ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... him when he rounded the bend in the road. A few hundred yards on the road turned again. There was no sign of the car. A cart piled high with manure was approaching, the driver, wearing wooden shoes and cracking at intervals a huge whip, trudging at ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... concluded to take him' with me, as he could identify places and people, and I knew well what castles the Shaker houses are for the world's people outside. Hiram was full of talk going over. He seemed to have been bottling it up, and I was the first auditor for his wrath. "I know 'm," he said, cracking his whip over his horses' heads. "They be sharp at a bargain, they be. If they've contrived to get a hold on Bessie Stewart, property and all, it'll go hard on 'em ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... how little of art one might obtain for a dime. Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves penned in a court, surrounded on all sides by strident cries of "barkers", cracking reports from target-practice, fusillades at the "doll-babies", clanging jars from strength-testers and the like; while from this horrid field of misguided energy, there was no outlet save the narrow entrance they ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... has itself, so to speak, constituted an exhibition, and that an important artistic truth has seemed to me thereby lighted. We brushed against that truth just now in our glance at the denial of expansibility to any idea the mould of the "stage-play" may hope to express without cracking and bursting—and we bear in mind at the same time that the picture of Nanda Brookenham's situation, though perhaps seeming to a careless eye so to wander and sprawl, yet presents itself on absolutely scenic lines, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... arrived in a bay of rocks. Sailors have given them the name of "gun-stones"; perhaps because the sound of the breakers reminds one of the cracking ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... deputy, "you're wanted for cracking the skull of a farmer named Leigh. There's a doubt if Leigh will live and you may be charged ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and he remembered no ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here 's a rascal, Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... lest I should be taken ill while unattended, and the certainty she felt that any intelligent woman would be proud and happy to share my existence—she concealed nothing, but, on the contrary, added many fresh follies to the recital. Maitre Mouche kept nodding his head in approval while cracking nuts. Then, after all this verbiage, he demanded, with an agreeable smile, what my answer ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... he cried, cracking his whip briskly, "we shall show the general that he has no cause to be ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... representatives of the eyebrows in the; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; cracking nuts with a stone; direction of the hair on the arms of the; supposed evolution of the; polygamous and social ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... cold that the country had known for many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed by the frosty rigor, and sentinels had been frozen to death in our neighborhood. The deep snow on which we made our beds, the icy covering of the streams near us, the limbs of the trees above us, had been cracking with loud noises all ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... I felt a tremendous shock, as if the earth had quaked and opened beneath me, and this was followed by a deafening uproar, the clashing of stones, the cracking of wood and glass, the grating and crushing of iron, and the pitiful cries of men, women, and children. The great mass of rock broke through the protecting barricade and rushed right upon the engine. The huge, steam-vomiting ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic. He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips. It ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the disgrace of such an end,' exclaimed Mr. Kornicker, twisting his fingers together, and in his earnestness cracking the knuckles of all of them. 'Think of that, my old fellow. Think of the stain that will always rest ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... annoying circumstance occurred at this Assize. It was the cracking, sometimes almost banging, of the seats and wainscoting, which had been remade of oak. Every now and again there was a loud squeak, and then a noise like the cracking of walnuts. To a sensitive mind it must have been a trying situation, as Toole afterwards ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... good salt was now at hand to preserve the roe herring that choked the rivers and creeks in the spring. The salt-herring breakfast was on its way to becoming a Virginia institution, and the salt-fish monopolies of New England and Canada were cracking after ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... and dogged in play. He had "made" the football team in his sophomore year. Customary snobbishness had kept him out of the fraternities and college societies. He may have been a good fellow, a fine student, and a cracking end on the eleven, and all that, but he was not acceptable material for any one ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... ready for the start. At nine o'clock we left the camp, and a rapid march brought us to the village of Macas, which the enemy had just abandoned. Here, to our great delight, we discovered a number of sheep dressed and ready for cooking; so, for once in a way, we enjoyed a really good meal, while cracking many jokes at the Spaniards' expense. Then having rested, we pushed on to the foot of the mountains, where the men bivouacked, being too tired to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... at W—— to get provisions, my partner heard the cliff cracking, and so moved away, up the canyon to another mine we had. He was just in time to save his life, for the cliff fell, and Buffalo Bill was in the valley that night with a comrade and heard the terrific roar ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the public opinion of Great Britain. Even the Times cannot deny this. It may not be generally known in the United States, but while the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement, and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who, as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... ortolan, had flown his last falcon, had listened to his last comedy, and hummed his last tune, in the frescoed corridors of the Vatican. Upon its shining walls the fatal finger of Martin Luther, stretching out of Germany, had written "Mene, Mene." Beneath the terrible spell the walls were cracking and the earth was shaking, but the splendid pope, in his scarlet cloud of cardinals, saw only the wild beauty of Raphael's Madonnas and the pleasant pages of the recovered literature of pagan Greece. When Sidney stepped for the first time ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... thousands and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too—but he got his leg smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet under a horse-blanket, saying to ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... aid the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly given to cracking ribald and saucy jokes with and upon the Devil, and treating him in a style of coarse familiarity and mockery; and a part of his ordinary business was to bestride the Devil, and beat him till he roared, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the air —as the boat churned .. on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... are usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their active hoofs. The French seem to have an instinctive ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... how ugly and how fell O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st For love. The ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell Alternate victory and defeat, and there 2475 The combatants with rage most horrible Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, And impotent their tongues ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 19 B.C., so that over nineteen centuries have elapsed since these words were written; as he was an excellent farmer, he would not have mentioned the practice unless he considered the advice sound. It is quite possible that the vertical cracking of the bark on one side of a young transplanted tree may be due to a change from the cool north aspect to the heat of the south. At any rate the experiment is well worth trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... all troublesome feelings, So little encumbered by faith in my dealings (And that I'm consistent the world will allow, What I was at Newmarket the same I am now). When such are my merits (you know I hate cracking), I hope, like the Vender of Best Patent Blacking, "To meet with the generous and kind approbation "Of a candid, enlightened, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I tell you Friends, most charitable care Haue the Patricians of you for your wants. Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the Heauen with your staues, as lift them Against the Roman State, whose course will on The way it takes: cracking ten thousand Curbes Of more strong linke assunder, then can euer Appeare in your impediment. For the Dearth, The Gods, not the Patricians make it, and Your knees to them (not armes) must helpe. Alacke, You are transported ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... family wagon, which was now crowded. According to the prearranged programme it was Gervais who held the ribbons, with Claire beside him. The two strong horses trotted on in their usual leisurely fashion, in spite of all the gay whip-cracking of their driver, who also wished to contribute to the music. Inside there were now seven people for six places, for if the three children were small, they were at the same time so restless that they fully took up their ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at Cawnpur an ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... the long stone jetties, we roll toward town by the Allees Marines, a wide promenade along the river, cross the bridge, rattle through the streets, and draw up before the hotel in the open square with a jingle and whip-cracking and general hullaballoo which fills the street urchins with awe and gives unmixed joy to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men guards and force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at all this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... by the cracking of the whips applied to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery were rolling in the darkness one over the other. The first day they advanced five leagues, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... home, and you would enjoy it to be with us, because you couldn't tell the town from Milwaukee, except for the military precision with which everything is conducted, where you never take a glass of beer without cracking your heels together like a soldier, and giving a military salute to the bartender, who is the commander-in-chief of all who happen to patronize his bar. Everybody here acts like he was at a picnic in the woods, with a large barrel of beer, with perspiration oozing down the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... "That was a cracking good speech—a great speech, Mr. Blount!" he said, as the branch train rattled in from the north. "If you can go all over the State making as good talks as the one we've just heard, you'll tie the whole shooting-match up in a hard knot for us fellows. But McVickar won't ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the objective point at which endless volleys of blazing shells were aimed, any of them powerful enough, if it only hit them fair, to make as short work of the Projectile as you could of an egg-shell. They had many hairbreadth escapes, but fortunately the cracking of the glass proved to be the only serious damage of which they ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... out of the room, the other girls following. They went out on the lawn, ran about for a while, then settled themselves under a tree and began cracking and eating nuts. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... school goal-line; the school team clinging to them and battling with them like tiger-cats. He had only been at Tidborough a month, but he felt he would die if the line was crossed. He swiped till he thought his throat must crack. When his cracking throat incontinently took intervals of rest, he prayed to God for the school, visioning God on his throne on the school goalposts and mentioning to Him the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... manhood out of you. You stumble along gasping. By a chance I came on an Esquimaux sealing, and he beat and thumped me into wakefulness. Then he packed me on to his dog-sleigh, and took my own bit of a sled behind, and set his fourteen-foot whip cracking, and off ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... or literary skill. There were no encouragements when Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the world, he ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... by the tongue-lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part of the routine, and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of other boys. When a pupil deserved punishment and the schoolmaster could not afford to inflict it because the culprit happened ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the spectators, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... plank and bolt begins to shake and speak. When he had come to where Strangeways had been standing, he stood still and listened. He could hear no sound of travel, no cursing a man's voice, urging his dogs forward, or cracking of a whip. Then he felt the ice sagging from under him, and the cold touch of water creeping round his moccasins. From a rift in the cloud, a segment of the moon looked out. Before and behind him lay the frozen expanse of river, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... he panted. 'You're cracking my ribs. We-we mustn't let them think we're afraid, must we,—all the powers of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the atmosphere having about this time become considerably lower than before, the cracking of the timbers was very frequent and loud for a time; but generally ceased altogether in an hour or two after this fall had taken place in the thermometer, and did not occur again at the same temperature during the winter. The wind blowing fresh from the northward, with a heavy snowdrift, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... fire in the living room, only going out to bring in logs and clear the snow from the door and windows. I never spent a more fearful night than two nights ago, alone in my cabin in the storm, with the roof lifting, the mud cracking and coming off, and the fine snow hissing through the chinks between the logs, while splittings and breaking of dead branches, wind wrung and snow laden, went on incessantly, with screechings, howlings, thunder and lightning, and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... lining to stiffen and keep the leg part in place, are cooler and more comfortable than any other kind. A pair of boot-hooks will be required for putting them on, and a boot-jack for taking them off. A little Lucca oil used occasionally prevents patent leather from cracking. The dry mud should be brushed off soiled boots with a soft brush that will not scratch the leather, and they should then be sponged over with a damp sponge and polished with a selvyt or chamois ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... statement; and as the fears of the spectators were still further relieved by the fat boy's suddenly recollecting that the water was nowhere more than five feet deep, prodigies of valor were performed to get him out. After a vast quantity of splashing, and cracking, and struggling, Mr. Pickwick was at length fairly extricated from his unpleasant position, and once ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... yer powder on yer friends, like the bloody-minded spalpeen ye are!" says the scavenger, cracking his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... special sounds. In some of the little manakins of Brazil, two or three of the wing-feathers are curiously shaped and stiffened in the male, so that the bird is able to produce with them a peculiar snapping or cracking sound; and the tail-feathers of several species of snipe are so narrowed as to produce distinct drumming, whistling, or switching sounds when the birds descend rapidly from a great height. All these are probably recognition and call notes, useful to each species ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... hide-and-seek amused people at first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... hazardous post once more, great was the lamenting. Madame wept. All the brave man's relatives poured in to kiss him good-bye. The departing soldier wept, himself. Even Grand'mere desisted for that day from cracking jokes, which she was always doing in a patois that to Talbot ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... sharply and clearly through the din and hubbub of the storm, came the cracking of the three rifles whenever the flashes showed the position of the cart to the murderers on the bank. Mouti was lying still in the bottom of it on the bed-plank, a bullet between his broad shoulders ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... hands as if his elbow joint was out of order, being at once too loose and too rigid. He began to be clumsy with the bread and butter, and, ceasing his talk with Miss Vanderpoel, fell into silence. Why should he go on talking? he thought. Miss Vanderpoel was a cracking handsome girl, but she was too clever for him, and he had to think of all sorts of new things to say when he talked to her. And—well, a fellow could never imagine himself stretched out on the grass, puffing happily away at a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... them and asked what the boys had to give. In return they asked to see the craft he proposed swapping, and were then conducted to a hillside where a canoe had but recently been dug out of the dry muck and earth in which it was buried over winter to save it from drying, cracking or warping. ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... don't think so. I heard a slight cracking noise and looked up. Something white appeared at the window for an instant. It looked like the face of ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... may be desirable to provide by artificial drainage against the accumulation of water under the concrete. Tile drains are better and cheaper than excessively deep foundations. The thorough tamping of the sub-base is essential to avoid settling and subsequent cracking of the concrete slab. This is a part of sidewalk work which is ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... year 70 B.C., and died, age 51, in 19 B.C., so that over nineteen centuries have elapsed since these words were written; as he was an excellent farmer, he would not have mentioned the practice unless he considered the advice sound. It is quite possible that the vertical cracking of the bark on one side of a young transplanted tree may be due to a change from the cool north aspect to the heat of the south. At any rate the experiment is well worth trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble to run a chalk line down the south side of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, which was often, the hoarse roncione ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... filled with those who took chances. The tenderfoot staked his claim on the chance of selling it again. The prospector toiled in his overland tunnel on the chance of cracking the apex of a vein. The small companies sank shafts on the chance of touching pay ore, the big companies tunneled deep and drifted wide in the hope of cutting several veins. The merchants built in the belief that the camp was a permanent town, and the gamblers ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Leighton, a schism in the church would have meant nothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism in governmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and own black chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first, thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divine ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... a bad time,' said I one day to a great dark bargee who was streaming from every pore, as much from bad temper as from the exertion of cracking his whip, and whose haggard horse looked as if he would soon break off in the middle from the strain of trying to move the barge, which was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... husband into a chair, where he was out of her way, and again greeted Toby by kissing him on both cheeks with a resounding smack that rivalled anything Reddy Grant had yet been able to do in the way of cracking his whip. ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... engagements are always dreadful, but this was the worst I ever knew. To see your danger is bad enough, but to hear shells whizzing and bursting over you, to hear shrapnell and iron fragments slapping the trees and cracking off limbs, and not know from whence death comes to you, is trying beyond all things. And here it looked so incongruous—below raged, thunder, shout, shriek, slaughter—above soft, silent, smiling ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... applause for poetic or literary skill. There were no encouragements when Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the world, he was so unscarred ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... called, and his voice came back through the echoing depths beyond. Presently a man could be dimly seen clinging to a cross-piece in an alcove made for an air-shaft from the main working. To get to him the treacherous ground must be crossed, with its cracking roof, through which the sand slid even yet, and under the split timbers ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... a respite, a deliverance—he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions—he would be a man again, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... alone with my corpse in some desolate place, she would first mourn wildly for her friend; but, this duty per- formed, she would proceed to ease her sorrow in the simplest way possible,—by eating him,—by cracking his bones between those long wolf's-teeth of hers. And thereafter, with spotless conscience, she would sit down and utter to the moon the funeral cry ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the voice of the American tradition strained to the utmost to make itself audible to the new world, and cracking into italics and breaking into capitals with the strain. The rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalisations, a public which has carried the conception of freedom ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... came a curious swishing and cracking sound, followed by a wild sort of yell. Then ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... fresh, spotlessly clean, and in perfect order; absolutely, if you can believe it, not a single broken thing to be seen! Pixie drew a quick breath of admiration, and wondered how long it could possibly be before she succeeded in cracking that lovely blue and white china, and exactly what would happen if she spilt the water over the floor! She was so much occupied in building castles in the air that ten minutes passed by and she had not ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... bite too?" cried Ramses. He seized the Greek with both hands, and when he heard the cracking of his broken spine he hurled ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... in the corner there is a convivial meeting; several elderly gentlemen are gathered round a group of very decollete 'ladies' sitting over a glass of wine and cracking jokes which are anything but delicate. 'Who are these three ladies?' 'Ladies! laughs my better-informed companion; well, the one on the right with the brown hair and short fancy dress is a hair-dresser; the second, the blonde with the pearl necklace ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... her brother. He lived his life cracking his little jokes and reading his great folios, neither wrangling with nor accepting the opinions of the friends he loved to see around him. To a contemporary stranger it might well have appeared as if his life were a frivolous and useless one as compared with those of these philosophers and ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... fast at first, when the cracklings are light-brown and float on the top, it is nearly done, and should cook slowly, when done, strain it into your vessels with a thin cloth put over a colander. If you put lard in stone or earthen jars, it should be cooled first, as there is danger of their cracking, white oak firkins with iron hoops, and covers to fit tight, are good to keep lard, and if taken care of will last for ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... and courage." Now she looked bravely in Mobei's face. It was the toilet dealer's turn to show confusion—"Honoured lady, is nothing known?"—"Known?" answered O'Iwa in some surprise. "What is there to know? When this Iwa left Samoncho[u] to be sure the house was cracking apart everywhere. The light poured in as through a bamboo door.... Ah! Have matters gone badly with the Danna in Iwa's absence?" Mobei shook his head in dissent. "Alas! Ito[u] Sama, Akiyama or Kondo[u] San, has misfortune come to them, without a word of condolence from Iwa? Perhaps Cho[u]bei ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... heard of before. So, that leaves just the four of us here, working off the two days' board bill of Bradley and the manager, Rushcroft's ungodly spree, and at the same time keeping our own slate clean. Miss Thackeray will no doubt make up your bed in the morning. She is temporarily a chambermaid. Cracking fine girl, too, if ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... free horse has made another jump, and again flew back, and now he has them both badly balked, and so confused that neither of them knows what is the matter, or how to start the load. Next will come the slashing and cracking of the whip, and hallooing of the driver, till something is broken or he is through with his course of treatment. But what a mistake the driver commits by whipping his horse for this act. Reason and common sense should teach him that the horse was willing and anxious to go, but did not know ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... in perfect silence for a few moments. Then there came a short cracking sound, and two or three ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... day the run was not less exciting than usual. The horses were placed as nearly abreast as possible and the starter gave an Indian yell. Then followed the cracking of whips, the furious pounding of heavy hoofs, the commands of the contestants, and the yells of the onlookers. Away they went at a mad pace down the road. The course extended a mile straight away ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... cap pulled over his ears, his weak eyelids, his nose pinched between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... from freshness of fancy and beauty of thought, are remarkable for the correctness and smoothness of their form. The Flemish tongue is used by him with a lyrical success that would reflect honor on a writer in the more melodious dialects of Southern Europe. He has also licked that jaw-cracking tongue so far into shape, that it ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... than they did,' she said to herself; and she pined for a little amusement also. Still, she knew that if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they did ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted for a yard or ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning trees. Among ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest and envy, or something; ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... foretopsail burst open from earing to earing, and then ripped up to the yard, the corners stretching out before the wind and cracking like musket shots. To set it again was impossible; the orders came, "Down yard—haul out reef tackle;" then half a dozen men laid out on the spar and began furling. Scarcely was this terrible job well under way when a whack of the slatting sail struck ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... as ever; Biot (et moi aussi je suis pere de famille), a fat, double volume of himself—I could not see a trace of the young pere de famille we knew—round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey to Brazil, magnificently ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... last scene, the gorgeous book was frizzling and curling and cracking on the embers. Whether she saw it or not I can not say, but she was followed all along the corridor by the smell of the burning leather, which got on to some sleeping noses, and made their owners dream the house was ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... coming like a swift fish directly at the vessel. "Torpedo!" was the cry, and men stood rooted to the spot. Far back, where the white streak started, you could see a periscope, moving slowly; there was a volley of cracking sounds, and the water all about it leaped high, and the little sea-terriers rushed towards it, firing, and getting ready their deadly depth-bombs. But of all that Jimmie got only a glimpse; there came a roar like the opening of hell in front of him; ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Cadgers are aye cracking o' crook saddles[148] has a very Scottish aspect, and signifies that professional men are very apt to talk too much of ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... big bottoms, Skinner. We'll have hell- cracking freight rates during the war and for a long time thereafter—and here we sit round like a lot of dubs, too conservative to help ourselves to the gravy. Why, you and Matt Peasley ought to be knitting socks in an old ladies' home, for all the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... fatigue, responded to his enquiry. Realising the reason for their unfortunate plight he bustled up to the Commanding Officer and emphasised the urgent necessity to give us a meal. But he was not entirely successful. Then he inspected us one by one, giving a cheering word here, and cracking a friendly joke there. The hand of Prince L—— received instant attention, while other slight injuries were also sympathetically treated. The hearts of one and all went out to this ministering angel, to whose work and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... darkness, the unhappy man pursues this fatal race, leading to inevitable destruction. During a part of this terrible night, he hears the frail frame-work which supports him cracking beneath his feet. How long must his sufferings last? He knows not. At last, jostled by adverse waves, shaken to its centre, the raft begins to whirl around, and something heavier than the shock of the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... you, old man, though I don't want it to go any farther, that I'm a bit worried about my jolly old father-in-law. I believe he's about to go in off the deep-end. I think he's cracking under the strain. Dashed weird his behaviour has ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... calling for me to come out. The cover-bows were bent far over, and the canvas pressed in on the side to the southwest till it seemed as if it must burst. The front end of the top had gone out and was cracking in the wind. I crept forward, and us I did so I felt the wagon rise up on the windward side and bump back on the ground. I concluded we were doomed to u wreck, and called to Ollie to get out as fast us he could. I supposed a hard storm had struck us, but as I went over the dash-board ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... panted. 'You're cracking my ribs. We-we mustn't let them think we're afraid, must we,—all the powers of darkness ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... before the suspicion flashed over him that there was somebody ahead who had either seen or heard him and who was deliberately leading him astray with false "lines" that would end in nothing. He listened; there was no sound either of steps or of cracking twigs, but both dogs had begun growling and staring into the demi-light ahead. He motioned them on and followed. A moment later both ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... up to a scream as she was borne along by the pressure of people getting out of the way of some carts coming up out of the ford at a gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips. Great masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the road; the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with the sound of an irregular fusillade. And then the bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving only a red dusk crowded with aimless dark shadows ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the distance required, and he went forward at a jog trot in the direction he had seen the figure disappear. He reached the pines and went softly. Every now and again he stopped, and once he could have sworn he heard the cracking of a ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him—I ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the forward engine, cracking it clean through about six inches above the base, and wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the ship's side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work, and in so doing brought round at its next revolution ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... was a convulsive jerk of his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened. Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking lash ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... follies? Gentle Northumberland, If thy offences were upon record, Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst, There shouldst thou find one heinous article, Containing the deposing of a king And cracking the strong warrant of an oath, Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven. Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Showing an outward pity; ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... were cracking, there was a confused medley of blows, yells, and oaths. And all the time the launch, with no one at the tiller, and the boat fast alongside, charged wildly across ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of large marbles. These fungous growths appear as dark-colored spots, which arrest the growth of the apple immediately beneath, causing it to become distorted, while the expansion and contraction bring on diseased action, which results in the cracking and general ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... and stamped down the long grasses at one side of the gap, and then bent nearly double and seemed to be pressing against something with his hands and his knee. The barbed wire began to hum, to buzz excitedly; there was the groan of cracking wood, and the grunt of his deep, straining breath. She found herself running her hands over her face and down her body and thinking, "Since he is like that, and I am like this, all will be well." ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Malise," said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Newspapers, of the thinnest substance and the most microscopic type, and from every part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied—groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps. Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one chair, while ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... sledges ran evenly, the horses jangling the bells on their great arched collars, the drivers in their leather fur-lined coats, cracking their whips ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... of their movements, their hollow cheeks, the dark markings under their eyes and, above all, the terrible look of suffering and despair that was beginning to reveal itself in the eyes themselves. Yet not a word of discouragement or complaint passed their black and cracking lips; they simply lay about, moving as little as possible, and endured silently. As for me, I could think of nothing, do nothing to help them. ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... hesitation, he silently closed the door—on the inside!... How could there be burglars in the house? The suspicion was folly. What he had heard could be naught but the nocturnal cracking and yielding of an old building at night. Was it not notorious that the night was full of noises? And even if burglars had entered!... Better, safer, to ignore them! They could not make off with a great deal, for the main item of prey happened to be in his own pocket. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... just covered when done. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and set them by the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork; (place no dependence on the usual test of their skin's cracking, which, if they are boiled fast, will happen to some potatos when they are not half done, and the inside is quite hard,) then pour off the water, (if you let the potatos remain in the water a moment after they are done enough, they will become waxy and ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... said Jasper, going off into another laugh. But although she teased again, she got no nearer to the facts. And Polly proposing that they make candy, the chafing dish was gotten out; and Alexia, who was quite an adept in the art, went to work, Jasper cracking the nuts, and Polly and Clare picking ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... here! Get a strain on the line, Mr. Rolfe!" And while the dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and twanging to the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... whom he was a decided favourite, any slight misdemeanours which they could not contrive to hide were generally overlooked. Quirk occasionally paid a visit to the midshipmen's berth, where he sat up at table cracking nuts, "evidently under the impression," as Jack observed, "that he is one of us." Quirk had soon struck up a friendship with the bear, who was a very tame beast, and could play almost as many antics as he could, only in a more sedate way. Wherever Quirk went, Bruin ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... endurance, by the vast weight it upheld, the lanyard struck by Earing no sooner parted, than each of its fellows snapped in succession, leaving the mast dependant on itself alone for the support of all its ponderous and complicated hamper. The cracking of the wood came next; and then the rigging fell, like a tree that had been sapped at its foundation, the little distance that still existed between ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... chillen, nohow. (gesture of shooing) Gwan! Thin out! Every time a grownperson open they mouf y'all right dere to gaze down they throat. Git! (The children exit sullenly right. In the silence that follows the cracking of Walter's peanut shells can be heard ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... of events shown by study of ore bodies related to intrusives. First, the invasion of the magma, resulting in contact metamorphism of the adjacent rocks, sometimes with, and often without conspicuous crowding effects on the invaded rocks; second, the cooling, crystallization, and cracking of both the igneous rock and the adjacent rock; third, the introduction of ore-bearing solutions into these cracks,—sometimes as a single episode, sometimes as a long continued and complex process forming various types of minerals at successive stages. This order may in some cases be repeated ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... the other the air—as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to resuming their journey. The batteau was too cumbrous for use toward the head waters of the Missouri, and it was to be sent back to St. Louis. To take its place, canoes were fashioned from green cottonwood planks. Cottonwood lumber is full of whims and caprices,—bending, twisting, cracking like brown paper, so as to be wholly unfit for ordinary carpentry; but there was no other material available. Six canoes were made to hang together somehow; and in these ramshackle structures, together with the two periogues, the party covered more than a thousand miles of the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... were now edging away from her. As she eased down the far side of the hill out of sight of the pickup, a steady stream of Sally's milk was engulfing the box of golden eggs. A minute later, the reduced contents caused the drum to shift and slip. It fell onto the eggs, cracking a ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... a caged beast in the yard. I prowled thus for the space of twelve hours. I knew my prison to its smallest cranny. I knew the spots where the lichens and the mosses pushed up through the sections of the wall which had given way in cracking. Disgust for my corridor, for my truckle-bed flattened out like a pancake, for my linen rotten with dirt, took hold of me. I lived isolated, speaking to no one, beating the flint stones of the ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... gods! you'll have to talk turkey to me on one point!" asserted Daunt, his veneer of dignity cracking wide and showing the coarser grain of his nature. "I made you a square business proposition and you insulted me—under the roof of a gentleman who had vouched ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... had now become almost insufferable, and the sparks and flakes of fire fell so fast and thick, that the spectators were compelled to retreat to a considerable distance from the burning buildings. The noise occasioned by the cracking of the timbers, and the falling of walls and roofs, was awful in the extreme. All the avenues and thoroughfares near the fire were now choked up by carts, coaches, and other vehicles, which had been ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... which bind it at the weakest parts of the curve." These chains, it may be mentioned parenthetically, were strengthened by Poleni, after the lapse of some years, when the second of the two shells showed some signs of cracking. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Later on we and they both fired heavily, the first battery getting it especially hot. The planes over us again and again, to coach the guns. An attack expected at dusk, but it turned only to heavy night shelling, so that with our fire, theirs, and the infantry cracking away constantly, we got sleep in small quantity all night; bullets whizzing over us constantly. Heavy rain from 5 to 8, and everything wet except the far-in corner of the dugout, where we mass our things to keep them as dry as ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... The hunters all kept by the great fire in the living room, only going out to bring in logs and clear the snow from the door and windows. I never spent a more fearful night than two nights ago, alone in my cabin in the storm, with the roof lifting, the mud cracking and coming off, and the fine snow hissing through the chinks between the logs, while splittings and breaking of dead branches, wind wrung and snow laden, went on incessantly, with screechings, howlings, thunder and lightning, and many unfamiliar ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... felt that there must have been some sinister purpose back of the robbery. In that respect it was like the scientific cracking of Langhorne's safe. Langhorne, too, though he had been robbed, had been careful to disclaim the loss of anything of value. I frankly had not believed Langhorne, yet Carton was not of the same type and I felt that his open face would surely ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... he said, his voice cracking. "I ain't got no other job in mind. I wanna be a noospaper ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... room, Bobinette experienced a strange, a penetrating emotion. She felt as though something around her in which she had moved safely, was cracking; with a sudden and terrible lucidity she saw herself marching forward, powerless to draw back, marching helplessly towards an abyss—an abyss which was about to engulf her! She trembled, trembled violently. She was encompassed ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... square. The circular form offers the least resistance to wind pressure, and for a given height and sectional area requires less material to secure stability than the octagonal and still less than the square; on the other hand, there is more liability to cracking. Brick is the material commonly used, but many chimneys are now made of iron or steel. Reinforced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... we reached, at last, the hospice, and in five minutes were sitting at the supper table, by a good blazing fire, with a lively company, chatting with a gentlemanly abbe, discussing figs and fun, cracking filberts and jokes, and regaling ourselves genially. But ever and anon drawing, with a half shiver, a little closer to the roaring fagots in the chimney, I thought to myself, "And this ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next. Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes. Sometimes they sing. Often they are asleep. Wreckage indescribable. Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by. Enormous and magnificent H.E.'s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts slowly and solidly away to limbo. Poor dead men lying about, and dead horses, too. And in the trenches this limitless porridge of mud. Cr-r-r-ump! go the ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... affected the appetite of these vigorous walkers. On the contrary, the food, which had to last for two more days, was very welcome. The damp had not reached the biscuits, and for several minutes it could be heard cracking under the solid teeth of Dick Sand and his companions. Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone. It ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the stage, he says, "I am the mandarin so-and-so." If the drama requires the actor to enter a house, he takes some steps and says, "I have entered;" and if he is supposed to travel, he does so by rapid running on the stage, cracking his whip, and saying afterwards, "I have arrived." The dialogue is written partly in verse and partly in prose, and the poetry is sometimes sung and sometimes recited. Many of their dramas are full of bustle and abound in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... her second brother too?" "Are these her brothers ?" asked Mohammed. She answered, "Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jann." He kills the Bull as before. A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf of dry bread under her mattress. When its cracking gives rise to the idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides. She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates grow to the weight of half a cantar.[FN440] The Ghuleh tells him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... rode ahead. He dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what he was looking for, and at last he saw it, a circle of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his little mate on the great silent prairie, Joe tried to forget and to do his work as usual; but the odor of the newly-severed sod, the cracking of the drivers' whips, the shouting to the stubborn mules, the stampede over the prairie at noon, the hateful sight of Shuter and his daughter—in fact, everything around him—made the longing for ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... driver, "that at the bottom of this 'ere swell, you'll find yourself to hum;" and plunging into a short path cut through the wood, he pointed to a miserable hut, at the bottom of a steep descent, and cracking his whip, exclaimed, "'Tis a smart location that. I wish you Britishers ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... as he often afterwards declared—was not going to let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hoofs she judged the number of horses to be six or eight. Low voices of men mingled with thuds and cracking of straps and flopping of saddles on the ground. After that the heavy tread of boots sounded on the porch of the cabin opposite. A door creaked on its hinges. Next a slow footstep, accompanied by clinking of spurs, approached ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Bob went on saying; "but all the same I don't think you are. After you've shown me, it's just like that egg Columbus stood up on end, after cracking the shell a bit—as easy as jumping off a log, once you know how. But now we're in here, I hope we find out the truth ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... a dark winter that followed, the darkest in our history. Gloom and despondency came fast upon the heels of Republican exultation. Men rose early for tidings from Charleston, the storm centre. The Union was cracking here and there. Would it crumble in pieces before Abraham Lincoln got ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... we get home," cried Hugh John, cracking his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place for Donald Bean ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... with its four horses and flapping leather hanging, its heated, red-coated driver and guard, and its dusty passengers swung into town with great cracking of a whip and blowing of a horn, drew up at the post-office just long enough to deliver a plethoric mail-bag, and then rolled on in a pillar of dust to the Eagle. The crowd about the post-office increased, men gathering on the steps as well as upon the porch above and on the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking hailstones between ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
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