"Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shake the inflamed parts. Often when expelling air from the lungs the horse gives a painful grunt especially when made to move. The pulse is generally hard and faster than usual. The temperature in early stages may rise from 104 to 106 degrees F. If the ear is applied to the affected side a dry crackling or friction sound can be heard; a groove along the lower portion of the ribs will extend back to the flank. Within two or three days the pulse will be softer and weaker, temperature will fall to 101 or 102 degrees F. and ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... except that under duress of great pain Lilly could have engaged services so obviously quasi professional, but she was past that perception by now, her nerves from brow to shoulder crackling like ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was filling with people. A row of cottages across the way was being emptied. The crackling flames were but half a square from Manouvrier's house. I called him once more to come. He waved his hand kindly to imply that he knew what I had done. He and his wife were in the Sisters' front garden walk conversing eagerly with the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... then cover the vessel, and continue the steaming for several hours, or until the saponification shall be completed. This may be known when a sample of the soap when cold gives a smooth and bright surface on being scraped with the finger-nail, and at the same time, breaks with a crackling noise. By this process the fat or oil is decomposed, its acids uniting with the lime to form insoluble lime-soap, while the eliminated glycerine remains in solution in the water along with the excess of the lime. After it has been sufficiently boiled, it is allowed to cool and to settle, and ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... seized his horn, which lay near, and blew thereon three shrill notes that echoed against the trees. A moment of silence ensued, and then was heard the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs like the coming of many men; and forth from the glade burst a score or two of stalwart yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, like Robin, with good Will Stutely and the widow's three sons at ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the wall. The very hearth-stone shone, and the heads of the large iron nails in the floor were polished to steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy fingers over the panes of glass. Wintry ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... There was no one to help her; she was so frightened that she lost all her presence of mind. When she tried to spread out the sheet again, she had a regular battle, for she was quite lost in it, as it covered her with a great crackling sound. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... the corner of the hearth, and watching her as she heated the beer which, together with rum, sugar, and lemon, forms the drink known and loved by Trojans as Shenachrum. The Twins had retired to wash in the little out-house at the back, and their splashing was audible every now and again above the crackling of the wood fire, which now, as before, filled the kitchen with fragrance. Its warmth struck kindly into Mr. Fogo's knees, and coloured Tamsin's cheeks with a hot red as she bent over the flame. He watched her profile in thoughtful silence for some moments, and then fell to staring ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... autumn, and thus have it ready for the ensuing spring. Burning a chopping, or fallow, as it is called, of twelve or fourteen acres in extent, is a grand and even awful sight: rushing in torrents of flame, it rolls with the wind, crackling and roaring through the brushwood, and often extending beyond the limits assigned it, catching the dry stems of ancient trees, the growth of the earlier ages of this continent, which lie in gigantic ruins, half buried in the rising ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... incentive enough to dare everything to the death. For them, what motive but to vindicate their bravery? But even bravery in its perfection has the limitation of physical endurance; and we had now reached the limit of what we could endure and live. The fire wave was crackling and licking up everything within a few paces of us. Live brands fell thick as a rain of fire. The flames were not crawling in the insidious line of the prairie fire when there is no wind, but the very heat of the air seemed to generate a hurricane and the red ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... comply, but she was too much interested in what was going on around her to give up either to sleep or to relaxation. The crackling of the fire and its wonderful odor, the little hushing noises of the birds going to rest, the gentle coming up of the moon and the myriads of stars, all were too fascinating to risk missing in sleep. Scott had gone after the horses and had tethered each by a long rope in a place ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... grown pale. A luminous glow ascended in company with the strains of the canticle which never ceased. And the roar of voices incessantly repeating the refrain of "Ave, ave, ave Maria!" was like the very crackling of those hearts of fire which were burning away in prayers in order that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... felt even more intense than earlier in the day. It impressed the girl as if some tremendous force were bearing down mightily upon the world and holding it in thrall. With the lowering of the sun the shadows had grown longer. After a time the slight sound of the man's snowshoes over the crackling snow, of the scraping toboggan, of the panting dog, began to seem to Madge like some sort of desecration of a stillness in which man was nothing and only an eternal and vengeful power reigned supreme. In spite of the patches of sunlight filtering down through ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... There came a crackling, a darkness of vast wings flinging down upon us. The corial's flight was checked as by a giant's hand. The shell swerved sickeningly; there was an oddly metallic splintering; it quivered; shot ahead. Dizzily I picked myself up and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well, [1]—they are interesting creatures at a certain age; what a pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling—and brain sauce; did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the color of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... mean that young lady with the court pearls, in that exquisite Indian muslin, which floats so gracefully, while the other muslin girls are all crimp and stiff; like little pigs clad in crackling." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... no more. The old lady stealthily patted Lavretsky on the cheek, slyly screwed up her eyes, and shook her head once or twice, adding in a whisper, "You have shut up our clever friend, many thanks." Everything was hushed in the room; the only sound was the faint crackling of the wax-candles, and sometimes the tap of a hand on the table, and an exclamation or reckoning of points; and the rich torrent of the nightingale's song, powerful piercingly sweet, poured in at the window, together with the dewy ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... fire. The bullet grazed the lad's temple, carrying away a bit of his hair. Iberville staggered forwards, so weak was he from loss of blood, and, with a deep instinct of protection and preservation, fell at Jessica's feet. There was a sound of footsteps and crackling of brush. Bucklaw stooped to pick up his prey, but a man burst on him from the trees. He saw that the game was up and he half raised his knife, but that was only the mad rage of the instant. His revenge did not comprise so unheard-of a crime. He thought he had killed Iberville: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hard for the boy to have to go away now before the fire burnt, before the potatoes were roasted. So he said nothing, but stooped down, and as he was not far enough down even then he knelt down and blew the fire, that was faintly crackling, with all the breath he had in his broad chest. Sparks began to leap out at once, and a small flame shot up and soon ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... back from church, Frederick ran to his fiddle; and found in a corner of the case the deed of compact he had signed. With what joy he tossed it into the fire, and heard it go crackling up the chimney! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt illusion, and happy anecdote, and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possessed ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... much as they could do to make any progress forward, or even to keep themselves upon their feet. While struggling and plunging blindly through the storm, amid the rushing of the wind and the rattling of the hail, and the crackling and creaking of the dry trees in the forest, and the rush of waters, and all the din of the tempest, Marian's ear caught the sound of a child wailing and sobbing. A pang shot through her heart. She listened breathlessly—and then in the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... may picture to oneself how harmoniously the holy cursing of the Puritan of that day would have chimed in with the unholy cursing and the crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of the faith of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had got down and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the ears of the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short for the round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar of his shirt. Whenever he was excited—and he always was on the least excuse—he puffed and ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... arose, angry and red, while the thunder continued to roll below them, and the crackling of the electric flashes was like minute guns. The Snowbird was winging its way along at about seventy-five miles per hour. Wash had gone into the covered galley to prepare breakfast. Jack was still in ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... without my host. On tiptoe I stole into the kitchen, where my sweetheart was frying ham and eggs. I thought I might snatch a kiss. Above the noise of the sizzling frying-pan and the crackling wood, I plainly heard the voice of my—well, let us say it—bride, weeping and complaining to an old house servant: 'It's a shame and a sin to enter matrimony with a lie. I can't wed this Michael: not because he is ugly; that doesn't matter in a man, but he comes too ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... country it is a pure spring melody. The little piper will sometimes climb a bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as we judged, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... of the great captain arose too late. A line of flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling before the evening breeze. The column on the causeway had seen their danger but too soon, and fled. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... alarm'll be given, and every man Jack about the place will be down there in ten minutes, fighting fire. That'll leave the money sacks and the women alone in the house for us to handle. You've heard cane burn? Well, there's mighty few women can screech loud enough to be heard above its crackling. The thing's dead safe. The only danger is in being caught before we can get far enough away with the money. Now, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... congregation in the fiery downfall of the Tabernacle. Some saw in the flames that roared through its organ pipes a requiem, nothing but unmitigated disaster, while others of us heard the voice of God, as from Heaven, sounding through the crackling thunder of that awful day, saying, "He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... petulantly, "I want fire and shelter; and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let me in, I say; I only want to ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... and retaining memories of a normally agreeable yesterday, one may lie watching the housemaid building the fire; and after she has swept the hearth and put things in order, lie watching the flames of the blazing and crackling wood catch the coals and set them blazing also, and dancing merrily and filling corners with a glow; and in so lying and realizing that leaping light and warmth and a soft bed are good things, one may turn over on one's back, stretching arms and legs ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... youths were grappling together like wild cats, striking, kicking, and biting with no thought except of who should have the best of the battle. They rolled on the floor, now tussling among the crackling faggots, anon pitching soft as one body on the peat dust in the corner, again knocking over a bench and bringing down the tools thereon to the floor with a jingle which might have been heard far out on the loch. They were still clawing and cuffing each other ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... poured in a steady stream through the portals. Groups of English and American students in their irreproachable evening attire, groups of French students in someone else's doubtful evening attire, crowds of rustling silken dominoes, herds of crackling muslin dominoes, countless sad-faced Pierrots, fewer sad-faced Capuchins, now and then a slim Mephistopheles, now and then a fat, stolid Turk, 'Arry, Tom, and Billy, redolent of plum pudding and Seven Dials, ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... she so much as lifted her eyes from the blue plush grass. But alas, for her resolution not to loiter! For although, on the other days, there had been such a variegated murmur of delighted sound—the Echo of the Plynck in the pool, and the lovely crackling of breaking rules, and the deep-blue singing of the Zizzes' wings, and the melodious snoring of the Snoodle (like that of a tuning-fork when it sleeps on its side) —yet everything had been as still ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... danced. The four hosemen staggered as the stream ripped from the nozzle, crackling like pistol discharges. There was no question as to Uncle Trufant's ability to get the most out of the ancient pride of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... broken up, and the bay was full of heaving ice-floes that rubbed against one another with a crackling sound; and the pieces farthest out, carrying bits of the rampart, were already on their way out to sea. Pelle had performed many exploits out there, but was really quite pleased that it was now packing up and taking its departure, so that it would ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... board realized, with sinking heart, that the Doraine was to go on drifting, drifting no man knew whither, until she crossed the path of a friendly stranger out there in the mighty waste. No cry of distress, no call for help could go crackling into the boundless reaches. That was the plight of the Doraine and her people on the mocking day that followed the disaster, and unless fate intervened that would be her plight for days ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... chair (so crippled was she by the rack) to her fiery doom at the stake, beside her fellow-courtier, Mr. Lascelles, while the very heavens seemed to the shuddering mob around to speak their wrath and grief in solemn thunder peals, and heavy drops which hissed upon the crackling pile. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... ashes out of his pipe, and without saying another word went into the tent. In a few moments the camp was as quiet as a country village on Sunday, excepting the occasional howling of a hungry wolf down in the timbered recesses of the Washita, or the crackling and sputtering of the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... remained with Lomen and his huge herd of fifteen thousand reindeer. He was eager to go on, but tried to hide his impatience. Something was urging him, whipping him on to greater haste. For the first time in months he heard the crackling thunder of reindeer hoofs, and the music of it was like a wild call from his own herds hurrying him home. He was glad when the week-end came and his business was done. The power-boat took him to Kotzebue. It was night, as his watch went, when Paul Davidovich started up the delta ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the crowd and the ruddier became the glow. And now, in spite of the bells, I caught other noises. The roar of irresistible fire,—which has a strange likeness to the roar of irresistible water,—the loud crackling of the burning wood, and the moving and talking of the crowd, which was so dense that ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... peaceful repose which seemed ever to rest like a benediction upon it. A ray of sunshine stealing through the myrtle-leaves made golden ripples on the wall; a bright wood-fire blazed in the wide, deep, old-fashioned chimney; the white cat slept on the rug, with her pink paws turned toward the crackling flames; and blue and white hyacinths hung their fragrant bells over the gilded edge of the vases on the mantelpiece. Huldah sat on one side of the hearth peeling a red apple; and, snugly wrapped in his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... luxury! Having once more satisfied his hunger, he built a fire in front of his rude booth, and lay down in its genial rays, his head upon a pillow of moss. The stillness of the cool, quiet evening was broken only by the crackling of the flames, the quiet murmurs of the two little rills which whispered to each other startled interrogations as to the meaning of this rude invasion, the hoot of owls in the tall tree tops, and the stealthy tread of some of the little ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shreiking (sic) of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of Towers, Houses, and Churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that, at the last, one was not able to approach it, so ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... ought to do," said Archie, "is to let me go and see him, taking the stuff in crackling bills. I'll roll them about on the table in front of him. That'll fetch him!" He prodded Mr. Brewster encouragingly with a roll. "I'll tell you what to do. Give me three thousand of the best and crispest, and I'll undertake to buy that ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... was no explosion, but, what was more serious, there was not even the slight crackling which indicates the presence of a small quantity of firedamp. Simon took the stick which Harry was holding, fixed his lamp to the end of it, and raised it high above his head, up to where the gas, by reason of its buoyancy, would naturally accumulate. The flame of the lamp, burning ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron. Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature, adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that hem with the nail of her rosy little thumb; when she fell into reminiscences of her mother, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... crackling, hissing and roaring, and soon the houses facing the Ladoinskis would be engulfed in them. The captain would not quit his post without orders, and his wife would not leave him. Death seemed certain, and they were preparing to meet it, when suddenly an order came from head-quarters ordering ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... danced fantastically against the color of the crackling logs and in her hair shimmered a glow that ranged between the glint of darkened mahogany and jet. It was of this that Stuart thought, as, for a half hour, they listened to Tollman's talk, content with ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... superior? For my part I envy the butterfly and the flower, which perish in the full glory of youth, beauty, and love. That is the way I have always imagined an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. At every rain of fire and explosion, a rapturous, ah! and a thunder of applause from the gaping Philistines, who ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the flames, consuming greedily these carriages which had once borne kings and princes. The screams and fright of the inmates of the nearest houses, and the crackling of the window-glass broken by the heat were drowned by the joyous shouts of the Austrians who danced round the fire with wild delight, and accompanied the roaring of the flames with insulting and licentious songs. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... knelt beside him. 'Dearest,' I whispered, 'it seems as though all the bitterness and misunderstanding between you and me is to be swept away at last. She can cook steaks, dear—juicy steaks, pork with crackling——' ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... very gracious and winning with the granddaughter of Jeremiah McNulty and the supporter of a rival painter. And she had added two or three other young men, who might be expected to appreciate this chance of making a fresh, youthful addition to their own limited and tiresome circle. There was a crackling fire in the big dining-room chimney-place; and three or four other little parties, scattered about, helped to remove some of the empty chill from the great, bare, shining place so full of disused chairs ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... reach the prairie. I had chosen to pass the hours of waiting in the wagon, feeling that I could better protect my dear little baby in this way. So when all the tired ones were still, and the silence only broken by the crackling of the burning fagots, the occasional falling of a dry twig or branch from the bare, ghostly looking trees about us, the hooting of an owl, the dismal howlings of the wolves in the forest, I sat there looking at the weary forms so illy protected from the cold, thinking ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... an interval of suspense. Was it a povarnia, or must I endure more hours of agony? But a lurch and a heave onward of the sled was only too often the unwelcome reply. At last the joyous moment would arrive when I could distinguish those ever-pleasant sounds, the creaking of a door followed by the crackling of sticks. A povarnia at last! But even then it was generally necessary to yell and hammer at the sides of your box of torture for half an hour or so, the drivers having fled to the cosy fireside intent upon warming themselves, and oblivious of every one else. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... scene on which Darby Dene's eyes rested when the party halted at the hollow where the Satellite Circus Company had made their headquarters for the night. Within the shelter of the firs a fire of crackling sticks was burning brightly. Hanging over the flame, suspended by an iron chain from the centre of three crossed metal bars, swung a big black pot, from which there came such a savoury smell that, in spite of his disappointment over the break in their journey, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... had any sight left, as soon as I lay down on my bed and turned on either side, a flood of light used to gush from my closed eyelids. Then, as my sight became daily more impaired, the colours became more faint and were emitted with a certain inward crackling sound; but at present, every species of illumination being, as it were, extinguished, there is diffused around me nothing but darkness, or darkness mingled and streaked with an ashy brown. Yet the darkness in which I am perpetually immersed seems always, both by night and day, to approach nearer ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... furnace. Shorn of their glory, their flashing, trembling forms stood crisping and writhing in the blaze till, weary of their long suffering, they threw themselves with a sudden and hurried sweep on the funeral pile around. From the noble pine to the bending sprout, the trees were aflame, while the crackling underbrush seemed a fiery network cast over the prostrate forms of the monarchs of the forest. When the fire caught a dry stump, it ran up the huge trunk like a serpent, and coiling around the withered branches, shot out its fiery tongue as if in mad joy over the raging element ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... From the crackling of guns that continued for some time Rod felt assured that all of the raiders who had so boldly entered the French village could not have gone out of it again. Some there must be caught in a trap, for it seemed that the first of the zouaves arriving had started to encircle the place, with the idea ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... petticoats, anything,—now empty, and now full of rice and sugar and meal and corn and syrup,—and robbed each other, and cursed and fought, and slipped down in pools of molasses, and threw live pigs and coops of chickens into the river, and with one voiceless rush left the broad levee a smoking, crackling desert, when some shells exploded on a burning gunboat, and presently were back again like ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... For a moment the fern smouldered and smoked, then the flame ran crackling along and shot up in the darkness, weirdly lighting the scene: to the right the low wood, a block of solid blackness against the sky; in front the wall of sheep, staring out of the gloom with bright eyes; and as centre-piece that still, white body, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Corinthian bronze, silver, and gold. Especially resplendent was the bird's head, with its gleaming red circle around the brightly shining eye. This eye glowed and sparkled in the flickering light of the crackling wood fire until it seemed fairly endowed with life ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... had a moment's shame that any creature should come to such a pass for her sake. "What crazy nonsense!" she said; and sat upon a stool before the crackling fire. "Do sit down, Noble—unless your dinner will be ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... were scorched—with great heat. Eh, Sammy? Is that water you have there? Quick! Give me—what? There is none? Then why the—why the—" There came an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling of flame through dead twigs. "Ah, I forgot. I mustn't curse. I've got to set the example to these children. But, O God, the heat and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... across an insistent sun, the fire is crackling and I do not know that I am ill but for ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... shouted, in order to make himself heard over the crackling flames and the greater noise of the pounding hoofs. "If we're not safe behind a curtain of flame, there is no other place near where we'd ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... across the hall to a room about twelve feet square, the walls of which were lined with books, where a wood fire was already crackling cozily. Motioning me to an old leather armchair, he pulled up a wooden rocker before the mantel and, leaning over, laid a regiment of chestnuts before ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... to burst with some news or other, but he had to restrain himself until his father had taken his seat by the fire that was crackling brightly on the hearth in the kitchen, and had leisurely filled his pipe, and taken two or three ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... a bitter evening in mid-winter, the fire burned cheerily on the hearth, the great logs crackling and flaring up the wide chimney of a comfortable cottage home in one of the wildest parts of the Inverness-shire highlands. It was a shepherd's hut, and, as the storm continued the owner of the cottage rose and looked out ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hotel Royal, and settled ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... crystal and which can be removed by powdering the crystal and drying. Thus, when crystals of common salt are heated, the water inclosed in the crystal is changed into steam and bursts the crystal with a crackling sound. Such crystals are said to decrepitate. That this water is not combined is proved by the fact that the amount present varies and that it has all the properties ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... the bed of the canyon, where the water was now represented by sheets of crackling white ice, we arrived presently at the first branch creek which came in on the right. This we ascended in turn, going some distance up it before we found a likely patch of sand, into which we chopped a hole with the old hatchet we had brought for the purpose, disclosing a little of the black ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... Shall we quarrel with the girl for that dazzling reflection; for owning that charming truth, and submitting to the conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive's drawings have been crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion is ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spring. When the New Year of 1895 dawned the Fram had been firmly frozen in for fifteen months. A few days later, the ship was nearly crushed by a fresh ice pressure and all prepared to abandon her if necessary, but after an anxious day of ice roaring and crackling—"an ice pressure with a vengeance, as if Doomsday had come," remarked Nansen—it quieted down. They had now beaten all records, for they had reached 83 ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... that. Mark would understand her. Mark had always understood her. And so she cheered her heavy heart through the breakfast hour, and the foolish jesting of the two that sounded to her anxious ears, in the language of scripture, like the "crackling of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... lost to him forever. He planned only to scare her into nervous collapse. But Jane, the housekeeper, did not liberate the captives in the two closets as Dexter had expected. Instead, as the housekeeper came to the head of the stairs, heard the crackling of flames and smelled the rising smoke, she fell on the landing in ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... blushing with shame at hearing one of my own sex so slanged by a woman. That sort of thing would never do with us. And yet there was something about this woman—something weirdly authoritative. She showed rather well in the morning light, her gray eyes crackling as she talked. She was wearing a most elaborate peignoir, and of course she should not have worn the diamonds; it seemed almost too much like the morning hour of a stage favourite; but still one felt that when she talked one would do well ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... they been thrown that we could not get a shot. It appeared to me that they were dropped from above. The pile was increasing, and soon rising higher than the loopholes, prevented us from seeing any one. Presently we heard the sound of crackling, and the flames rapidly ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... a sound broke the awful solemnity of the occasion, excepting the crackling of the fragrant pine limbs used as fuel, and the seething of the flesh as it melted ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... two-story brick house, dingy and weather-beaten outside, but attractive within. The room that Jurgis saw was half lined with books, and upon the walls were many pictures, dimly visible in the soft, yellow light; it was a cold, rainy night, so a log fire was crackling in the open hearth. Seven or eight people were gathered about it when Adams and his friend arrived, and Jurgis saw to his dismay that three of them were ladies. He had never talked to people of this sort before, and he fell into an agony of embarrassment. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... thy glad home. This blighted shore of mine No verdure hath, nor bloom, nor fruits that shine 'Mong drooping boughs. Far inland gloom lone peaks O'er blackened meads; or from their bare cones leaps Gaunt, crackling flame; or crawl like ashen veins The smouldering fires across the stricken plains. Deep in these yawning caves black shadows lie That shall be lifted never more. Come, I Enter! Know thou what treasure by the sea I gathered other time." Therewith showed he Hid ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... though the gentle mother had ever led their dancing steps another; nay, the very rocks must fall before him, and take what form he wills. The battle is lost and won. Nature is fairly routed and driven from the field, and the rattling, crackling, hissing, spitting demon has taken possession ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... islands that were volcanic and sent forth fire, and now he thought that this was one. He threw his wood to the ground and with palpitating heart drew closer and closer: but all he could see was smoke and flames. The crackling of the fire filled him with more fear. At last he saw that it was not from the earth that the fire issued. He realized that the wind had blown the flames of his little fire, which he always kept lighted, against some bushes and ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... the whereabouts of these birds soon led me up the mountain-side to a rocky plateau, which looked extremely likely, and where I even saw traces of them. My dog commenced to work, and I followed him into the light, dry, crackling grass, but suddenly became conscious of a smarting in the legs as though walking through nettles, and noticed that the grass was adhering to my stockings. However, I pushed on, my dog being hot on the scent, but presently we both came to a standstill—I, because ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... we stand on deck leaning on each other. We are on board, and the lights, near and far, shine from the vast City; and the stars are on high, bright and clear, as for the first mariners of old. Strange noises, rough voices, and crackling cords, and here and there the sobs of women, mingling with the oaths of men. Now the swing and heave of the vessel, the dreary sense of exile that comes when the ship fairly moves over the waters. And still we stood and looked and listened, silent, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... There came a crackling sound of her voice. He knew she had consumption of the throat, and braced himself hard to bear ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... my custom; and, getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw off an overcoat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Euphemia Setoun, of the honourable house of Winton, but of E. D., daughter of a Cameronian cowfeeder!—Jeanie, I can laugh yet sometimes—but God protect you from such mirth.—My father—I mean your father, would say it was like the idle crackling of thorns; but the thorns keep their poignancy, they remain unconsumed. Farewell, my dearest Jeanie—Do not show this even to Mr. Butler, much less to any one else. I have every respect for him, but his principles are over strict, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wandered from the crackling heat of his Nott stove, has taken it into his poetical imagination to liken this bay to that of Naples," said John Effingham; "and his fellow-citizens greedily swallow the absurdity, although there is scarcely a single feature in common to give ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... ribbon of road glistened white between the sentinel poplars silhouetted against the sky. The hot smell of the earth filled the air like spice. A thousand elfin sounds, the vibration of leaves, the tiny crackling of cornstalks, the fairy whirr of ground insects, melted into ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... once a confused many-voiced cry and a disorderly crackling of rifles was heard ahead of them; then a crowd of soldiers came running from that direction, at first singly, then in groups, and finally in a mass. They belonged to another regiment of the same division. One could discern from afar their wide-open eyes, rounded mouths, and an expression of frantic ...
— The Shield • Various
... could reach the sticks from where I knelt, for there was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... listen and to look. But he saw nothing—beyond the faint indication of the waning moonlight outside the red-curtained, circular windows high above him, and a fainter speck of glowing cinder, left behind in the recently emptied furnace. He heard nothing, either, save a very faint crackling of the expiring ashes in that furnace. Presently even that minute sound died down, the one speck of light went out, and the silence and ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... was under the covers, and all the shades were down, Jane stepped into the school-room, leaving the door slightly ajar. She snapped on the lights above the school-room table. Then Gwendolyn heard the crackling of a news-paper. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... fire twisted and rolled to one side; the crackling flames leaped higher, bathing the girl's drooping little figure ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... She lost no time in catching and burning all dissenters, real or suspected; and as many of these were honest persons who lived among the people, and were known and approved by them, and as they uniformly endured their martyrdom with admirable fortitude and good-humor, falling asleep in the crackling flames like babes at the mother's breast, Puritanism received an advertisement such as nothing since Christianity had enjoyed before, and which all the unaided Luthers, Melanchthons and Calvins in the world could not have ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... enable them every night to obtain the shelter of some one of these groves. They were almost certain during the day to obtain all the game they would need. A couple of hours' work with their axes, would enable them to rear a sufficient shelter for the night. With an immense fire roaring, and crackling, and throwing out its genial warmth in front of their camp, they could, wrapped in their furs and with their feet to the fire, enjoy all the comfort which the pioneers of the wilderness could desire. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... to call the dormouse. In a moment there was a crackling of branches and the sound of heavy footsteps, and a huge figure loomed ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... girl up there on the hill, Mark," Tim said. He joined me at the fireplace, and we stood side by side, as often we had stood in the old days, warming our hands, and watching the crackling flames. "Do you blame her? I had gone, vowing never to come back again till she kept her promise to you; you had fled from her—she wrote, and no word came. And Weston is a wise man and a kind man, and when she turned to him she found comfort. Do ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... the lights were out, when the ominous cry of "fire!" sounded through the grounds, striking terror to the visitors thus suddenly startled from their sleep, and emptying the cottages of their half-clad occupants by one accord. A glance at the crackling flames showed that Bachelors' Row was on fire and doomed. Men from the distant village were soon on the spot with buckets, and amid frightened cries, confused questions, and a general hurrying, scurrying ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... say, rejoice."' Brethren, we shall have to alter our conceptions of what true gladness is before we can come to understand the full depth of the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... lay entranced a curtain seemed To shrivel with crackling from before my face; Across mine eyes a waxing radiance beamed And showed a ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... she stood among the graves of her world, as utterly helpless and lost as if eternity swept between her and the past, and there she remained during some minutes that lengthened out like years, with the wind moaning around her and dead leaves crackling under her feet. She could see her old home through the naked trees, with the dull smoke curling in clouds above the chimneys, and the great trees sweeping their naked branches over it. Oh, how her heart yearned towards it, how wistfully her eyes watched all those signs of her forfeited ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... drifting our way, feeding like Sheep, grunting like only themselves. Each one found a grazing-spot, stood there till it was cleared off, then trotted on crackling hoofs to the front in search of another. So the band was ever changing in rank and form. But one there was that was always at or near the van—a large and well-favored Simle', or Hind. However much the band might change and spread, she was in the ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... were mostly rain at a temperature of thirty-five or forty degrees, with strong winds which sometimes roughly lash the shores and carry scud far into the woods. The long nights are then gloomy enough and the value of snug homes with crackling yellow cedar fires may be finely appreciated. Snow falls frequently, but never to any great depth or to lie long. It is said that only once since the settlement of Fort Wrangell has the ground been covered to a depth of four feet. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... all writing is sent off, not weighted in one corner, that it may, like unto the toy, after never so much swaying to and fro, still find its upright equilibrium, but rather like unto the sky-rocket, sent up into empty space whizzing and crackling, to end in due time ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... in crackling, swaying furze, his ears filled with the noise of his own progress. The boys reached the shelter of the wood and looked down through a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... by the crackling blaze of mesquite, sagebrush and live-oak limbs, while over us twinkled the friendly stars, and he told me many a strange story of his ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the Coast range, his assumption of meditated treachery was confirmed. A rising wind had set the young redwoods in motion. Before long the practised eye of Captain Mesa saw an increased agitation among the feathery branches, his ear caught a slight crackling. His men were flat on the ground. He stood in the shadow of a large oak. A moment later a dusky form crept out to where the brush grew more sparsely, hesitated a moment, and apparently passed back word that all was well; he was immediately followed by many of his kind; and the ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... feeling as never we are sure in years, as when we walked forth into its bracing air. And Aunt Rachel—she enjoyed it; the broad icy fields, the difficult ascent of the steep slippery hills and the "duckies" down them, and the crackling of the icicles as we thrust our way through the bristling under-brush of those diamond-cressed woods. We loved even to eat the icicles that hung from the pines with their pungent flavour, strong as though their pointed leaves had been steeped in boiling water. It was a pleasure to taste ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... cover, I thought, but before long I had the uncomfortable feeling that some one was following me; the crackling of the bushes, which ceased when I stopped, and began again when I went on, seemed very suspicious. I abruptly changed my course, making a wide circle, and was able to elude my pursuer and find ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... he cried, and there was a little explosion; a cork spurted out and struck the ceiling; there was smoke and the crackling of glass. He turned round and faced me, a smudge of ink on one of his cheeks, and that customary nervous unhappy ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... heard the sound of a rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the island, when the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every moment, we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire on the bank, and discovered the camp of the two explorers; they standing before it in their red shirts, and talking aloud of the adventures and profits of the day. They were just then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... fearlessly, leaving his horse hitched over a branch. We heard him no longer, as he proceeded with that stealthy silence known only to the Indian fighter. We listened, and waited in profound suspense. Not even the crackling of a branch broke the stillness. Full five minutes we waited, and then the sharp crack of a rifle near the centre of the copsewood relieved, us. The next moment was heard Redwood's voice ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... woman's heart was full of pride and jealousy. Still the air was sweet for them, the birds sang for them, and the sun shone tenderly upon them. They even laughed, as they went their high Jovian way, at the vanities of the world on its lower plane. But their very laughter was the crackling of thorns under a pot wherein their hearts ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... popped up at the windows to stare, and the only living thing in the silent, sunny street was a melancholy fowl with ruffled feathers, which looked at us reproachfully, as we dashed with so much energy over the crackling snow. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints; Or in the night, after a little sleep, I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost. I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back; A grazing iron collar grinds my neck; And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross, And strive and wrestle with thee till I die: O mercy, mercy! wash ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... lay more than half consumed in a little hollow of the ground; "here may you see the power of a prairie conflagration. The 'arth is moist, hereaway, and the grass has been taller than usual. This miserable beast has been caught in his bed. You see the bones; the crackling and scorched hide, and the grinning teeth. A thousand winters could not wither an animal so thoroughly, as the element has done it in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... singular, a mysterious bell that was and is. It expresses all the emotions of the neighborhood. It passes through all the moods and inflections of a hundred hearts. To-day it rings out with soft and sacred tones its call to worship. To-morrow from its watch-tower it sees the crackling flame in some neighboring barn or tenement, and utters, with loud and hurried and anxious voice, its alarm. Anon, heavy with grief, it seems to enter, as a sympathising friend, into the very heart experiences of bereaved and weeping mourners. And when the rolling year brings round Independence day, ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... the stove open while the spruce twigs were crackling, and in the red, uncertain, dancing light he caught glimpses of the room in which he was, and of her figure, but the fire died down ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... of the crackling flames and the distant boom of the guns, it was like a city of the dead. The once beautiful church was totally destroyed. In the square was the base of a monument upon which, before the war, stood a memorial to France's glorious dead in the war ...
— 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
... here and there—little shimmering white spots against the golden back-ground. Their shots came sometimes singly in quick, sharp throbs, and sometimes in a rolling volley, with a sound like a boy's stick drawn across iron railings. The hill buzzed like a bee-hive, and the bullets made a sharp crackling as they struck ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... several days of debate. It was inevitable that the check lying on Sally's cheap little three-drawer bureau should suggest things it would purchase. Martie summarily took it to the Bank one day and brought home crackling bills in exchange. One of the first things that was purchased was the perambulator in which 'Lizabeth was proudly wheeled to call upon ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... was aroused for a moment by the voices of the two men, raised in argument over something, she wondered if she would ever become quite content with a pleasureless, listless life like her mother. The crackling fire burnt clear and bright, and threw sudden gleams on the faded tapestry chairs, on the fox and the stork, on the melancholy-looking heron, on the ant and the grasshopper. The baron came over to the fireplace, and held his hands ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... five full-grown churches, of which the Roman Catholic was the fifth, and a body of folks who met in one another's houses of a Sabbath under the denomination of the United Brethren. Five churches worshiped God through the crackling parchment of their mortgages, when one, or at most two, might have pointed the way to heaven free and clear, and with no worries ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... said nothing at the time, poured water on the fire as soon as the supper was cooked—an act which somewhat astonished the rest. Soon afterward he went into the tent for a few moments, and when he returned he was beginning to advise Joe not to laugh quite so loud, when the crackling of branches was heard in the grove, and three very unpleasant-looking ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said the old woman, entering the dark cottage, where Morva was stirring a crock which hung on a chain from the open chimney, the furze and bracken flaming and crackling beneath it and lighting up her beautiful face. Once in the cottage, Sara sat down on the old oak settle and waited for her supper, her herbs lying in a green heap on the floor beside her. The square of scarlet flannel, which she always wore ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... over the hearth, spreading her bony hands towards the crackling flames, and, walking up to the mantelpiece, Salome touched the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of the Golden Snail! What crackling throats have gulped your ale! What sons of Fame from far and near Have glowed and mellowed in your cheer! Within this corner where I sit Banville and Coppee clashed their wit; And hither too, to dream and drain, And drown despair, came poor Verlaine. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Cintimba and the San Pedro, on the 28th of September 1789, a whole tract of ground, from three to four miles in extent, surged up like a foam-bubble, or the swell of a wave, to a height of upwards of 500 feet. Flames, lurid and crackling, broke forth over a surface of more than half a square league; and the earth, as if softened by heat, was seen to rise and sink like the rolling tide. Vast chasms opened in the earth, into which the two rivers poured their waters ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... pedestal ornamented with precious bronzes, the marble bust of some princess royal disguised as Diana appeared about to fly out of her turbulent drapery, while on the ceiling a figure of Night, powdered like a marquise and surrounded by cupids, sowed flowers. Everything was asleep, and only the crackling of the logs and the light rattle of Therese's ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... o'er the crackling fire, His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak; He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher Than pensioned blows—he owned the tree he stroke, And knows the value of the distant smoke, When he returns at night, his labor done, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Kris Kringle was due a white snow descended like a benediction. Bambi and the Professor sat before a huge, crackling fire in the library. She was restless as a spirit. She sat at the piano and sang "O Lonely Pine Tree ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... street. He stepped to the door to watch, and at that moment a big blue car trundled into view around the bend of the road. The rear wheels struck a slide of sand and dust, and skidded; a girl cried out; then the big machine gathered out of the cloud of dust, and came toward Andy with a crackling like musketry, and it was plain that it would leap through Martindale and away into the country beyond at a bound. Andy could see now that it was a roadster, low-hung, ponderous, to keep ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the people in the railway carriages care for you?—do you think that the gentleman in the worsted wrapper is saying to his neighbor with the striped rug on his comfortable knees, "How grateful we ought to be for that fiery particle which is crackling and hissing under the boiler! It helps us on the fraction of an inch from Vauxhall to Putney?" Not a bit of it. Ten to one but he is saying—"Not sixteen miles an hour! What the deuce is the matter with ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the surrounding forests was quenched and eclipsed here. Not a beam of it sifted downward through the branches of the oak. It stood like a pillar of cloud between the still light of heaven and the crackling, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... them; there was something pitiable about her. For, obviously, she was looking just as they were, but looking in such a silly way and in such hopelessly stupid places. All her life she had been looking like this, dressed in crackling black, wearing a prickly bonnet and heavy goloshes, and carrying a useless umbrella that of course must bother her. It was disappointment that made her talk as she did. But it was natural she should feel disappointment, for it never rained when she had her umbrella, and her ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... food preparation sometimes typify nationalities better even than variants of language or clothing. Take the lowly corn meal, for instance. We find that Italian polenti, Spanish tamale, Philadelphia scrapple and Southern Darkey crackling corn bread are but variants of the preparation of corn meal in delectable foods. It is a long step from plain corn meal mush to scrapple, which we consider the highest and best form of preparing this ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... feasible suggestion. Anything seemed better than open failure before those nineteen pairs of expectant eyes. Volunteers went off for fresh supplies of wood, which was soon crackling merrily. But alas! the Camellia Buds, being rather overwrought and flustered with their experiments, did not calculate on the fact that the smoke of their bonfire would give away their secret. Rachel had handed her tennis racket to Phyllis, and was ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... of her swoon again, after a while, with that strange and innocent clearness that usually follows such a thing, to find Alice beside her, a tapestried wall behind Alice, and the sound of a crackling fire in her ears. Then she perceived that she was in a small room, lying on her back along a bench, and that ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... December, after a warm and rainy morning, the ground being covered with mud and slush, the temperature fell instantly forty degrees. A man riding into Springfield for a marriage license says a roaring and crackling wind came upon him and the rain-drops dripping from his bridle-reins and beard changed in a second into jingling icicles. He rode hastily into the town and arrived in a few minutes at his destination; ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... whittled that morning for his dinner fire. He reached up to the shelf where the matches were kept, lighted the shavings, laid them carefully in the firebox and fed the little blaze with dry splinters. He placed wood upon the crackling pile, rattled the stove-lids into place and crouched shivering beside the stove, trying to absorb some warmth into his chilled old bones. He opened the oven door, hitched himself closer and thrust his numbed ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... crackling ice, o'er gulfs profound, With nimble glide the skaters play; O'er treacherous pleasure's flow'ry ground Thus lightly ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... which becomes easily separated from the seed. The opening of the cones is caused by drying, and if a number of ripe cones are gathered in the winter or early spring, and allowed to dry in an ordinary room, they will in a day or two open, often with a sharp, crackling sound, and ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... results! A crackling of noise with a singsong rhythm, the volume of which, low at first, arose to a drone filled the cabin. Ross, deafened by the din, twisted first one lever and then the other until he had brought the sound to a less piercing ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... she assigned him, opening from that she had given the elder man. Cheerful fires burned in old-fashioned, open-hearthed Franklin stoves, in both rooms, and the atmosphere was fragrant with the mingled breath of crackling apple-wood, and lavender from the fine old linen with which both ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the till top. Ling Foo raised his slanted eyes. His face was like a graven Buddha's, but there was a crackling in his ears as of many fire-crackers. There he stood—the man with the sluing walk! Ling Foo still wore a queue, so his hair could not very ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... roar, followed by a snarl; and this time there was a sharp crackling of bushes, as one of the savage beasts ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... was soon decided, for a loud crackling sound came from the place he had so lately left, and, to his horror, he saw the wreck crumble away and begin to sink steadily beneath the surface, long rafters raising their ends in the air and then diving down out of sight, while several shot by him, one of which he seized ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide through its passages and public chambers late at night to see that the servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches nor left embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that caused the superstition of the times to invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery, fabling that she had entered the portal of the province-house—none ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it till she was entered into the peace ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... and July passed like fevered dreams; the brief sweet spring had suddenly turned into summer in a single day—a strange, stifling, menacing summer full of heavy little thunder-storms which rolled crackling and banging up the Hudson amid vivid electric displays, leaving no coolness behind their trailing wake ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... against the unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of the Romans, who were awakened by the sense of their instant danger. Their close and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and the noise of the wind, the crackling of the flames, the dissonant cries of the soldiers and mariners, who could neither command nor obey, increased the horror of the nocturnal tumult. Whilst they labored to extricate themselves from the fire-ships, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon |
