"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; —Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes; The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; —The city ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... We marched off again through pouring rain, our path lit up by the flames, which in places thrust their long tongues right across the road. The wind blew clouds of smoke in our faces. The air was full of the roaring of the fires, the crackle of blazing woodwork, the crash of houses falling in, the loud explosions of ammunition dumps and petrol stores, which now and again for a few seconds lighted up the whole night sky for miles around with a terrific glare, and then ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... distinguish, and how to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as, therefore, this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. Presently she came in with two ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... rejoined Bessie coolly. "And if you will not bedizen me with artificial flowers, and will exonerate me from wearing dresses that crackle, I shall be happy. Did you not promise to give me simplicity and no ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... every bin in it he had a little anecdote or a pedigree to relate. And his laugh was frequent and hearty, and somehow the room and all in it felt the influence of his presence like the glow, and cheer, and crackle of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was moving on, the noise above became sharper. There was a slight crackle. The linen roofing sagged under a burden, and Drew caught his breath in a gasp. Miraculously the yellow cloth supported the object—a bulge as big as a saddlebag. A portion of the ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... loaded beasts, and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him and the edge of the bluff, cutting off his road to the prairie. It was evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs, and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them. There alone remained the river. It ran fast below him, and the ice was thin, and for ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... supper that we had every night was very cheerful. Just before the men came out of the field, a large faggot was flung on the fire; the wood used to crackle and blaze, and smell delightfully: and then the crickets, for they loved the fire, they used to sing, and old Spot, the shepherd, who loved the fire as well as the crickets did, he used to take his place in the chimney corner; after the hottest day in summer, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... mankind, some races have well-developed tendencies toward polygamy. In the warmer regions of the United States there dwells a great, splendid, glossy Blackbird, the Boat-tailed Crackle. The nest of this bird is a wonderfully woven structure of water plants and grasses and is usually built in a bush growing in the {55} water. When you find one nest of the Crackle you are pretty certain to find several ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... said. "Do you know how a sailor folds a waistcoat? Give it to me now. I'll show you." He snatched it from my hands with that rudeness which, in a boorish nature, passes for fun; he only wished to feel it over so that if any letter were sewn within it he might hear the paper crackle. The sailor's way of folding a waistcoat, as shown by him then, was just the way which bent all the cloth in folds. He seemed to be much disgusted at hearing no crackling as he folded it. I could have laughed outright at ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... stopped talking and looked straight at the officer, standing erect and waiting, as if he expected a quick answer, and only the kind of answer, too, that he wished. Meanwhile there was silence, save for an occasional crackle of burning wood. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... somewhat. It made her feel old. It chilled her with suspicion of the actuality of The Four Last Things—death and judgment, heaven and hell. The power of a merry scepticism waxed faint amid the scream of shells and long-drawn, murderous crackle of the mitrailleuse. Helen, indeed, became actively superstitious, thereby falling low in her own self-esteem. She took to frequenting churches, and spending long, still days with the nuns, her former teachers, within the convent of the Sacre ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... avert from them all desecration. I ought by rights to have eaten their ashes, or drunk a decoction of them, or at least treasured them in a golden urn, but contented myself with watching them shrivel and crackle with much sentimental satisfaction. I remember a most beautiful myrtle tree, which, by favor of a peculiarly sunny and sheltered exposure, had reached a very unusual size in the open air in Edinburgh, and in the flowering season might have borne ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... right, Ken!' muttered Dave. 'Fix bayonets!' Colonel Conway's voice rang like a trumpet above the crackle ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... saw you get so much—so much fun out of your food. I've heard about gourmands. I think I can guess now what they are and act like. Hark! What's that noise? Kind of a crackle, as if a cat or something was overhead among those vines. I hope it isn't. Cats love fish. I always have to shut up Lady Rosalind when Mother Martha has it for dinner. Isn't 'finnan ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... a few seconds the air was filled with the thumping of Archie and the distant crackle ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... a damascened suit of Milanese armour glittered in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese grotesques, vases of celadon and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sevres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... I said, as I listened to the noise he made rolling himself in his blanket, and making the fir-boughs crackle as he turned about. "I was horribly scared at first, but I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... steel grille, and pulled the heavy curtain. Then, when I had lit a candle, I went over and put a light to the fire. In a few seconds the dry wood had caught, and the flames were beginning to rise and crackle. She had not objected to my closing the window and drawing the curtain; neither did she make any comment on my lighting the fire. She simply acquiesced in it, as though it was now a matter of course. When I made the pile of cushions before it as on the occasion of her last ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... two heavy hands gripped him, one on either shoulder, and he was forced to his knees. At the same instant, with a snapping crackle a spurt of blue flame shot down from the zenith, and where it fell with a thunderclap a dazzling glare of emerald ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... tongue of flame was creeping through the joining of the logs at one end of the cabin, and the logs where the bunk had been were beginning to crackle and hiss ominously. The smoke had grown thicker, and the atmosphere was pungent and choking in its quality. He left her side for a moment, and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... stimulated, gladdened, and, as I lay on my bunk listening to the merry crackle of the wood fire, I was in a purring lethargy of content. Then ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... light of the super-mongoose's eyes seemed to lance at Sowles, like an infra-red flash. Then there was a puff where the would-be messiah had stood—a crackle, and a smell of scorched ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... physician, "Go your ways!" and is, as it were, a standard which Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... down; that he was in his own room and on his own bed, whither he had been brought by an ambulance party of his men; and that Mama Faquita, poor Senorita Isolda's nurse, had taken him in charge, cleaned and dressed his wound, and was looking after him generally. An intermittent crackle of rifle fire told him that the attack was still being pressed, but Faquita informed him that there had been very few serious casualties thus far, and that all was going well. The old woman would fain have kept him confined to his room; but Jack knew ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... their way toward the platform. It sunk for a moment and then rose again. As the dome swung back a sharp crackle of machine-gun fire sounded and the water before them was whipped into foam by the plunging bullets. One of the soldiers gave a sharp cry and ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... where the great stars burned like street-lamps. From time to time a greenish wave of the Northern Lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag, and disappear; or a meteor would crackle from darkness to darkness, trailing a shower of sparks behind. Then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped and laced with strange colours—red, copper, and bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frost-bitten gray. The floe, as you ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... falling over a slight depression in the rocky ground. The outlaw caught him and dragged him nearer the fire. The other horses stood shaking and straining. Moze ran between them and held them. Shady Jones threw green brush on the fire. With sputter and crackle a blaze started, showing Wilson standing tragically, his arms ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... hear the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful shriek as they passed overhead. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Like the garden of Eden is the land before them, And after them it is a desolate desert, Yea, nothing escapes them. Their appearance is as the appearance of horses, And like horsemen they run. Like the sound of chariots on the tops of the mountains they leap, Like the crackle of flames devouring stubble, Like a mighty people preparing for battle. Peoples are in anguish before them, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... dark grey tufts beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft and noiseless as ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... knowing that only the unwritten law of Western hospitality compelled that speech; it was the crackle and flare of the bright fire which overcame ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... brain, plaints, confused and distant groans, reach him from different points of the island. These sorrowful cries, almost uninterrupted, afterwards approach, and are repeated with increasing strength. He awakes, he listens; the bushes around him crackle and rustle; even the earth emits a dull sound, as beneath the bounding of a goat; the cries are renewed and become more and more distinct, like the sobs of a child. Selkirk puts his hand to his forehead. These plaints, these sobs, he thinks he recognizes, and, suddenly raising ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... lay torn and trampled, all but covered in the dust of the roadway before the school. Then one of the Moros again struck a match. In a moment the flames began to crackle and the smoke ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... alien about that landscape. Even as he circled above it, Garin wrested to break the grip of the will that had brought him there. There came a crackle of sound in his earphones and at that moment the ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... not ridden long when fortunately, as it seemed to Hale, the character of the storm changed. The snow no longer fell in such large flakes, nor as heavily. A bitter wind succeeded; the soft snow began to stiffen and crackle under the horses' hoofs; they were no longer weighted and encumbered by the drifts upon their bodies; the smaller flakes now rustled and rasped against them like sand, or bounded from them like hail. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... the Forecaster answered. "Thunder is caused by the electric discharge. You've heard Bob's big wireless outfit crackle, when he sends out a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... come down from over the hills across the fields and captured the city streets with a blare of northern winds, which had been met and tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so that, with lungs filled with the intoxicating draught of this late wine of October, everybody had ridden, driven, hunted, golfed and ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to the commander of the column, and soon the trumpets were calling the men to battle. The crackle of rifle shots ahead increased rapidly. The skirmishers were already pulling trigger, and, as Dick galloped back to Hertford he saw many puffs of white smoke down the road and in the fields and ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... almost imagine I heard the crash away off here, even with all that thunder from Big Berthas and the crackle ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... asleep. Barbara and Eleanor had succumbed to weariness the moment they rolled over on the beds. But Polly, tired and fatigued, too, knew that some one must keep the fires going all night, so she merely reclined on the pine-bough bed and started up at every sound or crackle of the fires. She piled pine upon them all night through until the first faint gleams of dawn, and then there was no more wood on hand ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... be very angry, but he'll have to put up with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he'd understand. And I'd really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I crackle my programme you won't glare. Of course, I shall try not to. Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert with him ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... crackle and Retief stiffened. Magnan heard a sharp intake of breath. The globe slowed, and Retief shook his ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... to disapprove, so the two sisters went downstairs to make some slight changes in their dress. As they passed the parlor door Miranda thought she heard a crackle and looked in. The shades were up, there was a cheerful blaze in the open stove in the front parlor, and a fire laid on the hearth in the back room. Rebecca's own lamp, her second Christmas present from Mr. Aladdin, stood on a marble-topped table in the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... papa strike a light and then the wood began to crackle. Then, by jinks! it began to get hot ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... suffer, I know that you would pity me—but you must never know the truth—Never! Never!" and sinking into a chair by the window, he covered his face with his hands. After remaining in this position for some minutes, occupied with his own gloomy thoughts, he arose and rang the bell. A faint crackle in the distance announced that Mrs. Sampson had heard it, and she soon came into the room, looking more like a cricket than ever. Brian had gone into his bedroom, and called out to her ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... for purposes of his own, and Hawk-eye at once took steps to secure his capture. While Heyward held the runner in conversation, the scout and the two Mohicans crept silently through the undergrowth to surround him, but the slight crackle of a breaking stick aroused Magua's suspicion, and, even as the ambush closed on him, he dodged under Heyward's arms and vanished into ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... There she sat with her striking forehead and her quite unimportant nose, in the large austere drawing-room of the Spatts, which was so pervaded by artistic chintz that the slightest movement in it produced a crackle—and wondered why she was so much queerer than other girls could ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of light flared from a headlamp, and he saw the blue crackle of a stunner. He jerked back as the beam bounced off the metal walls. Then he was firing point blank down the corridor, his stunner on a tight beam, a deadly pencil of violent energy. He heard a muffled scream and a bulk loomed up in front of him, crashed ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... and choked with the smoke; he could hear the sticks beginning to crackle and burn in the fireplace down below. He made up his mind to climb right to the top, and get out on the slates, and ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... floors, a sense of height, absolute silence, a dry, aromatic smell—this was Kirk's impression as he crossed the threshold, walking carefully and softly, that he might not break the spellbound stillness of the house. Then came the familiar crackle of an open fire, and Kirk was piloted into the delicious cozy depths of a big chair beside the hearth. Creakings, as of another chair being pulled up, then a contented sigh, indicated that his host had ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... water-colours, the colour had run down to the horizon and flamed intensest crimson in the Nick of Benarick. Broader and broader mounted the scarlet flame, till he seemed in that still place to hear the sun's corona crackle, as observers think they do when watching a great eclipse. The set of the sun affected him like a still morning—that most mysterious thing in nature. He missed, indeed, the diffused elation of the dawn; but it was infinitely sweet to hear in that still place the softened sounds of the sweet village ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... wish I could do more," said Mrs. Bradford, comfortably turning her page with a rustling crackle. "But my legs have given way ever since I was married. I don't know why, I'm sure; but marriage does seem to affect the constitution ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... volumes. The hall was spacious, and lighted by two large windows opening on the garden; the floor was of oak, and there was a great fireplace where the largest logs used in a country in which the wood costs nothing could find ample room to blaze and crackle. It took the young man several days to make the necessary changes, and during that time he enjoyed a respite from the petty annoyances worked by the steady hostility of Manette Sejournant and her son. To the great ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... them down the road they heard the crackle of a dozen rifle shots. The Southern advance undoubtedly had come into contact with the Union sentinels and skirmishers. After the first shots there was a moment's breathless silence, and then came a scattered and rapid fire, as if at least a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... swirling tower of scarlet flame hurled its illumination. For miles on every hand it could be seen. The sound of its crackle and hiss and roar was deafening. The twigs, dry and dead, caught fire from the surrounding blaze of moss, and communicated their flame to the thicker branches and to the tree's ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... forethought, he had had a covered way made, by which one could get out of a car and into the house without being touched by a drop of rain, and he had had a huge open fireplace made across the end of the tea-room, which would crackle and blaze a welcome that would cheer the most dispirited arrival. The cakes, at all times wonderful were on wet days to be more than wonderful. Li Koo had a secret receipt, given him, he said, by his mother for cakes of a quite peculiar and original charm, and these ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... her little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone." ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... turn came. The fire burst out of the woods at three different points. All worked with a will to stop it by cutting traces. But the wind was wild; burning masses from the tree-tops were hurled far among the canes, and all was lost. The canes burnt like shavings, exploding with a perpetual crackle at each joint. In a few hours the whole estate—works, coolie barracks, negro huts—was black ash; and the house only, by extreme exertion, saved. But the ground had scarcely cooled when replanting and rebuilding commenced; and now the canes were ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... boulder. Major Crozier's force then drew their sleds across the trail, and the police threw themselves down behind it. Then came the words "Begin, my men," from the commander; —and immediately the crackle of rifles startled the hush of the wilderness. The police were lying down, yet they were not completely sheltered; but the ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the ten minutes of that interval had made quite another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in amazement. "Why, God a'mighty, Dicksie, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented the flames from extending. But the inhabitants cared so little ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... in a crackle of obscene oaths. They garnished the questions that he snarled. "Wha's the matter with me? Why ain't I good ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the time came to turn and advance upon our prey he caused fires to be lighted here and there where the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... about the streets, for now the Bank Holiday people began to wander back from places that were not distant, and to them it had all to be explained anew. Free movement was possible everywhere in the City, but the constant crackle of rifles restricted somewhat that freedom. Up to one o'clock at night belated travellers were straggling into the City, and curious people were wandering from group to group still ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... Hornigold meant to keep faith with his old captain. He was sick and tired of assumed respectability, of honest piloting of ships to the harbor, of drinking with worthy merchantmen or the King's sailors. The itch for the old buccaneering game was hard upon him. To hear the fire crackle and roar through a doomed ship, to lord it over shiploads of terrified men and screaming women, to be sated with carnage and drunk with liquor, to dress in satins and velvets and laces, to let the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... I wore aided me greatly, nor were there many trees along the way to drop twigs in the path to crackle under foot; yet I found the ground uneven and deceptive, rifted with small gullies, and more or less bestrewn with stones, against which I stumbled in the darkness. I was too thoroughly trained in the stern and careful school of the frontier ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... come to New York on a mission similar to my own—to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. Then my ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... was no sound in the room except the soft crackle of the fire, and Amy thought deeply on the noble example before her of calm, trustful waiting. At last she became conscious that the house was growing strangely still; the faint tick of the great clock on ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... church bells of the city would answer it; the shadow would pass and the moon would rise, deep gold, and lie hard and sharp against the thick, impending air; the shadow would pass and the stars come out, breaking with an almost audible crackle through the stuff of the sky... and only five minutes away the shop-lights were glittering, the Isvostchicks crying to clear the road, the tram-bells clanging, the boys shouting the news. Around and about ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... you when so many other men wanted you, and he loved you, good-bye—would have fairly made your heart turn over with joy and made you kiss the hurried lines and thrust the letter in your belt, where you could crackle it now and then just to ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... to harmonize with the room, to add their usefulness and beauty to it as a part of the whole and be convincingly right both by day and night. There are many possibilities for having lamps made of different kinds of pottery and porcelain jars; some crackle-ware jars are very good in color. Chinese porcelain jars, both single color and figured, make lovely lamps. Old and valuable specimens should not be used in this way, for they are works of art. Many ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... His hand came on a bottle. A crackle of shattered glass was heard, Fantomas had taken the bottle by the neck and broken it against ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... in the speeding automobile were close enough to hear the sputtering crackle of the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... upon his captors, but his mouth was too dry for speech. He could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet. He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... ultimate word being pronounced with distinct emphasis. Page after page was turned; the droning sound of his voice went on and on, with its clock-like inflections at the end of sentences; the revived crackle of coals lent spirit to an otherwise dreary solo, and always it was Melissa who poked the grate and at the same time rubbed her leg to renew the circulation that had been checked by the limp weight of Katie Sykes; ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'Ecole. The Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... and willow are poor fuel. Seasoned chestnut and yellow poplar make a hot fire, but crackle and leave no coals. Balsam fir, basswood, and the white and loblolly pines make quick fires, but are soon spent. The grey (Labrador) or jack pine is considered good fuel in the far north, where hard woods are scarce. Seasoned tamarack is good. Spruce is poor fuel, although, being ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... and, bouncing out upon them, to catch them just as they are about to complete their crime. Thus, one clever fellow succeeded in retaining both his wife and the image already put into her bed, which he thrust into the oven to blaze and crackle in the sight and hearing of his wife's assembled friends, who supposed he was burning her until he produced her to their astonished gaze. A tale from Badenoch represents the man as discovering the fraud ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... we will to see—that is a known law of psychology. Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our garments. By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones—they are all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. They are ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... of us together, a terrible crackle bursts forth and makes somber captives of us in the depth of a valley of flames, and flames which illuminate the plain of men marching over the plain. They reveal them afar, in incalculable number, with the first ranks detaching themselves, wavering a little, and forming again, the chalky soil ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... were two flying bodies headed toward the gully's bottom. Corporal Noll Terry, standing there, had heard the ominous crackle of snapping wood. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... squire, the son of Richard, and father of Duncan Yordas, with fierce satisfaction struck the bosom of his heavy Bradford riding-coat, and the crackle of parchment replied to the blow, while with the other hand he drew rein on the brink of the Tees ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a consciousness wholly disembodied she was mainly aware of a great pain that seemed to fill all the region and atmosphere, an atmosphere charged with mysterious dim green light and full of great boomings amid a crackle of smaller ones; of shouts and cheers and of a placid quaking of myriad leaves; all of which things might be things or only divers manifestations of her ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed, "and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't—don't, please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... paper is an excellent non-conductor of heat and excluder of draughts: English cottagers often enclose sheets of it within their quilted counterpanes. If thoroughly soaked and then dried, it will not crackle. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... end further from the main building, was a small hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the wood began already to crackle. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... In their breeches brown, If one comrade takes a leap, Ten come bouncing down; When the crackle of a leaf Shakes one lad to laughter, Till he tumbles from his ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... moments, which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked on the attached ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... if these actions were the cardinally important ones of life. "Flo, you carry her bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we want to love Lolomi." Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire, making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... and waited, and in a few minutes the Southern horsemen came in sight, opening fire at once. Their infantry, too, soon appeared in the woods and fields and the dark hours before the dawn were filled with the crackle of small arms. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... onomatopoetic words, words whose sound signifies the sense, is so common that we seldom give it a thought. We have the "splash" of water; the "bang" of a gun; the "crackle" of branches and so on indefinitely. In verse this idea is carried a step farther. Lines are constructed not only with the purpose of conveying a given idea, as in prose, but with the additional end of strengthening this idea and impressing it on the ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... and at first heard nothing, and was just about to say that it must be the screech-owl come closer, when from a corner of the house there came a distant and sharp crackle. I heard Alf scuffle to his feet. "We are ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man," looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the "Boom—Boom—boom" in front of us ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... from one end of the room to the other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang. "There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his sides, "you can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... dollars. Blake had never seen so much money in a single lump in his life before; and for many months of privation and discomfort he had not known the "feel" of a twenty-dollar note, much less of a hundred-dollar one. He heard them crackle under the man's fingers, and it was like crisp laughter in his ears. The bills were evidently new ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in St. Luc's skirmishers. Black Rifle, uttering fierce shouts, was leading a strong attack in the center. The firing was now rapid and much heavier than it had been at any time before. Flashes of flame appeared everywhere in the thicket. Above the crackle of rifles and muskets swelled the long thrilling war cry of the Mohawks, and back in fierce defiance came the yells ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cabman and went up his stairs, he could not shake off his dreaminess; he saw the flames catching the village, and the forest beginning to crackle and smoke. A huge, wild bear frantic with terror rushed through the village. . . . And the girl tied to ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and his victim's shoulder blades lifted under the tight skin of his back as they took the strain. Shriek followed shriek, until the guard on the platform glanced furtively out into the central well. There came a dry, tearing crackle as the bones of the arms were drawn out of their sockets, and then the shrieks ceased as merciful unconsciousness came. Gore tossed ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... indignation Thornton had been slow to grasp the fact that his rival was making hints that both affronted and threatened. His conscience accused him of nothing. He felt the crackle of paper in his breast-pocket. He promptly suspected that Linton had gleaned a hint of the proposed legislation which would ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... smiling, watchful eye he began to grow restless. His hand crept to his breast, and I heard the crackle of papers. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... big bucket of water, which they always kept in a certain spot. She flung the water on the flames, but water will not quench the flames made from oil. The rail began to crackle, the sparks to fly. The "Merry Maid" was afire, with only one, feeble ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... sufficient distance, since the most irregular undulations are, in a long journey through the air, wrought to an equality, and made subject to exact law,—as in this universe all irregularities are sure to be in the end. Thus, the thunder, which near at hand is a wild crash, or nearer yet a crazy crackle, is by distance deepened and refined into that marvellous bass which we all know. And doubtless the jars, the discords, and moral contradictions of time, however harsh and crazy at the outset, flow into exact undulation along the ether of eternity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... and scanty bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the right conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a thousand some day comes up—and somebody lives by it; but most of our great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation of this comfort, not, to my mind, very sufficient, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... his feet, and ran out to call for succor. He went into the house, but it was empty. He rushed to the door, and saw the rest of the party in full retreat. He shouted, but his voice was lost in the crackle of musketry fire. He ran back to Ned and again tried to lift him, and had got him on his shoulders, when there was a tremendous explosion. Johannes' house had ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without permitting a single crackle, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... little grandeur, and, in hopes of having a fine yule log, both brothers strained and strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and beginning to crackle and blaze with the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of the sea which we were leaving behind us—nothing but that and the quick beating ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... pile the guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire took from her pocket a bit of flint and a piece of steel, striking them sharply together. Tiny sparks flew forth but no answering crackle resounded from the wood and paper, although the sparks darted in and out among them like miniature fireflies. Once more Miss McMurtry tried her flint and steel according to the prescribed rules, but again the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... outbreak in the kitchen should crown them; and to promote that prospect she had through Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... and of the making of beauty through which Leila moved. Even she must have felt the import of his mood, for she let her hands fall on the keys while Dick and I stared at each other before the shock of this crackle that seemed to threaten the perfection of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a tall pine ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... which came snorting with terror out of the smoke and gloom, ready to welcome a master's hand and voice. He caught it, left the good roan by the roadside, and hastened on. He met and passed people on the road fleeing from burning houses and wrecked homes; in his ears were the crackle of flames and the wailing of women who mourned their dead. From small hamlets scattered in the country, folk were seeking refuge in the larger towns. Yet when he had passed these heedless, scattered groups, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... screwing up his face. "Guess your watch is a-comin' out." He tucked it back caressingly, and started for the door—the back door. Involuntarily Wetherell put his hand to his pocket, felt something crackle under it, and drew the something out. To his amazement it was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Then as across the crackle of the fire came the confident word of David the Singer: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein," intoned in the old man's reverent voice, something ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Frenzy of speculations in land, cities undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all its labor,—these are what have made possible this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing even louder into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance of these, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... for a finish, there's Cumberland's Duke,— Good Lord, how his chin-tuft would crackle in air! Unless (as is shrewdly surmised from his look) He's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... shots had merely added to the noise of the gunfire that rattled intermittently around the two men. And even that gunfire was only a part of the cacophony. The tortured molecules of the air in the room were so besieged by the beat of drums, the blare of trumpets, the crackle of lightning, the rumble of heavy machinery, the squawks and shrieks of horns and whistles, the rustle of autumn leaves, the machine-gun snap of popping popcorn, the clink and jingle of falling coins, and the yelps, bellows, howls, roars, snarls, grunts, bleats, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... gigantic and menacing shapes—the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move. But he did not realise that ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother formerly rocked him ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... "let's have a fire in the fireplace, then we can have a crackle of our own." He had noticed how nervous Mrs. Reece grew, and that the little girls were watching her. He could not help thinking that it was foolish, even wicked, to waste strength in fear of something which no one of them could stop. "Build a fire, boys." And build a fire they ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... pigmentation, and to the formation of blood cysts. Sometimes the arterial vessels are so dilated as to impart to the tumour an aneurysmal pulsation and bruit. The enlargement or "expansion" of the bone results in the cortex being represented by a thin shell of bone, which may crackle on ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to be real ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... were flying so thick that they were obliged to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... introduced into neighboring houses, machine guns had been installed on rooftops, companies of infantry were picketed at street corners. Suddenly throughout the town all this hell was let loose. The streets gave back the echo a thousandfold. The crackle of musketry and din of machine guns was positively infernal. As evening came and darkened into night, one after another of the Bulgarian forts Chabrol surrendered, sometimes persuaded thereto by the deadly effect of a field-gun at thirty yards' range, but the sun had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the pole in its ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... blessing of the poor and the blessing of the Lord be full apt to go together: and dost thou reckon I would miss that—yea, so much as one of them—out of regard for that which is, saith Solomon, 'sonitum spinarum sub olla'? [Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse 6]. Ha, jolife! let the thorns crackle away, prithee; they shall not ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt |
