"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beside it; at its back a mighty rock, flung down in bygone centuries from the mountain which towered behind it. From a deep cleft in this rock sprang a young oak, dipping its fresh green to the roof of the chapel; all around it, in every crack and cranny, parsley fern, hare-bells on delicate, swaying stalks, foxgloves tall and straight, and glorious ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Immediately after each nursing the nipples should be washed off in a saturated solution of boric acid in cold water, and dried with a soft cloth. If they are disposed to crack, anoint them with cocoa-butter immediately after each cleansing. If the skin of the nipple is very sensitive, a nipple-shield should be used for the first few days; or should the nipple become sore at any time, the shield can ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... we could carry. It brought us up to the city about nine o'clock, where we had not yet set a foot on shore, before such a storm burst out of the northwest, of rain, hail, and snow together, that every thing seemed to bend and crack. It was at the same time so cold, it appeared as if this weather, whereby the winter was begun, had held back until we had arrived in the city to spend the winter. We cannot pass this circumstance by without ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... broad reach of Puget Sound; but though the tide had turned, there was still no wind. The late sun touched the glassy swells with the changing effect of a prism. The prow of the craft shattered this mirror, and her wake stretched in a ragged and widening crack. But under the awnings Frederic Morganstein's guests found it delightfully cool. Only Jimmie Daniels, huddled on a stool in the glare, outside the lowered curtain that cut him off from the breeze created by the motion of the yacht, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... of stepping out into the road again when a horseman rode into sight between the two rocks. In the same instant of his appearance she heard the unmistakable crack of a gun, saw the rider jerk backward in the saddle, throw up one hand—and then the darkness dropped ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... had time to crack his whip, lo! the cow started off as if she were about to go around the world anew. Horses, carriage, baron, betrothed, coachman, all were hurried away by the furious animal. In vain the knights spurred their horses to follow the pair; in vain the peasants ran ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... bottles, lamp chimneys, etc., first make a scratch as before; then heat the handle of a file, or a blunt iron—in a blast-lamp flame by preference—till it is red-hot, and at once press it against the scratch till the glass begins to crack. The fracture can be led in any direction by keeping the iron just in front of it. Re-heat the iron ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... bounded towards him. He had dropped his sword, and as the beast leaped upon him, he seized its head in his hands. Then he slowly, slowly, bent its head back. It was a strong lion, and with the effort the muscles on Brune's neck stood out like great ropes. Presently, the queen and Brune heard a loud crack and they knew that the lion's neck was broken. Brune loosed his hold, and the huge tawny body dropped to the ground, quivered ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... I was upon my feet, and had, somehow, crossed the brook, but, even so, I was too late; there was the crack of a whip, followed by the muffled thud of a horse's hoofs, which died quickly away, and was lost in ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... late, and almost abandoned in despair the hope of getting within hearing, until a happy thought suggested a seat on the platform stair at the speaker's back. There was a "crack" there, Marion said, ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs—the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun—have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of another of her honored children. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... every crack and crevice of the tunnel walls was in plain sight to the occupants of the car. The two fugitives might as well have attempted concealment under the limelight in the center of the stage of a ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... wanted to sleep, but it always awakened when the pen slipped. There was an instinct in him somewhere not to let the pen slip, and every time the pen moved his hand awakened, and began to work languidly. When he went home at night he lay down at once and stared for hours at a fly on the wall or a crack on the ceiling. When his wife spoke to him he heard her speaking as from a great distance, and he answered her dully as though he was replying through a cloud. He only wanted to be let alone, to be allowed to stare ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton an action; that our delights and our excrements ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans. Hades, king of the realms below, was struck with fear; he sprang panic-stricken from his throne and cried aloud in terror lest Neptune, lord of the earthquake, should crack the ground over his head, and lay bare his mouldy mansions to the sight of mortals and immortals—mansions so ghastly grim that even the gods shudder to think of them. Such was the uproar as the gods came together in ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... sharp crack of a pistol almost deafened us in the close passageway. As the smoke cleared, I saw Dolores, her eyes blazing with hatred, jealousy, revenge. In her hand was the pistol she had wrenched from ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... friends had grown weary of ruralizing—they found no longer any music in the crack of a fowling-piece, or any enjoyment in the dying agonies of the feathered tribes, and, having resisted all their persuasions to return with them, he ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Time." "For my own part I am just beginning my thirty-fifth round with knuckly life, and I rejoice to say that I have come up smiling. Floorers I have suffered, not a few, in the rounds preceding, but I am harder for it, harder and gamer." "Shall we not crack a bottle together on this side of the circumfluent Oceanus?" And so on, to the effect that Alexander much wished for a meeting with his brother, and urged him to come to Theobald's Road as soon as possible, at his ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... had just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack. Her chairs were not meant for such usage. A shade fell over her rosy ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... idolatry. She has given to the Slave Power a carte blanche, to be filled as it may dictate—and if, at any time, she grows restive under the yoke, and shrinks back aghast at the new atrocity contemplated, it is only necessary for that Power to crack the whip of Disunion over her head, as it has done again and again, and she will cower and obey like a plantation slave—for has she not sworn that she will sacrifice everything in heaven and on earth, ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... a crack as the bar smashed down on the weak point. The monster sank quivering to the ground. An instant later it was up, but now its movements were dazed and sluggish as it dragged its half-paralyzed abdomen after it, and fumbled and caught ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... Professor. You've had a bad crack-up. I don't suppose you realize how bad. You've been working too hard; harder than your nervous system could stand. It's been too much ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... had tried pityingly to throw some doubt on that hope doomed to disappointment, but the effect of her attempt had scared her very much. All at once over that man's face there came an expression of horror and incredulity, as though he had seen a crack ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... was feared at first—but I would see you spit fire before the holy man drives you away. So I looked in through a crack, and saw you asleep. Then I feared not, and bided your waking for a ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... shall sally forth, While Poseidon's trident their power shall own, When they shake to its 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 ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... In the crack, between the two panels of the screen, I can see the lady go up to the lectern and bow down to the ground, then get up, and, without looking at the priest, bow her head in anticipation. The priest stands ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... grew sober and discussed possibilities. "If that's true, it's the worst crack on the head I ever had," said Mcllvaine. "Seventeen hundred dollars is my pile in there." He took a seat on ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... 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 from ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... Harry, you've had a crack o' the sconce,' he exclaimed, more sagaciously than he was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the rebel army. Some months ago I was captured near Boston. I escaped later. But while I was a prisoner, I saw this fellow—unless I'm much mistaken. I saw him again the other day in Jamaica, at the shoemaker's; and now—look at him—here through the crack ...
— The Story of Nathan Hale • Henry Fisk Carlton
... selected to deliver the first crushing attack were withdrawn from the front and sent into training. Four months were thus set aside for this purpose. To make the decisive attack, the Germans made selection from four of their crack army corps, the 18th active, the 7th reserve, the 15th active (the Muehlhausen corps), and the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... bad job for you. (Puzzling unsteadily over himself.) I didn't know I was a wrong 'un at the time; thought quite well of myself, thought a vast deal more of you. Crack-in-my-eye-Tommy, how I used to leap out of bed at 6 A.M. all agog to be at my easel; blood ran through my veins in those days. And now I'm middle-aged and done for. Funny! Don't know how it has come about, nor what has made the music ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... days, and Sol never took notice. The worst of it is, my husband told me I hadn't orter keep it open, even a speck, while the bird was out of his cage. 'Sol can wriggle through the smallest kind of a crack,' says he; and it appears he was right. My, but he'll be angry! 'Marthy, it'll ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... out of the office, I will either murder him or commit suicide," he told us. "Efficient? Lord, yes! I never knew anybody so damnably efficient. Dependable? He is so dependable that he is uncanny. I would rather have a human being around who is willing to smoke a cigar with me once in a while, to crack a joke, or at least to laugh at my jokes. Just to break the monotony, I would be perfectly willing to have him make a few mistakes, to forget something. I have lots of faults—too many, I guess, to be comfortable around such a paragon ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... takes half a cup of coffee, and fills the cup with calvados, sweetened with sugar, and drinks it with seeming relish. Ice-cold coffee will almost sizzle when calvados is poured into it. It tastes like a corkscrew, and one drink has the same effect as a crack on the head with a hammer. From the toddling age up, the Norman ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... and Eloise rightly felt that it would be a preposterous thing for her to do. And though, when she heard their voices in the hall, she longed just to open the door and give one glance at Laura Murray sweeping by, or draw Lottie Humphreys in through the crack and indulge in one quick squeeze, she heroically bent herself upon the debit and credit beneath her eye, and tried to forget all about it,—succeeding only in remembering who had lived and who had died since the last time that hall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Rebecca Wright, after a suitable pause. "Them old brimstone discourses, you know, Mis' Trimble. Preachers is far more reasonable, nowadays. Why, I set an' thought, last Sabbath, as I listened, that if old Mr. Longbrother an' Deacon Bray could hear the difference they'd crack the ground over 'em like pole beans, an' come right up 'long ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... open, which was certainly something Jorgenson had not expected. He had expected but a hand with the watch protruded through a narrow crack, But he didn't start back or give any other sign of surprise at seeing Mrs. Travers fully dressed. Against the faint clearness in the frame of the open shutter she presented to him the dark silhouette of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... heaviest of weights. Gaining the opposite side, they waited as Dick took his bearings by the tree; and crossing a hard, chalky field, they stole towards the sunken road. They could hear the occasional crack of a rifle, and there was the ping of a bullet passing over their heads as they pressed on ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... imageries. The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards! Ye asked for mimes,—these bring you tragedies: For purple,—these shall wear it as your lords. Ye played like children,—die like innocents. Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch,—the crack Of the actual bolt, your pastime circumvents. Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack To follow any voice from Gilboa's tents, ... Here's Samuel!—and, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... reception and a comfortable bed. There was no light anywhere in the gloomy building; but Hassan knocked at the great door, confidently at first, and then angrily. At last came an Arab youth about nineteen, who stuck one eye in the crack of the door, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... over and stayed with me, so that we could get along with one bed and one fire. My buffalo robes were the things that kept us warm, those howling nights, or when it was so still that we could hear the ice crack in the creek eighty rods off. My wife has always said that Magnus and I holed up in our den like wild animals, and sometimes like a certain domestic one. But what with Magnus and the fiddle and his stories of Norway and mine of the canal we amused ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... have been taken for a statue, so immovable and rigid did she stand; and then as the Indian's arm went back for the blow, crack, and without a word or a cry the Indian fell back, struck with the deadly little bullet in the ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... old, carefully built, and pointed between the joints of the masonry with the best cement, requires a total repair after that period, and often before. The window-sills and lintels of limestone break and crack, and the chimneys soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays also very rapidly. A bridge becomes rotten ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the count, "I declare. I declare on my oath that, three months ago, during the holidays, the upholsterer, when laying the carpet in this room and the boudoir, found the wedding-ring which I gave my wife lying in a crack in the floor. Here is the ring. The date of the 23rd ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... and looking down, he noted that the last wave had left behind it a great crack in the deck, and he heard the skipper moaning, "Oh, the poor barkie, the poor barkie!" and knew that he too had seen it. "Have ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... nails, as for every ounce of dirt that they take out of the skin, they do a pound of damage to it. They scrub off the delicate epidermis, as well as the natural oil in it, and leave it dry and irritated and ready to crack open. Then more dirt gets into the cracks just formed, and more scrubbing with bristles and hot water and soap is indulged in to get it out. This opens the cracks still further, and the next layer of dirt is worked in still deeper. Wash frequently with cold or cool water, occasionally ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... of Mrs. Brier, at the early morning light, "up with you, I tell you. Do you hear? For every minute you keep me, you'll get an extra crack!" and, true to her word, there was presently a grieved cry from the child, upon whose slender shoulders at least a dozen blows were showered in ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush—this the light ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Grieve,' he said cheerily, 'we have been agreeing—your husband and I—that it will be best for you to go up to London and have that cheek looked at by one of the crack surgeons. They will give you the best advice as to what to do with it. It is not a common ailment, and we are very fine fellows down here, but of course we can't get the experience, in a particular line of cases, of one of the first-rate surgical specialists. Do you think you could ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from the cold and stormy North, With a rush and a roar I hurry forth, I toss from the trees the dead leaves down, The withered leaves all sere and brown, And sway the branches to and fro As on my way I whirling go. At crack and crevice I slip in, And make a lively sounding din. Swift I come and swift away, With you I can no longer stay, For I am wanted elsewhere now, And so ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... was the best of all possible Kings, (At least, so his Courtiers would swear to you gladly,) But Crack now and then would do heterodox things, And at last took ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... down the steep flight of stairs, a sharp crack came from the basement. He grinned. With this kind of weather, the ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... air that bade fair to last for a day or more. Evening closed in rapidly. Andy sat still on the porch; he could shuffle his heels as he pleased there, and take a sly bit of tobacco, watching, through a crack between the houses, the drip, drip, of rain on the umbrellas going by, the lamps beginning to glow here and there in the darkness, listening to the soggy footfalls and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the Soviet Union has surrounded itself with captive and sullen nations. Like a crack in the crust of an uneasily sleeping volcano, the Hungarian uprising revealed the depth and intensity of the patriotic longing for liberty that still burns within ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is sonus quid materiale, but further something much more grossely material then the objects of the rest of the senses, as for instance in the discharging of a canon being a distance looking on we would think it gives fire long before it gives the crack, tho in wery truth they be both in the same instant. The reason then whey we sie the fire before we hear the crack is because the species Wisibiles that carries the fire to our eyes, tho material are exceeding spirituall and subtill and are ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... him the girl darted abruptly through a narrow crack in the wall. Rawson followed—and then began a wild race through a network of connecting passages, a vast labyrinth of caves, more like fractures in this strange red substance which Rawson could think of only as rock, for lack of a more accurate name, until at last there was no sound except that ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... grasping the rice-plants at the same time, and hauling his little craft through them, in the way that sailors call "hand over hand." This expedient most probably saved his life. While bending over the gunwale, he heard the crack of the rifles, and the whizzing of two bullets that appeared to pass just behind him. By this time the whole of the canoe was within ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... devil, and sin for me. Here thou mayst through faith look the very devil in the face, and rejoice, saying, O Satan! I have a precious Jesus, a soul-comforting Jesus, a sin-pardoning Jesus. Here thou mayst hear the biggest thunder-crack that the Law can give, and yet not be daunted. Here thou mayst say, O Law! thou mayst roar against sin, but thou canst not reach me; thou mayst curse and condemn, but not my soul; for I have righteous Jesus, a holy Jesus, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Sitting on a locker, right in front of the door, was the skeleton of a man. The room had been shut up so tight that no fish big enough to eat bones could get in; but the little things that live in the water and can get through any crack had eaten all of that man except his bones, his gold buttons, that were lying about on the floor, the golden embroidery of his uniform, that was still hanging about on his skeleton, and the iron fetters on his hands and feet. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... listening for any sound from within. Nothing broke the impressive silence, and McAdam's hand closed over the knob, which he turned slowly. The door opened quietly into a darkened interior. For an instant he bent forward, peering through the narrow crack, endeavouring to learn what lay hidden beyond, the others quivering behind him. There was scarcely the sound of a breath audible. The detective hesitated; such luck, such carelessness on the part of criminals seemed almost uncanny; he half suspected ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... wire. It is well to reinforce the hinge by gluing on a strip of cloth if the lamp is to be in use more than once or twice. This lamp is safe, for the projecting edges of A and B form light-shields for the ventilation orifice and the crack at the top of the hinged cover, respectively. Moreover, since the flame of the candle is above A, only reflected and transmitted light reaches the plate, while the danger of igniting the paper is reduced ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... patiently for her answer, though the experience was a new one. Usually she had only to reach for the whip when her satellites mutinied; almost never was it necessary to crack it. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... our eyes; then bumped our heads together with a crack in our eagerness to lean over and see where ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... school house, and my curiosity being excited by the monotonous hum of the students within, I made bold to enter and creep along a crack between two boards until I reached the far end, where, in front of a hearth of glowing embers, sat the master ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... made you good and me bad. (He is silent.) Do you remember the time Kari and I went up the glacier, and he fell down into a crack? He told you I had been so frightened that I shook all over. It was not for his life I feared; I ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... maid came down and opened alike the door to him and good husband slipped gleefully into the king's apartment. The girl locked him carefully in a cupboard that was close to his wife's bed, and through a crack he feasted his eyes upon her beauty, for she undressed herself before the fire, and put on a thin nightgown, through which her charms were plainly visible. Believing herself alone with her maid she made those little jokes that women will when undressing. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... hand he crept up to the nearest window of the Oak Parlour. The heavy shutters were closed, but between the crack made by the warping of the wood, he could distinguish a streak of golden light. He waited a moment; and, then at the risk of alarming the intruder within, carefully tried the shutter. To his great satisfaction ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... "and do you mean to tell me I can get on that carpet and go straight to London, England?" I said, "London, England," captain, because he seemed to have been so long in your part of the world. "In the crack of a whip," said he. I figured up the time. What is the difference between ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... places where the pressure of the water, and the strain of the storm in which she had foundered, had 'opened the plates of the ship, but in no case were the openings large enough to admit a person. Captain Weston put his steel bar in one crack, and tried to pry it farther open, but his strength was not equal to the task. He made some peculiar motions, but Tom could not ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed down the gorge from crag to crag, awakening every crack and slab to vividness and life. The great crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night-mist of the desert, and as he poured his glory down the glen, the haze rose in threads and plumes, and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks, like ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... was ever known A foe to dissolution: Nor can we that a ruin call, Whose crack gives crushing ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Mouse had once lived, he had no real home. Like that quarrelsome rascal, Peter Mink, he would crawl into any good place that he happened to find. Sometimes Buster chose a hole in a fence-rail, and sometimes a crack in the side of one of the farm-buildings. He really didn't much care where he spent the night, provided it was not too far from the flower ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... found a discolored crack in the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... needlework, such as carters wear on the Down farms, and for me a smaller one, and hats and leather leggings all to match. We tried them on, and were for all the world carter and carter's boy; and I laughed long to see Elzevir stand there and practise how to crack his whip and cry 'Who-ho' as carters do to horses. And for all he was so grave, there was a smile on his face too, and he showed me how to twist a wisp of straw out of the bed to bind above my ankles at the bottom of ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... of steam boilers any way you can. Put too much water in them to make them slow-starting, or keep the fire under them low to keep them inefficient. Let them dry and turn the fire up; they will crack and be ruined. An especially good trick is to keep putting limestone or water containing lime in the boiler; it will deposit lime on the bottom and sides. This deposit will provide very good insulation against ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... treadmill stop in consequence of the languid limbs and exhausted frames of the victims, within a minute the lash resounds through the building—if the stones which they are set to break be not broken by limbs scarred, and marred, and whaled, they are summoned by the crack of the whip to their toilsome task! I myself have heard within the last three hours, from a person, who was an eye-witness of the appalling and disgusting fact, that a leper was introduced amongst the negroes; and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... behind, had to take off ski, and took nearly half an hour to come up a few hundred yards. True, the surface was awful and growing worse every moment. It is a very serious business if the men are going to crack up. As for myself, I never felt fitter and my party can easily hold its own. P.O. Evans, of course, is a tower of strength, but Oates and Wilson are ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... home. It did not enter my head that I might be shot as a burglar. My original intention, you must remember, had only been to stop the works of the ghost. It was later on that my intention became criminal, instead of merely boyish, or, in other words, crack-brained. As to stopping the ghost, I could not stop the revolving pipe. I could do no more than take away the light from the ghost-face. As for the owl on the lower floor, when I came to it, could not do so much, for it was a great big picture on board, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... whip, snip, high cum diddledy, The cog-wheels of life have need of much oiling; Smack, crack—this is our jubilee; Huzza, my lads we'll keep ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... that this his favorite seat spoke to me. How often had I beheld him sit by the hour with his eye on the door behind which his one darling lay ill! Even now, it was easy for me to recall his face as I had sometimes caught a glimpse of it through the crack of the suddenly opened door, and I felt my breast heave and my hand falter as I drew forth the stiletto and moved to place it where his eye would fall upon it on his leaving ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... where whole trains of wagons are stopped and whole camps snowed up, until all hands perish of cold and hunger. Don't tell me! You don't know nothin' about snow here." And she stopped talking to put another nut between her teeth and crack it. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... blue sky. As he entered it he saw her coming to meet him, and he went forward to greet her with his pulses bounding and a light in his eyes which no eyes but hers had ever seen there. Even in that supreme moment the wonderfully real atmosphere of it all impressed him. He heard a dry twig crack under his foot as he walked, and he recognized the different perfumes of the flowers around him—the heavy sweetness of a few belated orange blossoms, the delicate breath of the oleander, the reminiscent perfume of the rose. Then their hands ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... again, but much nearer, and then came the crack of a rifle. If his horse, alarmed perhaps, had not thrown up his head suddenly, and received the bullet himself the lad's career ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... spoke a distant echo reached their ears, the echo of a rifle shot. "Think Fanny not lie after all," went on Jeekie; "that white man's gun, sharp crack, smokeless powder, but wonder how he come in this place. Well, we soon ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... said Constance. "Max brought you, didn't he? If he hadn't sneezed and given himself away, he'd have opened the door a crack ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... thrust through the hole after it. The paw kept swinging about like a pendulum for a few seconds, and was then suddenly thrust into the Padre's open mouth as he lay back asleep, and again giving him another smart crack, vanished ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that they are wrong. There was no generosity, nor love of justice, in Edmund Tyrrel. When Rose Allen stood so calmly before him, with her hand on fire, he was neither softened nor ashamed. He burned her till "the sinews began to crack," and then he let go her hand and pushed her roughly away, calling her all the bad names he could think of ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... up the winding stairs. Moss covers the worn stone steps. Sometimes a ray of light, passing through a crack in the walls, strikes a green blade and makes it gleam in the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... "Hardly a crack!" Jack retorted. "But I'm more interested in wondering what would become of us. Guess we'd better keep a good thousand feet up, and not bother trying to pry ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... replied the Earl, "and write yourself a brother of the angle? Why, which like you best? to pull a dead strain on a miserable gudgeon, which you draw ashore by main force, as the fellows here tow in their fishing-boats—or a lively salmon, that makes your rod crack, and your line whistle—plays you ten thousand mischievous pranks—wearies your heart out with hopes and fears—and is only laid panting on the bank, after you have shown the most unmatchable display of skill, patience, and dexterity?—But ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... time, who was living at Masterfield, having been blessed with four daughters, but no son and heir, was met one evening by a messenger bringing the welcome news that a son had just been born to him. "Go," he said, "and make the bell ring till it crack." The order was literally obeyed—a broken bell being the result. Its fragments having been taken to Duncrub, were, many years after, re-cast into a bell, now used in connection with the private chapel there. The inscription on the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... little run made by many generations of rabbits, she found that it led finally into a dark crack in the rock, and, squeezing through that, she was in a small dark chamber which smelt strongly of ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... between the Sedberghs and the Wendovers, and Lady Charlotte made a point of keeping up with the squire. She adored cynics and people who said piquant things, and it amused her to make her large tyrannous hand felt by the squire's timid, crack-brained, ridiculous little sister. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the theory that the past, the present and the future are simultaneously in being, and that those who are said to read the future in reality possess only the power of seeing what already is on another plane. Had he in England, however vaguely, however dimly, seen as through a crack some blurred vision of what was already in existence? He felt almost afraid of the cypresses. Nevertheless, as he stood looking up at them, his sense almost of fear tempted him to make an experiment. He remained absolutely still, and strove to concentrate all his faculties. After a long ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... asleep, just now," put in Midshipman Trotter. "My, but that was a fearful crack you gave ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... haste he went and fetched his razor, and seizing the goat he shaved her head as smooth as the palm of his hand. And as the yard-measure was too honourable a weapon, he took the whip and fetched her such a crack that with many a jump and spring she ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... as beefstykes," M'riar commented as she took the brush and started to do Anna's painfully accomplished task all over, from the big crack by the door where she had started. "'Ow's 'e hever goin' to know w'ere we 'ave moved to?" she ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... get it," he went on. "I just don't get the big central idea behind it. Don't all these tugs we send out ever get there? First they tell the kid he'll have his life saved in twelve hours or so. Then they get him to take a shot so his mind won't crack up while ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy Catherine, who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones. Yes, and they had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and ferreting about in the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old stones. Under the eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering and bickering before going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and entered the church through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed them with his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... afterward, between boasting and confession, who explained that Dick was Gungadhura's real objective after all. He preferred vengeance on the American even to a settled account with Yasmini. He must have found the treasure by accident after crawling into the unsealed crack in the wall to wait there ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the 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 ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... keeper of the auberge himself, who seemed but little inclined to find fault with his servant, for the contumacious manner in which he treated the commands of the Convention; and there was the well-known postillion of St. Florent, the crack of whose whip was so welcome from Angers to Nantes, the sound of whose cheery voice was so warmly greeted at every hostelrie between those towns. The name of Cathelineau was not then so well known as it was some six months afterwards, but even then Cathelineau, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... father was seriously ill. The Smiths arrived there to find that the Skinners had preceded them on the same errand, and they recognized through the windows, in the leader of the band, a noted brigand on whose head a price was laid. He was searching every crack and cranny of the room, while Crosby, stripped to shirt and trousers, stood before the empty fireplace and begged for that night to be left ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... for it appeared to be only a little depression in the ground, but thrusting out one foot I found that go over too, so that I knew I must be parallel with the edge of the trench or crack ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... to figure out some sort of test and try the air. I'll go out in a space-suit and crack the face-plate! I can close it again before anything lethal gets in. But there's no use stepping out into a bed of coals tonight. I'll have ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... I told him. He is vulnerable to reason there—always a few grains of common-sense in an ounce of miserliness. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on. And there must be a little crack in the Brooke family, else we should not see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... attributed the fire of small arms to the attack and defence of a party that had been sent out for the purpose of securing the body, supposed to be his own; yet, if so, again how was he to account for his not hearing the report of a single musket? His ear was too well practised not to know the sharp crack of the rifle from the heavy dull discharge of the musket, and as yet the former only had been distinguishable, amid the intervals that ensued between each sullen booming of the cannon. While this impression continued on the mind ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... came. Crack he went against the wall, rebounded off, and went at it again, and then again. They were no mock blows, but serious, heavy raps, as from a small battering-ram. But yet both Bertram and Wilkinson were able to observe that he did ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... say something. The Bey made a sign: "Go on." The engineer pressed a button, a whistle replied, the train, which had never really stopped, seemed to stretch itself, making all its iron muscles crack, to take a bound and start off at full speed, the flags fluttering in the storm-wind, and the black smoke meeting ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c. 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c.; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel off; get loose. disjoin, disconnect, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... transparent if they are cemented in Canada balsam, and rubbed down very thin, in the ordinary way of making thin sections of non-transparent bodies. But as the thin slices, made in this way, are very apt to crack and break into fragments, it is better to employ marine glue as the cementing material. By the use of this substance, slices of considerable size and of extreme thinness and ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... I kept her from screaming. Nature assisted me a little. The girls own emotions made her spend and I knew it by the deep drawn respiration and the quivering of her frame, as the spasm came. My Prick had got its head just inside her crack, when the soothing emission came opportunely to assist his progress, and tight little virgin as she was, desperately writhing and struggling under me, my charger gradually won his way, till furiously plunging ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... no;— That were not soldier-like. 'Tis for the general To be more pensive: we adventurers Must be more cheerful. Wherefore should we think? Our tutelar Deity, in a leader's shape, Takes care of us. Keep thought aloof from hosts! If the knaves take to thinking, you will have To crack those walls alone. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the poorer class; and as they walked on, the Shah heard inside a house women talking with loud voices; then going near, he peeped in by the door-chink, and saw three fair sisters who having supped together were seated on a divan talking one to other. The King thereupon applied his ear to the crack and listened eagerly to what they said, and heard each and every declaring what was the thing she most desired.[FN352] Quoth the eldest, "I would I were married to the Shah's head Baker for then should I ever have ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton |
