"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... juice sizzled as it hit. Actually, this was probably imaginary. The stinging unit was not that sensitive to tobacco, though it was sensitive enough. As the drops splattered it, the pile of leaves erupted with a snuffling hiss like an overloaded teakettle into a tornado of bucking, ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the top of Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty free with me upon that occasion. Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... man the deathful whaleboat's bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... forsake me, then, To spare thyself a little bashful pain? Paolo, dost thou know what 'tis for me, A woman—nay, a dame of highest rank— To lose my purity? to walk a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou art ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... promenade, and worried and lashed and soaked that hideous structure to within an inch of its unnatural life. Behind the town the woods had swayed and creaked, funeral black against the grey thick sky. Across the folds the rain fell in slanting sheets with the sibilant hiss of relentless power ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... themselves again on the ferry-boat. Water and sky were grey, with a dividing gleam of sunset that sent sleek opal waves in the boat's wake. The wind had a cool tarry breath, as though it had travelled over miles of shipping, and the hiss of the water about the paddles was as delicious as though it had been splashed ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... select friends, Mr. Huntingdon sat, confident of success; and when the hiss of rockets ceased, he came forward, and addressed the assembly in an hour's speech. As a warm and rather prominent politician, he was habituated to the task, and bursts of applause from his own party frequently attested the effect of his easy, graceful ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... soon connected to the first of the cylinders and with a hiss the gas rushed into the bag when a turn of the wrench set free the precious stuff. Slowly the big yellow envelope swelled and assumed shape until by the time the last cylinder was empty it was tugging and straining to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... There was a hiss of compressed air. The "Pollard" didn't quite make the death plunge. Then she seemed to go, ever so little, toward a ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... ruffian nearest him, with a hiss of rage, drew a knife, with which he made a wicked slash at Hal. Hal did not see the movement, being closely pressed elsewhere, but Chester, with a sudden cry, leaped forward and seized the hand holding the knife, just as the weapon would have been ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... sound in the word Sister, that I cannot abide it. 'Tis a true English word, but a word I have not been used to, having never had a sis-s-s-ter before, as you know,"—Speaking the first syllable of the word with an emphatical hiss. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... them, they grew upon him, and as he pondered them, he sat gazing out on the bright blowing autumn day. The sky was dimmed with a clear pallor, across which small white clouds were driving; the yellow leaves that yet cleave to the twigs were few, and the wind swept through the branches with a hiss. The far off sea was alive with multitudinous white—the rush of the jubilant oversea across the blue plain. All without was merry, healthy, radiant, strong; in his mind brooded a single haunting thought that already ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... it before him; frowned down on it a moment with a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. Then he twisted oddly on his chair, and sat bolt upright, staring straight before him with unseeing eyes. Presently he passed a hand across his brow, and made a queer sound ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Heimbert angrily, and his wounded sense of honor giving him back for a moment all his strength, he seized his sword and stood ready for an encounter. "Oho!" laughed the Arab, "does the Christian viper still hiss so strongly? Then it only behooves me to put spurs to my horse and leave thee to perish here, thou lost creeping worm!" "Ride to the devil, thou dog of a heathen!" retorted Heimbert; "rather than entreat a crumb of thee I will die here, ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... was stopped by the populace, under a belief that it was Madame de Polignac, whom they would have insulted; the Queen, going to the theatre at Versailles with Madame de Polignac, was received with a general hiss. The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries, but sins on. The Count d'Artois is detested, and Monsieur, the general favorite. The Archbishop of Toulouse is ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... as you are, kneeling." She went over to the fire-place, took the whip from the mantle-piece, and, watching me with a smile, let it hiss through the air; then she slowly rolled up ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It resembles at once the barking of a dog, and the howl of a wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... not deny him this last whim. He found and strung a bow, and chose a Ghibelline war-arrow. Behind them, young Foresto drew in his breath with a hiss, laid his hand on his dagger, and turned the colour of clay. Old Baldo raised the bow, put all his remaining strength into the draw, and uttered a cracking shout of bliss. The mannikin no longer danced; but toward him, from the hillside, some men in steel were running. Baldo, sinking back ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... hearing the last cheerful good-night of that destined Pompeii, creeping on tiptoe with the mother when she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath; hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and he coils; now he soars up erect,—crest superb, and forked tongue,—the beautiful horror! Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the window, and the knock ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a hiss from between her set lips. And in one short instant all that was best in her and all that was worst became suddenly visible, as turning to her softly chuckling brother, she motioned him gently out of the room, and then turning ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... I am all venom, all viper, and cannot forbear to hiss even at my friend. But let my enemies beware! They shall find I can sting!—These cursed gnawings of heart will not ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Vulcan's echoes hiss and roar, And idle sits the hapless Gondolier. His Gondola is crumbling on the shore, The Penny Steamer's whistle racks his ear. 'ARRY exults—but Beauty is not here; Trade swells, Arts grow—but Nature seems to die. Hucksters may boast that Venice is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... Crabbe's life were spent at Trowbridge, varied by occasional absences among hiss friends at Bath, and in the neighbourhood, and by annual visits of greater length to the family of Samuel Hoare at Hampstead. Meantime his son John was resident with him at Trowbridge, and the parish and parishioners were not ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... in the production of the piece. He had come to the conclusion that the public was a fickle, foolish thing, and no one could tell what it would hiss or applaud. Then he remembered the blackness of the night when only two years before his other ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... guns, litter of powder-parcels, strong scent, A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful shining, Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated onto the skin, or stuck into it, as part of the skin. They are very slow in motion; and when a man comes nigh them they will stand still and hiss, not endeavouring to get away. Their livers are also spotted black and yellow: and the body when opened has a very unsavoury smell. I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere but here. The iguanas I have observed to be very good meat: and I have often eaten of them with pleasure; ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Every one in the court turned about, and gazed with steadfast hatred on the man in the dock. From the jury-box where the twelve sworn brethren were whispering together, a sound in the general stillness like a prolonged "hiss-s-s!" was heard; and then, in answer to the challenge of the officer, "How say you, gentlemen of the jury, guilty or not guilty?" came in a melancholy voice ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... it may, there once lived in that great forest a boy and his sister. Not being able to speak their language I do not know what their names may have meant; but they had names, one sounding like a grunt, the other a hiss. Better call them Umpl and Sptz, which is as near as I can come to it. Of course Sptz was the girl; and they both believed most firmly in hobgoblins, evil spirits, wicked elves, that were ever on the watch for them in the dark; and when they ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... All the writers talk of the place as infernal. We do not believe this place so near to hell as to heaven. We doubt if Satan ever comes here. He knows enough of hot climates, by experience, to fly from the hiss of these subterraneous furnaces. Standing amid the roaring, thundering, stupendous wonder of two hundred spouting water springs, we felt like crying out, "Great and marvelous are thy ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... say if you had set up to be clever, you would not be where you now are:' A wise saying; I admire you for it. Well, well, I and my dog have amused your townsfolk; they have amply repaid us. We are public servants; according as we act in public—hiss us or applaud. Are we to submit to an inquisition into our private character? Are you to ask how many mutton bones has that dog stolen? how many cats has he worried? or how many shirts has the showman in his wallet? how many debts ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... moved across the shed—till, on the other side, one ingot after another was lowered from the truck, and no sooner felt the ground than it became the prey of some unseen force, which drove it swiftly onwards from beneath, to where it leapt with a hiss and crunch into the jaws of the mill. Then out again on the further side, lengthened, and pared, the demon in it already half tamed!—flying as it were from the first mill, only to be caught again in the squeeze of the second, and the third—until ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... despair seized her, and a wild thought prompted her to make a sudden dash for freedom. Death might come, but such a death was preferable to the fate which must await her at the end of this journey. Her fingers had tightened on the reins, when the silence was suddenly broken, and, with a swift hiss, a streak of light cut through the darkness skyward, paused a moment, and then, with a muffled detonation, burst into globes of light which floated downward. The foremost of the troop reined in their horses sharply at the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... The hiss of a rocket hurled her words into space. The fireworks had begun. Miss Brown looked at them and watched Nelson at the same time. As a good business woman who was also a good citizen, having subscribed five dollars to ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... with folded handkerchiefs on their heads and long earrings in their ears, carrying baskets of fruit on their arms. They passed peasant men driving donkeys or oxen, who smiled at them from under hats decorated with pompons of colored paper and tinsel. Geese ran out to hiss at them as they flew by, and hens and chickens fluttered out of their way; but Rafael had eyes only for ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... tired watchers dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking around for his wig; while the sick man, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of this wave (which made every heart beat), all ears heard the long-drawn following "Ah!"—not fear only, not expectation made real, but rather awe, expectation shown just. It began low and hollow, ran up to a hiss: then the silence was such that the cracking of a man's ankle-bone by the door sounded like a carter's whip to him upon the bishop's throne. In that deathly state the whole body of people remained breathless, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... chopping. At the same moment the dogs appeared in force from under the cabin, their every action indicating that they had been summoned by the voice of their master. They looked up at him, wagging their tails vigorously, and then, encouraged, no doubt, by a low hiss or an order to "hunt 'em up," began running about with their heads high in the air. Discovering the approaching horseman, they started for him on the instant, each one striving to lead in the race and to growl and bark ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the door was closed tightly and then Tom Swift turned the valve that admitted the sea water. With a hiss the Atlantic began rushing in, and in a short time the outer door ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... rope remained as when the teams had first dropped. Then, of a sudden, Dale gave a hiss and up came his men, to haul in on the rope several inches ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... reversing the action of the engines. His hands direct, and his foot literally pinches obedience to the course over the roughest and most refractory ground. The dreadful consequences of boiler-bursting are annihilated by a judicious application of tubular boilers. Should, indeed, a tube burst, a hiss about equal to that of a hot nail plunged into water, contains the sum total of alarm, while a few strokes with a hammer will set all to rights again. Lastly, he has so contrived his 'carriers,' that ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as long and as much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... play, in the streets, in the lanes, At the fane of the merciful God, 'Midst a people in prison and chains, Spy-haunted, at home and abroad— Steals through all like the hiss of a snake Hate, by terror itself unsuppressed: "Cursed be the Italian could take The Austrian ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... and a moment later he heard the water hiss along the deck. He was not in the least sorry for what he had done; still, he regretted the act. Craig was a beast, and there was no knowing what he might do or say. But the hose had been simply irresistible. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... speak was when the great swan went gliding by, and, lifting his wings, began to hiss at the boat in a rather alarming manner. Then Rosie did touch Miss Peters's arm, asking, "Will he ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... atom in their corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living voice or living tread, cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry; haunted only by uninterrupted echoes from far off, wandering hither and thither among their walls, unable to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from under their shadow into the gulf of air: and, sometimes, when the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the sound of the torrent ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... behind the wooded point below, which masked the up-coming steamers till one heard the sighing labor of their stacks before he saw their smoke. It was a muddy, rushing giant, bearing a burden of sand and silt, so that one might hear it hiss and grind by stooping at its edge to listen; but the slanting sun this afternoon made it appear like a boiling flood of molten gold which issued silently out of a land of mystery and vanished into a valley of forgetfulness. At least so the trader fancied, and found himself wishing that it might ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... lodgings before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on. The rain came in its place. The great forty-day flood re-accomplished itself in an hour. We heard the beat of the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rain on the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almost continuously the close-packed, drenching rain.... The wet came in. We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped up out of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San Carlo, to do—what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman—to deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose beauty is faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every body spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would be crammed, because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his tempestuous yarn with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been air-tight—it was as close as possible—yet we heard the shrieking of the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing stricken with sudden fear: we seemed to be hanging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... lay on his oars, hearing the blue tide with a ceaseless motion heave and swirl and gutter all round its rocky border, and the serpents' hiss come from some Medusa's head of trailing weed uttered in venomous warning. Under flying moons the shaggy hemlock grove was like a bearskin thrown over the white and leprous nakedness of stony flanks. At the approach of storm the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... you? When last I was here I asked you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true passion had come upon him; that ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!" he exclaimed, suddenly ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... to be endured. The din became incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But the wind had steadily increased in violence. It did not ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... reverse. They inflate their bodies, having not only large lungs, but air-sacs in connection with them. The throat bulges; the body sways from side to side; and the creature expresses its sentiments in a hiss. The power of colour-change is very remarkable, and depends partly on the contraction and expansion of the colour-cells (chromatophores) in the under-skin (or dermis) and partly on close-packed refractive granules and crystals ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... realities might draw profit and instruction. But nothing was so thrilling as this: to wait and struggle among these clanging, rending iron boxes, with the repeated explosions of the shells and the artillery, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars, the hiss as they passed in the air, the grunting and puffing of the engine—poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end of all—the expectation ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... had vigor to sing, the song of the mill knew no resting; morning and evening, day and night it crooned its rhythmic tune; only during the daylight Sundays did its murmur die to a sibilant hiss. All the week its doors were filled with the coming and going of men and women and children: many men, more women, and greater and greater throngs of children. It seemed to devour children, sitting with its myriad eyes gleaming and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... snapped so fiercely at the Dons; and they peered down into the dark empty hold where the treasure-chests had lain, and up at the three masts and the rigging that had borne so long the swift wings of the Pelican. And they heard the hiss and rattle of the ropes as Hubert ordered a man to run up a flag to show them how it was done; and they smelled the strange tarry briny smell of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... left. About ten o'clock, the occasional picket firing increased to the sharper rattle of skirmishing, and then deepened to the roar of battle, as the sound of continuous volleys rolled through the woods, mingled with the bellow of cannon and the hiss of shells. Every man now stood with rifle in hand, ready for the decisive moment which had evidently come. Above the noise of musketry and cannon we could sometimes hear the well-known rebel yell, and knew that they were charging with all their force. Now the horrid uproar could be heard moving ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... some stage-struck gentlemen whom nothing can convince of their total unfitness for the stage. You may hiss them night after night, you may present them with bouquets of carrots, and wreaths of cabbage leaves and onions, and leather medals, and services of tin plate; and if you find them "insensible to kindness," you may try brickbats—but in vain. They will cling to the stage for life—living, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... not daring to talk. There was no sound except for the faint whoosh of their breathing through the gas masks they were wearing, and the muffled hiss from a ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... door swung shut with a bang as Paddy and Capps, followed by Kennedy and myself, crept into the air-lock. Paddy turned on a valve, and compressed air from the tunnel began to rush in with a hiss as of escaping steam. Pound after pound to the square inch the pressure slowly rose until I felt sure the drums of my ears would burst. Then the hissing noise began to dwindle down to a wheeze, and then it stopped all of a sudden. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... and often warned me. Whence learned she this?—O she was innocent! And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom! The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air, Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter. And the young steed recoils upon his haunches, The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard. O surer than suspicion's hundred eyes Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart, By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness, Reveals the approach ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... little while we stopped again and hailed loudly. The only sound in answer was the low hiss of a sea, which had begun to make with the breeze, and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... anger—its crest began to glow and rise, as if menacing and preparing itself to spring upon the Neapolitan—Glaucus caught quickly at one of the half-burned logs upon the hearth—and, as if enraged at the action, the snake came forth from its shelter, and with a loud hiss raised itself on end till its height nearly approached that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... in front of whom he thinks is the right one. If he should make a correct guess, the company clap their hands, and the person to whom he knelt goes outside. If, however, the guess is an incorrect one, the company hiss loudly, and the guesser has to go outside, come back, and try again. Of course, it will make more amusement if when a boy is sent outside the room a girl be chosen as the person to whom he has to kneel; and the opposite if a ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... sight of Nana. When he saw everybody turning toward him he grew extremely red at the thought of having thus unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor, smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana's gracious contours, lolled back in their seats ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the theatres have got up a plot," continued the manager; "they will even hiss the piece, but I have made arrangements to defeat their kind intentions. I have squared the men in their pay; they will make a muddle of it. A couple of city men yonder have taken a hundred tickets apiece to secure a triumph ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... fine ear I listen and hear The tender Silence speak, As it leans on the breast of Night to rest, And presses his dusky cheek. And the darkness turns in its sleep, and yearns For something that is kin; And I hear the hiss of a scorching kiss, As ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the chimney. Here was the genuine chimney-corner of our fathers; there were seats on each side of the fireplace where one could sit snug and sheltered on December nights, warm and merry in the blazing light, and listen to the battle of the storm, and hear the flame spit and hiss at the falling snowflakes. At the back of the fire were great blackened tiles with raised initials and a ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... she gasped. "He has spoken to you? So, Charles Sadler, Charles Sadler!" Her voice came through her white lips like a snake's hiss. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... again. He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars. Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly. "But it is worth while all the same—even though one may be turned back from Paradise. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the ground To Galatea grieving for her love; He who could show to all unseeing eyes Glad shepherds watching o'er their flocks by night, Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies, Or Jordan standing as an heap upright - He'll meet both Jones and me and clap or hiss us Vicariously ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... had lifted itself from the box, to glare at several of the boys. Then its cold, beady eyes were fixed on Dick and it uttered a vicious hiss. This was more than the eldest Rover could stand and he let box and snake drop in a hurry. The snake glided out of sight ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... cast my eyes round the room, old memories seemed to awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and sat down between my legs, as if he thought that something strange and unexpected ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had already disappeared amid the dark cypress-trees of the hunting park. The immense enclosure stretching from the edge of the morasses that bordered the walls of Babylon far into the country, soon echoed with the shouts of the attendants beating the coverts for game, the baying of the dogs, the hiss of lances and whir of arrows. Bright-hued birds, roused by the tumult, flew wildly hither and thither, now and then the superb plumage of a bird of paradise flashing like a jewel among the dense foliage of ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... the tensing trigger finger and pushed hard against the floor. His head rolled clear but the bullet tore through his shoulder. Coleman didn't have a chance for a second shot, there was a fizzling hiss from the tank and the riot ports released a flood of tear gas. The stricken men never saw the gas-masked police that poured in ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... came through Duncan's teeth with a little hiss. One could fancy that he was wishing that his had been the hand to strike the blow. The Baron glanced round casually. He called a waiter and complained of the slow service, sent for another bottle of ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bird was sitting, the cock would bring a green caterpillar for her every four or five minutes, and sometimes take her place on the nest. I often took the husk down from its nail to show the brave little bird sitting on her eggs. If touched she would hiss and set up her feathers, but did not leave her nest. When the young birds were hatched, the parents were incessantly at work from early morning till late at night bringing small caterpillars about ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... keep them for his children! But it is all to torment her, that I, in my turn, give not back her glances, pretending that I have another love. To hear this makes her jealous of me, by Paean, and she wastes with pain, and springs madly from the sea, gazing at my caves and at my herds. And I hiss on my dog to bark at her, for when I loved Galatea he would whine with joy, and lay his muzzle on her lap. Perchance when she marks how I use her she will send me many a messenger, but on her envoys I will ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck me. But she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... precisely, "dog." When it is used in the sense to mean not "a dog" or "one dog" but two or more dogs—in other words what we grammarians are accustomed to call the plural—it is proper to add to it the diphthong, s, pronounced with a hiss like z in soup. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... not have been more than three miles distant, when the space cleared was as wide as Mr. Hardy deemed necessary for safety. A regular noise, something between a hiss and a roar, was plainly audible; and when the wind lifted the smoke, the flames could be seen running along in an unbroken wall of fire. Birds flew past over head with terrified cries, and a close, hot smell of ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... expression that there was no sound in the headphones except the frying noise all main-sequence stars give out, and the infrequent thumping noises that come from gas-giant planets' lower atmospheres, and the Jansky-radiation hiss which comes ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... in colour with a train, something which will hiss and whisper if mademoiselle moves about the room—yes, and I think one of mademoiselle's big hats," she said. "We will have mademoiselle as modern as possible, so that, when the great ladies of the past appear in the coiffure of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... his shoulder and took a long and steady aim. Just then the stranger put his fingers to his lips and gave a low, shrill whistle. It was the last whistle that he was to give upon this earth. There was a sharp, jarring twang of the bow-string, the hiss of the flying bolt, and the dull thud as it struck its mark. The man gave a shrill, quavering cry, and went staggering back, and then fell all of a heap against the wall behind him. As though in answer to the cry, half a dozen men rushed tumultuously out from the shadow of the gateway whence the ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... resounding that one feels himself annihilated by the mere sound of the downpoured thunder of these great constellations of destruction that form in the sky. One sees and one feels the fragments passing close to one's head with their hiss of red-hot iron plunged in water. The blast of one explosion so burns my hands that I let my rifle fall. I pick it up again, reeling, and set off in the tawny-gleaming tempest with lowered head, lashed by spirits of dust and soot in a crushing downpour like volcanic ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the scout lay down beside the off-world man, listening to the soft hiss of waves on sand, the distant cluttering of night insects. And his last waking thought was a wish for ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Pandemonium to hear the news of his success, which he related, overjoyed at having wrought the ruin of mankind and revenged himself on God by so small a thing as the eating of an apple. As he concluded and stood waiting their applause, he heard a universal hiss, and saw himself surrounded by serpents, and himself changing into an enormous dragon. The great hall was filled with the monsters, scorpions, asps, hydras, and those who stood waiting without with applause for their leader were likewise changed ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Professor Paul M. Doty, Jr., of Harvard's Chemistry Department; Professor Lloyd Reynolds, Yale University economist; Professor Louis B. Sohn of the Harvard Law School; Dr. Joseph E. Johnson, an old friend and former associate of Alger Hiss in the State Department, who succeeded Hiss as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and still holds that position; Professor Robert R. Bowie, former head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff (a job which Hiss also held at one time), now Director of the ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... Jerry would "Whuff!" softly the information that there was a noise he did not know; and Nalasu, with different sibilances, would hiss to him to stand still, to whuff more softly, or to keep silent, or to come to him noiselessly, or to go into the bush and investigate the source of the strange noise, or, barking loudly, to rush and ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... held a heavy revolver in his hand, and that the butt of another one protruded from his sash. "I am armed and you are not. If one of you moves or speaks he is a dead man. If not, I shall not harm you. You must wait here for an hour. Why, you FOOLS" (this with a hiss of contempt which rang in our ears for many a long day), "do you know who it is that has stuck you up? Do you know who it is that has been playing it upon you for months as a parson and a saint? Conky Jim, the bushranger, ye apes. And Phillips and Maule were ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe, even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird sound—the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... ringing now, and he could hear nothing but the shriek of the wind, the hollow roaring of it in the woods, and the hiss and whish of driving snow. The folds of his capote protected him partially from the stinging particles, and his gauntleted ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Bass! We had a Dutchman working for us when I was just a kid, and he was forever bawling out: 'Sa-am Pass was porn in Injiany, it was-s hiss natiff ho-o-ome!'" ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... contains those lizards of India and Africa which have long held the regard of eastern nations, upon the slender report that they hiss upon the approach of a crocodile, and so warn the incautious traveller to retreat in time. The truth is, these sauria prey upon the crocodile's eggs, no doubt to the particular annoyance of the crocodile, who are, therefore, it is more than probable, no friends ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... fete, with its presence. People went to see an encounter in chivalric tourney, not merely between the infantry and the cavalry, but between the old army and the young. The exhibition fully satisfied public expectation. No one was tempted to hiss the piece, and everybody had ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About |
