"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a physical struggle for the possession of the letter he would be outmatched; but his passion grew colder and more malignant, and in a voice that cut like the hiss of a snake he spoke slowly and deliberately. He was all sober now; the drunkenness of brain and blood was lost, for the time, in the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... all earthly despair, for the very altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... were on the deck looked pale and anxious, as if they dreaded the consequences of the hurricane. Bambrick and another good hand went to the helm. A part of the fore-staysail was hoisted, just to pay the vessel's head off. We were not kept long in suspense. With a loud hiss and roar like thunder the hurricane struck us. The schooner heeled over to the gale; I thought she was going over altogether. Many fancied so likewise, and cries of terror escaped from several of the Frenchmen. Lieutenant Preville uttered an expression of annoyance ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Place de la Concorde, was distributed thence over certain sections of the city agreed upon beforehand. Nothing that could be called a disturbance took place during the march; and though there was a hiss now and then and murmurings of discontent, yet the most noteworthy mutterings were directed against the defunct Empire. Indeed, I found everywhere that the national misfortunes were laid at Napoleon's door—he, by this time, having become a scapegoat ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... beneath him. A combat in which neither of the combatants seemed desirous of assuming the aggressive. Lying in a close coil, with its head rising from the center, its forked tongue darting in and out, and emitting every now and then an angry hiss, the snake, swaying its head from side to side, closely followed in its movements those of the dog, which circled about it barking furiously, and apparently watching for an opportunity to seize it back of the head, but which the snake was ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... and my fair companion departed. In the evening, having supped, we went to the theatre, where I revenged myself upon the "heavy man," and the "light comedian," who had in the afternoon made merry at my expense for carrying the harp, by getting up a hiss for the former gentleman, who knew not one single word of his part, and by hitting the latter individual upon the nose with an apple, for which latter feat (as the actor was a great favorite,) I was ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... was their desire to aid me in matters that I could manage better alone. If some one whispered and I tapped a pencil, instantly half the children in the room would turn around and utter the hiss with which they invoke silence, or else they would begin to scold the offender in the vernacular. Such acts led, of course, to unutterable confusion, and I had no little trouble in putting a ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... very near these phenomenal objects; the ground was lukewarm in a few places, and she could hold her hand for several minutes at a time over the cracks whence the vapour escaped. No water was visible. The roar and hiss of the steam, combined with the violence of the wind, made a noise so deafening that she was glad to quit the scene, and feel a safer soil beneath her feet. It seemed to her excited fancy as if the entire mountain were converted into a ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... The sudden hiss of the kettle, boiling over, made him jump and seize it. As he turned to set it down, there was a figure standing beside the table. Neither spoke. The kettle burnt his hand and he set it back on the hearth; then he remained standing, his eyes ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss, and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... drawn inward in a sharp hiss. Then, with startling suddenness, her hand was jerked from under his but not before he had sensed an instant chilling of the warm flesh. Wondering, he turned to see her stepping backward in slow, measured steps while her eyes, fixed immovably upon him, blazed with a fell light, mingled ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... said, "I will dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire; But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man, And the hearth was cold from the day that ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... middle of the ship were now leaping fifty feet into the air. The river manuals played upon it, but made little or no impression. It seemed to hiss back contempt and ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... never known him to be quick, sharp, or loud with the cows. When things go wrong, the crooning ceases. When it is resumed, all is well in the cow world. The other man, French, who is an excellent milker, and who stands well with the cows, has a half hiss, half whistle, such as English stable-boys use, except that it runs up and down five notes and is lost at each end. The cows like it and seem to admire French for his accomplishment even more than Judson, for they follow his movements ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... sober sorcerer rise Swift to whose wand a winged volume flies; All sudden, gorgon's hiss and dragon's glare, And ten horned fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, heaven descends, and dance on earth, Gods, imps and monsters, music, rage and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide conflagration swallows all; Thence a new world ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... in a quick, sharp, decided tone, prolonged almost to be a hiss. "That will do! Now use some of these pins—quick, fasten up your skirt, and then ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... made everything dreamlike. I sank half into unconsciousness again. It seemed an endless interval, with only the muttering hiss of the car's mechanism and the confused murmurs ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... 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
... 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 louder than ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... moon had risen full and round, so that the clouds of smoke that rose in the air appeared as white as snow. The air seemed full of the hiss and screaming of shot, each one of which, when it struck the galleon, was magnified by our hero's imagination into ten times its magnitude from the crash which it delivered and from the cloud of splinters it would cast up into the moonlight. At last he suddenly beheld one poor man ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... in with a hiss. Unable to resist, her husband crept from his place and stood peering over ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... foul deeds that have been perpetrated, in all ages, by abandoned men; when no human ears listened to the stifled shriek, or the gurgling plunge; when no human eyes beheld the murderous acts, the bloody decks, the blazing vessels, or the final hiss of ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... PARTIES. Many there are who hiss at this teaching of mine, and will have none of it, but the people of Ahura give heed thereto. O supreme spirit of good, grant me by the sacred fire and the holy ritual some sign that will convince and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... of universal interest. He is in the world to make beauty and truth evident to his fellowmen, who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of both, but whose judgment he must nevertheless not despise. If he can make something that they will cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may not have done any great thing, but if he has made something that they will neither cheer nor hiss, he may well have his misgivings, no matter how well, how finely, how truly he has done ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss; a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show the world his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... now hold. I come to you from the South—from the home of secession—from that State where the leaders of—(the balance of the sentence of the speaker was drowned by hisses). Mr. Tillman (resuming): There are only three things in the world that can hiss—a goose, a serpent, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... manly strength and ease, Such as have pleased a friend, will strangers please; But, suppliant, to the critic's throne I bow, Here burn my incense, and here pay my vow; That censure hush'd, may every blast give o'er, And the lash'd coxcomb hiss contempt no more. And ye, whom authors dread or dare in vain, Affecting modest hopes, or poor disdain, Receive a bard, who neither mad nor mean, Despises each extreme, and sails between; Who fears; but has, amid his fears confess'd, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... sake don't let them carry me off body and soul! Ah, they hiss at me with their venomous tongues! Yes! yes, they are crawling over me! They are sucking the blood in my brain! Evelyn, come to me! I will not send you away again. Oh, take me out of this fire! I'm burning! Oh God, I'm ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... knows that you are coming, and is already skimming the sandbags with his machine guns and knocking little pieces of earth and stone into your face. Extraordinary, how maddening is the sting of these harmless little pebbles and bits of dirt! The bullets ricochet away with a peculiar singing hiss, or crack overhead when they go too high. The shells which burst on the other side of the parapet shake the ground with a dull thud and crash. There are two minutes to wait before going over. Then is the time when a man feels a sinking sensation in his stomach; ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... speckled black and yellow like toads, and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles, plated on to 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, hath a very unsavoury smell. I did never see such ugly creatures anywhere but here. The guanos I have observed to be very good meat, and I have often eaten of them with pleasure; ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... fell down. The lights o' the Claymore showed dim in the drivin' mist. The wind had its way. An' it blowed the slob off t' sea like feathers. What a wonder o' power is the wind! An' the sea begun t' hiss an' swell where the ice had been. From the fog come the clang o' the Claymore's telegraph, the chug-chug of her engines, an' a long howl o' delight as she gathered way. 'Twas no time at all, it seemed t' me, afore we lost her lights in the mist. An' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... therein lay the treasure, gold and jewels—the wealth of the Indies, as the writing called it. He stood for a moment looking at the recess, and then, as he took a hasty step forward, he started, and a sharp hiss of indrawn breath came from his lips. A sudden sound had struck upon his ear, a grating noise, then silence, then light footsteps. In a moment Rosmore had blown out the candle, his one idea being to hide himself; ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... before I was half-way down the Lower Road. A few drops of rain splashed the leaves. A lightning stroke so near and sharp that I fancied I could hear the hiss was accompanied by a savage thunder-clap. Then came the roar of wind in the trees by the roadside and down came the rain. I put up my umbrella and began to run. We have few "tempests" in Denboro, those we do have are ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... For all his practical readiness of martial eye and ruling hand in action, he is also in his season "of imagination all compact." Therefore it is that in the face and teeth of all devils akin to Iago that hell could send forth to hiss at her election, we feel and recognise the spotless exaltation, the sublime and sun-bright purity, of Desdemona's inevitable and invulnerable love. When once we likewise have seen Othello's visage in his mind, we see too how much more of greatness is in this mind than in another hero's. ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the wicked flames may hiss Round the heroes who have fought For conscience and for home in all its beauty, But the grim old fortalice Takes little heed of aught That comes not in the measure of ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... through it. He had been through many stormy nights, but he had never heard the like of this. The wind blew with a steady roar, like a flood of thunder outpoured; in the midst of it, the great waves, hurled upon the rocks, uttered their voices; and between he heard the hiss of the water, as it rushed downwards from the cliff face. In the midst of all came a sharp and sudden wailing cry; and then he began to wonder what the poor ship was doing, which he thought of as riding furiously at her anchor, with the drunken crew, and the old ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "All abawd! All abawd." There was the clang of a bell, a hiss of steam, and in a second the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... with the cave-like mouth And sidelong eyes, 'Queen Bertha's voice was that! A woman's man! Since first from Gallic shores That dainty daughter of King Charibert Pressed her small foot on England's honest shore The whole land dwindles!' In seraphic hymns Ere long that serpent hiss was lost: for soon, In raiment white, circling a rocky point, O'er sands still glistening with a tide far-ebbed, On drew, preceded by a silver Cross, A long procession. Music, as it moved, Floated on ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to know that he would not be satisfied with simply deserting the company, but would try in all ways to be revenged upon every member of it who had voted against him. While the captain was thinking about it, somebody tried to make matters worse by setting up a loud hiss, and in an instant the sound was carried along the whole length of the line. It wasn't stopped, either, until Rodney ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... livery, 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 made minister principal, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... could drive a Regiment Of Geese afore me, such a night as this, Ten Leagues with my Hat and Staff, and not a hiss Heard, nor a wing of ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... hoofs upon the hard mountain road sounded suddenly above the hiss of the rain-storm. It was quite dark by this time, night having been hurried on by the lowering skies. A moment later, three horsemen, drenched to the skin, drew up in front of the inn, threw their reins over the posts, and dashed ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... rational circumstance the move seemed to spell only his own disaster, was characteristic of the man. He stood there in the instrument room at the peak of the skeleton tower in Venia and rasped out to the Earth Council his defiance. Silence followed—silence unbroken save by the hiss and click of the instruments as the message ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... uttered a tremendous cheer, and another and another, and for the next half-hour there was the clanking of the pumps, and the loud slushing noise of the water being thrown below, and the hiss and rush of the constant ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... long low windows were monstrous dragons' mouths, from which the darting forks came to play over golden stony lips, and lick the mullions and buttresses around. Then came a fresh explosion, as pent-up gases, generated by heat, burst forth to augment the fire with hiss, crackle, and flutter, as it seemed to gain its climax, and then sank down with ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... 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 Tuwhoo! Tuwhit! Tuwhoo! A merry note! While greasy Joan doth ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... getaway. Which was just what happened, and almost at once. Probably that great horned owl had been hooting for some time, but we had been too busy to notice. I heard the wicket door turning on its hinges, and ventured a warning hiss to Brower and Tim Westmore, who had not yet descended. An instant later I could make out shadowy forms stealing toward the willows. Evidently those who served Old Man Hooper were accustomed ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... drives his chariot round The Latian plains, with palms and laurels crown'd. Proud of his steeds, he smokes along the field; His father's hydra fills his ample shield: A hundred serpents hiss about the brims; The son of Hercules he justly seems By his broad shoulders and gigantic limbs; Of heav'nly part, and part of earthly blood, A mortal woman mixing with a god. For strong Alcides, after he had slain The triple Geryon, drove from conquer'd Spain His captive herds; and, thence ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... to the rear of the cottage and paused to draw aside a branch. Roger cautiously peered through the leaves, and a hiss like that of an angry snake ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... shoot, shoot, And when the bullets hiss, Don't let the tears fill up your eyes, For weeping ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... And my heart cried out in an agony. But my will sought to comfort my heart, and said, Cry not out, for, in spite of old age as in spite of death, I will love her still. Then something began to writhe within me, and to hiss out words that gathered themselves unto this purpose: But she will grow unlovely, and wrinkled, and dark of hue, and the shape of her body will vanish, and her form be unformed, and her eyes will grow small and dim, and creep back into her head, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... to be included in the list of ordinary clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... been her play of The Sister, brought out in 1769. 'The audience expressed their disapprobation of it with so much appearance of prejudice that she would not suffer an attempt to exhibit it a second time.' Gent. Mag. xxxix. 199. It is strange, however, if Goldsmith was asked to hiss a play for which he wrote the epilogue. Goldsmith's Misc. Works, ii. 80. Johnson wrote on Oct. 28, 1779 (Piozzi Letters, ii. 72):—'C—— L—— accuses —— of making a party against her play. I always hissed away the charge, supposing him a man of honour; but I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... ascertaining the correctness of the experiment, suddenly arrested the arm of the professor just at the moment that the bucket was in its zenith, which immediately descended with astonishing precision upon the philosophic head of the instructor of youth. A hollow sound, and a red-hot hiss, attended the contact; but the theory was in the amplest manner illustrated, for the unfortunate bucket perished in the conflict; but the blazing countenance of Professor Von Poddingcoft emerged ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... at a loss which must be sold at a given moment Permissible neither to applaud nor to hiss Respectful without servility She awaits your replies without interruption These liars in surplice, in black cassock, or in purple Wish you had the generosity to show, now and again, less wit You know, madame, that he generally gets everything ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... it here alone it's Magick show, But works in Hell, and binds the Fiends below. So powerful is the Muse! When David plaid, The Frantick Daemon heard him, and obey'd. No Noise, no Hiss: the dumb Apostate lay Sunk in soft silence, and dissolv'd away. Nor was this Miracle of Verse confin'd To Jews alone: For in a Heathen mind Some strokes appear: Thus Orpheus was inspir'd, Inchanting Syrens at his Song retir'd. To Rocks and Seas he the curst Maids pursu'd, And ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... now to be even holding his breath. Arnold took one step back and charged the door. It went crashing in, and almost at once there was a loud report. The closet—it was little more—was filled with smoke, and Arnold heard distinctly the hiss of a bullet buried in the woodwork over his shoulder. He caught the revolver from the shaking fingers of the man who was crouching upon the ground, and slipped it into his pocket. With his other hand, he ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was dark with a swither of foam and spray blown off the waves in the thickness of a fog. The heavy bows of the smack beat into the seas with a thud and a hiss—the thud of a steam-hammer, the hiss of molten iron plunged into water; the waves raced exultingly up to the bows from windward, and roared angrily away in a spume of foam from the ship's keel to lee; and the thrumming and screaming of the storm in the rigging exceeded all ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... understood that if Lescuyer explained, Lescuyer was saved. That was not what they wanted. They flung themselves upon him, tore him from the pulpit, and thrust him into the midst of this howling mob, who dragged him to the altar with that sort of terrible cry which combines the hiss of the serpent and the roar of the tiger, the murderous zou! zou! peculiar to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... it at once. Your observations are as true as they are severe. When we would harangue geese, we must condescend to hiss; but still, my dear Barnstaple, though you have fully proved to me that in a fashionable novel all plot is unnecessary, don't you think there ought to be a catastrophe, or sort of a kind of an end ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... The silence was broken now by the roar of a gun, which sounded so loud that I jumped sideways with the sudden shock of it. It seemed to be the signal for our batteries, and shell after shell went rushing through the night, with that long, menacing hiss which ends in a ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... took off the top of the stove and put the pot on the fire, much to its delight, for it began to hiss like the rocket sent off from the market-place the day before in honor of the election of a new mayor. Then Nelle wetted her finger and snuffed the candles, and the flame which had been flickering unsteadily at the end of the black wick burned ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... and escorted by a score of boats. All the paddles flashed and struck together with a mighty splash that reverberated loudly in the monumental amphitheatre of hills. A broad stream of dazzling foam trailed behind the flotilla. The canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of water; turbaned heads swayed back and forth; a multitude of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement; the spearmen upright in the bows of canoes had variegated sarongs and gleaming shoulders ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... hour, till at length I began to grow heartily sick of the performance. It was about as dull a business as the last hour of a comic opera. I could hear buffaloes snorting and moving all round, and see the red-beaked tic birds flying up off their backs, making a kind of hiss as they did so, something like that of the English missel-thrush, but I could not see a single buffalo. As for my old bull, I think he must have slept the sleep of the just, for ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... pale silver moon-crescent poised on the brow of Old Harpeth and a tingling little breeze was coming down from the north as if sent as a warning of the winter soon to be upon us. I went down to the old graybeard poplars and their leaves seemed to hiss together in the moonlight instead of rustling softly as they had been all summer. A great many of them were drifted in dry waves on the grass and their gold was turned to silver in the moonlight. Many of the tall shrubs were naked ghosts of their former selves and gnashed their bones ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a Japanese. The sight of her countrymen in their drab monotonous thousands sickened her. The hiss and cackle of their incomprehensible tongue beat upon her brain with a deadly incessant sound, like raindrops to one who is impatiently awaiting the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... with it all along till towards the end he comes to discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man of his parts could possibly fall into ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... its sable mantle over the earth. A silver moon rode in a clear sky, and the lightning express rattled down through the night with a hiss and screech that rent the silence with an ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... tender-hearted man. "It was the fright, stage fright—a terrible thing; but it seldom comes twice. Why, that woman, your mother I mean, broke down over and over again, but the parts were so small, no one observed it enough to clap or hiss, while you sang like an angel, up to the very minute you fainted. I never saw ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... His metallic voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to cast you into my arms. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... you really love that man Kennedy," he exclaimed, in a tone that was almost a hiss. "But I tell you, Elaine, he is all bluff. Why, he has been after that Clutching Hand now for three months—and what has he ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... affect us like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss like serpents." ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... please, "The mob of gentlemen who hoot with ease. As for the ladies, bless their angry hearts! They've Primrosed into playing fish-wife parts; And now 'tis one of Patriotism's tests That you should hiss and hoot your fellow-guests. Should they dare don a rival party vesture; Billingsgate rhetoric and Borough gesture Invade the (party) precincts of Mayfair— To express the vulgar wrath now raging there. We are Mob-ruled indeed—when Courtly Nob Apes, near his Prince, the manners ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... men shouting, then there would be no sound save the subdued hiss of steam. After a long wait a bell rang, and Jawn's grasp tightened, but the other engine gave only a few coughs and stopped again. The ensuing silence was broken by Harvey stepping to the tender and beckoning to the detective, who had ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... land of Burmah, still her woman's nature, enfeebled by suffering, could not but have trembled at the idea of living in a lonely spot, (for the mission-house was nearly a mile from the barracks,) with the neighboring jungle swarming with "serpents that hiss, and beasts of prey that howl." In addition to this cause of alarm, there was opposite them, on the Burman side of the river, the old decayed city of Martaban; which was the refuge of a horde of banditti, who, armed with knives and swords, would often ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... "Hiss," prop. speaking a perception (as of sound or motion) as opposed to "Hades," a surmise or ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... at times, and he saw the spreading cone of luminous gas behind them like the wake of a great ship in a phosphorescent sea. The hiss and threshing of many wings came unceasingly. Once he swung close to another body clad like his own and, like him, enmeshed in a net. And he saw in the light of the luminiferous air the girl's wide, staring eyes. Then she was gone, and all about was only the whip of ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ground. The sound of cannons and of arquebusses, the shrieks of agony and fear, the shouts of the Spanish soldiers, the war-cries of the Aztecs, the screams of wounded horses, the wail of women, the hiss of hurtling darts and arrows, and the dull noise of falling blows went up to heaven in one hideous hurly-burly. Like a frightened mob of cattle the long Spanish array swayed this way and that, bellowing as it swayed. Many rolled down the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... on which nature had fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a glass refilled. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the sand spit is the steeper. There the folds of the sea fall in velvety thuds ever so gentle, ever so regular. On the southern slope, where the gradient is easy, the wavelets glide up with heedless hiss and slide back with shuffling whisper, scarce moving the garlands of brown seaweed which a few hours before had been torn from the borders of the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... his throat. Ere he could try again, a hiss arose from one quarter of the room. The hiss grew and swelled. Phin realized, though he dared not look about him any longer, that the hissing came as much from the girls as ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... silence of the multitude was now broken by thunders of hurras, that drowned the hiss of the escaping steam and the rolling of the engine-wheels. To reduce the surprise and delight excited on this occasion to the universal standard, and as an illustration of the extent to which the value of property is sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and flames were licking each other across the roadways. It was even difficult for our ambulances to get so far, because we had to pass over a bridge to which the enemy's guns were paying great attention. Several of their thunderbolts fell with a hiss into the water of the canal where some Belgian soldiers were building a bridge of boats. It was just an odd chance that our ambulance could get across without being touched, but we took the chance and dodged between two shell-bursts. On the other side, on the outlying streets, there was ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a hiss from between closed teeth. "Indeed! You choose your object well, madam! I congratulate you on your discretion. The ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... at great length, exhaling. Yet it sounded like a hiss. "Stires, eh?" And he looked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... holds phantom tryst, When chestnuts hiss among the coals, Upon the Evening of All Souls, When all the night is moon and mist, And all the world is mystery; I kiss dear lips that death hath kissed, And gaze in eyes no man may see, Filled with a love long ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... there was any exchange of sentiments. He had a great admiration for the gifts of Ned Nestor, and wanted every one to understand what his sentiments were. So he started to open his mouth to say something, when Ned lifted a hand and gave a low sibilant hiss. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 neglected. From Mrs. Hoare's house on Hampstead ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... in the blackness. The thunder rolled and cracked and pealed like the trump of doom, whirlwinds tore round, lifting dust and even stones high into the air, and in a low, continuous undertone rose the hiss of the rushing rain. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... as I heard the words. If a horse should neigh or make any noise that could be heard above the hiss of the rain! I did not dare to move for fear lest I should betray myself. There I stood so close to the Kaffirs that I could smell them and hear the rain pattering on their bodies. Only very stealthily I drew my hunting knife with my right ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... The thing for these targets to do, they knew, was to intrench and begin to return the infantry and automatics' fire. Desperately, with the last effort of courage, they rose in the attempt—rose into playing hose streams of bullets whose close hiss was a steady undertone between shell bursts. In the garish, jumping light brave officers impulsively stood up to hearten their commands in their work, and dropped with half-uttered urgings, threats, and oaths ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... A death-like hiss rose from Jude's lips, "Repentigny? He is my enemy too. I will be your slave. I have too much fear of you to ever harm you. Let me tell you about this Repentigny. Life, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... for the sight momentarily stunned them. But then Dave recovered his presence of mind and blazed away with his shotgun, hitting the reptile in the middle, and inflicting several ugly but not mortal wounds. The rattlesnake gave a hiss, glided under some leafy bushes, and there commenced to ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... of waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... 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 ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... wounds, he began to hiss like a serpent, and springing forwards breathed upon the princess, filling the ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... Gissing dozed and waked and dozed again. On the bridge near by he heard the steady tread of feet, the mysterious words of the officer on watch passing the course to his relief. Bells rang with sharp double clang. Through the open port he could hear the alternate boom and hiss of the sea under the bows. With the stately lift and lean of the ship there mingled a ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... mine axe; of all my belongings this remains alone. They have divided my cattle; they have taken my wives; and my children know my face no more. Yet with this axe' — and he swung the formidable weapon round his head, making the air hiss as he clove it — 'will I cut another path to fortune. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate, and sewing up his mouth, observed, with much satisfaction, that the viper could no longer hiss. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... no, my song is not yet sung to the end! My breast has imbibed something, and I'll hiss like a whip! Wait, I'll drop the newspaper, I'll start to do serious work, and write one small book, which I will entitle 'The Passing of the Soul'; there is a prayer by that name, it is read for the dying. And before its death this society, cursed by the anathema ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must remember how, when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hill-side, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... holding the helmet. Doc dropped his bracky weed and felt the helmet snap down. A hiss of oxygen reached him and the suit ballooned out. There was no gravity; the two men handed him up easily to the one in the airlock while the inner seal ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... learned them from the wise men; but if I had not learned them, I should have invented them. What's your p-p-part of the business, says you; listen! You are to be its m-m-mouth-piece. That tongue of yours must wag like the tail of a d-d-dog; turn like a weather-vane; hiss like a serpent, drip with honey and poison, be tipped with p-p-persuasion; tell ten thousand t-t-tales, and every tale must sell a ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... killed a fat ox, the men are busily engaged in boiling down the fat. Care should be taken to sprinkle a few drops of water in the pot when the fat is supposed to be sufficiently boiled; should it hiss, as though poured upon melted lead, it is ready; but if it be silent, the fat is not sufficiently boiled, and it ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... "You cannot have enough: what you possess, That makes your value, be it more or less." What answer would you make to such as these? Why, let them hug their misery if they please, Like the Athenian miser, who was wont To meet men's curses with a hero's front: "Folks hiss me," said he, "but myself I clap When I tell o'er my treasures on my lap." So Tantalus catches at the waves that fly His thirsty palate—Laughing, are you? why? Change but the name, of you the tale is told: You sleep, mouth ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Waller uttered a low hiss, and hurried on in silence till they stood together among the nut stubs overshadowed by the spreading oaks, when he stopped short and ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... lignum; such was my "coal formation." The magic touch of a Promethean elicited my "grand agent" to the thick laid post; it consumed rather sluggishly, but the dry pine wood of the broken model caught the flame and entered into fair combustion, cracking and sparkling, and now and then sending out a hiss of pyroligenous vapour; hissing yourself thought I. The fiery example was soon followed by the coal at first slowly sending up wreaths of dirty, green, yellow smoke, but as the fire waxed warmer these disappeared, and vivid hissing jets of ignited gas shot forth in abundance. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... straggling tail of children bearing home small shoppings and jugs of supper beer, for a flock of gray geese proceeding with suggestively self-righteous demeanour along the very middle of the roadway and lowering long necks to hiss defiance at the passer-by, and for an old black retriever dozing peacefully beneath one of the rustling sycamores in front of Josiah Appleyard, the saddler's shop—all these, as she looked at them, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the rocky ledge he paused, concentrating his powers to catch some sound other than the dull boom and hiss of the blizzard. Suddenly at his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... arrives distorted, but it arrives. Well, he said that in his opinion practically everything that came to pass in my dream was originally suggested by some outside influence. Water being poured into a basin suggests a brook. A sewing-machine becomes a train. The hiss of a burning log escaping steam. So much for the ears. Now for the eyes. A maid helps the nurse to move a sofa—I see timber being hauled. The doctor shakes his thermometer, and there's Winchester wielding an axe.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... no other man can, and he thinks he can act! I heard him once at a party of friends. My good Spiller, if his vanity ever prompted him to air his voice on the stage, the people would think he was mocking them, and one half would laugh and the other half boo and hiss." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... compared to one of those great fires of the American prairies, whose destructive range has been checked by the hand of man. In vain the flames jet out on all sides, seeking fresh element. A wide space has been cleared around them. Soon the crackling of the large trees, and the hiss of the burning grass, cease to be heard; and the whole plain becomes enveloped under a cloud of smoke rising upward ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... partner Ned, I know, thinks he, He'll mak hiss en secure o' me, He's often said he'd treat me rarely; But I's think o' some other fun, I'll aim for some rich farmer's son, And cheat oor simple Neddy fairly, Sae ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... broken stalks spouted forth, with a hiss and a rush, blinding jets of liquid white fire, which tore at the ceiling angrily and roared and crackled. From the broken stalks it spread to the others, and in a moment jets of liquid white fire were blazing and crackling upward from all the ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... it was in Geoffrey's face that the tide rose. Such a burning tide it was, he fancied he heard the blood hiss as it curled round the roots of his hair. He noted this as curious, and remembered that in hanging or drowning it was the trifles that stamped themselves upon the mind. Also, it appeared that he was hollow, with nothing but ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... friend shewed me one evening from my own box at the opera, fifty or a hundred low shop-keepers wives, dispersed about the pit at the theatre, dressed in men's clothes, per disimpegno as they call it; that they might be more at liberty forsooth to clap and hiss, and quarrel and jostle, &c. I felt shocked. "One who comes from a free government need not wonder so," said he: "On the contrary, Sir," replied I, "where every body has hopes, at least possibility, of bettering his station, and advancing nearer to the limits of upper life, none except ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and impassive 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 groan, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... attendance on every six or eight hundred; and another, who may be looked upon as commander in chief, takes up his station close to the wall which they are repairing, and frequently repeats the beating which I just mentioned, which is instantly answered by a loud hiss from all the labourers within the dome,—those at work ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... with a merciless lash. The hiss of it, as it cut the air with all the force of her strong arm, startled her mare, and she sprang aside, so that Kirsty, who, leaning forward, had thrown the strength of her whole body into the blow, could not but lose her seat. But it was only to stand upright ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the agony of unsullied bliss, Her Demogorgon's doom shall Sin bewail, The undying serpent at the spheres shall hiss, And lash the empyrean ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Clockmaker grew uneasy. "It's pretty well on in the evening, I guess," said he, "and Marm Pugwash is as onsartin in her temper as a mornin' in April; it's all sunshine or all clouds with her, and if she's in one of her tantrums she'll stretch out her neck and hiss like a goose with a flock of goslin's. I wonder what on airth Pugwash was a-thinkin' on when he signed articles of partnership with that are woman; she's not a bad-lookin' piece of furniture, neither, and it's a proper ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... clanged, and ceased not; all Berlin struggling there, all night, in vain. Such volumes of smoke: "the heavens were black as if you had hung them with mortcloth:" such roaring cataracts of flame, "you could have picked up a copper doit at the distance of 800 yards."—"Hiss-s-s!" what hissing far aloft is that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... shocked the whole audience, upper tiers and all. The ghost of a hiss breathed under the tense hush of the silent beholders. A shudder ran over the hollow of the amphitheater, as the dragged corpse, mauled by the sand and turning over, became a mere lump of pounded meat. The chill of the onlookers appeared to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 560 Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response, at each pause In most familiar cadence, with the howl 565 The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void Scattering its waters to the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... impressions, had thrilled responsively to the exultation of the audience. He had endured the agony of suspense, he had shared the universal enthusiasm. If, in a sense, he was a series of moods, each the result of blind impulse, it so happened that Grace's hiss—"It's the hand of God," turned his love to aversion; she was appealing as a justification of personal hatred, to the ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... from impressions which the earth made upon his mind: for no Paradise can be fairer than this; just as his notion of a Hell arose from the squalid mess into which his own foolish habits of thought and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it struck me then: and, thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up into what more and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points of almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen on the left, the slopes changed in character, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... with his hand upon his chin, thinking as well as he might. What did he owe to Douglas Guest, the friend of Emily de Reuss, successful where he had failed? Had he not seen their hands joined? He drew a breath which sounded like a hiss. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... seemed to be pouring down torrents of living coals; flashes of intensest crimson played fitfully across its surface, the blazing brands fell in showers into the water and were extinguished with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing palaces on either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, doomed to destruction and burning on the banks of a river of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... waggons of coal. Such was the first train. A man on horseback, carrying a flag, having taken up his position in front of the 'Locomotion' to head the procession, the starting word was given, and with a hiss of steam, half drowned in the shouting of the crowd, the first railway journey ever ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... this Broadway! The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in the dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses here! Half-a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too; gigs, phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private carriages ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens |
