"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there broke out a persistent metallic buzzing, while the bells in the other rooms rang with all their accustomed clarity. He began to undress; but the merciless noise racked his nerves. There was nothing for it but to tie a handkerchief round the clapper of the bell. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... top, and as he paused for a moment to look round him he saw another headless man cowering in the very bell itself, waiting till Hans should seize the bell-pull in order to strike him a blow with the clapper, which would soon have made an end ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... hall there stood many flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair and left nothing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... you to talk to for a whole week," she said; "and you'll let me; won't you? I can't help it, anyway, because as soon as I see you—crack! a million thoughts wake up in me and clipper-clapper goes my tongue. . . . You are very good for me. You are so thoroughly satisfactory—except when your eyes narrow in that dreadful far-away gaze—which I've forbidden, you understand. . . . What have you done ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... metal was ever at one time a molten mass, seething over vast furnaces. Imagine a circular room more than twenty feet in diameter, and of proportionate height, and you have some faint idea of the interior of the Tzar Kolokol. It is said that it required ten strong men to draw the clapper from the centre to the inner rim, by means of ropes, so as to produce the ordinary sounds of which the bell was capable. This I can very well credit; for the great bell of the Ivan Tower, not a third of the size of this, has an ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... had been observed by the passengers, and there was a dead silence aboard, broken only by the thumping of the engines and the splash of the paddle-blades as they pounded the still waters. Presently the dreary clang of the bell, struck by the clapper as the sea rocked it, came to us in uncertain and fitful tones. It was a melancholy sound, but its effect was cheering, because it gave the people some idea of our whereabouts, and was an indication that we had crossed the intervening space ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... unmistakable: the big bell was going as he had never heard it before—not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and were beating it against the side—Dang, dang, dang, dang—stroke following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when faintly, but plainly heard on the still night air, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... bell is never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. The fact is well known of the sentry at Windsor, who, when accused ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... if you stuck a pin in, there was no feeling. Men cover themselves all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution. They 'wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm.' You can tie up the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the solemn conviction that Jesus Christ knew his sin, and the saving assurance that Jesus Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... The clapper on his giant side Shall ring no peal for blushing bride, For birth, or death, or new-year tide, Or festival begun! A nation's joy alone shall be The signal for his revelry; And for a nation's woes alone His melancholy tongue shall moan— Hurra! the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell. Then it began to toll. The boy was an unpractised hand, and the strokes were irregular, sometimes too slow and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... niggers am gwin' anyway. Dey ain't got sense nuff ter put dere han's in de bell ter keep de clapper from ringin', but dey does stuff de bell wid leaves an' it doan ring none, 'sides dat dey tears deir shirts, or steals sheets from missus clothes line an' fold dem ter make a scarf. Dey ties dese 'roun' deir necks ter hide de bell an' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... assumed a kind of ascendency among the quadrupeds—sitting in state in Scott's armchair, and occasionally stationing himself on a chair beside the door, as if to review his subjects as they passed, giving each dog a cuff beside the ears as he went by. This clapper-clawing was always taken in good part; it appeared to be, in fact, a mere act of sovereignty on the part of grimalkin, to remind the others of their vassalage; which they acknowledged by the most perfect acquiescence. A general harmony prevailed between sovereign and subjects, and they would ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... what happened after that, Georgina's memory is a blank, save for a confused recollection of being galloped to Banbury Cross on somebody's knee, while a big hand helped her to clang the clapper of a bell far too heavy for her to swing alone. But some dim picture of the kindly face puckered into smiles for her comforting, stayed on in her mind as an object seen through a fog, and thereafter she never saw the Towncrier go kling-klanging along ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... night, in January, '39, Jake Hinkle came down to the "Court House," hitched his horse to the Court Square fence, and made a straight bend for Sanders' "Grocery," and began to "wood up." Old Jake's tongue was a perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, the stars winking and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... had finished, he flew away, with the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left. He flew far away to a mill, and the mill went "Clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper, clipper, clapper." And in the mill there sat twenty millers, who chopped a stone, and chopped, "Hick, hack, hick, hack, hick, hack;" and the mill went, "Clipper, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... translation without one particle of literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my next neighbor said to me, "that man will be our valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That glib reciter did become the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... I know, but the only one I can think of just now is that it takes a priest to get round a woman; and I always feel inclined to jump on to the table myself when I think of those poor dear creatures sitting on the floor and feeling that awful thing clapper-clawing its way up ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... has an e'e, she has but ane, The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper tongue wad deave a miller: A whiskin beard about her mou', Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... ho! up they hoisted their prize, dripping with moisture, and festooned with verdant water-moss. As the base of the bell emerged from the swamp, the pioneers perceived that a skeleton was clinging with its bony fingers to the clapper, but immediately relaxing its nerveless grasp, sank back into the stagnant water. The bell then gave forth a sullen clang. No wonder that he was in haste to speak, after holding his tongue for such a length ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then instantly all would be silent again. Theirs ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... well begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will leave walking after the players and onely follow you; the simplest ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... day, I was obliged to bribe into a breach of contract. That which you are pleased with, however noisy, does not disturb you. That which is indifferent to you has not more effect. The rattle of coaches, the clapper of a mill, the fall of water, leave your mind undisturbed. But the sound of the pipe, awakening the idea of the lazy life of the piper, better paid than the labouring man, drew the mind aside from its pursuit; and, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... into the boat and seized the heavy oars. Something like laughter, or, as it were, the clapper of a scarer of birds, echoed among the rocks at the rattling of the rowlocks. As if invisible hands withdrew it from me, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... had lived—the reprobate and the ruffian. "Pooh," said he, in his quaint brutality, to the worthy clergyman, who attended his last moments with more zeal than success; "Pooh, what's the difference between gospel and go—spell? we agree like a bell and its clapper—you're prating while ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or a cowbell—that was it; but why did it seem to come from overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly from one quarter to another—from left to right and back again to left? And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny. He had it. It was not a cow at all. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... but a clapper. Simplicity itself. The feathers in the hat next me are bright and pleasing as a child's rattle. The leaf on the plane-tree flashes green through the chink in the curtain. Very strange, ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Chinese characters consisting of extracts from the sacred writings, and the Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who is an expert in the Chinese language, says that there is "not one imperfect character among them.'' The bell when struck by the big wooden clapper emits a deep musical note that can be heard for miles. Such a magnificent bell vividly illustrates the stage of civilization reached by the Chinese while Europe was comparatively barbarous, for the bell was cast as far back as 1406 in the reign of Yung-loh, and the present temple ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... nearly an hour, planted on a chair, watching with a sort of stupor the turning of the fan of this word-mill, whose clapper kept up such an incessant noise. After having criticised to her heart's content her neighbours, including under that title emperors and grand-dukes, and having abundantly multiplied the et ceteras, Princess Gulof suddenly ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... is evident to sense in the string of a violin or harpsichord, for we may perceive by the eye, or feel by the hand, the trembling of the strings, when by striking they are made to sound. If a bell be struck by a clapper on the inside, the bell is made to vibrate. The base, of the bell, is a circle, but it has been found that by striking any part of this circle on the inside, that part flies out, so that the diameter which passes through this part of the base ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... too? den her clapper is stopped at last. [Pause.] So de old woman is dead; well, she led me a hard life—she was de wife of my bosom, she was mine frow for all dat. [Whimpering.] I'm dead too, unt dat is a fact. Tell ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... time with his face hidden and I waited. My head was like a great bronze bell with one thought for the clapper. ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... sympathies. The scene of the in pace, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again, the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it had ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... When the clapper strikes the lip of a bell it produces a sound and sends a tremor out upon the air. The vibrations thus ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... the boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... collaborating in "The Wife," "Lord Chumley," "The Charity Ball," and "Men and Women," he was probably first individualized in the minds of present-day theatregoers when Mrs. Leslie Carter made a sensational swing across stage, holding on to the clapper of a bell in "The Heart of Maryland." Even thus early, he was displaying characteristics for which, in later days, he remained unexcelled. He was helping Bronson Howard to touch up "Baron Rudolph," "The Banker's Daughter" and "The Young Mrs. Winthrop;" ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... acquainted had puss become with this circumstance, and so fond was she of fish, that the moment she heard the noise of the mill clapper cease, she used to scamper off to the dam, and, up to her belly in water, continue to catch ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... always depend on a certain number of sore-heads to make fools of themselves here—you could depend on it in the old days; it's worse in these times when everybody is ready to pitch into a row and clapper-claw right and left simply because they're aching for ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... as the ring of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the French in ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... open your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... said,—"That barbarous tongue of thine is like the imperfect clapper of a broken bell that strikes forth harsh and undesired sounds suggesting nothing! Thy present duty is to hear, and not to speak,—therefore listen discerningly and write with exactitude, so shall thy poor blank scrolls of reed grow rich with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... any doubt! The lamp was beating back and forth like the clapper of a great bell. Where was he? Billy sought a window. He found some little round, glass-covered holes near the low ceiling at one side of the room. It was only at the greatest risk to life and limb that he managed to crawl on all fours to one ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... house in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... bell without further hindrance. When he looked up, to make sure that all was right, he saw another headless little man sitting crouched together in the bell. He had loosened the clapper, and seemed to be waiting for Hans to pull the bell-rope, to drop the heavy clapper on his head, which would certainly have killed him. "Wait a while, my little friend," cried Hans; "we haven't bargained for this. You may have seen how I rolled your little comrades downstairs ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... hundred feet high, which vibrated with every stroke of the great bell hanging midway between his airy perch and the ground. He was sixty years of age, and had white hair, but he was as strong as younger men, and could swing the clapper against the side of the great bell with a boom that could be heard across rivers, and far into the peaceful country, on quiet nights. His eyes were so sharp, that, without the aid of a glass, he could read ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... their appearance, and there were plums in the orchard. Then they made use of all the devices which had been recommended to them against the birds. But the bits of glass made dazzling reflections, the clapper of the wind-mill woke them during the night, and the sparrows perched on the lay figure. They made a second, and even a third, varying the dress, but without any ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the aquarium. But they are very delicate. How beautiful and remarkable are these headless Discophori, as they float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders are but so much sea-water, inclosed in so slight a tissue that it withers in the sun, and leaves only a minute spot of dried-up gelatinous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... was covered with the flying French cavalry—Burgundy, and Bern, and the Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. "What is your clamor about Oudenarde?" says another bell (Bob Major THIS one must be). "Be still, thou querulous old clapper! I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June, when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heroes came face to face each made a prodigious start in the style of a veteran stage champion. Then did they regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious tom-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw themselves into one attitude, then into another striking their swords on the ground first on the right side, then on the left; at last at it they went with incredible ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... threw things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not whine—it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... incidents that defy belief and alienate the sympathies. The scene of the IN PACE, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it has ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des poignees de cheveux, POUR VOIR S'ILS NE BLANCHISSAIENT ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cry, the old man leaped up, forgetting his rheumatism in his excitement and delight, and seizing the great iron clapper, swung it back and forth against the sides of the great brass bell, thus causing it to do what by a strange coincidence the inscription on its side said it was to do, viz.: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... of Greek words myself," said Drysdale; "but old Murdock was too pleased at hearing his own clapper going, and too full of whisky, to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... masquerade: among whom I recognized a zany, with a blue perriwig, bestriding a large goose, and brandishing a golden egg, whilst your worship was clapping your hands in all the raptures of applause. "Perdition seize this fellow," cried your worship, pointing to me, "his tongue chatters like a cherry-clapper, and lies like the prospectus of a new magazine! All you, my pimps, parasites, and pensioners—my leading mistresses and led captain—my mummers and melo-dramatists, who conspire to drill holes in the breeches-pockets of John Bull, that his coin may not corrode for want ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... little—only a little—with Mr. Magruder. There was a postscript from Aunt Melinda, and a separate sheet written by his younger sisters, with scrawly postscripts from the little boys to tell Jack how the workmen had dug down and found the old church bell, and that there was a crack in it, and the clapper was ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... only sometimes a little peppery and argumentative. Then came Mr Jacob Bumble, a sleek fat— pated Scotchman. Next I was introduced to Mr Alonzo Smoothpate, a very handsome fellow, with an uncommon share of natural good—breeding and politeness. Again I clapper—clawed, according to the fashion of the country, a violent shake of the paw being the Jamaica infeftment to acquaintanceship, with Mr Percales, whom I took for a foreign Jew somehow or other at first, from his uncommon ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... into all the corners of the den, command was given that, without let or stop, dead-man's bell should be rung for joy. So the bell was rung, and the princes rejoiced that Mansoul was likely to come to ruin. Now, the clapper of the bell went, 'The town of Mansoul is coming to dwell with us: make room for the town of Mansoul.' This bell therefore they did ring, because they did hope that they ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... all of a piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to force ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... accustomed the citizens to accept this music for ever floating in the upper air as part of the city's life—the most spiritual, poetical, and recreative part of it. Nothing of the kind has ever been tried in London. The crashing peals of a dozen large bells banged violently with clapper instead of softly struck with hammer, the exasperating dong, or ding, dong, of the Ritualist temple over the way, or the hoarse, gong-like roar of Big Ben—that is all we know about bells in London, and no form of church discipline could be more ferocious. Bell noise and bell music are ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... long. Very lately, in the midst of the carnival, he announced his own literary death and burial, and even preached a burlesque funeral sermon upon his life and times. Such an artist, by the very nature of his endeavors, must needs stand above all public-clapper-clawing, pro or con. He writes, not to please his customers in general, nor even to please his partisans in particular, but to please himself. He is his own criterion, his own audience, his own judge and hangman. When ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... 6) charm your tongue] I know not whether I have read, or whether my own thoughts hare suggested, an alteration of this passage. It seems to me not improbable, that Shakespeare wrote clam your tongue; to clam a bell, is to cover the clapper with felt, which drowns the blow, and hinders ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... it is everywhere recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—it is ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to be, I say; and either, Sedgett, you does woman's work, gossipin' about like a cracked bell-clapper, or men's the biggest gossips of all, which I believe; for there's no beating you at your work, and one can't wish ill to you, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... down, and looked up at the long branches, and fancied they were now in the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who asserted they had penetrated to the end of the forest, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... 'I vow, young ladies, I wish I had five hundred arms to reciprocate one with each of you; but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a whapper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your service.' Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks, half a thousand little clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear little eyes sparklin', like so many stars twinklin' ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... marvel not that thou hast taken a liking to my manner of life, good fellow, but 'to like' and 'to do' are two matters of different sorts. I tell thee, friend, one must serve a long apprenticeship ere one can learn to be even so much as a clapper- dudgeon, much less a crank or an Abraham-man.[3] I tell thee, lad, thou art too old to enter upon that which it may take thee years to catch the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... nothing, and the crowded hall of judgment shuddered as one man, when he came to his awful disclosure, hitherto unsuspected, unimagined, of that second strangulation: as to feelings, he might as well have been a galvanized mummy, an automaton lay-figure enunciating all with bellows and clapper, for any sense he seemed to have of shame, or fear, or pity; he admitted his lie about the door, complimented Burke on the accuracy of his evidence, and declared Roger Acton not merely innocent, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the i is short as in pit) does not grow in the United States. It has spotted leaves, large and triangular, and the "bell" is an upright green cup in which stands a tall column, the "clapper." It is called cuckoo-pint because it blossoms about the time the cuckoo returns to England. Our nearest approach to the flower is the "Jack-in-the-Pulpit" or ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... from the dark skies, It took the bell-rope thong, The bell cried "Look! Lift up your eyes!" The clapper shook ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... servants without disturbing the neighbourhood was another matter. There was no bell; only a heavy iron clapper. Adrian tried this cautiously, with little hope of being heard. To his joy the hollow sound had scarcely ceased when footsteps were heard crossing the court, and a small trap in one of the gates was opened. An elderly man with high cheek ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... this while, and had heard great part of the hurry and bustle that had passed, of which he had now some curiosity to know the particulars. He therefore applied to his bell, which he rung at least twenty times without any effect: for my landlady was in such high mirth with her company, that no clapper could be heard there but her own; and the drawer and chambermaid, who were sitting together in the kitchen (for neither durst he sit up nor she lie in bed alone), the more they heard the bell ring the more they were frightened, and as it were ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... shown by our illustrations has been adopted for this purpose on the Austrian lines, and is a simple contrivance. It consists of a cylindrical chamber, a, ending in a narrower tube, c, which forms the seating for a flap valve, d, to which the hammer or clapper, e, is fixed. Steam is admitted through a small pipe, b, at the bottom, and after a certain interval attains sufficient pressure to lift the valve. The opening being large compared with the pipe, b, steam escapes more rapidly than it arrives through the small orifice; the pressure falls, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... and delivered to him. Next he was warned not to approach the dwellings of men, or to wash in running streams, or to handle the ropes of draw-wells, or to drink from the cups of wayside springs. He was forbidden the highways, and when he went abroad a clapper must give token of his coming and going. Nothing that might be used by others should he ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, its chief benefactors, and others may not have done ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... as still as only an English summer night can be, and the first clang of the clapper sounded like a million iron girders falling from a height on to a sheet of tin. He tugged away furiously, with an eye on the now rapidly advancing and loudly shouting ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs in your clear, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... that above the gentle clapper of the waters she could hear a rustle and the scrunching of the fine gravel under carefully measured footsteps. She waited a while. The footsteps seemed to draw nearer, and soon, although the starlit night was very dark, she perceived a cloaked ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Alec Johnstone to him, "wait till auld Clapper gie's ye a biff or twa wi' his muckle tawse. Do ye ken what he does to mak' them nippy? He burns them a wee bit in the fire, an' then st'eeps them in whusky. An' ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... great incitement; for nothing here can be arbitrarily substituted or added: genuine strength can only create from necessity. Wherever in the series of your pieces Goethe himself incites your strength, the bell resounds with its natural full tone, and the clapper beats in it as the heart does in the body. If you had been able to ring the whole "Faust"-bell (I know this was impossible), if the detached pieces had had reference to a great whole, then that great whole would have thrown on the single pieces a reflex which is exactly ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... long been dead. He was a leper; his cruel disease drove him from the haunts of men. The last we knew of him, he went forth with cup and clapper as they are wont. Soon after ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... lower story of the tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel creaked, the enormous capsule of metal started slowly into motion. Quasimodo followed it with his glance and trembled. The first shock of the clapper and the brazen wall made the framework upon which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Coke abhorred? That, at least, would have been more appropriate to present surroundings? But would it? Ah, Philip felt a twinge then. "Touche!" chortled some unseen imp who plied a venomous rapier. Thank goodness, a sailor was standing by the ship's bell, with his hand on a bit of cord tied to the clapper. It would soon be seven o'clock. Even the companionship of the uncouth skipper was preferable to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... in the days when "mother did it," had acted as a sort of Gabriel's trump, was still extant, minus clapper and handle, I was enabled to provide myself with its fac-simile. Armed with this instrument of retribution, I laid me down to sleep by Charlie's side, gloating in anticipation over my ripening ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... on that point now, Eel, but when I was quite a small shaver, in 1906, the fog signal was a bell, rung with a clapper. In July of that year the clapper broke and couldn't be used. A heavy fog came down and blanketed the island so that you couldn't see anything a foot away. That woman light-keeper stood there with a watch in one hand and a nail-hammer in the other and struck that bell once ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper to strike ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... an e'e, she has but ane, [eye] The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, [besides] A clapper tongue wad deave a miller; [deafen] A whiskin beard about her mou, [mouth] Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... in silence, except that for Lilly the beating of her heart seemed to record like a clapper against her brain. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and sound waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the tower, trying to steal the clapper of the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... sole of foot to the nape of his neck—for his head had too much snow on the top of it to let love lodge there. Then the good man perceived that he needed a wife in his manor, and it appeared more lonely to him than it was. And what then was a castle without a chatelaine? As well have a clapper without its bell. In short, a wife was the only thing that he had to desire, so he wished to have one promptly, seeing that if the Lady of Azay made him wait, he had just time to pass out of this ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... horseshoe, rendered alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by clock-work. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and it pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of the circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the clapper go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory motion to a fly-wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... an' in the place o' that, hasna he keepit me in a sleep a' this while as deep as death? An' here do I find him abscondit like a speeder i' the mids o' my leddy's wab, an' me dreamin' a' the night that I had the Deil i' my house, an' that he was clapper-clawin me ayont the loom. Have at you, ye brunstane thief!" and, in spite of the good woman's struggles, he ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... tearing away at the karkiss like mad: fer he'd pooty much made up his mind by this time what sort o' game lay behind it, and he was bound to be at it. Any one would 'a thought his nateral feelings would 'a stood in the way some, seein' as 'twor his own wife he wor clapper-clawin' at sich a rate; but they didn't seem to a bit: and, I tell you, he made the fur fly 'thout con-sideration. The blood streamed down inter my face, and the smell of that and the flesh choked me. My arms wor straightened ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... impossible; even to toll it requires the united strength of three men pulling with separate ropes the vast clapper; above this are ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... not hasty. As I said before, the doors rattled till you would have thought the knocking was reiterated in every room of the Palace. The bell rung out for company, though we could not find that any one tolled the clapper, and the guards let off their firelocks, merely because they knew not what better to do. So, Master Bibbet being, as I said, unsusceptible of his duty, I went down with my poor rapier to the door, and demanded who was there; ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... but usually signifies mother hen, an old dear. Chuffie, fat-faced. Chuse, to choose. Cit, the civet. Cit, a citizen, a merchant. Clachan, a small village about a church. Claeding, clothing. Claes, claise, clothes. Claith, cloth. Claithing, clothing. Clankie, a severe knock. Clap, the clapper of a mill. Clark, a clerk. Clark, clerkly, scholarly. Clarkit, clerked, wrote. Clarty, dirty. Clash, an idle tale; gossip. Clash, to tattle. Clatter, noise, tattle, talk, disputation, babble. Clatter, to make a noise by striking; to babble; to prattle. Claught, clutched, seized. Claughtin, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of our Association. But what, asks the late Sir James Stephen, the eloquent writer in the Edinburgh is a party, political or religious, without a Review? and he replies, "A bell without a clapper." Such a bell would this Association have been without its Journal, and it must gratefully attribute much of its success to the ability with which in the first instance Dr. Bucknill, and subsequently Drs. Robertson, Maudsley, Sibbald, and Clouston, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... three-quarters of an hour at least; it drones along, a rapid flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the inattentive Spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping of dry palms, or by harsh sounds from a kind of wooden clapper made of two discs of mandragora root; it is an uninterrupted stream of prayer; its flow never ceases, and the quavering continues without stopping, like the bleating of an ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... his ugly voice out in the front bar, askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up! Ye see?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of what had happened. "And then I take it he come sneaking down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... women much pursue me; None, however,—e'en the stately, Richly vine-clad, blue-eyed Mosel— Ever from my heart can banish Thee, the Feldberg's lovely daughter. When I through the sands of Holland Weary drag my sluggish waters, And I hear the wind-mills clapper, Tender longings oft steal o'er me For my early lovely sweetheart. Then with deep dull sound my waves roll Onward through the tedious meadows, Roll out far into the North Sea, But not one ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... sallied out, and that the gold-laced hat of the Captain was seen rising like Hesper above the dewy verge of the rising ground, the clash (for it was rather a clash than a clang) of the bell was heard from the old moss-grown tower, and the clapper continued to thump its cracked sides all the while they advanced towards the kirk, Duncan exhorting them to take their own time, "for teil ony sport wad ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... handle hit her the blow might prove fatal, whereupon the girl, burning to show off her great strength, did not wait for the end of the bar to recover its normal position, but seizing the iron rod when it was only half way round, tore it back again, with the result that the steel clapper did not cast the gold piece between the matrices in the usual way and it thus received a double impression, being stamped with a two-fold figure of the Mother of God on one side and a two-fold figure of the royal profile ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... very few turbellaria we find otolith vesicles. These are little sacks in the skin, lined with neuro-epithelial cells and having in the middle a little concretion of carbonate of lime hung on rather a stiffer hair, like a clapper in a bell. Such organs serve in higher animals as organs of hearing, for the sensory hairs are set in vibration by the sound-waves. It is quite as probable that they here serve as organs for feeling the slightest vibrations in the surrounding water, and thus giving warning of approaching food ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Philip Sidney as saying that the "chief life of modern versifying consists in rhyme." Swift agrees with him. "Verse without rhyme," he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell without a clapper." He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatly improved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroic and sonorous than ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... The Clapper Rail, or Mud Hen, is one of the most remarkable, and like its relative, the Corncrake of England, makes its note heard all the night long. It is fourteen inches in length and eighteen in the stretch of the wings; the bill is two ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... contains a gruesome moral tale by Ricardo Santiago, entitled "The Bell of Huesca". It is proper to remark here, that an important sentence was omitted at the top of page 3. The passage should read "'Sire, thy bell has no clapper!' 'Thy head shall be the clapper'; said the king, and he sent him to the block" etc. Whatever may be said of the aptness of the allegory, it is evident that Mr. Santiago possesses the foundations of a pure and forcible prose style, and a commendable sense of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... spirit and go that Rose had, and a far better figure. Now you know, Anne, I always take the ground that us women ought to stand by each other. We've got enough to endure at the hands of the men, the Lord knows, so I hold we hadn't ought to clapper-claw one another, and it isn't often you'll find me running down another woman. But I never had much use for Rose Elliott. She was spoiled to begin with, believe ME, and she was nothing but a lazy, selfish, whining creature. Frank was no hand to work, so they were ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... are apt to continue and to complete the devastation which the first brings about. The vibrations due to any one shock take place with great rapidity. They may, indeed, be compared to those movements which we perceive in the margin of a large bell when it has received a heavy blow from the clapper. The reader has perhaps seen that for a moment the rim of the bell vibrates with such rapidity that it has a misty look—that is, the motions elude the sight. It is easy to see that a shaking of this kind is particularly ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... "'Keep your clapper shut, Hornblower,' returned the Squire, telling Hornblower, how, if he doubted his capacity for the law business, he would read him Haliburton's opinions, and convince him that they precisely conformed with his. 'Remember you're in the presence of a Justice of the Peace!' he added, as Hornblower ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... one will ask, "Have you found a wicker's nest?" which is a biting sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in a general sense of food, or in the more particular ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... entrance there was another bell. A long red streamer hung from its clapper, and under it was a great box with bars over the top. On the box there perched a ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... anything but Blowes, Coles,[143] my Drink, and that clapper of the Divell, the tongue of a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... pounds each. The pendulum is 16 feet long, and the bob weighs 180 pounds, and yet is suspended by a spring no thicker than a shilling. The clock goes eight days, and strikes the hours on the great bell, the clapper of which weighs 180 pounds. Below the great bell are two smaller bells, on which the clock strikes the quarters. In the northern tower is the bell that tolls for prayers. Mr. E.B. Denison pronounced the St. Paul's bell, although the smallest, as by far the best of the four large bells of England—York, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
