"Ticking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late for YOU, on any side, and you don't strike me as in danger of missing the train; besides which people can be in general pretty well trusted, of course—with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here—to keep an eye on the fleeting hour. All the same don't forget that you're young—blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it. Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... sabred and uniformed in their bed-ticking suits; hated by the residents and despised by themselves, they doggedly marched, counter-marched and wheeled, knowing that they are loathsome in the island, and that their days in the New World are numbered. The sons of the colonies ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... center table. Cautiously he pried loose the false top and peered into its depths. There followed a tense moment during which he bent in a close inspection over its fascinating depths. Presently Fred caught a distinct ticking sound, and he knew that Storch had set in motion the clock upon which depended the bomb's explosion at the appointed hour. But withal he remained ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... put out their tongues, admired their sooty faces and began to pull out their bristles, for they all wore their upper lips shaved. Naturally, they confused right and left, and became entirely bewildered. A watch did not impress them; the ticking seemed mysterious and not quite innocent, and they put the instrument away at a safe distance. They asked to see some money, but were much disappointed, having imagined it would look bigger and more imposing. They preferred a little slip of paper, which they carefully ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the ears of Jack Carleton, while he stood in the woods, silent and listening, was a peculiar swashing noise, which continued a few seconds, followed by the same space of silence—the intervals being as regular as the ticking of a huge pendulum. Accompanying the sound was another, a soft, almost inaudible flow, such as one hears when standing on the bank of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... September the 11th were trained in Afghanistan's camps, and so were tens of thousands of others. Thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder, often supported by outlaw regimes, are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sea far below her above the sickening thudding of her heart as she crept forward round that terrible bend. She heard with an acuteness that made her marvel the long sweet note of the nightingale swelling among the bushes above. She also heard a watch ticking with amazing loudness close to her ear, and was aware of a very firm hand that grasped her shoulder, impelling her forward. There was no resisting that steady pressure. She crept on step by step ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... room, Daverill had glanced round for valuables. An old silver watch of Uncle Mo's, that always stopped unless allowed to lie on its back, was ticking on the dresser. The convict slipped it into his pocket, and looked round for more, opening drawers, looking under dish-covers. Finding nothing, he sat again on the table, with his hands in the pockets of his velveteen corduroy coat. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his eye condescended to the many curious objects with which the floor was littered. Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks and clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars, and bottles; a carpenter's bench and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disappear in the elevator. Then, shutting the door, he came slowly back into the room and sat down at his desk. For ten minutes he sat there motionless, his head bent forward, every limb relaxed. There was deep silence, broken only by Howard's regular breathing and the loud ticking ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,—that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all,—and that he had never seen a sweet-water on a trellis growing so fairly, or in forms so pleasing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... out with a tree upon it. There was a beautiful little bird upon the tree, and when the clock had done striking, the bird would flap its wings and sing. Then the platform would slide back into its place, the door would shut, and the clock go on ticking quietly for another hour. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... was brought up to his bedroom in the morning with his breakfast was very comic. He kept an oblong volume like a washing-book, with all the editions he knew of, some thousands in all, and his delight in ticking one more off the lengthy desiderata was like that of a schoolboy marking off the "days to the holidays." Edmund Waterton had a number of rare books besides those in his "Imitation" collection; notably a very tall ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... o'clock, intending to smoke a cigar and look at the picture papers before luncheon. I found Malcolmson in the outer hall. His head was bent over the machine which reels off strips of paper with the latest news printed on them. The machine was ticking vigorously, and I knew by the tense attitude in which Malcolmson was standing that something very important must have happened. My first impulse was to slip quietly past and get away to the smoking room before he saw me. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... that Mr. Rogers had been in the telegraph office and had telegraphed your father that the experiment night before last was a success. Tony is ambitious as a Scout should always be and has learned to read the ticking of ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the old clock ticking," said Vane, looking up at the groined roof where, in place of bosses to ornament the handsome old ceiling of the belfry, there were circular holes intended to pour more lead and arrows upon besiegers, in case they made their way through the door, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... far-off house-dog barking, and the nearer clanking of the chains by which the cows were fastened to their mangers, and the loud ticking of the old clock in the kitchen below. It would very soon be midnight. She felt the chill of the keen air, and she shivered as she huddled her shawl closer about her; but it was not the cold that made her lips tremble and ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton
... was not a sound; only the rumble of the streets, the ticking of the clock, and our heart-beats. Again he went ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... self, which men had thought of as far back as Socrates, kept guard. When he had slept an hour a tiny voice in his ear, no louder than the ticking of a watch, told him to awake, that danger was near. He obeyed the call, sleep was lifted from him and he opened his eyes. But with inherited caution he did not move. He still lay flat in his covert, trusting to his ears, and did not make a ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... away and climbed into his car at the dope-kettle incident. There are times when retreat is the only recipe for self-restraint; and in imagination he could see the general manager's special ticking off the miles to the eastward while his own men were sweating over the thrice-accursed journal-bearing under ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the time she finished a letter, in which she enclosed some money. Then she stamped it and placed it in the bag that would be taken up in the morning, for the eastbound express. Finally she placed the heavy iron bar against the front door and went up the creaking stairs to her room as the loud-ticking clock boomed out eleven strokes, ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... table remained untasted, and the only sounds heard were the solemn ticking of the old clock, the soft rustling of the kettle on the stove, and now and then a long drawn sigh from father or mother, as one strove to utter a comforting word ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... in Somasco ranch who needed sleep that night and found it fly from him. Deringham, who had spoken with the doctor, lay fully dressed in an adjoining room, listening to the ticking of his watch, and for any sound that might rise from beyond the cedar boarding where his daughter kept her vigil. He had gathered that before the morning Alton of Somasco and Carnaby would either have laid aside ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... thoroughly soaked let them dry in a hot sun for six or seven successive days, shaking them up well and turning them over each day. They should be covered over with a thick cloth during the night; if exposed to the night air they will become damp and mildew. This way of washing the bed-ticking and feathers makes them very fresh and light, and is much easier than the old-fashioned way of emptying the beds and washing the feathers separately, while it answers quite as well. Care must be taken to dry the bed perfectly ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... ticking of his mother's knitting needles to relieve the oppressive silence. Suddenly the worried pucker disappeared from his brow, and his ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... pause. The ticking of the little Swiss clock, the joyous warble of the thrushes, the soft rustle of the trees sounding preternaturally loud. Beatrix Stuart sat white to the lips, with anger, mortification, amaze, disappointment. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... except in cities, need not be squalid. When the shower abated a little, we gave all the pennies we had to the children, and set forth again. By the by, there were several colored prints stuck up against the walls, and there was a clock ticking in a corner and some paper-hangings ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the hand, and they walked cautiously down the hall. At the top of the stairs Highboy paused and leaned over the bannisters. Somebody was walking to and fro in the hall beneath with soft regular footfalls like the ticking of a clock. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... like a coffin on end the night held a hundred hours. The matchbox lay outside, where it had fallen, and though they could hear his watch ticking in his pocket, they were unable to look at it. After the watch stopped, they lost their sense of time altogether; they disputed what day ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... a trained nurse who was with us for a time, and it is a very good thing to have on hand when there is sickness. When hot cloths are to be applied it is hard to wring them out by hand as hot as the doctor would like. The bags are made of strong ticking and measure eighteen inches in width and are ten inches deep. At each end a loop the depth of the bag was stitched, through which a piece of broom handle was run when in use. To use, put the flannel into the bag, and ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... and the spaceman heaved. Air exploded outwards, and Doc went with it. He was alone in space, gliding away from the ship, with oxygen hissing softly through the valve and ticking away his life. ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... sat at the desk reading the reports of recent fires. The place was very quiet—the sounds of the great city were hushed—the night was calm, and nothing was heard but the soft breathing of the sleepers and the ticking of the clock as I sat there waiting for a fire. I often looked at the telegraph needles and, (I am half ashamed to say it), longed for them to move and give us "a call." At last, when I had begun to despair, the sharp little telegraph bell rang. Up ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... quiet to expect, and to work for, in a children's room. Are we to try to maintain that awful hush that sends cold chills down the spine of the visitor on his first entering a modern reading room, and tempts him to back out in fright lest the ticking of his watch may draw all ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... intense valleyward. Boylan felt the need of thinking further and dashed into the headquarters' stairway. There were excited voices above, and he made haste to see. Kohlvihr was wild-eyed in the center of the upper room—the telegraph ticking nervously, half of his staff bending with extraordinary intensity over the birth of a certain message.... What they wanted ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... He was so quiet and unassuming that you could hear his watch ticking in his vest pocket! Was he athletic? Don't be ridiculous! If he wasn't athletic anywhere but in his fingers he'd have been athletic enough. As it was, he was the best end that ever played on a football eleven representing ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... the unearthly appearance that made the imaginative minds of the ancients people the silent woods with devils and dryads. The soft moaning of the Pacific was barred out by the leafy barriers, and we walked in a silence that was tremendous. The ticking of our watches sounded to our strained ears like the blows of a hammer, and once, when the Professor sneezed mightily, Miss Barbara gave a scream of fear before she realized what had ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his father's sterling industry was the best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to ceiling. The heavy velvet curtains that draped the arched entrance by which she had come had fallen behind her. The silence in the room where the feet fell so softly could be felt. There was not a sound but the ticking of a clock ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Cricket's little bug heart went pitty-pat, and sounded as if it would run a race with the ticking ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... comfortable chair in which he sat brought him that peculiar peace of home which is one of the greatest gifts travel can bestow. Even the ticking of the clock came to his senses gratefully. Home at last, after all the pain, the dreary nights and days of acute loneliness, and only one more day ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... the colour rushed into her face, and half a dozen questions tripped together on her tongue. "Oh-h, was it you who hid my things? All the things I lost? My pencils, my books, my gloves, the clock that I heard ticking in my hat-box, my slippers that were on the top of the wardrobe? Oh, Norah, why? What made you do it? Was ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... seemed to Duroy interminable, for there was no conversation, only the ticking of a clock broke the silence. When they had finished, Duroy, pleading fatigue, retired to his room and tried in vain to invent some pretext for returning home as quickly as possible. He consoled himself by saying: "Perhaps it will not be ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... lagging feet, reluctant to leave comfort behind, swift feet, hurrying to keep some tryst with joy. She heard them pass and repass while her pulses leaped with a hope she knew to be folly, and then steadied to the old monotonous beat. She grew to hate the face of the tall clock in the corner ticking off the seconds glibly, leering as the time grew late, as if it alone knew her secret and mocked her disappointment. Thomas Hardin, coming in on one or two occasions, had exclaimed at the sight of her colorless face. Ordinarily she knew his step, but now her strained ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... was yet ticking, the train stopped at West Newton, and we stepped out upon the platform. The station nearest to the Watch-Factory is that at Waltham upon the Fitchburg Railroad; but by taking the Worcester cars to West Newton, you secure a pleasant drive of a mile or two across the country. If you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the white, beautiful face, the trembling throat, the wide-open blue eyes staring at the one black window between them and the outside night. A lull had come in the storm. It was quiet and ominous stillness, and the ticking of a clock, old and gray like the Missioner himself, filled the room. And Nada, seated on the edge of Father John's bed, no longer looked like the young girl of "seventeen goin' on eighteen." That afternoon, in ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... wonder," said I, "with that thing there on the wall continually ticking in your ear, how comes it that you do ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... The ticking— ticking— ticking of the clock—! That vexed me so last night—! "For though Time keeps Such drowsy watch," I moaned, "he never sleeps, But only nods above the world to mock Its restless occupant, then rudely rock It as the cradle of a babe that weeps!" I ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake, entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of pheasants' feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... One of the pillows had no slip, and the ticking cover had a scorch or two on it. I went over ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the arm, to silence him, and listened. A steady click-click came from the ground beneath their feet. The sounds came continuously, almost with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... girl observing all that passed, in silent stillness. When they had satisfied their hunger, they arose, scalped the woman and boy, plundered the house—even emptying the feathers to carry off the ticking—and departed, dragging the little girl by the hair, forty or fifty yards from the house. They then threw her over the fence, and scalped her; but as she evinced symptoms of life, Schoolcraft observed "that ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... silence except the loud ticking of the bank clock and an occasional groan from the cashier, who was just beginning to return to consciousness. Twice the man left on guard called down to those in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... awkward gesture, half-bend, half-nod, and neither for a moment spoke again. It was one of those silences with a character, conscious, tentative. Half-veiled, disavowed thoughts rose up in it, awakened by Advena's name, turning away their heads. The ticking of the Doctor's old-fashioned watch came through it from his waistcoat pocket. It was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hearts. The painful reverie might, perhaps, have lasted till the pallid dawn looked in with tearful eyes at the window, but Paragon, who was sleeping on the rug at her feet, started up and growled. She raised her head and listened, but only the ticking of the clock was audible, and the wailing of the wind through the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... you," John Bradford said. The impertinent clock kept on, but Miss Theodosia could not hear it now for the ticking of her heart. Was she a frightened girl that she could not ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... below, that they did not answer it, was a thing I had not, at the first, understood; but it became plain when the chimney I climbed shut out every sound but that of the breaking seas, and gave intervals of silence so great that a man might have heard a ticking watch. No, truly, it was no wonder that they had not gone down nor heard that loud alarm, for they hungered for the wreck; for pillage and plunder, and all the gruesome sights Ken's Island that night could show them; and this hunger kept them at the water's edge, hounds ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... go through booksellers' catalogues, ticking here and there a possible purchase. Formerly, when I could seldom spare money, I kept catalogues as much as possible out of sight; now I savour them page by page, and make a pleasant virtue of the discretion ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... up in his chair and now sat scowling at his inquisitor open-mouthed; and in the hush I could hear the ticking of the clock in the corner, and the crackle of the logs upon the hearth. Then, all at once, Cragg's pipe shivered to fragments on the floor and he leapt to his feet. In one stride, as it seemed, he reached the speaker, who occupied the corner opposite mine, but, even as he raised his fist, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... I am. Daniel Whittle Harvey is speaking; the House is thin; the subject is dull; and I have stolen away to write to you. Lushington is scribbling at my side. No sound is heard but the scratching of our pens, and the ticking of the clock. We are in a far better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week; and the company is more decent, inasmuch as that naval officer, whom Nancy blames me for describing in ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... he held it to my ear, and it was ticking loudly, while as he lowered it and I glanced at the face, I could see that the second hand had moved some ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... beseeching letters to be written to our friends, imploring their attendance at meetings at which, if Mr Healy found us in full strength, all was uneventful and they had an expensive journey for their pains; next, the consultations far into the night preceding every trial of strength; the painful ticking off, man by man, of the friends, foes, and doubtfuls on the Party list, the careful collection of information as to the latest frame of mind of this or that man of the four or five waverers who might turn the scale; the resolution, after endless debates, to take strong action ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... in an unpretentious cottage with the commander, I followed the preparations which were being made for the assault. The ticking of the instruments gave news from the front, the line of which was visible from the windows by flares and rockets and burning villages. By midnight ten breaches had been made in the barbed wire, each approximately twenty paces broad, and the attacks were ordered for three o'clock ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... seemed incomplete, deftly slipped in between the circle of legs and feet, and curled up upon Jinny's lap. Her snoring, a wheezy noise that made Jimbo wonder 'why it didn't scrape her,' was as familiar as the ticking of the clock. Old Mere Riquette knew her rights. And she exacted them. Jinny's lap was one of these. She had a face like an old peasant woman, with a curious snub nose and irregular whiskers that betrayed recklessly the advance of age. Her snores and gentle ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... on the office bench, and while the wondering operator set the wires ticking, strove to get his breath, utterly spent in his mad race across the heather. And when it was got he set out ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... had turned it away. He was watching a little brown lizard sunning itself outside the tent door, and wondering how long he could keep his disciplinary expression. You could hear nothing in the tent but the ticking of the watch. Sunni looked down at the lizard too, and ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... She tried to understand what her father was saying sufficiently to put in a word now and then, but her sense of hearing was strained to its utmost for other sounds. There was no traffic in the road below, and the house itself was hushed; the ticking of the old clock, performed with such painful effort that it ever seemed on the point of failing, was the only sign of life outside the garret. At length Emily's ear caught a remote rushing sound; her father's low voice ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... dreadful to face in peace as in war. I watched them out of sight, and then placed myself beside my uncle, who, with closed eyes and folded hands, was endeavoring to sleep. My aunt went below to baste the poulet for his dinner. The house was very still; nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the clock. ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... the accomplishment, for which she was afterwards noted. Verse by verse they read the psalms together as a rule, and Beth was usually attentive; but that evening, before the end, her attention became distracted by a loud ticking; and the last word was scarcely pronounced before she exclaimed, looking about her—"Aunt Victoria, what is that ticking? ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... obviously a conundrum," said Yates, ticking off the items on his four fingers. "First, Monday is washing day. Second, this is not Monday. Third, neither is to-morrow. Fourth, we are preparing for washing. I give it up, Miss Bartlett. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... that Bea had time to notice the ticking of her watch. Then she turned slowly around ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... far from one o'clock, and around her the terrible silence of a still night. All those small sounds lost in the hum of midday life now came into relief—a ticking in the wainscot, a crack now and then in the joining of the furniture, and occasionally the tap of a moth against the window pane from outside, sounds sharp and odd, which made her wish the stillness of the night were ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lately married in Spain, was pinned to the wall above the table. This table, with its green oil-cloth top, and the lamp, about which winged insects beat noisily, and an earthen water-jar—from which the water dripped as regularly as the ticking of a clock—were the only articles of furniture in the office. On a shelf at one side of the door lay the men's machetes, a belt of cartridges, and a revolver in ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... indeed! Does thee know, Elizabeth, that in so quiet a room as this I can scarce believe that a great city lies about us? 'Tis so still that I can hear the ticking of ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... for a long while; the numbness became painful; the tension a dull endurance. Fatigue came, too; she rested her head wearily on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. But the tall clocks ticking slowly became unendurable—and the odour of the roses ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... upon whom she herself called at times because of the force of early habit—perhaps He was only life-principle—the warmth of the sun, for instance—an impersonal, intangible something which started the universe as one winds a clock, and left it to go on ticking till the mechanism runs down.... Good or bad, wise or foolish—what difference? Spin our webs no matter how carefully, they are only gossamer, visible for a moment with the dew or the frost upon them and then—vanished. Human and ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... that fell upon the company at these words, the ticking of the clock under its classic pediment on the mantel was painfully audible, and had the effect of intimating that time now had its innings and eternity was altogether out of it. Several minutes seemed to pass ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was—why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly-ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad awake and conscious, in the middle of an old avenue that had long ceased to exist—that had been built over by a huge brick edifice covered with newly-painted trellis-work. I saw it, this edifice, myself, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... on. "That's just it. The mediums are so nonchalant while causing these marvels that they fail to convince. Why, when I was holding a slate in order that they might write upon it, I minded the scratching no more than a clock a-ticking, they had made me that careless of their hocus-pocus. A voice in my ear can't make me start, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can now 'rouse my fell of hair.' You put a potato in the ashes of the hearth and it will ultimately pop into something to eat. You put a medium ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... sound on the earth except the ticking of the grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quaking in a superstitious terror through every fiber. He heard the stir of the mouse in the pile of walnuts, the hissing of the flame above the embers, and the sudden breaking of the smoked chimney of the lamp. Then as he leaned down he heard something else—the steady ticking of the big silver watch in ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it by stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the stars. The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I could not see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between the slow ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and heard at length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; that was the last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out of the river; indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of stream underneath, for ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... a certain tombstone in the London Tract "Hardshell" Baptist graveyard, near Newark, Delaware, will give to the ear placed flat upon it the sound of a ticking like a watch. The London Tract Church, as its name implies, was the worshipping place of certain settlers who either came from London, or chose land owned by a London company. It is a quaint edifice of hard stone, with low-bent bevelled ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... perfectly quiet; the loud ticking of the clock was the only sound heard, the swing of its pendulum the only motion seen, except that a few black beetles were creeping on the sanded floor. The fire, which must have been a very large one, had almost burnt out; but a few red embers still were ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... and Massa George say um summer-house. 'Pose um find de boat 'ticking in tree, dat ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... tall, thin form became rigid in the intensity of his service. In the silence, that deepened, the ticking of the clock in the front of the gallery, could be heard plainly in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Nothing is to be heard save the carol of a bird, the rippling of a clear stream flowing swiftly through the valley, and at intervals the distinct notes of the little bells and cymbals upon the clocks which his Majesty brought with him. Even their ticking is often audible. At certain hours the ringing of the monastery bells blends solemnly and softly with the silence. The Hieronymites in the monastery are pious monks. His Majesty sometimes listens to their choir. Its music is very fine since Sir Wolf Hartschwert, whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... As she stood there, she could hear again the ticking of the clock, and the chock of piles of books taken out of the low cupboard. Then came the faint flap of books on the desks. The children passed in silence, their hands working in unison. They were no longer a pack, but each one separated into ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... cure slept soundly, his body shrouded in the blankets like some carved Gothic saint of old. The silence was intense—a silence that could be heard—broken only by the brisk ticking of the cure's watch on the narrow shelf. Occasionally a water-rat would patter over the sunken roof, become inquisitive, and peer in at me through the slit within half a foot of my nose. Once in a while I took down the fat opera-glass, focussing it upon the dim shapes that resembled ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... Heart-beat.—This is the one positive sign of pregnancy and it may be heard as early as the sixteenth to the twentieth week. It has been compared to the ticking of a watch under a pillow. It ranges in frequency from one hundred and ten to one hundred and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and the cooling cologne had stopped the throbbing in her temples, they had brought only temporary relief in their train and not the sleep which Helen craved. She strained her ears to discover the time by the ticking of her clock, but either it was between the half or quarters of an hour, or it had stopped, for no chimes sounded. With a gasp of exasperation, Helen flung back the bed clothes and sat up. Switching on the light by the side of her bed she hunted for a book, but not finding any, she contemplated ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... save her for himself. He could not keep the thought out of his surge of hope; but the erstwhile bitterness was swept away. Nothing else mattered, if Rose could be saved. Measured by the ticking of a clock, the action was taking place with dramatic speed; but, to his quivering mind, it dragged woefully, and the periods when the light failed caused him ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Brown, at that particular moment, was sitting in her little room in the dormitory, with the old watch ticking on the stand so she would not over-stay her off duty. She was aching with fatigue from her head, with its smooth and shiny hair, to her feet, which were in a bowl of witch hazel and hot water. And she was crying over a ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... story. "All of six months my husband, Josephus, poor soul, lay sick with his poor head resting on the same pillow day in and day out. I'd come to know he was on his death bed," she said resignedly, "for one day when I smoothed a hand over his pillow I felt there his crown a-forming inside the ticking. I'd felt the crown with my own hands and I knew death was hovering over my man. Though I didn't tell him so. I wanted he should not be troubled, that he should die a peaceable death and he did. When we laid him out we put the pillow under his head and when we laid him away I opened the pillow and ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment—her own bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will.... And then—music, strange, soft, mysterious music ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... History. In its opening pages, we are made to listen to the feet and chariots of "Dubarrydom" hurrying from the "Armida Palace," where Louis XV. and the ancien regime lay dying; later to the ticking of the clocks in Launay's doomed Bastile; again to the tocsin of the steeples that roused the singers of the Marseillaise to march from "their bright Phocaean city" and grapple with the Swiss guard, last ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... interesting conversation so that we were not giving any attention whatever to the way, and yet every step was taken correctly under the guidance of our eyes. We saw the street, although we were not conscious of seeing it. We do not hear a clock ticking in our room when we are working, and yet if the clock suddenly stops we notice it. This indicates that the ticking of the clock reached us somehow and had an effect on us in spite of our not being conscious of it. The scientists are still debating whether it ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Jackson and make sure," said Sam, and led the way to the telegraph office. The telegraph receiver was ticking away at a lively rate, and Jackson, who had charge of the office, was taking down a message ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... closing her eye-lids gently, and her breathing and the beating of her heart could be heard like the ticking of a watch in the silence of the room ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... fell to silence, after the last words, a stillness came upon the lamp-lit room, a hush broken only by the snapping of the pine-root fire on the hearth and by the busy ticking of the clock upon the chimneypiece. Then, after a minute's pause, Craig reached over and took Gabriel by ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... hotel each morning was a joy through expectation, the return each evening a delight through memory. The vestibule in which he waited his lord's pleasure, with its marble pavement and its painted walls, a few cane chairs and tables, and a great clock ticking steadily, became the entrance-hall of paradise. Of nights the thought of sitting there next morning caused his pulse to quicken. The sons of Musa and the negro doorkeeper shared in the radiance of ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a Brobdingnag watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January, they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months. Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the center of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Roman chair in front of the couch, and sat down together to await the President's awakening. The room was almost gloomy in its dimness, and so quiet that they could hear their own breathing. But not another sound broke the silence, save the ticking of the little French clock on the mantel, which drove Peace almost to distraction. Then she chanced to remember a discussion she had heard a long time before, and settling herself with elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, she fixed her somber eyes full upon the sleeping ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... voice rose in the quiet of that little bungalow upon the hill where the only other sounds were the ticking of the clock and the quick ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... from the sight of my blankets, and the sound of my watch ticking—things which seemed to link me to other people; but the screaming of the wood-hens frightened me, as also a chattering bird which I had never heard before, and which seemed to laugh at me; though I soon got used to it, and before ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... very readily supposed that to one in the condition of Nicholas, the minutes appeared to move with leaden wings indeed, and that their progress did not seem the more rapid from the monotonous ticking of a French clock, or the shrill sound of its little bell which told the quarters. But there he sat; and in his old seat on the opposite side of the room reclined Sir Mulberry Hawk, with his legs upon the cushion, and his handkerchief thrown negligently ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... below the street-level, and varied in ventilation, crowding, and disorder. In one the waiters were Greek immigrants, who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons and no collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. In the fourteen meals I had there, I sat down only once to a clean table. The coffee boilers along the side of the room would be boiling over and sending ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... like a madman, to keep up what heart was left in the wretched little brute, holding on to him for bare life, with my arms and legs straight out in front of me. The gray wall and the blinding road rushed by me like a river—I scarcely knew what happened—I couldn't think of anything but the ticking of the clock that I was somehow trying to count, till there came the bang of a pistol ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a telephone, things that were going on among the upper branches; as when the breeze puffed up and they sighed and creaked together. I could hear a squirrel scampering and a woodpecker at work—or so I guessed, though it sounded more like a watch ticking. I made several essays to climb up the hollow, but the knotholes and crevices, and odds and ends of support, were too far removed from each other for the length of my limbs, and, furthermore, my efforts seemed to shake the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... gully of an empty trench, and, thirty-five feet away, another blue-gray tangle of barbed wire and a low ripple of the brownish earth. As I looked, one of the random silences of the front stole swiftly into the air. French trench and German trench were perfectly silent; you could have heard the ticking of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... normal—in general—are not at all loth to be thought "different," when it comes to particulars. Are there not many of us who are at small pains to hide the fact that we "didn't sleep a wink last night," or that we "can't stand" a ticking clock or a crowing rooster? We sometimes consider it a mark of distinction to have a delicate appetite and to have to choose our food with care. If we are frank with ourselves, some of us will have to admit that our own ailments seem interesting, while the other ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... in the country in winter and knows those long dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on such evenings has been troubled by awakening conscience and has moved restlessly about, trying now to smother his conscience, now to interpret it, will understand the distraction and the pleasure my wife's voice gave me as it sounded in the snug little room, telling ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of that summer evening, seated in the arm-chair, barely moving, listening to the ticking of the clock, and the thunder of the streets, and at times hearkening to the sounds in the inner chamber, the wanderings feebler and more rare, but the fearful convulsions more frequent, seeming, as it were, to be tearing away the last remnant of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... household. As I had expected, the young man led me across the patio, lifted the cotton hanging and introduced me into an apartment exactly like the one we had just left. Divans covered with striped mattress-ticking stood against the white walls, and on them sat seven or eight passive-looking women over whom a number ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... half bewildered by what the woman had told him, and his heart beat tumultuously as he stood by the empty hearth, waiting for Ellen Carley's coming. It seemed to him as if the girl never would come. The ticking of an old eight-day clock in the hall had a ghastly sound in the dead silence of the house, and an industrious mouse made itself distinctly ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in the Duke, conciliatingly, "don't take so much for granted. Why, there are folks suspicious enough to accuse Saint Peter of starting Lent and ticking off Fridays from the meat programme simply because he was in the fish business. Let's not get to fussing about a set of convention resolutions. They're ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... solitary tumbler stood on the table with its white cloth falling in straight folds. The ticking of ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... sitting at our two-legged table, writing up my carnet de vol. Suzanne, the maid of all work at the Bonne Rencontre, was sweeping a passageway along the center of the room, telling me, as she worked, about her family. She was ticking off the names of her brothers and sisters, when Drew put his ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall |
