"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell thee what Thou for the breach shall do; First crack the strings, and after that Cleave thou my heart ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... heat you wish. In these ovens (steam-cracks) she boils tea, coffee and eggs; or cooks omelets and meats. You wrap the beef or chicken, or whatever meat you may wish to cook, in leaves, and lay it in the steam-crack. Soon it is thoroughly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... upon the surface of the table. Put the thumbs together at the crack in the shell, then hold the egg upright, and gently break the shell into two parts. Then slip the yolk several times from one part of the shell to the other until all the white has run over the edge into a bowl or plate. Scrape out the ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... they were at this Mr. Edison, getting on to the joke, for he generally naps with one eye open, got up and put a lot of stuffing under the couch spread, stuck his old hat on it so as to make it look as though his face was covered; then peered through the crack of a door. When the music commenced he opened the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... party, with A group of pleasant folks,— You venture quietly to crack The least of little jokes,— A lady doesn't catch the point, And begs you to explain— Alas for one that drops a jest And takes it ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... is an awkward infant giant, The oak by the roots uptearing; He'll beat you till your backs are sore, And crack your crowns ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Fear, dreading Shooba to be even then in the Room. And indeed the Tale he whisper'd me was enough to Craze a Christian Man, & hath all but crack'd mine own Witts. If 't were not for the Paper he slip't into my Palm, I should sett it down for a Phantazy, one of old Shooba's evil Spells. Most merciful God, how came he by that Paper ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Also Ran admires athletic girls, you know, not being able to sit astride a horse himself, and through his boasting Artie has discovered that Flora is a crack golf player—won the cup for her ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... that have been left of roast or boiled fowls, either turkeys or chickens, crack the bones, cut off the meat, and chop it fine, put it in a small iron pot, or stew pan, cover it with water, put in the gravy that may be left from the fowls, season with pepper and salt, put in some chopped celery, crumbs of bread, a lump of butter, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... deserving of much worse than they kin do. Maybe, he ain't a scamp of the biggest wethers. His rascality ain't to be measured. Why, he kin walk through a man's pockets, jest as the devil goes through a crack or a keyhole, and the money will naterally stick to him, jest as ef he was made of gum turpentine. His very face is a sort of kining [coining] machine. His look says dollars and cents; and its always your dollars and cents, and he kines them out of your hands ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... over every inch of that basement, until I knew every crack in the flooring, every spot on the cement. And Bella was nasty, and said that she had never seen that part of the house in such condition, and that if I had acted like a sane person and put her out, when she ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... horses, as it was a long, hard climb. From time to time, as I stopped to catch my breath I gazed away across the growing void to the gorgeous Pink Cliffs, far above and beyond the red wall which had seemed so high, and then out toward the desert. The irregular ragged crack in the plain, apparently only a thread of broken ground, was the Grand Canyon. How unutterably remote, wild, grand was that world of red and brown, of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory of her single instant with Dan, but she felt that in such ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... all black except those that have lost the ivory—and those are green. It has also five pedals, disposed as a harp underneath; but none of them make any impression on the sound, except the middle one, which rings a bell. The sound-board has a crack in it somewhere, Nino says, and two of the notes are dumb since the great German maestro came home with my boy one night, and insisted on playing an accompaniment after supper. We had stewed chickens ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... wouldn't expect you to play the man at a real execution or at anything real, but surely you can pull yourself together enough to play the man at a mock execution. What a chance! You can leave a reputation as great as your brother's—greater, even; you could crack jokes and burst out laughing just ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... soon noised about the college that Farmer Appleby had made a "crack" about his hay fire, and great was ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... of some thirty paces, a dark line was seen upon the prairie, running transversely to the course I was following. It appeared to be a narrow crack in the plain; but on spurring nearer, it proved to be a fissure of considerable width—one of those formations known throughout Spanish America as barrancas. The earth yawned, as though rent by an earthquake; but water had evidently something ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... 11 P.M. we arrived at Uniontown, 12 miles from Brownsville. There the horses were to be changed, an operation which took about an hour to accomplish. Three coaches were there together. The passengers rushed out of the inn, where we had been warming ourselves, and jumped into the coaches. Crack went the whips, off went the horses, and round went the wheels. But, alas! while we could hear the rattling of the other coaches, our own moved not at all! "Driver, why don't you be off?" No answer. "Driver, push on." No reply. "Go a-head, driver,—don't keep ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... afraid they had lost track of the man they were after when they heard a crack ahead of them, followed by a short yell of alarm. Merrick had stumbled over a fallen log and pitched headlong into some thorny bushes. It took him some time to extricate himself, and ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... Further towards the centre of the Fu is Prince Su's own palace and his retainers' quarters; to the south of this is an ornamental garden full of trees, a vast and mournful enclosure, standing in which the crack of outpost rifles can only be distantly heard. Moving across to the southern side—that is, the side near the French Legation and the protected Legation Street—the Christian refugees are found gathered here in huge droves. In one building there are alone four hundred native schoolgirls, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... popular, though not as stylish and costly, as the Star and Garter at Richmond. The town and palace of Hampton lie about halfway up the western side of the demesne. The view up and down the river from Hampton Bridge is one of the crack spectacles of the neighborhood. Satisfied with it, we pass through the principal street, with the Green in view to our left and Bushy Park beyond it, to the main entrance. This is part of the original palace as built by the cardinal. It leads into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... question whether to go deeper into the decomposed rock or to be content with what supply has been struck. Many a good soak has been ruined by a too ambitious worker, who, after infinite toil, may see his priceless fluid disappear down some hidden crack beneath. Native soaks dug out with sticks and wooden "coolimans"—small troughs used as spades or as a means of carrying seeds, water, or game—are by no means uncommon, and, when holding water, are easily made more serviceable by throwing out ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... bashful as to study only in the Nighttime, or in the Country. The other Night I spied one of our young Gentlemen very diligent at his Lucubrations in Fleet-Street; and by the way, I should be under some concern, lest this hard Student should one time or other crack his Brain with studying, but that I am in hopes Nature has taken care to fortify him in proportion to the great Undertakings he was design'd for. Another of my Fellow-Templers, on Thursday last, was getting ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... tightly down to the bench in all its parts, or, at least, in those being operated upon, as it may, if unsupported, crack across some of the narrow parts. The sides of all the holes must be carved out clean to remove the rough saw marks. This can be done partly by gouges, or still better, the wood may be held up on its ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... squirrel still ahead of us, springing from tree top to tree top. How he rattles down the dry splinters as he scratches up that dead hemlock. Now we've got him! Go round on the other side of the tree and he will dodge back this way, and I shall get a crack at him. But he don't though! He must have a hole up there. Sure enough, there is one! Let me get this old bough broken in two, and I will start him. Now be ready, and shoot him as he comes out. The old tree is hollow all the way up; it sounds as I strike like an old bass-drum. There! he's out! blaze ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... was tremendous. The stroke of sword on armour, the sharp crack of the pistols, the rattle of musketry, the shouts of the Imperialists, and the wild defiant cries of the Highlanders ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... said. "You ain't tellin' us that it wasn't you, durn you! Oh, say!" He uttered a whoop that must have startled the horses in front of the building. Then he sobered down, speaking in a low, regretful voice: "You durn tenderfoot! Here I've been waitin' for years to get a crack at that big four-flusher, an' here you come, a-fannin' along from your little old East an' get ahead of me!" He stifled a cackle of mirth. "An' so you're lookin' for action? Lordy! If you don't call what you done to Dunlavey an' Yuma action this country's goin' to set ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... an insatiable and universal reader; meant for the Church, took to poetry and philosophy, became an author, putting forth the strangest books with the strangest titles; considered for a time a strange, crack-brained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon; was recognised at last as a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration; his writings procured him friends and fame, and at length a wife and a settled pension; settled in Baireuth, where he lived thenceforth diligent and celebrated ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... yellow color had appeared along the under crack of the door. A second later the door was rimmed on all sides with it. It grew; reached out. Energy flowed through it: fingers of dusty yellow pronged out from the cracks where the door fitted, hung wavering for a moment, melted together, then slumped to the floor to more quickly continue the advance. ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... The ancient scars of drills still marked it. Masses of rock had been blasted from it; but that must have been years ago because a deep growth of moss and lichen covered the scars and the tough stems of crag-shrubs masked every crack. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... had talked of going out to look at the fighting, and A.B. had offered to conduct me. I had not taken the offer very seriously, but when I got back to the hotel after seeing the Prime Minister, she was there in a big racing car, with a crack chauffeur, ready for the jaunt. She was in her campaign kit of knickers, with a long rain-coat and a big knitted cap, and an entrancing boy she made. Mr. and Mrs. W—— had asked to go along, and were in their car with Barbacon, an aide-de-camp of the Prime ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... head should be broken off. To prevent the plants falling over after the seed-stalks are grown, dig deep holes, and plant the entire stump in the ground. Scarecrows should be set up, or some like precaution be taken, to keep away the little seed-birds, that begin to crack the pods as soon as they commence to ripen. A plaster cat is a very good scarecrow to frighten away birds from seed and small fruits, if its location is changed every ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... door, endeavored to shut it on the instant, to keep out the foe; in doing which the proboscis of Mistress Pettit, which was truly of the Strasburgh order, was unhappily and literally caught in the door crack, and beyond all question somewhat injured thereby. In the language of the trumpeter's wife in Tristram Shandy, it was truly "a noble nose," and the pinch it endured, though transient, it must be confessed, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... in full practice or with public school training; and the veteran spectators were mourning the decay of cricket, and talking of past triumphs. The school had the first innings, which resulted in the discomfiture of Fielder, one of their crack champions, and with no great honour to any one except Folliot, the Dux, and Leonard Ward, who both acquitted themselves so creditably, that it was allowed that if others had done as well, Stoneborough might have ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reaching into the wagons to unsling their rifles from the riding loops fastened to the bows. It all was a trample and a tumult and a whirl of dust under thudding hoofs outside and in, a phase which could last no more than an instant. Came the thin crack of a squirrel rifle from the far corner of the wagon park. The Crow partisan sat his horse just a moment, the expression on his face frozen there, his mouth slowly closing. Then he slid off his horse close to the gap, now; piled high with ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... eyes opened wide, and be made the knuckle-bones of both hands crack like caps going off. "Four ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... proposal, and crouching down, we crept on till we reached the rock. For an instant we waited to recover breath, then we lifted up our rifles and rested them on a ledge of the rock. It would be impossible to have got a better aim. Crack— crack—we both fired. Off scampered the herd up ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the vintage of nineteen hundred. If you bring that loathsome eighteen ninety-three I'll have to crack the bottle over your head. You wouldn't want that, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the wallow where he lay, and with his strong hands felt along the walls, and found a crack between two great stones, and set his strength to rend them apart; but they clung together like the lips of Death. Long he struggled, yet could not stir them; and ever the doleful voice beat like a bell in his ears, till it seemed to him that he must give his life, ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... Alarmed as Tom was at his comrade's insensibility, he yet felt that it was the shock, and the revulsion of feeling which caused it, and not any serious injury which he had received. No bones had been heard to crack and, although the compression had been severe, Tom did not think that any serious injury had ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... importance of this world justifies. He maintains that overwork slew Pansay who died under his hands about three years ago. He has, of course, the right to speak authoritatively, and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death. "Pansay went off the handle," says Heatherlegh, "after the stimulus of long leave at Home. He may or he may not have behaved like a blackguard to Mrs. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff, And a crook is in his back. And a melancholy crack In ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... her knees beside the crack of light went Miranda. First her eye and then her ear were applied to the small aperture. She could see nothing but a table directly in front of the door about a foot away on which were quills, paper, and a large horn inkstand filled with ink. Some one evidently had been writing, for a ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... turpentine, 1-1/2 lbs.; gum shellac 1-1/2 lbs.; venice turpentine, 1 gill; let these stand in a jug in the sun, or by a stove, until the gums are dissolved; then add sweet oil, 1 gill; lampblack, 2 oz., and you have a varnish that will not crack when the harness is twisted like the old shellac varnish. It is good also for boots and shoes, looking well, and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Woongas had followed a moose trail, with which they were apparently well acquainted, and in this traveling was easy. But Rod gave an involuntary shudder as he gazed ahead into the chaotic tangle through which it led. At any moment he expected to hear the sharp crack of a rifle and to see Mukoki tumble forward upon his face. Or there might be a fusillade of shots and he himself might feel the burning sting that comes with rifle death. At the distance from which they would shoot the outlaws could not miss. Did not Mukoki ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... nine o'clock, when a straggling fire from the pickets gave warning of the approach of a more formidable foe. The American land-forces had reached the outer lines of the British camp, and the increasing din of the musketry, with ringing through it the whip-like crack of the Tennesseean rifles, called out the whole British army to the shock of a desperate and uncertain strife. The young moon had by this time struggled through the clouds, and cast on the battle-field a dim, unearthly light ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... soon surrounded by ice. The little harbor in which she had taken refuge was soon completely filled with it, and it commenced to press upon and dash against her sides until she began to crack, and they feared every moment that ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... To Montague it was an amazing and terrible thing. It counted little to him that he was out of the struggle himself; that he no longer had anything to lose personally. He was like a man who had been through an earthquake, and who stood and stared at a gaping crack in the ground. Even though he was safe at the moment, he could not forget that this was the earth upon which he had to spend the rest of his life, and that the next crack might ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... the cutters are secured, as usual, by a key, all mechanics know that it is very difficult to set a cutter twice alike; and the notch, which is filed in the cutter, to prevent it from moving endways, is a great source of weakness, often causing the cutters to crack in hardening, as well as after they are put to work. The inclosed ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... has really no very clear idea of what happened to him after he missed the Cape. He seems to have wandered aimlessly up wind till he hit an island; he walked all round this; says he couldn't see a yard at this time; fell often into the tide crack; finally stopped under the lee of some rocks; here got his hand frostbitten owing to difficulty of getting frozen mit on again, finally got it on; started to dig a hole to wait in. Saw something of the moon and left the island; lost the moon and wanted ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... I had last failed to bring down what I aimed at. Nor did I fail now; as the bird rose it flew straight away from me, and it was still uttering its alarm cry when I pressed the trigger and down it fell, stone-dead, shot clean through the body. At the whip-like crack of the rifle the two dogs dashed forward into the thick clumps of low milk-bush into which the bird had fallen, and presently reappeared, Thunder dragging the bird along the ground by one of its legs, while Juno romped round him uttering low, sharp yells of delight, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... uttered through the crack of the library door, outside of which Polly stood, gathering courage to walk in ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... France, meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position. He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England was under arms could have done little to lessen his feeling for his caste. A Gretna Green marriage with an heiress, while he was yet a minor, is characteristic ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... van, a big dark man of forty slouched along, with a whip under his arm, and a black pipe in his mouth; and every now and then he seemed to remember that he had the said whip, and took it in hand, to give it a crack which sounded like a pistol shot, with the result that the horse in the van threw up its head, which had hung down toward the road, and the other skeleton-like creature in the cart threw up its tail with a sharp whisk that disturbed the ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... what had occurred. A Russian detective "wanted" Vera, who, to be sure, was a Nihilist. To catch Vera he made an alliance with "The Whiteley of Crime." He was a man who would destroy a parish register, or forge a will, or crack a crib, or break up a Pro-Boer meeting, or burn a house, or kidnap a rightful heir, or manage a personation, or issue amateur bank-notes, or what you please. Thinking to kill two birds with one stone, he carried off Rose for her diamonds and Vera ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... retreat; for the further in the greater fall. It should also teach them to beg of God his blessing upon their endeavours, their honest and lawful endeavours. And it should put them upon a diligent looking to their steps, that if in their going they should hear the ice crack, they may timely go back again. These things considered, and duly put in practice, if God will blow upon a man, then let him be content, and with Job embrace the dunghill. Let him give unto all their dues, and not fight against the providence of God, but humble himself rather under his mighty ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I knew I ought not to do it. I told her the whole story, between the entrees and the roast. The wound began to bleed again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I live half as long as Tithonus,* that crack across my heart can never be cured. There are wrongs and griefs that CAN'T be mended. It is all very well of you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian, and that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget at will? How forgive? I can forgive the occasional ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there was one narrow opening, through which the sea ran clear and deep, making a safe channel to the shore. This was Cook's Crack. Very few of the fishermen knew of it. It was not likely, therefore, that anybody on board of the schooner would be able to pilot her ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... his inclinations and point of view with that of the instructor, Jimmy got into very close touch with the little man, who was never tired of answering questions and making explanations. Reece had been for some years working for one or another of the crack international fliers who traveled in various parts of the world. He had no ambition to become a star himself, but knew most of the well-known airmen of two continents, and contained a store—-house of anecdotes about them ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... and splashes where the myriads of trout were rising. The trail led out over open grassy shores, with a few pines straggling down to the lake, and clumps of spruces raising dark blurs against the background of gleaming lake. Wade heard a sharp crack of hoofs on rock, and he knew he had disturbed deer at their drinking; also he heard a ring of horns on the branch of a tree, and was sure an elk was slipping off through the woods. Across the lake he saw a camp-fire and a pale, sharp-pointed object that was a trapper's tent ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... decidedly the best speech of the evening, given "with perfect fluency, distinctness, and command of language," and that you showed great self-possession: was the latter the proverbially desperate courage of a coward? But you are a pretty fellow to be so desperately afraid and then to make the crack speech. Many such an ordeal may you have to go through! I do not know whether Sir William [Hooker] would be contented with Lord Rosse's (38/2. President of the Royal Society 1848-54.) speech on giving you the medal; but I am very much pleased with it, and really the roll ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... bounced, from a cupboard that Andrew Coffey had never noticed before, a man. And the man was in a towering rage. But it wasn't that. And he carried as fine a blackthorn as you'd wish to crack a man's head with. But it wasn't that either. But when my grandfather clapped eyes on him, he knew him for Patrick Rooney, and all the world knew he'd gone overboard, fishing one night ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... green wall. Into one such hoary-headed sea the white boat now drove like a lance. Stella saw the spray leap like a cascade, saw the solid green curl deep over the forward deck and engine hatch and smash the low windshield. She heard the glass crack. Immediately the roaring exhausts died. Amid the whistle of the wind and the murmur of broken water, the launch staggered like a drunken man, lurched off into the trough, deep down by the head with the weight ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... escaped; for up there no horseman could follow. But as a trooper came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full length on ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... where she lay, while, but for the golden oil the oars stirred on the surface of the water, our boat must have been invisible, though that bullet was sufficiently well aimed to strike the side of the boat with a sharp crack. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... on a stool beside me, and there it lay, under a cross-fire from five men,—three opposite, one above, and one below. I make no complaints, and show no disgust. I am looked upon as highly facetious at night, for I crack jokes with everybody near me until we fall asleep. I am considered very hardy in the morning, for I run up, bare-necked, and plunge my head into the half-frozen water, by half-past five o'clock. I am respected for my activity, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to come forth from space. Sometimes they sounded so low that she could scarcely hear them; at others they were so loud that she could almost distinguish the words uttered by the unseen. Was it merely a phenomenon caused by the wind blowing through some crack in the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... a writer in the London Times, "that the Americans have some superior mode of firing." But when Broke with his crack crew in the Shannon beat the Chesapeake fresh out of port, he demonstrated, as had the Americans in other actions, that the superiority was primarily a matter ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... crystals hung from the ceiling or formed rows of pillars, even the copper which made the walls of the cave had a coating of green. Wayland broke off a huge projecting lump and left the cave, which instantly closed up so that not a crack remained to tell ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... rushing through some crack, or possibly the rain-water and the water from the melted ice on top streaming down through some hole into the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... walnuts, held at the moment four in the palm of his right hand. They broke with a four-fold crack, which sounded but as one mighty crunch. Then, all unconscious of what he did, the Knight opened his great hand and let fall upon the table, a little heap of crushed nuts, shells and white flesh ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... persisted Bob. "In the idea, I mean. If there's a secret hiding-place in that upright carved beam, that rose is the key to it. See how deeply it's cut in, compared to the other; and I can almost see a crack all round it, as if it could be removed. May I try ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... a sharp knife in its back between the body and tail shells cutting the spinal cord. Split the shell the entire length of the back, remove the stomach and intestinal canal, crack the large claws and lay the fish as flat as possible. Brush the meat with melted butter, season with salt and pepper, place in a broiler, and with the flesh side down, cover and broil slowly until a delicate brown, about 20 minutes. Turn the broiler and broil ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... late into leaf and sheds its leaves very early, have rather thrown it out of favour of late years. As a useful tree it does not rank very high, except for wood-carvers, who highly prize its light, easily-cut wood, that keeps its shape, and is very little liable to crack or split either in the working or afterwards. Nearly all Grinling Gibbons' delicate carving is in Lime wood. To gardeners the Lime is further useful as furnishing the material for bast or bazen mats,[147:1] ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... The deer, evidently, felt a little playful; but it would never do, under the circumstances. "Come here, sir!" he commanded. Billy only lived to obey such a command, as I have shown. But this time Mr. D—— recognised a difference, and went about like a crack yacht. He had intentions of reaching the door. Billy cut off retreat. Mr. D—— thought of the well-dressed man, and dived under the table. Those who had stood uncertain, seeing this line of action taken by one who knew the customs of the country, promptly imitated him. The ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... I stepped through a crack in the ice into the water, and, almost instantaneously, my leg to the knee was a mass of ice. I was now compelled to go on to some place where the foot-gear could be dried. As though in a dream, suffering the most horrible tortures of fatigue, we pushed on dispiritedly until midnight, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... full horror of the thing burst upon her. Her own silly misapprehension, the infatuation of Alwyn for Zora, her thoughtless—no, vindictive—betrayal of him to something worse than death. She listened for the crack of doom. She heard a bird singing far down in the swamp; she heard the soft raising of a window and the closing of a door. And then—great God in heaven! must she live forever in this agony?—and then, she heard the door bang and Mr. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the altars of the Hoolah Hoolah ground, it seemed a mere pigmy in tatters. But appearances all the world over are deceptive. Little men are sometimes very potent, and rags sometimes cover very extensive pretensions. In fact, this funny little image was the 'crack' god of the island; lording it over all the wooden lubbers who looked so grim and dreadful; its name was Moa Artua*. And it was in honour of Moa Artua, and for the entertainment of those who believe in him, that the curious ceremony I am ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... to myself as I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother's best candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the door. But this ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... line the German bullets spin overhead or crack like whips against our sandbags, sending little clods of earth down into the trench; all down the line we stand on our firing platforms, and answer back to the little spurts of flame which mark the enemy trench; sudden flashes and explosions tell of bombs or grenades, ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... was not solid as it had seemed. There was a doorway; the stone was swung inward; and at one side in a straight-marked crack, he saw ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... increasing motion. I sat still enjoying the novel sensation for some seconds; but in less than half a minute it became strong enough to shake me in my chair, and to make the house visibly rock about, and creak and crack as if it would fall to pieces. Then began a cry throughout the village of "Tana goyang! tana goyang! "(Earthquake! earthquake!) Everybody rushed out of their houses—women screamed and children cried—and I thought it prudent to go out too. On getting up, I found my head giddy and my steps ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... side of the concrete road that split the panorama right down the middle all the way down to where it vanished among the hills. It was so old that Red's father couldn't tell Red when it had been built. It didn't have a crack or a rough ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... doesn't know Boston, then. And as for that crack-brained demagogue cousin of yours, he calls the Constitution a compact with hell! I hope I'll live to see ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... made furious raids on the mob of spectators who pressed round the door, and stood with their eyes glued to every crack in the bark of which the hut was made. The next door neighbours on either side might have amassed a comfortable competence for their old age, by letting out seats for the circus. Every hole in the side ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to do, was riding at a leisurely pace, when, without the least warning, the sharp crack of a rifle broke the stillness of, the woods on his right, and the bullet zipped so close to his forehead that it literally grazed the skin, leaving a faint mark, which was ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... paid more attention than usual when they heard her talk, and put their ears close to a crack in the wall between the rooms, and heard the queen say quite plainly: 'When I yawn a little, then I am a nice little maiden: when I yawn halfway, then I am half a troll; and when I yawn fully then I am ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs—the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun—have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of another of her honored children. May the auspicious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... whistled outside and glided from the station. He heard a woman's cheerful voice cry out a conventional "good-bye, good-bye," and through the window he saw the flutter of a dainty handkerchief. A truck was wheeled past the waiting-room. There was the crack of a whip and some cars rattled away over the ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... over 2 weeks with 4 to 6 persons to crack and cull out the ones we knew were not worth further consideration. One-tenth passed the screening test. The nut selected is one in ten-thousand expectancy. This contest brought out some outstanding nuts. The judges didn't have much trouble selecting No. 1. The next four were harder ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... a glimmer of light through the crack in the wall. Stern silently wormed in between a corroded steel I-beam and a cracked granite block, about the edges of which the small green tendrils of a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And a mel-an-chol-y crack In his laugh. ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... thunder-peals his ears had caught a single whip-like crack. A stunning crash followed a lurid glare, lighting up sky and sea. Again came the sharp detonation, but little louder than a fire-cracker. This time all ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cheerful like, 'I may get through this, and if I do, I'll have another crack at 'em. But if I don't, why I aint got no kick comin', for there'll be others ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... opened a crack, still without a sound, and a man with a black beard put in his head. As he met her eyes fixed squarely upon him he closed the door as silently as a shadow. She hurried after him and looked out, and ran up the corridor peering into every possible corner, but no ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... the deep bay formed by the two huge tentacles that run south and south-east from the crab-like body of the island, when suddenly, above the noise of the engine, they heard the sharp crack of a shot, then two or three more. Glancing up the bay to his left, Smith saw a large junk, its sails hanging limp, surrounded by a number of small craft which from their appearance he guessed to be praus. He had read many a time of the fierce Malayan pirates ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... crack of whips we started, and it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, the air vibrated with the strident clang of rails, and ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... after a suitable pause. "Them old brimstone discourses, you know, Mis' Trimble. Preachers is far more reasonable, nowadays. Why, I set an' thought, last Sabbath, as I listened, that if old Mr. Longbrother an' Deacon Bray could hear the difference they'd crack the ground over 'em like pole beans, an' come right up ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... which is commonly used throughout the whole of the remainder of the upper octave, the higher notes of which can be reached only in the falsetto. In passing from one 'voice' to the other, especially while descending the scale, a break or crack may be observed in the untutored and uncultivated voice. When this defect has been overcome, and the student has acquired the power of passing from one 'voice' to the other without this break, the voice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... as to what to use and what not, applies to the effect on the permanence of your canvas. Never use pigments which will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause others to fade. Avoid all such using of materials as you know will make your picture crack, or in any other way bring about ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... couldn't keep away from that coast for more than six months if his life depended upon it. Howland, if you care to ship again, I'll make you gun-pointer aboard the Indian Queen here. You say you want nothing better than to get a crack at the pirate. We'll make what preparations we can and get off at once. This young friend of yours—about Bob's age he must be—well, I'm glad my boy's got company! Let's get to work ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... railways offer great facilities. From early times, the subterranean river beneath the town has yielded an uninterrupted supply of the richest brine in Europe; and it is curious to observe how the vacuum created by the amount raised has caused the ground to collapse and crack, as shown by the decrepit state of the buildings, many of which are broken-backed, twisted, and contorted—although the intermediate earth is about 200 feet in thickness. The place, therefore, has a sort of downcast look, and the streets have a melancholy ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... of straw, used the last winter to cover new-moulded bricks to protect them from the frost against their drying. He was preparing a bed. He muttered to himself as he worked, and Philo Gubb, placing his eye to a crack between the boards of the roof, tried to observe him. The darkness was so absolute he could ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... so fastened together that they can be easily knocked apart and stored when not in use. They should be about 10 inches high in front and 16 or 18 inches at the back, care being taken that if the back is made of two boards one of them be narrow and at the bottom so that the crack between them can be covered by banking up with manure or earth. In placing them on the manure short pieces of board should be laid under the corners to prevent their settling in the manure unevenly. I prefer to ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... to me. How often had I beheld him sit by the hour with his eye on the door behind which his one darling lay ill! Even now, it was easy for me to recall his face as I had sometimes caught a glimpse of it through the crack of the suddenly opened door, and I felt my breast heave and my hand falter as I drew forth the stiletto and moved to place it where his eye would fall upon it on his ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... is chewed or drunk as tea. Quaaludes is the North American slang term for methaqualone, a pharmaceutical depressant. Stimulants are drugs that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of bad blood, and mischievously gay, Haunt "tirs au pistolets," and kill—the day! There, where the rafters tell the frequent crack, To fire with steady hand, acquire the knack, From rifle barrels, twenty feet apart, On gypsum warriors exercise their art, Till ripe proficients, and with skill elate, Their aimless mischief turns to deadly hate. Perverted spirits; reckless, and unblest; Ye slaves to lust; ye duellists ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... freezer is used does not occur in a vacuum freezer. Also, the texture of the finished product is not, as a rule, equal to that of the dessert made in a freezer turned with a dasher. In addition, it is necessary to crack the ice somewhat finer for a vacuum freezer and to mix it thoroughly with the correct proportion of salt required for the particular ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... want to see 'em,' he said, sulkily pushing the book from him. 'Take the things away, child; who cares what they say? They're all at the same scribbling business themselves; o' course they'd crack up one another.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... (putting her fingers in her ears) "you crack my tympanums with your rude Anglicisms. But, how is our well-beloved John? Do tell me about him. The poor man must be in a sad way. What did he say to my behaviour the other ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... achievements in this respect, and of his threats against our governor and ourselves; yet we think it scarce likely that Sir John de Walton will move from Douglasdale without the King's order, although this James Douglas, a mere chicken, take upon himself to crack his voice by crowing like ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... she had ta'en the mantle, And put it on her back, About the hem it seemed To wrinkle and to crack. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... had already weakened the wood. When Tom attempted to draw himself up, crack! went the board, and a jagged piece broke off. This would not have been so serious if the ice had not given way. Then, into the water, with many strange, guttural cries, slipped the deaf and dumb man. Grace herself was wet through by the rush of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... by the window in Tutt's office when he came in, and for a full minute he paused upon the threshold while she pretended she did not know that he was there. The deluge of sunlight that fell upon her face betrayed no crack or wrinkle—no flaw of any kind—in the white marble of its perfection. It was indeed a lovely face, classic in the chiseling of its transparent alabaster; and when she turned, her eyes were like misty lakes of blue. Bar none, she was the most beautiful creature—and there had been many—that had ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained way. "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain Barnaby. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... vexed her; but her grandmother had suggested a way of reconciling them. Where he commanded victory followed, and if the Christians should succeed in destroying the image of Serapis the joints of the world would crack and the earth would crumble away. She herself was familiar with the traditions and the oracles which with one consent foretold this doom; she had learnt them as an infant from her nurse, from the slave-women at the loom, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went high, singing overhead like a flight of canaries. Going up on the other side, I took a piece of bread out of my pocket, and was just trying to persuade myself to offer our two companions some, when crack! crack! came a couple of Nordenfeldt shells right behind us. It didn't take us long to get over the hill, the vicious little one-pounders crackling and fizzling round us all ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... Commons. A very large and symbolic knout might occupy the position of the present mace, and from time to time the SPEAKER could take it up and crack it. As this needs a certain amount of practice it will be necessary to select a fairly horsey man as Speaker, and the Whips, who will follow the same procedure, should also be skilled practitioners. I see no difficulty in applying the same method ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... it was a devil, as was very natural for him to opine, seeing how the evil spirits flock in countless swarms to torment mankind, and above all at night time. But the moon just then breaking through the clouds, he recognised Madame Ysabeau and saw she was busy with her beak pushing into a crack in the wall that served her for storehouse a blue purse broidered with silver. He let her do as she list; but when she had left her hoard, he clambered onto a beam, took the purse, opened it, and saw ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... crack shot when he was young," said the pitiless Jacques. "My father often used to tell me ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... but Bess and Nan could not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and were playing old-fashioned hockey, "shinny-on-your-own-side" as it was locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of the shinny-stick against the wooden block, and the "z-z-z-zip!" of the missile as it ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush and refuse to come ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... down to the floor and laid his mouth alongside the crack, with the feeling that his message would be more impressive delivered in that way, since he was not to be admitted to the apartment to give ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... says that 'man is common clay—woman porcelain.' Alas! there is but little genuine porcelain. It is a pity that you couldn't contrive to have a few jars before matrimony, to crack off some of the glazing, and show the true character of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid him live ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... a queer kind of dawn life went on between the small boy and me. Morning after morning he threw a pebble to waken me and I hurried down to our tryst, which extended through the hour that lies between the crack of day and the first glint of the awakening sun. At first I had carried sweetmeats to our tryst, which were accepted with moderate pleasure, but one morning I had taken a huge volume of Rackham's Mother Goose which Nickols had brought me, and from then ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tidings for Rudy, fortune smiled upon him, as it always does on those that rely upon themselves and think upon the saying: "Our Lord gives us nuts, but he does not crack them for us!" Rudy made himself quite at home with the miller's relations; they drank the health of the best marksman. Babette knocked her glass against his and Rudy gave thanks ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... pounded stone-ware mixed together, and used in the same manner. This dries and hardens by the fire, so as to form a true supplementary retort capable of retaining the materials, if the glass retort below should crack or soften. But, in experiments which are intended for collecting gasses, this lute, being porous, is of ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... bent his two knees to the ground and remained kneeling until the Manager, with the crack of the whip, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... confusion, "I'm not at all wet, I'm not." Happily, the children don't know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding sail boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached to, and the jaws of ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... sez Con," drawled out the American, the crack of his six- shooter echoing through the air at the same time that the knife fell to the deck from the miscreant's hand, which had been neatly perforated by a bullet. The instant he raised it above his head to strike ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Relstaub could finish his remark, the crack of two rifles cut short his words. At the same moment the whistling bullets and the war whoops left no doubt of the explanation. Several Pawnees had been prowling along their trail, when the sight of the boys moving away led them ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... through the crevice made by the chisel and Mayo planted his palm against the crack. The pressure held his hand as if it were clamped against the planks, and the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... one of the churchwardens of X complained to the churchwardens of Y that his late importation from the Y pulpit was not very satisfactory. 'And yet,' he said, 'you all cracked him up enormously.' 'Yes,' replied the churchwarden of Y, 'and you will have to crack him up too before ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... afternoon in crying for her lost letter; and the face that she turned to the door, on hearing some slight noise outside, was very white and thin indeed. And though it was placid, too, her eye searched the crack of the door with a keen wistfulness that went to Alice's heart. But as the door was gently pushed open, and the eye caught the figure that stood behind it, the sudden and entire change of expression took away all her powers ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sheltered from the wind, and here, with the luck which characterized the trip, was found the only opening in this barrier of coral. A long cleft, perhaps eight feet wide, at the outer edge of the reef, ran in, narrowing to a mere crack near the shore. Watching a favorable chance, the boats were guided through the surf into a cleft as far as shoal water, when the men jumped on to the reef and carried baggage and instruments ashore ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various |
