"Clap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consciousness by the flash of a dazzling light upon my closed eyelids, accompanied by the crash of a terrific clap of thunder. Opening my eyes I discovered that the room was in opaque darkness— showing that I must have been allowed to sleep at least eight hours; but even as I swung my feet to the floor and started to grope for my boots, while ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... through the overwhelmed and trembling mass of humanity! Shall I be the idiot to throw this decrepit form, this mis-shapen lump of mortality, under her wheels, that the Dwarf, the Wizard, the Hunchback, may save from destruction some fair form or some active frame, and all the world clap their hands at the exchange? No, never!—And yet this Elliot—this Hobbie, so young and gallant, so frank, so—I will think of it no longer. I cannot aid him if I would, and I am resolved—firmly resolved, that I would not aid him, if a wish were ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... got up very angry, and took a large hickory stick and came towards me. I went backwards towards the door, and he followed me. He is a strong man and I did not want to have any trouble with him, and I gave him no impudence. I had a small piece of clap-board in my hand, that I had walked with. He told me to throw it down. I made no attempt to strike him, but held it up to keep off his blow. I went backwards to the door and to the edge of the porch, and he followed ...
— A Letter to Hon. Charles Sumner, with 'Statements' of Outrages upon Freedmen in Georgia • Hamilton Wilcox Pierson
... "I'd like to wring his neck," says Bruff, scowling over his shoulder at him. Clarence meanwhile nods, winks, smiles, and patronizes them all with the easiest good-humor. He is a fellow who would poke an archbishop in the apron, or clap a duke on the shoulder, as coolly as he would address ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... AFTER-CLAP. Whatever disagreeable occurrence takes place after the consequences of the cause were thought at an end; a principal application being when a ship, supposed to have struck, opens her fire again. This is a very old English word, alluding to unexpected events happening after the seeming end of an ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... not merely suspect you, I know you for a traitor—nay do not clap your hand upon your sword until I have finished. You have now in your possession certain traitorous dispatches which were given you by one Carne Yvard in exchange for others which you brought over with you in a vessel ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... that Marian did tell me how that she feared the earl was in danger of some sort, judging by certain words that my lady had let fall in her sleep. I noticed how that my lady seemed restless, and would start at the clap o' a door, or when Herne did come suddenly upon her. And one day she leaned from a window, as I swept up the rose-leaves from the grass on the east terrace, and called to me to come thither. She was as white as her kirtle, and her gray eyes were dark like water before a storm. ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... to clap; but they dropped into her lap, lay there, as, with a face set like marble, Ben turned and seated himself at the piano. There was a moment's pause, while he stared straight in front of him—such a pause that a feeling of goose-flesh ran down ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... sixteen times a day. They want me to put on black—to put on—huh! when the fool has already made me spend my last dollar on an outfit that—shucks! Well, you see what I've got my foot into. I had actually to clap my hand over Ma's mouth the other day while Carrie Wade was there making her brags to keep Ma from telling of my great loss. Carrie would see through it, you know she would, and I'd never hear the end of it. Ma was dead bent on letting ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... pulled it open, and rushed forth. I followed him into the landing involuntarily, calling him to stop; but, without heeding me, he bounded down the stairs, clinging to the balusters, and taking several steps at a time. I heard, where I stood, the street door open—heard it again clap to. I was left alone in the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Brother Haddock has a large intellectual development, a warm heart, an eloquent tongue, and an intense spiritual activity. What he does must be done at once, and done thoroughly. He has an ardent hatred of shams, and despises all clap-trap. Both in sermons and debate, he strikes home, and woe be to the luckless pate that has the temerity to dash under his well-aimed strokes. And yet under all this seeming severity, there dwells a spirit as kind and manly as ever throbbed in a ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... bother over that silly joke about the 'surprise packet.' You see, you won't be that. I have no doubt you sing vastly better than most of them, but they will not realise it. It takes a Velma to make such people as these sit up. They will think THE ROSARY a pretty song, and give you a mild clap, and there the thing will end. So ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... have said, that I am most impressed with the youthfulness of man. How delighted we are when the long man in the little boy's hat, having asked his short brother a riddle, and before he can find time to answer it, hits him over the stomach with an umbrella! How we clap our hands and shout with glee! It isn't really his stomach: it is a bolster tied round his waist—we know that; but seeing the long man whack at that bolster with an umbrella gives us almost as much joy as if the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... the piece of work I've put in his hands; and I will say he's never failed me on his side, either. Old Reliable Dav, that's what I call him; Old Reliable Dav, and I'd trust him with every dollar I've got in the world." He finished with a clap of good fellowship on Davenport's shoulder, and then fell upon the remainder of his chop and potato with a concentration of interest that put an end ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... head the fan-like mass quivered for one moment. The youth did not give it a chance. Over he went and shot down into the water like an eel, just as the tail came down like a thunder-clap on his kayak, and reduced it to a jumble of its shattered elements, while Rooney paddled out of danger. Arbalik swam ashore, and landed just in time to see the whale rise out of the water, lifting Ippegoo ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... sent to desire the Cardinal to let him know whether there was any possibility of refusing it without disobliging the Pope and the Sacred College. As I was travelling through the Duke's country, my mules, being frightened by a clap of thunder, ran with my litter into a brook, where I narrowly escaped ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... comic. I followed him around only the other day for fifteen or twenty minutes, from one alcove to another, and watched him taking down books. He does not even know how to take down a book. He takes all the books down alike—the same pleasant, dapper, capable manner, the same peek and clap for all of them. He always seems to have the same indefatigable unconsciousness about him, going up and down his long aisles, no more idea of what he is about or of what the books are about; everything about him seems ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... minute." The Indiarubber Man counted. ". . . Eight—twelve! Hallo! Six absentees—— No, Corney, you can't steer, because I'm going to clap you all below hatches the moment we get outside." He raised his voice, hailing the picket-boat. "All right, Torps?" The Torpedo Lieutenant signified that they were all aboard the lugger, and off ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the mason, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be when one is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed me down; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... an ill bargain. Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep his breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing ribald songs. 'Then,' says he sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the wayside, clap thou on the music box! so 'twill make our pot boil for the nonce; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick dark cloud, a sudden flash of lightning happened, and after that a great clap of thunder, as is naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised with the lightning, as I was with a thought which darted into my mind as swift as the lightning itself; O my powder! my very heart sunk within me, when I thought, that at one blast all my powder might be destroyed; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... returned Benjamin, I must say that it was ship- shape and Brister-fashion. Now all that the doctor has to do, is to clap a couple of plugs in the holes, and the lad will float in any gale that ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... loaded revolver in my belt. Though we had not in the least anticipated this sudden revolt—it broke like a thunder-clap from a clear sky—the unsettled state of the country made even women go armed about their ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to clap his cymbals together, the Calico Clown could also move his arms and legs when you pulled certain strings, like those on some Jumping Jacks. The Calico Clown was a lively fellow, as well as being very ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... where the late great fire begun Bill against importing Cattle from Ireland But my wife vexed, which vexed me Clap of the pox which he got about twelve years ago Come to us out of bed in his furred mittens and furred cap Court full of great apprehensions of the French Declared he will never have another public mistress again Desk fastened to one of the armes of his chayre Do outdo the Lords infinitely ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... crowd on the wharf; he saw the natives in their shabby gabardines, the blacks from the Soudan, the noisy throng of Greeks and Italians, the grave Turks in tarbooshes, the sunshine and the blue sky; and something happened to him. He could not describe it. It was like a thunder-clap, he said, and then, dissatisfied with this, he said it was like a revelation. Something seemed to twist his heart, and suddenly he felt an exultation, a sense of wonderful freedom. He felt himself at home, and he made ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... is because its occupants are not farm labourers in receipt of ten shillings a week; in fact, the possession of land—except in the hands of English squires— is the most impoverishing, demoralizing, satanic force imaginable, and the only way of turning modern France into a Utopia would be to clap every peasant proprietor alive into nice comfortable, well-conducted workhouses, after ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... they griev'd to see so nigh their hall The bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall; That he should raise his mitred crest on high, And clap his wings and call his family To sacred rites; and vex th' ethereal powers With midnight matins at uncivil hours; Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest Just in the sweetness ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was this amount of evidence for it that there certainly had been a series of moments each one of which glowed with the lucid sense that, as she couldn't like him as much as that either for his acted clap-trap or for his printed verbiage, what it must come to was that she liked him, and to such a tune, just for himself and quite after no other fashion than that in which every goddess in the calendar had, when you came to look, sooner or later liked some prepossessing ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... He hardly knew whether to fly into a rage with this extraordinary young man or to clap him on the back and tell him he liked him better and better every minute. He contented himself by repeating a remark he had made earlier in ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Standeth lintel and roof, The dwelling of days Of the Woodland ways: Now nought wendeth there Save the wolf and the bear, And the fox of the waste Faring soft without haste. No carle the axe whetteth on oak-laden hill; No shaft the hart letteth to wend at his will; None heedeth the thunder-clap over the glade, And the wind-storm thereunder makes no man afraid. Is it thus then that endeth man's days on Mid-earth, For no man there wendeth in ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... be gone from our earthly home, get to your own abode. I take the power of casting you all from here. Begone! begone! begone!" And all the devils flew up, and there was a mighty clap as of thunder, and the earth trembled, and the sky became overcast, and all the devils burst, ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... you have concern enough Here on the left, with Prince Bagration And all the Austro-Russian cavalry. Haste off. The victory promising to-day Will, like a thunder-clap, conclude the war! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... tendencies in art. On the whole, the dramatic achievement of the Romantic School was the least valuable part of their work. Hernani, the first performance of which marked the turning-point of the movement, is a piece of bombastic melodrama, full of the stagiest clap-trap and the most turgid declamation. Victor Hugo imagined when he wrote it that he was inspired by Shakespeare; if he was inspired by anyone it was by Voltaire. His drama is the old drama of the eighteenth century, repainted in picturesque colours; ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... this day. The account is as follows:—"In the year of the Lord 1492, on the Wednesday before St. Martin's Day, November 7th, a singular miracle occurred, for between eleven o'clock and noon there was a loud clap of thunder and a prolonged confused noise, which was heard at a great distance, and a stone fell from the air in the jurisdiction of Ensisheim which weighed 260 pounds, and the confused noise was at other places much louder than here. Then a boy saw ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... been made, I presume, but who owns the lucky cards is the secret that has not yet transpired. You young people have no respect for red tape, and methodical business routine. You want to clap spurs on fate, and make her lower her own last record? ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Nyangwe till too late to do him honour; in fact, every effort was made to keep me in the dark while the slavers of Ujiji made all smooth for themselves to get canoes. All chiefs claim the privilege of shaking hands, that is, they touch the hand held out with their palm, then clap two hands together, then touch again, and clap again, and the ceremony concludes: this frequency of shaking hands misled me ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... from the task. It was a startling transition from verse 9, which declares God's pitying knowledge of Israel's oppression, to verse 10, which thrusts Moses forward into the thick of dangers and difficulties, as God's instrument. 'I will send thee' must have come like a thunder-clap. The commander's summons which brings a man from the rear rank and sets him in the van of a storming-party may well make its receiver shrink. It was not cowardice which prompted Moses' answer, but lowliness. His former impetuous confidence had all been beaten out of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... O Sovereign, for once, with an {135} effectual clap of thunder.... O Deity! either thunder to us no more, or when you thunder, do it home, and strike with vengeance to the mark.... 'Tis not enough to raise a storm, unless you follow it with a blow, and the thunder ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the lace several times, but do not rub it. Dip it frequently into the tea, which will at length assume a dirty appearance. Have ready some weak gum-water and press the lace gently through it; then clap it for a quarter of an hour; after which, pin it to a towel in any shape which you wish it to take. When nearly dry, cover it with another towel and iron it with a cool iron. The lace, if previously sound ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years, But he shall fade into a feebler age; Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his snares, And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap His withered hands, and from their ambush call His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send Quaint maskers, wearing fair and gallant forms, To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth, Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... upon to clasp the hand of the Captain of the People, and swear to keep the Peace of the City. If he did this, he was suffered to go to his own house, where for a while, as I think, authority kept a wary eye upon him. If he would not do this, then the Captain of the People had the right to clap him into prison and keep him there till he was of a more reasonable and pacific mood of mind. All of which serves to show how excellent were our laws and customs, and how intelligently ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... speaking, a noise was heard like a violent clap of thunder; the earth quaked, and the magistrates and their servants fell down stunned. When they recovered their senses, they found themselves in the wood to which their guide had led them, but on the spot where the palace of glass had stood in all its splendour, clear cold water now gushed ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... rapture). Oh dear! Oh lor! What doins! Time! you two, afore ye kill one another! Now, Gentlemen, a good clap, to encourage 'em. I think you'll agree as the Volunteer is showin' you good sport; and, if you think him deservin' of a drink, p'raps one o' you will oblige with the loan of a 'at, which he'll now take round. (The hat is procured, and offered to JOE, who, however, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... pace or two and, sinking upon one knee, levelled my rifle and fired right into the thick of the bunch. The range was only about four hundred yards, and while the sharp, whip-like report of the piece was still echoing along the side of the range of hills in front of me I heard the clap of the bullet, and, as the smoke drifted away, saw that one dog was down, dead, while a second was struggling feebly on the ground, and a third, with a broken leg, was making the welkin ring with ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... horse here, and I'll have mine ready by the time this young lady has rested. Miss a wont you join with me? I assure you I will not put you to the expense of a minute. Thank you, Mr. Harden! just clap the saddle on to Lollypop, and have him up here in three seconds. Thank you! My dear Miss a wont you take my arm? I am gratified, I ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... their late attracts decline, 695 And turn as eager as prick'd wine; And all their catterwauling tricks, In earnest to as jealous piques; Which the ancients wisely signify'd, By th' yellow mantos of the bride: 700 For jealousy is but a kind Of clap and grincam of the mind, The natural effects of love, As other flames and aches prove; But all the mischief is, the doubt 705 On whose account they first broke out. For though Chineses go to bed, And lie in, in their ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... had been watching her, he had not noticed that the sky was growing dark and the wind was rising. Suddenly there was a clap of thunder. The princess danced on. But another clap came louder, and then a sudden great flash of lightning that lit up the sky from end to end. The prince couldn't help shutting his eyes, but he opened them quickly to see if Daylight was hurt. Alas, ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... citerns, lutes, and viols, such as ours, but they have many other instruments which we have not. When the lord begins to drink, one of his servants exclaims aloud Ha! and the minstrel begins to play. When they make a great feast, all the guests clap their hands and dance to the music, the men before the lord, and the women before the lady of the house. When the lord hath drank, the servant calls out as before, and the minstrel ceases; then all drink round ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... But Charles's own spirits are so high and so amiable, and he is so thoroughly convinced his cousin is a fine fellow, that one's scruples are carried away in the torrent of his happiness and gratitude. And his would be a sordid spirit who would not clap hands at the consummation (Nov. 1440); when Charles, after having sworn on the Sacrament that he would never again bear arms against England, and pledged himself body and soul to the unpatriotic faction in his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here, For ev'ry peeping fop to jeer? To think that your brains' issue is Exposed to th'excrement of his, In pow'r of spittle and a clout, Whene'er he please, to blot it out; And then, to heighten the disgrace, Clap his own nonsense in the place. Whoe'er expects to hold his part In such a book, and such a heart, If he be wealthy, and a fool, Is in all points the fittest tool; Of whom it may be justly said, He's a ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... in the work on the punching bag, and he walked closer to note what Lew Flapp was doing. Clap! clap! clap! went Flapp's fists on the bag, which bounced back ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Phil Shehan, making the sign of the cross, half in jest, half in earnest: "for it isn't the captin at all, and who but the divil could have managed to clap ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his heart." He felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and blaspheme the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve but that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself that he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an ancient Christian," whom ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... us all! I am so overcome by shock and horror that I can scarcely hold the pen. It has all come in one terrible moment, like a clap of thunder. I take no account of time, night and morning are the same to me and the day is but a sudden flash of lightning destroying the proud castle of my hopes and desires. A venerable man of God—the father of my betrothed—is in prison! And as ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... book consist in the allegations that the Government of England had been taken out of the hands of an aristocracy grown barren of ideas and stupid beyond words, and entrusted to a middle class without noble traditions, wretchedly educated, full of Ungeist, with a passion for clap-trap, only wanting to be left alone to push trade and make money; so ignorant as to believe that feudalism can be abated without any heroic Stein, by providing that in one insignificant case out of a hundred ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... gentlemen. I must be drunk at dinner, and when I am in liquor I am no ornament to a duchess's drawing-room. But what a woman you have grown," he would say, staring at her and shaking his head. "Each time I clap eyes on you 'tis to marvel at you, remembering what a baggage you were, and how you kept from slipping by the way. There was Jack Oxon, now," he added one day—"after you married Dunstanwolde, I heard a pretty tale of Jack—that he had made ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes a gladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands, the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant together in the gladness ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... part, and remember that on the day of the election in November I was notified that it would be advisable for me to vote for Bell and Everett, but I openly said I would not, and I did not. The election of Mr. Lincoln fell upon us all like a clap of thunder. People saw and felt that the South had threatened so long that, if she quietly submitted, the question of slavery in the Territories was at an end forever. I mingled freely with the members of the Board of Supervisors, and with the people of Rapides Parish generally, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... without leave or license, to attack a large hogshead, that lay very invitingly on the outside of the rest. The enemy seeing the approach of our buccaneers, reserved their fire until they had got pretty near up to the intended prize; then all at once cut loose upon them with a thundering clap, which killed one, crippled a second, and so frightened the third, that he forgot the cask, and turning tail, thought of nothing but to save his bacon! which he did by such extraordinary running and jumping, as threw us all into ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on the joyous little menage in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Whether it be thy lot to go, {660} For the good of us all, where the haters meet In the crowded city's horrible street; Or thou step alone through the morass Where never sound yet was Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill, For the air is still, and the water still, When the blue breast of the dipping coot Dives under, and all is mute. So at the last shall come old age, Decrepit as befits that stage; {670} How else wouldst thou retire apart With the hoarded memories of thy heart, And ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... feet long. You will need a bull's-eye lantern or bicycle lamp and after dark, make the rounds of your bait and cautiously flash the light on the baited tree. If you see a moth feeding there, carefully bring the cyanide bottle up and drop him into it. Under no circumstances, clap the bottle over the specimen. If you do the neck of the bottle will become smeared with the bait and the moth would be daubed over and ruined. You will soon have all the specimens that you can care for at one time and will be ready to go home and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... are you, you obstinate whelp?" said the deep voice of the captain, as he came up and gave me a box on the ear that nearly felled me to the deck. "I don't allow any such weakness aboard o' this ship. So clap a stopper on your eyes or I'll give you ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... and almost vindictive, came into its own again and, with an almost audible paean, a suffusion of bright sound that was one with the bright colour, took large possession. Venice glowed and plashed and called and chimed again; the air was like a clap of hands, and the scattered pinks, yellows, blues, sea-greens, were like a hanging-out of vivid stuffs, a laying-down of fine carpets. Densher rejoiced in this on the occasion of his going to the station to meet the great doctor. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... surrounding land lay between sky and water, hushed to a Sunday stillness. Far off across the lake by Richardson's they heard a dog bark, and the sound came fine and small and delicate. At long intervals the boat stirred with a gentle clap-clapping of the water along its sides. From the nearby shore in the growth of manzanita bushes quail called and clucked comfortably to each other; a bewildered yellow butterfly danced by over their heads, and slim blue dragon-flies ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... relaxed that I was at last able to look them in the face. I saw the doctor and the clergyman smile encouragingly, and my half-witted gardener looking up at me with open mouth, and the atrabilious confectioner clap his hands, which made me take refuge in my paper again. I got to the end of my task without any remarkable incident, if I except the doctor's once calling out "hear" loudly, which brought the heart into my mouth, and blurred half a sentence. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... was on the paper. Then she held up the five dollar gold piece. How the children did shout and clap their hands. "Hurrah for Betty's Uncle Fred!" they cried. "Hurrah for the living airplane! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" When the last shout had been given, Showman Bob stepped out. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said in his deep showman's voice, "we thank ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... her approval; when things were worked up to this end; she would have liked to clap her applause, it was so well done. Mrs. Polkington and Violet were so admirable, they were already almost convinced of all they said; in two days they would believe it quite as much as Mr. Ponsonby ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... said of the eagle, that, in however long a flight, he is never seen to clap his wings to his sides. He seems to govern his movements by the inclination of his wings and tail to the wind, as a ship is propelled by the action of the wind on ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ye wha are sae guid yoursel', Sae pious and sae holy, Ye've nought to do but mark and tell Your neebor's fauts and folly:— Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi' store o' water. The heapet happer's ebbing still, And still the clap plays clatter. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... skipper, "clap a stopper over all that, and stand by to hear where we are bound to-morrow, or next day. Have any of you found ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... wreckage, my son, and put the unbroken things back into their places," exclaimed Maxwell. "Also, clap a stopper upon your jawing tackle, younker; you have altogether too much too say, for a little 'un. Here, you Fleming—" to another mid, who was lying upon a locker with his hands clasped under his ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... in such cases is more than as good as a feast. The young fellow asked him if he was satisfied, and held out his hand. But the other sulked, and muttered something about revenge.—Jest as y' like,—said the young man John.—Clap a slice o' raw beefsteak on to that mouse o' yours 'n' 't'll take down the swellin'. (Mouse is a technical term for a bluish, oblong, rounded elevation occasioned by running one's forehead or eyebrow against another's knuckles.) The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Count Kostia; he is devoted to him even to fanaticism. It is certain that having discovered that the Countess Olga was enceinte, he had the barbarity to become her denouncer; and that letter which announced to Count Kostia his dishonor, that letter which made him return from Paris like a thunder-clap, that letter in short which caused the death of Olga Vassilievna, was ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the fall of this fortress came like a thunder-clap over Europe. It announced the reign of anarchy in France, and the helplessness of the King. On hearing of the fall of the Bastille, the King is said to have exclaimed to his courtiers, "It is a revolt, then." "Nay, sire," said the Duke of Liancourt, "it is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... A remarkable clap of thunder drowned Nelson's reply. Perhaps it was as well. And as the heavy roll of the report died away, they heard a series of shrieks somewhere in the upper part of ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... I could say to these persons here would help me with them as Time will help me if my work lasts. I am not afraid of my design being permanently misunderstood, provided the execution has done it any sort of justice. Estimated by the clap-trap morality of the present day, this may be a very daring book. Judged by the Christian morality which is of all time, it is only a book that is daring enough to speak ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... much pleased. You said, 'How nice!' as much as twice; and didn't you almost laugh out loud in the spelling class? Hark! what a clap!" ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... Then the bigot will say, "my brother;" the intolerant will grasp hands in loyal fellowship, and Christian hearts will pulsate in one common rhythm. Then will our mountains and hills break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... to the sad and serious side of life. Men and women committing suicide to slow music is the chief stock in trade in some quarters, and when serious trouble came to her this devil's comedy had been robbed of its horror by the clap-trap of stage effect. That is the only way in which I can account for it all or excuse her. But the fact that she recoiled from Sibley so strongly and felt the disgrace of her association so keenly, proves that she possesses a true woman's nature. But, as I said, she needs a brother's care. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... he passed to more remote abstractions; until, had Chichikov been listening, he would have learnt a number of interesting details concerning himself. However, his thoughts were wholly occupied with his own subject, so much so that not until a loud clap of thunder awoke him from his reverie did he glance around him. The sky was completely covered with clouds, and the dusty turnpike beginning to be sprinkled with drops of rain. At length a second and a nearer and a louder ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... do whatso Daniel commanded him, then should the bond which the Devil held against Daniel become null and void, and upon that same day should a thousand and one souls be released forever from the Devil's dominion. The Devil winced; he hated to sign this agreement, but he had to. An awful clap of thunder ratified the abominable treaty, and every black cat within a radius of a hundred leagues straightway fell to ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... execution.—Whose turn is it now among the eleven? Seized unawares, the docile Convention unanimously applauding, after three days of a judicial farce, the cart will bear him to the Place de la Revolution; Samson will tie him fast, shouters at thirty sous a day will clap their hands, and, on the following morning, the popular politicians will congratulate each other on seeing the name of a great traitor on the bulletin of the guillotined.[3260] To this end, to enable this or that king of the day to pass from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and dress her in a'most a beautiful long habit, man's hat, stand-up collar and stock, clap a beautiful little cow-hide whip in her hand, and mount her on a'most a splendiferous white hoss, with long tail and flowin' mane, a rairin' and a cavortin' like mad, and a champin' and a chawin' of its bit, and makin' the froth fly from its mouth, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... music, the stamp of the dancers, the clink of glasses and the ice in pitchers, the rattle of dice, the slap of cards and currency, the announcements of the dealers, the clap-trap of barkers and monte spielers, the general chatter of voices, one such as I, a newcomer, scarcely knew ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... the land, he found it convenient to have this sail haul out and brail like a ship's spanker. As the gaff was now aloft, it was only necessary to let go the brails to loosen this broad sheet of canvas, and to clap on the out-hauler, to set it. This was probably the reason why the brig was so unceremoniously cast into the stream, without showing more of her cloth. The jib and flying-jibs, however, did at that moment drop beneath their booms, ready ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... a nobler being than his sister, and had reached up to clap Harold on the shoulder, while declaring that these assertions made no difference to him, and that he did not care the value of a straw for what Avice Stympson might say, though Harold had no defence but his own denial of half the stories, and was forced to own that there was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from the intoxicated drugs of conformity, the softer milk which makes them grow in error. And who can be ignorant what a large spread Popery, Arminianism and reconciliation with Rome, have taken among the arch urgers of the ceremonies? What marvel that Papists clap their hands! for they see the day coming which they wish for. Woe to thee, O land, which bears professed Papists and avouched Atheists, but cannot bear them who desire to "abstain from all appearance of evil," 1 Thes. v. 22, for truth and equity are fallen in thee, and "he that ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... mocke my woe, When your mirth is turn'd to moane; May your like then serue you so. When one Swaine among the rest Thus him merrily bespake, Get thee vp thou arrant beast 350 Fits this season loue to make? Take thy Sheephooke in thy hand, Clap thy Curre and set him on, For our fields 'tis time to stand, Or they quickly will be gon. Rougish Swinheards that repine At our Flocks, like beastly Clownes, Sweare that they will bring their Swine, And will wroote vp all our Downes: They their Holly whips haue brac'd, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... in rest's soft lap, And hoped for long repose, There broke o'er me a thunder-clap, My stay came ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... canoe, which Paul had hauled upon the shore, a sharp, rattling clap of thunder peeled above her head. This was preceded an instant before by a dazzling blue and golden flash that all but blinded the band of wanderers. Another and another flash, followed by their thunderbolts, in quick succession shattered a solid rock over which they had ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work I should choose the Slave Ship; the color is absolutely perfect,' to the frank disapproval of our own George Innes, when he says that it is 'the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted. There is nothing in it. It is not even a fine bouquet of colors.' Some one said it looks like a 'tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.' The lurid light that streams ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... down the open gravel slopes, and the excited population have all rushed out in breathless expectancy to try and make out its character. The villagers of Assababad are simple-hearted people, and both men and women clap their hands like delighted children to have so rare a novelty suddenly appear upon the scene of their usually humdrum and uneventful lives. Quilts are spread for me on the sunny side of the village wall, and they gather eagerly around to feast to the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... which you could stand upright. The legend was that once a year on a certain night a sable horse and cloaked horseman rode across that great apartment, flames snorting from the horse's nostrils, and into the fireplace, disappearing with a clap of thunder. She brought me, too, an owl from the coach-houses, holding the bird by the legs firmly, her hand defended by her ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... suddenly into a moody silence, which was not to the taste of the fellowship who were interested in the adventure. Montigny, leaning forward, gave Villon a clap on the back which made him shrink, and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... were all shouting now, while the crowd went into convulsions. The third baseman reached Curry and grabbed him with one hand, while with the other he frantically tried to get the ball from his pocket and clap it on him. But the ball stuck, and in the mixup both players fell to the ground and rolled ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... place. All being seated, the maitre d'hotel claps his hands, and in an instant, at one coup, the covers are nipped away, as if with the same hand, by waiters stationed at regular distances around the tables. Then the serious work of eating commences. If any embarrassment arises, a clap of the hand calls attention to it, and a sign directs its immediate remedy. Then, as each course is finished, another clap stations the waiters again at their old places, and at a wave of the hand all the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... cut from its side, and poison put into its heart, poor Nation! Or again, you may buy, not of the Third Estate in such ways, but of the Fourth, or of the Fourth and Third together, in other still more felonious and deadly, though refined ways. By doing clap-traps, namely; letting off Parliamentary blue-lights, to awaken the Sleeping Swineries, and charm them into diapason for you,—what a music! Or, without clap-trap or previous felony of your own, you may feloniously, in the pinch of things, make truce with the evident Demagogos, and Son of Nox and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... universe, man's love of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Intellectual masters like Emerson and Renan. ignore conscience; they refuse to acknowledge the selfishness, the baseness, the cruelty of society; they are deaf to the groans of creation; they smile, and expect us to smile, whilst they clap a purple patch of rhetoric on the running sores of humanity. No sackcloth must pass their gate, and no craftsman of Ind ever wove gossamer half so delicate and delightful as the verbal veil with which these literary artists attempt to conceal ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... walkt into a withdrawing room, and there did the same to all who lodged there. Thus having welcomed them for more than two hours' space, it walkt out as it came in, and shut the outer door again, but with the clap of some mightie force. These guests were in a sweat all this while, but out of it falling into a sleep again, it became morning first before they spake their minds; then would they have it to be a dog, yet they described it more to the likeness of a great bear; so fell to the examining ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of six bisques. I holed out the first in five. A, who was in well-deserved trouble all the way, holed out in ten. I remarked, "One up!" to which A made no response. As we moved off to the second tee there was a loud clap of thunder and the heavens burst over our heads. A at once shouted above the tumult, "I take my six bisques and claim the hole and the match." He then headed swiftly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... overturned by his energetic uprising in pursuit of the little tease, who heeded the warning and was safely out of sight on the landing, with one parting giggle as the door of her room was shut with a resounding clap. ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth kind called 'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of wheaten flour, which was separated from the bran by being worked through a hair-sieve tiffany, or temse:—south of England Tammy,—with a brush ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... and the beloved Berthe Delny, "petite poupee jolie," as she so modestly terms herself, bring the grocer and his wife and children and the baker and his wife and children temporarily out of their glasses of Bock to yell their immense approval and clap their hands. I have heard many an audience applaud. I have heard applause for Tree at His Majesty's in London, for Schroth at the Kleines in Berlin, for Feraudy at the Comedie Francaise, for Skinner at the Knickerbocker—and it was stentorian applause and sincere—but I have never heard ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... remain a mystery. No doubt we would have found out sooner or later had it not come on to blow. The thunder had ceased and the lightning flashed less frequently, now that the rain had set in, but the wind began to rise, and almost on the last clap of thunder I felt the wall of the tent shiver under the impact of the blast. It occurred to me in one of those flashes of memory that we sometimes have in moments of tension that we had not troubled about ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... would steal through the glen, and creeping up the mountain would cover it with a veil so dense that the children could not see it, and then they would say to each other: "Our mountain is gone away from us." But when the mist would lift and float off into the skies, the children would clap their hands, and say: "Oh, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... from this particular periodical, because its old files can best put the past back upon its legs and set it going. There is a kind of history-book that sorts the bones and ties them all about with strings, that sets the past up and bids it walk. Yet it will not wag a finger. Its knees will clap together, its chest fall in. Such books are like the scribblings on a tombstone; the ghost below gives not the slightest squeal of life. But slap it shut and read what was written hastily at the time on the pages of The Gentleman's ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... "wot a 'arsh word! Does you know, missie, that he's arsked me to go down to Clap'am presently to 'elp wait on your ma? If you're there, miss, it'll be the 'eight of ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... time I'd got her out to the farm and had heared her talk and seen her clap her hands at the chippies, and laugh at the birds, and go half wild over every little thing she'd see, I knowed I'd got hold o' something that filled up every crack o' my heart. And she didn't come a day too soon, for Jed had got so ugly there ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... yet red with blood and tongues yet black with lies, Clap and clamour—"Parnell spurs his Gladstone well!" Truth, unscared and undeluded by their praise or blame, replies— "Is the goal of fraud and bloodshed ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... savages, at least so long as they remained at the brook; and even when the journey was resumed, which it soon was, their deportment was but little less loving. It is true, that the senior, before mounting his horse, proceeded very coolly to clap the noose, which had previously been placed on Roland's arms, around his neck, where it bade fair to strangle him, at the first false step of the horse; but the young Indians walked at his side, chattering in high good humour; though, as their ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... breeze there was came from the south-west, under a leaden sky and over a leaden sea. At 8.10 A.M., as we were returning from the rocks about three-quarters of a mile off, there was a sudden rambling like a distant thunder-clap; the sands seemed to wave up and down as a shaken carpet, and we both staggered forwards. Others described the movement as rising and falling like the waters of a lagoon. I looked with apprehension at the sea; but the direction of the shock was apparently from west-north-west; and the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it was full of a monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... been three times before the court of session and won each time. I knew your father, who was a decent shoemaker in Cupar, and when he sent you to learn to be a lawyer he little thought he was making a tool for those he despised. Pick a man from the plow, clap on his back a black coat, send him to college, and in five years he is a Conservative, and puckers his mouth at anything so vulgar as a Reformer, booing and clawing to the gentry and nobility. Dod, set a beggar on horseback and he will ride over his own father, and your father was no lick-the-ladle ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... acoustics and a student of electricity, possibly the only man in his generation who was able to focus a knowledge of both subjects upon the problem of the telephone. To other men that exceedingly faint sound would have been as inaudible as silence itself; but to Bell it was a thunder-clap. It was a dream come true. It was an impossible thing which had in a flash become so easy that he could scarcely believe it. Here, without the use of a battery, with no more electric current than that made by a couple of magnets, all the waves of a sound had been carried along a wire and changed ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... soot hanging on the bars of the grate indicated a visit from a stranger. By clapping the hands close to it, if the current produced by this, blew it off at the first clap, the stranger would visit that day. Every clap indicated the day before the visit would be made. This is still a common practice, of which the following lines taken from Glasgow Weekly Herald, 1877, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... she flashed back with a scared smile. The sound of her own voice seemed to clap spurs to her excitement. "Why not at this moment, dear Tabs? Everything comes out sooner or later. If there's going to be any spreading of gossip, one takes the sting out of it by being the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... long in revealing to his grandmother and the devoted Agathe that Philippe, the cashier, the hero of heroes, was in love with Mariette, the celebrated ballet-dancer at the Porte-Saint-Martin. The news was a thunder-clap to the two widows; Agathe's religious principles taught her to think that all women on the stage were brands in the burning; moreover, she thought, and so did Madame Descoings, that women of that kind dined off gold, drank pearls, and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges twain;" and it is said of Gluttony in the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to the Islander, the passengers of both vessels, on board of her, began to clap their hands. I was embarrassed by this demonstration, and after asking Washburn to see that we were made fast to our consort, I sat down in the pilot-house where ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... flayed. Get this in your coconut. You'll walk chalk, you lazy son of a sea cook, or I'll haze you till you wish you'd never been born." He punctuated his remarks with vigorous kicks. "Bully Green runs this tub, strike me dead if he don't. Now you hump for'ard and clap a hand to them ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... over and John Ellwell was succeeding in the general tide of success, established with a family and three young children, all seemed well. Now the Four Corners was rarely visited. The verandas broke down; grass and hardy roses grew into the cracks where the clap-boards had started. The Ellwells, father and son, were fashionable people; the ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... for blood by people who never see it; the iteration of that most illogical demand, a life for a life—and, if possible, two lives for a life; the loud, hectoring, frothy argument that lashes itself into a fury with strong and abusive language—they all came like a clap of thunder after what I am bound to call in comparison the quiet decency of the battlefield. This is a grave thing to say, but it would be unfair to disguise so clear an impression as this that I received, who went to South Africa with so little political ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... the missionaries that the practice of handshaking has been introduced in the Congo. Formerly the custom was to clap hands when exchanging greetings. The blacks saw the Anglo-Saxons grasp hands when they met and being apt imitators in many things, they started to do likewise. One of the first things that impressed me in Africa was the extraordinary amount ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... smack of reality to any one who knows something about the Uitlanders from personal observation, and something about the Boers and Boer life from personal observation. I put these aside and come back to the only argument that will really wash, that has no clap-trap in it. And that is South Africa under one Government, and under a strong and progressive Government. Human nature is pretty much the same all the world over, and if the Boers have been to blame in the past, no doubt the Britons have been just as much ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... heard a sound. His heart stood suddenly still. He held his breath. It was a sound almost indistinguishable from the whisper of the air and the trees and yet it smote upon his senses like the detonation of a thunder-clap. It was more of a PRESENCE than a sound. The trail was clear. He could see to the far side of the open now, and there was no movement. He turned his head—slowly and without movement of his body, and in that instant a gasp rose to his lips, and died there. Scarcely a ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... trumpet shrill and clear. The hens all hang their heads, the chickens sadly peep; The boys look sober, and the girls all weep. Good-by, dear Cocky: sleep and rest, With grass and daisies on your faithful breast; And when you wake, brave bird, so good and true, Clap your white wings and ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... A clap of thunder, loud and awful, resounded through the trembling air. All around him fell into ruin. The lovely fairy, the beautiful garden, sunk deeper and deeper. The prince saw it sinking down in the dark night till it shone only like a star ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... cheers, rush to their guns, and, after a tremendous conflict, succeed in beating off the enemy. Not a syllable of all this; this is not the manner in which the honourable Commander goes to work: the first thing he does is to secure twenty or thirty of his prime sailors who happen to be Catholics, to clap them in irons, and set over them a guard of as many Protestants; having taken this admirable method of defending himself against his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sailors in a very bitter harangue, that they are of different religions; exhorts the Episcopal gunner ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... cauldron. It rose again, churning the sea with its tail, and then raising the caudal fin for twenty feet, or more, and slapping it down upon the water with a shock like the report of a big gun—aye, like a thunder-clap! ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... asked Rouletabille, ready now for the thunder-clap that his question invited, "the name of the inspector you ordered to ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Circle asked questions which were not calculated to elicit a single fact connected with labour, either in Russia or England, but were just the usual clap-trap monkey business, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... under the exact laws of light and the prism, than they are tempered and toned, as objects audible, to give distinctions of sound by their vibrations in the terms of the musical octave. It is not simply that we hear the sea roar and the floods clap their hands in anthems of joy; it is not that we hear the low winds sigh, or the storms howl dolefully, or the ripples break peacefully on the shore, or the waters dripping sadly from the rock, or the thunders ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... you know how to get hold of this evil hag, do it at once; we shall then bind her arms, so that she can make no signs to hurt us, and clap a pitch-plaster on her mouth, to stop the said mouth from calling the devil to her help; after which, I can easily bring her with me to Stettin, and answer for all proceedings to his Grace. Probably she is a-bed still; ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... desire?" The candidate answers, after his prompter, "More light." The Master says, "Brethren, form on the square, and assist in bringing our new-made brother from darkness to light; 'And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.'" At this instant all the brethren clap their hands, and stamp on the floor, as in the preceding degree. The Master says to the candidate, "Brother, what do you discover different from before?" The Master says, after a short pause, "You now discover one point of the Compass elevated above the Square, which denotes light in this ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... was soon over. The whole nation was, at that time, on fire with faction. The whigs applauded every line in which liberty was mentioned, as a satire on the tories; and the tories echoed every clap, to show that the satire was unfelt. The story of Bolingbroke is well known. He called Booth to his box, and gave him fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator[178]. The whigs, says Pope, design a second present, when they ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... said: "A good conventional British ending. Why didn't he clap a pair of wings on the old reprobate and run him up on a wire, the way they used to do in translating little Eva ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... day, when eyes are dimmer, Old Death will have his chance to scoff; For up his sleeve he's got a trimmer Bound to come a yard from the off! It'll do me down! But if he's a chap, Sir, Able to tell a job well done, No doubt he'll give his foe a clap, Sir, Walkin' out of the crease ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... dram, lad, an' take it like a man! God save us! but a bottle's the b'y t' make a fair wind of a head wind. Tom," says he, laying a hand on my head—which was the ultimate expression of his affection—"you jus' ought t' clap eyes on this here little ol' Dannie when he've donned his Highland kilts. He's a little divil of a dandy then, I'm tellin' you. Never a lad o' the city can match un, by the Lord! Not match my little Dannie! Clap eyes," says he, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... loud and terrible sounds of musical instruments, making the hair stand on end, arose. Hearing that loud uproar made by thy troops, the son of Pandu could not bear it, as a snake cannot bear the clap of human palms. With eyes red as copper in rage, with glances that like fire consumed every thing, the son of the Wind-god, like Tvashtri himself, aimed the weapon known by the name of Tvashtri. From that weapon were produced thousands of arrows on all sides. And in consequence of those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end of time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... So absorbed was she in trying to appear unconcerned that she did not see the approach of the storm; in fact, there was a supercharge of restraint on all three of them, and it startlingly broke upon them in a clap of thunder that sounded as if it had smashed a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... ye hags obscene! Your limbs, no sepulture allow'd, The wolves shall tear and birds unclean. My parents who, though grey and old, Shall me survive, their youthful boy When they that spectacle behold Shall clap their hands ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... "Only thunder—a sharper clap than usual—don't be a goose!" said Betty, sharply. "Shall I try it again, Mollie?" for Mollie was still inspecting the motor by the light of one of the oil lamps held over it by Cousin Jane, while Betty was at the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... years hence my eyes may grow If not quite dim, yet rather so, Still yours from others they shall know Twenty years hence. Twenty years hence tho' it may hap That I be call'd to take a nap In a cool cell where thunder-clap Was never heard, There breathe but o'er my arch of grass A not too sadly sigh'd Alas, And I shall catch, ere you can pass, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... that they desired something from us, and that they were in great concern about it. So I asked him, as well as I could, what it was they desired of us; he told us by signs that they desired we should clap our hands to the sun (that was, to swear) that we would not kill them, that we would give them chiaruck, that is to say, bread, would not starve them, and would not let the lions eat them. I told him we would ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe |
