"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the morning the hotel clerk winked at them. "I'm not saying a word," he whispered. "But it served the old crank right. Even the boss is doing a little smiling, although he ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... "and that is a difficulty that meets us at every turn. It is something that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... my musician road friends once told me how he sold a bill to a well-known old crank, now dead, in the state ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... be nothing, but I don't like the idea of it. There is apt to be something underlying this, or even if it is only a single individual and he happens to be a crank he could cause a lot of trouble. Suppose, for instance, one of these crack-brained foreigners in the shop got it into his head that Torrance here was grinding him down in order to increase our profits? Why, he might attack him at ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that, but if Pee-wee had prepared his sneaks especially for making prints on wooden ties he could scarcely have done better. In order to get at the main bearings of the engine he had, with characteristic disregard, stood plunk in the copper drain basin under the crank-case. The oil had undoubtedly softened the rubber sole of his sneakers so that it held the clinging substance, and in some cases it was possible to distinguish on the ties the half-obliterated crisscross ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... less than seventy years ago since the time that the so-called crank, George Stephenson, ventured modestly to assert that his little four-and-a-half-ton locomotive, "The Rocket," was actually capable of whirling along one to two light carriages at the astounding velocity of twelve miles an hour. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... vernacular. I think one must often fall into error from too great an attempt of metaphysical accuracy (precision), for whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... the lenses? That 's the main thing. The bearings must be kept well oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. The clock-face will tell you when it is running right. If anything gets hitched up here's the crank to keep it going until you can straighten the machine again. It's easy enough to turn it. But you must never let it stop between dark and daylight. The regular turn once a minute—that's the mark of this light. If it shines steady it might as well ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... say that I cannot recall the time when I was not passionately opposed to slavery, a crank on the subject of personal liberty, if I am a crank ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... be precise, on the morning of January 3—the city of San Francisco awoke to read in one of its daily papers a curious letter, which had been received by Walter Bassett and which had evidently been written by some crank. Walter Bassett was the greatest captain of industry west of the Rockies, and was one of the small group that controlled the nation in everything but name. As such, he was the recipient of lucubrations from countless cranks; but this particular lucubration was so different from the average ruck ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... "no intelligent person could fail to be interested in politics, once he or she appreciated what it meant. And people of our class owe it to society to take part in politics. Victor Dorn is a crank, but he's right about some things—and he's right in saying that we of the upper class are parasites upon the masses. They earn all the wealth, and we take a large part of it away from them. And it's plain stealing ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ought to do is to hire that blind piano-pounder who thumps for the fraternity dances, put a neat red-haired girl in a box on the sidewalk, get one of the football team who's working his way through college to turn the crank, and put on ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... That's out of the question! I'm not strong-minded enough to crank my own motor-car and study woman's suffrage. I prefer to suffer at the hands of some cruel man and trust to beguiling him into doing just as I say. I like men, can't help it, and want one for my own. I don't count poor ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wall, distant about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was drawing to a close when young Johnny Eyre came sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and a boy of ten or twelve managing that crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. "Are you at work yet, Lavender?" he said. "I never saw such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... direction in which improvements have been slow is in the starting of the machine. The power is usually so mounted that the pilot has no control over the starting, as he is not in a position to crank it. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... time we were looking the Great Panjandrum Himself, with his little round button-at-the-top on his head, was turning a crank in the side of the wonderful Pantoscopticon, which had a hopper on the top of it like that of an old-fashioned coffee-mill. As he turned ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... The iron crank that would have hurled him into the river as its span fell with a rattle, and that was one peril gone; but the lever he grasped was difficult to move, and his hands were stiff and numb. Still he persisted, and Mattawa watched him, because there was only room for one, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... of cavalry, which we supposed to be part of General Wilson's force, charging rapidly after us. The highway lay close alongside the railroad, and our pursuers were enveloped in a cloud of dust. The car was stopped, or rather the men who were working the crank incontinently took to their heels, and we followed their example. There was a fence a few rods from the road, which I succeeded in reaching, and over which I jumped, just before our pursuers overtook us. As they forced their horses over it, I discovered my ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen years his senior and regarded by his neighbors as a harmless crank. But there was something about him which touched Hancock's imagination—and touched his pocketbook, too, for about the first thing Adams did was to borrow money ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... the smoulder," said Uncle Ben to Carfax, "and let them work the crank, for John to understand a thing ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... four stories below I heard something—music. I raised the sash and looked out. An Italian had halted in front of the boarding house with a grind organ and he was turning the crank and the thing was playing. It wasn't much of a grind organ as grind organs go. I judge it must have been the original grind organ that played with Booth and Barrett. It had lost a lot of its most important works, and it had the asthma and the heaves and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... ought not to keep such a good thing to myself, but that I should preach the doctrine far and wide. I soon found, however, that it was an impossible task to try to save men from themselves, and I acquired the unenviable sobriquet of "crank"; but I was not dismayed. From my native friends I turned to the foreign community in Peking, thinking that the latter would possess better judgment, appreciate and be converted to the sanitarian doctrine. Among the foreigners I appealed to, one was a distinguished diplomat, and ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... scientific era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth century, bears a certain resemblance. The ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... village store as soon as the train stopped and had bought the first toy she happened to see. It was a black dancing bear, worked by a tiny crank hidden under the bar on which it stood. Robin's pleasure was unbounded, and his shrieks of delight brought all the children flocking ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... moments he returned, bringing it with him, and placing the magnetic cups, one in each hand, commenced generating the electricity by turning the generator attached to the machine. After a few turns of the crank the prisoner opened his eyes; one or two more and he sat up; a few more and he stood on his feet; another turn or two and he commenced dancing around, and exclaimed, "For God's sake, doctor, do quit, for I ain't dead, but I can't let loose!" Reader, what do you suppose was the object ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... her laughter, answered this by proceeding to steep some tea in an odd little contrivance over the gas-jet, much as Sara did over the log- fire at home; but neither Morton nor Molly would have been surprised to see food come sliding in, all cooked, or clothes all made, by the simple turn of a crank, so like fairyland was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... companions love to think of him, clutching his short-stemmed pipe to his mouth, puffing gravely, saying little, thinking much, quick at appreciating a joke, slow at making one, with an eye full of humour, and its lid and corresponding corner of his mouth quickly responsive to any quip or crank that might let fly. Eclectic in his humour as in his art, disposed to condemn any cartoon suggestion not thoroughly thought out as "damn bad," he was in the weekly assembly at the Table like the 'cello in the orchestra—not much heard, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... an untidy room—that of a student, a traveler and a crank—by a plain-clothes officer. Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages, in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man. His white hair and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity. But ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... cerveza, beer cestilla, waste-paper basket ciego, blind cielo, heaven, sky cien, ciento, hundred ciencia, science, wisdom cierre, lock-out cierto, certain cifras, figures cigarros, tabacos, puros, cigars cigueenal, crank shaft cilindro, cylinder, roller cima, top cinta, ribbon cinto, sash cinturon, belt circular, to circulate, to go round citar, to quote, to cite, to mention a passage, etc. citar ante los tribunales, to summon ciudad, city cizallas, shears ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... tower. The pigeon bore a letter dictated by Admiral Boisot, though she recognised the handwriting of Captain Van der Elst. It stated that the fleet led by an enormous vessel, the "Ark of Delft," with shot-proof bulwarks, and moved by paddle-wheels turned by a crank, had reached the Land-Scheiding, and that he hoped, ere long, the large dyke would be broken through and that the way would be opened to the very walls of the city. The Prince also sent a message urging the citizens ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Certainly. A crank in the last stages of alcoholism and mental depression brought it in yesterday. It's an idiotic jumble about Beautiful Women of History, part in prose ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... rod is attached to a long cast-iron crosshead, from which two bent connecting rods extend downward, the one to a crank, and the other to a crank-pin inserted in the flywheel. The connecting-rods now on this engine were supplied by Mr. Webb, the original ones—which they have been made to resemble as closely as possible—having been broken up. In the Crewe engine as it now exists it is not quite clear how the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... ordinary steam-engine, the verdict as to consumption of fuel was against the new rotary engine. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic projector, "tho' vanquished he would argue still," insisted that the merits of his contrivance would sooner or later cause it to be a most formidable rival to the crank steam-engines. As he was pleased with its performances, I had no reason to be dissatisfied. I had done my part in the matter, and Mr. Steen had done his. His punctual weekly payments had assisted me in the completion of my tools; ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... load of a thousand pounds at thirty miles an hour over even the softest snow, as its cylindrical supports did not sink into the snow as ordinary wheels would have done. The motor was a forty-horse power automobile machine with a crank-case enclosed in an outer case in which a vacuum had been created—on the principle of the bottles which keep liquids cold or warm. In this instance the vacuum served to keep the oil in the crank-case, which was poured in warm, at an even temperature. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was: built in Genoa from an English model that Williams, who had been a sailor, had brought with him. Without a deck, schooner-rigged, it took, says Trelawney, "two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam." Truly Shelley was no seaman. "You will do no good with Shelley," Trelawney told Williams, "until you heave his books and papers overboard, shear the wisps of hair that hang over his eyes, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... girls stood well in their classes; and they were liked by all the instructors—even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's "self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank." ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the universe seemed to be a wheel. The sun and the stars came up and went down over the monotonous sea of grass with frightful regularity, and she could not tell whether there was a God or not. When she thought of God at all, it was as a relentless giant turning the crank that kept the sky going round. The universe was an awful machine. The prayers her mother taught her in infancy died upon her lips, and instead of praying to God she cried out to her mother. Un-protestant as the sentiment is, I can not forbear saying that this talking to the dead is ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of raising vessels to repair. But in these cases a large portion of the power applied is lost in the friction ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... up. I never saw him so completely cowed. It knocked all the eloquence out of him for once. The man is a crank and an agitator. I have kept my eye on him for some time. He is a fairly good workman in his line, though, and just now can't do much harm, as times are easy and these new improvements of yours keep the people busy with other interests. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Kennedy took three black boxes. They seemed to have an opening in front, while at one side was a little crank, which, as nearly as I could make out, was operated by clockwork released by an electric contact. His first problem seemed to be to dispose the boxes to the best advantage at various angles about the counter ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... from a man he disliked. This boy stated that he remembered each revolution of the lever and the individual injuries that each inflicted. Three years after his injury he was in every respect well. Fraser mentions an instance of a boy of fifteen who was caught in the crank of a balance-wheel in a shingle-mill, and was taken up insensible. His skull was fractured at the parietal eminence and the pericranium stripped off, leaving a bloody tumor near the base of the fracture about two inches in diameter. The right humerus was fractured at the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... replied. "Miss Darrow is a singularly close observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel, sifted ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectarian preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the container is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... screw form with pivot point, also operated by the same hand. A special feature of this machine is the spreading of the lower frame so that its base rests upon an independent portion of the foundation from the main pillow block or crank shaft. The solidity of the whole structure is thus increased, both by the increased width at the base and the prevention of connecting vibrations, which necessarily communicate when resting upon the same part, as in other forms of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of the wide wandering among the many cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat and the anxious ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... at the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I heaved in. The tackle dragged heavily across the rail, increasing ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... so. I see now why you got mad. Wonder you didn't throw that chap into the river." I am a crank on the happiness one gets from the giving of tips—and a half-penny man is the rock ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... received in a settling vat, of suitable size and construction, to drain off the water and let the clay dry out sufficiently by subsequent evaporation. A machine of this construction may be made of such a size that it may be put in motion by hand, by means of a crank, and yet be capable of mixing, if properly supplied, clay enough to mold 800 or 1000 pieces of drain pipe ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... perusal may demonstrate that the fare has, at any rate, a grain of logic on his side if he looks upon himself as defrauded. We don't, you know, take your cabs for the joy of sitting in them, or for the pleasure of watching you struggling with a crank, but to be conveyed quickly from place to place. It is wrong to ask us to pay for the time spent by you in persuading your engine to behave, and it is indecent to become abusive when we act on that assumption. If I had not been so busy I should have refused to pay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Christian martyr was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, not because they really cared two-pence ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... let the chauffeur whisk me over to the station, I'll get back to London and on to the earliest possible train for Liverpool, so as to be on hand for the first Irish packet to-morrow. And while you're looking for your hat, sir—good evening, Mr. Van Nant—I'll step outside and tell Lennard to crank up." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... A sand crank is a fissure in the horn of the wall of the foot. These fissures are quite narrow, and, as a general rule, they follow the direction of the horny fibers. They may occur on any part of the wall, but ordinarily are only seen directly in front, when they are called toe cracks; ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... lot of the farmer-boy, it is the grindstone. Turning grindstones to grind scythes is one of those heroic but unobtrusive occupations for which one gets no credit. It is a hopeless kind of task, and, however faithfully the crank is turned, it is one that brings little reputation. There is a great deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... very pin or crank or cog, on which he had set such store, refused the next hour or day or week to do its work, no trace of his disappointment would have been found in his face or speech. His faith was always supreme; his belief in his ideals unshaken. If the pin or crank would not answer, the lever or pulley would. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... about that, and had followed Shoop to the automobile stage, where it stood, sand-scarred, muddy, and ragged as to tires, in front of the post-office. Bondsman had watched the driver rope the lean mail bags to the running-board, crank up the sturdy old road warrior of the desert, and step in beside the supervisor. There had been no other passengers. And while Shoop had told Bondsman that he would be away some little time, Bondsman would have known it without the telling. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... succeeded in driving Up into a corner, in spite of their striving, A small flock of terrified victims, and there, With an I-turn-the-crank-of-the-Universe air And a tone which, at least to my fancy, appears Not so much to be entering as boxing your ears, Is unfolding a tale (of herself, I surmise, 1210 For 'tis dotted as thick as a peacock's with I's), ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Then, Harry, as we have a pretty tough job before us, I suggest that you make two capstans, something like those you saw on shipboard, around which the two raising ropes can he wound, each to have a crank, and a means for holding the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... mixture that is to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about five inches deep), and then a thin layer of salt. Continue this until the tub is full, and ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... came into the world to this day; and they will for certain live and die under the same dispensation, and then be damned to all eternity, if they be not converted from under that covenant into and under the Covenant of Grace, of which I shall speak in its place; and yet for all this, how brag and crank 6 are our poor wantons and wicked ones in this day of forbearance! as if God would never have a reckoning with them, as if there was no law to condemn them, as if there was no hellfire to put them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... jump over the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... very good indeed, and would have been good anywhere—for Nick was, according to his own way of putting it, a "crank" about doing well whatever he undertook, and he knew now that he had conquered the machine—but on such a road, and in the light and shade of orange ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... legendary characters are often served. It seems to me that the legend is the interesting thing, and not the character, and that the latter loses all its value when the legend which surrounds it is destroyed. But everyone knows that I am a crank. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... remarks that the Senior Surgeon addressed to any one were addressed distinctly to the crank of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... days patents could be very easily blocked, as Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large engine under his patent, after he had successfully made a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. Roebuck's pits was selected as away from prying eyes. The parts for the new engine were partly supplied ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... 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 Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also in danger of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... tight place, I know, but I was once in a tighter, yes, I did what you have nearly done—I went to jail on a false charge and false evidence. But I didn't commit suicide. I served my time, and I think it crazed me a bit though it was only a month; at any rate, I was what they call a crank when I came out, which I wasn't when I went in. Then I set to work and showed up those for whom I had done time—living or dead they'll never forget Stephen Strong, I'll warrant—and after that I turned to and became the ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... woman he loves, of course! My neighbor's a sort of crank and insisted on expressing himself in this way. Come, I want you to ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... hasten, to urge (a.) apresurarse, to hasten (n.) apresurarse con sus ordenes, to rush one's orders arbol de eje, axle shaft camara de comercio, chamber of commerce cigueena, arbol de cigueena, cigueenal, crank-shaft compania de ferrocarril, railway company con manchas, (designs)—spot con puntitas, con bolitas, (designs) spot contestar, to answer, to reply cuadritos, (designs) checks cuenta simulada, pro forma account culpa, blame, fault dano, damage, injury, breakdown de ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... have to crank this island or whether it has a self-starter," he drawled in his amusing way. "If they don't get back by one or so, we'll have to make some root sandwiches. What ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... epoch-making dreams and eventually made them come true; and there were those who merely saw visions too impractical ever to become realities. To work amid this mecca of minds must have been not only an education in science but in human nature as well. Every sort of crank who had gathered a wild notion out of the blue meandered into Williams's shop in the hope that somebody could be found there who would provide either the money or the labor to further ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... normally restrains the turning of the shaft by the weight. There is a fixed spindle (24) supported on the bracket (23)—which is fixed to the tank or one of the guide-rods—having centred on it a curved bar or quadrant (25) running loose on the spindle (24) and having a crank arm (26) to which is connected one end of a rod (27) which, at the other end, is connected to the arm (28) of the escapement. The quadrant bears at both extremities against the flat bar (29) when the bell (22) is sufficiently raised. The bar (29) extends ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... he told me that, for I had been imagining that he was the kind of man who is known as a freak, and had come to win me over to some stupid crank which he would call a ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... first trial at extracting the fibre failed on account of our having no proper machine to bruise the stems. We extemporized a two-roller mill; but as it had no cog-gearing to cause both rollers to turn together, the only one on which the handle or crank was fixed turned, with, the result of grinding the stems to pulp ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Wall, he told me he had some lightnin' rods, and he brought out a little masheen and told me to take hold of the handles and he'd show me what a powerful thing 'lectricity wuz. Wall, I took hold of them handles and he turned on a crank, and that durned masheen jist made me dance all over the porch, and it wouldn't let go. Gee whiz, I felt as though I'd fell in a yeller jacket's nest, and about four thousand of 'em wuz a stingin' me all to onct. Wall, I told him I guessed he could put up a lightning rod or two, seein' as how I ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, or just—a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of subterfuge and caution he ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... of one idea, and that a false one. He was a gigantic crank,—an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of public opinion which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... President Garfield and Senator Conkling resulted in a national calamity. The bitterness that grew out of it had the effect of bringing a crank on the scene of action. Early in July, 1881,—when the President, in company with Mr. Blaine, was leaving Washington for his summer vacation,—this cowardly crank, who had waited at the railroad station for the arrival of the distinguished ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... attack with another burst of fire from the flank. With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ran toward ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... good to talk to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go South yesterday. She cry, say 'I so sorry, Katie; you been so good to me.' ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... now? Oh, I'm so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. Yes, that wasn't so bad. Twenty-five ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... thereof which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the one in which she appeared on the platform ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... as to say it was amongst the first of any jails, where convicts were employed in connection with steam power. We had, it is true, an engine to be worked by manual power, for six or eight men abreast, to drive the circular saw, but it did not answer. It was intended as "crank" labour for ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... little struck by this circumstance myself; of course, in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I am sure I want to. Let's get going again, if we are to make the Woodbine Way in time to plan the tour. I'm just crazy about the trip," and the enthusiastic girl expended some of her pent-up energies on the crank at the front of ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... out of him. He's a Socialist and a crank, you know, and you'd be surprised how ugly some of them fellows can be. As soon as I get the story complete I'll report to you, but meantime there's no use ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... three-fourths full. Cover; place in wooden bucket; adjust the top and pack, as directed above. Turn crank slowly and steadily. After freezing drain off water, remove dasher; with a spoon pack hard. Put cork in top of lid. Repack freezer. Cover top with heavy pieces of carpet and paper. When time comes ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... should be so arranged that the requisite speed is obtained by not more than forty or fifty revolutions of the crank handle per minute, so that it may be maintained for periods of twenty or thirty ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... continually enforce a burning personal conviction. But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort of crank—certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vegetarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant something quite other than was meant by Jefferson or later by Lincoln. When these great men spoke ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... degrees. The first page which is the anvil is fixed save for adjustments for nuts of varying size. The other page or hammer riding up and down through an inch and one quarter of travel is fixed to a crank below. Both of these pages or plates are heavy cast iron plates that are fluted and cause the nut to be cracked against these saw toothed flutes and while being cracked are revolved down through the plates. The plate moving at an angle forces the nut finally through ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... I do," said he. "That there little one up top is Johnny; he's a little crank. An' the big un is Grumpy; she's a big crank. She's mighty onreliable gen'relly, but she's always strictly ugly when Johnny hollers ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... of the Automatic Company's 7 ohm wire between New York and Washington, it happened that Prof. Moses G. Farmer was in the Washington office when the first message was about to be sent, and upon being requested, he turned the "crank" and transmitted the message to New York, at the rate of 217 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... one o' the heving peepers, they sez—that the people wot's missin' hev been carted off in aeroplanes by some o' the other religionists wot wanted to git rid o' them, an' that the crank religiouses is ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson |
