"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to side in a terrific manner, proved a mere paper Company; never sent any ships, only produced Diplomacies, and "had the honor to be." This was the third grand Shadow which the Kaiser chased, shaking all the world, poor crank world, as he strode after it; and this also ended in zero, and several tons of diplomatic correspondence, carried once by breathless estaffettes, and now silent, gravitating towards Acheron all of them, and interesting to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of it," Cressler went on, heedless of Jadwin's good-humoured protests. "Yes, I know I am a crank on speculating. I'm going to preach a little if you'll let me. I've been a speculator myself, and a ruined one at that, and I know what I am talking about. Here is what I was going to say. These fellows themselves, the gamblers—well, call them speculators, if you like. Oh, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... talk of the flight across the Atlantic, a means has been found to allow the aviator, or some helper with him, to start the engine once it has stalled in midair. This is accomplished by means of a sprocket chain gear and a crank connected to the engine shaft. The turning handle is within reach ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... UNREGULATED PUBLIC OPINION.—The growing power of Public Opinion brings with it increased possibilities for good, but also increased possibilities for evil. In an important sense, this is the age of the propagandist, the crank reformer, and the subsidized newspaper, the age of the agitator who spreads lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against this flood; he must recognize that Public Opinion is often capricious, ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... her. It could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... if you have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... it is really wonderfully simple. We never mention the aristocracy now—it would be like talking shop. We just enjoy ourselves. You, by the way, I met in connection with the movement for rational dress. You are a bit of a crank, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... lives in learning pilotage, And grow good steersmen when the vessel's crank! Gap-toothed he spake, and with a tottering shank Sidled to gain the sunny bench of Age. It is the sentence which completes that stage; A testament of wisdom reading blank. The seniors of the race, on their last plank, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... onion about their roots you can make roses what you want—but you can't people—no, not even when you've helped to bring them into the world. No matter how straight they come at birth, they're all just as liable as not to take an inward crank and go crooked before the end." He looked thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the green table, and his face, beautiful with the wisdom of more than seventy years, was illumined by a smile which seemed in some way a part of the April sunshine flooding the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... relieved when he told me that, for I had been imagining that he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me over to some stupid crank which he would call ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... flat on de groun' en tuck off one er de behime shoes, en loant it ter Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit, he lope off down de road en den he come back. He tell Mr. Dog dat de shoe fit mighty nice, but wid des one un um on, hit make 'im trot crank-sided. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... secure him an interview during to-day. Here is that line. Norgate is a young man for whom I have a great friendship. I consider him possessed of unusual intelligence and many delightful gifts, but, like many others of us, he is a crank. You can listen with interest to anything he may have to say to you, unless he speaks of Germany. That's his weak point. On any other subject he is as sane ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to like to be bullied,'" I quoted. "And I guess I'm not afraid. He's healthy and a healthy man's never a crank." ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Our crank cuffins had for some time looked upon me with suspicion and coldness: my superior privileges and comforts they had at first forgiven, on account of my birth and my generosity to them; but by degrees they lost respect for the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fish, they placed their villages near the sea beaches or the rivers and lakes. In their canoes they would paddle as far as twelve miles from land. Amongst other fish they caught sharks, killing them before they hauled them into the crank canoes; or, joining forces, they would sweep some estuary with drag nets, and, with much yelling and splashing, drive the fish into a shallow corner. There with club and spear dog-fish and smooth-hound would be done to death amid shouts and ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... slopes, and around the hills and promontories, with beautiful green swells of land above it and below it. The horses went upon the run. The postilion had a little handle close by his seat—a sort of crank—that he could turn round and round, and so bring a brake to bear against the wheels, and thus help to hold the carriage back. When he began to go down a slope he would turn this crank round and round as fast as he could, till it was screwed up tight, cheering the horses on ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... disappeared we find here and there evidences of the difficulty men found in giving up the scriptural idea of direct personal interference by agents of Heaven in the ordinary phenomena of Nature: thus, in a noted map of the sixteenth century representing the earth as a sphere, there is at each pole a crank, with an angel laboriously turning the earth by means of it; and, in another map, the hand of the Almighty, thrust forth from the clouds, holds the earth suspended by a rope and spins it with his ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... the first afternoon we don't have practice, West, honestly. I'm awfully sorry I'm such a crank about lessons, but you see I've made up my mind to try for the—the—what scholarship ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it always ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is. She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound of ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... regarding his official and personal position, as shown in sundry petty treason trials. The simple fact is that German public opinion, embodied in German law, has arrived at the conclusion that it is not best to allow the head of the state to be the sport of every crank or blackguard who can wield a pen or pencil. The American view, which allowed Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley to be attacked in all the moods and tenses of vituperation, and to be artistically portrayed as tyrants, drunkards, clowns, beasts of prey, and reptiles, has not yet ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... peace-mongers—all these may have a real genius among them once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It's the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—never the crank. This is the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... moment I come out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... busy making coffee when the third nomad appeared with his music machine, and, halting near her, alighted and fell stiffly to turning the eventful crank. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... belief there's a crank in the old fellow,' exclaimed Joseph. 'Is he really such a fool as to think Jane won't use the money for herself? And what about Kirkwood? I tell you what it is; he's a deep fellow, is Kirkwood. I ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... said Beamish, without a trace of rancor. "There's Mrs. Nelson—everybody knows she's a crank—and Hardie, the Methodist minister. They've been trying to make trouble for the hotels for ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and forth along the bank trying to think of some way to cross the river. He found a high flagpole with a rope going over to the other side. The rope went through a loop at the top of the pole and then down the pole and around a large crank. A sign on ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... the church were exasperating to a degree. There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about curing the German Emperor from cancer. Inasmuch as what we needed was, not protection against a mob, but a sharp lookout for cranks, the arrangement ought by rights to have been ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... CRANK.—With a crank two feet long, one may turn a wheel twice as easily as with one one foot long, but the hand will move twice as far. If a wedge is two inches thick at the large end and ten inches long, a man may lift 1000 pounds by striking the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... that again on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday and on Friday, and on Saturday. One afternoon, strolling in the adjacent country, he had seen a horse walking round and round and round in a small paddock, turning a crank which worked some machine or other in an adjoining shed: that horse had somehow suggested himself ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... anti-musical natures, they avoid concerts, or at the most, resign themselves to sit through an opera. However, since the nature and quality of the music does not matter here, we may quote: "Hearing a Barbary organ in the street, I picture the instrument to myself. I see the man turning the crank. If military music sounds from afar, I see a regiment marching." An excellent pianist plays for a friend Beethoven's sonata in C sharp minor, putting into its execution all the pathos of which he is capable. The other sees in it "the tumult and excitement of a fair." Here the musical rendering ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... helter-skelter. How would he know the man? How could he be certain, in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted, before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person, or some strange outlandish crank? ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I am a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... a secret eccentric bearing through which the crank shaft operated. When this bearing was properly adjusted the engine worked perfectly, when it was out of adjustment, it would ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... Pee-wee had prepared his sneaks especially for making prints on wooden ties he could scarcely have done better. In order to get at the main bearings of the engine he had, with characteristic disregard, stood plunk in the copper drain basin under the crank-case. The oil had undoubtedly softened the rubber sole of his sneakers so that it held the clinging substance, and in some cases it was possible to distinguish on the ties the half-obliterated crisscross design ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... off the eastern slope of Quereau is a very rocky piece of ground full of "trees" (corals) in 250 fathoms. This is a good halibut ground although it is almost impossible to haul the gear by hand and the use of the "gurdy" (a roller turned by a crank and fastened to the dory's bow for winding up the trawl) becomes necessary. Occasional fares of halibut are taken on and about the Rocky Bottom in 20 to 25 fathoms from July 1 to ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich
... extremely simple and effective. The cranked part of the rod passing across the end of the wagon, and with handles at each end workable from the 6 ft. way, is attached to the catch hooks by means of a light chain. On throwing the handle over, and against the end of the wagon, the crank moves over and below the center, lifting up the catch into a position out of range of action, and from this position it cannot fall except it is released by the shunter. A shackle and links hang from the end of the drawbar for attachment to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... garden hedge which encloses it is as high as the wall of the women's penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... and no protection but his honest eye and his humane heart; and track those embittered savages to their lairs in the gloomy forests and among the mountain snows. Naturally, he was considered a crank. But he was not quite that. In fact, he was a good way short of that. He was building upon his long and intimate knowledge of the native character. The deriders of his project were right—from their standpoint—for they believed the natives to be mere wild beasts; and Robinson was right, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... observations, he finally decided to appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at and then avoided as a crank. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Bell Crank.—Curious examples of mechanical constructions in the communication of motion between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... a Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two or three minutes ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... back on the car and did not see it slip out of the crowd of motor traffic and turn into the avenue. But Wonota, the Indian girl, saw her friend's danger. She uttered a loud cry and bounded out of the camera field just as the two camera men began to crank their machines. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... the whole thing from a pleasure into a duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... generations if a halt is not called on the over-zealous adoption of automatic machines for most every line of industrial activity. You are now getting to the stage where the most simple and elementary mathematical problems are solved by merely pressing a few buttons or turning a crank, the operator understanding little or nothing of the fundamentals underlying the solution of the problems in hand. This means, in the near future, brain ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... profession. When further told that they have to help themselves by living so that they will not put any obstacles in the way of normal functioning of their bodies, they think that the physician who thinks and talks that way must be a crank, and many seek help where they are told that they can obtain health from pills, powders and potions or from various ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... fastened her wrists to two other rings in the wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... spin in the park. Stoop, crank your automobile. Step into the machine. Ride around the track; blow your horn. Pump up your flat tire. Bend and stretch arms upward to rest them. Ride home. Breathe in the good fresh air. Put your ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... said Dorothy, handing him a written slip, "except things I know mother took with her. So robbery wasn't the motive. I think you must be right. It's some crank. But, oh, if you only knew how afraid I am to stay here! I'm afraid of my own shadow; I'm afraid of the clock chimes; when the telephone rings I'm in a panic. Don't you think I could go away somewhere, with Tante Lydia—just ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... offered a hiding-place, but the search proved useless until they reached the head of the track. Then an explanation of the man's escape was supplied, for the hand-car, which had stood there an hour ago, had gone. A few strokes of the crank would start it, after which it ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the wires from the battery up and down outside the pile of helices, it was clear that an upward and downward movement of the rod would follow, 'and that a shackle-bar attached from this oscillating rod, and to a crank, would convert this reciprocating motion into a continuous one.' To this contrivance the name of 'Jumper' was given, of which one was exhibited, the helices weighing 800 lbs., and the rod 526 lbs.; and by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... Dalwood, who was not at that moment engaged at the crank of some camera. He used the same sea terms the old man himself had uttered, but this salt-water "lingo," or translation of the command to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... the night cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness that make even a philosopher like Herbert Spencer more or less of a crank. What I wanted, and wanted as the fellow did his pistol in Texas, was first-class slumber, just such unmitigated repose as occasionally comes to a highly organized baby, unvexed by colic or pure cussedness. I began to think that perhaps that British doctor was right, and that, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... But that doesn't change the distinction between men and animals. He is your son, madam—and he's going to be mine. But, fine boy as he is, I call him a crank of the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... have thrown the crank into production. But some activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders. The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held up a small sheet which said in large letters: The Workers' Bulletin Issued ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... his heart strings. He was not a crank, nor a stickler for forms or reforms, yet he had made up his mind never to touch intoxicants. And it gave him a shock to find his roommate ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... a court any longer," he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish—that's what ails him! For one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop that there spiteful old crank in the street and put a civil question to him—that's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... where the two rods meet there is a "crosshead," H, running to and fro in a guide to prevent the piston rod being broken or bent by the oblique thrusts and pulls which it imparts through C R to the crank K. The latter is keyed to a shaft S carrying the fly-wheel, or, in the case of a locomotive, the driving-wheels. The crank shaft revolves in bearings. The internal diameter of a cylinder is called its bore. The travel ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... would better part! Lieders had answered not a word; he had given Lossing a queer glance and turned on his heel. He went home and bought some poison on the way. "The old man is gone and the young feller don't want the old crank round, no more," he said to himself. "Thekla, I guess I make her troubles, ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... forgetting that. And naturally for a time you were frightened. It is just possible that for the moment you lost your head and honestly thought that Mrs. Porter's methods were the only chance for him. But that state of mind could not last all the time with you. You are not a crank like your aunt. You are a perfectly sensible, level-headed woman. And you must have seen the idiocy of it all long before I came back. Why did ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it. So while Jerry hastened to get the mudhook aboard, Frank bent down over the motor. They heard him crank it, and then came the merry and suggestive ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;—the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,—with a sort of little crank.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... speed, strength, and durability are steel-bar carpenter clamps, Fig. 176. They vary in length from 1-1/2 ft. to 8 ft. The separate parts are the steel bar A, the cast-iron frame B, the tip C into which fits the screw D, on the other end of which is the crank E, and the slide F with its dog G, which engages in the notches on the bar. Any part, if broken, can be ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any one ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... side only was there barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the bright ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), Apropos of Miranda, I'll rest on my oars And drift through ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Carroll, glancing down again through the scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water. It was comforting, however, to see that it had not increased, though he did not expect that state of affairs to last. When they drove out into broken water, he found it difficult to work the crank. The plunges threw him against the coaming, and the sea poured in over it continually. There are not many men who feel equal to determined toil before their morning meal, and the physical slackness is generally more pronounced if they have been up most of ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the speed you can, Tom!" begged Mr. Damon. "We'll catch the scoundrels now. Speed up the motor! Oh, if I only had my automobile now. Bless my crank shaft, but one can go so much faster on land ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... at all to Manuel's taste, despite her affectionate caresses; but La Goya was compromised with El Soldadito, a man with a position, as she said, for when he went to work he turned the crank of an handorgan. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... thought it was one; but I found it moved only when touched in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like it. It was some kind of a machine, and the turning of a crank made it draw together in such a way, that if a person were once within its embrace, the pressure would soon arrest the vital current, and stop the breath of life. Around the walls of the room were chains, rings and hooks, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... The great crank that grinds the screw, and is itself ground by the piston—not to mention the cylinder and boiler—works in a dark place deep down in the engine-room, like a giant hand constantly engaged on ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... shot a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply. "So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what this ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of the author of the alleged protocols, though obviously it would make all the difference in the world whether these are summaries of statements made by a responsible leader of the Jewish people or the wild vaporings of such a crank as infests practically every conference and convention. We do not know who translated the alleged protocols, nor in what language they were written. Moreover, not one word of assurance does Professor Nilus give on his own account that he knows any of these things. He does not appear to ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling cream drowning ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... a maintenance case coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was not ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... and many spiders at his command, this officer improved upon my suggestion, by substituting for my quill turned in the fingers a wooden cylinder worked by a crank, and by securing, at a proper distance, (between pins, I think,) one or more spiders, whose threads were guided between pins upon the cylinder. He thus produced more of the silk, winding it upon rings of hard rubber so as to make very pretty ornaments. With this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... to give him the job because he has earned it. He gave me some very valuable information about the wretched condition of her electric-light plant and a crack, cunningly concealed, in the after web of her crank shaft—" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... teacher—that he has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome, and he gives his orders through certain assistant engineers until the one is reached who turns the crank, and the machine has nothing to do one way or the other. This machine is paid for giving up his liberty by having machines under him who have also given up theirs. While somebody else turns his crank, he has the pleasure of turning a crank belonging ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... does not prevent it, other folks will have to import their own roses; and I have engaged every boy in the public schools who has nothing better to do next Saturday to go to Lome Park and bring back as many maiden-hairs as he can find. Ferns are my craze, as you know, and I am quite a crank on maiden-hair, which I mean to adopt for my crest with "If she will, she will," as a motto. Ever ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... a dry rasp in the Major's throat. "Don't you think that to say she is a crank would be hitting nearer ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a dimple in the middle of her chin. She ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... reputation he made while in office of lack of good manners. Saying he was unable to read the handwriting in which the protest was written, he disposed of it in a way that would suggest itself naturally to a statesman and a gentleman. As a "crank" letter he turned it over to the Washington correspondents. You can imagine what ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... wanted a velocipede With springs of burnished steel; He knew the way to work it— The treadle for the wheel, The brake to turn and twist it, The crank to make it stop, My! hadn't he been riding For days, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... fish surrounding old Sir Joseph. Some of them I couldn't quite make out. He was just a little hard to get at, himself. I got very huffy at the old boy once or twice, I'm sorry to say. It was about ships. I'm a crank on ships. Everybody has at least one mania. That's mine—ships. Sir Joseph and I quarreled about them. He wanted to buy all I could make, but he was in no hurry to have 'em finished. I told him he talked more like a German trying to stop production than like a Britisher trying to speed it ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... engine. The situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Robinson—to be sinking, and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a bucket up from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... The iron crank that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, until there was a crash ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... routine work of his own trade; with merely knowing that he must turn such and such a tap or valve in order to produce such and such a desired result: he wanted to see for himself how and why the engine did this or that, what was the use and object of piston and cylinder and crank and joint and condenser—in short, fully to understand the underlying principle of its construction. He took it to pieces for cleaning whenever it was needful; he made working models of it after his old childish pattern; he even ventured to tinker it up when ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Probably there never will be. But I'm no crank. I like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of training my own perceptions, though ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... it knew his business; therefore he is a student of this type of explosives; therefore a police agent, a—what you call—crank like myself, or a destroying criminal—that is, an anarchist. Therefore he is the last named, since neither of the others would want to blow up a gentleman's yacht. It seems clear to you?" he asked, without raising his eyes; ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... on paper and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the machine is right, then the material with which it is fed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... twice, as it were. On the first "take" the characters go through the business already rehearsed, and the director keeps careful track of just when each important move is made by counting while the cameraman turns the crank. If, at the count of "Eleven!" one character registers surprise and points excitedly at an unoccupied corner of the room, it is the first step in introducing the fairy, or the spectre, who is to appear there in the picture as shown on the screen. After the scene has been gone through with, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with us; and I guess that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... flock crank theft whit shut trick shock sling whet shed shelf trunk trust whig shop swift plank sting whip shad frock swing fresh whiff chub strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script scrub ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... starting crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally, and pulled the lever that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get up the proper speed, and the powerful new engine failed to fire. Charlie almost cried with vexation while ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... attention to the improvements that we have just made in our mill. Last week we put a handle in the upper burr, and we have also engaged one of the best head millers in Pompeii to turn the crank day-times. Our old head miller will oversee the business at night, so that the mill will be in full blast night and day, except when the head miller has gone to his meals or stopped to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... added to the scalded milk and cream, stirring them well together. When the mixture has cooled, strain it into the can of the freezer. Three measures of cracked ice to one of salt should be used. The ice and salt, well-mixed, were packed around the freezer. The crank was turned very slowly the first ten minutes, until the mixture had thickened, when it was turned more rapidly until the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... and rotatory engines. Single acting engines are engines without a crank, such as are used for pumping water. Rotative engines are engines provided with a crank, by means of which a rotative motion is produced; and in this important class stand marine and mill engines, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... similarity in build; as it would permit us to relieve our ships of many of the spare spars with which they are incumbered, and we should probably not again hear of suspending the operations of a frigate thousands of miles away, until a crank or rod could be sent to her; because, when ships of the same class are cruising together, by a careful distribution of spare spars and machinery among them, it is hardly probable that damage would be sustained, or loss of spars or "break ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... straw crawl brawn snore gloss flank brick charge crow quench green tinge shark Scotch chest goose brand thrift space prow twist flange crank wealth slice twain limp screw throb thrice chess flake soon flesh finch flash flaw twelve ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... with a hand more swift and sure The greater labor might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he labored his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all, Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat, And ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... heard priest or people condemning her for forming the acquaintance of a stranger without an introduction; she was called one of the "mothers in Israel," and even St. Paul, who was a regular crank about the girls, classed her with the "holy women of old," which proves he didn't know anything about her history or was playing upon the ignorance of his hearers. She was a leader of the ton in Israel, and if in those days they did not banish her from good society, ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... news about him," said the doctor. "I hoped he was going to stay. It's always a pity when such a man lets his sympathies use him instead of using them. But we must always judge that kind of crank leniently, if he doesn't involve other ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... a Christian martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, not because ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... shrieked derisively, the crank turned, and the next moment the train slid out serpent-like into the mist. Major Colquhoun had watched it off like any ordinary spectator, and when it had gone he looked at the porter, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ma'am! She was such a beautiful sea-boat: and just look at her now! Never sail again: never! never! She was a little crank in beating, I can't deny it; but how she did fly with the wind abaft. She sank a pirate in the straits, and weathered a hurricane off the Mauritius; and after all for a lubber to go and lay her bones ashore in a fair wind: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... was the verdict of Aunt Jane, overheard by Roy, who was not supposed to understand. "They will grow up without an inch of moral backbone. And you can't say I didn't warn you. Lady Despard's a crank, of course; but Nevil is a fool to allow it. Goodness knows he was bad enough, though he was reared on the good old lines. And you are not giving his son a chance. The sooner the boy's packed off to school the better. I shall ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver |
