|
|
|
More "Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: "Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"—which was perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to neighbouring ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... fish surrounding old Sir Joseph. Some of them I couldn't quite make out. He was just a little hard to get at, himself. I got very huffy at the old boy once or twice, I'm sorry to say. It was about ships. I'm a crank on ships. Everybody has at least one mania. That's mine—ships. Sir Joseph and I quarreled about them. He wanted to buy all I could make, but he was in no hurry to have 'em finished. I told him he talked more like a German trying to stop production than like ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... other worlds, is obtained by "superimposure," or by taking the picture twice, as it were. On the first "take" the characters go through the business already rehearsed, and the director keeps careful track of just when each important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank. If, at the count of "Eleven!" one character registers surprise and points excitedly at an unoccupied corner of the room, it is the first step in introducing the fairy, or the spectre, who is to appear there in the picture as shown on the screen. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get back over ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Mr. Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, bent on ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... only son of Dr. Nancarrow, a man much respected in St. Ia, but whom Admiral Tresize regarded as a crank. For Dr. Nancarrow was a Quaker, and although he did not parade his faith, it was well known that he held fast by those principles for which the Society of Friends is known. For one thing, he hated war. To him it was utterly opposed to the ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... come true; and there were those who merely saw visions too impractical ever to become realities. To work amid this mecca of minds must have been not only an education in science but in human nature as well. Every sort of crank who had gathered a wild notion out of the blue meandered into Williams's shop in the hope that somebody could be found there who would provide either the money or the labor ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... portion of next week's ration, and camp at the telephone orderly's elbow. After a day or two it will percolate through to the varlet's intelligence that you are a desperate dog in urgent need of something, and he will bestir himself, and mayhap in a further two or three days' time he will wind a crank, pull some strings, and announce that you are "on," and you will find yourself in animated conversation with an inspector of cemeteries, a jam expert at the Base, or the Dalai Lama. If you want to give back-chat to the Staff you had best take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... the sound between the drifting floes. We got on pretty well, except for an interruption every now and then when the engine took it into its head to come to a standstill. It caused a good deal of merriment when the stalwart Peter turned the crank to set her off again and the engine gave a start so as nearly to pull his arms out of joint and upset him head over heels in the boat. Every now and then a flock of long-tailed duck (Harelda glacialis) or other birds came whizzing by us, one ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... lever is a machine; but in more commonly accepted usage a machine is distinguished from a tool by its complexity, and by the combination and coordination of powers and movements for the production of a result. A chisel by itself is a tool; when it is set so as to be operated by a crank and pitman, the entire mechanism is called a machine; as, a mortising-machine. An apparatus may be a machine, but the word is commonly used for a collection of distinct articles to be used in connection or combination ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... at extracting the fibre failed on account of our having no proper machine to bruise the stems. We extemporized a two-roller mill; but as it had no cog-gearing to cause both rollers to turn together, the only one on which the handle or crank was fixed turned, with, the result of grinding the stems to pulp instead of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... crank, an' there on the bank they squatted like bumps on a log. For acres around there wasn't a sound, not even the howl of a dog. When out of the horn there sudden was born such a marvellous elegant tone; An' ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... intrenched and so brutally strong as the Vice Trust appealed instantly to the crowd's imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a "notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the headline writer who announced her as a "modern Joan ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... in a world where there's nothing much else counts. There ain't no joy to life without 'em. An' you just can't live life without joy. If you're fixed that way, why, you'll hit the trail of the long haired crank, or join the folk who make a pastime of a penitentiary. The dollars for mine. If they come on a cushion of down I'll handle 'em elegant with kid gloves on my hands. I'm sick chasin'—sick ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... ye got to sell anyhow?" Wall, he told me he had some lightnin' rods, and he brought out a little masheen and told me to take hold of the handles and he'd show me what a powerful thing 'lectricity wuz. Wall, I took hold of them handles and he turned on a crank, and that durned masheen jist made me dance all over the porch, and it wouldn't let go. Gee whiz, I felt as though I'd fell in a yeller jacket's nest, and about four thousand of 'em wuz a stingin' me all to ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... to tell over to me and the dear lass that's gone. There now—and thou hadst not this matter in hand, I'd wive thee to Barbara Standish—'t is the best wench alive, I do believe, and full of quip, and crank as ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... seemed lifeless until the King turned a crank which protruded from its side, when the little creature turned its head stiffly from side to side and said ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... air-cooled cylinders, in two sets of four, placed at an angle of ninety degrees to each other. The crank case was of aluminum and the shaft of vanadium steel, hollow, and specially treated to insure toughness. All the studs or bolts were of the same steel. Complete, with balance wheel, it weighed two hundred pounds. The ignition was accomplished by six dry batteries and a single-wire vibrating coil. ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... patting him almost paternally] Well, my dear Barnabas, for the last thirty years the post has brought me at least once a week a plan from some crank or other for the establishment of the millennium. I think you are the maddest of all the cranks; but you are much the most interesting. I am conscious of a very curious mixture of relief and disappointment ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... Marjorie answered it. "I hope you'll pardon me," she excused, hanging up the receiver. "They want me very much down-stairs." Then appealing, she added: "I'll have to leave you with father. But, please, you must catch that crank who is threatening him." ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... had to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green coat. From cigarette tip to cigarette tip ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and you can ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the old crank that, after working hard at the problem for nine years, he one day, at nine o'clock on the morning of the ninth day of the ninth month, fell down nine steps, knocked out nine teeth, and expired in nine minutes. ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... up in that old one-lung machine,—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because we ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... frame with spruce planking, and was capable of carrying a load of a thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with a crank-case enclosed in an outer case in which a vacuum had been created—on the principle of the bottles which keep liquids cold or warm. In this instance the vacuum served to keep the oil in the crank-case, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the crank turned, and the next moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked at the porter, and the porter ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... company shook hands, and Finnegan ascended. When past the quartermasters and out of hearing, he grumbled and whined: "No good, hey? Thirty years in the service, and sent up here to think of my sins like a sick monkey. Good for nothin' but to turn a crank with the sogers. Nice job for an able seaman. What's the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... looked helplessly toward the two clerks, but they were even more terrified than he. There was one to whom he did not look for help, and that was the telegraph boy, who stood but three feet from the crank, watching him sharply. For a plan of relief had come into the mind of Mark Mason, who, though he appreciated the danger, was cooler and more self-possessed than any ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... out of him. He's a Socialist and a crank, you know, and you'd be surprised how ugly some of them fellows can be. As soon as I get the story complete I'll report to you, but meantime there's no ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... texts are changed into a little Child in the act of blessing while the four Evangelists turn a long silver crank in the right-hand corner of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... but he is total abstinence. Won't allow any literature with the least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid came ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... also call attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and gunpowder. Both vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can show ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... townsman's literary works would be published in a sumptuous twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of mastership. In his lifetime he printed only two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers"—which was even more completely neglected by the public than Emerson's "Nature"—and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... sailed there now some years; and scarce ever seen a ship except in port or close by; I think twice. It was the hurricane season besides, and hurricane waters. Well, our chief engineer got the shaft—it was the middle crank shaft—mended; thrice it was mended, and twice broke down; but now keeps up—only we dare not stop, for it is almost impossible to start again. The captain in the meanwhile crowded her with sail; fifteen sails in all, every stay ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, a more perfect method of condensation of steam and a more ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... Good Hope, staying some days at each place, and at the latter adding several passengers to our small party. We proceeded very happily until we were within a day's steam of the Island of St. Vincent, off the coast of Africa; then the great crank of the steam-engine snapped in two, and we had to sail. It took us ten days to beat up to the island, for a large screw steamer was never intended ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Jack sat in front with Remedios and one of the bags. Mr. Temple and Bob, both big individuals, filled the rear with the balance of the bags. Frank, who had gone to the front of the car to crank it, found no room within for him when he returned. He leaped to ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... And if I hadn't, Llewellyn Stanhope would; Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the Chronicle. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever he begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, 'I'm sure Mr. Lindsay ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... activity which will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under the load of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... time they were out of the train, walking up toward the engine. About it were men and women, and the children saw a man with a black box on three legs grinding away at a crank. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... muttered, And under his breath said he, "This ship is so crank and walty, I fear our ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... bellowing of a great liner, blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this, as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting, ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid, sordid, brutal ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... consists of few parts, is easily accessible for repairs, and may be both light and strong at the same time. In the case of large engines the crank in the intermediate shaft is a disadvantage, as it is difficult to obtain such a forging quite sound. But by forging it in three cranked flat bars, which are then laid together and welded into a square shaft, a sound forging will be more probable, and the bars should be rounded a little on the sides ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... with the camera began turning a crank on one side, and a low whirring noise blended softly with the roar of the rushing water. Hiram saw dripping men and women dancing about like ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... struck upon a protuberance, concealed by a tuft of grass, snapping off the axle, and scattering the ball-bearings over the ground. For some miles we pushed along on the bare axle inverted in the pedal-crank. But the wrenching the machine thus received soon began to tell. With a sudden jolt on a steep descent, it collapsed entirely, and precipitated the rider over the handle-bars. The lower part of the frame had broken short off, where it was previously cracked, and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... a secret eccentric bearing through which the crank shaft operated. When this bearing was properly adjusted the engine worked perfectly, when it was out of adjustment, it would not work ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... being entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men becoming ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... drawback-cranking. Owing to the peculiar features of a gasoline engine, it must first be put in motion by some external power before it will begin to operate under its own power. This made it necessary for the driver to "crank" the engine, or start it moving, by means of a handle attached to the engine shaft. Cranking a large engine is difficult, especially if it is cold, and often results in tired muscles, and soiled clothes and tempers. It also made it impossible for the average woman to drive a car because ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... that man first," said he. "But what excuse have I? He may be nothing but a crank, with some crack-brained idea in his head. We'll soon know; for there's certainly something wrong there ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... was, I got a food crank, an' let me tell you right now, my dear, them's the worst kind. A man what's queer about his food is goin' to be queerer about a'most everything else. Give me any man that can eat three square meals a day an' enjoy 'em, an' I'll undertake to live with him peaceful, but I don't go ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... give seven rapid turns to that crank," said Spieghalter, pointing out a beam of polished steel, "you would make a steel bar spurt out in thousands of jets, that would get into your legs ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... wind got round to N. and there was no appearance of its abating. At eight, the captain well satisfied that she was very crank and ought to have had more ballast, agreed to make for Bacon Island Road, in North Carolina; and in the very act of wearing her, a sudden gust of wind laid her down on her beam-end, and she never rose again!—At this ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... for him. And just as his tendency was to magnify the success and utility of his patent purchases, so he would lend himself more or less to gross impostures simply because they interested him. This confirmed his reputation for being a bit of a crank; and as he had in addition all the restlessness and eccentricity of the active spirits of his class, arising from the fact that no matter what he busied himself with, it never really mattered whether he accomplished it or not, he remained an unsatisfied ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... General, "never forget that the great thing is drill—discipline. Keep the machinery well oiled, and your hand upon the crank, and all ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... either to commercialize it and lose his professional standing, or to abide the convenience of his colleagues and their learned organizations in testing it. Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should be made a ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... household," I thought. "The mistress, who is sane enough, is told by her husband that she is mad, and fears she will lose her reason; a native who tells me that I am to be his master and travel with him on the deep sea, and a witch woman, whom I have yet to see, on the premises. I wonder what sort of a crank she is?" ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... the matter he knows of?" and he handed her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... live alooan,' Tha tell'd me that thisen:— Tha needn't shak thi heead an grooan;— Tha's happen changed sin then. But if ther ivver wor a crank, It's been my luck to see, It wor my childer's father When he ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached to the boat across it near the stern, with ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... milk, place in freezer. Add lemon juice after freezer has been packed. Add juice rapidly and with violent stirring, then immediately place in dasher and turn the crank until frozen. ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... canvas-covered case that looked like a knapsack. It had a crank on one side and a pair of electrical connections. "It's not a battery," he explained. "It's ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... means and cultivation, whose fancy for them went so far as to induce him to become a member of the unique little family in the dingy wooden shanty which they had succeeded in renting for a song. To this old gentleman, who had the reputation of being something of a crank, The Dreamer's conversation and Virginia's beauty and exquisite singing were never-failing wells of delight, while the generous sum that he paid for the privilege of sharing their home was an equal benefit to them and went a long way toward supplying the simple table. The ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... was reckoned considerable of a crank. A great educational reformer, and a progressive Democratic stalwart, that is the kind of hair-pin Pappa was! But it is awkward for ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... about. Plausaby, Esq., was so desirous of Albert's absence that he threw all of Mrs. Plausaby's influence on the side of the arrangement which Charlton made a sine qua non. Albert felt a little mean at making such a compromise of principle, and Plausaby felt much as a man does who pays the maker of crank-music to begone. He did not like Katy's going; he wanted to further her marriage with so influential a person as Smith Westcott, the agent in charge of the interests of Jackson, Jones & Co., who not only owned the Emporium, but were silent partners in the town-site. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... best of spirits. Then came a change, the wind backing out from south-west with squally weather which placed us at once upon a taut bowline; and simultaneously with this change of weather a most disagreeable discovery was made, namely, that the Daphne was an exceedingly crank ship. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "I am sure I want to. Let's get going again, if we are to make the Woodbine Way in time to plan the tour. I'm just crazy about the trip," and the enthusiastic girl expended some of her pent-up energies on the crank at ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... a large "shanghai" fixed to timber, one end of which rested on the parapet whilst the other—in the trench—was packed in a manner to give the required elevation. A cricket ball or jam tin bomb was placed in the pouch and the rubbers were then strained by means of a crank handle winding up a wire attached to the pouch with a trip hook. When the required tension was obtained one man lit the fuse and retired to cover. The other, the expert, allowing the fuse to burn for a certain time—to suit the range, pulled the string which released the trip. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... went to the telephone. It was one of the old-fashioned sort, still in almost universal use in the rural parts of England, that require the use of a bell to call the central office. Dick turned the crank, then took down the receiver. At once he heard a confused buzzing sound ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... especially for making prints on wooden ties he could scarcely have done better. In order to get at the main bearings of the engine he had, with characteristic disregard, stood plunk in the copper drain basin under the crank-case. The oil had undoubtedly softened the rubber sole of his sneakers so that it held the clinging substance, and in some cases it was possible to distinguish on the ties the half-obliterated crisscross design of the ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Cora's answer, as she stooped over to crank the motor. It started on the first turn and soon the Chelton was chugging a course over the sun-lit waters of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... in an even funnier sense than the mythical one was a real problem on early research computers (e.g., the R1; see {grind crank}). If a program that depended on a peculiar instruction hadn't been run in quite a while, the user might discover that the opcodes no longer did the same things they once did. ("Hey, so-and-so needs an instruction to do such-and-such. We ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the Ford if his engine had suffered. No, he thought it was all right; he would crank up and see. Good! She started off with a clutter, and he asked me if I wanted to ride. I had not far to go, but gladly accepted, for I was rather struck with this young fellow's grip on himself. It took self-control to avoid making the air blue with ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... my situation, in the natural course of events. The whistle blows. The little steam-boat is about to stop at the landing-place of the Djurgaard. The engineer, smutty and oily with hard service, gives a turn to the crank, pulls an iron bar with a polished handle, and then pushes it; the tea-kettle boiler fizzes and whizzes, and lets off steam; the paddles stop paddling; the gentlemen passengers stand up and adjust their shirt collars; ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... didn't have long to live. One book said that British capitalists owned all the money in the world and that at a given signal they would draw the money out of America and the working men here would starve to death in twenty-nine days. It seemed that some crank had fasted that many days in order to get accurate statistics showing just how long the working man could hope to last after England pushed the button for the ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... sang out another voice, which Denman recognized as Dwyer's. "And here, you blooming crank, take a drink and get ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... We shall no doubt have a similar field open in Oude when Government interposes in behalf of the suffering people, and we might prepare for it by converting the Martiniere into a similar school or college. The committee has just expressed to you a hope that Mr. Crank, the officiating principal, may be able to pass an examination in the native languages. This hope can never be realised; and if he does I shall have to record my opinion that he is otherwise unfitted. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... and cold; but the poor man bade his wife wait and see what would happen. He placed the little hand mill on the table, and began to turn the crank. First, out there came some grand, lighted wax candles, and a fire on the hearth, and a porridge pot boiling over it, because in his mind he said they should come first. Then he ground out a tablecloth, and dishes, and spoons, ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... after reverted to the subject, and said that every opportunity was taken in that gaol to wrong and torture the men incarcerated there on political charges. Every petty breach of discipline was availed of to punish them, by sending them down to work the crank, and reducing their scanty rations. For the crime of not saluting Mr. Governor Price, they were placed upon a dietary of seven ounces of what was called brown bread and a pint of Anna Liffey, in the twenty-four ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... be fun," cried Amy, her eyes shining with anticipation, "to get in front of him and give that old crank a taste of ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... for rejoicing, as at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules or horses; another is the before-mentioned kajaveh, an arrangement not unlike a pair of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... are enough to drive a well man crazy, to say nothing of a half-sick relic like me. I say yes—yes—YES! Sooner or later I'll MAKE you. You've lost your place here. You told me yourself that that old crank Dean is going to make this town too hot to hold you. You'll HAVE to go away. Now ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he found this house and the other houses combined in a conspiracy of silence against the musical addresses of a swarthy foreigner who had a foothold a yard beyond the curbstone, and who was turning the crank of his instrument with all the rapid regularity of the thorough mechanician. The whole street rang. "'Ah, perche non posso odiarti!'" hummed Truesdale in unison with the organ, as the performer, after an intricate cadenza, returned to the original theme. "That's the only recognizable thing I've ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Harding. "Clarke's known as a crank, and he takes advantage of it to cover his doings. At first, I thought of the whisky trade; but taking up prohibited liquor would hardly be worth his while; though I dare say he has some with him to be used ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for Kenny and by nine ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Sam does not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for assisting ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... without knowing what was going to happen next,—whether or not the boiler would explode, and the deck be torn up beneath me,—I waited in feverish anxiety for the result. Then I heard the splash of the wheels; the crank turned, rumbled, and jarred on its centre, but went over, and continued to turn. The Adieno moved, and the motion sent a thrill through my whole being. It was fortunate for us that she lay at the pier in such a position as to require no special skill in handling her. The open lake was ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... and again, just as long as they were willing to revolve the little cylinder with its dotted spiral indentations in the tinfoil under the vibrating stylus of the reproducing diaphragm. It took a little time to acquire the knack of turning the crank steadily while leaning over the recorder to talk into the machine; and there was some deftness required also in fastening down the tinfoil on the cylinder where it was held by a pin running in a longitudinal slot. Paraffined paper appears also to have been ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... turning round a minute? Ah, 'Wagnerian Crank!' I am afraid we should not get on together. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... disdainfully. "That's all right enough, I reckon. There's a hundred thousand dollars in the syndicate. Maw put in twenty thousand, and Custer's bound to make it go—particularly as there's some talk of a compromise. But Malcolm's a crank, and I reckon if it wasn't for the compromise the syndicate wouldn't have much show. Why, he didn't even know that the McHulishes ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the fiercely urgent proposal was in Spanish. Pete came to a pause and cast a stealthy glance at his fellow Navaho. The man had dragged Lennon out past the windlass and turned back to grasp the crank handle. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... to get out and crank the engines, which he calmly proceeded to do. The man who had called himself Algernon Tobey perceived his intention and urged his pony to the front of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... old-fashioned hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all winter and its spattering slop all summer. Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap in one corner,—suicides from the window-sills ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he conveyed ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... when, by the light of a held-up lantern, he had made the necessary adjustment. "We will see if it won't go. Of course you can't use the self-starter, since your storage battery is out of order, but we can crank up ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... had one thousand five hundred acres of land. He had several farms. Little Hill and Creek farms. They had a rock walk from the kitchen to the house. I slept in a little trunnel bed under my mother's mistress' bed. The bed was corded and had a crank. They used no slats in them days. We called Master Bob Young's wife Miss Nippy; her name was Par/nel/i/py. They was good old people. His boys was rough. They drunk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... him with shouts of welcome. "You'll be walking the crank yet, Capt'n," said they, in mockery of his unsteady gait. His altered humor suited them. "Cards," they cried; "cards—a game for ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... Friday, August 4, 1807, a crowd of curious people might have been seen along the wharves of the Hudson River. They had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a "crank" who proposed to take a party of people up the Hudson River to Albany in what he called a steam vessel named the Clermont. Did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current up the Hudson in a vessel without sails? "The thing will 'bust,'" says one; "it will burn ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty ornaments. With this simple ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Tree people heard about Mr. Man's automobile they at first could hardly say anything at all. Then Mr. 'Possum said he supposed what made it go was some kind of clockwork that Mr. Man wound up when he turned that crank; and Mr. Crow thought he must build a fire in it to make the smoke come out behind. Mr. Dog didn't know, himself, just how the machinery went in, but that Mr. Man called it a motor and had ever so many names for different parts of it, and sometimes said strong words when he took one of the parts ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... returning procession was re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... is famous the country round as a cook, and she excelled herself that afternoon. Bishop is a crank on truck gardening, and the vegetables served would have taken prizes in any exhibit. A delicious soup was followed by a baked sea trout—I must not forget to ask Mrs. Bishop how ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... Daddy. "If he has to do this for a living I'm sorry for him, and if he isn't compelled to he's probably some sort of useful crank." ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... invariably his dollars; We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... two trees and twisted them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that twisted the first wire that made the first Glidden barb fence ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... that the school should not be dubbed "old-fashioned", and by all means in her power she kept it abreast of the times. So well did she succeed that the girls were apt to complain that their second Principal was a crank on education, and fond of trying every fresh experiment she could get hold of. The various enterprises added an atmosphere of novelty, however, and prevented the daily life from degenerating into a dull routine. No one ever ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... of the rudder is communicated to the steam cut-off by means of the shaft, C, crank, J, rod, K, crank, I, and the hollow valve spindle. When the tiller is amidships the valve handle, H, is at right angles to the cylinder, and parallel to the tiller. By moving the lever, H, to right or left, steam is admitted ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... be jolly glad you ain't there. Old Goggle-eyes gave us two pages of Algebra—20 problems! I spent a whole hour on the first ten and I'm shaky about them now. Oh, he's a honey, he is—the dried up old crank. I'll bet he was old ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... truth to say that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I am a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... point in regard to loading a highway bridge, which is to be considered. It often happens that a very heavy load is carried over such bridges upon a single truck, thus throwing a heavy and concentrated load upon each point as it passes. Mr. Stoney states that a wagon with a crank-shaft of the British ship "Hercules," weighing about forty-five tons, was refused a passage over Westminster iron bridge, for fear of damage to the structure, and had to be carried over Waterloo bridge, which ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... convenient being a crank," I said. "People are careful how they meddle with you. Haven't you found that out in your ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... days patents could be very easily blocked, as Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large engine under his patent, after he had successfully made a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. Roebuck's pits was selected as away from prying eyes. The parts for the new engine ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds approve their action but ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the quay. A heavy weight seemed to press on his head, and a red mist hung over everything as he walked blindly on. At a point which he had just reached, a heap of rough boxes obstructed his path, and at that moment a huge crank swung its iron arm over the edge of the dock, a heavy weight was hanging from it, and exactly as Cardo passed, it came with a horizontal movement against the back of his head with terrible force, throwing him forward insensible on the ground. The high pile of boxes had hidden the accident ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... mumbled these curt phrases in a series of inarticulate jerks, as if his vocal apparatus were wound up and worked with a crank, but had grown so rusty that every now and then a wheel would catch on a cog. He did not stand still for a moment, but kept continually stepping, stepping, without advancing or retreating, striking his heavy cane on the ground at each step, as ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... who might come across that Business, there or here, to overhaul it again. What the meaning of a Governor, if he is not to overhaul and control such things, may be, I cannot conjecture. A Canadian Lumber-log may as well be made Governor. He might have some cast-metal hand or shoulder-crank (a thing easily contrivable in Birmingham) for signing his name to Acts of the Colonial Parliament; he would be a "native of the country" too, with popularity on that score if on no other;—he is your man, if you ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment to-morrow. The public demands ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... abnormality has to be treated as pathological. The mind which may find perhaps its way under the most simple rural conditions would be unable to protect life under the complex conditions of a great city. The man who in certain surroundings may appear a crank has to be treated as a patient in a different set of life conditions. Wherever psychotherapeutic work is in question, perhaps nothing is more important than to keep steadily in mind this continuity between normal and abnormal mental features. The mental disturbance must constantly be looked ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Vane had been somewhat careless and shallow, but certainly kindly, and not inaccessible to common sense so long as it was put to him in strictly conventional language. He was at least an authority of a more human and refreshing sort than the crank with the wagging beard or the fiend ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny. The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or crank journalist might entrap him into ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the Corporal, nothing taken by surprise; "spoke of the new-fangled stirrups that open, crank, when we fall, and let us out of the scrape." [Note: Of course the Corporal does not speak of the patent stirrup: that would be ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... communication with the east coast does prove to be the work of political fanatics, we think, and hope, that these gentry may shortly be convinced, in a manner they are never likely to forget, that, even in this land of liberty, the crank is not allowed to interfere with ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... in boats, or on floating spars, but only to meet worse hardships than on sea; for the savages on the coast, aided by your gallant Englishmen, fell on us, defenceless as we were, stripped us of all we had, and drove us from the shore in an old crank of a galleon, which, if it carried us thus far, did so only by the grace of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... I had expected, that on an even keel she was crank, though not to the extent I had anticipated; but as she began to heel over her overhanging topside supported her; so that, as the breeze freshened (which it did gradually), the more she lay down to ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... he was sorry Professor Harmon had asked that old crank to help. Laurie didn't say 'old crank,' but I say it, and I mean it," continued Jerry vindictively. "Don't breathe it to anyone, though. It was a brotherly confidence and Hal would rave if he knew I ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... doings of the Society of Friends, you may extract a jest by saying "that many of the characters trembled with anxiety before its production—in fact, were quakers!" The name of the Manager of the Haymarket has frequently been the subject of a quip, if not a crank; still it may yet serve as a peg for slyly observing that, "At the fall of the Curtain, TREE, naturally enough, appeared with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... has developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham. "There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family have ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... see." His hands gripped the wheel. His cheeks had been too ruddily tinted by the Dakota sun to show a blush, but his teeth caught his lower lip. He had no starter on his bug; he had in his embarrassment to get out and crank. He did it quietly, not looking at her. She could see that his hand trembled on the crank. When he did glance at her, as he drove off, it was apologetically, miserably. His foot was shaking on ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... all the speed you can, Tom!" begged Mr. Damon. "We'll catch the scoundrels now. Speed up the motor! Oh, if I only had my automobile now. Bless my crank shaft, but one can go so much faster on land ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... not only gives them great stability, but, with good management, makes it difficult for a bear, when swimming, to put his paw upon the gunwale, which they generally endeavour to do; whereas, with our boats, which are more light and crank, and therefore very easily heeled over, I have more than once seen a bear on the point of taking possession of them. Great caution should therefore be used under such circumstances in attacking these ferocious creatures. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... with him. He had said it was hopeless twenty years before, but he had kept on, in the same old attitude, by habit and taste, until he found himself altogether alone. He had hugged his antiquated dislike of bankers and capitalistic society until he had become little better than a crank. He had known for years that he must accept the regime, but he had known a great many other disagreeable certainties — like age, senility, and death — against which one made what little resistance one could. The matter was settled at last by the people. For a hundred years, between 1793 ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Place a crank (E), 5 inches long, on the outer end of the mandrel, as in Fig. 3. Then mount one block on the end of the bench and the other block 3 inches away. Affix them to the bench by nails ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... devil of it is, that I manage, with sickness, and moves, and education, and the like, to keep steadily in front of my income. However, I console myself with this, that if I were anything else under God's Heaven, and had the same crank health, I should make an even zero. If I had, with my present knowledge, twelve months of my old health, I would, could, and should do something neat. As it is, I have to tinker at my things in little sittings; and the rent, or the butcher, or something, is always ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a sort of crank (Folks said his learning made him mad,) But this I know, he always drank, And that will make ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the first week after she came, Mrs. Twiddler concluded to churn. The hired man spent the whole day at the crank, and about sunset the butter came. They got it out, and found that there was almost half a pound. Then Mrs. Twiddler began to see how economical it was to make her own butter. A half pound at the store cost thirty cents. The wages of that man for one day were one dollar, and so ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... entertained any idea so absurd. I merely mentioned poor old Zamorra's crank as an instance of how ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... occurred on the outward voyage; for one thing, because there were no unusual people among the passengers; for another, because the vessel behaved admirably. The same cannot be said of the return voyage: and with it my story really begins. Misfortune followed us out of Sydney harbour. We broke a crank-shaft between there and Port Phillip, Melbourne; a fire in the hold occurred at Adelaide; and at Albany we buried a passenger who had died of consumption one day out from King George's Sound. At Colombo, also, we had a misfortune, but it was of a peculiar kind, and did not obtrude ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... third week of Selwood's secretaryship to Jacob Herapath. Herapath was a well-known man in London. He was a Member of Parliament, the owner of a sort of model estate of up-to-date flats, and something of a crank about such matters as ventilation, sanitation, and lighting. He himself, a bachelor, lived in one of the best houses in Portman Square; when he engaged Selwood as his secretary he made him take a convenient set of rooms in Upper Seymour ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... they thought the weather suitable they put to sea in the direction of Espanola. They were only about fifteen miles from the shore, however, when the wind began to head them and to send up something of a sea; not rough, but enough to make the crank and overloaded canoes roll heavily, for they had not been prepared, as those of Mendez were, with false keels and weather-boards. The Spaniards got frightened and turned back to Jamaica; but the sea became rougher, the canoes rolled more and more, they often shipped a quantity ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Christian martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, not because they really cared two-pence about Diana or Christ, or could have given you any intelligent ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... I've always been weak there. And when I found how late it was after getting here I concluded not to hustle around to the grounds. I guessed you'd be cropping up to find out what had become of a certain baseball crank who had played hookey. So I've been sitting here about ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... a variety of overhead coverings to shelter the well and its users. The well was a large one, appearing to be four or five feet in diameter at the top, and was surrounded by a raised platform. Standing on this platform, one drew water from the well by a windlass operated by a hand-crank. Later the box on which the windlass was mounted was fitted with a hand pump, and a trough for filling buckets or other containers was placed at the side of the well. This well served the courthouse into the twentieth century, but was closed ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... permitted but encouraged them in this exaggeration,—to the amazement of the camera man who had turned the crank on more Western dramas than he could remember. Scenes of violence—such as the saloon row in which Big Medicine had forgotten that Pink was to be left alive, and so had killed him twice—made the camera man and the assistant laugh when they should have shuddered; and to wonder why Luck Lindsay, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... trying, they did succeed in making two paddle wheels. They were very rough and crude, but strong and serviceable. They fastened each of these wheels to the end of an iron rod which they passed through the boat from side to side. The rod was bent in the middle so that it could be turned as with a crank. When the work was finished, the old fishing boat looked rather odd, with a paddle wheel on each side which dipped just a few inches into the water. The boys lost ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... the morning the hotel clerk winked at them. "I'm not saying a word," he whispered. "But it served the old crank right. Even the boss is doing a little smiling, although he ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... "and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... my musician road friends once told me how he sold a bill to a well-known old crank, now dead, in the state ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... be nothing, but I don't like the idea of it. There is apt to be something underlying this, or even if it is only a single individual and he happens to be a crank he could cause a lot of trouble. Suppose, for instance, one of these crack-brained foreigners in the shop got it into his head that Torrance here was grinding him down in order to increase our profits? Why, he might attack him at ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that, but if Pee-wee had prepared his sneaks especially for making prints on wooden ties he could scarcely have done better. In order to get at the main bearings of the engine he had, with characteristic disregard, stood plunk in the copper drain basin under the crank-case. The oil had undoubtedly softened the rubber sole of his sneakers so that it held the clinging substance, and in some cases it was possible to distinguish on the ties the half-obliterated crisscross ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... less than seventy years ago since the time that the so-called crank, George Stephenson, ventured modestly to assert that his little four-and-a-half-ton locomotive, "The Rocket," was actually capable of whirling along one to two light carriages at the astounding velocity of twelve miles an hour. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... vernacular. I think one must often fall into error from too great an attempt of metaphysical accuracy (precision), for whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... the lenses? That 's the main thing. The bearings must be kept well oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. The clock-face will tell you when it is running right. If anything gets hitched up here's the crank to keep it going until you can straighten the machine again. It's easy enough to turn it. But you must never let it stop between dark and daylight. The regular turn once a minute—that's the mark of this light. If it shines steady it might as well ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... say that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I am a crank ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... be precise, on the morning of January 3—the city of San Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter, which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently been written by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that controlled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was the recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular lucubration was so different from the average ruck ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... "no intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ought to do is to hire that blind piano-pounder who thumps for the fraternity dances, put a neat red-haired girl in a box on the sidewalk, get one of the football team who's working his way through college to turn the crank, and put on ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't count poor ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was drawing to a close when young Johnny Eyre came sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. "Are you at work yet, Lavender?" he said. "I never saw such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... direction in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... time we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... The iron crank that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... of cavalry, which we supposed to be part of General Wilson's force, charging rapidly after us. The highway lay close alongside the railroad, and our pursuers were enveloped in a cloud of dust. The car was stopped, or rather the men who were working the crank incontinently took to their heels, and we followed their example. There was a fence a few rods from the road, which I succeeded in reaching, and over which I jumped, just before our pursuers overtook us. As they forced their horses over it, I discovered my ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow money ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... the smoulder," said Uncle Ben to Carfax, "and let them work the crank, for John to understand a thing ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... four stories below I heard something—music. I raised the sash and looked out. An Italian had halted in front of the boarding house with a grind organ and he was turning the crank and the thing was playing. It wasn't much of a grind organ as grind organs go. I judge it must have been the original grind organ that played with Booth and Barrett. It had lost a lot of its most important works, and it had the asthma and the heaves and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... ought not to keep such a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed to, one was a distinguished diplomat, and ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a certain resemblance. The ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... village store as soon as the train stopped and had bought the first toy she happened to see. It was a black dancing bear, worked by a tiny crank hidden under the bar on which it stood. Robin's pleasure was unbounded, and his shrieks of delight brought all the children flocking ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... moments he returned, bringing it with him, and placing the magnetic cups, one in each hand, commenced generating the electricity by turning the generator attached to the machine. After a few turns of the crank the prisoner opened his eyes; one or two more and he sat up; a few more and he stood on his feet; another turn or two and he commenced dancing around, and exclaimed, "For God's sake, doctor, do quit, for I ain't dead, but I can't let loose!" Reader, what do you suppose was the object ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... her laughter, answered this by proceeding to steep some tea in an odd little contrivance over the gas-jet, much as Sara did over the log- fire at home; but neither Morton nor Molly would have been surprised to see food come sliding in, all cooked, or clothes all made, by the simple turn of a crank, so like fairyland was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... companions love to think of him, clutching his short-stemmed pipe to his mouth, puffing gravely, saying little, thinking much, quick at appreciating a joke, slow at making one, with an eye full of humour, and its lid and corresponding corner of his mouth quickly responsive to any quip or crank that might let fly. Eclectic in his humour as in his art, disposed to condemn any cartoon suggestion not thoroughly thought out as "damn bad," he was in the weekly assembly at the Table like the 'cello in the orchestra—not much heard, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... an untidy room—that of a student, a traveler and a crank—by a plain-clothes officer. Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man. His white hair and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity. But ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... cerveza, beer cestilla, waste-paper basket ciego, blind cielo, heaven, sky cien, ciento, hundred ciencia, science, wisdom cierre, lock-out cierto, certain cifras, figures cigarros, tabacos, puros, cigars cigueenal, crank shaft cilindro, cylinder, roller cima, top cinta, ribbon cinto, sash cinturon, belt circular, to circulate, to go round citar, to quote, to cite, to mention a passage, etc. citar ante los tribunales, to summon ciudad, city cizallas, shears ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... tower. The pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental depression brought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about Beautiful Women of History, part in prose ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rod is attached to a long cast-iron crosshead, from which two bent connecting rods extend downward, the one to a crank, and the other to a crank-pin inserted in the flywheel. The connecting-rods now on this engine were supplied by Mr. Webb, the original ones—which they have been made to resemble as closely as possible—having been broken up. In the Crewe engine as it now exists it is not quite clear how the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... ordinary steam-engine, the verdict as to consumption of fuel was against the new rotary engine. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic projector, "tho' vanquished he would argue still," insisted that the merits of his contrivance would sooner or later cause it to be a most formidable rival to the crank steam-engines. As he was pleased with its performances, I had no reason to be dissatisfied. I had done my part in the matter, and Mr. Steen had done his. His punctual weekly payments had assisted me in the completion of my tools; ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... load of a thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with a crank-case enclosed in an outer case in which a vacuum had been created—on the principle of the bottles which keep liquids cold or warm. In this instance the vacuum served to keep the oil in the crank-case, which was poured in warm, at an even temperature. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was: built in Genoa from an English model that Williams, who had been a sailor, had brought with him. Without a deck, schooner-rigged, it took, says Trelawney, "two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam." Truly Shelley was no seaman. "You will do no good with Shelley," Trelawney told Williams, "until you heave his books and papers overboard, shear the wisps of hair that hang over his eyes, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... girls stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the universe seemed to be a wheel. The sun and the stars came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment is, I can not forbear saying that this talking to the dead is ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of raising vessels to repair. But in these cases a large portion of the power applied is lost in the friction ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... up. I never saw him so completely cowed. It knocked all the eloquence out of him for once. The man is a crank and an agitator. I have kept my eye on him for some time. He is a fairly good workman in his line, though, and just now can't do much harm, as times are easy and these new improvements of yours keep the people busy with other interests. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Kennedy took three black boxes. They seemed to have an opening in front, while at one side was a little crank, which, as nearly as I could make out, was operated by clockwork released by an electric contact. His first problem seemed to be to dispose the boxes to the best advantage at various angles about the counter ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... from a man he disliked. This boy stated that he remembered each revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture about two inches in diameter. The right humerus was fractured at the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... replied. "Miss Darrow is a singularly close observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel, sifted ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectarian preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the container is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... screw form with pivot point, also operated by the same hand. A special feature of this machine is the spreading of the lower frame so that its base rests upon an independent portion of the foundation from the main pillow block or crank shaft. The solidity of the whole structure is thus increased, both by the increased width at the base and the prevention of connecting vibrations, which necessarily communicate when resting upon the same part, as in other forms of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of the wide wandering among the many cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat and the anxious ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... at the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I heaved in. The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... so. I see now why you got mad. Wonder you didn't throw that chap into the river." I am a crank on the happiness one gets from the giving of tips—and a half-penny man is the rock ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... received in a settling vat, of suitable size and construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of drain pipe ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... perusal may demonstrate that the fare has, at any rate, a grain of logic on his side if he looks upon himself as defrauded. We don't, you know, take your cabs for the joy of sitting in them, or for the pleasure of watching you struggling with a crank, but to be conveyed quickly from place to place. It is wrong to ask us to pay for the time spent by you in persuading your engine to behave, and it is indecent to become abusive when we act on that assumption. If I had not been so busy I should have refused to pay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... let the chauffeur whisk me over to the station, I'll get back to London and on to the earliest possible train for Liverpool, so as to be on hand for the first Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir—good evening, Mr. Van Nant—I'll step outside and tell Lennard to crank up." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... A sand crank is a fissure in the horn of the wall of the foot. These fissures are quite narrow, and, as a general rule, they follow the direction of the horny fibers. They may occur on any part of the wall, but ordinarily are only seen directly in front, when they are called toe cracks; ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... lot of the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... very pin or crank or cog, on which he had set such store, refused the next hour or day or week to do its work, no trace of his disappointment would have been found in his face or speech. His faith was always supreme; his belief in his ideals unshaken. If the pin or crank would not answer, the lever or pulley would. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about that, and had followed Shoop to the automobile stage, where it stood, sand-scarred, muddy, and ragged as to tires, in front of the post-office. Bondsman had watched the driver rope the lean mail bags to the running-board, crank up the sturdy old road warrior of the desert, and step in beside the supervisor. There had been no other passengers. And while Shoop had told Bondsman that he would be away some little time, Bondsman would have known it without the telling. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Then, Harry, as we have a pretty tough job before us, I suggest that you make two capstans, something like those you saw on shipboard, around which the two raising ropes can he wound, each to have a crank, and a means for holding the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... mixture that is to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about five inches deep), and then a thin layer of salt. Continue this until the tub is full, and ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... came into the world to this day; and they will for certain live and die under the same dispensation, and then be damned to all eternity, if they be not converted from under that covenant into and under the Covenant of Grace, of which I shall speak in its place; and yet for all this, how brag and crank 6 are our poor wantons and wicked ones in this day of forbearance! as if God would never have a reckoning with them, as if there was no law to condemn them, as if there was no hellfire to put them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... jump over the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... very good indeed, and would have been good anywhere—for Nick was, according to his own way of putting it, a "crank" about doing well whatever he undertook, and he knew now that he had conquered the machine—but on such a road, and in the light and shade of orange ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... legendary characters are often served. It seems to me that the legend is the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed. But everyone knows that I am a crank. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... remarks that the Senior Surgeon addressed to any one were addressed distinctly to the crank of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also in danger of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... tight place, I know, but I was once in a tighter, yes, I did what you have nearly done—I went to jail on a false charge and false evidence. But I didn't commit suicide. I served my time, and I think it crazed me a bit though it was only a month; at any rate, I was what they call a crank when I came out, which I wasn't when I went in. Then I set to work and showed up those for whom I had done time—living or dead they'll never forget Stephen Strong, I'll warrant—and after that I turned to and became the ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... hasten, to urge (a.) apresurarse, to hasten (n.) apresurarse con sus ordenes, to rush one's orders arbol de eje, axle shaft camara de comercio, chamber of commerce cigueena, arbol de cigueena, cigueenal, crank-shaft compania de ferrocarril, railway company con manchas, (designs)—spot con puntitas, con bolitas, (designs) spot contestar, to answer, to reply cuadritos, (designs) checks cuenta simulada, pro forma account culpa, blame, fault dano, damage, injury, breakdown de ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... epoch-making dreams and eventually made them come true; and there were those who merely saw visions too impractical ever to become realities. To work amid this mecca of minds must have been not only an education in science but in human nature as well. Every sort of crank who had gathered a wild notion out of the blue meandered into Williams's shop in the hope that somebody could be found there who would provide either the money or the labor to further ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... normally restrains the turning of the shaft by the weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when the bell (22) is sufficiently raised. The bar (29) extends ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... he told me that, for I had been imagining that he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me over to some stupid crank which he would call a ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... first trial at extracting the fibre failed on account of our having no proper machine to bruise the stems. We extemporized a two-roller mill; but as it had no cog-gearing to cause both rollers to turn together, the only one on which the handle or crank was fixed turned, with, the result of grinding the stems to pulp ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Wall, he told me he had some lightnin' rods, and he brought out a little masheen and told me to take hold of the handles and he'd show me what a powerful thing 'lectricity wuz. Wall, I took hold of them handles and he turned on a crank, and that durned masheen jist made me dance all over the porch, and it wouldn't let go. Gee whiz, I felt as though I'd fell in a yeller jacket's nest, and about four thousand of 'em wuz a stingin' me all to onct. Wall, I told him I guessed he could put up a lightning rod or two, seein' as how I ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... President Garfield and Senator Conkling resulted in a national calamity. The bitterness that grew out of it had the effect of bringing a crank on the scene of action. Early in July, 1881,—when the President, in company with Mr. Blaine, was leaving Washington for his summer vacation,—this cowardly crank, who had waited at the railroad station for the arrival of the distinguished ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... attack with another burst of fire from the flank. With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ran toward ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... good to talk to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go South yesterday. She cry, say 'I so sorry, Katie; you been so good to me.' ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... now? Oh, I'm so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. Yes, that wasn't so bad. Twenty-five ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... thereof which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the one in which she appeared on the platform ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... as to say it was amongst the first of any jails, where convicts were employed in connection with steam power. We had, it is true, an engine to be worked by manual power, for six or eight men abreast, to drive the circular saw, but it did not answer. It was intended as "crank" labour for ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... three-fourths full. Cover; place in wooden bucket; adjust the top and pack, as directed above. Turn crank slowly and steadily. After freezing drain off water, remove dasher; with a spoon pack hard. Put cork in top of lid. Repack freezer. Cover top with heavy pieces of carpet and paper. When time comes ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... should be so arranged that the requisite speed is obtained by not more than forty or fifty revolutions of the crank handle per minute, so that it may be maintained for periods of twenty or thirty ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... continually enforce a burning personal conviction. But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort of crank—certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vegetarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant something quite other than was meant by Jefferson or later by Lincoln. When these great men spoke ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... degrees. The first page which is the anvil is fixed save for adjustments for nuts of varying size. The other page or hammer riding up and down through an inch and one quarter of travel is fixed to a crank below. Both of these pages or plates are heavy cast iron plates that are fluted and cause the nut to be cracked against these saw toothed flutes and while being cracked are revolved down through the plates. The plate moving at an angle forces the nut finally through ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... I do," said he. "That there little one up top is Johnny; he's a little crank. An' the big un is Grumpy; she's a big crank. She's mighty onreliable gen'relly, but she's always strictly ugly when Johnny hollers ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... of the Automatic Company's 7 ohm wire between New York and Washington, it happened that Prof. Moses G. Farmer was in the Washington office when the first message was about to be sent, and upon being requested, he turned the "crank" and transmitted the message to New York, at the rate of 217 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... one o' the heving peepers, they sez—that the people wot's missin' hev been carted off in aeroplanes by some o' the other religionists wot wanted to git rid o' them, an' that the crank religiouses is ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... made was to convert my old friend and classmate, Thomas C. Platt, the main manager and, as he was called, the "boss'' of the Republican party in the State of New York, a man of great influence throughout the Union. He treated me civilly, but evidently considered me a "crank.'' He, like Mr. Thurlow Weed, was unable to understand how a party could be conducted without the promise of spoils for the victors; but I have lived to see him take a better view. As I write these lines word comes that his influence is thrown in favor ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... dexterity in the management of their little craft. These boats are extremely light, being hollowed out until little thicker than pasteboard, and even with two Kroomen paddling it is difficult for a European to sit in them, so extremely crank are they. Light as they are the Krooboy can stand up and dive from his boat without upsetting it if he take time; but in the hurry and excitement of diving for coppers, when half a dozen men would leap overboard together, the canoes were frequently capsized. The divers, ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... such a wheel; it was turned by a crank; it did the work perfectly; so, in the year 1793, he had invented the machine the ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... or gas, I suppose, out here. Well, you can raise some kind of a light to trot round by, can't you? I'm a crank on ancient houses and furniture. Wish you had some old mahogany—that's what ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... case that looked like a knapsack. It had a crank on one side and a pair of electrical connections. "It's not a battery," he explained. "It's a small, ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... the prisoner soon after reverted to the subject, and said that every opportunity was taken in that gaol to wrong and torture the men incarcerated there on political charges. Every petty breach of discipline was availed of to punish them, by sending them down to work the crank, and reducing their scanty rations. For the crime of not saluting Mr. Governor Price, they were placed upon a dietary of seven ounces of what was called brown bread and a pint of Anna Liffey, in the twenty-four hours. Brown, indeed, the article ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... a hero to his servants. In their eyes he was not the great artist, whose achievement was to go ringing down the ages; he was simply a crank or madman, who did not know his own mind half the time, from whom abuse was as likely to be predicated as gratuities, who could be ridiculed, neglected, circumvented with impunity. When the dereliction became glaring enough to arrest his attention, he would ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... be left behind in the dregs of the bowl. I have no patience with your long memories; this nursing of grievances, this raking up of last night's squabbles, is unworthy of a king, let alone a king of Gods. Once take away from our feasts the little elegancies of quip and crank and wile, and what is left? Muzziness; repletion; silence;—cheerful accompaniments these to the wine-bowl! For my part, I never supposed that Zeus would give the matter a thought the next morning; much less that he would make such a stir about it, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... always in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... toper with his bottle, the milk-maid sitting by her cow—this fortunate little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank; and, behold! every one of these small individuals started into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron, the soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... degree. There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp lookout for cranks, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... deceive an innocent young girl and blast her life forever; you may stab your friend in the dark, and you are all right: but if you eat a piece of fried pork on Friday you are a lost man! China arranges her prayers in a machine, and turns her obligations to Deity off with a crank. There is usually more or less intimate relationship between prayer and a crank. Our God loved human sacrifice in Galilee, and rewarded Abraham for it. He abhors it in Pocasset, America, and his followers threaten to hang the only consistent ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... In the form of kneading apparatus, shown in Fig. 14, two thick rollers, which move freely on axes at the extremities of arms, projecting on either side of a shaft turned by a crank or belt, are made to act alternately upon each side of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... To crank the motor (for the self-starter had not yet arrived) was a task of magnitude, but he accomplished it and pulled himself into the seat. For a moment he lay upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... and growing in numbers, who hate England and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds approve their action but do not ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... performing its duty, and the engine did not seem to be overheated. The manifest fact was that the motor would not run. A few irregular beats, I say, I got out of it by almost winding my arm out of its socket with the crank, only to have the thing die away before I could regain my seat in the car. In my desperation I advanced the spark to a point which resulted in a "back kick" so tremendous that I was nearly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... wandering among the many cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat and the anxious ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... idiot. Always was a crank and an unsociable cuss when a boy, and he's worse now he's grown up. Oh, I know Forbes, all right; and I haven't got no ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... inactive was not merely to invite destruction for ourselves, but was sure to bring certain failure upon the purpose of the expedition. All of us began instantly to look about in search of the proper handle, seizing every crank and wheel in sight and striving to ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head on ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, not because they really cared ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... car absolutely, and you ought always to do that, even if you just leave a car outside a store for a couple of minutes when you go in to buy something. This car is great, too, because you don't have to crank it. It has a self-starting device, so that you can start the motor automatically without ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... she said sharply. "Anybody'd know it wasn't an automobile crank. I don't want to look like a fool! Well, why ain't ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the speed you can, Tom!" begged Mr. Damon. "We'll catch the scoundrels now. Speed up the motor! Oh, if I only had my automobile now. Bless my crank shaft, but one can go so much faster on ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... efforts at parody. It had been jerking and bucking like a playful mustang for some time past, and behaving in an altogether curious manner, but now it was stiller than the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro then got out and had a go at the crank. No good. Thereafter, the two made a thorough examination of the beast, but poking and prying into all its secret places booted them nothing. As far as the eye of man could see, nothing was wrong ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... called the Pyramidal, because of its form, and was the first move towards what are now called Direct-acting Engines, in which the lateral movement of the piston is communicated by connecting-rods to the rotatory movement of the crank-shaft. Mr. Nasmyth says of it, that "on account of its great simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, its compactness and self-contained steadiness, this engine has been the parent of a vast progeny, all more or less marked by the distinguishing features of the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... court any longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's what ails him! For one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank in the street and put a civil question to him—that's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... surface of the water, and at every revolution is splashed all over the working parts, including the interior of the cylinder, which it reaches through holes in the piston. The oil is maintained exactly at one level by a very ingenious arrangement. The bottom of the crank chamber communicates through a hole, C, with an outer box, which receives the water deposited by the exhaust steam. The level of this water is exactly determined by an overflow hole, B, which allows all excess above that level to pass into an elbow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I heaved in. The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing its drag as the spar ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... as the wall of the women's penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. At the same time, ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... wide applicability. They are equally true for men, animals, or machines; and are wholly independent of the way in which the power is applied: whether, for instance, a man carries his burden, or draws it, or rows or punts it in a boat, or winds it up with a crank or tread-mill. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... governor belt is all right, and if it is, it would be well for you to stop and see if a wheel is not loose. It might be either the little belt wheel or one of the little cog wheels. If you find these are all right, examine the spool on the crank shaft from which the governor is run and you will probably find it loose. If the engine has been run for any length of time, you will always find the trouble in one of these places, but if it is a new one the ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... cried Bunker Blue. "The auto-van's got a self-starter on. That's the best of all, I think. You don't have to get out to crank up now. It's great. See, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... in distinctive costume at the front of the car controls a crank, by means of which he is enabled to bring the car to a sudden stop, or to cause it to plunge violently forward. His aim in so doing is to cause all the standing players to fall over backward. Every time he does this ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... all she impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Hollow Tree people heard about Mr. Man's automobile they at first could hardly say anything at all. Then Mr. 'Possum said he supposed what made it go was some kind of clockwork that Mr. Man wound up when he turned that crank; and Mr. Crow thought he must build a fire in it to make the smoke come out behind. Mr. Dog didn't know, himself, just how the machinery went in, but that Mr. Man called it a motor and had ever ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his council, and not divulge the secrets ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... from you than from any one else, because we are acquainted with you. If I do take the measles and anything happens to me Felicity is to have my cherry vase. I'd rather give it to the Story Girl, but Dan says it ought to be kept in the family, even if Felicity is a crank. I haven't anything else valuable, since I gave Sara Ray my forget-me-not jug, but if you would like anything I've got let me know and I'll leave instructions for you to have it. The Story Girl has told us some splendid stories lately. I wish I was clever like ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... denunciatory language of that day he was called a "proud and pestilent seducer," or, as the modern newspaper would say, a "crank." It is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh treatment of him. But we have also his own writings from which to form an opinion as to his character and views. Lucidity, indeed, was ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... helter-skelter. How would he know the man? How could he be certain, in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted, before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person, or some strange outlandish crank? ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... we could not decide instantly that we should run after Judith. It was all so sudden," said spokesman Dozia. "And of course we realized any more commotion would really get us all in trouble; that old officer is such a crank." ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... pictures show a variety of overhead coverings to shelter the well and its users. The well was a large one, appearing to be four or five feet in diameter at the top, and was surrounded by a raised platform. Standing on this platform, one drew water from the well by a windlass operated by a hand-crank. Later the box on which the windlass was mounted was fitted with a hand pump, and a trough for filling buckets or other containers was placed at the side of the well. This well served the courthouse into the twentieth century, ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... as a crank and as a joke, but none of them, try as they would, could get to know him or win his confidence. They used to wonder what Fletcher did with his spare time, what were his pursuits, what were his hobbies, if he had any. They suspected that Fletcher had some hobby of an engrossing kind, since in everyday ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... thief. We do not know the name of the author of the alleged protocols, though obviously it would make all the difference in the world whether these are summaries of statements made by a responsible leader of the Jewish people or the wild vaporings of such a crank as infests practically every conference and convention. We do not know who translated the alleged protocols, nor in what language they were written. Moreover, not one word of assurance does Professor Nilus give on his own account that he knows any of these things. He does not appear ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... fun of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see was worse ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... "He's too old and peevish—that's whut ails him! Fur one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank on the street and put a civil question to him—that's ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... by the tenacity with which they hold to and continually enforce a burning personal conviction. But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort of crank—certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vegetarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant something quite other than was meant by Jefferson or later by Lincoln. When these great men spoke ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... tried to turn the crank, but as soon as he had got out the Pater, he wandered; he was obstinate in wishing to grind out the Aves, but then his mind gave way ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... our lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said to himself, "what manner of crank is he who would bury himself like this? Of all the crazy ideas ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... this fashion: that a highly gifted and carefully educated man shall, like Mr. Pecksniff, squint at a sheet of paper, and that the results of that squint shall set a vast number of well-fed, contented operatives (they are ashamed to call them workmen) turning crank handles for ten hours a-day, bidding them keep what gifts and education they may have been born with for their—I was going to say leisure hours, but I don't know how to, for if I were to work ten hours ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... down in the morning the hotel clerk winked at them. "I'm not saying a word," he whispered. "But it served the old crank right. Even the boss is doing a little smiling, although he got ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... the little office here transcribing the names on to small cards, with the addresses and all necessary information for notifying a winner. On the day of the drawing the forty thousand-odd names will be put into a big hollow drum, fitted with a crank. They'll whirl it, and then a blindfolded child will put his hand into the drum and draw out Number One. Another child will then draw Number Two, and so on until eight thousand names have come out of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... old friend to receive your letter of the 31st ult. Mrs. Nation is all right. She is engaged in the very laudable business of abating what our statute declares to be a common nuisance. She is not crazy, nor is she a crank, but she is, a sensible Christian woman and has the respect of our best people. Her crusade is much like that of John Brown's, and I hope and pray that it may terminate as disastrously to the liquor traffic ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... on paper and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the machine is right, then the material with which it is fed must ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... in on him. All the thinking minds of the centre of civilization were so busy thinking thoughts of their own making, that it was impossible to attract their attention for more than a moment; from Bostoc the dramatist to Bastiche the anarchist, each individual was turning his own crank diligently, and not to be ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... years of patient observations, he finally decided to appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at and then avoided as a crank. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... me of the "Antiquers"—that's what Peter T. Brown called 'em. They put up at the Old Home House—summer before last; and at a crank show they'd have tied for the blue ribbon. There was the Dowager and the Duchess and "My Daughter" and "Irene dear." Likewise there was Thompson and Small, but they, being nothing but husbands and fathers, didn't count for much first along, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his chair swiftly to his work table, and turned the little crank, continuing his ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of mastership. In his lifetime he printed only two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers"—which was even more completely neglected by the public than Emerson's "Nature"—and "Walden," now one of the classics, but only beginning to be talked about ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... him again," the captain agreed cheerfully. "Well, that Thunder Bird plane of yours had quite a jolt, from the report. You cracked the crank-case for one thing, and broke the tail. I had the plane run in and repaired last night, so it's all ready now for you to go up. We really are much in your debt for bringing in this man Lowell; though your manner of doing it was ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... great influence. He obtained a grant of the monopoly of steam-navigation from the State of New York. Fulton took out two patents for his invention; but unfortunately they were not adequate to his protection, for they covered only the application of the steam-engine to the turning of a crank in producing the rotary ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... for fear of outrunning my companion; the wise little beast, for her part, seemed to rise to the occasion, and to understand that we were pursued; for she stepped out bravely. On the other hand, in spite of the low seat and the short crank of a woman's machine, I could pedal up the slope with more force than Hilda, for I am a practised hill-climber; so that in both ways we gained, besides having momentarily disconcerted and checked the enemy. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... was only twenty-seven at the time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... four little slave girls who were in it. In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the berths where the better-class passengers are generally quartered. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... over at Epinal the day after tomorrow,' he said as they left the mill, 'and I'll see if I can get the new crank there.' ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... filing motion, take two blocks of wood, and try surfacing them off with a file. When you place the two filed surfaces together after the first trial both will be convex, because the hands, in filing, unless you exert the utmost vigilance, will assume a crank-like movement. The filing test is so to file the two blocks that they will fit tightly together without rolling on each other. Before shaping and planing machines were invented, machinists were compelled to plane down and accurately finish off ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... it amounted to infatuation, would have been comprehensible enough in any other man, but it was unaccountable in Rickman, who was wholly destitute of reverence for the sources of his income. Jewdwine of The Museion had been in Maddox's opinion a harmless philosophic crank; he had done nothing, absolutely nothing for Rickman's genius; but Jewdwine of Metropolis was dangerous, for he encouraged Rickman's talent; and Rickman's talent would, he was afraid, be ultimately destructive to ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... own he had missed his picture of her, and they exalted Charmian as a partner in his merit, for being so impossible. The arguments of Wetmore went for something with Mrs. Maybough, though they were mainly admissions to the effect that Ludlow was more of a crank than he had supposed, and would have to be humored in a case of the kind; but it was chiefly the courage and friendship of Mrs. Westley that availed. She enforced what she had to say in his behalf with the invitation to her January Thursdays which she had brought. She had brought it in person ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about five inches deep), ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... is just possible, this could not be called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no necessary correlation between ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... spell-bound. He was playing, turning the crank with a swift, steady motion, his ragged hat tipped ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... golf with you the first afternoon we don't have practice, West, honestly. I'm awfully sorry I'm such a crank about lessons, but you see I've made up my mind to try for the—the—what scholarship ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... is attached to a long cast-iron crosshead, from which two bent connecting rods extend downward, the one to a crank, and the other to a crank-pin inserted in the flywheel. The connecting-rods now on this engine were supplied by Mr. Webb, the original ones—which they have been made to resemble as closely as possible—having been broken up. In the Crewe engine as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the other beam and threw her over, so that she shipped a bucket or two of water. Had the water got into the belly of the sail, the weight would have dragged her down; but Rob instantly got rid of this danger by springing to the halyards, and, the moment the crank craft strove to right herself, bringing sail and yard rattling down into the boat. By this time, so fierce was the squall, a pretty heavy sea had sprung up, and altogether things looked very ugly. When they allowed the jib to fill, even that was enough ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... permitting its lower surface to pass over dry sand in a box standing on the floor. A workman rolled off the paper, and with his hand he strews sand on the upper surface. The rolling taking place on the edge of a table, by means of a crank, the excess ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... there. Every rung of every chair must be gone over, though ever so clean; every article put up or put out of the way; Miss Fortune made the most of the little province of housekeeping that was left her; and a fluttering tape escaping through the crank of the door would have put her whole spirit topsy-turvy. When all was to her mind, and not before, she would have her breakfast. Only gruel and biscuit, or toast and tea, or some such trifle, but Ellen must prepare it, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... “He was a crank and I suppose he got a lot of satisfaction out of concealing his money. But this hunt for it isn’t funny. I supposed, of course, we’d dig it up before Glenarm got here or I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to send for him. But it’s over ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... PUBLIC OPINION.—The growing power of Public Opinion brings with it increased possibilities for good, but also increased possibilities for evil. In an important sense, this is the age of the propagandist, the crank reformer, and the subsidized newspaper, the age of the agitator who spreads lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against this ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... his surroundings to note any peculiarity in this neglect of himself and marked respect for 'Captain Cole.' We made the round of the decks, then explored the engine room. Here the designer found himself in an earthly paradise. He button-holed the engineer and inquired into every crank, and piston, and valve, and every bolt, as it seemed to me, till the officer in charge unconsciously began to ask opinions instead of offering explanations. By degrees the captain was equally astonished at the visitor's knowledge, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... being asked to be President, because I should certainly feel compelled to decline it. I never go, willingly, to London now, and should never attend meetings, so pray say no more about it. Besides, I am so widely known as a "crank" and a "faddist" that my being President would injure the Society, as much as Lord Rayleigh would benefit it, so pray do not put any obstacle in his way, though of course there is no necessity to beg him as a favour to be the successor ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... man, who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech. There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation of facts. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... psychological phenomena I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This is, no ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... the propeller shaft, brought the leaders to the edge of a wider space. Sievers struck a match, and a well-like, vertical opening was revealed. High overhead towered and threatened an enormous steel crank. Before their feet lay a deep pool of slime. The heat ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... and serviceable. They fastened each of these wheels to the end of an iron rod which they passed through the boat from side to side. The rod was bent in the middle so that it could be turned as with a crank. When the work was finished, the old fishing boat looked rather odd, with a paddle wheel on each side which dipped just a few inches into the water. The boys lost no time ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... the spell of their singing raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship over the ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... was known as the "devil," a term that annoyed me not a little. I worked with Wood, the pressman, as a roller boy, and in the same room was a power press, the power being a stalwart negro who turned a crank. Wood and I used to race with the power press, and then I would fly the sheets,—that is, take them off, when printed, with one hand and roll the type with the other. This so pleased Noel that he advanced my wages to a dollar and ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... and the steamer Peace was built on the Thames, Grenfell watching everything being made from the crank to the funnel. She was built, launched, and tried on the Thames; then taken to pieces and packed in 800 packages, weighing 65 lbs. each, and taken to the mouth of the Congo. On the heads and shoulders ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... automobile, but the motor car still had a great drawback-cranking. Owing to the peculiar features of a gasoline engine, it must first be put in motion by some external power before it will begin to operate under its own power. This made it necessary for the driver to "crank" the engine, or start it moving, by means of a handle attached to the engine shaft. Cranking a large engine is difficult, especially if it is cold, and often results in tired muscles, and soiled clothes and tempers. It also made it impossible for the average woman ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the general's assignment ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... by means of a spring pole; but oftener a steam engine of from four to eight horse power. Midway between the well and the engine a post is planted, on which is balanced a working beam about sixteen feet in length: one end of this beam is attached to the crank of the engine, and the other to the implements in the well. The power is applied to raising the bit—the blow is produced by the fall of the same when relieved by the downward motion ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... out through the nearest door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat. Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a bound the great machine leaped ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... to those deeds. In the murder trials at Dublin, 1883, those destined to the assassin's knife were spoken of by approvers as persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their 'removal.' In Sussex it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may be 'tight,' or 'primed,' or 'crank,' or 'concerned in liquor,' nay, it may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: 'Pransus' and 'potus,' in like manner, as every ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... they read and discussed the letters which poured in upon them from theatrical managers, Wild West shows, music halls, and other similar enterprises, and from romantic girls and shrewd photographers, and every other conceivable kind of crank. The offers of the music halls Jack was inclined to consider worth while. "He'd be a great success there, or as a dead-shot in a Wild West show. They pay pretty ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... gave a little shriek of dismay. Complete silence and darkness followed the onslaught, and then with a whisper of "Who's afraid?" she drew forth a lamp of diminutive proportions and Etruscan design, and turning the crank produced a brilliant electric flame, which permeated the damp and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... in war, intelligence, knowledge, friendship all marked him out as a man only too likely to bring discredit on Archducal tradition. His peers in birth shook their heads, and muttered the German synonym for "crank." Worse than all, he was in love—in love with a woman of dangerous virtue. What could such a man do against temptation? Struggle as he might, he could not long repel the seductive advances of honourable action. He loved, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... girl! I know you're a crank from Crankville on some subjects. Let us have it for all you're worth. I'm on the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... and durability are steel-bar carpenter clamps, Fig. 176. They vary in length from 1-1/2 ft. to 8 ft. The separate parts are the steel bar A, the cast-iron frame B, the tip C into which fits the screw D, on the other end of which is the crank E, and the slide F with its dog G, which engages in the notches on the bar. Any part, if broken, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... once a year Good protections against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense Most satisfactory ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... turning of the shaft by the weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when the bell (22) ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... steady her in entering the crank little craft, I waited until she had seated herself aft and taken the steering paddle in her hand, then, with a powerful push that sent the canoe, stern-first, far out into the rapidly flowing stream, I sprang in over the bows, seized a paddle, and proceeded to force ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... wind was still blowing about twenty miles per hour when we set to work on the machine. I poured some oil straight into the crank-case to make sure that there was sufficient, and we also tested and improved the ignition. At four o'clock the wind dropped, and in an hour the engine was started. While moving along, the idle cylinder was ejecting ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... of one of the pu-pils, said that he had turned the crank of that ma-chine time and time a-gain when he was a boy, and that he was will-ing to go on the stage with it at that time if it would help a-long the "Show," and raise mon-ey for the "Cause." So when the clos-ing scene came Al-lan Frost ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... one outside, and then turning about let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... just for the sake of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... striking fact that the great mass of Chinese critical scholarship is entirely adverse to the claims put forward on behalf of the treatise,—a man who believes in it as the genuine work of Lao Tzu being generally regarded among educated Chinese as an amiable crank, much as many people now regard any one who credits the plays of Shakespeare to Lord Bacon,—and I think we may safely dismiss the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... the chicken coop turned around as the lights flashed, and he was looking squarely at the camera. Of course this made his face very plain to the audience, as Tom turned the crank of the reproducing machine. ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... his word, Roosevelt called at the Ehrich's that afternoon, and no one could have been more charming, more neighborly than he. He told of our first meeting, smilingly called me "a Henry George crank," and referred to other differences which existed between us. "Differences which do not in the least interfere with our friendship," he assured Zulime. "Your husband, for example, doesn't believe in hunting, and has always stood out against my shooting," here he became quite ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... violent controversy arose over appointments to important offices in New York, which led to the resignation of Senators Conkling and Platt. This was followed by President Garfield being shot (July 2, 1881) by a crazy crank (Guiteau) who, in some way, conceived that he, through the controversy, was deprived of an office. In company with General Sherman I saw and had an interview with Mr. Garfield in his room at the White House the afternoon of the day he was shot. His appearance then was that ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... good results, and save so much time and effort that they should be found in every kitchen. Among them is the rotary egg beater shown in Fig. 1 (a). This is so made that one revolution of the wheel to which the crank is attached does about five times as much work as can be done with a fork or with an egg whip, which is shown in (b). Another inexpensive device that is a real help is the potato ricer. This device, one style of which is shown in Fig. 2, is really a press ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... toasting everybody from the "Chief Magistrate of America" down to our very humble selves, she sent a muchacho out to borrow the hand-organ belonging to a neighbour, this musical instrument being highly venerated in Misamis. On its arrival the presidente himself turned the crank, and with such vigour that I feared a stroke of apoplexy on ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... cried Macey, and Vane began to work his crank and paddle on the boat's starboard side with the result that they began to move and curve round. Then, applying more force and working hard, he gave himself too much swing in working his lever, with the result that his side rose a little. In the midst of ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... house and a queer printer. There was an old damaged press, on which Franklin exercised his skill in repairing, and a small worn-out font of type. Keimer himself, who seems to have been a grotesque compound of knave and crank, was engaged at once in composing and setting up in type an elegy on the death of a prominent young man. He is the only poet to my knowledge who ever used the composition-stick instead of a pen for the vehicle of inspiration. The elegy may still be read in Duyckinck's ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... idea," said Harding. "Clarke's known as a crank, and he takes advantage of it to cover his doings. At first, I thought of the whisky trade; but taking up prohibited liquor would hardly be worth his while; though I dare say he has some with him to be used for gaining his Indian friends' good will. He's on the ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Captain John Hall, in company with the Francis, Captain Newsham; and as the latter ship sailed much better than the Cadogan, she left us immediately after getting out to sea. Finding his ship very tender, or crank, Captain Hill put in at Batavia, to get her into better trim. We continued here about ten days; but I can say little about that place, being all the time unable to stand on my legs, and was only twice out in a coach to take the air, two or three miles out of the city, in which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... system of popular education, into a local antiquarian society; but simply let it serve incidentally as a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. A wide-awake, scholarly librarian will like his town, and delight in at least some study of its antecedents. And such a librarian need not be a crank, but must needs be an enterprising, wide-awake, appreciative student, who can scent the tastes ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... plainly seen now, for they were exactly in the path of the strong light. There was some laughter in the audience, and then the man who was turning the crank of the moving picture machine began to understand that ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... many engineers has been to take advantage of these matters by using the valve with 90 deg. angular advance of eccentric ahead of crank, for the admission, release, and compression of the steam, and provide another means of cutting off, besides the one already referred to, viz., cutting off the supply of steam to the chest, and overcome ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think he is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a 'crank' exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,—the lake, the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over and take a look at the college. He did n't promise, but I should not be surprised if I should get him over there some day. I asked ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... himself—" She broke off, and turned her head ungraciously toward the sounder, which seemed to be repeating something over and over with a good deal of insistence. "That's Shoshone calling," she said, frowning attentively. "They've got an old crank up there in the office—I'd know his touch among a million—and when he calls he means business. I'll have to speak up, I suppose." She sighed, tucked a chocolate into her cheek, and went scowling to the table. "Can't ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... intended for us was, like all Indian boats, a trunk of a tree hollowed out partly by the hatchet and partly by fire. It was forty feet long, and three broad. Three persons could not sit in it side by side. These canoes are so crank, and they require, from their instability, a cargo so equally distributed, that when you want to rise for an instant, you must warn the rowers to lean to the opposite side. Without this precaution the water would necessarily enter the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... can't say THAT! He's regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you'd hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be," he went on, with brotherly directness. "It wouldn't be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he's off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I reckon, I've ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... called there once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable had happened. The ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... mistake. All! says you? Don't you believe it. There's a lot more to come yet, take my tip—a devil of a lot, or I'm the biggest lunatic within a ten-mile circle of w'ere I'm stannin', which is givin' long odds to any other crank in the whole creation." ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... narrow pathway, the pedal of one of the machines struck upon a protuberance, concealed by a tuft of grass, snapping off the axle, and scattering the ball-bearings over the ground. For some miles we pushed along on the bare axle inverted in the pedal-crank. But the wrenching the machine thus received soon began to tell. With a sudden jolt on a steep descent, it collapsed entirely, and precipitated the rider over the handle-bars. The lower part of the frame had broken short off, where it was ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... I sat in the lantern, the great brazen frame of polished reflectors swung around, once in each minute, within a few inches of the side. Beneath was the projecting handle of a crank, or lever, by pressing upon which the revolution could be instantly arrested. Stooping down, I could sit at ease, with my head clear from any contact with the lamps, and in that position could have the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... at last on what he would be in our so great America. Once or twice, when he was tired or discouraged, Tish had taken him out in her machine, and he had been thrilled—really thrilled. He did not seem able to learn how to crank it—Tish's car is hard to crank—but he learned how to light the lamps and to spot a policeman two blocks away. Several times, when we were going into the country, Tish took him because it gave her a sense of security ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he turned the crank, and raised the sinker and the cask, so that the skids which supported them could ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... when I was a youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... was re-formed. Louis pushed the bicycle on its front wheel, and Rachel tried to help him to support the weight of the suspended part. He had attempted in vain to take the pedal off the crank. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... tramp by the long trail's border, Given to squalor, rags and disorder. I nap and amble and yawn and look, Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, Recite to the children, explore at my ease, Work when I work, beg when I please, Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, And get me a place to sleep in the hay At the end of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... in milk, place in freezer. Add lemon juice after freezer has been packed. Add juice rapidly and with violent stirring, then immediately place in dasher and turn the crank until frozen. ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... jobs where it does not pay to install a power mixer a hand power mixer mounted on a frame carried by two large wheels has been found at least as efficient as hand mixing; more convenient and easier on the men. The machine is turned by a crank driving a sprocket chain; it is charged at the stock piles and then hauled to the forms to be discharged. Local conditions determine the capacity of power mixer to be used. Difficulties in supplying material or in taking away the concrete may readily reduce the output of a large machine ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... have you with me in Santa Barbara," she said. "But Roberto is what the Americanos call 'crank.' No is use asking him. Santa Barbara no is like in the old time, but is nice sleep place, where no have the neuralgia, and nothing to bother. Then always I have the few old families that are left, and we are so friends,—see each other every day, and eat the Spanish ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... iron frame and Varus standing where I am. There,—Caesar having in a few moments brought the wires—the body you perceive is confined in this manner.—You observe there can be no escape and no motion. Now at the word of the judge, this crank is turned. Do you see the effect upon the wire? Imagine it your body and you will have a lively idea of the instrument. Then at another wink or word from Varus, these are turned, and you see that ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Take off each stay That binds him to his couch of clay, And let him struggle into day; Let chain and pulley run, With yielding crank and steady rope, Until he rise from rim to cope, In rounded beauty, ribb'd in strength, Without a flaw in all his length: Hurra! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... trees to withstand the winter's grip. I do not know what his age was but he clearly looked older than his years. Some days in the course of our lessons he would suddenly be at a loss for some word and look vacant and ashamed. His people at home counted him a crank. He had become possessed of a theory. He believed that in each age some one dominant idea is manifested in every human society in all parts of the world; and though it may take different shapes under different degrees ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines—whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining rods—the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... a hand-organ. An armless beggar was turning the crank of an organ with his bare feet. The plateau was fairly alive with beggars, hopping about in the dust like fleas. Some were armless; others legless. They swung along at our heels on long, muscular arms, with leather on the palms of their hands, or dragged distorted, paralyzed bodies that ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... for themselves to bring the water of salvation to their lips, and the effect has always been the same. There has been something wrong with the valves; the pump has not worked properly; there has been something wrong with the crank; the pipe has not gone down to the water; and there has been nothing but a great jingling of empty buckets, and aching and wearied elbows, and what the woman said to Christ has been true all round, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... she impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the street four stories below I heard something—music. I raised the sash and looked out. An Italian had halted in front of the boarding house with a grind organ and he was turning the crank and the thing was playing. It wasn't much of a grind organ as grind organs go. I judge it must have been the original grind organ that played with Booth and Barrett. It had lost a lot of its most important works, ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... was Martin. Old Michael made the boy his own, was proud of his cleverness, would have him go to college, and left him all he had. There was no talk of Martin being anything but a Joliffe till Oxford puffed him up, and then he got this crank, and spent the rest of his life trying to find out who his father was. It was a forty-years' wandering in the wilderness; he found this clue and that, and thought at last he had climbed Pisgah and could see the promised land. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... at the bowline. Then, as we seized the next instant of the rhythm, and hauled her alongside, Peterson made a leap and went aboard her, and Williams scrambled back, once more, across the two huddled forms. I saw him wrench at the engine crank, and heard the spitting chug of the little motor. They fell off in the seaway, Peterson holding her with an oar as he could till the screws caught. Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of the beam of our search-light, so that it seemed to ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. Thus unmanageable she drifted down within thirty yards of the batteries, and had to anchor below. Her loss was 6 killed and 21 wounded; the Kineo, though repeatedly struck, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... phonograph continued playing the dreary tune, so Ojo seized the crank, jerked it free and threw it into the road. However, the moment the crank struck the ground it bounded back to the machine again and began winding it up. And still ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... weighed just upon a hundred pounds. A wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating severity ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Marjorie. "This is the way it works." And releasing a big wooden button, she let the whole affair slide to the ground, and, then, grasping the handle of a crank, she began to ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... mistake, seemingly, may prove to be of the most vital importance. Dick went to the telephone. It was one of the old-fashioned sort, still in almost universal use in the rural parts of England, that require the use of a bell to call the central office. Dick turned the crank, then took down the receiver. At once he heard a confused buzzing sound that ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... boiler lay full length between four ornamental iron wheels. Out of the front end of the boiler rose a tall and ugly stove-pipe, while over the boiler was a confused collection of rods and levers communicating with the crank of the big wheels. It was called the 'Locomotion.' George Stephenson stood ready to drive it as soon as the trucks, which a stationary engine was lowering down the slope by means of a wire rope, had been ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... received a letter from Scudder. I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well useless in any Secret Service—a pity, for he had uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the world, for he was always shivering with fright, ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... doctor retired for the purpose of getting his electrical apparatus. In a few moments he returned, bringing it with him, and placing the magnetic cups, one in each hand, commenced generating the electricity by turning the generator attached to the machine. After a few turns of the crank the prisoner opened his eyes; one or two more and he sat up; a few more and he stood on his feet; another turn or two and he commenced dancing around, and exclaimed, "For God's sake, doctor, do quit, for I ain't dead, but I can't let loose!" Reader, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... exerting in their revolutions what seemed to be an almost irresistible power. There was no noise, no vibration, nor the slightest sign of heating. The tremendous frame of ironwork sprang at once into life and motion, with as much ease as if every rod and crank had been worked for ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... perhaps fifty yards distant were two birds—curlews—running toward the boys with nervous, jerky motions. They were furtively picking up crabs, and Mart quickly set up his camera and focused it. But the instant he began to turn the crank, the two birds ceased their antics. With an inquiring pipe, they looked toward the slight click; then one of them desperately snatched up a crab and both flew ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... thus left a prey to the most weakening, depressing and humiliating malady that can be conceived, and if, as often happens, he fails from physical weakness to complete his required evolutions at the crank, or the mill, he is reported for idleness and punished with the greatest severity and brutality. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... stoutly. "I'm a crank,—strait-laced, if you like. It's the fault of my bringing up. But I know, and you know, that that little woman, in her loneliness and in her natural longing for some congenial spirit to commune with, is simply falling madly in love with Sam Waring, and there will be tragedy here ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... way to the jail the man begged like a trooper to be released, plead that he was only joking, and that he was really only a "crank," but ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for Kenny and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... what is the matter. Their bellwether is an old deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a forty-horsepower crank." ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Where's Caledonia now? Oh, I'm so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. Yes, that wasn't so bad. Twenty-five and two-fifths. But ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... in the winter turnip fields, or worse, caught by an apple-baited hook hung from an orchard bough. He now limits his aspirations to hares and pheasants, and too probably once in his life 'hits the keeper into the river,' and reconsiders himself for a while over a crank in Winchester gaol. Well, he has his faults, and I have mine. But he is a thoroughly good fellow nevertheless. Civil, contented, industrious, and often very handsome; a far shrewder fellow too—owing to his dash of wild forest blood from gipsy, highwayman, and what ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... this very pin or crank or cog, on which he had set such store, refused the next hour or day or week to do its work, no trace of his disappointment would have been found in his face or speech. His faith was always supreme; his belief in his ideals unshaken. If the pin or crank ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... naturally for a time you were frightened. It is just possible that for the moment you lost your head and honestly thought that Mrs. Porter's methods were the only chance for him. But that state of mind could not last all the time with you. You are not a crank like your aunt. You are a perfectly sensible, level-headed woman. And you must have seen the idiocy of it all long before I came back. Why did you ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... When I die, grant, kind Heaven! that the last earthly sound that murmurs in my "death-deafened" ear may be the kind, soothing, pitying voice of woman. When this worn-out hulk, strained fore and aft by exposure and hard service, its upper works crank with vexations and disappointments, shall be hauled up high and dry upon the lee-side of death's cove, may the last that "shoves off" from alongside be woman—I care ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to its position. All that is necessary in the construction of this part of the work is to make a set of ways, and a sliding platform that will run with ease from one side of the stage to the other. A rope attached to the platform, and fastened to a crank below the stage, will propel the Goddess to her position. The ways and platform can be hidden from view by a strip of board, painted to imitate the floor of the room. A small quantity of the whitish-blue fire may be burned near the spot where the Goddess appears. The ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... the wind got round to N. and there was no appearance of its abating. At eight, the captain well satisfied that she was very crank and ought to have had more ballast, agreed to make for Bacon Island Road, in North Carolina; and in the very act of wearing her, a sudden gust of wind laid her down on her beam-end, and she never rose ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... fracture of the lower end of the radius frequently occurs from the recoil of the crank, "by back firing," in starting the engine of a motor-car. The injury may be produced either by direct violence, the handle as it recoils striking the forearm, or by indirect violence, from forcible hyper-extension of the hand while grasping the handle. The fracture may pass ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... they never seemed to catch anything beyond eels, turtles, sun-fish, and a few two inch bass, the name of which they did not even know, and I got into their bad graces by telling them they ought to return the bass into the lake. They thought I was a crank, in fact one of them told me so. These men were salt-water sports, and one man who came there from Newark, N. J., was actually baiting with shrimps for fresh-water bass and had no less than eight hooks upon his line, all baited with shrimps. This man also told me that there were no decent fish ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... herself loose she made fair way. She champed and churned in a fussy manner, and the great steel crank in her middle began to thud in a terrifying manner. We had backed out, and were driving down the harbour at the rate of perhaps nine knots. Was the Sea Queen making more? It was impossible to judge at that distance. The yacht might ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... he has developed into a crank," said Mrs. Derringham. "There's something so underbred about crankiness; and the Harwich family have ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... discovers a surgical appliance is forced by the ethics of his profession either to commercialize it and lose his professional standing, or to abide the convenience of his colleagues and their learned organizations in testing it. Rather than be branded a quack, charlatan, or crank, the physician keeps silent as to convictions which do not conform to the text-books. Many a life-saving, health-promoting discovery which ought to be taken up and incorporated into general practice from one end of the country to the other, and which should be made a part of the minimum ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... news of every-day life—the murders and accidents and political convulsions—but he was interested in strong types of human character. We young men had not had experience enough to understand this kind of a man. It seems to me now that we looked at Whitman simply as a kind of crank, if the word had then been invented. His talk to us was chiefly of books, and the men who wrote them: especially of poetry, and what he considered poetry. He never said much of the class whom he visited in our wards, after he had satisfied himself ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... theatre, I want to forget the shop and forget myself from the moment I go in to the moment I come out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his conduct before the ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... range on the road where the trucks had to pass, and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no chance if he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done for. A man driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and stopped his truck, to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a shell struck his truck and ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... you pass a fresh victim going in and you see the dentist welcome him and then turn to crank up his motor and you hear the canary tuning up with a new line of v-shaped twitters. And you are glad that he is the one who is going in and that you are the one ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned he kept ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and as many winters of total inaction had told heavily against her river worthiness; the sun had cracked her roof and sides, the rigour of the Winnipeg winter left its trace on bows and hull. Her engines were a perfect marvel of patchwork—pieces of rope seemed twisted around crank and shaft, mud was laid thickly on boiler and pipes, little jets and spurts of steam had a disagreeable way of coming out from places not supposed to be capable of such outpourings. Her capacity for going on fire seemed ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... sat in front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling cream drowning all ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... about let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get back over ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... judged. Conscious of a curious timidity, feeling a kind of awesomeness about every form in the room, he stepped softly to the bureau, applied its key, and following carefully the directions the earl had given him, for the lock was Italian, with more than one quip and crank and wanton wile about it, succeeded in opening it. He had no difficulty in finding its secret place, nor the packet concealed in it; but just as he laid his hands on it, he was aware of a swift passage along the floor without, past the door of the room, and apparently up the next stair. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... States, a violent controversy arose over appointments to important offices in New York, which led to the resignation of Senators Conkling and Platt. This was followed by President Garfield being shot (July 2, 1881) by a crazy crank (Guiteau) who, in some way, conceived that he, through the controversy, was deprived of an office. In company with General Sherman I saw and had an interview with Mr. Garfield in his room at the White House the afternoon of the day he was shot. His appearance then was that of a man fatally ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... engine of from four to eight horse power. Midway between the well and the engine a post is planted, on which is balanced a working beam about sixteen feet in length: one end of this beam is attached to the crank of the engine, and the other to the implements in the well. The power is applied to raising the bit—the blow is produced by the fall of the same when relieved by the downward ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... son of Dr. Nancarrow, a man much respected in St. Ia, but whom Admiral Tresize regarded as a crank. For Dr. Nancarrow was a Quaker, and although he did not parade his faith, it was well known that he held fast by those principles for which the Society of Friends is known. For one thing, he hated war. To him it was utterly ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... you, then. There's your mother's big churn, that goes with a crank. You whittle out a wheel twice as large as that, and set it a little stronger, and raise your dam a few inches, and you ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... abstinence. Won't allow any literature with the least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid came to me, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... west, had sold out and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person . . . "a crank," Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people . . . and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who are taught in it. We shall no doubt have a similar field open in Oude when Government interposes in behalf of the suffering people, and we might prepare for it by converting the Martiniere into a similar school or college. The committee has just expressed to you a hope that Mr. Crank, the officiating principal, may be able to pass an examination in the native languages. This hope can never be realised; and if he does I shall have to record my opinion that he is otherwise unfitted. The power of nominating a principal rests entirely with the trustees; and if you concur in my views ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a new machine," said a Yankee pedlar, "for picking bones out of fish. Now, I tell you, it's a leetle bit the darndest thing you ever did see. All you have to do is to set it on a table and turn a crank, and the fish flies right down your throat and the bones right under the grate. Well, there was a country greenhorn got hold of it the other day, and he turned the crank the wrong way; and, I tell ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... had her brother's melancholy, and greater reticence, and had continued of her own free will, long after her girlish pupilage at the convent, to live secluded under its maternal roof without taking orders. A general suspicion that she was either a religious "crank," or considered herself too good to live in a mountain mining town, had not contributed to her brother's popularity. In her abstraction from worldly ambitions she had, naturally, taken no part in her ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... discharge their duties in a perfunctory, sleepy way. No crowd of Pressmen and sightseers is present; there are no delegates and address, and flowers, and cheers as of yore. Only cabby, who expostulates, and who doubtless thinks this Frenchman a bit of a crank to insist upon being driven just ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... by the man who repairs electric lights and wires in our city streets. Another is patterned after the hook and ladder truck of the fire department. The tower, or ladder, is raised after the fashion of the ladders in fighting a fire. A couple of soldiers turn a crank, and the ladders are raised to a perpendicular position and extended high into the air on ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green coat. From cigarette tip to cigarette tip the fraternal spark was being transmitted: ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... aeroplanes. In January 1912 he went up with Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland in the first B.E. machine, to test its suitability for wireless. In May 1912 he set about fitting the same machine, which was then being flown by Major Burke, with a generator driven from the engine crank-shaft by bicycle-chain gear. These experiments prepared ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... into the machine, turned the crank, and in a minute the black and dirt were all out ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was a sick man, Keegan was him. He told M. the foreman about it one day, who told him to have the doctor look him over, and sent him up one afternoon; the doctor looked him over and told him he was only a crank—nothing at all the matter with him. Soon after he was taken very sick, and one night I called the prison nurse to his cell, and he had him taken to the hospital, where he stayed some time, but it did him no good, for he came back to the cell house in just as bad a fix as before. Then ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... descending a few steps from the door, and he noticed that a private automobile was speeding down the street from the same direction as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was starting with the crank. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the water," Mr. Lacelle replied. "This machine in the case," pointing to a high black-walnut case, "is a three-cylinder air-pump; two men in the vessel, or on the shore, keep the pumps constantly in motion by means of the crank attached to ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... wrecked it and them, how when our haul turned out to be unexpectedly big the four of us left from the kill chummied up and padded down together and amused each other for a while and played games, you might say. Why, at one point we even had an old crank phonograph going and read some books. And, of course, how when the loot gave out and the fun wore off, we had our murder party and I survived along with, I think, a bugger named Jerry—at any rate, he was gone when the blood stopped spurting, and I'd had ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... cranks I ever did read about or hear tell on, you are the darndest. The women folks in my house are as hot as hell, ever since they read in the paper what you talked in church. My wife said, 'What a crank you must be,' and my mother-in-law said hell is too good for such as you. What a rumpus you have made all over the country; it seems as if hell is ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... Therefore, the engine's over-all length, from head of cylinder to the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft, could not have been much less than 15 feet 9 inches, and probably as much as 16 feet 2 inches, thus making the length at extreme clearance of crank throw as much as 19 feet. These dimensions indicate that the centerline of the side paddle wheel shaft must have been from 38 to 39 feet from the forward perpendicular. It is not clear how the wheel shaft was mounted ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... she's a regular crank, Alec—-excuse me for saying it!" exclaimed Billy, wiping his heated brow, for when others were shivering the fat ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... do that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... position as to be readily seized by a mechanical finger, K (Fig. 3), attached to a truck arranged to run backward and forward along one side of the basin. This finger is mounted on an axis, and has a tang projecting at right angles to the side of the basin, so that the whole is in the form of a bell crank ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... and thoroughly demoralising," was the verdict of Aunt Jane, overheard by Roy, who was not supposed to understand. "They will grow up without an inch of moral backbone. And you can't say I didn't warn you. Lady Despard's a crank, of course; but Nevil is a fool to allow it. Goodness knows he was bad enough, though he was reared on the good old lines. And you are not giving his son a chance. The sooner the boy's packed off to school the better. I shall ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... a crank," said the aunt, suppressing a smile. "You are an awful crank, but I love you for the very reason that you are such an awful crank," she repeated, the word evidently well describing, according to her view, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... natives. I've heard tell it's tabu; why, the Lord only knows—some crank of the Kanakas I s'pose. Anyhow, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... MACHINE.—The direction in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... there once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... as a motive power long before it was so applied; and because he employed a good deal of his time in trying to discover the principle, he was ridiculed by his neighbors and friends, and the more thoughtless among them didn't know whether he was a crank, a half-wit, or a "luny." From all accounts, he was a modest, shy, retiring man, though a merry one. He had but little money to devote to the experiments he wished to make, and in this was not different from ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the French politesse, which was no more to be trusted than a whirlpool at sea. He observed that many young men had gone to Paris with good cargoes of sense, and returned with a great deal of canvas, and no ballast at all, whereby they became crank all the days of their lives, and sometimes carried their keels above water. He desired Mr. Jolter to keep his pupil out of the clutches of those sharking priests who lie in wait to make converts of all young strangers, and in a particular manner cautioned ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... miserable crank after those moments of frenzied action and silence that was the hard part-that was what tried my nerve and first robbed me of calmness. But I dared not leave that fearful thing dangling there; I had to wind. The ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... years of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced, cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic line; a food crank. These being the three most ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... had long understood that Monsen was the richest man in the town, and that he had become so by provisioning ships with spoiled foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily insured. And he knew who was a thief and who a bankrupt speculator, and that Merchant Lau only did business with the little shopkeepers, because his daughter had gone to the bad. Pelle knew the secret pride of the town, the "Top-galeass," ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he cried, and bolted out and turned the crank. "I'm awfully sorry," he added, when, the engine running, he resumed his place. "I had forgotten all about these pretty things. Out there a car is a sacred chariot set apart for gods in brass hats, and the ordinary Tommy looks on them with ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... happened that Mr. Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... cranked the engine—no result. He tried it again with equal futility—then, going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all right. He tried the crank again—the engine, like some cold, dead ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men becoming gloomy and taciturn, and affirming that they sometimes ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... Robert Boyle, Newton's contemporary, one of the founders of the Royal Society and one of the most acute scientific minds of any time. And here between these two mementos is a higher apparatus, with crank and wheel and a large glass bulb that make it conspicuous. This is the electrical machine of Joseph Priestley. There are other mementos of Newton—a stone graven with a sun-dial, which he carved as a boy, on the paternal manor-house; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... was always a crank," said Mr. Rogers, "and doubtless will be to the end. By the way, I heard a rumour to the effect that you are soon going to take a course at the business college in Trenton. I hope ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... must be a crank," thought Jack; "but still, since I've money to pay for my breakfast, even a crank won't drive ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... rod to be pulled in case of a separation between engine and tank and allow the valve to be seated by its spring and avoid a waste of oil. The second or main oil valve is located in oil pipe under deck leading to burner. It is usually of the plug-cock pattern connected by bell crank and this connected to some part of the engine by chain, in which case it also acts as a safety valve in case of separation between engine and tender. In other cases it is connected by an operating rod extending above deck of tender where it can be operated by hand in case of safety valves failure ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... water swashes back and forth through the clothes, eradicating almost instantly every particle of dirt. We guarantee a wash can be done in the "1900" Machine in less than half the time required by any other washer. There is no bending, no hand-car motion, no turning of a crank worse than a grindstone, no backache, no headache, no standing on tired feet but work easily done by the aid of motor-springs and ball bearings, sitting in a comfortable position at the side of ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... the middle of a stormy sea, without being able to see whether there was any hope within sight, and having enough ado to hold on, cold as my seat was, with sometimes one end of me in the water, and sometimes the other, as the ill-fashioned crank thing kept whirling, and whomeling about all night. However, praised be God, daylight had not been long in, when a boat's crew on the outlook hove in sight, and taking me for a basking seal, and maybe I was not unlike that same, up they came of themselves, for neither voice nor hand had I to signal ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... at Mauritius, then at the Cape of Good Hope, staying some days at each place, and at the latter adding several passengers to our small party. We proceeded very happily until we were within a day's steam of the Island of St. Vincent, off the coast of Africa; then the great crank of the steam-engine snapped in two, and we had to sail. It took us ten days to beat up to the island, for a large screw steamer was never intended to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... candy store across the street from Gluck's shop. He used to come in and drink ice-cream sodas and lemon-squashes, and stare at her. It seems the girl did not care for him, and merely played with him. He was "queer," she said; and at another time she called him a crank when describing how he sat at the counter and peered at her through his spectacles, blushing and stammering when she took notice of him, and often leaving the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... your own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me? That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess I'll never see either him ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. Isn't ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... afterward be received in a settling vat, of suitable size and construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of drain ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... To her disordered fancy the universe seemed to be a wheel. The sun and the stars came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Strange's lode was something of a joke. The miners called him a crank, and Thirlwell had doubted if he was quite sane, but he persisted in his search and sometimes Black Steve Driscoll went North with him. It was suspected that Driscoll made an unlawful profit by selling the ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... he said. "That was an idea! Now, then, Jeekes," he ordered, "crank up that car. And be quick about it! We want ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that twisted the first wire that made the first Glidden barb fence ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy this treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for dinner. As I went, I was thinking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out and crank the engines, which he calmly proceeded to do. The man who had called himself Algernon Tobey perceived his intention and urged his pony to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... other passengers by their fun and dexterity in the management of their little craft. These boats are extremely light, being hollowed out until little thicker than pasteboard, and even with two Kroomen paddling it is difficult for a European to sit in them, so extremely crank are they. Light as they are the Krooboy can stand up and dive from his boat without upsetting it if he take time; but in the hurry and excitement of diving for coppers, when half a dozen men would leap overboard together, the canoes were frequently capsized. The divers, however, ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... London and on to the earliest possible train for Liverpool, so as to be on hand for the first Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir—good evening, Mr. Van Nant—I'll step outside and tell Lennard to crank up." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Stacy bluntly. "Call me a crank, say I'm in a blue funk"—his compressed lips and sharp black eyes did not lend themselves much to that hypothesis—"only get out of this with that stuff, and take Barker with you! I'm not responsible ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think he is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a 'crank' exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,—the lake, the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over and take a look at the college. He did n't promise, but I should not be surprised if I should get him over there ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... these passed under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny. The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or crank journalist might entrap him into the meshes ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... to side in a terrific manner, proved a mere paper Company; never sent any ships, only produced Diplomacies, and "had the honor to be." This was the third grand Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence, carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent, gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of it," Cressler went on, heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes, I know I am a crank on speculating. I'm going to preach a little if you'll let me. I've been a speculator myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am talking about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows themselves, the gamblers—well, call them speculators, if you like. Oh, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... talk of the flight across the Atlantic, a means has been found to allow the aviator, or some helper with him, to start the engine once it has stalled in midair. This is accomplished by means of a sprocket chain gear and a crank connected to the engine shaft. The turning handle is within reach ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... UNREGULATED PUBLIC OPINION.—The growing power of Public Opinion brings with it increased possibilities for good, but also increased possibilities for evil. In an important sense, this is the age of the propagandist, the crank reformer, and the subsidized newspaper, the age of the agitator who spreads lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against this flood; he must recognize that Public Opinion is often capricious, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... her. It could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... if you have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... it is really wonderfully simple. We never mention the aristocracy now—it would be like talking shop. We just enjoy ourselves. You, by the way, I met in connection with the movement for rational dress. You are a bit of a crank, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last plank, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... onion about their roots you can make roses what you want—but you can't people—no, not even when you've helped to bring them into the world. No matter how straight they come at birth, they're all just as liable as not to take an inward crank and go crooked before the end." He looked thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the green table, and his face, beautiful with the wisdom of more than seventy years, was illumined by a smile which seemed in some way a part of the April sunshine flooding the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... relieved when he told me that, for I had been imagining that he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me over to some stupid crank which he would call ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... flat on de groun' en tuck off one er de behime shoes, en loant it ter Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he lope off down de road en den he come back. He tell Mr. Dog dat de shoe fit mighty nice, but wid des one un um on, hit make 'im trot crank-sided. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... secure him an interview during to-day. Here is that line. Norgate is a young man for whom I have a great friendship. I consider him possessed of unusual intelligence and many delightful gifts, but, like many others of us, he is a crank. You can listen with interest to anything he may have to say to you, unless he speaks of Germany. That's his weak point. On any other subject he is as sane ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to like to be bullied,'" I quoted. "And I guess I'm not afraid. He's healthy and a healthy man's never a crank." ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Our crank cuffins had for some time looked upon me with suspicion and coldness: my superior privileges and comforts they had at first forgiven, on account of my birth and my generosity to them; but by degrees they lost respect for the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fish, they placed their villages near the sea beaches or the rivers and lakes. In their canoes they would paddle as far as twelve miles from land. Amongst other fish they caught sharks, killing them before they hauled them into the crank canoes; or, joining forces, they would sweep some estuary with drag nets, and, with much yelling and splashing, drive the fish into a shallow corner. There with club and spear dog-fish and smooth-hound would be done to death amid shouts and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... slopes, and around the hills and promontories, with beautiful green swells of land above it and below it. The horses went upon the run. The postilion had a little handle close by his seat—a sort of crank—that he could turn round and round, and so bring a brake to bear against the wheels, and thus help to hold the carriage back. When he began to go down a slope he would turn this crank round and round as fast as he could, till it was screwed up tight, cheering the horses on ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... disappeared we find here and there evidences of the difficulty men found in giving up the scriptural idea of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven in the ordinary phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the Almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... the first afternoon we don't have practice, West, honestly. I'm awfully sorry I'm such a crank about lessons, but you see I've made up my mind to try for the—the—what scholarship ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is. She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound of ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... regarding his official and personal position, as shown in sundry petty treason trials. The simple fact is that German public opinion, embodied in German law, has arrived at the conclusion that it is not best to allow the head of the state to be the sport of every crank or blackguard who can wield a pen or pencil. The American view, which allowed Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley to be attacked in all the moods and tenses of vituperation, and to be artistically portrayed as tyrants, drunkards, clowns, beasts of prey, and reptiles, has not yet ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... peace-mongers—all these may have a real genius among them once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It's the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—never the crank. This is the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... moment I come out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... busy making coffee when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... belief there's a crank in the old fellow,' exclaimed Joseph. 'Is he really such a fool as to think Jane won't use the money for herself? And what about Kirkwood? I tell you what it is; he's a deep fellow, is Kirkwood. I ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... said Beamish, without a trace of rancor. "There's Mrs. Nelson—everybody knows she's a crank—and Hardie, the Methodist minister. They've been trying to make trouble for the hotels for ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and forth along the bank trying to think of some way to cross the river. He found a high flagpole with a rope going over to the other side. The rope went through a loop at the top of the pole and then down the pole and around a large crank. A sign on ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... the church were exasperating to a degree. There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp lookout for cranks, the arrangement ought by rights to have been ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... CRANK.—With a crank two feet long, one may turn a wheel twice as easily as with one one foot long, but the hand will move twice as far. If a wedge is two inches thick at the large end and ten inches long, a man may lift 1000 pounds by striking the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had somehow suggested himself ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... anti-musical natures, they avoid concerts, or at the most, resign themselves to sit through an opera. However, since the nature and quality of the music does not matter here, we may quote: "Hearing a Barbary organ in the street, I picture the instrument to myself. I see the man turning the crank. If military music sounds from afar, I see a regiment marching." An excellent pianist plays for a friend Beethoven's sonata in C sharp minor, putting into its execution all the pathos of which he is capable. The other sees in it "the tumult and excitement of a fair." Here the musical rendering ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I am a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Pee-wee had prepared his sneaks especially for making prints on wooden ties he could scarcely have done better. In order to get at the main bearings of the engine he had, with characteristic disregard, stood plunk in the copper drain basin under the crank-case. The oil had undoubtedly softened the rubber sole of his sneakers so that it held the clinging substance, and in some cases it was possible to distinguish on the ties the half-obliterated crisscross design ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... off the eastern slope of Quereau is a very rocky piece of ground full of "trees" (corals) in 250 fathoms. This is a good halibut ground although it is almost impossible to haul the gear by hand and the use of the "gurdy" (a roller turned by a crank and fastened to the dory's bow for winding up the trawl) becomes necessary. Occasional fares of halibut are taken on and about the Rocky Bottom in 20 to 25 fathoms from July 1 to ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... extremely simple and effective. The cranked part of the rod passing across the end of the wagon, and with handles at each end workable from the 6 ft. way, is attached to the catch hooks by means of a light chain. On throwing the handle over, and against the end of the wagon, the crank moves over and below the center, lifting up the catch into a position out of range of action, and from this position it cannot fall except it is released by the shunter. A shackle and links hang from the end of the drawbar for attachment to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... garden hedge which encloses it is as high as the wall of the women's penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project were right—from their standpoint—for they believed the natives to be mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... observations, he finally decided to appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at and then avoided as a crank. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Bell Crank.—Curious examples of mechanical constructions in the communication of motion between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... a Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two or three minutes ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... back on the car and did not see it slip out of the crowd of motor traffic and turn into the avenue. But Wonota, the Indian girl, saw her friend's danger. She uttered a loud cry and bounded out of the camera field just as the two camera men began to crank their machines. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... the whole thing from a pleasure into a duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... generations if a halt is not called on the over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, brain ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or from various ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... fastened her wrists to two other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... spin in the park. Stoop, crank your automobile. Step into the machine. Ride around the track; blow your horn. Pump up your flat tire. Bend and stretch arms upward to rest them. Ride home. Breathe in the good fresh air. Put your ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... said Dorothy, handing him a written slip, "except things I know mother took with her. So robbery wasn't the motive. I think you must be right. It's some crank. But, oh, if you only knew how afraid I am to stay here! I'm afraid of my own shadow; I'm afraid of the clock chimes; when the telephone rings I'm in a panic. Don't you think I could go away somewhere, with Tante Lydia—just ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... offered a hiding-place, but the search proved useless until they reached the head of the track. Then an explanation of the man's escape was supplied, for the hand-car, which had stood there an hour ago, had gone. A few strokes of the crank would start it, after which it ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the wires from the battery up and down outside the pile of helices, it was clear that an upward and downward movement of the rod would follow, 'and that a shackle-bar attached from this oscillating rod, and to a crank, would convert this reciprocating motion into a continuous one.' To this contrivance the name of 'Jumper' was given, of which one was exhibited, the helices weighing 800 lbs., and the rod 526 lbs.; and by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... Dalwood, who was not at that moment engaged at the crank of some camera. He used the same sea terms the old man himself had uttered, but this salt-water "lingo," or translation of the command to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... the night cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness that make even a philosopher like Herbert Spencer more or less of a crank. What I wanted, and wanted as the fellow did his pistol in Texas, was first-class slumber, just such unmitigated repose as occasionally comes to a highly organized baby, unvexed by colic or pure cussedness. I began to think that perhaps that British doctor was right, and that, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... But that doesn't change the distinction between men and animals. He is your son, madam—and he's going to be mine. But, fine boy as he is, I call him a crank of the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... have thrown the crank into production. But some activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders. The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held up a small sheet which said in large letters: The Workers' Bulletin Issued ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... his heart strings. He was not a crank, nor a stickler for forms or reforms, yet he had made up his mind never to touch intoxicants. And it gave him a shock to find his roommate ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... a court any longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's what ails him! For one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank in the street and put a civil question to him—that's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... where the two rods meet there is a "crosshead," H, running to and fro in a guide to prevent the piston rod being broken or bent by the oblique thrusts and pulls which it imparts through C R to the crank K. The latter is keyed to a shaft S carrying the fly-wheel, or, in the case of a locomotive, the driving-wheels. The crank shaft revolves in bearings. The internal diameter of a cylinder is called its bore. The travel ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... would better part! Lieders had answered not a word; he had given Lossing a queer glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some poison on the way. "The old man is gone and the young feller don't want the old crank round, no more," he said to himself. "Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... forgetting that. And naturally for a time you were frightened. It is just possible that for the moment you lost your head and honestly thought that Mrs. Porter's methods were the only chance for him. But that state of mind could not last all the time with you. You are not a crank like your aunt. You are a perfectly sensible, level-headed woman. And you must have seen the idiocy of it all long before I came back. Why did ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it. So while Jerry hastened to get the mudhook aboard, Frank bent down over the motor. They heard him crank it, and then came the merry and suggestive ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;—the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,—with a sort of little crank.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... speed, strength, and durability are steel-bar carpenter clamps, Fig. 176. They vary in length from 1-1/2 ft. to 8 ft. The separate parts are the steel bar A, the cast-iron frame B, the tip C into which fits the screw D, on the other end of which is the crank E, and the slide F with its dog G, which engages in the notches on the bar. Any part, if broken, can be ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any one ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... side only was there barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the bright ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Carroll, glancing down again through the scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water. It was comforting, however, to see that it had not increased, though he did not expect that state of affairs to last. When they drove out into broken water, he found it difficult to work the crank. The plunges threw him against the coaming, and the sea poured in over it continually. There are not many men who feel equal to determined toil before their morning meal, and the physical slackness is generally more pronounced if they have been up most of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of an handorgan. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... thought it was one; but I found it moved only when touched in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like it. It was some kind of a machine, and the turning of a crank made it draw together in such a way, that if a person were once within its embrace, the pressure would soon arrest the vital current, and stop the breath of life. Around the walls of the room were chains, rings and hooks, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... The great crank that grinds the screw, and is itself ground by the piston—not to mention the cylinder and boiler—works in a dark place deep down in the engine-room, like a giant hand constantly engaged on ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... shot a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply. "So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what this ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of the author of the alleged protocols, though obviously it would make all the difference in the world whether these are summaries of statements made by a responsible leader of the Jewish people or the wild vaporings of such a crank as infests practically every conference and convention. We do not know who translated the alleged protocols, nor in what language they were written. Moreover, not one word of assurance does Professor Nilus give on his own account that he knows any of these things. He does not appear to ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... a maintenance case coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was not ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to give him the job because he has earned it. He gave me some very valuable information about the wretched condition of her electric-light plant and a crack, cunningly concealed, in the after web of her crank shaft—" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... teacher—that he has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome, and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure of turning a crank belonging ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... does not prevent it, other folks will have to import their own roses; and I have engaged every boy in the public schools who has nothing better to do next Saturday to go to Lome Park and bring back as many maiden-hairs as he can find. Ferns are my craze, as you know, and I am quite a crank on maiden-hair, which I mean to adopt for my crest with "If she will, she will," as a motto. Ever ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... a dry rasp in the Major's throat. "Don't you think that to say she is a crank would be hitting nearer ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a dimple in the middle of her chin. She ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... reputation he made while in office of lack of good manners. Saying he was unable to read the handwriting in which the protest was written, he disposed of it in a way that would suggest itself naturally to a statesman and a gentleman. As a "crank" letter he turned it over to the Washington correspondents. You can imagine what ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... wanted a velocipede With springs of burnished steel; He knew the way to work it— The treadle for the wheel, The brake to turn and twist it, The crank to make it stop, My! hadn't he been riding For days, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... engine. The situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Robinson—to be sinking, and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a bucket up from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... routine work of his own trade; with merely knowing that he must turn such and such a tap or valve in order to produce such and such a desired result: he wanted to see for himself how and why the engine did this or that, what was the use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser—in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction. He took it to pieces for cleaning whenever it was needful; he made working models of it after his old childish pattern; he even ventured to tinker it up when ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Probably there never will be. But I'm no crank. I like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of training my own perceptions, though ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... it knew his business; therefore he is a student of this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a—what you call—crank like myself, or a destroying criminal—that is, an anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he asked, without raising his eyes; ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... twice, as it were. On the first "take" the characters go through the business already rehearsed, and the director keeps careful track of just when each important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank. If, at the count of "Eleven!" one character registers surprise and points excitedly at an unoccupied corner of the room, it is the first step in introducing the fairy, or the spectre, who is to appear there in the picture as shown on the screen. After the scene has been gone through with, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with us; and I guess that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... flock crank theft whit shut trick shock sling whet shed shelf trunk trust whig shop swift plank sting whip shad frock swing fresh whiff chub strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script scrub ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... starting crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally, and pulled the lever that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get up the proper speed, and the powerful new engine failed to fire. Charlie almost cried with vexation while ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... added to the scalded milk and cream, stirring them well together. When the mixture has cooled, strain it into the can of the freezer. Three measures of cracked ice to one of salt should be used. The ice and salt, well-mixed, were packed around the freezer. The crank was turned very slowly the first ten minutes, until the mixture had thickened, when it was turned more rapidly until the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... and rotatory engines. Single acting engines are engines without a crank, such as are used for pumping water. Rotative engines are engines provided with a crank, by means of which a rotative motion is produced; and in this important class stand marine and mill engines, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... similarity in build; as it would permit us to relieve our ships of many of the spare spars with which they are incumbered, and we should probably not again hear of suspending the operations of a frigate thousands of miles away, until a crank or rod could be sent to her; because, when ships of the same class are cruising together, by a careful distribution of spare spars and machinery among them, it is hardly probable that damage would be sustained, or loss of spars or "break ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... straw crawl brawn snore gloss flank brick charge crow quench green tinge shark Scotch chest goose brand thrift space prow twist flange crank wealth slice twain limp screw throb thrice chess flake soon flesh finch flash flaw twelve ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... with a hand more swift and sure The greater labor might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he labored his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all, Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat, And ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... heard priest or people condemning her for forming the acquaintance of a stranger without an introduction; she was called one of the "mothers in Israel," and even St. Paul, who was a regular crank about the girls, classed her with the "holy women of old," which proves he didn't know anything about her history or was playing upon the ignorance of his hearers. She was a leader of the ton in Israel, and if in those days they did not banish her from good society, ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... news about him," said the doctor. "I hoped he was going to stay. It's always a pity when such a man lets his sympathies use him instead of using them. But we must always judge that kind of crank leniently, if he doesn't involve other ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a Christian martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, not because ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... shrieked derisively, the crank turned, and the next moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked at the porter, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ma'am! She was such a beautiful sea-boat: and just look at her now! Never sail again: never! never! She was a little crank in beating, I can't deny it; but how she did fly with the wind abaft. She sank a pirate in the straits, and weathered a hurricane off the Mauritius; and after all for a lubber to go and lay her bones ashore in a fair wind: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was the verdict of Aunt Jane, overheard by Roy, who was not supposed to understand. "They will grow up without an inch of moral backbone. And you can't say I didn't warn you. Lady Despard's a crank, of course; but Nevil is a fool to allow it. Goodness knows he was bad enough, though he was reared on the good old lines. And you are not giving his son a chance. The sooner the boy's packed off to school the better. I shall ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... partial vacuum was formed, and the atmospheric pressure did work on the piston on its down stroke. A number of cylinders were required in this engine, three being shown in the specification all connected to the same crank-shaft. According to the Mechanic's Magazine, such an engine with a complete gas generating plant was fitted to a boat which ran as an ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... it was, I got a food crank, an' let me tell you right now, my dear, them's the worst kind. A man what's queer about his food is goin' to be queerer about a'most everything else. Give me any man that can eat three square meals a day an' enjoy 'em, an' I'll undertake ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... this office! The only persons who have not tried to sell me automobiles are George Washington, Jack Dempsey and Billy Sunday! I'm quite sure every one else has been here. The air has been filled with magnetos, self-starters, sliding gear transmissions, aluminum crank cases and all that other damnable technical stuff that goes with automobiles! You need not open your mouth—I know exactly what your sales talk is, they're all alike, more or less. Your car is far and away the best on the market, ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... suspected him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the general's assignment to a fieldcommand hadnt ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... of a bow was, of course, applied to the monochord class of keyed instruments, and was thus the origin of the hurdy-gurdy, which consisted of a wheel covered with resined leather and turned by a crank. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... one of the pu-pils, said that he had turned the crank of that ma-chine time and time a-gain when he was a boy, and that he was will-ing to go on the stage with it at that time if it would help a-long the "Show," and raise mon-ey for the "Cause." So when the clos-ing scene came Al-lan Frost ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... megabytes-of-mass-storage. "That machine can't run GNU EMACS, it doesn't have enough computrons!" This usage is usually found in metaphors that treat computing power as a fungible commodity good, like a crop yield or diesel horsepower. See {bitty box}, {Get a real computer!}, {toy}, {crank}. 2. A mythical subatomic particle that bears the unit quantity of computation or information, in much the same way that an electron bears one unit of electric charge (see also {bogon}). An elaborate pseudo-scientific theory of computrons has been ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the sort for me. I'm out of the kindergarten myself, and I'd hate to spend my life cutting paper figures for my wife. No, sir! If I ever seize a frill, I want her to know as much as me; then she won't tear away with the first dark-eyed diamond broker that stops in front of my place to crank up his whizz-buggy. You never heard of a wise woman breaking up her own home, did you? It's the pink-faced dolls from the seminary that fall for ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... himself, and now believed he had to do with a crank or some person under the influence of liquor, again barred the way. Trying to push the unwelcome visitor out, he ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... invention which has been the result of the inventive conception of Mr. Edison is the phonograph, a simple apparatus consisting in its original mechanism of a simple cylinder of hollow brass, mounted upon a shaft, at one end of which is a crank for turning it, and at the other a balance-wheel, the whole being supported by two iron uprights. There is a mouth-piece, as in the telephone, which has a vibrating membrane similar to the drum of a person's ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... whole thing from a pleasure into a duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the corner, if necessary), and arrange for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... biographies such as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... the street walked the organ grinder, turning the crank and making music. His little girl, an Italian child, after putting the Candy Rabbit under her apron, looked around the house where Madeline lived to see if any one might be coming out with pennies. But no ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... angles. (2) The Woolf engine in the tandem form, having generally the high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders in line with each other, but occasionally alongside, and always communicating their power to one crank. Such a pair of engines is used sometimes singly, oftener two pairs together, working side by side to cranks at right angles; recently three pairs together, working to cranks placed 120 deg. apart. The system affords the opportunity ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... educated man shall, like Mr. Pecksniff, squint at a sheet of paper, and that the results of that squint shall set a vast number of well-fed, contented operatives (they are ashamed to call them workmen) turning crank handles for ten hours a-day, bidding them keep what gifts and education they may have been born with for their—I was going to say leisure hours, but I don't know how to, for if I were to work ten hours a-day at work I despised and hated, I should spend my leisure ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... friend in the dark, and you are all right: but if you eat a piece of fried pork on Friday you are a lost man! China arranges her prayers in a machine, and turns her obligations to Deity off with a crank. There is usually more or less intimate relationship between prayer and a crank. Our God loved human sacrifice in Galilee, and rewarded Abraham for it. He abhors it in Pocasset, America, and his followers threaten to hang ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... Hollin, all right. Got an idea that he's a boss prospector and froze on to the railroad job because it took him into the mountains. Been all round looking for minerals; got fired for it at one or two camps, and never struck anything worth speaking of. It's a point on which he's certainly a crank." ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... fellow in the Josephine that didn't have the same thought," added Pelham. "I don't see why a man need try to make himself as disagreeable as he does. All the students were willing to treat him with respect, and get their lessons well; but he is as crank as ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... Both vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... different thing. And if I hadn't, Llewellyn Stanhope would; Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the Chronicle. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever he begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, 'I'm ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... a full hour before breakfast-time, the boys were out, eager to participate in the sport of conquering a wild colt. The colt appeared to snuff trouble, for he was unusually gay and crank that morning. His head and tail were up, as he went prancing around the field, when the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... remembered each revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture about two inches in diameter. The right humerus was fractured at the external condyle; there ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Fig. 30, at the right of the mill. Small cups were made of soft tin and fastened to a leather strap. The strap was fastened around two rods, placed one above the other. The lower rod was turned by a crank fastened on the outside of the box. Two or three brads driven into the lower rod caught into holes in the strap and prevented slipping. The machine successfully hoisted grain from the lower box to one fastened ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... "A sort of training in inventing. Cranks, eh?" At that time my one ambition in life was to invent a folding crank that would give double ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowers—you will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn't his music, but the other man's—he is only turning the crank. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... New Jersey. When eighty-eight years old he was as active as a man of half his years. I came upon him one wintry day, when he was of that age, and found him in the barn, shoveling corn into a hopper, of which a sturdy Irishman was turning the crank. The old admiral kept his hired man busy and enjoyed his own work. He was of small figure, always wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, took snuff, and would laugh and shake until his weatherbeaten face was purple over some of his reminiscences ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... dun'no'! She's an awful crank. She just loves them Injuns, they say. But I, fer one, draw the line at holdin' 'em in my lap. I don't b'lieve in mixin' folks up that way. Preach to 'em if you like, but let 'em keep their distance, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... morning exercises which had become a second nature to him, or else defy London's unwritten law and brave London's mockery. He had not hesitated long. Physical fitness was his gospel. On the subject of exercise he was confessedly a crank. He decided ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... them together with a stick placed between them. A pair of cutting nippers was the next addition to his "kit" of tools. His next means for twisting the two wires together was the grindstone—attaching one end of the wire to shaft and crank, the others being fastened to the wall of the barn. And here, as in most things great and small in this world, woman furnished the motor power. The strong arm of the good helpmeet, Mrs. Glidden, turned the grindstone that ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... savage and civilized, on the moral being vegetating in those dreadful pens called bureaus, where the sun seldom penetrates, where thoughts are tied down to occupations like that of horses who turn a crank and who, poor beasts, yawn distressingly and die quickly. Rabourdin was, therefore, fully justified in seeking to reform their present condition, by lessening their numbers and giving to each a larger salary ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, entitled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circumstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with it is an ethical one; ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... new machine," said a Yankee pedlar, "for picking bones out of fish. Now, I tell you, it's a leetle bit the darndest thing you ever did see. All you have to do is to set it on a table and turn a crank, and the fish flies right down your throat and the bones right under the grate. Well, there was a country greenhorn got hold of it the other day, and he turned the crank the wrong way; and, I tell you, the way the bones flew down his throat was awful. Why, it stuck that fellow so full of ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Harrison, it is true, favored an eccentric drive for feed pumps, but they mounted the eccentric on the crankpin of the rear driving wheel and thus produced in effect a half-stroke pump. This was not an unusual arrangement, though a small crank was usually employed in place of the eccentric. The full-stroke crosshead pump with which the Jenny Lind (fig. 22) is equipped, was of course the most common style of feed pump used in this country in the ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... truth," continued Redpath. "Incredibly fast. I had barely time to crank up the car and get out of there. I never would have done it if the strange growth hadn't left the way clear from the garage to the road. Silby, I had the devil of a time getting the wife and kids out of the house. When I looked back after going a quarter of ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... careful that the machine produced the least friction possible, and naturally it ought to produce little, as it would not be at all complicated. The new Daedalus, sitting comfortably in his carriage, would by means of a crank give to the pterophore a suitable circular (or revolving) speed. This single pterophore would lift him vertically, but in order to move horizontally he should be supplied with a tail in the shape of another pterophore. When he wished to stop for a little time, valves ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... with another burst of fire from the flank. With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ran toward the standing truck. He ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... administers the cooling draught. When I die, grant, kind Heaven! that the last earthly sound that murmurs in my "death-deafened" ear may be the kind, soothing, pitying voice of woman. When this worn-out hulk, strained fore and aft by exposure and hard service, its upper works crank with vexations and disappointments, shall be hauled up high and dry upon the lee-side of death's cove, may the last that "shoves off" from alongside be woman—I care not ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. Isn't Marcia ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... thoroughly demoralising," was the verdict of Aunt Jane, overheard by Roy, who was not supposed to understand. "They will grow up without an inch of moral backbone. And you can't say I didn't warn you. Lady Despard's a crank, of course; but Nevil is a fool to allow it. Goodness knows he was bad enough, though he was reared on the good old lines. And you are not giving his son a chance. The sooner the boy's packed off to school the better. I shall ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... crossing before the machines when one of the drivers saw fit to crank his engine (if that is the knowing phrase) and the thing shook out the usual vibrating uproar. It had a devastating effect upon my companion. He uttered a wild exclamation and sprang sideways into me, almost ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdroeckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... great mass of Chinese critical scholarship is entirely adverse to the claims put forward on behalf of the treatise,—a man who believes in it as the genuine work of Lao Tzu being generally regarded among educated Chinese as an amiable crank, much as many people now regard any one who credits the plays of Shakespeare to Lord Bacon,—and I think we may safely dismiss the question ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... her white-winged birds to her tower. The pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens yet longer to hold out, reminding them that with Leyden all Holland must also perish. ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... it no longer. He was fuming at the great window overlooking the street, and now burst impetuously into speech. "No power on earth, you absurd lunatic? do you mean that because this State has a crank like you temporarily at the top there's nothing beyond or behind it to save us from pillage and murder and anarchy? Listen to that, you foreign-born fraud!" and far up the street the morning air was ringing with shouts of acclaim; "listen to that! There's some American music for you, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... notice that I said seemingly wrong. I'm for A. S. just one hundred per cent and would prefer to have it as right as possible. I don't like crank letter writing and would never have written this now if it hadn't been for several of the letters in the March issue that gave me a touch of hades under the collar. S'long. Maybe I'll write again sometime when I get some more "ham science" ideas.—William S. Lotsch, 1 Morrison ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... indicated was the right one; as if to follow him were utter madness. The water spouted up through the clutch, and once again the engine stopped, and long moments went by before it would respond to the crank again. But Rachael pushed slowly on. She was not thinking now, she was conscious of no feeling but that there was an opposite shore, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... actor, a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he conveyed left his ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... hundred pounds. A wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... raise a genius—laugh at him, pity his family—till you learn how the outside world respects him. Then—hurrah! Strike up the band, boys! When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds looking down on him as a crank—I get so blamed sore at the place that I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when you ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the farmer can buy juice ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... 1883, those destined to the assassin's knife were spoken of by approvers as persons to be removed, and their death constantly described as their 'removal.' In Sussex it is never said of a man that he is drunk. He may be 'tight,' or 'primed,' or 'crank,' or 'concerned in liquor,' nay, it may even be admitted that he had taken as much liquor as was good for him; but that he was drunk, oh never. [Footnote: 'Pransus' and 'potus,' in like manner, as every ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... derisively, the crank turned, and the next moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked at the porter, and the porter looked ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... let himself down to arm's-length and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to get ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... noise again, and again the human note was heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats—the time during which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... man-engine. It consists of two parallel rods, furnished at equal distances with steps, while one is raised to a certain height the other is lowered to the same distance. While the movement of the crank is on its turning point, the miner passes from the step on which he is standing to the opposite step of the other. As they are constantly moving up and down, his next step is back again to the rod he had before left, which rising a few feet, ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... question is this: What is the figure representing the acceleration of the motion of a piston, controlled by a crank which revolves with a uniform velocity? I stated it to be a right-angled triangle, and indicated, as I supposed, clearly enough, a simple method by which this could be shown. Your correspondent claims that the calculation, according to my own rule, gives a figure of a totally ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Chinese journey. In a rapid descent by a narrow pathway, the pedal of one of the machines struck upon a protuberance, concealed by a tuft of grass, snapping off the axle, and scattering the ball-bearings over the ground. For some miles we pushed along on the bare axle inverted in the pedal-crank. But the wrenching the machine thus received soon began to tell. With a sudden jolt on a steep descent, it collapsed entirely, and precipitated the rider over the handle-bars. The lower part of the frame had broken short off, where it was previously ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... distinguished from a tool by its complexity, and by the combination and coordination of powers and movements for the production of a result. A chisel by itself is a tool; when it is set so as to be operated by a crank and pitman, the entire mechanism is called a machine; as, a mortising-machine. An apparatus may be a machine, but the word is commonly used for a collection of distinct articles to be used in connection ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... cold-blooded savages! Does anything equal a crank with a camera, bent on snapping off everything that happens?" muttered Jerry, shaking his head in real ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... turning point in the life of Eliphaz. Up to that moment he had been a lonely crank, and men thought he was queer; but now there were two of them and he became a Movement. A Movement in England may do what it likes: there was a Movement, before the War, for spoiling tulips in Kew Gardens and breaking church windows; it had its run ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... out of the train, walking up toward the engine. About it were men and women, and the children saw a man with a black box on three legs grinding away at a crank. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... suppose, out here. Well, you can raise some kind of a light to trot round by, can't you? I'm a crank on ancient houses and furniture. Wish you had some old mahogany—that's what you ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... demeanor was still enigmatic, and I anxiously wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic business man or merely as an adventurer, a crank, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... They belong to the higher opportunism, the consideration of what is best in the long run. The man who is controlled by an arbitrary system without reference to conditions, is ineffective. He becomes a crank, a fanatic, a man whose aims are out of all proportion to results. This is because he is dealing with an imaginary world, not with the world as it is. We may admire the valiant knight who displays a noble ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... and is engaged actively in the "second-hand" trade, or is in sharp competition with the rag-picker. And our great political educators fall to wrangling about a proposition, that could be paralleled only by some phenomenal crank beating up recruits for a new party upon a platform that all yard-sticks must be made of hickory wood, and he shall be deemed a counterfeiter who dares to use any other, and the length of the yard-stick must be flexible so that "a yard shall always contain a yard's worth of cloth." The children ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... and a rack and pinion have been substituted. Some of the best in use consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of raising vessels to repair. But in these cases a large portion of the power applied is lost ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... 7 degrees. The first page which is the anvil is fixed save for adjustments for nuts of varying size. The other page or hammer riding up and down through an inch and one quarter of travel is fixed to a crank below. Both of these pages or plates are heavy cast iron plates that are fluted and cause the nut to be cracked against these saw toothed flutes and while being cracked are revolved down through the plates. The plate moving at an angle forces the nut finally through a 3/8 inch opening ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... no manner of good if it come down to a runnin' chase. Nearest depot's fifty mile' across the county line. Racin' this car ag'in' the sheriff's 'ud be like matchin' a flea ag'in' a grasshopper. Dern it, she's balked ag'in." He wrestled with the crank, conquered it and the machine shivered like a hunting dog while his aunt adjusted spark and gas. She nodded to him to start and they moved off, Miranda waving a farewell as she called out, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... "Why, I guess I must have turned the crank the wrong way, don't you suppose I did, Mr. Upton?—Don't worry, Allison, old man; I'll rescue you, never fear. I'll try to lower you gently, so that you won't get hurt; you'll call out if you find you're coming down too ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... in the world without giving birth to that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... magnetism produce current in alternately reversing half-cycles, one complete rotation of the magnet producing one such cycle. Obviously the result would be the same if the magnet were stationary and the coils should rotate, which is the construction of more modern devices. The turning of the crank of a magneto-bell rotates the armature in the magnetic field by some form of gearing at a rate usually of the order of twenty turns per second, producing an alternating current of that frequency. This current is caused ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... sense a hero to his servants. In their eyes he was not the great artist, whose achievement was to go ringing down the ages; he was simply a crank or madman, who did not know his own mind half the time, from whom abuse was as likely to be predicated as gratuities, who could be ridiculed, neglected, circumvented with impunity. When the dereliction became glaring enough to arrest his attention, he would deliver ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... foundering. On the 20th we could not see the Success; and this storm so terrified the greatest part of the crew, that seventy of them were resolved to bear away for England, alleging that the ship was so very crank she would never be able to carry us to the South Sea. But by the resolution of the officers they were brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... local doctor, a most extraordinary individual with a crank. He had started a Montenegrin temperance society, called the "Band of Good Hope." At present, I believe, the three hundred odd members were all from Kolasin, and it was meeting with very little encouragement. The cultivation of plums for the manufacture of spirits is a staple ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... avoiding, opportunities to ride in elevators and tunnels, and even to occupy an inside seat at the theatre, just to try his new-found power, and to rejoice in doing as others do instead of being set apart as a hopeless crank. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... said Eph, balancing the boathook, "I'm sorry to stand here making a noise like a crank, but have you any idea at all what orders mean on shipboard? And I'm under the strictest orders ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... use of the weary breadwinner? Not at all. He walks from his home to the "elevated." The carriage is to take his wife to teas or the park. In a year or two she will go abroad, leaving him alone to turn the crank that produces the income. As it is, she always leaves him for six months each year in a half-closed house, to the tender mercies of a caretaker. Two additional words could be advantageously added to the wedding service. After "for ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... busy thinking thoughts of their own making, that it was impossible to attract their attention for more than a moment; from Bostoc the dramatist to Bastiche the anarchist, each individual was turning his own crank diligently, and not to be ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... we lingered yet a little over that famous breakfast, then rose, and prepared to follow the mechanical old ape. Boy hugged Bessy fondly by way of good-by, and, leaving Beebe on guard, we went forth. The same long, narrow, tall, and very crank boat received us. The sun was hot enough to daunt a sepoy; down the bare backs of the oarsmen flowed miniature Meinams of sweat, as they tugged, grunting, against the strong current. We landed at the familiar (king's) pavilion, the front ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... bales and packages on the edge of the quay. A heavy weight seemed to press on his head, and a red mist hung over everything as he walked blindly on. At a point which he had just reached, a heap of rough boxes obstructed his path, and at that moment a huge crank swung its iron arm over the edge of the dock, a heavy weight was hanging from it, and exactly as Cardo passed, it came with a horizontal movement against the back of his head with terrible force, throwing him forward insensible on the ground. The high pile of boxes had hidden the accident from the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.' And when he began in the usual way, the dear old goodies in glasses thought he had been wound up like the musical box and had just turned on the crank, so they cuddled in comfortably for forty winks before the anthem. There were two natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections swayed it, and all the rest of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... strangest tastes. She will spend every summer out here with her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is. She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are you ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
