"Clack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... river flows. He leans on the rail and gasps, for here the mist has concentrated, lying like a foot-pad to garrote such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge guys rattle to the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming to say to him: "Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir—but not from our river. Litmus paper all along the banks ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... on the guitars, gradually increasing in volume, and in which the tap of the tomtom mingled like the rolling of distant thunder, opened the dance. Then came the sharp and yet mellow clack of the dancers' castanets, and finally the soft tones of the flute, blending the whole into harmony. The dancers seemed to follow and imitate by their action each change of the music: at first, and with wonderful grace and elegance, they fell into a group or tableau, their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... clap, or clack, dish (dish with a movable lid) was carried by beggars and lepers to show that the vessel was empty, and to give sound ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... for Mr. Archer?" he cried shrilly, with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expression, something like a smile. "Do I mind for God, my girl?" he said; "that's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she said well: for cravenhood it were Befitting man of straw, not warrior true, With whom so bright a lady deigned to pair, So wonderous sweet and full of nectarous dew, To clack like a poor cuckow to the fair, Hanging his coward wing, when he should woo, Shaping her speech to this in wary mode, My sister that she was a ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do what his ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... mind. Of late some instinct had prompted me to finish it. I had worked at it far into the night, until I marveled that the ancient occupants of the surrounding rooms did not enter a combined protest against the clack-clacking of my typewriter keys. And now that it was gone I wondered, dully, if I could feel Von Gerhard's ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack." ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... do not know whether he heard much of my clack, and I got very tired of it myself at last. When I had finished my blackberries, he asked mechanically, in an echo of my former visit, with a repetition of his gesture towards the coffee-pot, "More?" I shook my head, and then he led the way out ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... a wonderful, yet most simple application of natural force. The inlet leg of the syphon is larger in diameter than the outlet leg, and is provided at the bottom with a valve or "clack." The outlet leg has a tap at its base. At the apex are two chambers, with an intermediary valve, regulated by a counterpoise weighted lever. The first chamber has also a vertical ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... have fewer orders in a commonwealth, you will have more; for where she is not perfect at first, every day, every hour will produce a new order, the end whereof is to have no order at all, but to grind with the clack of some demagogue. Is he providing already for his golden thumb? Lift up your heads; away with ambition, that fulsome complexion of a statesman, tempered, like Sylla's, with blood and muck. 'And the Lord give to his senators wisdom; and make ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the Dawn was on the road, Far from my side, so silently he went, Catching his golden helmet as he ran, And hast'ning on along the dun straight way, Where old men's sabots now began to clack And withered women, knitting, led their cows, On, on to call the men of Kitchener Down to their coasts,—I shouting after him: "O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on Till all its armament were turned to rust, Nor waked it to this day of hideous ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... the other, and sometimes all four at a time, till your head spins round like a top. I got quite giddy goin' down to the waterfall with them yesterday, and it wasn't the steps, neither, it was just their tongues going at it, clackerty-clack all the time. What time will you ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... "He has given me means and tastes to correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of imagination is soul-slaying. The man is ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... sundry people's good opinion of themselves? What, if at times their speech is insipid as water after wine? What, if to ungenial and irascible souls, their very "mug" is an exasperation to behold, their clack an inducement to suicide? Let us not be hard upon them for this; but let them live on for the good ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... appropriated to passengers, wishing him a good night. He put my coat down in the crib beneath, and as he could no longer hold the button, he laid hold of the side of the crib, and continued his incessant clack. At last I turned my back to him, and made no answer, upon which he made a retreat, and when I awoke the next morning, I found that he was too ill to spout politics, although as he progressed, he spouted ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... John H. Clack, a master commandant in the Navy of the United States, having rank as such from the 24th April, 1828, was on the sentence of a court-martial, which was approved by me, ordered to be dismissed from the service. On a reexamination of the record of the trial I am satisfied that the proceeding ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the rattle and clack of the returning coffeepot, boiling up the hill at an unwonted speed. And she waved her hand to Wes as he came past; but he was bent over the wheel and did not even look round for her, only banged the little car round to the back furiously. Something in his attitude warned her, and she ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... and that their manly sports nurtured them in the hardihood of military habits, we may well conclude from Fitzstephen's account of this community at a little later period than that of which we are writing. To the north of the city were pasture lands, with streams on whose banks the clack of many mills was pleasing to the ear; and beyond was an immense forest, with densely wooded thickets, where stags, fallow-deer, boars, and wild bulls had their coverts. We have seen that in the charter ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... hansom wheels—or The Circus in a wet night, a whirlpool of moving lights and shadows and wavering reflections! What a contrast to the quiet effects in some side street; for example this street seen half in moonlight, beneath my window in the Coburg; the only sound the click clack of the busy horse's feet on the wood pavement, as hansoms and carriages flit round from Berkeley Square—there's a levee to night, and their yellow lamps string up Mount Street and divide beneath ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... article of clothing worn by the entire family, as well as all household supplies, were the work of their busy hands. All day in the frontier cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, the clack of the loom, or the click of knitting needles. In many localities the added work of teaching the children fell to the mothers, and the home lessons given around the fireplace, heaped with glowing logs, were the only ones possible for many boys and girls. ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... rhythmic clack of the oars on the thole-pins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper's voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by objurgations ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... The pumps frequently got choked by the sand drawn in at the bottom of the well through the snore-holes, or apertures through which the water to be raised is admitted. The barrels soon became worn, and the bucket and clack leathers destroyed, so that it became necessary to devise a remedy; and with this object the engineman proceeded to adopt the following simple but original expedient. He had a wooden box or boot made, twelve feet high, which he placed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... quarters of an hour brought them to their destination, as they learned from a preliminary howl of the conductor through the rear door of the car. The engine bell rang, the whistle screamed, the clack of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... not sing loud, and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even Travis began to hum the words, but at that, Condy stopped abruptly, laid the instrument across his knees with exaggerated solicitude, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... out of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels passengers could hear her counting: "One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words at short intervals. Two girls tittered, thoughtlessly exchanging vapid remarks about ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was wound; and, slip, slap, click, clack, it went round the pawl belaying every inch of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... finished, he flew away. He had the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left, and he flew right away to a mill, and the mill went 'Click clack, click clack, click clack.' Inside the mill were twenty of the miller's men hewing a stone, and as they went 'Hick hack, hick hack, hick hack,' the mill went 'Click clack, click ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... happily, for his comfort, stone deaf, and could not hear her vituperation, and of a parish girl of twelve, to do the indoor work, who had been so used to be scolded all her life, that she minded the noise no more than a miller minds the clack of his mill, or than people who live in a churchyard mind the sound of the church bells, and would probably, from long habit, have felt some miss of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the way, there was small danger, so long as Mrs. Deborah continued in this life. Her ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... has not escaped your memory that the young couple at Clack are hoping to offer incense at the shrine of Venus this morning at the hour of ten. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... experience, you have got a compass which will enable you to steer through one or the other of them, into the inner harbour of it. Now, Minister used to say that Eve in Hebrew meant talk, for providence gave her the power of chattyfication on purpose to take charge of that department. Clack then you see is natural to them; talk therefore to them as they like, and they will soon like to talk to you. If a woman was to put a Bramah lock on her heart, a skilful man would find his way into it if he wanted to, I know. That contrivance is set to a particular word; find the letters that ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... is tossing from side to side on the floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his breath and clack his teeth like the rattling ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Mr. Beeson, releasing the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, "it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... our tools, baiting at an inn a little beyond Contin; but there was no sign of the carter; and we were informed by the innkeeper, to whom he was well known, that we might have to wait for him all day, and perhaps not see him at night. Click-Clack—a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by which he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish register—might no doubt have purposed in the morning joining us at an early hour, but that was when he was sober; and what his intention might be ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... head. It struck the side of the flitter with a sharp clack, and fell. Kieran's nervous relays finally connected. He jumped for the open hatch. Automatically he pushed Paula ahead of him, trying to shield her, and she gave him an odd startled look. Webber was already inside. More stones rattled around and one grazed Kieran's thigh. It hurt. ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... two young women have evidently been very industrious this morning; they have half-buried themselves in the product of their labors, and are still grinding away as though for their very lives, while the constant "click-clack " of the carpet weavers prove them likewise the embodiment of industry. They seem rather disconcerted by the abrupt intrusion and scrutinizing attentions of a Frank and a stranger; however, the fascinating search for bits of interesting experience forbids my retirement on that account, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... his face to the ceiling, and the boys held their mouths open that their teeth might not clack together. They closed their eyes: instinct bade them give heed to visual magnetism. Roldan immediately wanted to cough, Adan to scratch his nose. The next few moments were the most agonised of their lives. They felt the priest lift his hands and pass them slowly along the ceiling, ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... was a real thing with him. Well, when the boom began to come he hated it awfully, and he fought it. He used to write communications to the weekly newspaper in Moffitt—they've got three dailies there now—and throw cold water on the boom. He couldn't catch on no way. It made him sick to hear the clack that went on about the gas the whole while, and that stirred up the neighborhood and got into his family. Whenever he'd hear of a man that had been offered a big price for his land and was going to sell out and move into town, he'd go ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... instrumentes can do against vs: For we dailie fight against the Deuill in a hundreth other waies: And therefore as a valiant Captaine, affraies no more being at the combat, nor stayes from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a Cannon, nor the small clack of a Pistolet: suppose he be not certaine what may light vpon him; Euen so ought we boldlie to goe forwarde in fighting against the Deuill without anie greater terrour, for these his rarest weapons, nor for the ordinarie whereof wee ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... daily paper which, by the way, he largely depended on for the news. Silence reigned for a while, save for the rustle of the sheet. The click-clack of the widow's knitting needles, and the rapid plying of Cicely's brush, were varied at last by the girl surreptitiously pulling a note out of her jaunty ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... This wine is liquid gold. I quaff to your good health and ease of mind. This is good wine. It warms my chilly blood With all the dreamy heat of Spain. I hear The clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... his attempt to examine the deserted edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of steam barrel- organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells, the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight street, and into ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the walls the golden light of the setting sun was slowly moving—so slow, and yet a motion gives the feeling of rest to the weary yet more than perfect stillness. The old clock on the staircase told its monotonous click-clack, in that soothing way which more marked the quiet of the house than disturbed with any sense of sound. Leonard still slept that renovating slumber, almost in her arms, far from that fatal pursuing sea, with its human form of cruelty. The dream was a vision; the reality ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone. When he reached the end of the corridor ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish; the Duke had Crochets in him. Hee would be drunke too, that let ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... who would become possessed of her, and the certainty that she would be the maitresse of whoever did; they were waxing warmer in their eulogium of her beauty, and beginning to lay wagers on the result of the sale, when all at once the clack of their conversation ceased, and two ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... 1909 at the suggestion of Mr. Champ Clack but not offered. A bill adding fourteen years to the copyright period was passed about ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... such wrath, For warming fingers—cooling broth. No statutes old or new forbid it, Although with the same mouth he did it: Yet this beware of old and young, What Esop meant—a double tongue; Which flatters now with civil clack, And ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... the conversation into a less disagreeable channel — But, lest you should think my scribble as tedious as Mrs Tabby's clack, I shall not add another word, but ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... she-goat in the painful fit of an absolute birth, in doing whereof he did cough and sigh exceeding heavily. This done, after that he had made demonstration of the want of his codpiece, he from under his shirt took his placket-racket in a full grip, making it therewithal clack very melodiously betwixt his thighs; then, no sooner had he with his body stooped a little forwards, and bowed his left knee, but that immediately thereupon holding both his arms on his breast, in a loose faint-like posture, the one over the other, he paused awhile. Goatsnose ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... said Yes when I should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon. Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said: she frowned and made him signs: but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. -The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect:—but, when I left a triumphant party in England, I did not come hither ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... like that Pinkney—but to the best members of all society. It is there I made this sketch, while Miss Chesterforth was singing a deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a buzz and clack and chatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glance at him. "He says you act as if you thought yourself everybody," she said, softly, "and your everlasting clack, clack, ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... about to replace the empty pot, when he heard the click-clack of a door behind him. He looked round, and saw the Superior, who had unlocked the door, and come to restore the boy to liberty. Oh, unhappy day! When the Abbe found the prisoner stealing his precious preserves, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... down beside her and beginning to shred rushes she gives him.] — If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... drowned in a sodden swish as Lawler struck. His fist had shot upward with the weight of his body behind it, landing fairly on the point of Singleton's chin, snapping his teeth shut with a clack. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wold mill, My naighbour playmeaetes' happy hwome, Wi' rollen wheel, an' leaepen foam, Below the overhangen hill, Where, wide an' slow, The stream did flow, An' flags did grow, an' lightly vlee Below the grey-leav'd withy tree, While clack, clack, clack, vrom hour to hour, Wi' whirlen stwone, an' streamen flour, Did goo the mill ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the stubborn back Above the grinching quern, It's woe to hear the leg-bar clack And ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... horrible blow that fell upon us, that shameless disgrace. Well, because the parish can't clack enough about the fact itself, it must begin about Barbara, saying that the disgrace and humiliation are reflected upon her, and that nobody will come near her to ask her to be his wife. One would think, rather than lie under the stigma and afford ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... well as their ignorance of music. This trait is most marked in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once, that chose to do his wooing close under the window of a farm-house where I was lodged. He had no regard for my hours of sleep or meditation. His amatory click-clack prevented the morning and wrecked the tranquillity of the evening. It was odious, brutal,—worse, it was absolutely thoughtless. Herein is ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... fast to its cord—as it should always be in trying experiments—and I tossed it into the canoe. The rattle roused Umquenawis from his wonder, as if he had heard the challenging clack of antlers on the alder stems. He floundered out in mighty jumps and came swinging along the shore, chocking and grunting fiercely. He had seen the man again and knew it was no fish—Unh! unh! eeeeeunh-unh! he grunted, with a twisting, jerky wriggle of ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... clean quartz sand showed the entrance to a rabbit-burrow, or where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Clym's feet white miller-moths flew into the air just ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... sympathies as they ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious. The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and where the highway ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... invariably ruined his career. Look at Henry the Fourth and Louis the Fourteenth. They are all ideologists, dreamers, sentimentalists, full of emotion and energy, but without logic or foresight. Look at that accursed Madame de Stael! Look at the Salons of the Quartier St. Germain! Their eternal clack, clack, clack give me more trouble than the fleet of England. Why cannot they look after their babies and their needlework? I suppose you think that these are very dreadful opinions, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then we suddenly saw another plane, this time an Italian, coming from the left, flying high, hard in pursuit. The Austrian began to rise, but the Italian outpaced him and got right above him, and pressed him gradually down towards the ground. We heard the wooden-sounding clack-clack-clack of machine gun fire. And then we saw the Austrian evidently go out of control, diving toward the ground, more and more rapidly, and the Italian circling downwards above him; and then the Austrian went out of sight behind the acacias and a few moments later a column of smoke began ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... way he gains his point is this: He induces a lad to pretend to be a "silent woman." Morose is so delighted with the phenomenon that he consents to marry the prodigy; but the moment the ceremony is over, the boy-wife assumes the character of a virago, whose tongue is a ceaseless clack. Morose is in despair, and signs away a third of his property to his nephew, on condition of being rid of this intolerable pest. The trick is now revealed, Morose retires into private life, and Sir Dauphine remains master ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... on, tied up in a voluminous apron, she was cooking in the kitchen, very hot and floury and preoccupied, drawing grating shelves out of the oven, greasing tins and patty-pans, dredging flour. The click-clack of egg-beating resounded continuously; and mountains of sponge-cakes of all shapes and sizes rose under her hands. This would be the largest, most ambitious party she had ever given—the guests expected numbered between twenty and thirty, and had, besides, carte ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... upon the lake; His oars a softened click-clack make; On all that water bright and blue, His boat is the only one in view; So, when he hears another oar Click-clack along the farthest shore, "Heigh-ho," he cries, "out for a row! Echo is out! heigh-ho—heigh-ho!" ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... an elderly Salarik seated to the right of Halfer, a man who wore no claw knife and whose dusky yellow cloak and sash made a subdued note amid the splendor of his fellows, who spoke first, using the click-clack of the Trade Lingo his nation had learned ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... his cross, though, and he did not say his prayers, so the Leechie caught hold of him, and kept knocking him about, against the trunks of the trees and over the fallen branches and roots, till he had scarcely a whole bone left in his body. The Leechie did not say a word, but only went clack, clack, clack, and chuckled with pleasure. Poor Koulik was almost dead with terror and pain, but still he never thought of his cross. Had the Leechie once got him well inside the forest, I do not know what would have become of him. He would ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... watched them," proceeded Mistress Clo. "They cannot keep their mouths shut. If they have a secret they must tell it, whether 'tis their own or another's. They clack, they tell lies, they cry and scream out if they are hurt; but they will hurt anything which cannot hurt them back. They run and weep to each other when they are in love and a man slights them. They have no spirit and no decency." ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... summer day had dawned, and in the village was heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh, the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... hear Apollo's soothfast rede Of stiff debate, heroic challenge ringing Shrill, and each headpiece lined with fence of proof. Alternate clack the strokes in whirling strife; Sore buffeted, quakes and shivers heart of oak. But when grasshopper feels the vulture's talons, Then the storm-boding ravens croak their last, Prevail the mules, butts his swift foals ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... at the foot of the berg, where Sigmund was supplied with milk and Eugen and I with beer, where we sat at a little wooden table in a garden and the pleasant clack of friendly conversation sounded around; where the women tried to make friends with Sigmund, and the girls whispered behind their coffee-cups or (pace, elegant fiction!) their beer-glasses, and always happened to be looking ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... making a home-land out of a wilderness, we are conjuring up cities and threading the continent with steel, we are feeding the world on the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clear and opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with its harvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breaking sod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows of umber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture, something mysteriously moving ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... I'll tell you. Cuffy Bear wanted to see a mowing-machine. You may think that was queer. But you see, it was summer now. And down in the valley Farmer Green was making hay as fast as ever he could. Early and late there sounded far up the mountainside the click-clack-click-clack of Farmer ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... never permit myself any more,' says she, 'to be drowned in ale, nor to be blinded by bribes, nor deafened by music and company, nor lulled nor confounded by careless listlessness; for now I will be listened to, and never shall the clack of the hated truth cease in your ears.' Longing is ever raging within the wretch for the happiness which he has lost; memory is ever reproaching him by saying how easy it was to be obtained, and the understanding showing him the magnitude of his loss, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... your name Bell?—a family cognomen, I presume, on account of the infernal clack, clack, without any sense in it, that is ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... order for attention runs down the column. Attention it is. Another order follows, higher-keyed, longer drawn out, and with one sharp "clack!" the sword-bayoneted rifles go to the shoulders of as fine a battalion as any ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always interrupted at the instant the interesting point was reached. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... light. Had the veil lifted at last? The welter of sullen anger subsided within him. The wrapped mystery of the mountain twilight hushed speech. What folly it all was—that far off clamor of greed in the Outer World, that wolfish war of self-interest down in the Valley, that clack of the wordsters darkening wisdom without knowledge! As if one man, as if one generation of men, could stay the workings of the laws of eternal righteousness by refusing to heed, any more than one man's will could stop an avalanche by refusing to heed the law ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... yes, your beggar of fifty;—and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too: that let ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... taste av a thrial, 'Bekase,' says the king, says he, 'maybe he didn't do it at all, an' so he'd get aff, so up wid him,' an' so they'd do. He had more than a hunderd wives, ginerally spakin', but he wasn't throubled in the laste be their clack, for whin wan had too much blasthogue in her jaw, or begun gostherin' at him, he cut aff her head an' said, beways av a joke, that 'that's the only cure fur a woman's tongue.' An' all the time, from sun to sun, he was cursin' an' howlin' wid rage, so as I'm sure yer Anner wouldn't want fur to ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... then just after seven o'clock, and the October evening was drawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The road plunged straight from the railway clearing into its depths, and in a very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots fell dead and echoless against the serried stems of a million firs. It was very black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walked smartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on his way to bed, and the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... with fear, At last he drew quite near. Another follow'd, and another yet, Till quite a crowd at last were met; Who, growing fast and strangely bolder, Perch'd soon upon the royal shoulder. His gracious majesty kept still, And let his people work their will. Clack, clack! what din beset the ears of Jove? 'We want a king,' the people said, 'to move!' The god straight sent them down a crane, Who caught and slew them without measure, And gulp'd their carcasses at pleasure; Whereat the frogs more wofully complain. ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to me. Yet take heed of being like my neighbour's servant, he is so transported to find no rubs in his way that he knows not whether he stands on his head or his feet. 'Tis the most troublesome, busy talking little thing that ever was born; his tongue goes like the clack of a mill, but to much less purpose, though if it were all oracle, my head would ache to hear that perpetual noise. I admire at her patience and her resolution that can laugh at his fooleries and ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... nets or finer thread for the looms that now began to clack—for at last some few women had arrived, and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveled stowed in crates ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls manage to make ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... In each dull, lonely hour; And though misfortunes lie around, Thicker than hailstones on the ground, I'll rest upon thy power. Then while the coxcomb, pert and proud, The politician, learned and loud, Keep one eternal clack, I'll tread where silent Nature smiles, Where Solitude our woe beguiles, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... part of all the haze-filled hours, The happy, happy world all drenched with light, The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers, And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight; And they to me will ever bring in dreams Far mist-clad ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... he reflected that, though hungry, he was warm. He was in a glass coach driven rapidly on a rough road, and outside the weather seemed to be wild, for the snow was crusted on the window. There were riders in attendance; he could hear the click-clack of ridden horses. Sometimes a lantern flashed on the pane, and a face peered dimly through the frost. It seemed a face that ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... less than any of the rest, and her first amusement was keeping silence to punish him for complaining of clack; but he explained that he did not mean quiet, sensible conversation—he only referred to those foolish women's raptures over the gabble they had been hearing ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... miss his dear delight, to wrangle; 440 In which his parts were so accomplisht, That, right or wrong, he ne'er was non-plusht; But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater ease; And with its everlasting clack 445 Set all men's ears upon the rack. No sooner cou'd a hint appear, But up he started to picqueer, And made the stoutest yield to mercy, When he engag'd in controversy. 450 Not by the force of carnal reason, But indefatigable teazing; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... before the shop windows. Far away I heard the rattle of the elevated and the never-ceasing hum of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but, save for these reminders of the city's life, the silence of the street was broken only by the click-clack of our ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of thy silly clack!" ordered her mother. "A runaway bond-servant on his Excellency's staff, quotha! Though he does head the rebels, General Washington is a man of breeding and would ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... difference. In modern rotative land engines, the valves for admitting the steam to the cylinder or condenser, instead of being clack or pot-lid valves moved by tappets on the air pump rod, are usually sluice or sliding valves, moved by an eccentric wheel on the crank shaft. Sometimes the beam is discarded altogether, and malleable iron is more largely used in the construction of engines instead ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... A duck said, "Quack!" Up in the tree-top A crow answered back, Two of us amusing, Two of us confusing: So we had to give up talking, And just listen to their clack. ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... must find Willy Wagtail," said the Kangaroo. "The chances are Click-i-ti-clack, his big cousin who lives in the bush, will be able to tell us where to find him; for he doesn't care for the bush, and lives almost entirely with Humans, and the queer creatures they have brought into the country now-a-days. We may have to go a long way, so hop into my pouch, and we will ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... one, and one by one the loosened turns of the bandage were uncoiled. The trenches at this point were apparently very close, for Macalister could hear the crack of the British rifles, the clack-clack-clack of a machine gun at close range, and the thought flitted through his mind that over there in his own trenches his own fellows would hear presently the crack of the officer's pistol with no understanding of what it meant. But with ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window, counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the great Mother; she has, it seems, no heart for me when I am sorry, though she smiles with me when I am glad." But he has told me that he is able to enjoy a simple village scene in a way that others can not easily understand: a chestnut crowded with pink spires, the clack of a mill-wheel, the gush of a green sluice out of a mantled pool, a little stream surrounded by flags and water lobelias, gave him all his life a keen satisfaction in his happy moments. "I always gravitate to water," he writes. "I could stop and look at a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Clickety-clack! clickety-clack!" went the loom, as the colored thread was woven over and under over and under. Before long it was made into ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... rumble of voices belonging to the unseen sailors; and the click-clack of oars working in the rowlocks also began to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... attention from the car, but before another mile had been traversed, the clickety-clack noise grew too loud to be ignored, the car drew up with a jerk, and the chauffeur ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Clack! was the sound that followed the first cry. Like a flash the marine sentry had thrown his rifle to the deck. A single bound carried him to one of the night life buoys. This he released, and ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... travel across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of view, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... necessary to frighten the woman, Melody, for fright is the only thing that makes an impression on a fool. Now, I want you to run down there, like a good child; that is, if your aunts can spare you. Run down and comfort the little fellow, who has been badly scared by the clack of tongues and the smarting of the tobacco-juice. Imbeciles! cods' heads! scooped-out pumpkins!" exclaimed the doctor, in a sudden frenzy. "A—I don't mean that. Comfort him up, child, and sing to him and tell him about ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... hand."—"Good: vamoose."—"Again 'vamoose'", grumbled Dentatsu openly.[24] "Why such strange words; and at least why not explain them?"—"Ah! Ha! A noisy priest; these clerics can do nothing but clack, clack, like a parcel of geese or women. Even the best of them—who thus consorts with Jimbei. Remember, Bo[u]zu—silence, or the Go Shukke Sama finds Nirvana—not Gion; or was it Chion." With a silent ferocious laugh, or expression of such, he ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... farm-wife had been very different on this occasion. She had met him with his burden some distance down the trail, whither she had followed her young mistress, whose fleetness had left her far behind. Her tongue had started to clack at once, but Buck was in no mood to put up with unnecessary chatter. A peremptory order had had the astonishing effect of silencing her, and a further command had set her bustling ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It's "Gang-plank up and in," dear lass, It's "Hawsers warp her through!" And it's "All clear aft" on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're backing down on tile Long Trail—the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... I have the marks to show. Marks! I ha' marks o' more than burns—deep in my soul an' black, An' times like this, when things go smooth, my wickudness comes back. The sins o' four and forty years, all up an' down the seas, Clack an' repeat like valves half-fed.... Forgie's our trespasses. Nights when I'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, The couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; Years when I raked the ports wi' pride to fill my cup o' wrong— Judge not, O Lord, my steps aside at Gay Street ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... o'clock, at the very moment when the Abbe de Sponde returned home, and just as mademoiselle began to think she had set the table with the best plate and linen and prepared the choicest dishes to no purpose, the click-clack of a postilion was heard in ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... wicked instruments can do against us, for we daily fight against him in a hundred other ways, and therefore as a valiant captain affrays no more being at the combat, nor stays from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a cannon, nor the small clack of a pistolet; not being certain what may light on him; even so ought we boldly to go forward in fighting against the devil without any greater terror, for these his rarest weapons, than the ordinary, whereof we have ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... pieces for joy of her doing it. That scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll find to rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with "Landy," and got interested in his work, and she broke ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... across the harbor at the new schooner which Hat was to command. The Minnie Williams sat on the ways resplendent, her masts of yellow Oregon pine tapering into a blue sky. A mellow clack of calking hammers rang ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wise, and this is just what we Russians lack. Oh, if we could educate our unusual powers and abilities, if we had the will to apply them actively in our chaotic, untidy existence, which is terribly blocked up with all kinds of idle clack and home-spun philosophy, and which gets more and more saturated with silly arrogance and puerile bragging. Somewhere deep in the Russian soul—no matter whether it is the "master's" or the muzhik's—there lives a petty and squalid ...
— The Shield • Various
... sermon like that—a quiet, gentlemanly man, much like you. Lord, yes, 'tis a strain...." He paused, still wiping his face, then went on: "And I swear that when I sees them men sit there in that black pew, an' hev heard the hammers going clack, clack on the scaffolding outside, and knew that they hadn't no more chance than you have to get out of there..." He pointed his short thumb towards the handkerchief of an opening, where the little blurr of blue light wavered through the two iron frames crossed in the nine feet of well. "Lord, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... glare from within Alleyne could see the bearded fellows cleaning their harness, while their wives would come out for a gossip, with their needlework in their hands, and their long black shadows streaming across the yard. The air was full of the clack of their voices and the merry prattling of children, in strange contrast to the flash of arms and constant warlike challenge from ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pass, because perhaps it would have been worse if we had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson. But this is what I am coming to: you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack. Now, take a warning from me, and don't let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips. I did all the shooting, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the eternal God, if you open your lips to a soul, I'll shoot you ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... terrible wind blew through the rotten boards, moans came up from the pit as from victims ill-buried, and the wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beat against the walls to the level of the window-slits and spattered its water upon the captive. At intervals the bell of a passing steamer, the clack of its paddle-wheels cut short the reflections of poor Tartarin, as evening, gray and gloomy, fell into the dungeon and seemed ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... "If it was not for the old glaur! What for does heaven—or hell—send the worst of its temptations to the young and ignorant? If I had met her twenty years ago! Twenty years ago! H'm! 'Clack!' goes the weaver's shuttle! Twenty years ago it was her mother, and Sim MacTaggart without a hair on his face trying to kiss the good lady of Doom, and her, perhaps na' half unwilling. I'm ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... join the lost arts. The parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile earnestness are lost in the general buzz and clack ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of knitters! for a ball Of worsted was thy pride; With dangling stockings great and small, And world of clack beside! ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... or sing,[6] Nor dread the adder's tooth, nor scorpion's sting. With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains, Omens, the types of thy impending chains. I sent the magpie from the British soil, With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil; To din thine ears with unharmonious clack, And haunt thy holy walls in white and black. What else are those thou seest in bishop's gear, Who crop the nurseries of learning here; Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate, Devour the church, and chatter to the state? As you grew more degenerate and base, I sent you millions ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... broken, now and then, by the call of the sentinel, who, peering through the window bars, asks,—'Prisoner, have you not done any harm to yourself?' or by the rattling of the locks and door-bolts, the clack of guns shouldered or grounded, or the dreary striking of the hour in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.... Far, far away from everything human!... Nothing there to nourish the feelings of friendship and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... little javelin-like narwhal harpoons, some with spears, and others with rifles. From the circle of strangely dressed and hideously visaged beings that had gathered about him one advanced and began talking to him in a language that was like the rapid clack of knuckle bones. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... or go to France and proclaim myself with myself for follower; and other feats of like nature, being particularly strong in me, I struck the pillow beside me with my fist. Something bounced from it on the floor with a clack like wood. I stretched downward from one of Madame Ursule's thick feather beds, and picked up what brought me to my feet. Without letting go of it I lighted my candle. It was the padlocked book which Skenedonk said he ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... summer, through the damp cold or the burning heat, she might be seen coming quickly down the steep hill from Haworth every morning clack, clack, in her wooden shoes, with her child in her arms. In the evening her pace was slower, for she was tired, and the road was hard to climb, and the child, generally asleep, weighed heavily. For the baby was getting beyond a baby now; ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... now startled, now seeming to be far away—shaking hands, signing papers; and now it was all settled, and I, on a horse, rode toward home to seek a night of rest in the country. The moon was full. I heard the sharp clack of hoofs, and, looking back, I saw a man riding as if it were his aim to overtake me. I jogged along slowly ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... last became perceptible to Miss Kilburn through her own humiliation. "There's some in every community that's bound to complain, I don't care what you do to accommodate 'em; and what I done, I done as much to stop their clack as anything, and give him the right sort of a start off, an' I guess I did. But Mis' Bolton she didn't know but what you'd look at it in the light of a libbutty, and I didn't know but what you would think I ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... from school are all playing the fool With the house and its fittings from garret to basement. The girls, too, are back, and continual clack Goes on all day long, to home comfort's effacement. The pudding's as sticky, the holly as pricky, The smell of sour oranges awful as ever; Stuffed hamper-unpackers, and pullers of crackers, At making of litter and noise just as clever. The stairs are all rustle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various |
