"Cranny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English, who took my estates in Piccadilly. Is it not a knavish trick to put justice in motion against me? Ho! Ho! my lord constable, a chamberlain is worth two of you, and I will beat you yet. My dear Petit, I give you permission to search by night and by day, every nook and cranny of my house. But come in here alone, search my room, turn the bed over, do what you like. Only allow me to cover with a cloth or a handkerchief this fair lady, who is at present in the costume of an archangel, in order that you may not know to ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... western machinery, modern mining plants and other evidences of how China is coming out of her shell, cause one to rejoice in improved conditions. The animosity occasioned by these inventions that are being so gradually and so surely introduced into every nook and cranny of East and North China is very marked; but on close inspection, and after one has made a study of the subject, one is inclined to feel that it is more or less theoretical. So it is to be hoped it will be in Szech'wan and Far ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... nor woman, elderly nor young; the little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the wainscot; the bird that, in frost and snow, pecks at the window for a crumb. I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it loves to purr. The old dog always ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... curious vibrations and throbbings we could hear; of the heavy rumbling and the flash and glow that came from the different works. Some were so lit up that it seemed as if the windows were fiery eyes staring out of the darkness, and more than once we stopped to gaze in at some cranny where furnaces were kept going night and day and the work ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... mountains.—Now all therein slept, so even that not a dog barked at the sound of my footsteps. But suddenly, and my soul yet quivers with dismay at the remembrance, a yell of horror tore its way from the throat of every sleeper at once, and shot into every cranny of the many-folded mountains, that my soul knocked shaking against the sides of my body, and I also shrieked aloud with the keen terror of the cry. For surely there was no sleeper there, man, woman, or child, who yelled ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... presently they went down to the bottom of the quarry again, where Mallalieu, under pretence of thoroughly seeing into everything, walked about all over the place. He did not find the stick, and he was quite sure that nobody else had found it. Finally he went away, convinced that it lay in some nook or cranny of the shelving slope on to which he had kicked it in his sudden passion of rage. There, in all probability, it would remain for ever, for it would never occur to the police that whoever wielded whatever weapon it was that struck ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... concealed in some nook or cranny in the widow's home. Cora made up her mind to have a search made after this night ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... too, began to look under the leaves and under the bark. They pawed around in the grass, they hunted in every nook and cranny, but not a nut could they find. They were tired and cross and hot and they accused Billy Mink of having hidden the nuts. Billy Mink stoutly insisted that he had not hidden the nuts, that he had not found the nuts, and when they saw ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... shall strike him upon the head," Mr. Twemlow replied, with his heavy stick ready. "It will be better for you to hear me out. Otherwise I shall procure a search-warrant, and myself examine your ruins, of which I know every crick and cranny. And your aunt Maria shall come with me, who knows every stone even better than you do. That would be a very different thing from an overhauling by Captain Stubbard. I think we should find a good many barrels and bales that had ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... spring-like; the violets raised their heads in thick mats of blue and white in every available cranny of the garden and other enclosures where they were allowed to assert themselves, while other plants were opening their garlands to replace them, and the air breathed such a note of balminess that Ernest came to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... he to do? The question kept pounding at his brain, growing more sinister with each repetition. What was he to do? Defy the police—and be branded as a stool-pigeon, a snitch, an informer in every nook and cranny of the underworld! He could not do that. Everything, all that meant anything in life to him now would be swept from his reach at even the first breath of suspicion. Nor was it an idle threat that his unwelcome visitor had made. He was not fool enough to blind himself on that score—it could ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... building. At the end was a door, which upon opening, discovered a room of large proportions, with a low ceiling divided into square compartments. Here our traveller was no sooner installed and left alone, than he locked the door; then with candle in hand he began to examine each crack and cranny, but could find nothing suspicious. There were few things in it worthy of note, excepting a large bed with drawn curtains of dazzling whiteness; a most ample hearth, on which was blazing a bundle of dry faggots, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... have recourse to this desperate expedient, and I know not how long I had been a prisoner when one day I fancied that I heard something near me, which breathed loudly. Turning to the place from which the sound came I dimly saw a shadowy form which fled at my movement, squeezing itself through a cranny in the wall. I pursued it as fast as I could, and found myself in a narrow crack among the rocks, along which I was just able to force my way. I followed it for what seemed to me many miles, and ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... etiquette, a statesman rule, A soldier discipline, a poet verse, And each mechanic his distinctive trade; Yet bring him to his motley, and how wide He shoots from reason! We can understand All business but our own, and thrust advice In every gaping cranny of the world; While habit shapes us to our own dull work, And reason nods above his proper task. Just so philosophy would rectify All things abroad, and be a jade at home. Pepe, what think you of ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... unvoiced queries had perplexed her mind, and, strengthening with her growth, now cried out peremptorily for answers. With shuddering dread she strove to stifle the spirit which, once thoroughly awakened, threatened to explore every nook and cranny of mystery. She longed to talk freely with her guardian regarding many of the suggestions which puzzled her, but shrank instinctively from broaching such topics. Now, in her need, the sublime words of Job came to her: "Oh, that my words were now written! oh, that they were printed ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... eyes that flashed with excitement; and drawing a step nearer his brother, he said in changed tones, "Now must that rascally priest have fled, and it behoves us to search the precincts of the place with all diligence. We must not leave a nook or a cranny unvisited, and must make a mighty coil. Thou takest me, ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hitherto sat silent, being thus called upon to give his evidence, after divers strange gesticulations, opened his mouth like a gasping cod, and with a cadence like that of the east wind singing through a cranny, pronounced, "Half a quarter of a league right ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... they rummaged among the mouldering mass, setting them coughing and sneezing. Now and then a great gray rat would shoot out beneath their very feet, and disappear, like a sudden shadow, into some hole or cranny ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... grateful, the distant murmur of the excited settlement came only as the soothing sound of wind among the leaves. The pure air of the pines that filled every cranny of the quiet school-room, and seemed to disperse all taint of human tenancy, made the far-off celebrations as unreal as a dream. The only reality ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... in case the last end of the Vein be found, it terminate abruptly, or else end in some peculiar kind of Rock or Earth, which does, as it were, close or Seal it up, without leaving any crack or cranny, or otherwise? And whether the terminating part of the Vein tend upwards, downwards, or neither? And whether in the places, where the Vein is interrupted, there be any peculiar Stone or Earth, that does, as it were, seal ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... she had enjoyed the society, not only of the friends who went with her, but the companionship of the invisible ones, whose presence seemed to haunt every nook and cranny of the palace ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... ourselves to the old man who was the sole tenant of that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as it would go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Food he procured us—rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and some goat's milk—and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been a ducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... piled upon each other in the wildest confusion. Beyond these rocks, was a vast chasm above the level of the lake, and extending right and left for a distance of fifty rods. This huge chasm was one mass of crimson light, whose rays pierced every nook and cranny on every ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... that day more than these two, who prowled about and visited every nook and cranny of the old place—studies, passages, class-rooms, Fourth Junior ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... surface of a mill-pond. He had made himself in the Fledgling,—had rounded to the measure of a man aboard of her,—had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and courage and success. He felt the loss of his tug; it hit him hard; he suffered in every mental corner and cranny. And when the two men who had given their lives for him and for the yacht came to mind in all the clearness of their personality and devotion to him, his head sank on his hand and ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... ready cut and dry: But ere you sell yourself to laughter, Consider well what may come after; For fine ideas vanish fast, While all the gross and filthy last. O Strephon, ere that fatal day When Chloe stole your heart away, Had you but through a cranny spy'd On house of ease your future bride, In all the postures of her face, Which nature gives in such a case; Distortions, groanings, strainings, heavings, 'Twere better you had lick'd her leavings, Than from experience find too late ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a number of useful odds and ends in a drawer. Now little miss, being installed as housekeeper to papa, and for the first time in her life being queen—at least so she fancied—of all she surveyed, went to work searching every cranny, and prying into every drawer, and woe betide anything which did not come up to my idea of neat housekeeping. When I chanced across the drawer of scraps I at once condemned them to the flames. Such a place of disorder could not be ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... at the ceiling at the moment, when I saw his face change, saw his eyes suddenly drop like shot birds and fix themselves on the cranny of the door he had just left ajar. Even from where I sat I could see his colour change; he went greenish. He crouched without stirring, simply fixed. And I, scarcely daring to breathe, sat with creeping skin, simply watching him. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... blackened tin kettle, without a spout,—a principal utensil in brewing scalding water for the manufacture of whisky-punch; and its soft and yet warm bed was shared by a red cat, who had stolen in from his own orgies, through some cranny, since day-break. The single four-paned window of the apartment remained veiled by its rough shutter, that turned on leather hinges; but down the wide yawning chimney came sufficient light to reveal ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... party; but he earned everybody's gratitude by his unflagging energy in preparing meals that to us at least were savoury and satisfying. Frankly, we needed all the comfort that the hot food could give us. The icy fingers of the gale searched every cranny of our beach and pushed relentlessly through our worn garments and tattered tents. The snow, drifting from the glacier and falling from the skies, swathed us and our gear and set traps for our stumbling feet. The rising sea beat against the rocks and shingle and tossed fragments of floe-ice ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright: and ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY. 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos[270]; and Bouhours[271], ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... excitement, and again it sank so low, that the rushing of the waters ran through their melody, like a hollow accompaniment. The natural taste and true ear of David governed and modified the sounds to suit the confined cavern, every crevice and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flexible voices. The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed his chin in his hand, with an expression of cold indifference, gradually ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... and figure was projected grimly on the rafters as though it were the hovering guardian spirit of the house. But even that passed presently and faded out, and the beleaguering darkness that had encompassed the house all the evening began to slowly creep in through every chink and cranny of the rambling, ill-jointed structure, until it at last obliterated even the faint embers on the hearth. The cool fragrance of the woodland depths crept in with it until the steep of human warmth, the reek of human ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... Leroy appeared to hesitate. He was singularly unnerved by the glances of those dark blue eyes, which like searchlights seemed to penetrate into every nook and cranny of his soul. But his recklessness and love of adventure having led him so far, it was now too late to retract or to reconsider the risks he might possibly be running. He therefore took the quill and dipped it into ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from its aerial cranny. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... presently I am overcome by a feeling that something is missing, a great trouble seizes me, a fear as if I had forgotten something of great importance, not done a thing I ought to have done; and I find out that the thought of Aniela has percolated through every nook and cranny of the mind, and taken possession of it. It knocks there night and day like the death-tick in the desk of Mickiewicz's poem. When I try to lessen or to ridicule the impression, my scepticism and irony fail me, or rather help me only for a moment; ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a pen of light, a tongue of fire, That every word might burn in living flame Upon the age's brow, and leave one name Engraven on the future! One desire Fills every nook and cranny of my heart; One hope—one sorrow—one beloved aim! She whose pure life was of my life a part, As light is of the day, could she inspire My unmelodious muse, or tune the lyre To diapasons worthy of the theme, How would her joy put on its robes of light, And nestle in my bosom once ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... climm up thar', Caesar?" Pettigrass unfolded his long legs and stood up on the flat stone to attain an eye-level with the interior of the little cavern. Tom crushed Nan into the farthest cranny, and flattened himself lizard-like against the nearer side wall. The horse-trader looked long and hard, and they could hear him ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the stove in the centre. The floor of this place may with propriety be termed the great expectorating deposit, owing to the inducements it offers for centralization, though, of course, no creek or cranny of the vessel is free from this American tobacco-tax—if I may presume so to dignify and designate it. Having thus taken off one-third and one-fifth, the remaining portion is the "gentlemen's share"—how many 'eenths it may be, I leave to fractional ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... had a lingering solicitude for the bird-faced officer. He had a haunting fancy he might be lying disabled or badly smashed in some way in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a most exhaustive search that he abandoned that distressing idea. "If I found 'im," he reasoned the while, "what could I do wiv 'im? You can't blow a chap's brains out when 'e's down. And I don' see 'ow ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Sue with them, for she knew many "cubby holes" in which she and her brother often took turns hiding. And some of these even her mother had forgotten about, though Mrs. Brown thought she knew every nook and cranny ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... rest; but sleep was denied. The owl hooted at her window; the bat flapped his leathern wings; the taper burned red and heavily, and its rays were tinged as though with blood; the fire flung out its tiny coffin; the wind sobbed aloud at every cranny, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... boy, or at least the people at the farm-house (Aunt Laura and Uncle Sam) did not think so—because his mother when she was a little girl had gone there for a visit years and years ago, just as he was coming to-day, and she had loved every nook and cranny of the old house as they hoped he would love it, and to those two people, it seemed almost as if she were coming back again, which really couldn't happen, for that was ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... request the Officer's permission to pass. Under existing circumstances I confess I did not much like the responsibility of the charge committed to me, but fortunately our conductor soon returned with permission to pass. We got out while he drove his 4 in hand quietly into the boat, every cranny of which was filled up by soldiers and artillery horses, which, as if to shew off the pomp of war, capered and reared before our sedate steeds, who only wanted pipes in their mouths to rival the impenetrable gravity of their driver. It is necessary to cross the Waal ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... lighter parts of the fuel; for this purpose, there was, in prudent families, a generous pile of dry cord-wood in the kitchen. With these appliances, considerable warmth was felt in the room; the larger part of the heat, however, was lost up the huge chimney. Fresh air rushed in at every crack and cranny to supply this great draft; and, although the windows were small, and the walls lined with brick, there was no lack of ventilation. In this condition of things, the high-backed settle in front of the blazing fire was a cozy seat. It was the place of honor for the heads of the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... possible occasions. Forster I will speak to carefully, and I have no doubt it will quicken him a little; not that we have anything to complain of in his direction. If you ever see any new loophole, cranny, needle's-eye, through which I can present your case to "Household Words," I most earnestly entreat you, as your staunch friend and admirer—you can have no truer—to indicate it to me at any time or season, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... voice, "Now, if aught of harm befalls thee because of this day's doings, I swear by Saint George that the red cock shall crow over the rooftree of this house, for the hot flames shall lick every crack and cranny thereof. As for these women"—here he ground his teeth—"it will be an ill ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... corner, every crack and cranny in the raft. There was nothing. Our provisions were reduced to one bit of salt ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... hand, there are not wanting many who are equally prepared to argue that, although this bolt-hole being open may have facilitated the guerilla's escape, that astute leader would easily have found some other nook or cranny quite sufficient for his purpose had it been shut; while, if the worst had come to the worst, from his point of view, he could, at the sacrifice of his waggons and guns, have dissolved his commando in the night, only to unite again ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... vista—for the first time since he had sat upon a keg in the fog he forgot him-self and his foolishness, his hunger, his aching nerves, his smarting pride, everything! The beauty before him filled his heart and mind, leaving not a cranny anywhere for lesser things. Blue sea, blue sky, blue mountains, blue smoke that rose in misty spirals as from a thousand fairy fires and, nearer, the sun-warmed, dew-drenched green—green of the earth, green of the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... them with a patience terminated only by success, or by firm conviction that he could not reach what he aimed at, or unless, as he wandered thus in deep darkness, a glimmer of light came to him from some other cranny. He passed thus his days in sapping and counter-sapping. The most impudent deceit had become natural to him, and was concealed under an air that was simple, upright, sincere, often bashful. He would have spoken with grace and forcibly, if, fearful of saying more than he wished, he had not accustomed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... or even undress, for she knew that Ishmael was locked out; and so she threw a light shawl around her, and seated herself at the open back window, which from its high point of view commanded every nook and cranny of the back grounds, to watch until Ishmael should wake up and approach the house, so that she might go down and admit him quietly, without disturbing the servants and exciting their curiosity and conjectures. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... don't want along—fear. We will never get anywhere with that, nor with any of its uncles, aunts or cousins—Envy, Malice and Greed. In justice to our own best interests we should search every crook and cranny of our hearts and minds lest we venture forth with any such impedimenta. There is no excuse, and we have no one to blame if we allow any of them to journey along with us. We know whether they are there or not just as we would know Courage, Trust and Honor were they perched behind ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... friendship than of thine, Who knew no better than to obey command. Even now 'tis manifest he burns within With pain for his own error and my wrong. But, though unwilling and mapt for ill, Thy crafty, mean, and cranny spying soul Too well hath lessoned him in sinful lore. Now thou hast bound me, O thou wretch, and thinkest To take me from this coast, where thou didst cast me Outlawed and desolate, a corpse 'mongst men. Oh! I curse thee now, as ofttimes in the ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... well he might be, at the confidence bestowed on him by his father, took the bag with him under his smock when he went out with the cows, and bestowed it in a cranny not far from that in which that more precious ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... partial diversions of eating and sleeping. The ocean grew monotonous, the vessel monotonous, the passengers monotonous, everything monotonous except that idea, and that grew and spread till its fibres filled every nook and cranny of the inventive brain that had taken it in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... for the key which she had dropped on the previous day during the dust-storm, before Kelly's arrival. Burke's reference to the matter had recalled it to her mind, and now with shamed self-reproach she sought in every cranny for the only thing of any importance which he had ever ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... I'd crammed my life full. I didn't know there was a cranny left anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in everything I could lay my hands on—there was such a big void to fill. And after all I haven't filled it. I felt that the moment I saw you. (A pause.) I'm ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... said, but still always on the scent of that doomed beast. From one thicket to another he tried to hide himself, but the moist leaves of the underwood told quickly of his whereabouts. He tried every hole and cranny about the house, but every hole and corner had been stopped by Owen's jealous care. He would have lived disgraced for ever in his own estimation, had a fox gone to ground anywhere about his domicile. At last a loud whoop was heard just in front ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Macaulay or Clive, or somebody of equal consequence. More imposing even than Westminster is St. Paul's. I am not thinking so much of the memorials or the tombs or the statues there, but of the tattered battleflags bearing the names of battles fought by the English in every crack and cranny of the world, from Quebec to Ladysmith, and from Lucknow to Khartum. Beholding them there, draped above the tombs, some faded but still intact, some mere clotted wisps of ragged silk clinging to blackened standards, gives one an uplifting ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... In a cranny of the rocks Agatha hollowed out the sand, still warm beneath the surface here where the sun had lain on it through long summer days, and made for herself a bed and coverlet and pillow all at once. With the sand piled around and ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the spirit of cabbaging, a little distorted muttered the Rover, as he turned lightly on his heel, and tapped the gong, with an impatience that sent the startling sound through every cranny of the ship. Four or five heads were thrust in at the different doors of the cabin, and the voice of one was heard, desiring to know the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Ranulph, fiercely springing to his feet. "How escaped they? There appears to be but one entrance to this vault. I will search each nook and cranny." ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... boulders, spotted aloft with bright yellow lichens, and black drops of tar, polished lower down by the surge of centuries, and towards the foot of the wall roughened with crusts of barnacles, and mussel-nests in crack and cranny, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... fell on its surface, pulverizing these by keeping them in motion, but producing very unimportant effects on the rock below; the roundings and striation produced by ice were superficial; while a torrent penetrated into every angle and cranny, undermining and wearing continually, and carrying stones, at the lowest estimate, six hundred thousand times as fast as the glacier. Had the quantity of rain which has fallen on Mont Blanc in the form of snow (and descended in the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. The interior of the hold and the cabin became free from damp, and ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... longer—she merely floated. Every moment she seemed about to turn over on her back, like a dead fish. The good condition and perfectly water-tight state of the hull alone saved her from this disaster. Below the water-line not a plank had started. There was not a cranny, chink, nor crack; and she had not made a single drop of water in the hold. This was lucky, as the pump, being ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... "I wanted to ask what you meant by stating that it was your habit always to be abroad in the hours immaculate? I happened by the merest chance to be abroad in them myself this morning. I examined every nook and cranny of them, I turned them inside out; but not one jot or tittle of you ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the turk's-head brush, the policeman ascended Mrs. Gammer's small, steep staircase. When he reached her bedroom, he poked into every cranny and corner with the handle of his brush. But no ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... have one of them fellows running about loose. I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby. He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks. And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm. Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched. There was ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... be all on fire with the spirit of this religion now," said the Minister. "They should give it forth to the world as a vital heat warming up the temple of the heart like a furnace; a light, flooding every niche and cranny of that temple with full illumination; a fountain, watering all its sanctities and graces; and music, filling it to overflow with the voice ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... lay them better and stronger even than your super-structure; vault every thing under the lower rooms—ay, vault them, either in solid stone or brick, and drain and counter drain, and explore every crick and cranny of your sub-soil; and get rid of your land springs; and do not let the water from any neighbouring hill percolate through your garden, nor rise into a pleasing jet-d'eau right under the floor of your principal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... blew with bitter keenness through every chink and cranny, roaring and whistling round the bare gray house, rattling the doors and windows with every angry gust. In the little parlour at the back of the house it was not heard so plainly. A bright fire burned in the grate, and the crimson curtains gave it a look of warmth and comfort which ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... articles of female attire. On another table, placed below a high, narrow, shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny), were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling which, we fear, many of our readers ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... creation, election, and redemption, and shall see and know as thoroughly, all the things of heaven, and earth, and hell, even as perfectly, as now we know our A, B, C. For the Spirit, with which we shall in every cranny of soul and body be filled, I say, "searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Cor 2:10). We see what strange things have been known by the prophets and saints of God, and that when ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... out of the window on her right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena Vista,"—of course,—which she thought pretty, though she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded up, though the mosquito netting still ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... grease-bespattered lantern and a box of matches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from a Clough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he drew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he had driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dip carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung the lantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect, with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentially ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the seed falling on rocky soil or the fertile furrow. When the merchants with caravans and silken tunics surrounded Him it becomes the pearl of great price. When amongst simple villagers it is the lost groat in search of which the housewife sweeps the floor and searches each nook and cranny. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... much. Great were my labours, yet in them I found more happiness than I had known since that fatal day when I, the rich London merchant, Hubert of Hastings, had stood before the altar of St. Margaret's church with Blanche Aleys. Indeed, every cranny of my time and mind being thus filled with things finished or attempted, I forgot my great loneliness as an alien in a strange land, and once more became as I had been when I trafficked in ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... fluttered out of its cranny in the wall. With an apprehensive beat of its wings it sailed off over the deserted village and sent forth ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... you are quite alone in your ravishing monastery, working and never going out? That is what it means TO HAVE ALREADY gone out too much. Monsieur craves Syrias, deserts, dead seas, dangers and fatigues! But nevertheless he can make Bovarys in which every little cranny of life is studied and painted with mastery. What an odd person who can also compose the fight between the Sphinx and the Chimaera! You are a being quite apart, very mysterious, gentle as a lamb with it all. I have had a great desire to question you, but a too great respect ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... essays[67] of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up—honesty, justice, generosity, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... moment, shrugged, and spoke out. "Ashby's active enough, sir. Since yesterday I have just grazed three picket posts. He has vedettes everywhere. The report is that he has fifteen hundred troopers—nearly all valley men, born to the saddle and knowing every crook and cranny of the land. They move like a whirlwind and deal ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... skill in making buckskin shirts. She was a dead shot, and it was said of her that even "Calamity Jane," Deadwood's "first lady," was forced "to yield the palm to Mrs. Maddox when it came to the use of a vocabulary which adequately searched every nook and cranny of a man's life from birth to ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... sell and trample them all, I will, some day," he says, and dances a banshee dance with shuffling feet and flinging arms. The spiders—who are all misers—glare down on him with a poison joy, and hasten to spin a web over the cranny where the can of treasure is buried. "No thief will suspect what is hidden there now," says Tim; and opens another deposit in another cranny, where a spider with golden spots mounts guard. But the mice having set their nests in order only look ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... comes the Spring, Touching but not transforming what they are: Flowers in the cranny but a foolish thing, Grass in the pavements, foreign as a star ... Each reminiscent, half-insensate stone Mocked with new life it cannot call ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... The more they dug into the facts, however, and into Arnold's reputation, the more it appeared that he was telling the truth. Besides having an unquestionable character, he was an excellent mountain pilot, and mountain pilots are a breed of men who know every nook and cranny of the mountains in their area. The most fantastic part of Arnold's story had been the 1,700-miles-per-hour speed computed from Arnold's timing the objects between two landmarks. "When Arnold told us how he computed the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... oozed out, as, somehow or other, news, like water, will find a vent, however small the cranny,—by slow degrees it came to be understood that Mrs. Deborah's visiter was a certain Mr. Adolphus Lynfield, clerk to an attorney of no great note in the good town of Belford Regis, and nearly related, as he ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... taught the master brain of the British army that it was useless longer to chase De Wet up and down over the face of the earth. The Boer general was familiar with every crack and cranny of that earth. He knew where to hide, where to dodge, where to scurry away as fast as his convoy train could bear him company. Behind him, plucky, but totally in ignorance of the natural advantages of the country, toiled and perspired and ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... free men. For at the end of three days' fight we had been driven up to the easternmost end of the Dale, and up anigh to the jaws of the pass whereby the Folk had first come into Silver- dale, and we had those with us who knew every cranny of that way, while to strangers who knew it not it was utterly impassable; night was coming on also, and even those murder-carles were weary with slaying; and, moreover, on this last day, when they saw that they had won all, they were fighting ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and even in the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. The wind extinguished her candle, but an imperfect ray of clouded moonshine gleamed through a cranny in the roof of the vault and fell directly on the spring of the trap-door." But Walpole's medievalism was very thin. He took some pains with the description of the feudal cavalcade entering the castle gate with the great sword, but the passage is incorrect and poor in detail ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... active associates at Long's or Stevens's, the Cider Cellar, or the Coal-hole! The general introduction of gas throws too clear a light upon many dark transactions and midnight frolics to allow the repetition of the scenes of former times: here and there to be sure an odd nook, or a dark cranny, is yet left unenlightened; but the leading streets of the metropolis are, for the most part, too well illuminated to allow the spreeish or the sprightly to carry on their jokes in security, or bolt away with safety when a charley thinks ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... deeper into the gravel, and stayed there. For some weeks he led a very quiet life among the pebbles, and the only mishap that befell him during that time was the direct result of his retiring disposition. In his anxiety to get as far away from the world as possible he one day wedged himself into a cranny so narrow that he couldn't get out again. He couldn't even breathe, for his gill-covers were squeezed down against the sides of his head as if he were in a vise. A trout's method of respiration is to open his mouth and fill it with water, and then to close it again and force the water ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... and a scrap of cotton wool. If you swob yourself carefully with this, you will not become diseased. Remember always it is delay that is dangerous. If there has been delay, use a syringe sufficiently large for the contents to flood the urethra and slightly distend it, so that every nook and cranny is cleansed. ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... in a strident voice of triumph, while a burst of diabolical laughter seemed to proceed from every cranny of the eaves and piers of the old bridge, and to be taken up by goblin echoes from the summits of the adjacent towers ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... this time the insect engaged my particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... with every reconciling softness of charity—such, in turns, and in quickest intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and the fame of Robert Burns. It became him—and he knew it—that on this great and consummating occasion, so full of reconcilement betwixt human frailty and human ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... our faces to the cold and icy North,—now our path lies through the hot and sunny South. Then we lived in a log-hut, and closed every cranny to keep out the cold,—now, in our cottage of palms and cane, we shall be but too glad to let the breeze play through the open walls. Then we wrapped our bodies in thick furs,—now we shall be content with the lightest garments. Then we were bitten by the frost—now we shall ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that he stood in a shaft of consuming light that exposed every shadowy nook and cranny of his nature, and the narrow-minded meanness that ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... followed, several domiciliary visits were paid, not a shack or tent in Nome escaping, but Fortune lay in his cranny undisturbed. In fact, little attention was given to Uri Bram's cabin; for it was the last place under the sun to expect to find the murderer of John Randolph. Except during such interruptions, Fortune lolled about the cabin, playing ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... to talk about, for I searched every crook and cranny of my old brain for bits of any sort with which to interest her. The last turn in the path leading back to the house found us friendly and with a ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... had not dripp'd upon my torch. Faith 'twas a moving letter—very moving! His life in danger—no place safe but this. 5 'Twas his turn now to talk of gratitude! And yet—but no! there can't be such a villain. It cannot be! Thanks to that little cranny Which lets the moonlight in! I'll go and sit by it. To peep at a tree, or see a he-goat's beard, 10 Or hear a cow or two breathe loud in their sleep, 'Twere better than this dreary ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is exhausted, and move on to another. In Nicaragua they are generally called "Army Ants." One of the smaller species (Eciton predator) used occasionally to visit our house, swarm over the floors and walls, searching every cranny, and driving out the cockroaches and spiders, many of which were caught, pulled or bitten to pieces, and carried off. The individuals of this species are of various sizes; the smallest measuring one and a quarter lines, and the largest three ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... spent many years on Tillamook Rock, Eric was eager to see every nook and cranny of the building, and he importuned his uncle to go with him over the structure. But, although the inspector and the light-keeper were brothers, the trip was an official one, and his uncle deputed one of the assistant light-keepers to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... windows and doors. Growing, however, more desperate at the loss of their companions, and burning for revenge, they rushed up closer to the house, pouring in their fire, which searched out every hole and cranny. Some of the slaves who incautiously exposed themselves were the first to suffer. A poor fellow was standing at the window next to me. A bullet struck him on the breast. It was fired from a tree, I suspect. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... not: the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be flung open. Patriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from grundsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar, or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found; all safe there; lying packed in straw,—apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangour and vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching:—to the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... confessed Tony. "It is too soon to tell. Just now Alan fills every nook and cranny of me. I can't think of any other man or imagine myself loving anybody else as I loved him. But I am a very much alive person. I don't believe I shall give myself to death forever. Alan himself wouldn't want it so. A part of me will always be his but there are other ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the upper deck, but narrow in proportion to her build, for she was what is technically called a Tennessee cotton boat. To those who have never seen a cotton boat loaded, it is a wondrous sight. The bales are piled up from the lower guards wherever there is a cranny until they reach above the second deck, room being merely left for passengers to walk outside the cabin. You have regular alleys left amid the cotton in order to pass about on the first deck. Such is a cotton boat carrying from 1,500 to ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... depend whether he proceeded or not, forthwith, to the apprehension of Mr. Caryll. Meanwhile the search went on amain, and was extended presently to the very bedroom where the dead Sir Richard lay. Every nook and cranny was ransacked; the very mattress under the dead man was removed, and investigated, and even Mr. Caryll and Bentley had to submit to being searched. But it all proved fruitless. Not a line of treasonable matter was ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... service a band of young braves, under the guidance of several warriors who knew every trail of the range, every waterhole, every cranny where even a wolf might hide. They swept the river-end of the plateau, and working westward, scoured the levels, ridges, valleys, climbed to the peaks, and sent their Indian dogs into the thickets and caves. From Eschtah's encampment westward the hogans diminished in number till ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... looking to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery, the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... time. His days were filled with action. Never was any who had more business to attend to! Yet he was of those to whom solitude is as air,—imperiously a necessity. Into it he plunged through every crack and cranny among events. He knew how to use the space in which swim events. But beside this he must make for himself wide holdings, and when he could not get them by day he took ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... is light, though the circumference may be very dark. Much will remain obscure. That is of very small consequence to Hope, which does not need information half so much as it needs assurance. Like some flower in the cranny of the rock, it can spread a broad bright blossom on little soil, if ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... missionaries have said so, and it is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts. During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical, have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... ease of great strength he drew himself along through cranny and hollow till he was far from where they sat, and had reached the place where the boats were made fast. It would seem natural to every one that he should suddenly be standing there to see that all was right, and that none of the moorings had slipped ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Hermeias, is but a transliteration of the Sanscrit Sarameyas, under which he appears in the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house, is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet further, for as Sarameyas is derived from the root sar, to creep, whence serpo, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... programme to abduct the girl by main force, unless peaceful or stealthy measures should prove unsuccessful. When, however, he reached the dell and entered his dwelling, he found that the bird had flown! Every nook and cranny of the place was carefully searched; but, to the consternation of the Hebrew, and the wrath of Gadarn and his men, not a vestige of Branwen was to ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... myself, in the manner of rifles, Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles:— 1230 There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence the mind Not a corner nor cranny to cling by can find; You feel as in nightmares sometimes, when you slip Down a steep slated roof, where there's nothing to grip; You slide and you slide, the blank horror increases,— You had rather by far ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... worship had commenced so strong a flirtation with the Lambeth sybil, that all the world looked upon wedlock as inevitable. As I stood in the porch, I overheard your amatory sighs and groans which sounded in my ears like Boreas wooing Vulcan through a cranny in a chimney-corner. On approaching your pew, how was I struck with the change in your physiognomy! Your face heretofore as red and round as the full moon, had, by the joint influence of that planet and the aforesaid Joanna, extended itself ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... opened unceremoniously and some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending when they entered the room, was passed over without so much as ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... is intense, and to combat it in these buildings of green lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each night. He squeezes in through every chink and cranny, and once inside the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when I went in ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... solution of the problem; and to minds of sombre tinge, who naturally feel life as a tragic mystery, such optimism is a shallow dodge or mean evasion. It accepts, in lieu of a real deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely, a cranny to escape by. It leaves the general world unhelped and still in the clutch of Satan. The real deliverance, the twice-born folk insist, must be of universal application. Pain and wrong and death must be fairly ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not offer to build houses and barns thereon reverencing the splendor of the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fellow, was always ready to second me in my explorations into every nook and cranny of the vessel. He imagined that my reading was distasteful and enforced by the older gentlemen, so he was continually planning some diversion, and often invited me to sit with him and listen to his experiences of a ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
