"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "drive th' cattle down from th' Cup Rim right away. We'll run those two bunches under Blue Pine an' Nick Bob out toward th' Black Coulee. Tell 'em t' keep close t' th' others. I trust th' Indians, but there ain't no Indian livin' can meet Courtrey's white renegades in courage an' wits. Then we'll start right in an' dig ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the man was almost wholly ignorant of military matters and utterly incapable of handling such a situation, he leaped on his horse and, spurring his way across the frozen ground to the sound of the firing, confronted the huddled and beaten division just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, General Lew Wallace—afterwards famous as the author "Ben Hur"—had arrived and thrown forward a brigade to cover the confused retreat, so that for the moment the Confederate advance was held in check. But despite this, McClernand's ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... some very thin ice at luncheon upon a classical subject, when talking to the distinguished Mr. Derringham, and she must be warned and primed up before dinner. Arabella had herself averted a catastrophe and dexterously turned the conversation in the nick of time. Mrs. Cricklander had a peculiarly unclassical brain, and found learning statistics about ancient philosophies and the names of mythological personages the most difficult of all. Fortunately in these days, even among ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... "Nick," said J.W., doing the honors, "you know Mr. Drury, the pastor of our church. And this is Mr. Conover from Philadelphia, a very good friend of ours. He's been looking around town, and wants to ask ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... very careful not to nick this fragile ware. As a lover of ceramic art, it would pain me ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... put us all in good nick," said Tresco, as he drew the cork of the bottle, and poured some of the spirit into the pannikin. "Here's luck," and he drank his ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... expected of Sir Redvers Buller, to whom the Boers, by a play of words, had given a somewhat disrespectful nick-name. He had not been long in Natal before his chance came. I must, however, be silent about his successes and his failures, for, as I left Natal on the 9th of December, I had no personal experience of his methods. But this I will say, that whatever his own people have to say to his discredit, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... said Mason, "it looks as if you had been quarrelling. I guess I came just in the nick of time." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... the way into her study, and shut the door behind her. It was a bare little room, singularly free from those photographs and nick- nacks with which most girls love to adorn a private sanctum. It looked what it was—a workroom pure and simple, with a pile of writing materials on the table, and the walls ornamented with maps ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... on the cloth, she asked her father who the man could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head, repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including the check, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wanted what they did not want, in the nick ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... trees. Even though the hounds kept nipping the cougar, the persistent fellow still pursued the hunter. At last Jones found the right shell, just as the cougar reached for him. Major, the leader of the hounds, darted bravely in, and grasped the leg of the beast just in the nick of time. This enabled Jones to take aim and fire at close range, which ended the fight. Upon examination, it was discovered the cougar had been half-blinded by the fine shot, which accounted for the ineffectual attempts he ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... perfect plot, unless probability be superadded. And although it cannot be said that Fielding disregards probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money is conveniently lost and found; the naivest coincidences continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but entirely casual) relations with the characters. Sometimes an episode is so inartistically introduced as to be almost clumsy. Towards the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... took a long time, and laid me open to dire penalties for disturbing the public peace. But it had to be done, and fortunately for me a row at the other end of the room called the monitor away in the nick of time. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... up in the window with his legs crossed, and his arms folded, and his face making you think of the Old Nick?" ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... mother, but at the moment he had not received the perfect initiation of the Palladium; technically, therefore, he had no right to participate in the Supreme Mysteries. However, it is needless to say that he had arrived in the nick of time to be present at a ceremony which takes place only once in ten years, provided that he was willing to undergo the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... punctuality, promptness, immediateness. V. be prompt, be on time, be in time; arrive on time; be in the nick of time. Adj. timely, seasonable, in time, punctual, prompt. Adv. on time, punctually, at the deadline, precisely, exactly; right on time, to the minute; in time; in good time, in military time, in pudding time^, in due time; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and found it was locked, and now they try the timber walls so that every beam creaked again; at last they brought things so far that they broke down the shield-panelling, got into the passage, and thence out to the steps. Now bearserks'-gang seized them, and they howled like dogs. In that very nick of time Grettir came up and with both hands thrust his spear at the midst of Thorir, as he was about to get down the steps, so that it went through him at once. Now the spear-head was both long and broad, and Ogmund the Evil ran on to Thorir and pushed him on to Grettir's thrust, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... the scheme of the story conveys a sense of unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That Mr. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... carelessly amidst a stream of insults and shouts. Its greater power enabled it to disdain collisions which would have run down frailer vessels. Besides, Tahoser's crew were so skilful that their vessel seemed endowed with life, so swiftly did it obey the rudder and avoid in the nick of time serious obstacles. Soon it had left behind the heavily laden boats with their cabins filled with passengers inside, and on the roof three or four rows of men, women, and children crouching in the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... fairly GLARED At one another, and the scared And empty faces of the crowd,— I wisht you could 'a' been allowed To jest look on and see it all,— And heerd the girls and women bawl And wring their hands; and heerd old Jeff A-cussin' as he swung hisse'f Upon his hoss, who champed his bit As though old Nick had holt of it: And cheek by jowl the two old wrecks Rode off as though they'd break ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Mary, Clara, and Sophia are called by their parents Johnny (or Jack), Nick, Ernie, Will (or Willie or Bill or Billy), Polly ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... the Jebel el-Abyaz, whose colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing along the coast, was found to be 350 (not 600) feet above the plain. The Grand Filon, which a mauvais plaisant of a reviewer called the "Grand Filou," forms a "nick" near the hill-top, but does not bifurcate in the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron, with a trace of silver,[EN22] where it meets the quartz and the granite. Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I counted five several ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... had risen instinctively, and stood looking with crimson cheeks and quicker-coming breath at this young man who came upon her in the nick of time. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... bed and strode dazedly to his tent door. At the mine below him his fellaheen were as busy as so many dirty and gaudy bees. Even the lordly lazy Turkish soldiers were lending a hand at windlass and crane. Over the nick of the pass, leading toward Jerusalem, the last animal of a mule train was vanishing. Najib, who had as usual escorted the departing shipment of ore to the opening in the pass, was trotting ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... of gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction. "Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies "Scurra ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... together. Hal felt a bullet brush past his ear. Nicolas dropped suddenly from his horse. Turning, Hal gazed into the calm face of Nikol and in the dwarf's hand was a smoking revolver. He had whipped out his revolver and fired in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... two hoots if her dad was old Nick himself. I'm going to marry her—if she'll have me. Ah, the glorious creature!" He waved his long arms despairingly. "O Lord, send me a cure for freckles. Bryce, you'll speak a kind word for me, won't you—sort of boom my stock, eh? Be a ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... leaving this place till morning, but it suddenly appeared like the most woful waste of time. The master of this tremendous affair should be abroad and active; who knew what his keen eyes might detect, what loss his absence might occasion in this nick of time? And here he was, shut up and locked in a wine-cellar! I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation to discover the thief, if I never regained the diamond. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... orders in the nick of time. We are to go to Key West. I am to join the others on the ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... Old Nick drives; I had either to find courage to enter the schooner and search her, and so stand to come across the means to prolong my life, and perhaps procure my deliverance, or perish of famine and frost ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... he gets sight on him, and goes softly up to him, shakin' of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase for it back again, seven miles more. By this ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... coming along that old road lots of times, and freighting wagons, and wagons what we all know carry mostly wiskey, and that was breaking the law, too! Them soldiers catch the man with that whiskey they sure put him up for a long time, less'n he put some silver in they hands. That's what my Uncle Nick say. That Uncle Nick a mean Negro, and he ought ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a symptom ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... have been deliciously refreshed; and now that is done you will go home and the poor thirsty soul will once more become the great architect. But before that happens, pray inform us what god it was that brought you hither from Pelusium in the very nick of time when the fire broke out, and how matters look now in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Orleans could not have been saved. His chief hope lay in the volunteers of Tennessee, who, under their Generals, Coffee and Carroll, were pushing their toilsome and weary way toward the city. Every effort was made to hurry their march through the almost impassable roads, and at last, in the very nick of time, on the 23d of December, the day of which the British troops reached the river bank, the vanguard of the Tennesseeans marched into New Orleans. Gaunt of form and grim of face; with their powder-horns slung over their buckskin shirts; carrying their long rifles on their shoulders and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when all ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... merit of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... laughing. Like me, he now saw this mysterious young lady for the first time. Like me, he wondered what the extraordinary nick-name under which she had ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... nick of time," answered Dick. "Will you allow me to introduce myself?" and he bowed. "My name is Dick Rover and this is my brother Tom and this my brother Sam. You are ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... ones, big white ones and a few little yellow ones. Well, in less time than it takes to cock your ears, that baby was shovelling pennies through the slit in my box and chuckling with joy. I stood it as long as I could, and then, in the nick of time, snatched a big white penny out of his paw and bolted off to the confectioner's. Imagine my astonishment when the girl actually refused to serve me! "Oh, Scottie," she cried, "there must be some mistake; I know your mistress wouldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... "If she is ill she would rather see the old Nick himself than Miss Stetson. I'll run ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... but tha knows we've noa need ta mix up wi' sich like unless we've a mind. Aw'm capt whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, an' he'll ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... boyhood on his father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nether-lip, his florid face a thought less florid than its wont, his prominent blue eyes a thought more prominent. Under its golden periwig old Nick Trenchard's wizened countenance was darkened by a scowl, and his fingers, long, swarthy, and gnarled, drummed fretfully upon the table. Portly Lord Gervase Scoresby—their host, a benign and placid man of peace, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Aurelie, "Maxime is right. Don't you see, old fellow, that generous actions are like Couture's investments?—you should make them in the nick of time." ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... "Nick don't work straight from the shoulder, Mr. Kendrick; but he's got a long arm with a lot o' elbows in it." McCorquodale shook his head. thoughtfully and looked serious. "There was a guy named Weiler hangin' around—I dunno. It's ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... fifteen years of age before I stole any money, or got into any trouble; but I used to 'nick' little things, such as fruit, &c., when I was a kid. My father kept a small shop, but I was bound an apprentice to a very peculiar branch of the Sheffield trade; and before I had finished my apprenticeship I committed my first crime. I was playing at bagatelle one night, and lost all my cash, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... at every turn of her propeller, the Sky-Bird shot down the last stretch of ground reaching to the fence. How fast this obstruction loomed up! Just in the nick of time the airplane left the ground. They sailed over the tops of trees and houses so close that the wheels of their landing-gear almost scraped. It was one of the finest maneuvers of the whole voyage, and the boys praised John ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... Hamish, as Aul' Nick said when his mouth was fu'. Yon's Finlay's beast, and I'm thinkin' o' a' Finlay's lassies, there's just wan wid bother her noddle tae come here away, and that's Mirren; but wae's me," said he, with his droll smile, "she's set her cap at ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... water-fowl, a creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, or ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... which Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick"; follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet "loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the Shearers' Knowe, those "adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill," sometimes ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... between the engineers trying to repair the damage and the shortening hours of daylight. On the result depended quite possibly the lives of us all. I cannot remember one sweeter sound than the raucous voice of the engineer just in the nick of time calling out, "Right for'ard," and then the signal of the engine-room bell in the tell-tale in our little wheel-house. The Government has since put a fine little light in summer on White Point, the point ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Nick walked calmly up to the table, and gazed at the face of his victim with a coldness that proved he felt no compunction. Still he hesitated about touching the body, actually raising his hand, as if ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... going to walk right up against it! Oh! Frank, what a horrible monster!" Andy replied, in trembling tones, as he strove to point toward something that he had seen just in the nick of time. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... whiskey standing by us all the time, waiting patiently to be drunk. Here, Nick Snell, boy, take your hands out of your breeches-pocket, and run down with the calabash to the branch. The water is pretty good thar, I reckon; and, strannger, after we've taken a sup, we'll eat a bite, and then lie down. It's high time, I ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Her hard blue eyes met his unflinchingly. "Money's the only thing in the world worth having when you've never had any, and I know! I believe I'd marry Old Nick himself if he offered me ten thousand a year and a car ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... the thought came; but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly, and tried to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... just passing the entrance to a factory yard when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and wheeling around found himself confronted by Jack Sagger, Nick Sammel, and half a dozen others, who had gathered to see their leader ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... and a part of a battery!" was the announcement. "They are coming along as though they were followed by the Old Nick himself!" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... somewhat fretful at this; he has, to be sure, strong parts, but he is a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog.' Letters of Boswell, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody speech that had fixed on him the nick-name of Starvation! Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds:—'The happily coined word "starvation" delivered a whole continent from the Northern harpies that meant to devour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... observ'd, not to remain always the same, but to be continually chang'd by a kind of fluctuating motion, not unlike that of the waves of the Sea, so as that part of the limb, which was but even now nick'd or indented in, is now protuberant, and will presently be sinking again; neither is this all but the whole body of the Luminaries, do in the Telescope, seem to be depress'd and slatted, the upper, and more especially the under ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... scouts. But for Stannard the hostiles would have gotten away, not only with Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the nick of time," was his verdict. "I trust to be able to effect a complete cure. A winter in the south would work wonders, and, if my treatment is thoroughly carried out, she should return to Haversleigh in the spring with ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... her hands, "you don't mean to say you haven't taken down your stocking. What would Saint Nick say?" ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... occasion to send the appeal therein mentioned. It is evident that at that time Dr. Jameson believed that his plans were so well arranged that there would be no bloodshed, that, indeed, he would appear in the nick of time to afford the "moral support" he had originally engaged to provide. The troops were to go straight to Johannesburg before the Boers had time to assemble their forces or to take any measures to stop him. The Doctor explained that they were marching to the rescue ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... The wind died down in the nick of time, giving the men a chance to control the blaze. When it was evident the danger was past, the operator set up his apparatus again and prepared to continue his duties, as ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... seems that I came down just in the nick of time," replied the little fop. "The fact is, I drank too much wine last night, and it makes me thirsty to-day. I was almost choked, and the ladies had seated themselves on a rock, to enjoy a view of the boundless ocean, you see; and it looked to me just as though they intended to stay there all ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... "Old Nick has more influence with York than I have. He crosses the street when he sees me. I like him about as much as he likes me. He's boss of his own show—his directors cut no ice. Anyway, it's none of my business. I've no excuse ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... wasting men in attacking the great pile of buildings with the force at our disposal. We had men in plenty, but for breeching we needed the cannon left behind by these swift forces, which, marching day and night, had arrived in the very nick of time before the walls ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Miss Rusha; she too ugly for dat. S'pose fire burn de ole Nick? Den he be done dead and gone, which ain't so; derefore nuthin' ever fall Miss Rusha; she never sick, nor die, nor drown, nor burn up. Miss Ellice she sick, she die, 'cause she be an angel; she go home to glory; but Miss Rusha she ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... was courteously military—that of an established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp receipt ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and such other like games, cutting at the nick, is a great aduantage, so is cutting by Bumcard, finely vnder or ouer: stealing the stock or ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... of Germany has by some been supposed traceable to 'Old Nick'; but this is not probable, since St. Nicholas has been the patron-saint of sailors for many centuries. It was during the time of the Crusades that a vessel on the way to the Holy Land was in great peril, and ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... a second, made a snatch at his collar; and, clutching hold of it, in the very nick of time, saved him by a miracle—had he been carried overboard, no earthly power could ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... woman's feelings; and she is not proof against pity. He will have her again. Why, she is his nurse now; and see how that will work. We have a week's more business here; and, by bad luck, a dead fortnight, all along of Dublin falling through unexpectedly. He is as artful as Old Nick; he will spin out that broken head of his and make it last all the three weeks; and she will nurse him, and he will be weak, and grateful, and cry, and beg her pardon six times a day, and she is only a woman, after all: and they are man and wife, when all is done: the road is beaten. They will run ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the shell from the sutural angle on the outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six inches, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... sheep a certain day; For he had solemnly vowed to slay, In sacrifice, a sheep that day, And wanted a sheep his vow to pay. Three neighboring rogues (The cunning dogs!) Finding this out, Went straight about (Moved, I ween, by the very Old Nick,) To play the Brahmin a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... person. Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him, if I can hit the nick of time." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... accurate, and as spirited as it is true. The constable, Sellick, is an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... charm to dissipate all the affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the terminus before going to a fancy-dress ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... through it," he said, "she has got a capital constitution; but I'll tell you what it is—if she had lain another five minutes in that draught there would have been an end of her. You came in the nick of time. And now if I were you I should go to bed. You can do no good here, and you look ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... man," said the captain, turning to our coastguardsman, "the missin' of that steamer, at which I growled so much that day, turned out to be a great blessin' after all, although it seemed such a misfortune. For it caused me to arrive just in the nick of time to save two human lives—besides givin' the old girl here somethin' to think about and work upon for the next twelvemonth to come—whereas, if I had arrived the day before, I would have bin sleepin' in the house, and mayhap have bin burnt alive ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's indignation had shut her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... "and just in the nick of time. The soldier was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't give it enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... a sign they take no more care of their souls than of their country, and so both one and t'other go to old Nick." ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... Cape Bajoli straight for Marseille. They run both ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once highly ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... we have when we were married? Why, little girl, you just got through saying that the happiest days we ever spent were up there in the woods when money was so scarce that we knew the date on every dollar we owned—and every scratch and nick on them—and the dimes ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... to see the place one mass of fire, and he might easily have been forgiven if he had turned his back on it then. He is made of brave stuff, though, and they said he dashed straight into that blazing place, and, with the flames and smoke all around him, he brought his patient out in the nick of time, for the whole show collapsed just as he got to the doorway, the sheets of red-hot corrugated roofing fell down upon him, and he was so badly burned that someone will have to go and find a doctor to cure ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too wide a berth, I should as surely be carried past it, in which case I felt pretty certain that my last chance would be gone. I made a desperate effort at the very nick of time, and happily succeeded in laying hold of a rope, which was hanging in the water, by means of which I was swung round to the stern of the raft, upon which, in a small timber-hut, I could see the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... Heup at the dining table, he had questioned them and they had told him a graphic story of how they had been chased by a great pack of wolves and how they had managed to escape with their lives by climbing a tree only just in the nick of time; and, moreover, how the ferocious brutes had kept them there all night long, and how, consequently, they had been nearly ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... to the window beyond which the girl could see a rope dangling from above. The sight of it partially solved the riddle of the king's almost uncanny presence upon her window sill in the very nick of time. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by his intimates. I forgot you didn't know. He got the nick-name through going to the Bal des Quatre Arts, here in Paris, wearing a half-mask made of ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... and his quality of leadership. He was an excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was the more remarkable because, at this time it was not something on ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Nay, creditors, I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and an accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick. And there is made—what? Debts. A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity. Debts, I say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the combinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... (moneyed) Woman up to Man Wins "Constitutional" support and votes From a "majority" of Tory throats! Mrs. LYNN LINTON, how this vote must vex, That caustic censor of her own sweet sex! Wild Women—with the Suffrage! Fancy that, O fluent Lady, at tart nick-names pat! Girls of the Period? They were bad enough, But what a deal of skimble-skamble stuff Will Mrs. FAWCETT's Middle-aged Ones talk When these eight hundred thousand hens o' the walk Cackle for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... of declaration to be got over. From timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable answer. I daresay, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aeroplane arrived at Aurangabad early in January 1911, and was hastily erected under a tree by the two mechanics, assisted by six willing and jocular privates of the Dublin Fusiliers. It was ready forty-eight hours after detrainment, just in the nick of time. The first flight was made by M. Jullerot and Captain Brancker, the day before the manoeuvres began, in the presence of twelve generals, one of whom was Sir Douglas Haig, at that time Chief of the Staff in India, and a numerous company ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... as well as many other cadets and boys and girls from that vicinity, had been using the hill for a couple of hours when the race between the Blue Moon and the Yellow Streak was proposed by Nick Carncross, the new friend ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... ignominious fourteen shillings a week, which Peckaby earned. The prevalent opinion in Clay Lane was that this was quite as much as Peckaby deserved; and that it was a special piece of undeserved good fortune which had taken off the blacksmith's brother and assistant in the nick of time, Joe Chuff, to make room for him. Mrs. Peckaby, however, was in a state of semi-rebellion; the worse, that she did not know upon whom to visit it, or see any remedy. She took to passing her time in groaning and tears, somewhat ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... pridefulness towards me; for, observing me standing in serenity at the window, he came, and in a vehement manner cried to me for the love of heaven to come to his assistance, and pacify the people. It would not have been proper in me to have refused; so out I went in the very nick of time: for when I got to the door, there was the soldiers in battle array, coming marching with fife and drum up the gait with Major Blaze at their head, red and furious in the face, and bent on some bloody business. The first thing I did was to run ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... nick" was to pay, "Truth indeed is stranger than fiction," His prayers were so tedious and long, People slept, till the benediction. And then came another, on trial, Who actually preached in his gloves, His manner so awkward and queer, That we settled ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... glare, And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!" Then all the passengers get in and root. Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!" Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air Pungles his nick and ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings to her countess-mother, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... sleepily the distant dust, where Mr. Sanford's Nick Stoner was leading a brilliant field, steadily overhauling the favourite, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... shutters, and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the luster of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Anglo-American. The present slave-holder, then, by declining to emancipate his bondman, does not place himself in the guilt of the man-stealer or of those who had complicity with him; but he stands exactly in that NICK of time and place, in the course of Providence, where wrong, in the transmission of African slavery, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Willoughby had set about the execution of this scheme with deliberation, prudence, and intelligence. On the frontiers, or lines, as it is the custom to term the American boundaries, he had become acquainted with a Tuscarora, known by the English sobriquet of "Saucy Nick." This fellow, a sort of half-outcast from his own people, had early attached himself to the whites, had acquired their language, and owing to a singular mixture of good and bad qualities, blended with ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the lips. In Gawayne's corner, as the shades grew thicker, Four eyes waxed brighter, and two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from each silver sconce. The scene was changed, the dreamer's dream dispelled, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... of prayer rugs by the dozen which beat any I've seen in the bazaars of Cairo. For we haven't hired from Cook, but from an Egyptian millionaire of Alexandria called Mahmoud Baroudi, whom we met coming out, and who happened to want a tenant for his boat just in the nick of time. It isn't my money he needs, though I'm paying him what I should pay Cook for a first-rate boat, but he doesn't like leaving his crew and servants with nothing to do. He says they get into mischief. He was looking out for a rich American—like nearly every one out here—when he happened ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... on 1st July, after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... about that Indian girl?" demanded Jennie Stone excitedly. "She was just as cool as a cucumber. Think of her shooting that bull just in the nick of time and ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... on," Phil explained. "The old gentleman asked me why I did not address him in his own tongue, since I evidently understand it; and then went on to say that we arrived here just in the nick of time, as the villagers were about to torture him to death, to secure the favour of some god or devil of whom they appear to be particularly afraid. And I said that he might depend upon us to protect him so long as we have the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood |
