"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and jostled, doing as little service with as much tumult as could well be imagined. At length, while the dinner was, after various efforts, in the act of being arranged upon the board, "the clamour much of men and dogs," the cracking of whips, calculated for the intimidation of the latter, voices loud and high, steps which, impressed by the heavy-heeled boots of the period, clattered like those of the statue in the Festin de pierre, announced the arrival of those for whose benefit the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Costigan. He knew me at once; and he says, 'Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name.' His highly respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter—"those were his very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy circumstances'—he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I heartily wish he'd ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... either copy, but that both are offered to you by a bookseller at precisely the same price. What will be your feelings as you handle the repaired copy? It is more than probable that you will sigh 'Poor thing' as you open it gently for fear of cracking the old piece pasted on to the back. But, 'What a nice clean copy' you will say as you take up the other; and it is improbable that you will hesitate long in ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... which he had found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... an incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by dividing their forces against ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... skipping and frisking into Nutham, as his manner was, both pockets full of corn which he had confiscated, he remarked significantly, from a field down yonder. He nodded jauntily right and left, and then disposed himself comfortably in a corner, and began cracking his dainties in a very free-and-easy manner, not noticing the woe-begone aspect of his friends. All at once, however, he awoke to a realizing sense of things, and showed his sympathy after his own fashion, by giving a sudden flirt with his ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and Richard his one, and they were about to pass in although Mrs. Fayal said it ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... on each side of the speaker's desk," Who wouldn't legislate, (and early, too,) if he could do it with his feet on the fender, his well-flavored Havana or best Virginia leaf in his mouth, and the privilege of cracking jokes and telling naughty stories ad interim? Go it, ye Buckeye lawmakers! Shall we hear of any sympathy ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... thy life thou shedd'st For love. The ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell Alternate victory and defeat, and there 2475 The combatants with rage most horrible Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, And impotent their tongues they lolled into ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... flattened,—often bursting or cracking longitudinally before attaining its full dimensions; skin deep scarlet; flesh rose-colored, crisp, mild, and pleasant; neck small; leaves few in number, and of smaller size than those of the common Scarlet Turnip-rooted. Season quite early,—two ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... lurcher, terrier, spaniel—snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from the Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon. Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging. Behind came Sir Nigel himself, with Lady Loring upon his arm, the pair walking slowly and sedately, as befitted both their age and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inches on a side, and is fastened to the second layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.) The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon and are extremely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... shouting and laughing, made as much noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica shrieking ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... bark wound with a sharp knife so as to remove all frayed edges. Cover the exposed wood with oil and lead paint to prevent cracking, and the wound will soon be covered with new bark ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... They were cracking decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... his face felt cold, and opening his eyes, he found that it had good reason to be so. It was covered with snow, and upon the robe itself the snow lay deep. The whole forest was white, and, as he stood up, he heard branches cracking beneath the weight that had gathered on them in the night. It had come down in thick and great flakes, but so softly that it ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... recollect that some of us, faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking quite five miles behind the line when a flare went up), the constant order to keep closed up, the whizz of bullets, at every one of which we ducked instantly, the cracking of rifles, the 'dead cow' smell which afterwards became so painfully familiar, the arrival at the trenches and the posting of sentries. Later the cautious creeping over the parapet to look at the wire and at dawn stand-to, followed by the frizzling of bacon and the brewing of tea ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... there shot dazzling sparks, and streamers of green and violet fire. There was a snapping, cracking sound that could be heard above the whir of the craft's propellers, for ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... sphere of metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left him floating helpless ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... fear of suffocation. In one or two of the shop windows could be discerned a light glimmering feebly as through the thickest fog. All the ordinary sights and sounds of morning—the vehicles plying for hire, the cracking of whips, the cries of the fish and fruit vendors—all were gone. The deathly stillness was broken only by a clangour of the town clock, tolling the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... told myself that my pity ought to be kept for the real men who had been frequenters of the building, who now were waifs. I reviewed the gaping, glassless windows through which they had been wont to watch the human comedy. There they had stood, puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing women's reputations ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold to gain ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... older brothers couldn't understand about Stefan was why he was always laughing and joking. He did the work of two men but whether he was working or resting you could always hear him cracking his merry jokes and laughing his ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... the foremost Indian, and with the crack of his rifle saw the redskin drop his gun, stop in his mad run, stagger sideways, and fall. Then the borderman looked to see what had become of his ally. The cracking of the Indian's rifle told him that Wetzel had been ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... The king talks with his knights.] [Sidenote B: Gawayne,] [Sidenote C: Agravayn,] [Sidenote D: Bishop Bawdewyn,] [Sidenote E: and Ywain sit on the dais.] [Sidenote F: The first course is served with cracking of trumpets.] [Sidenote G: It consisted of all dainties in season.] [Sidenote H: Each two had dishes twelve,] [Sidenote I: good beer and bright wine both.] [Footnote ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... something of what the country was doing and had done, cracking a few jokes based on camp life, that almost sent the girls into hysterics—so finely balanced were they between laughter and tears. Then he ended with another eulogy of the Outdoor Girls and the hope that health and good fortune would follow them wherever ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... when I awoke. I felt all right except for a soreness under my arms and across my chest where the lasso had chafed and bruised me. Still I did not recover my good spirits. Herky-Jerky kept on grinning and cracking jokes on my failure to escape. He had appropriated my revolver for himself, and he asked me several times if I wanted to borrow it to ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... crawled quickly on. There were several branches below me, which, should the one I was on give way, would still afford me support, and there were many on either side. The bough bent with my weight, and as I reached the further end I every moment expected that it would break. I felt it giving way, cracking horribly. It broke! I endeavoured to seize another bough—in vain. With a crash, down I came, but it was to find myself on the opposite bank, and by making a few springs I reached the ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the house, in such an agitation that they declared—for it was their turn now—that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures, to not one of which they could give a name, and not one of ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... else to think of, and the smashing of porcelain and cracking of whips came to an end. The Archimandrite was summoned, and preparations, both religious and secular, were made for a funeral worthy the rank of the deceased. Thousands flocked to Kinesma; and when the immense procession moved away from the castle, although very ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... expression that it had in the Hebrew prophets—humour. A man must be very full of faith to jest about his divinity. No Neo-Pagan delicately suggesting a revival of Dionysius, no vague, half-converted Theosophist groping towards a recognition of Buddha, would ever think of cracking jokes on the matter. But to the Hebrew prophets their religion was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. So it was with Carlyle. His ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... but he makes more noise about it. When the linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, and they pretend to say that there are valuable things in it which may get hurt. Hope not,—hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing place,—always cracking up something. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in the road, about two miles from home; and there, all in a moment, quite suddenly, when nobody was thinking about the frost or the danger, down came the poor horse on his side, his feet having gone quite from under him, and a dreadful cracking sound of broken timber gave notice that a shaft was smashed. A shaft at least was smashed; if only no ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the rafters and nailed down at the edges, so as to be considerably concaved between them, the joints on the rafters being covered by inverted caps or troughs. The concave form of the sheet is designed to prevent the sheet metal from cracking, to which it is subject by expansion and contraction ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly up and down, did not know that ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name, don't! I can't bear it, dear," ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... called back to his adversary, "Wish you joy of the bargain Ole Anderson. The peat bog won't beggar me, and the cattle at Ingvorstrup have all the hay they can eat." I could hear his loud laughter outside and the cracking of his whip. It is not easy to have to sit in judgment. Every decision makes ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... two Pepper hung at the extremity of the branch to which he was clinging, when all at once there came an ominous cracking and the end broke away, but fortunately it had swung so low toward the ground that he dropped at the foot of the tree, not much the ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... soft, deliberate tone, on any one of the great subjects of American policy which we might happen to start, always amazing us with the moderation of estimate and speech which so impetuous a nature has been able to attain. Mr. Webster, leaning back at his ease, telling stories, cracking jokes, shaking the sofa with burst after burst of laughter, or smoothly discoursing to the perfect felicity of the logical part of one's constitution, would illuminate an evening now and then. Mr. Calhoun, the cast-iron man, who looks as if he had never been born and could never be extinguished, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... one else—which answering, he walked off briskly, under press of filial obedience, to see what was wanted. As if hoping to force what would not come of its own accord, or by persuasion, Bushie now laid unauthorized hands on Grumbo's tail, and giving it a cracking pull, got his finger bitten; ditto, then, on Tom's tail, and giving it a cracking jerk, got his leg scratched. Evidently, quiet amusement at home to-day was a consummation quite out of the question, however ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of something which happened to a lady, a fellow-traveller of ours, a few weeks, ago. She came here to visit a lady whose husband owns one hundred and fifty slaves. The morning after she reached the plantation, as she told me, she was awaked by the cracking of whips. She listened; human voices, raised above the ordinary pitch, were mingling with the sounds. She lay till she could endure it no longer. Coming down to the piazza, she saw a white man mending a ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... rather staggered as well as we could, into the gallery, where the servants were already arranged on their knees, praying and crossing themselves with all their might. The shock lasted above a minute and a half, and I believe has done no injury, except in frightening the whole population, and cracking a few old walls. All Mexico was on its knees while it lasted, even the poor madmen in San Hepolito, which A—— had gone to visit in company with Seor ——-. I have had a feeling of sea-sickness ever since. They expect a return of the shock in twenty-four hours. How dreadful a severe ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... leafage, and struck the ground with a dull crash. It must have fallen under the very jaws of an unseen waiting monster; for there arose at once a strange, hooting roar, followed by the sound of rending flesh and cracking bone. Loob grinned over his feat, and Grom, glancing at A-ya, muttered quietly: "It is better to be up here than down there." As he spoke, and they all peered downwards, a dreadful head, with the limp body of the leopard gripped like a rat between its long jaws and dripping yellow ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the sleeper lay in a huddle. Taking little heed of where he set them, some of them, as the wind arose, flared out until their flames licked the decayed branches of the fallen white oak. As the boy crouched, pensive and distraught, he was suddenly aroused by a vivacious cracking. He looked up. Lines of fire were darting thither and yon, where dry wood, the debris of years of decay, had been caught in the thick clumps of underbrush and among the limbs of the trees. The fire had pushed briskly, and the uncanny glade was now an amphitheatre of crawling flames, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... aussi je suis pere de famille), a fat, double volume of himself—I could not see a trace of the young pere de famille we knew—round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey to Brazil, magnificently printed in ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... cracking a peanut and dexterously nipping the double kernel into his mouth. "We'll be there, though I don't believe we need much practice to beat that Barville bunch. We ate 'em up ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... the guns which had been idle were all speaking. Every one by scattered practice shots had registered on the German first-line trench at the point where its shell-bursts would form its link in the chain of bursts. Over the wavy line of chalk for the front of the attack broke the flashes of cracking shrapnel jackets, whose bullets were whipping up spurts of chalk like spurts of dust on a road from ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the tramp of an armed man, coming ever nearer and nearer, and now close to the entrance of the cave. In vain did Froda strive to free himself from the trembling maiden. Already the branches before the entrance were cracking and breaking, and Froda sighed deeply. "Must I, then, fall like a lurking fugitive, entangled in a woman's garments? It is a base death to die. But can I cast this half-fainting creature away from me on the ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our Administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... little on the piano, I should long ago have lost patience with my work, but I like my instruments to respond to the player, and to be durable." His pianos do really last well. He warrants the sounding-board neither breaking nor cracking; when he has finished one, he exposes it in the air to rain, snow, sun, and every kind of devilry, that it may give way, and then inserts slips of wood which he glues in, making it quite strong and solid. He is very glad when ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... cracking of whips re-echoed from the wall of rocks; a carriage with four horses rolled up to the hotel. Armed servants sat on the seat at the back of the carriage; a pale thin gentleman, wrapped in a large bright-coloured dressing-gown, stretched himself within it. The postilion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... to any of the party, except the leaders. The prospect of a sharp fight had not in the least dampened the ardor of their hopes. With men of their craft it was a dull season, and the prospect of "cracking a crib" plentifully stored with valuables was quite ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... remains a mystery, and it is frightful so long as the cause does remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... his fingers, and flinging his plumed hat on the table, as who should say, Lie there, authority! he swallowed a hearty cup of wine to the happiness of the married couple, and began to amble about the room, mumping, laughing, and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company. Whilst his Majesty was in the midst of this gay humour, and a call to the banquet was anxiously expected, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... relates that the man to whom it was offered by the underground folk did not refuse to drink, but having drunk, he kept the vessel and took it home. A boy who was employed to watch horses by night on a turf moor near the village of Kritzemow, in Mecklenburg, annoyed the underground folk by the constant cracking of his whip. One night, as he was thus amusing himself, a mannikin came up to him and offered him drink in a silver-gilt beaker. The boy took the beaker, but being openly on bad terms with the elves, argued no good ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... their drawing after the games. Gesner affirms that an otter will wind a fish four miles distance in the water, and my Lord Verulam (cent. 8) speaks of that element's being also a medium of sounds, as well as air. Eels do manifestly stir at the cracking of thunder, but that may also be attributed to some other tremulous motion; yet carps and other fish are known to come at the call and the sound of a bell, as I have been informed. Notorious is the story of Arion, and of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... be boiling fast when the eggs are put in, that it may not be checked. They should have lain in warm water a few minutes before boiling, to prevent the shells cracking. Allow three minutes for a soft-boiled egg; four, to have the white firmly set; and ten, for a hard-boiled egg. Another method is to pour boiling water on the eggs, and let them stand for ten minutes where they will be nearly at boiling-point, though not boiling. The white and yolk are then ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St. John's Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it is doubtful whether they had ever enjoyed themselves more; until just as they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and said to him "If you pour milk every day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were anything but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room. In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused at the cold perspirations of the night before; but even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself like those historic ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of a cracksman," said Arthur Weldon, with a laugh. "If there are any safes out here that are worth cracking, I'd say ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... my remarks to the newer things that you haven't heard of. I will first note a shagbark hickory that stands in my own neighborhood, an outstanding variety we call Hand. This is very much like the Vest in shape and size and cracking quality. According to my tests, this variety cracks out 50% meat, and since it is a local variety and I know it is hardy and fruitful, I am placing it ahead of the Vest for the Middle West. It is certainly equal to it in every way and hardy and fruitful. While the Vest hasn't yet ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... which of these three passions stripped her this Amilcare naked? Naked he was now, and she found that she had never known him. The colour of his face was that of old white wax; his mouth seemed stretched to cracking point, neither turned up at the corners nor down, but a bleak slit jagged across his face. He fastened her with his hard eyes, which seemed smaller than usual, and had a scared look, as if he was positively disconcerted ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sharp air that cut their faces and the flying pace of the two outer horses alone gave them any idea of the speed they were making. Nicolas glanced back at the other two drivers; they were shouting and urging their shaft-horses with cries and cracking of whips, so as not to be quite left behind; Nicolas's middle horse, swinging steadily along under the shaft-bow, kept up his regular pace, quite ready to go twice as fast the moment he ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... were for this preparing Late last fall, Neither time nor trouble sparing To please you all, Zounds! these niggers raised the shindies, Cracking crowns and court-house windies, Sent us sharp to the West ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... distinctly in it on returning to Chalons, which, if it had seemed packed on our previous visit, was now quivering and cracking with fresh crowds. The stir about the fountain, in the square before the Haute Mere-Dieu, was more melodramatic than ever. Every one was in a hurry, every one booted and mudsplashed, and spurred or sworded or despatch-bagged, or somehow labelled as a member of the huge military beehive. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... complaining emptiness. We fell into a refreshing sleep; the hours passed away unheeded, until we were awakened by the rustling of the reeds bending in the breeze, whispering of the coveted blow. Heavy black clouds were gathering, and soon old Boreas came cracking out from the ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... her hair and wrung it till the last salt drop had fallen. Sitting there in the sands, idle fingers cracking the pods of gilded sea-weed, she glanced up at me and laughed contentedly. Presently she rose and walked out to a high ledge, motioning me to follow. Far below, the sun-lit water shimmered in a shallow basin of ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... city of Florence. My only consolation was to eat unnumbered cherries and apricots, for I did not as yet like the figs. My brother and I sometimes had a lurid delight in cracking the cherry and apricot stones and devouring the bitter contents, with the dreadful expectation of soon dying from the effects. Altogether I considered our sojourn in the town house, Casa del Bello, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... even this morning, in Padua, Verona, Milan, Chioggia, or wherever it was, whips were cracking, hoofs clattering, motor horns booming, wheels endangering your life. Farewell now to all!—there is not a wheel in Venice save those that steer rudders, or ring bells; but instead, as you discern in time when the brightness ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... early life. During the winter that had just passed, Frank, in company with his cousin Archie Winters, of whom more hereafter, paid a visit to Uncle Joe. One cold, stormy morning, as they sat before a blazing fire, cracking hickory-nuts, the farmer burst suddenly into the house, which was built of logs, and contained but one room, and commenced taking down ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... and round the heads of the commissioners, all the night long. On the eleventh, the demon ran away with their breeches; and on the twelfth filled their beds so full of pewter platters that they could not get into them. On the thirteenth night, the glass became unaccountably seized with a fit of cracking, and fell into shivers in all parts of the house. On the fourteenth, there was a noise as if forty pieces of artillery had been fired off, and a shower of pebble-stones, which so alarmed the commissioners that, "struck with great ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in riding and hunting. He rose early, ate his breakfast of corn-cake, honey, and tea, and then rode about his estates; his evenings he passed with his family around the blazing hearth, retiring between nine and ten. He loved to linger at the table, cracking nuts and relating his adventures. In personal appearance, Washington was over six feet in height, robust, graceful, and perfectly erect. His manner was formal and dignified. He was more solid than brilliant, and had more judgment than genius. He had great ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... slowly stirred a pot of stew. The little party of cowboys came thundering up. There was a chorus of shouts and exclamations, whistlings and good-natured chaff, as they threw themselves from their horses. Long Jim stood slowly cracking his whip and looking ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reach of his ambition, and his ambition soars at random; he is light-hearted, generous, and enthusiastic; in short, the fledgling bird has discovered that he has wings. A poor student snatches at every chance pleasure much as a dog runs all sorts of risks to steal a bone, cracking it and sucking the marrow as he flies from pursuit; but a young man who can rattle a few runaway gold coins in his pocket can take his pleasure deliberately, can taste the whole of the sweets of secure possession; he soars far above earth; he has ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... from morning till night; she herself would place the scant flowers that could be got in the guests' rooms. The steward of the Pioneer had undertaken to bring any number of things from Oban; Donald, the piper-lad, had a brand-new suit of tartan, and was determined that, short of the very cracking of his lungs, the English lady would have a good salute played for her that day. The Umpire, all smartened up now, had been put in a safe anchorage in Loch-na-Keal; the men wore their new jerseys; the long gig, painted white, with a band of gold, was brought ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and crawled ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... dark and, what is a rare occurrence under the tropics, very still. They could hear only the cracking of the burning thorns and the hissing of flames which illumined the overhanging rocks forming a semi-circle. The moon did not shine into the depths of the ravine, but above twinkled a swarm of unknown stars. The air became so cool that Stas shook off his drowsiness ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... severe frosts and the snow and ice came. There were several varieties, including large ones two inches long, and the fine little ones known to boys throughout the Mississippi Valley as the scaly bark. Paul procured two stones, and, cracking several of them, found them delicious to the taste. Already in his Kentucky home he had become familiar with them all. The hogs of the settlers, running through the forest and fattening upon these nuts and acorns, known collectively as "mast," acquired a delicious flavor. Boys ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... before the shaft. With the last batch of these in the bucket, we white men stepped upon the platform below it and dropped suddenly into the black depths of the earth, with now and then a stone easily capable of cracking a skull bounding swiftly with a hollow sound past us back and ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the process of making steel tough after it has been hardened, so that it will hold a cutting edge and resist cracking. Tempering makes the grain finer and the metal stronger. It does not affect the hardness, but increases the elastic limit and reduces the brittleness of the steel. In that tempering is usually performed immediately after hardening, it might be considered as a continuation ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... detected the noise of padded feet and the scraping noise of claws on the wood. A shudder ran through me. Was a panther, a mountain lion, about to spring upon me? No, I abandoned the thought and instinctively I knew that it must be one of the black wolf pack. Then I remembered hearing the cracking and breaking of sticks or timber while I was trying to sleep in the bedroom, and I felt that Pluto had broken out of the pen and was creeping up on us slowly and stealthily as I have seen a fox creep up on a ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... for ever calculating, devising, and plotting for the future,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and more, and looking at the fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it: 'I am weary of such arts. If our inclinations are but good and open-hearted, let us gratify them boldly, though they bring upon us Loss instead ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... this moonbeam passed a sort of grey streak, for all the world as though some long thin shape had been withdrawn, snakelike, from the room, through the open window.... From somewhere outside the house, and below, I heard the cough again, followed by a sharp cracking sound like the lashing ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... immemorial slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded in my mind by a strange, overpowering, fascinating wonder and speculation as to what dismal ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the blue air, high above the wood which is now no longer visible. A thick black smoke ascends up into the clear air, where it rests like a cloud. Out of the flames, and even out of the smoke, the wind carries away large masses of fire, which, crackling and cracking, are borne on to the wood, and which fill the spectator with apprehension of their falling upon the nearest trees and burning up ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... the other side of the wall. He waited till the old lady was fairly over, and then commenced running. The old lady pursued with vindictive animosity, cracking the whip in a suggestive manner. Pomp doubled and turned in a most provoking way. Finally he had recourse to a piece of strategy. He had flung himself, doubled up in a ball, at the old lady's feet, and she, unable to check her speed, fell over ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... puddled and hardened, and then, after crop-picking is finished, lightly dig, or pick over and stir, the remainder of the soil, breaking, of course, all clods at the same time. By such a process we should prevent the central portion drying up and cracking, and aerate laterally the rest of the soil, and at the same time do as little damage as possible to the roots. I need hardly say that it is of great importance to begin with all those places where the soil is most hardened, as, should the planter not ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... for a moment silent there came the sound of approaching hoof-beats, and presently the cracking and popping of the feet of a galloping horse fell into a duller crunch on the hard ground before the door, and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... sailed into Apia with a load of copra and his letter for the outgoing mail. The town was in an uproar, and cracking like the Fourth of July. Jack wondered what in thunder it was about, as he landed at Leicester's wharf and discovered the postmaster lying underneath the post office in a nest of sand bags. Crawling in after the functionary, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... this time of the year to mention the fact that Lord SALISBURY always uses a poker in cracking walnuts. He says it saves the silver. The other day, whilst wielding the poker across the walnuts and the wine, Mr. GLADSTONE chanced to look in. The Premier, with his well-known hospitality, immediately ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... did not obey her command, she pressed the button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... other sounds, after a few moments. Rifles were cracking persistently; but it was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... silent, the pipe and the string between them began to question me. But I was neither in the mood nor the desire to gratify their curiosity. They therefore contented themselves with cracking jokes at my expense, and thus we journeyed together a mile or ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... captain and others were defending the breach, the battering-ram was withdrawn; why, we were not long left in doubt. To our great horror, the battering, cracking sound was heard in the rear of the house. Still we were not at once to be defeated, and some of our party hurried to defend the spot. The attack on the front-door had cost the negroes so many lives that they were more cautious in ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... distinctly within the field of the family case work agencies. It is time that these agencies began to find means of dealing, not with the dependent family alone but with the family in danger of becoming dependent—not with the family broken and estranged only, but with the one whose bonds, even if cracking and ill-adjusted, still hold. ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured it ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872) |
