"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another report in the machine, which I believed was produced by the cracking of a cord. This new intimation made me carefully examine the inside of our habitation. I saw that the part that was turned towards the south was full of holes, of which some ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... other men were watching alertly at the loopholes. Occasionally they would fire at some partly exposed Indians, and then dodge back as a straggling volley of bullets pelted the stockade. Over on the east side muskets were cracking in the same desultory fashion. The storm showed no signs of abating. On the contrary, the snow was falling more thickly and in finer flakes, and a bitter wind was constantly heaping it in higher drifts, and blowing it in blinding, eddying showers ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... expected a thing of this kind to come so soon! Why, I'm a man of distinction! My doings have been noted; the admirable qualities of my style have drawn attention; I'm looked upon as one of the coming men! Thanks, I confess, in some measure, to old Barlow; he seems to have amused himself with cracking me up to all and sundry. That last thing of mine in The West End has done me a vast amount of good, it seems. And Alfred Yule himself had noticed that paper in The Wayside. That's how things work, you know; reputation comes with a burst, just when you're not looking for anything ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... angry cries stunned Timokles' ears. He clutched the palm branch tightly. From the swaying motion and the sound of a slight, though ominous, cracking, Timokles doubted if ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... western margin in closer contact with the eastern edge of the floe that lay within it. The movement could be seen merely by the closing of the channel through which the boat had come, and by the cracking and crushing of the ice on the edges of the two fields. So tremendous was the pressure, however, that cakes as large as a small house were broken off, and forced upward on the surface of the field, or ground into ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have to talk turkey to me on one point!" asserted Daunt, his veneer of dignity cracking wide and showing the coarser grain of his nature. "I made you a square business proposition and you insulted me—under the roof of a gentleman who had vouched ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Cafe des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a little allowed for waste in boiling, so that they must be just covered when done. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and set them by the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork; (place no dependence on the usual test of their skin's cracking, which, if they are boiled fast, will happen to some potatos when they are not half done, and the inside is quite hard,) then pour off the water, (if you let the potatos remain in the water a moment after they are done enough, they will become waxy and watery,) uncover the sauce-pan, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... is said he kept a ragged little booth, which he put up at corners of streets; associated with beadles, policemen, his own ugly wife (whom he treated most scandalously), and persons in a low station of life; earning a precarious livelihood by the cracking of wild jokes, the singing of ribald songs, and halfpence extorted from passers-by. He is the Satyric genius we spoke of anon: he cracks his jokes still, for satire must live; but he is combed, washed, neatly clothed, and ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... water striking out to catch hold of the youngster, who couldn't swim a stroke. At that moment the captain came on deck. He was in a great state of agitation when he heard who it was who had fallen overboard. Studden sail-sheets were let fly. No one minded the spars, though they were all cracking away; the helm was put down, the yards were braced sharp up, and the ship was brought ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... hot, red, and tender, and emit a disagreeable odor when secretions are retained. The skin becomes sodden by retained sweat, and may crack and bleed. The same redness and tenderness are seen in chapping of the face and lips, and cracking of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... recollected that this was the day of the Highland gathering of the county. A dance was going on as he approached, and four tall and stalwart Highlanders in complete national costumes, bonneted and kilted, were leaping and wheeling, cracking their fingers and uttering shrill cries as they danced with astonishing vigour and adroitness ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dream of the old oak: and while he dreamed, a mighty storm came rushing over land and sea, at the holy Christmas time. The sea rolled in great billows towards the shore. There was a cracking and crushing heard in the tree. The root was torn from the ground just at the moment when in his dream he fancied it was being loosened from the earth. He fell—his three hundred and sixty-five years were passed as the single day of the Ephemera. On the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the railroad station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week; he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home. Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he must have picked up off the Hyeres, he paused before the gateway of the house which had become ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... almost midnight, but it seemed like a week to the boys, when the cracking of twigs and the crunch of feet warned of the approach of men. It proved to be the party, for they heard a low growling imprecation from Green as he stumbled over some object. Garry nudged Fernald, and immediately felt two sharp taps on his shoulder. At once he ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... is a mud hearth, a wall of clay plastered over the stones of the fireplace. This will prevent the fire from cracking and chipping the stones, but clay is not absolutely necessary in this fireplace. When, however, you build the walls of your fireplace of logs and your chimney of sticks the clay is necessary to prevent the fire ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... no response for a few minutes, during which Murray contrived to moisten the parched and cracking membrane as if in vain, and he was about to try in despair to bathe the poor lad's temples when the lips softened, there was a choking gurgling sound, a gasp or two, and then with strange avidity the midshipman ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thought I knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking hailstones ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together, could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all attention, and from time to ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the unfortunate man he faintly cried, "Help me, help me! Oh, God! men, help me!" After which the fearful beast got a hold of his neck, and then all was still, except that his comrades heard the bones of his neck cracking between the teeth of the lion. John Stofolus had lain with his back to the fire on the opposite side, and on hearing the lion he sprang up, and, seizing a large flaming brand, he had belabored him on the head with the burning wood; but the brute did not take any notice of him. The ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... potatoes, acorns, and fruit; would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... howls of the whizzing bullets, the constant nerve-racking crashing and roaring overhead, the deafening cracking of splitting iron everywhere—that is war. And accompanying it all the hopeless sensation that this will never, never stop, that it will go on like this forever, until one's thoughts are dulled by some terrible, cruel, incomprehensible, demoralizing force. Those bounding puffs ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table and danced ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... for the manufacture of glass. The skilled Italian artisans sent over to put the works into operation were intractable and mutinous. After trying in various ways to discourage the enterprise, so that they could return to Europe, these men brought matters to a close by cracking the furnace with a crowbar. George Sandys, in anger, declared "that a more ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a large cue on the boarding half-way down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured picture of "Wombwell's Circus," a fine affair, with spangled ladies jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that there would be a "Cattle ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... rattan painted with a mixture of beeswax and pot black for preserving the rattan against atmospheric influences. No paint is applied to the sago sheath, but the beeswax is applied to the bamboo as a preservative against cracking. Neither are any decorative incisions or tracings used in this form of hat, it being primarily and essentially for protection against sun and rain. Two parallel strips of rattan fastened at the ends of a diagonal serve to hold the hat in position on ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... A pedal bass, a diapasonic tone, that came from the bowels of the firmament struck fear to his heart; the tone was of such magnitude as might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have held it without cracking and dying. This gigantic flood, this overwhelming and cataclysmic roar, filled every pore of Stannum's body. It blew him as a blade of grass is blown in a boreal blast; yet he sensed the pitch. Unorganized nature, the unrestrained cry of the rocks and their buried secrets; crushed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the board was cleared of the viands that the nuts and fruit were partaken of. The edible nuts mostly favoured before foreign supplies came into the market were the hazel, walnut, chestnut, and the famous Kent filberts. Although doubtless supplemented by any objects handy, the primitive method of cracking nuts with the teeth was generally practised by the common people. What more natural than for the early inventor to see in the human head the "box" in which to place his mechanical device and to give power ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... asked Mohammed. She answered, "Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jann." He kills the Bull as before. A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf of dry bread under her mattress. When its cracking gives rise to the idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides. She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates grow to the weight of half a cantar.[FN440] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... blow delivered. He ran up and, to be on the safe side, put both men under technical arrest. The sweeper, who had been bowled over by the clout he had got, made a charge of unprovoked assault against the stranger; the latter expressed a blasphemous regret that he had not succeeded in cracking the sweeper's skull. He appeared to be in a highly nervous, highly irritable state. At any rate such was the interpretation which the patrolman put upon his ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce breeze. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are often spoiled by too much: they should merely be covered, and a little allowed for waste in boiling. Set them on a moderate fire till they boil, then take them off, and place them on the side of the fire to simmer slowly, till they are soft enough to admit a fork. The usual test of their skin cracking is not to be depended on, for if they are boiled fast this will happen when the potatoes are not half done, and the inside is quite hard. Pour off the water the minute the potatoes are done, or they will become watery and sad; uncover the saucepan, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... lack of embarrassment. Some men are of an assurance, of a sang froid! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their perplexity. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... as he rose from his cushion, cracking audibly, "so we're to have our coffee and what not over there, hey?... Well, my boy, I shan't be sorry, I confess, to have something to lean my back against—and a cigar, a mild cigar, will—ah—aid ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... by the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... is at the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. 'The cordial,' Raleigh says, 'will cure him or any other of a fever, except ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... snorings of the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded—an ineffectual concert! The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which words ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... eager for the chase. All was life, gaiety excitement, noise; the hounds, giving forth occasional howls and snappish yelpings, expressive of an impatience that was almost beyond endurance; the huntsman cracking his whip, and reproving his charges in language more forcible than polite; the spirited horses pawing the ground; the gentlemen exchanging the compliments of the season with the ladies who had come up to see ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... trying to distinguish the words uttered, but could make out nothing. They were moving slowly together, in close vicinity to myself, for their feet stirred the dry leaves, and I could hear the boughs cracking as they ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... him when he rounded the bend in the road. A few hundred yards on the road turned again. There was no sign of the car. A cart piled high with manure was approaching, the driver, wearing wooden shoes and cracking at intervals a huge whip, trudging at ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... concluded to take him' with me, as he could identify places and people, and I knew well what castles the Shaker houses are for the world's people outside. Hiram was full of talk going over. He seemed to have been bottling it up, and I was the first auditor for his wrath. "I know 'm," he said, cracking his whip over his horses' heads. "They be sharp at a bargain, they be. If they've contrived to get a hold on Bessie Stewart, property and all, it'll go hard on 'em ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... how little of art one might obtain for a dime. Always out of sympathy with such displays, but now more than ever repelled by them, Grace and Gregory hurried away to find themselves penned in a court, surrounded on all sides by strident cries of "barkers", cracking reports from target-practice, fusillades at the "doll-babies", clanging jars from strength-testers and the like; while from this horrid field of misguided energy, there was no outlet save the narrow entrance they ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... has itself, so to speak, constituted an exhibition, and that an important artistic truth has seemed to me thereby lighted. We brushed against that truth just now in our glance at the denial of expansibility to any idea the mould of the "stage-play" may hope to express without cracking and bursting—and we bear in mind at the same time that the picture of Nanda Brookenham's situation, though perhaps seeming to a careless eye so to wander and sprawl, yet presents itself on absolutely scenic lines, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... arrived in a bay of rocks. Sailors have given them the name of "gun-stones"; perhaps because the sound of the breakers reminds one of the cracking ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... deputy, "you're wanted for cracking the skull of a farmer named Leigh. There's a doubt if Leigh will live and you may be charged ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and he remembered no ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here 's a rascal, Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... lest I should be taken ill while unattended, and the certainty she felt that any intelligent woman would be proud and happy to share my existence—she concealed nothing, but, on the contrary, added many fresh follies to the recital. Maitre Mouche kept nodding his head in approval while cracking nuts. Then, after all this verbiage, he demanded, with an agreeable smile, what my answer ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... he cried, cracking his whip briskly, "we shall show the general that he has no cause to be ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... representatives of the eyebrows in the; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; cracking nuts with a stone; direction of the hair on the arms of the; supposed evolution of the; polygamous and social ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... cold that the country had known for many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed by the frosty rigor, and sentinels had been frozen to death in our neighborhood. The deep snow on which we made our beds, the icy covering of the streams near us, the limbs of the trees above us, had been cracking with loud noises all ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... I felt a tremendous shock, as if the earth had quaked and opened beneath me, and this was followed by a deafening uproar, the clashing of stones, the cracking of wood and glass, the grating and crushing of iron, and the pitiful cries of men, women, and children. The great mass of rock broke through the protecting barricade and rushed right upon the engine. The huge, steam-vomiting ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic. He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation broke from his lips. It ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the disgrace of such an end,' exclaimed Mr. Kornicker, twisting his fingers together, and in his earnestness cracking the knuckles of all of them. 'Think of that, my old fellow. Think of the stain that will always rest ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... annoying circumstance occurred at this Assize. It was the cracking, sometimes almost banging, of the seats and wainscoting, which had been remade of oak. Every now and again there was a loud squeak, and then a noise like the cracking of walnuts. To a sensitive mind it must have been a trying situation, as Toole afterwards ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... good salt was now at hand to preserve the roe herring that choked the rivers and creeks in the spring. The salt-herring breakfast was on its way to becoming a Virginia institution, and the salt-fish monopolies of New England and Canada were cracking after ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... and dogged in play. He had "made" the football team in his sophomore year. Customary snobbishness had kept him out of the fraternities and college societies. He may have been a good fellow, a fine student, and a cracking end on the eleven, and all that, but he was not acceptable material for any one ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... ready for the start. At nine o'clock we left the camp, and a rapid march brought us to the village of Macas, which the enemy had just abandoned. Here, to our great delight, we discovered a number of sheep dressed and ready for cooking; so, for once in a way, we enjoyed a really good meal, while cracking many jokes at the Spaniards' expense. Then having rested, we pushed on to the foot of the mountains, where the men bivouacked, being too tired to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... at W—— to get provisions, my partner heard the cliff cracking, and so moved away, up the canyon to another mine we had. He was just in time to save his life, for the cliff fell, and Buffalo Bill was in the valley that night with a comrade and heard the terrific roar ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the public opinion of Great Britain. Even the Times cannot deny this. It may not be generally known in the United States, but while the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement, and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who, as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... ortolan, had flown his last falcon, had listened to his last comedy, and hummed his last tune, in the frescoed corridors of the Vatican. Upon its shining walls the fatal finger of Martin Luther, stretching out of Germany, had written "Mene, Mene." Beneath the terrible spell the walls were cracking and the earth was shaking, but the splendid pope, in his scarlet cloud of cardinals, saw only the wild beauty of Raphael's Madonnas and the pleasant pages of the recovered literature of pagan Greece. When Sidney stepped for the first time ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... thousands and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too—but he got his leg smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet under a horse-blanket, saying to ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... aid the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own defeat. Therewithal he was vastly given to cracking ribald and saucy jokes with and upon the Devil, and treating him in a style of coarse familiarity and mockery; and a part of his ordinary business was to bestride the Devil, and beat him till he roared, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the air —as the boat churned .. on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... are usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their active hoofs. The French seem to have an instinctive ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... how ugly and how fell O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st For love. The ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell Alternate victory and defeat, and there 2475 The combatants with rage most horrible Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, And impotent their tongues ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 19 B.C., so that over nineteen centuries have elapsed since these words were written; as he was an excellent farmer, he would not have mentioned the practice unless he considered the advice sound. It is quite possible that the vertical cracking of the bark on one side of a young transplanted tree may be due to a change from the cool north aspect to the heat of the south. At any rate the experiment is well worth trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... all troublesome feelings, So little encumbered by faith in my dealings (And that I'm consistent the world will allow, What I was at Newmarket the same I am now). When such are my merits (you know I hate cracking), I hope, like the Vender of Best Patent Blacking, "To meet with the generous and kind approbation "Of a candid, enlightened, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I tell you Friends, most charitable care Haue the Patricians of you for your wants. Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the Heauen with your staues, as lift them Against the Roman State, whose course will on The way it takes: cracking ten thousand Curbes Of more strong linke assunder, then can euer Appeare in your impediment. For the Dearth, The Gods, not the Patricians make it, and Your knees to them (not armes) must helpe. Alacke, You are transported ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... family wagon, which was now crowded. According to the prearranged programme it was Gervais who held the ribbons, with Claire beside him. The two strong horses trotted on in their usual leisurely fashion, in spite of all the gay whip-cracking of their driver, who also wished to contribute to the music. Inside there were now seven people for six places, for if the three children were small, they were at the same time so restless that they fully took up their ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... cracking his whip joyously, and followed by half a score of dogs, cantered on his rude pony down the Tilford Lane, and thence it was that with a smile of amused contempt upon his face he observed the comedy in the field and the impotent efforts ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at Cawnpur an ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... cart came crawling; its high-piled white load of snow was faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... the long stone jetties, we roll toward town by the Allees Marines, a wide promenade along the river, cross the bridge, rattle through the streets, and draw up before the hotel in the open square with a jingle and whip-cracking and general hullaballoo which fills the street urchins with awe and gives unmixed joy to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men guards and force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at all this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... by the cracking of the whips applied to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery were rolling in the darkness one over the other. The first day they advanced five leagues, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... home, and you would enjoy it to be with us, because you couldn't tell the town from Milwaukee, except for the military precision with which everything is conducted, where you never take a glass of beer without cracking your heels together like a soldier, and giving a military salute to the bartender, who is the commander-in-chief of all who happen to patronize his bar. Everybody here acts like he was at a picnic in the woods, with a large barrel of beer, with perspiration oozing down the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... "That was a cracking good speech—a great speech, Mr. Blount!" he said, as the branch train rattled in from the north. "If you can go all over the State making as good talks as the one we've just heard, you'll tie the whole shooting-match up in a hard knot for us fellows. But McVickar won't ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the objective point at which endless volleys of blazing shells were aimed, any of them powerful enough, if it only hit them fair, to make as short work of the Projectile as you could of an egg-shell. They had many hairbreadth escapes, but fortunately the cracking of the glass proved to be the only serious damage of which they ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... out of the room, the other girls following. They went out on the lawn, ran about for a while, then settled themselves under a tree and began cracking and eating nuts. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... school goal-line; the school team clinging to them and battling with them like tiger-cats. He had only been at Tidborough a month, but he felt he would die if the line was crossed. He swiped till he thought his throat must crack. When his cracking throat incontinently took intervals of rest, he prayed to God for the school, visioning God on his throne on the school goalposts and mentioning to Him the ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... manhood out of you. You stumble along gasping. By a chance I came on an Esquimaux sealing, and he beat and thumped me into wakefulness. Then he packed me on to his dog-sleigh, and took my own bit of a sled behind, and set his fourteen-foot whip cracking, and off ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... or literary skill. There were no encouragements when Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the world, he ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... by the tongue-lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, "nape-cracking," or "chin-smashing," were part of the routine, and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of other boys. When a pupil deserved punishment and the schoolmaster could not afford to inflict it because the culprit happened ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the spectators, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... plank and bolt begins to shake and speak. When he had come to where Strangeways had been standing, he stood still and listened. He could hear no sound of travel, no cursing a man's voice, urging his dogs forward, or cracking of a whip. Then he felt the ice sagging from under him, and the cold touch of water creeping round his moccasins. From a rift in the cloud, a segment of the moon looked out. Before and behind him lay the frozen expanse of river, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... he panted. 'You're cracking my ribs. We-we mustn't let them think we're afraid, must we,—all the powers of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the atmosphere having about this time become considerably lower than before, the cracking of the timbers was very frequent and loud for a time; but generally ceased altogether in an hour or two after this fall had taken place in the thermometer, and did not occur again at the same temperature during the winter. The wind blowing fresh from the northward, with a heavy snowdrift, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... fire in the living room, only going out to bring in logs and clear the snow from the door and windows. I never spent a more fearful night than two nights ago, alone in my cabin in the storm, with the roof lifting, the mud cracking and coming off, and the fine snow hissing through the chinks between the logs, while splittings and breaking of dead branches, wind wrung and snow laden, went on incessantly, with screechings, howlings, thunder and lightning, and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... lining to stiffen and keep the leg part in place, are cooler and more comfortable than any other kind. A pair of boot-hooks will be required for putting them on, and a boot-jack for taking them off. A little Lucca oil used occasionally prevents patent leather from cracking. The dry mud should be brushed off soiled boots with a soft brush that will not scratch the leather, and they should then be sponged over with a damp sponge and polished with a selvyt or chamois ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes |
