"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... danger, but too late to stave it off. His immense head struck the rear of the monster with such momentum that he was lifted fully a foot from the ground, the concussion sounding like the crack of ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... beri-beri. Hence the fact that the hair is in Class I, while the scalp is at the bottom of Class V. So again and again. To break one's collar-bone (Class II) is to be in harmony with the nobility and gentry; to crack one's shin (Class IV) is merely vulgar. And what a difference between having one's tonsils cut out (Class II) and getting a new set of ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... quality of excited suspense. This suggested to her, oddly, that she had, with the liberty she was taking, an air of intention, and the impression betrayed by her companion's eyes grew more distinct in a word of warning. "It's of value, but its value's impaired, I've learned, by a crack." ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of coloured rag tied to the, but it will hardly commend itself to any archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the axe-head represent string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that metal took the place of the stone axe-head, and being tough the new substance needed no support. The mightiest man in the prehistoric days was he who had the best weapon, and knew how to wield it ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... discern a clear outline of the figures, but he had no doubt that these were Urrea's Mexicans. He waited only a moment longer to assure himself that the dark moving line was fact and not fancy. Then, aiming his rifle at the foremost shape, he fired. While the echo of the sharp crack was yet speeding across the ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was Muriel's reply. "We were both on board together, and standing at the crack of the door watched you sitting at dinner that evening. Elma told me that she believed that there was a plot against your life, but why she would not tell me. She evidently knew of the proposed rifling of the safe at the Consulate. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only it had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... river—all the landscape of his bliss, the prison of his intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end desirable as death! What kept ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that it is strongest in the lower social strata. Several years ago I went to the first night of a rather foolish play about ancient Rome, in which an early Christian is brought in to be very mildly tortured on the stage. At the first crack of the whip my neighbours sprang from their seats, crying, 'Shame! Stop that!'; and the scene had to be removed in subsequent performances. The operatives in a certain factory stopped the engines for an hour because they heard a cat mewing among the machinery. Having with difficulty ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... nice crack of some kind or other on the head," he said, "and he still feels the effects of it, as now ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lordship, I was sitting at work by my fireside between the hours of six and seven in the evening, just as it was growing dusk, and little Jack was spinning beside me, when all at once crack went the window, and down fell a little basket of cakes that was set up against it. I started up and cried to Jack: 'Bless me, what's the matter?' 'So,' says Jack, 'sombody has thrown a stone and broke the window, and I dare say it is some of the schoolboys.' With that I ran out of the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... ill formed; his legs were short and shrunken. He was the schoolmaster of Wythburn, and his name Monsey Laman. The dalesmen found the little schoolmaster the merriest comrade that ever sat with them over a glass. He had a crack for each of them, a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow associated with the idea ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Which Heathcote did, and was girt hand and foot with pads, and led by his senior down into the fields, where for an hour he stood gallantly at the wickets, swiping heroically at every ball, and re-erecting his stumps about once an over, as often as they were overturned by the desolating fire of the crack bowler of Templeton. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... by the most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held to be a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who had held me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years, my heart handsomely pieced again,—but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride and nearly winged ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the artistic possibilities of "My Uncle Toby" and "Corporal Trim," and had realized the full potentialities of humour contained in the contrast between the two brothers Shandy. The very work of sharpening and deepening the outlines of this humorous antithesis, while it made the crack-brained philosopher more and more of a burlesque unreality, continually added new touches of life and nature to the lineaments of the simple-minded soldier; and it was by this curious and half-accidental process that there came to be added to the gallery of English fiction one ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Alexandrovna, I've just looked out, I keep running to peep through the crack, I am in fear ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ox driver. He drove five or six yokes at a time. He walk long side of em, wagons loaded up. He toted a long cowhide whoop. He toted it over his shoulder. When he'd crack it you could hear his whoop half a mile. Knowed he was comin' on up to the house. Them oxen would step long, peartin up when he crack his whoop over em. He'd be haulin' logs, wood, cotton, corn, taters, sorghum cane and stuff. He ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... possible. We had to desert one of you, so we stuck by the old man. We hid your revolver and money- belt under the seventh palm, on the beach to the right of this shack. If I'd known you had twenty double eagles on you all this time, I'd have cracked your skull myself. The crack you've got is healing, and if you pull through the fever you'll be all right. If you do, give this woman twenty pesos I borrowed from her. Get her to hire a boat, and men, and row it to Amapala. This ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... of excitement was in the voice of the young Mexican. He knew the record of the Texas Rangers. They took their men in dead or alive. This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack. In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward, but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an assignment—"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... were pitilessly being put to the sword. Charged was the air of Worcester with the din of that fierce massacre. The crashing of shivered timbers, as doors were beaten in, mingled with the clatter and grind of sword on sword, the crack of musket and pistol, the clank of armour, and the stamping of men and horses in that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not because they necessarily came so in order of time, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... even of the magistrate, a small-sized man, to whom a full grey beard, a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, and a deep voice imparted an air of dignity he would not otherwise have possessed. That they should crack jokes with each other over such serious matters was something he could not understand, as with eyes and ears that missed nothing he observed all ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... apparently unmoved, though it was plain that he was intensely watchful and ready. But the foe assailed him where least expected. In a little hole right under the very spot on which he sat lay one of the zigzag crackers. Its first crack caused the chief, despite his power of will and early training, to bound up as if an electric battery had discharged him. The second crack sent the eccentric thing into his face. Its third vagary brought it down about his knees. Its fourth sent it into the gaping mouth of the cheeky one. At the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... is to crack or break the nuts in what is called the 'kibbling-mill.' The roasting has made them quite crisp, and with a few turns of the whizzing apparatus, they are divested of their husk, which is driven into a bin ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... my clenched fist ... and this brought on the fracas.... I heard a heavy pair of feet bounding on the floor directly above my head.... Then there was a scraping and a sound like the tearing up of carpets.... Presently I heard an iron bolt crack back and the floor above my head began rising slowly until I found myself looking into the muzzle of a Mauser held in the clenched hands of a tall square-faced man with a ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... architectural purity. It is built of red stone, and is not ugly in itself. There is a very nice Norman porch to it, and little bits of Lombard Gothic have been well copied from Cologne. But windows have been fitted in with stilted arches, of which the stilts seem to crack and bend, so narrow are they and so high. And then the towers with high pinnacled roofs are a mistake—unless indeed they be needed to give to the whole structure that name of Romanesque which it has assumed. The building is used ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr. Lessingham, and there you are—Major Felstead's friend and a Guardsman! Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments. I shall certainly ask him to dinner ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... think. This one—or the next. No; it's this one, I remember the fence. It would never do to walk right up the front path when you're going to crack a crib. We'll have to get in a back window, anyway, so we'd better go a little farther down the road, get over the wall, circle round, and come up ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... like drops of water that fall into a room through some crack, and when in its return it is scattered and disordered much like the twine of a cord which is unravelled, the bones are dried up ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... this moment that William noticed a large megaphone, one of Walter's cherished possessions, in the back part of the Emporium. "Say, Walter," he cried excitedly, "let me have a crack at the megaphone." ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have been used to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... and his father drove to Enterprises, and the young inventor plunged into the job of organizing an engineering crew for the missile hunt. Art Wiltessa, a crack underwater specialist as well as ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... could be done, he will try another speculation. The Irishman may miss it too; but to console himself he will break the head of any man who may have impeded him in his efforts, as a proof that he ought to have succeeded; or if he cannot manage that point, he will crack the pate of the first man he meets, or he will get drunk, or he will marry a wife, or swear a gauger never to show his face in that quarter again; or he will exclaim, if it be concerning a farm, with a countenance full of simplicity—"God bless your honor, long life ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... cocaine and heroin from South America; illicit production of cannabis on small, scattered plots; domestic cocaine consumption is rising, particularly crack cocaine ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... short a yarn of talk which, when it comes to likings and dislikings, might last to almighty crack: I'll ask you to do nothing that Lord L'Estrange does not sanction. Will ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crack or two in her inner skin. There, let me get a light, and I'll explain it to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... I have got one of the hardest nuts to crack that were ever put before me. If I crack it, I get five thousand pounds for the kernel. If I don't crack it—but that's a possibility I can't bear ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... she's got! and how well her masts stand. How light she looks aloft—and yet everything that is required— not a block too large—and yet everything works as easy as possible. On deck, too, you'll find there's no jim-crack nonsense about her— everything is for service, and intended to last; and yet, where there is any brass or varnished wood, it's kept as bright and clean as can be. There isn't a ship on the station can come up to us in reefing or furling; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... gave me a crack on the back and he put his arm around my shoulder awful nice and friendly like, and it made me kind of proud because ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and ox-yokes; and corn to shell, and hemp to hackle; and at which ever corner of the fireplace Winthrop might set himself down, a pair of little feet would come pattering round him, and petitions, soft but strong, to cut an apple, or to play jackstraws, or to crack hickory nuts, or to roast chestnuts, were sure to be preferred; and if none of these, or if these were put off, there was still too much of that sweet companionship to suit with the rough road to learning. Winnie was rarely put off, and never rejected. And the little garret ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... old man," teased his grandfather. "Don't let your knife go through the side or you'll let out a crack of light ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... slinking about the woods and rocks with his gun, and has generally a hare or a partridge in his bag; but on Sundays he wears a cocked hat, a gold-laced coat with a sword at his side, and he brings down his staff upon the church pavement with a thundering crack at those moments when the wool-gathering mind has to be hurried back and fixed upon the sacredness of the ritual. He is a well-knit, agile fellow, who knows every inch of his ground, and he has ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... another, and, at that instant Tom heard some one's hand on the knob. The door opened a crack, letting out a pencil of light. The men were evidently coming out. The young inventor did not wait to hear more. He had a clue now, and, running on tiptoes, he made his way to the staircase and out of the scuttle ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... and yet close enough to the sea to overcome the intensity of subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each other, the eyes of the press followed them with more persistent interest than it has ever followed ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... the man mounted on the mule overtook her, and she turned about and faced him, setting her back against the wall. Then I crouched down and hid myself among some banana-trees, and watched what passed through a crack in the wall. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... allowance which he himself considered a very handsome one. But my husband," continued Mrs. Lester, with a faint smile, "had been engaged in commercial pursuits all his life, until a year or two before his death, and he did not know that the expenses, and the—well, the style of living in a crack cavalry regiment are—what they are. More than once Guy asked his father to increase his allowance—considerably. His father always refused—he was a strict and, in some ways, a very hard man about money. And so—my son had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... a crack in the door Roger saw the crew coming aboard. The engineer was in the lead; behind him came the captain, a tall man of vicious appearance, and a half-naked ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... bear near the house, probably in imitation of the Zoological Gardens; but the idea is rather a failure, and would appear more suitable over the door of a perfumer's shop, to intimate the presence of bear's grease. A little gim-crack model of a wooden house is also visible, by way of an ornament, stuck on the summit of a wooden pillar, but the effect is disproportioned to all surrounding objects, even more than the designs on Chinese paper; where men of six feet high are represented entering mansions half ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... approved of this idea, and encouraged the children by every means in his power; so that, for more than three weeks, the beans went in regularly and the halfpence in Tuttu's store, which he kept like a magpie hidden away in a crack of the ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... lively time of it. A gentleman of colour, from Jamaica, who was returning to the mines after escorting young Mr. Seemann to the port, and who could find no place to rest in, excepting an old hammock, kept his long arms going round like a windmill, every now and then wakening every one up with a loud crack, as he tried to bring his flat hand down on one of his tormentors. A mosquito, however, is not to be caught, even in the dark, in such a way. It holds up its two hinder legs as feelers; the current of air driven ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... paradox is that the men who have done the most for North America did not intend to do so. They set out on the far quest of a crack-brained idealist's dream. They pulled up at a foreshortened purpose; but the unaccomplished aim did more for humanity ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... where the Indians had camped I came upon two white men. They were at one side of the trace and curiously busy among some rocks at the top of a fifty-foot cliff. They were hauling a rope from a deep crack or crevice in the rocks and were ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... I know he's wanted the house a long time. Of course, he's a hard nut to crack, is Dain. But he went up to two thousand, and yesterday I got him to make it guineas. That's a good ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... his time, elected to halt the German drive with Americans. The Marines of the United States forces were given the post of honor, and at Chateau-Thierry the counter-thrust of Foch was commenced by a complete defeat of the Prussian Guard and other crack German regiments, by the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... of their masther Is often in plasther O' Paris, put over the door of a tap; A fine chubby fellow, Ripe, rosy, and mellow, Like a peach that is ready to drop in your lap. Hurrah! for brave Bacchus, A bottle to crack us, He's a friend of the people, like bowld ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... acclamation, of the College heavyweights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces? The huge butcher, fifteen stone,—two hundred and ten pounds,—good weight,—steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... arises as a small lump, like a wart generally, on the lower lip in men from forty to seventy. Sometimes it appears at first simply as a slight sore or crack which repeatedly scabs over but does not heal. Its growth is very slow and it may seem like a trivial matter, but any sore on the lower lip in a man of middle age or over, which persists, should demand the immediate attention of a surgeon, because early ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... asunder: Patti-Patty was revealed on the stage, while the band played as if possessed. Lily, in the shadow of the wings, put her hand to her heart; her veins were ablaze. And that audience, at which she peeped through a crack in the scenery; that audience was hers, with its rustling silks, its bare shoulders, its diamonds, its flowers! She would have liked to step ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... could speak the buggy began to sway dangerously from side to side and the earth seemed to rise up before them. Next minute there was a roar and a sharp crash, and at her side Dorothy saw the ground open in a wide crack ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... hear a judge thus use his authority, I always wish that I had the power of forcing him to some very uncongenial employment,—jumping in a sack, let us say; and then when he jumped poorly, as he certainly would, I would crack my whip and bid him go higher and higher. The more I so bade him, the more he would limp; and the world looking on, would pity him and execrate me. It is much the same thing when a witness is ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... for a few moments, as old Captain Nourse, who had them in his keeping, and eyed them as if he was afraid that he might lose one of them in a crack and be held accountable on his bond, rattled away at the unruly lock. Looking at them then, you would have seen faces all of a New England cast but one. There was a tall, powerful negro called George Washington, a man well ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... solemnized, being a sacrament of the Church, would hold fast until the crack of doom unless the Pope annulled it, and, as you know, the Pope is out of favour in this realm on this very matter of marriage. Let me explain the law to you, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... if you didn't accidentally throw a handful of bullets among their legs that crack!" said Sneak, observing the now discomfited and retreating Indians, as they endeavoured to bear off their wounded, and then firing on them again himself as they vanished down the valley. The like result was witnessed above, and again in a very short time ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... to be made unhappy," replied Benedick. "Crack what jokes you will. As for you, Claudio, I had hoped to run you through the body, but as you are now my kinsman, live ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... 333) collected was, however, considered sufficient by the juries which tried the prisoners; Fisher went to the scaffold on 22nd June, and More on 6th July. Condemned justly or not by the law, both sought their death in a quarrel which is as old as the hills and will last till the crack of doom. Where shall we place the limits of conscience, and where those of the national will? Is conscience a luxury which only a king may enjoy in peace? Fisher and More refused to accommodate theirs to Acts of Parliament, but neither believed conscience to be the supreme tribunal.[937] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... calamity. Even the irrepressible man with the apron, who always turns up to sell nuts and sweetmeats in a crowd, plied his trade in silence, and found few indeed (to the credit of the nation be it spoken) who had the heart to crack a nut at such a time as this. The police were on the spot, in large numbers, and in mute sympathy with the people, touching to see. Julius, on being stopped at the door, mentioned his name—and received an ovation. His brother! oh, heavens, his brother! The people closed round him, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... frequently employed for excluding the air from wounds caused in the process of grafting. These are liable to crack, unless the clay is well kneaded and mixed with wood ashes or ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... my chair and grabbed its arms until I could hear my knuckles crack. My mind snapped shut with an almost audible crack. I was ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... dropping bullets began to whiz past my window and crack upon the tin roof in quite a shower. The Boer snipers had crept up into Brooks's Farm, beyond the Harrismith railway, and were firing at the heads of our men on Junction Hill. Whenever they missed the edge of the hill the bullets fell on my cottage. At last some guns opened ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... demands. In cramp of the leg, compulsory movement usually causes relaxation very quickly; therefore the animal should be led out of the stable and be forced to run or trot. Sudden, nervous excitement caused by a crack of the whip or smart blow will often bring about immediate relief. Should this fail, the anodyne liniment may be used along the inside of the thigh, and chloroform, ether, or laudanum given internally. An ounce of the chloral hydrate will ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... crack it some day," remarked Edna, "and then what would you do, miles from a hooker as you are? I was telling you, Miss Lacey, that I have a mother with only one foible,—she doesn't like our island. You will see what heresy it is when you come over there. So Miss Martha has taken ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... cry before them: 'This is the reward and the lest of the reward for whoso exceedeth in talk and vexeth the folk and turneth their joy to annoy.' This is what I wish, and no more." Said the Caliph, "Allah grant thee that thou seekest! Let us crack one last cup and rise ere the dawn draw near, and to-morrow night I will be with thee again." Said Abu al-Hasan, "Far be it!" Then the Caliph crowned a cup, and putting therein a piece of Cretan Bhang,[FN20] gave it to his host and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... as low as possible. They heard the tree bend and crack. Then came a tremendous crash, and they felt one ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... blastin'. He'd allus thoct as he'd dee that way, you know. They pit mair pooder i' quarry than common; and the ston' it split, and roared, and crackit, wi' a noise like tha crack o' doom. And one bit on 't, big as ox, were shot i' th' air, an' fell, unlookit for like, and dang him tew the groun', and crushit him,—a-lyin' richt athwart ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... up, and crack! crack! crack! in quick succession, three or four or five reports—I don't know how many. At the first shots the Sheriff fell forward on his face. Williams started to run along the side-walk; the groups of men at the corner, through whom he ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... and repeated explosions of volcanoes are shown by Mr. Mitchell in the Philosoph. Transact. to arise from their communication with the sea, or with rivers, or inundations; and that after a chink or crack is made, the water rushing into an immense burning cavern, and falling on boiling lava, is instantly expanded into steam, and produces ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... prairie on this novel and hitherto unridden steed! A spirit of wild, ungovernable glee instantly arose within him. Seizing the handle of the heavy hunting-whip, which still hung from his right wrist by a leather thong, he flourished it in the air, and brought it down on his charger's flank with a crack like a pistol-shot, causing the animal to wriggle its tail, toss its ponderous head, and kick up its heels, in a way that wellnigh ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the boards and the fishermen proceeded to the river bank near the bridge to find the canoe. It was long, and, for a dug-out, fairly wide, but ancient and black, and moist at the bottom, owing to an insufficiently caulked crack. Its paddles had seen much service, and presented ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop. Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay. Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whole of the last night in searching every nook and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me. Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the reader has ever been upon a frozen lake at a time when the weather was growing colder, and the ice, therefore, was shrinking, he may have noted the rending sound and the slight vibration which comes with the formation of a crack traversing the sheet of ice. At such a time he feels a movement which is an earthquake, and which represents the simpler form of those tremors arising from the sudden rupture of fault planes. If he has a mind to make the experiment, he may hang a bullet by a thread from a small frame which ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... along the passages and viewing the different apartments, we saw the house would accommodate a great number of persons. The rooms were long and narrow, many of them containing a number of beds; but in this bracing mountain air there is no fear of bad ventilation. No crack of my window was open, but the wind blew furiously outside, and there was a decidedly 'healthy coolness' about the apartment. The room was uncarpeted and scantily furnished, but every thing was spotlessly clean, and in pleasant contrast with the dirty luxury of some of the Continental inns. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... months' confinement, they suffered incredible misery and torments. They were thrice called out, and put to the rack or question; their legs were straight bound with cords, which were drawn with so much violence, that their bones breaking, were heard to crack like sticks in a fagot. Amidst these tortures the officers cried out to them: "Adore the sun, and obey the king, if you would save your lives." Sadoth answered in the name of all, that the sun was but a creature, the work of God, made for ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... too, but Juli's agonized face came between me and the picture of disaster. I clenched my fist around the chair arm, not surprised to see the fragile plastic buckle, crack and split under my grip. If ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... to buy some vegetables in the middle of the morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody bought it and everybody called it the "yell." It was full that morning of stupendous news and still more stupendous ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... for you, Alec!" he cried. "Where's my hammer, Flip? I want to crack some of those nuts we gathered ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... before I crack this 'ere egg, I'd like to state that eggs is four bits apiece. Only two hens left—" She broke off short, and turning upon Handsome, who had been gradually sidling up until his elbows almost touched hers, she repulsed him a ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That will be ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... allusion to his office reminded him of his professional duties, he added: "I plumb forgot, Auntie Sue, this gentleman is Mr. Ross. He is one of William J. Burns's crack detectives. Don't be scared, though, he ain't ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... the cattle home. The barking of dogs sounded clear in different parts of the vale, and about scattered hamlets, on the hill sides. I could hear the far-off prattle of a company of girls, mingled with the lazy joltings of a cart, the occasional crack of a whip, and the surly call of a driver to his horses, upon the high road, half a mile below me. From a wooded slope, on the opposite side of the valley, the crack of a gun came, waking the echoes for a minute; and then all seemed to sink into a deeper stillness than before, ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... to make Jack a squirrel-skin overcoat, and asked him to carry while I killed; loaded him with squirrels, neck, shoulders, breast, back, and loins, till as he moved he tottered and swayed like a squirrel pyramid; about sundown challenged him to what he had not yet had, some crack shooting, which in that light requires young eyesight, and barked the squirrel for him four times; later still snuffed the candle for him, having brought one along for the purpose; and then, with my step fresh, ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... got the stoniest eyes you can imagine. Ha, ha! They were frightened. But they pulled. Oh, yes, they pulled all day, sometimes looking wild and sometimes looking faint. I lost nothing of it because I had to keep my eyes on them all the time, or else—crack!—they would have been on top of me in a second. I rested my revolver hand on my knee all ready and steered with the other. Their faces began to blister. Sky and sea seemed on fire round us and the sea steamed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and dim, a bush in the wilds of Kapa'a, The paddlers bend to their work, as the flower-laden Shrub inclines to the earth in Maile-huna; They sway like reeds in the breeze to crack their bones 5 Such the sight as I look at this tossing grove, The rhythmic dip and swing on to Wailua. My call to the witch shall fly with the breeze, Shall be heard at Pua-ke'i, e-he, e-he! The flower-stalk Laukona beguiles man to love, 10 Can bring ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with Cyril, thrust a stout-shod little foot against his brother's chest; there was a crack!—the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father's second-best Waterbury watch, which Cyril had borrowed ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... weight had already weakened the wood. When Tom attempted to draw himself up, crack! went the board, and a jagged piece broke off. This would not have been so serious if the ice had not given way. Then, into the water, with many strange, guttural cries, slipped the deaf and dumb man. Grace herself was wet through by the rush of water over ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... the crack of a whip, and we soon met Mr. Larmer at the head of the party. I continued the route in the same direction until after sunset, when we were obliged to encamp without reaching water. Bulger however, with the assistance of the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... base his watery throne; The billows in angry fury shall rise, And every sea-mark and dam despise; The lightning shall gleam through the firmament black While the poles of earth and of heaven shall crack, The ocean the heights of Olympus explore, From thousandfold jaws with wild deafening roar The thunder shall howl, while with mad jubilee The hurricane fierce sings in triumph ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Chicago, burrid undher victims; Captain Epaminondas Lucius Quintus Cassius Marcellus Xerxes Cyrus Bangs of Hoganpolis, Hamilcar Township, Butseen County, died iv hear-rt disease whin his scoor was tied. Th' las' named was a prominent leader in society, a crack shot an' a gintleman iv th' ol' school without fear an' without reproach. His son succeeds to his lunch ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing round, to strike him in his new position, Amyas' whole broadside, great and small, had ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... which this was fitted was often fulfilled during the voyage. Many a time on charging a large ice-floe the stem of the ship glided upwards until the bows were raised two or three feet, then the weight of the ship acting downwards would crack the floe beneath, the bow would drop, and gradually the ship would forge ahead to tussle against the [Page 23] next obstruction. Nothing but a wooden structure has the elasticity and strength to thrust its way without injury ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... altar I have surrendered my choicest hopes. I had fondly hoped that in approaching age it was to beguile my solitary hours, and I will stand by it as long as there is a Union to stand by and when the ship of the Union shall crack and groan, when the skies lower and threaten, when the lightnings flash, the thunders roar, the storms beat, and the waves run mountain-high, if the ship of State goes down, and the Union perishes, I would rather perish with it than survive ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... corn, when a crow, flying past, swooped off with a grain from the winnowing basket and perched on a tree close by to eat it. The farmer's wife, greatly enraged, flung a clod at the bird with so good an aim that the crow fell to the ground, dropping the grain of corn, which rolled into a crack in the tree. The farmer's wife, seeing the crow fall, ran up to it, and seizing it by the tail, cried, 'Give me back my grain of corn, or I ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... when we parted in this cabin in New York Harbor was the necessity of prudence and discretion in the discharge of my duties; and I am sure his advice saved me from falling into the traps set for me by Hungerford and Pawcett, and enabled me to capture two of the enemy's crack steamers." ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... There you sit sunning yourself, and stretching yourself till your bones crack, leaving me to do all the work alone. I can keep you here no longer. Spring is at hand. Off with you into the world and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... yeast-jar, an expression of serious intent on his face. Some cooks sing when they make bread; the Scotchman I told you of in a previous letter invariably trilled "Stop yer ticklin', Jock," and his bread was invariably below par. But this cook does not warble. He only releases the stopper with a crack like a gun-shot, flings the liquid "doughshifter" over the lake in a devastating shower, and commences to knead, swearing softly. Anon the exorcism changes to a noise like that affected by ostlers ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... through his brain in an instant moment, like things happen in a dream, and then he was brought up sudden and fell so light that he knew he weren't dead yet, but heard something crack at the same moment. And then Amos discovered he was on a rotten landing-stage of old timber, with the shaft hole above him and a head, outlined against the stars, looking down, and another hole extending below. He was, in fact, catched half-way to ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... ones again the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern Japan as a "black hut" in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... were about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn't see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we not ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... towards others; he will only not be disturbed in the pleasant repose of his sensuality, and this he obtains through the activity of his understanding. Always on the alert, and good-humoured, ever ready to crack jokes on others, and to enter into those of which he is himself the subject, so that he justly boasts he is not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others, he is an admirable companion for youthful idleness and levity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and his alarm increased as he insisted that he occasionally heard the crack of dry twigs behind them, as if broken by some one pursueing. But Yates deriding his fears, pressed on, making the woods resound with a song, to which he gave utterance from unusually full and strong lungs. Downing gradually slackened his pace, and when Yates was some ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Crack fifty walnuts and remove the meats as nearly as possible in unbroken halves. Squeeze over them the juice of two large lemons, or three small ones, and leave them for several hours, or a day if convenient. Just before dinner ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent thoroughfares, of shouting drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips and the clatter of wheels; an uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise, adventure, youth; a city of pulsing energies, the center of a boundless land; a port of commerce with all the world, of stately ships with snowy sails; ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... sir. Crack'ell Court, fust turnin' on the left. I'll show yer, sir," piped the ragged urchin, whose heartfelt interest Leroy had purchased, along with his query, by means of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... beheld a field of battle on the snows of the River Raisin, presenting in bold relief long files of those terrible enemies, whose massacres had filled his native State with tales of horror, must have felt some stirring sensations. But the crack of the Indian rifle, and his savage yell, awoke in him the chivalric instincts of his nature; and the promptitude with which he communicated his enthusiasm to a few comrades around, and rushed forward ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... spot they aren't. They're like coiled wire—when they stretch out to get through a crack they have no dimension except length, their bodies are mere imaginary points to hang feathers on. You don't ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... a fine man, than a slender or elegant one. He had the true Anglo-Saxon physiognomy, blue eyes, and light brown hair that waved, rather than curled, round his broad handsome forehead. And, then, what a mustache the fellow had! (He was officer in a crack yeomanry corps.) Not one of the composite order, made up of pomatum and lamp-black, such as may be seen sauntering down St James's Street on a spring afternoon, with incipient guardsmen behind them—but worthy of an Italian painter or Hungarian hussar; full, well-grown, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... from somewhere came a series of tiny noises, that, though they were so faint and small, suggested rifles fired at a great distance. Crack, crack, crack! went ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... to him before he saw a faint gleam of light, and edging himself along, found himself again under the hatchway, through a crack in which the light was shining. It was some hours before the hatch was lifted off, and he saw two ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... continued, and the brave Libyan slingers, while shouting and even singing, began to press forward. From both sides missiles whizzed like beetles, buzzed like bees, sometimes they struck one another in the air with a crack, and every minute or two on this side or that some warrior went to the rear groaning, or fell dead immediately. But this did not spoil the humor of others: they fought with malicious delight, which gradually changed ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... both bare, clenched fists, one after the other, with his weight behind each, and both blows landed. The sounds of their impact rang like pistol-shots, and beneath his knuckles he felt naked flesh crack and give. Something fell away from him with a grunt like a poled ox. And then, in an instant, before he could recover his poise, even before he knew that the turned-in stone of the emerald ring had bitten deep into his palm, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... I first took them down Feather-bed Lane, where we stuck fast in the mud. I then rattled them crack over the stones of Up-and-down Hill. I then introduced them to the gibbet on Heavy-tree Heath; and from that, with a circumbendibus, I fairly lodged them in the horse-pond at the ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 'They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all events,' Mr. Fenellan said. 'But if we let our journals go on making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game with our loss of the covey. An unstable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... day went by, then another and another, and still no letter came. Her big heart began to fail and the rainbow in the sky of her life to pale away. The singing of the birds on the roof pained her now. How could they crack their little throats like that? It was raining ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... a cheery tone, 'I am the man! As you may like to know why—and that's due to you and me both of us—all I can say is, the Black Muzzle yonder lying got his settler for merry-making with this peaceful maiden here, without her consent—an offence in my green island they reckon a crack o' the sconce light basting for, I warrant all company present,' and he nodded sharply about. 'As for the other there, who looks as if a rope had been round his neck once and shirked its duty, he counts his wages for helping ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ease with which a mass of it drops apart. By the word lightness one does not mean colour or weight, but looseness. A clay soil may be told by its stickiness; its power to form lumps or masses; its tendency to crack and bake under the hot sun. Such a soil is called heavy. Humus soil is made up largely of decayed animal and vegetable matter. Its presence is told by ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... would take off my hat, if I wore one in Steynholme, to any man who claims the friendship of Don Manoel Alcorta, a sincere patriot. I suggest that we crack a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their hands, with two-fold balls and sceptres in their hands—are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he 'smiles,' he smiles upon his baffled foe, 'and points at them ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon |
