"Splitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... veins, as if he had been sitting all night beside a smoky fire. When Mackenzie sat near him the wind bore the pollution of whisky from his breath. Reid made a show of being at his ease, although the veins in his temples were swollen in the stress of what must have been a splitting headache. He rolled a cigarette with nonchalance almost challenging, and smoked in silence, the corners of his wide, salamander mouth drawn ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... gets used to anything, and Gerasim got used at last to living in town. He had little work to do; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and watching at night. And it must be said he did his duty zealously. In his courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... with clouds, and the broken masses, as they rolled along, permitted a stray moonbeam to dart down upon the turmoil beneath, and render darkness visible. Sometimes the wind lulled for a second or two, as if to breathe; then it burst forth again, splitting through the mountain gorges with a shriek of intensity; the columns of snow sprang in thousands from every hollow, cliff and glen, mingled in wild confusion, swayed, now hither, now thither, in mad uncertainty, and then, caught by the steady gale, pelted on, like the charging troops ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... who is at all inclined or accustomed to think about the characteristics of the pleasure he receives from literature, should not have noticed in this period the fact—beside and outside of the other fact of a provision of delectable novelists—of a great splitting up and (as scientific slang would put it) fissiparous generation of the the classes of novel. It is, indeed, open to the advocates or generic or specific criticism—though I think they cannot possibly maintain their position as to poetry—to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... sleepers to keep it steady: it should be at least three quarters of a yard in girth at bottom, and taper gradually to the top to half that size. An iron rim is to be driven on the head of the pole to keep it from splitting, and then a spindle at least an inch in diameter, with a shoulder, is to be fixed in it; an iron wheel with four spokes turned up at the end like a hook, to which four ropes are to be fastened, must then be made to revolve on the spindle. As the ropes reach the ground, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... slaves on the plantation were not known, but there were enough to carry on the work of plowing, hoeing and chopping the cotton and other crops. Women as well as men were expected to turn out the required amount of work, whether it was picking cotton, cutting logs, splitting rails for fences or ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... unable to meet compel him to leave the land. The land shark sells the land to a new settler for a still higher price, capitalizing the improvements made by the former settler. With the new settler the process is repeated, and so it goes, like an endless chain. It is similar to the method of splitting fees practiced by private employment offices and foremen who keep ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... Carr say. "Go and fetch some brandy." And I felt myself turned right side uppermost, and my hands were rubbed, while Carr, in a voice of the greatest anxiety, asked me how I felt. I was soon able to sit up, and to become aware that I had a splitting headache, and was staring at a tallow-candle stuck in a bottle. Having got so far I got a little farther, and on looking round found myself reclining on a sack in a corner of a disreputable-looking room, dingy with dirt, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of considering himself a miracle of metaphysical light, which he is not, I am persuaded, by any means, since he has much more skill in rending down than in building up, in perplexing than in making clear. Ernst is no friend of metaphysical hair-splitting, and when Jacobi begins to doubt the most perceptible and most certain things—'what is perceptible, what is certain?' the Candidate will inquire—he grows impatient, shrugs his shoulders, goes to his writing-table, and leaves me to combat ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... North alike. While the armies of the people had been shedding rivers of blood in the effort to preserve the political unity of the nation, its social unity, upon which the very life of a republic depends, had been attacked by the beginnings of class divisions, which could only end by splitting the once coherent nation into mutually suspicious and inimical bodies of citizens, requiring the iron bands of despotism to hold them together in a political organization. Four million negroes had indeed been freed from chattel slavery, but meanwhile a nation of white men had passed ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the Sabbath utterly immaculate was to abolish it altogether, which was done. Other laws, probably based upon genuine zeal for human welfare, had resulted in odd evasions or legal fictions. For instance, people were forbidden to miss trains. The penalty for missing a train was ten days' hard labor splitting infinitives in the government tract-factory. Rather than impose this harsh punishment on any one, good-hearted engineers would permit their trains to loiter about the stations until they felt certain no other passengers would turn up. Consequently no trains ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... worked," he said, laughing like he'd die, a-doubling up and holding his sides to keep from splitting. "At last I have showed up distinct; at last I am of some use in the world. You don't realize what a pleasure it is to know that you are fulfilling your mission and ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... success. To hesitate is sometimes to be lost. In fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. There is not positiveness enough in him; negativeness never accomplishes anything. The negative man creates no confidence, he only invites distrust. But the positive man, the decided man, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... will be asked impatiently, is there for the splitting of our personality? The question is a just one, and I proceed to ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... colonies—at such times, he would almost wish himself a soldier, and in the field fighting for his country. And then the hammer, it was observed, would come down upon his lapstone with double force, as if he were splitting the head of one of the enemy open, or his awl would go through the leather, as if he were plunging a bayonet into ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... in his beard by way of submitting to the mild rebuke, and Ali Higg—a little bit impressed perhaps—proceeded to question me on doctrine and theology, showing a zeal for splitting hairs that would have done credit to a Cairo m'allim. But I had had lots of instruction on those points, and in fact surprised him with a trite fanaticism equal to his own, ending with a statement that whoever did not believe every article and precept of the Sunni faith not ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... their minds. Personally, he was still obnoxious to them; but in light of his recent pronouncement, they would take their chances on "rescuing" him from the Committee; and since he would not withdraw, they would not cooperate in splitting the Union party. But they could not convince the conspirators. A long debate ended in an agreement to disagree. The New Englanders withdrew, confessed partisans of Lincoln.(10) It was the beginning ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... advantage but I can eat you. That's all you are good for—a few dinners and breakfasts!" He went out into the street with the violin under his cloak, and from Houston Street he turned into the Bowery. There was no elevated road at that time and the thundering, ear-splitting, overhead noises heard nowadays were not yet in existence. Still it was noisy, a perfect bedlam of jabbering foreigners, who crowded this busiest of busy streets as they crowded no other section of this cosmopolitan city. Von Barwig, usually so sensitive to noises, apparently did not ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... with the sail. They got it in and lashed to the mast just in time, for, with the shriek of a thousand demons, the squall whirled itself upon them. In an instant they were enveloped in a blinding horror of furious wind and rain, glare of lightning and incessant, ear-splitting thunder. A leaden darkness, illuminated only by the lightning, settled around them, and the air grew suddenly cold. Beneath the whip of the wind the Chesapeake woke from slumber, stirred, and rose in fury. The Bluebird danced dizzily upon white ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... that metaphor teach us a great deal more of what faith is, and encourage us far more to exercise it, than much theological hair-splitting? What lies in the metaphor? Two things, the earnest eagerness of the act of flight, and the absolute security which comes when we have reached the shadow of the great Rock in a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... komatik will "work" like a snake, adapting itself to the inequalities of the ground, and will not spread or "buckle." Long nails are driven up right through the runners, and clinched on the top to prevent splitting. The runners should be shod with spring steel, one inch wide; and a second runner, two and a half inches wide, may be put between the lower one and the wood, to hold up the sledge when the snow is soft. Thus one has on both ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... arm grasped; with his left hand (the right side was already lifeless) the dying man drew me towards him nearer and nearer, till his lips almost touched my ear, and, in a voice now firm, now splitting into gasp and hiss, thus he said, "I have summoned you to gaze on your own work! You have stricken down my life at the moment when it was most needed by my children, and most serviceable to mankind. Had I lived a few years longer, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in order to avoid political devastation by splitting the vote into three opposition groups each fighting the other, it is the immediate business of the two historic parties to unite against all parties of experiment, especially against ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... being doubtful even then whether the charges brought against him amounted to treason, the odious old contrivance of the worst kings was resorted to, and a bill of attainder was brought in against him. He was a violently prejudiced and mischievous person; had had strong ear-cropping and nose-splitting propensities, as you know; and had done a world of harm. But he died peaceably, and like ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... "There was, and there is yet, I guess," he asserted. "I'll tell you how you can find it and what it's like—if yuh doubt my words." He glanced around and found every man, including the cook, listening intently. He picked a blade of new grass and began splitting it into tiny threads. The host found boxes for the women to sit upon, and the men sat down upon ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... republican and revolutionary brain. The steamboat has been claimed for various inventors, for one so far back as 1543; but somehow or other it happened, as it has so often happened, that "the chasm from mere attempts to positive achievement was first bridged by an American." Our wave-splitting clippers have changed the whole model of sailing-vessels. One of them, which was to have been taken in tow by the steam-vessels of the Crimean squadron, spread her wings, and sailed proudly by them all. Our iron water-beetles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... bottom with a stone; after it lays there a little time they haul it Gently up, and hardly ever without fish, and very often a large quantity. All their netts are made of the broad Grass plant before mentioned; generally with no other preparation than by Splitting the blade of the plant into threads. Their fish hooks are made of Crooked pieces of Wood, bones, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... wild-eyed fear on that same bough, watching the wild orgies of the students. They had probably been there for a considerable period, not daring to descend while that howling, dancing mob held the grounds. Perhaps they even fancied that those yells and ear-splitting squeals were directed against them. They must have thought so when Don Pike crawled out on the limb toward them, followed ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... tribe; I have no brew of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such like. I like none of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... that of Bue, two of the viking champions, Haavard the Hewer and Aslak Rock-skull, leaped on deck and made terrible havoc. In the end an Icelander picked up an anvil that was used to sharpen their spears and hurled it at Aslak, splitting his skull, while Haavard had both legs cut off. Yet the indomitable viking fought ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... before Ben and Gershom dared to commence the process of cutting and splitting the tree, in order to obtain the honey. Until then, the bees lingered around their fallen hive, and it would have been dangerous to venture beyond the smoke and heat, in order to accomplish the task. It is true, le Bourdon ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... replied. "But I don't think Daggs had time to gather a big crew, and what's more, he'd figure the fewer the better when it came to splitting up the gold. I doubt if there's above fifteen men—maybe only fourteen now." He grinned as he thought of the big pirate who had ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... me, lads," he said, "when I give a loud sneeze, do you give vent to a roar that will only stop short of splitting your lungs; then give chase, and yell to your hearts' content as you run; but see to it that ye keep together and that no man runs past me. There is plenty of moonlight to let you see what you're about. If any ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that they apparently had no joints like the other ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... still dutifully submissive at home—Abroad, I am splitting a straw in arguments with Susannah about straw bonnets—The rest of the Chapter contains ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... pretty well, she is taught the curious art of whipping it (fess). You can hear the sound of the fesse a great way off, echoing and re-echoing among the mornes: it is not a sharp smacking noise, as the name might seem to imply, but a heavy hollow sound exactly like that of an axe splitting dry timber. In fact, it so closely resembles the latter sound that you are apt on first hearing it to look up at the mornes with the expectation of seeing woodmen there at work. And it is not made by ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... form and manner of his pleasure. Now it pictured in its large eye, whose depth seemed to meet eternity, the lights and forms and colours of the sky, the rocks, and the trees; now it leapt from the shaded quietude, and, splitting into two or more currents, separated by willowy islets or banks of pebbles, rushed with an eager and joyous cry a hundred yards or so; then it stopped to take breath, and moved dreamily on again. Where the water was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... while from the bushes and the young coppices arose noisy mirth like that of youthful lovers chasing one another over banks and into hollows amid much crackling and snapping of branches. From afar, too, the faint breeze wafted the sounds of the rocks splitting in their passion beneath the burning heat, while near them the spiky plants loved in a tragic fashion of their own, unrefreshed by the neighbouring springs, which themselves glowed with the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... at the BEETHOVEN festival, the words are drowned by the music, and the music by the artillery. It thus becomes an inarticulate patriotic "yawp," of tremendous ear-splitting power. But the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... no time on Greek and Latin," said Chris Robinson. "And one learns to go straight at a thing without splitting straws. One gets hold ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... as I am aware of, has never been imagined, and it has been agreed among geologists not to call such splitting as this cleavage at all, but to restrict the term to a phenomenon of a ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... separating two rivers had tired me, but I might as well have remained downstairs for all the sleep that I enticed. As the hours wore on the uproar, instead of subsiding, became more terrific. These Southerners have voices of such rock-splitting power that, when twenty or thirty of them, inspired by Bacchus, or excited by discussion, shout together, one asks if it would be possible for devils on the rampage to raise a more hideous tumult. The house trembled as from ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... her fulfil her destiny, for nothing short of splitting her head open would have kept her backside quiet; so he let her run about like a bitch on heat amongst a couple of dozen dogs, and accomplish all ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... not a morsel had we tasted, And our heads were almost splitting with the cannons' deafening thrill, When a figure tall and stately round the rampart strode sedately; It was PRESCOTT, one since told me; ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... a mass of mica is rapidly split in the dark a slight flash is perceived. Becquerel found that in such separation the two pieces came away oppositely charged with electricity. The splitting of mica ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... from his mistress. Audrey had never dreamed that Vincent could get up to town so quickly. She was so sorry she had missed him; especially as she had had to go to bed with a feverish cold and a splitting headache. She would be delighted to see him if he could call to-morrow afternoon, between three and four. And she was always ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... act, "The Flying Martins," | |whose thrilling tricks put the audience | |in a proper state of mind for the | |sparkling and laughable program that | |follows—a state of mind that keeps its | |high pitch without a break or let-down to | |the very end of Dr. Herman's | |side-splitting electrical pranks. This | |man, who has truly "tamed electricity," | |does many remarkable things with his big | |coils and high voltage currents and plays | |many extremely funny tricks upon his row | |of "unsuspecting-handsome" ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... not control her brush. The sketch of two native women in deerskin unionsuits, their brown shoulders bared, working at the task of splitting walrus skins, went unfinished while she took a long walk ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... have sought her out simply from the instinct to protest against the smugness of Salem opinion. A fine sailor, and a master at twenty-two. A great one to carry sail; yet in the sixteen years of his commands he had had no more serious accident than the loss of a fore-topgallant mast or splitting a couple of courses. It was Gerrit's ability, the splendid qualities of his ship, that made Jeremy hope he would still come sailing into the harbor with some narration of delay ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... breakfast, Mrs. Hawthorne espied them coming through the gateway. She had never met Pierce, but she recognized Bridge's tall, elegant figure, when he waved his hat to her in the distance. Hawthorne himself was sawing and splitting in the wood-shed, and thither she directed his friends—to his no slight astonishment when they appeared before him. Pierce had his arm across Hawthorne's broad shoulders when they reappeared. There is one pleasure, indeed, which young people cannot know, and that is, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... intimate relationship compared with intercourse here, which is, in fact, nothing more than mutual mistrust and espionage, if there only were anything to spy out or to conceal! The people toil and fret over nothing but mere trifles, and these diplomats, with their consequential hair-splitting, already seem to me more ridiculous than the Member of the Second Chamber in the consciousness of his dignity. If foreign events do not take place, and those we over-smart Diet people can neither direct nor prognosticate, I know quite definitely now what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... no further, for at that moment there was a weird flash of lightning, followed by an ear-splitting crash of thunder. Then came ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... in splitting a mineral substance called mica into films of such extreme thinness as to give brilliant colours. One plate, for example, gave a yellow colour, another a blue colour, and the two together a deep purple, but as plates which produced this colour were always ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... on the twelve o'clock shift are just about ganging down, and they want to tak' a few mair forks with them. They've telt me 'at the timber is splitting like ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... but respecting which he had never unbosomed himself to any of his friends. The first was, a capacity which he felt in himself of abandoning his body in a sort of extacy whenever he pleased. He felt in these cases a sort of splitting of the heart, as if his soul was about to withdraw, the sensation spreading over his whole frame, like the opening of a door for the dismissal of its guest. His apprehension was, that he was out of his body, and that by an energetic exertion he still retained a small hold of his corporeal figure. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... innocence had supposed that a profligacy he was himself sometimes guilty of had been referred to. He felt that his uncle's knee was for the moment the stool of repentance, but was relieved when a new reading was suggested. There could be no disgrace in splitting, though it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fought game for England from Wales or Scotland or Ireland. The scouts were returning from a picnic on Wimbledon Common, in the suburbs of London, and Grenfel was following his usual custom of dropping into step now with one group, now with another. He favored the idea of splitting up into groups of two or three on the homeward way, because it was his idea that one of the great functions of the Scout movement was to foster enduring friendships among the boys. He liked to know, without listening or trying to overhear, ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... The first mention of it occurs in A.D. 400 when Richu condemned the muraji, Hamako, to be thus branded, but whether the practice originated then or dated from an earlier period, the annals do not show. It was variously called hitae-kizamu (slicing the brow), me-saku (splitting the eyes), and so on, but these terms signified nothing worse than tattooing on the forehead or round the eyes. The Emperor Richu deemed that such notoriety was sufficient penalty for high treason, but Yuryaku inflicted tattooing on a man whose dog had killed one ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Chicago Avenue Church. They were not all ministers. They were not all men. Satan made a mighty attempt to ruin the meeting. First of all three men got down by the door and knelt down by chairs and pounded and shouted until some of our heads seemed almost splitting, and some felt they must retire from the meeting; and when a brother went to expostulate with them and urge them that things be done decently and in order, they swore at the brother who made the protest. Still later a man sprang up in the middle of the ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... the rest of the sentence; for he walked close beside her and spoke so gently that I could not catch the words. My heart was splitting with hatred; but I listened intently for her reply. I ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... grass that there must be water nearby. So, leading their mounts, Don Quixote and Sancho came in the darkness to a meadow, and they had gone only a short distance when they heard the welcome sound of falling water. Then suddenly a most tremendous, ear-splitting noise came out of the darkness, a din like the beating of gigantic hammers, and added to this a shifting wind. All these furious sounds, the mystery of them, and the blackness of the night, might have intimidated any heart, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this remark was, "I think, Mrs. Carrington, you will admit that the young ladies who come here from the North almost always possess superior education. Now if they spent much time in splitting wood and digging potatoes, I am sure they could ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... and Fanny picked the hatchet out of the snow and started on the leathery, damp end of a fresh log. It would not split, the tapping marred the white silence, and yet again she let the hatchet fall and sat down on the log instead. It was nearly six—they had spent the whole afternoon splitting up the logs, and making a fine pile of short pieces for firewood; the forest was darkening rapidly, blue deepened above the trees to indigo, and black settled among the trunks. Only the snow sent up its everlasting shine. Her ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... of Bengal was a measure harmless enough on the face of it for splitting up into two administrative units a huge province with some 70 million inhabitants which had outgrown the capacities of a single provincial government. But the Bengalees are a singularly sensitive race. They were intensely proud of their province as the senior of the three great "Presidencies" of ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... as the men came on; he and Steering could feel the rock upon which they lay vibrate; there was a rending and splitting going on all through the ledge. "Can you hold on a minute alone, sir?" gasped Throcker suddenly. "I have a bad heart and it's going back on me,"—he ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... occasionally takes place, as in Ebenus cretica.[25] It has also been observed in Tithonia, and is of constant occurrence in the seed leaves of some Mesembryanthema. This condition must be carefully distinguished from the very similar appearance produced by quite a different cause, viz., the splitting of one cotyledon into two, which gives rise to the appearance as if two were ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling thunder of the big doobla or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of innumerable tom-toms. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy coolies, come floating down in bursts of clamour on the soft morning air. The din waxes and wanes as the excited ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... might be termed Saxon logic, and of which Swift in one century, and Cobbett in another, are obvious instances. His premises are not always true, nor his inferences always legitimate; but there is such evident absence of sophistry, and even of that refining and hair-splitting which usually beget the suspicion of sophistry—his statements are so sincere, and his conclusions so direct, the language is so perspicuous, and the appeal is made so honestly to each reader's understanding, that his popularity as a reasoner is inevitable. We need not say that the author of the ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... the Anglican establishment came to the abrupt realization that the subject of the continuing debate—the reliability of the argument from prophecy—was inconclusive, that it could lead only to pedantic wrangling and hair-splitting with each side vainly clutching victory. Certainly the devotion of many clergymen to biblical criticism was secondary to their interest in orthodoxy as a functional adjunct of government, both civil and canonical. It was against this interest, as it was enunciated in Rogers's ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... and we expect soon to hear the author heralded as the Martial of amateur journalism. "Ford, Do Not Shake", Mr. Goodwin's parody on Kleiner's "Heart, Do Not Wake", is actually side-splitting. The metre is handled to perfection, and the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... his revenge. Crying "Din!" as loudly as any of the Muslimeen boarders, he flung himself upon the rear of the Spaniards brandishing his chain. In his hands it became a terrific weapon. He used it as a scourge, lashing it to right and left of him, splitting here a head and crushing there a face, until he had hacked a way clean through the Spanish press, which bewildered by this sudden rear attack made but little attempt to retaliate upon the escaped galley-slave. After him, whirling the remaining ten feet of the broken ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... "doing their best" at cricket to such good purpose that they had succeeded in splitting one ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... observe their superiority to english-wrought brads consists in their being quite regular in their shape, so much so, that ten thousand may be drove through the thinnest pine board, without using a brad-awl, or splitting the board. They have the advantage also of being cut with the grain of the iron; others are cut against it. He has already three engines at work, which can turn out two hundred ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... when going down into the valley, a certain rock which fell in pieces by splitting off in smooth plates; and another kind which lay scattered about in small fragments that would make marks like chalk-marks. This substance was of a reddish color, and, on the purplish surface of the thin slabs of the harder rock, it ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... ice box, near the ice, until ready to serve. Scrape and clean the celery, cutting the root into a point, then splitting it in half ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... employed in softening slender grass filaments, by dragging them through his teeth; then he learnt to intertwine them, and sat in the middle of an ever-growing sphere of delicate network; finally, like his mother, he tackled large, stiff grass stems, biting them into short lengths, and splitting them, or letting them split themselves, lengthways. By the time he was a month old, he was an expert nest-builder, and, given the material, could build a complete nest ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... as, in the United States, the variety of sects, the continual splitting and breaking up of those sects, and their occasional violent altercations, have all proved most injurious to society, and to the cause of religion itself. Indeed religion in the States may be said to have been a source ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... little winter injury, except with the Broadview variety. The tops froze back a little and I had a little trouble with the bark splitting on the larger trees. I covered the splits with tree wound dressing and they are all doing well now. I consider the Schafer about the best and most promising variety I have and the grafts take very well. Most of the Carpathian ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... his opponents as if they were "not only morally bad but intellectually contemptible," the House proceeded to consider the Lords' Amendments to the Home Rule Bill, and dealt with them by the time-honoured device of "splitting the difference." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... square, as well as some stout iron screws one inch long. Two screws are sufficient for each strip. If you are anything of a carpenter you will countersink the holes for the heads of the screws; this will also prevent a possible splitting of the strip. ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... with a headache and great tiredness. There was the bustle of embarkation on to the boat; the rattle and bang of falling luggage; the jangle of French and English tongues; the unstraining of mighty ropes; the "hoot! hoot!" from the funnel, a side-splitting incident; the suff-suff-lap-suff of the ploughed-up sea; the spray of the Channel, which sprinkling one's cheeks, caused one to roar with laughter, till more moderation was enjoined; the incessant throb of the engines; ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... them. But in his chapter "The Shrill Trump," in the Biography, he writes: "'O you mortal engines, whose rude throats the immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,' O for the 'spirit-stirring drum, and the ear-splitting fife' 'in these piping times of peace.' Small wonder it was that with the clang and clank of sabre and artillery in his ears, with the huzzas of comrades and the sparkle of the wine of war in his eyes, our hero wrote the never dying words that made him famous. How ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the bread-tree consists principally of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is commonly served up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mountain on the E. coast of Sicily, 10,840 ft. high; a striking feature is the immense ravine, the Val del Bove, splitting the eastern side of the mountain, and about 5 m. in diameter; on the flanks are many smaller cones. Etna is celebrated for its many and destructive eruptions; was active in 1892; its observatory, built in 1880, at an elevation ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... chill and stiff-fingered to his task. Summer as it was, there lay a thin coating of ice round the edges of the stream, for they had camped in an altitude of about nine thousand feet. The "King" had wakened in a vile humor. He had a splitting headache, as was natural under the circumstances and he had not left in his bottle a single drink to tide him over it. He came cursing to the struggling fire, which was making only fitful headway against the rain which ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... gaslight. And in front of him, ticking like a sledge-hammer, its only hand upon the stroke of twelve, stood a simple, old-fashioned, grandfather's clock—but not for half an instant longer—only until my guide could hurl himself upon it and send the whole thing crashing into the corner. An ear-splitting report accompanied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the fallen clock, and I saw a revolver smoking in a vice screwed below the dial, an arrangement of wires sprouting from the dial itself, and the single hand at once at its zenith and in contact ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the back of the shed," said Charley, "and crawl through the window and unfasten the door. Then we'll take turns in sawing, splitting, and carrying in the wood; and I want to pile it up nicely, and to shovel all the snow away from the door; and make a good wide path, too, from the door to the street: What fun it will be when she comes ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... intensely conscious of holding something unutterably funny in their hands. They appeared to consider it a huge joke. The entire Senate presented the appearance of a laughing-school practising side-splitting and ear-extended grins. Mr. Wadleigh leaned back in his chair and shook with laughter, after portraying to his next neighbor, Pinkney Whyte, of Maryland, the apparition of Pinkney's landlady descending upon the polls like a wolf on the fold, to annihilate his election. Oglesby, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... place. My gratitude to her is the sort of gratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late for dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep. Your Aunt Lora is a human cyclone. No, on the whole, she's more like an earthquake. She has a habit of splitting up and altering the face of the world whenever she feels like it, and I'm too well satisfied with my world at present to relish the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... feeling as if its back was splitting, and it shrieked with pain. At that moment there was a rustle among the rushes on the bank ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... left hand, and at arm's length, as if closer contact with it meant unbearable pollution. And as he trod his measure, his right fist shot out at regular intervals, each time nearer and nearer the Judge's nose, and with each motion the Colonel sent forth that ear-splitting yell which had not been heard in Jordantown since a Confederate regiment charged a ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... it is supposed to have been erected about a hundred and fifty years since, and the shell-rock of which it is built is dark with time. We saw where it had been struck with cannon-balls, which, instead of splitting the rock, became imbedded and clogged among the loosened fragments of shell. This rock is, therefore, one of the best materials for a fortification in the world. We were taken into the ancient prisons of the fort—dungeons, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... game, we returned to the boat, and after plucking and splitting open the birds, some were roasted over the fire for immediate use, but by far the greater number were boiled in a pot, which was portion of the boat's furniture when on an expedition. One of the troopers had with a tomahawk ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... splinter, crumble, break short, burst, fly, give way; fall to pieces; crumble to, crumble into dust. Adj. brittle, brash [U.S.], breakable, weak, frangible, fragile, frail, gimcrack^, shivery, fissile; splitting &c v.; lacerable^, splintery, crisp, crimp, short, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Jeffreys (bloody assize) bereavement (too heavy a sob) parental grief mad son MADISON Maderia frustrating first-rate wine (defeating) feet toe the line row MONROE row boat steamer side-splitting (divert) annoy harassing HARRISON Old Harry the tempter (the fraud) painted clay baked clay tiles TYLER Wat Tyler poll tax compulsory (free will) free offering burnt offering poker POLK end of dance termination "ly" (adverb) part of speech part of a man TAYLOR measurer theodoilte ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... (after Sir Arthur Evans, op. cit., p. 39). (c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, op. cit., p. 373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"—Smintheus). (e) Part of the design from a Mycenaean vase from Old Salamis (after Evans, p. 9). (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idaean Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). (g) The Eastern Mountains ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and, at the same moment, the mate left the wheel with an ear-splitting yell and rushed to the galley for the life-belt which hung there. He crashed heavily into Joe, who had rushed on deck, but, without pausing, ran to the side ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... and disgusting, but utterly unproductive of button-hooks, and meanwhile the breakfast was growing cold. I succeeded in buttoning Toddie's shoes with my fingers, splitting most of my nails in the operation. I had been too busily engaged with Toddie to pay any attention to Budge, who I now found about half dressed and trying to catch flies on the windowpane. Snatching Toddie, I started for the dining-room, when ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... an occidental standpoint has been unjustly described as "clashing cymbals, twanging guitars, harsh flageolets, and shrill flutes, ear-splitting and headache-producing to the foreigner." Such general condemnation shows deplorable ignorance.[2] The writer had apparently never attended an official service in honor of Confucius, held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty at 3 A.M. The "stone chimes", consisting of ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... subsequent bars, we recommend turning the needle round and holding it as it were the reverse way, so that the eye not the point passes first under the threads; strange as it may seem, it is easier in this manner to avoid splitting the threads. The working thread should always issue from the edge of the braid, one or two threads before the foundation threads of the bar, to prevent the bars being of unequal width, or getting ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... the particulars where the universal has to be proved; for in so doing a man is taking for granted separately what he was bound to prove along with several other things. Again, when one assumes the question at issue by splitting it up, for instance, if, when the point to be proved is that the art of medicine deals with health and disease, one were to take each by itself ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... words which they seldom use in the right place), poco tiempo, si, and bueno (the last they will persist in pronouncing whayno), they have the whole of the glorious Castilian at their tongue's end. Some, however, eschew the above words entirely, and innocently fancy that by splitting the tympanum of an unhappy foreigner in screaming forth their sentences in good solid English they can be surely understood; others, at the imminent risk of dislocating their own limbs, and the jaws of their listeners by the laughs which their efforts elicit, make the most excruciatingly ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the radicle protrudes from a small hole in the sharp edge of the seed; and on its summit, where united with the hypocotyl, a transverse ridge is developed at an early age, which clearly aids in splitting the tough seed-coats; but it does not aid in casting them off, as this is subsequently effected by the swelling of the cotyledons after they have been raised above the ground. The ridge or heel therefore acts rather differently from that of Cucurbita. Its lower ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... the practiced fingers of the chemist. But the difficulties of his task did not end here. The writing was (as usual in letters) traced on both sides of the paper, and it could only be preserved for the purpose of reconstruction by splitting each morsel into two—so as artificially to make a blank side, on which could be spread the fine cement used for reuniting the ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... shown it to me, the wretched little pasty-faced gutter-bred art student, I could not conceive for many of the after years during which I wrestled with the head- and heart-splitting perplexities of women. But experience has taught me that human beings, of whichever sex they may be, will do amazing things in times of spiritual upheaval. I have known the primmest of vicar's churchwardens curse like a coal-heaver when a ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Towne you enter'd like a Poste, And had no welcomes home, but he returnes Splitting the Ayre ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... exaggerate. In such passages as the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop and the interviews between Dora and David in David Copperfield, Dickens becomes mawkish and sentimental. While his power of portraiture is amazing, he often overleaps the line of character drawing and makes side-splitting caricatures of his men and women. They are remembered too often by a limp or a mannerism of speech, or by some other little peculiarity, instead of by ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... my head off. Bones? When there were North Poles, and Centres of Earths, and hairy comets to ride across space among the stars! Of course I didn't want to go on any bone- snatching expedition. I said my father was able-bodied, and he could go, splitting equally with her whatever bones he brought back. But she said he was only a blamed collector—or words ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... of thunder denoted a new gathering of storm. Five minutes passed, and then the lightning flashed across the firmament directly overhead. A crash like the splitting of the heavens followed, and the rain came down as if it poured through ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... legs are finished on all sides and chamfered at the bottom to prevent the corners from splitting. The mortises for the shelf should be cut 9 in. from the top of each leg, as shown in the sketch. Care should be taken to make these a ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... residential blocks to the north of Fifty-ninth Street," he wrote in the book that on this side of the North Atlantic was known as "Your United States," "fall short of their pretensions in beauty and interest. But except for the miserly splitting, here and there, in the older edifices, of an inadequate ground floor into a mezzanine and a narrow box, there is nothing mean in the whole street from the Plaza to Washington Square. Much mediocre architecture, of course, but the general effect homogeneous and fine, and, above ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... of night came a return of his first violent symptoms; he was hot, shivery, and feverish by turns, with dry tongue and throat, and a splitting headache; but in this condition he could still take cognizance of a black, ram-bowed gunboat, which stole into the bay from the east and dropped anchor near ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Peninsula while a Communist-style government was installed in the north (the DPRK). During the Korean War (1950-53), US troops and UN forces fought alongside soldiers from the ROK to defend South Korea from DPRK attacks supported by China and the Soviet Union. An armistice was signed in 1953, splitting the peninsula along a demilitarized zone at about the 38th parallel. Thereafter, South Korea achieved rapid economic growth with per capita income rising to roughly 14 times the level of North Korea. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... on his favourite phrase, "D'you know, that's a funny thing; I had never noticed it; I may as well tell you that I don't much care about peering at things through a microscope, and pricking myself on pin-points of difference; no; we don't waste time splitting hairs in this house; why not? well, it's not a habit of ours, that's all," Mme. Verdurin replied, while Dr. Cottard gazed at her with open-mouthed admiration, and yearned to be able to follow her as she skipped lightly from one stepping-stone to another of her stock of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... unable patiently to endure any further cross-examination; and he walked away through the trees to say to his friend,—'There's an intolerable Yankee yonder, splitting troughs as fast as possible, but his tongue is more ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... exclaimed, with menacing tone, though there was relief as well in his voice. He bent the point of his blade against the floor, gazed at himself in the pier-glass and looked over his shoulder at Nell, who stood in the midst of his courtiers, splitting her sides with laughter, undignified ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... cell-wall, and effect the rapid locomotion of this "monad," which, in all respects except its mobility, is characteristically a plant. Under ordinary circumstances, the Chlamydomonas multiplies by simple fission, each splitting into two or into four parts, which separate and become independent organisms. Sometimes, however, the Chlamydomonas divides into eight parts, each of which is provided with four instead of two cilia. These "zoospores" conjugate in pairs, and give rise to quiescent bodies, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... after having cut it down, and brought it home green in bundles, in which state it is called "koradee," scrape it with a large mussel-shell, and take the heart out of it, splitting it with the nails of their thumbs, which for that purpose they keep very long. It would seem, however, that the natives have made instruments for dressing this flax not very dissimilar from the tools of our own wool-combers. The outside they throw away, and the rest they spread out ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... hand, when Robert Moore was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... reformers—the psychopathic ones who publicly and shamelessly belabor their own unfortunate impulses; to the reformers (once again)—the psychopathic ones trying forever to drown their own obscene desires in ear-splitting prayers for their fellowman's welfare; to the reformers—the Freudian dervishes who masturbate with Purity Leagues, who achieve involved orgasms denouncing the depravities of others; to the reformers (patience, patience) the psychopathic ones who seek to vindicate their own sexual impotencies ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... me, my head was splitting with agony, and I tottered to a bank near a small neat cottage, on the side of the road. I have a faint recollection of some one coming to me and taking my hand, but nothing further; and it was not till many months afterwards, that I became acquainted with the circumstances ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... government was installed in the north. The Korean War (1950-53) had US and other UN forces intervene to defend South Korea from North Korean attacks supported by the Chinese. An armistice was signed in 1953 splitting the peninsula at the 38th parallel known as the DMZ. Thereafter, South Korea achieved rapid economic growth, with per capita income rising to 13 times the level of North Korea. In 1997, the nation suffered a severe financial crisis from which it continues ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... English old maid we saw last week," I interrupted, "who doubled just once instead of splitting. I can see the drop of the jaw now. Even without the false teeth, it would have ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... arm. Alvah, complaining of a splitting head, went off alone. Somehow the others filtered away; Angela Baxter, who was to spend the night with Lydia, piled the last of the dishes with Lydia in the kitchen. Sally, silent and yawning, sank into an armchair by the dying fire. Martie, watching ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... their way to the Eldorado of the North. It was when they were but three miles from Dawson that the break-up came. It was heralded by ear-splitting explosions. Jim put all his weight on to ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... mid-Victorian evangelists ever pictured to spellbound, quaking sinners. Never in this world had there been a parallel to the naked dangers and nauseous discomforts of that western front; never so prolonged an agony of head-splitting noises, lacerations of human flesh, smells that turned the body sick, blasphemies that made the soul grow hard, frenzied efforts to kill, and above all a spirit, fanatical, that urged each man to bear more, kill more, because he was ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... they passed streams with cascades, on which mills might easily be formed; but here numbers of carpenters were converting the lofty trees which grew around into planks, by splitting them with wedges. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... it would be great fun to go down into the valley and find out for himself if the ice really did go out. He had an idea that it caused a terrific splitting and crashing and thundering noise and he thought that perhaps some fish would be tossed up on the bank and then he would have ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was turned off one morning with a joyous band of comrades, retired to hammocks, and awaited the worst with firmness. It was nothing more than a splitting headache and shivering for about an hour, during which time I wished Kruger, Roberts, and the war at the bottom of the sea. A painful stiffness then ensued, and that was all. My only grievance was that two dying horses were brought up and tied just below me, and dosed—lucky beasts—with champagne ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... geographical lines, but only the common division occurring everywhere between conservatives and progressives. The other is that instead of two divisions in China, there are at least five, two parties in both the north and south, and another in the central or Yangtse region,[3] each one of the five splitting up again more or less on factional and provincial lines. And so far as the future is concerned, probably this last statement is the most significant of the three. That all three statements are true is what makes Chinese politics so difficult ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... came when, after felling the dead tree, splitting an armful of fuel and carrying it to the Colonel, he returned to the task of cutting down the tough green spruce for their bedding. Many strained blows must be delivered before he could effect the chopping of even a little notch. Then he would shift his position and cut a corresponding ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... straight to his own rooms. As he came in there was a vivid flash of lightning, followed instantaneously by a crashing, splitting noise, like that of universes ripped asunder. He did not honor the high uproar with attention. This dwarf was not afraid of anything except the commission ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... grotesque and ludicrous misery. It was fun at first, and they smiled at each other, but soon the fun had become tragedy as the terrible camel-ache seized them by spine and waist, with its deep, dull throb, which rises gradually to a splitting agony. ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Executive Will; Prudence, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Self-love, minister for the Home Department; Observation, Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Poetry, over the Woods and Forests; Lord Keeper Conscience, a sage, scrupulous, hesitating, head-shaking, hair-splitting personage, whose decisions are most just, but too slow to be useful, and who is the readier to weep for what is done, than to direct what should be done; Wit, Manager of the House of Commons, a flashy, either-sided gentleman, who piques himself on never being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... contest. He easily persuaded Ellangowan, that it would be creditable to him to take the field at the head of as strong a party as possible; and immediately went to work, making votes, as every Scotch lawyer knows how, by splitting and subdividing the superiorities upon this ancient and once powerful barony. These were so extensive, that by dint of clipping and paring here, adding and eking there, and creating over-lords upon all the estate ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... contributed indirectly to defeat the aspirations of their fellow-Germans after the perpetuation of a Germany in America. The combination of the mass of the German population in one solid church organization would have been a formidable support to such aspirations. The splitting of this mass in half, necessitating petty local schisms with all their debilitating and demoralizing consequences, may have helped secure the country from a ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... all, so absurd. He proves it by putting wrong thinking on the stage, where you see it for yourself in action, and laugh immoderately. Perhaps you had never thought how droll wrong thinking or no thinking was before; and while you laugh with Shaw at your side-splitting discovery, the serious message glides in unostentatiously—wrong thinking is not merely laughable; it is also dangerous, and very uncomfortable. And so the showman has done his work, the advertiser has sold his goods, and there is so much more truth in circulation in unfamiliar ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... back yard of the hotel one day when I had been begging him for the gift harder than usual, there stood a huge pile of wood that needed splitting, and looking at this he remarked, that I could earn the watch if I chose by doing the task. He was about to take a journey at the time and I asked him if he really meant it. He replied that he did, and ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... outstretched in a vain endeavour to reach the gunwale of the boat. Then, almost in the self- same instant, and before one's benumbed senses found time to realise the ghastly tragedy, there was a rapid swirl of water alongside, an ear- splitting yell, and the miserable man was dragged down, an ensanguined patch in the deep crystalline blue, and a few transitory air-bubbles alone marking the spot from which he had vanished. Involuntarily I glanced astern. There was but one shark's fin ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... groped his devious way to the open air, and to the burn that went singing by. Here, after drinking copiously, he lay till grey dawn, groaning, the thundering of the linn incessantly jarring his splitting head. Then, when there was light enough, the unhappy man rose on unsteady feet, and started looking for his horse. A fruitless search; no sign of a horse could be seen, beyond the trampled space where he had ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang |
