"Racket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fogs, and the great foghorn bellowed and howled night after night. Galusha soon learned to sleep through the racket. It was astonishing, his capacity for sleep and his capability in sleeping up to capacity. His appetite, too, was equally capable. He was, in fact, feeling so very well that his conscience began troubling him ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... snatched upright and into full awareness by the marrow-chilling clamor that slashed across the night. The very air seemed curdled by the savage racket and, for a moment, he sat numbed by it. Then, slowly, it seemed—his brain took the noise and separated it into two distinct but intermingled categories, the deadly screaming of a cat and the maddened trumpeting ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... had more than either one or two Occasions to know a good deal of the shifty Behaviour of this said Master Trim,— and that you are astonished, nor can you for your Soul conceive, how so worthless a Fellow, and so worthless a Thing into the Bargain, could become the Occasion of such a Racket as ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... He was literally holding her before him by the sheer strength of his kindly, compelling personality. "When this racket started—this war—I told them at the Admiralty my age was forty-five. It was a lie—I am fifty-two. I've knocked about the world; I know men and cities and the places where there are neither. But I've lived clean all my life and I was never gladder of it ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... I heard Aunt Gwen's angelic voice calling down. My first fear was that Uncle Philander had gone off on some sort of racket, and was returning in no condition for a gentleman, for which suspicion I humbly beg his pardon, for he's just as lovely as a man ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... Bacon also testifies that he "had much and private access to her, which he used honorably and did many men good: yet he would say merrily of himself, that he was like Robin Goodfellow; for when the maids spilt the milk-pans or kept any racket, they would lay it upon Robin: so what tales the ladies about the queen told her, or other bad offices that they did, they would put it upon him." The poems of Fulke Greville, celebrated and fashionable in his own time, but now known ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the tree, which was small, but very tough. Every blow brought a yell from the fat boy. He couldn't have made much more racket had his companions in reality been amputating ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... now. I had now to make an impression, and right away, to back up our battle-ship looks. So we cut loose and gave them, port and starboard, one after the other, twenty-one whaling bombs in good, regulation style. They made a terrible racket against the Andes Mountains, which come down here to the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... down now that we're half shelved. The men did make such a racket, and yet no one seemed to speak for two minutes except Mr. Gresham, who stood upon my pet footstool, and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... uproar going on upon deck, and I was not at all surprised when the general, clad in a dressing- gown, emerged from below with his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other, to enquire what all the racket was about. ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... thought the room was hardly big enough for three, I excused myself to Mr. Jim Matheson—alias Matthews, the coachman—and made for the hall. We passed each other at the head of the stairs, and I cluttered down, making as much racket as I could; then at the foot of the stairs I took off my boots and crept upstairs again, more to hear the fellow's voice than anything else, so I ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... chattering at the Table d'Hote, and all sorts of business transacted under my very windows. The racket and perfume of this place make me resolve to get out of it to-morrow; as that is the case, you won't hear from me till I reach Munich. Adieu! May we meet in our dreams by the fountain of Merlin, and from thence take ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and the sun did not set until near eight o'clock. Up-stairs the poor child had to go, and then his mother found some quiet. Her babe slept soundly in the cradle, undisturbed by Tommy's racket, and she enjoyed a new novel to the extent of almost entirely forgetting her lonely boy shut up in ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... Whitehall. You may expose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel, and in a City pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. It is but a ball bandied to and fro, and every man carries a racket about him to strike it from himself among the rest of the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake the nature of things so far as to drop but a single hint in public how such a one starved half the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Barry," returned Little carelessly. "If you said we'd gone the other way and would sight Surabaya in fifteen minutes, I'd believe you, old sailor. This darkness and light, racket and hush, mud flats and moss on the masts, all in one evening, has got me flummuxed. But I've got one little ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Green Forest he found Drummer the Woodpecker making a great racket on the hollow limb of an old chestnut. Sammy sat down near by and listened. "My, that's fine! I wish I could do that. You must be practising," said Sammy at the ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... steaming before us; and, like ourselves, all around us are absorbed in absorbing. Though every table is full, there is little noise in the crowded apartment. Men go to the Maison Doree to eat, not to chatter. Without, too, there is a lull, after the bustle and racket of the afternoon. The day has been splendid—crisp, bright, and invigorating, and all the dandies and beauties of Paris have been abroad, driving in the Champs Elysees, galloping through the leafless avenues ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... quite so. I own that I have thought but little about him, for indeed 'tis rarely that I see him, and save that at times his racket in the house sorely disturbs my studies, I have well-nigh forgotten all about him. Yes, yes; it is, of course, high time that he began his education, so that if I should die before I have completed my discoveries he may ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... away the fact that he had done things. They were large, broad; the knuckles heavy; the palms calloused by something rougher than oar and tennis-racket. The microscopic traces of black grease did not for months quite come out of the cracks in his skin. And two of his well-kept but thick nails had obviously ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the two rummaged around the room for a while, till suddenly one of them pounced upon the table where lay the paper dolls, and catching all three of them up in his hand, cried out: "Here! these'll do. Come on, Frank;" and the boys hurried down stairs again with even more racket than they had made ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... straight to bed, but had a hard time sleeping, as there was a tremendous racket of loading all night long. Nearly all the passengers were British officers on their way to the front. Among the others I found de Bassompierre of the Foreign Office, and a Mr. and Mrs. W——, who were coming over with a Rolls-Royce, to be presented ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... the deck alone until he hit upon a plausible explanation of the awakening which would arouse the Magyar songbird's gravest suspicions. "When she awakes and finds herself far out at sea, there will be a devil of a racket, unless I can find a way to control her. Should she denounce me, I might be detained by the Captain, subject to an examination. And the money; it would have to go overboard or else I would go to ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... and I don't like to shoot without giving him a chance. But I owe him a few. If the company goes bust, there's going to be a row round here we won't forget in a hurry. Every widow and orphan in the county has got some of that stuff. They worked that racket as hard as they could—home road for the home people. What's ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... putting up a bluff, he's waiting out there at Michigan for me to call it. If he's working the sentimental racket, then I've got to be the beneficiary ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... sir," she said, opening the door; and there were Sanders and Bonamy like two bulls of Bashan driving each other up and down, making such a racket, and all them chairs in the way. They never noticed her. She felt motherly towards them. "Your breakfast, sir," she said, as they came near. And Bonamy, all his hair touzled and his tie flying, broke off, and pushed Sanders into the arm-chair, and said ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... fluttered like a bird to the floor. The house that had seemed whirring, buzzing a moment since, was suddenly very quiet; a breath of air crept in through the open front door carrying the noise of a passing motor; she heard faint sounds from upstairs and then a grinding racket in the pipe behind the bookcases-her husband turning of ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... remarked the man of the sea placidly, and controlling a temper which in less civilized parts would have led him to wipe the floor with the plump scientist. "My owners were paid fur that racket: not me. No, sir. So I've paddled into this port to see if I can rake in a few dollars on ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... to call her to dinner she flung the door open, and he paused in wide-eyed amazement over the transformation. His eyes kindled at a pair of golf-sticks, a hockey-stick, a tennis-racket, and a big basket-ball in the corner; and his whole look of surprise was so ridiculous that she had to laugh. He looked as if a miracle had been performed on the room, and actually stepped back ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... was a postscript: "By the way, I've only just learnt that it was your son who was buying those Royal Rubber shares. I do hope he was not inconvenienced. I need not say that if I had had the slightest idea who was standing the racket I should ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... brother is the corpulent duke, That is, the great duke, 'sdeath, I shall not shortly Racket away five hundred crowns at tennis, But it shall rest 'pon record! I scorn him Like a shav'd Polack: all his reverend wit Lies in his wardrobe; he 's a discreet fellow, When he 's made up in his robes of state. Your ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... house," he said. "She 'll not can co in." A great floundering racket was going on above, mingled with growls and shrieks, but ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... muttered again: "the thing made rattle and racket enough to wake the dead. Wonder if I disturbed ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... were ashamed, I don't see why they shouldn't have done it here-right," said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. "'Tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. I don't care for ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... whole agreeable Architecture disordered; so that I can compare em to nothing but to the Night-Goblins that take a Pleasure to over-turn the Disposition of Plates and Dishes in the Kitchens of your housewifely Maids. Well, after all this Racket and Clutter, this is too dear, that is their Aversion; another thing is charming, but not wanted: The Ladies are cured of the Spleen, but I am not a Shilling the better for it. Lord! what signifies ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... commenced its career as hand-ball, the ball being driven backwards and forwards with the palm of the hand. Then the players used gloves, and afterwards bound cords round their hands to make the ball rebound more forcibly. Here we have the primitive idea of a racket. France seems to have been the original home of tennis, which in the thirteenth century was played in unenclosed spaces; but in the fourteenth it migrated to the towns, and walls enclosed the motions of the ball. In Paris alone there were said to be eighteen hundred tennis-courts. In the sixteenth ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... that was the way Gaston had sensed it. Along the silent roads of Central Park and Riverside Drive, where even the taxis seemed to employ their mufflers and to resort less frequently to the warning racket of their exhausts, the Frenchman had been ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... silence followed. To tell the truth, none of them liked Miss Allen. They knew that she did not like them either, but considered them frivolous and pert, and complained when they made a racket. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... long-drawn out, almost unbearable squeaks, mouse-like in character. Perhaps they had never had the faculty of speech, since they did not need it to communicate with one another; perhaps they realized that the racket they could make would hurt them as much ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... goin' to git help. When I bring a mechanic back don't ye try makin' no racket or it'll be the ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... he exclaimed, with sudden irritation, as a louder chattering of pneumatic riveters from the new building all at once clattered in at the window. "A free country, eh? And men are permitted to make that kind of a racket when a fellow wants to ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... yelping and crying. Lop-Ear started suddenly. He thought he had heard something. We looked at each other in fear, realizing the danger of our position. The one thing that made animals raging demons was tampering with their young. And these puppies that made such a racket belonged to the wild dogs. Well we knew them, running in packs, the terror of the grass-eating animals. We had watched them following the herds of cattle and bison and dragging down the calves, the aged, and the sick. We had been chased by them ourselves, ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... mere resembled the parang, or heavy, broad-bladed knife, of the Malays. Others liken it to a paddle, and matter-of-fact colonists to a tennis-racket or a ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... August that they went up into the village. Their hearts beat violently while they drew near to the inn. There was no light in the room. They groped about the porch, but not a soul was to be seen. Dachsel and Wachsel, however, were making a heathenish racket. Hansei called out: ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... the greatest racket you ever heard, pans fallin', dishes smashin', men yellin', and the cook swearin'. Father run on deck, thinkin' the ship was dismasted. He found the cook and Billy Peter sittin' in the middle of the mess, lookin' at each other. Neither was ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pronounced: "A parson should be married and have children—plenty of them. Last time I was here, couldn't hear myself speak there was such a racket of children in the hall. Mother sick upstairs, and the kids sliding down the banisters like mad. I left the ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... came so suddenly that it made us jump, and Ed Mason, who was standing up forward, nearly fell overboard. He grabbed the mast to save himself, and then we all stooped to looked under the sail. The shouting had begun again, and there was a great racket ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... a broad smile. "Jake turned his guns loose on them prowlin' men last night. By George! you ought to have heard them run. One plumped into the gate an' went clear over it, to fall like a log. Another fell into the brook an' made more racket than a drownin' horse. But it was so ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... of a convent on Fiesole, and the slow walk through its cool cloisters; in place of the dead files of uniform ugly houses, Venetian palaces, with the water at their base, reflecting the colors which Giorgione and Titian, housepainters at Venice, left upon their stones; in place of the racket of the street, the quiet greenness of an English lane, or the inaccessible ice and glory of a far-off mountain summit; in place of the burnt waste of fields covered with ashes and coal-dust, the burning stretch of the desert with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... "Such a racket as never was!" declared Thede, laughing at the recollection of the scene. "I was in the shop," he went on, "getting out some articles Mother Murphy had been borrowing money on, and ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... making such a racket that this could not be heard more than a foot or so from the speaker. Lynch himself charged into the mass, swinging his billy and his free fist, and laying others out one after the other. Pretty soon the floor was littered with cops. Lynch was doing yeoman duty, but it was hard to tell what side ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... New York two hours when I'm blessed if the beggar didn't walk in on me at the Waldorf. Jolly glad to see me, and all that, but had to hang on in New York for a bit, on some business or other. Now he thinks he can't get off for a fortnight or so, and as what he's got on isn't my sort of racket, I might as well be here as anywhere ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... better reason, chile. Folks cyarn' stan' too much er de gab nohow, en' dey sez dat he 'ouldn't let up, but kep' up sech a racket dat dey couldn't git ner sleep. Den at las' ole King George over dar in England sent de hull army clear across de water jes' ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... he exclaimed. Jeremy was doubtful of the possibility of this. "You see," he said, "the key is on a string 'round his neck. The only way would be to break the chest open. It's big and heavy and we should raise the whole ship with the racket. Then, besides, I don't like to steal the thing, even though he is a pirate." Bob also felt that it would hardly be honest to break into a man's box, no matter what his character might be. "If we should just happen to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a Filipino skeeter holler when he's mad. When they find they can't get at you then about four thousand settle on your net and blanket and sing all night. You've got to be fagged out before you can sleep over the racket those little ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... hast, viz. these, and those that were thy peach-coloured ones! or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as, one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries have made a shift to eat up thy holland: and God knows, whether those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his kingdom: but the midwives say the children are not in the fault; whereupon the world increases, ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... like her," replied the doctor, with a hostile note in his voice. "Whenever I am dining here, she always goes in and kicks up that racket. She knows ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Lemuel Train is in it, an' Truxton, of the Diamond Dot, Holcomb, of the Star, Yeager, of the Three Diamond, Clark, of the Circle Y, Henningson, of the Three Bar, Toban, of the T Down, an' some more which has come in for the racket tonight. Countin' 'em all—the punchers which have come in with the fellows I have named—there'll ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... rush. There was a trembling of the ground, a dull, heavy shock, and I felt something warm on my face. At the same moment I heard a growl of rage and surprise from the bear and felt relieved of his weight above me. A terrific racket followed. As soon as I could free myself from the dirt, I crawled out cautiously and saw a strange thing. A big black bull, the boss of the Mutaw ranch, had charged on the Grizzly and knocked him ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... Israelis killed in border clashes in the past twenty-four hours, so maybe they're really getting things patched up, after all. During the same period, there were more fatalities in Newer New York as a result of clashes between the private troops of rival racket gangs, political parties and ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Lord took the trouble to make me, and it seems kind of onjustifiable for me to prove He plumb wasted His time. You tell Maggy I done it for her. I ain't hidin' my light under a bushel, because I need it to see by. Ouch!' says he. 'This racket hurts!' ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... concert pitch to-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do—-first of all, what you'll do. You sit right down flat on the top of the wall. Then I'll move on up forward and see what has been happening out there that should boom shoreward with such a racket. You stay right here, and I'll be back as soon as I've looked into the face of ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... of those early telephone exchanges in the silence of a printed page is a wholly impossible thing. Nothing but a language of noise could convey the proper impression. An editor who visited the Chicago exchange in 1879 said of it: "The racket is almost deafening. Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics engaged in a game of fox and geese." In the same ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... in body and soul. I'm sick of this empty life. I want a home. I want rest. I want some one to care for me, and take an interest in what I do. Frank isn't perfect, I don't pretend that he is. I wish to goodness he would own up, and face the racket once for all, but it's no use, he won't! Between ourselves I believe he thinks the old man won't live much longer, and there will be no need to worry him at all. Any way there it is, he won't tell at present, however much I may beg, but he will marry me; ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... comfort Bess, for I've beaten her all to bits and she needs amusing. I know you've got something nice in your pocket, George; give her some, and 'Dolphus can have her racket. Now then, fly round'; and driving her prey before her, Josie returned ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... article in the Weekly Courier about the terrible marshal from Texas, Hastings by name," laughed the other. "I've had lots of fun over that racket, son, I give you my word I have. Of course there's a sheriff down there capable of doing all those stunts your friend on the paper wrote up; but his name chances to be Rawlings and not Hastings. I must have got things a bit mixed when I told you about how he took ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... was a stone-cutter's shop. One day the proprietor, Dave Atkinson, got into a muss with one "Fighting" MacDonald, and there was a tremendous racket. Judge Clemens ran out and found the men down, punishing each ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... porshun of the audiense, cos they shaded their eyes with their opera glasses and blushed on the top of there heds, were there hare used to grow. The gals then go thru a lot of moshuns, dansin the racket, and Gussy sets ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... too. And then out from the red store ran Curly and he squealed and his brother squealed, also, and the boy dog barked, and so did the storekeeper lady dog, and such a time you never heard in all your life! Oh! such a racket! ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... Bachelor's Establishment Cousin Pons The Muse of the Department Cesar Birotteau At the Sign of the Cat and Racket ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... The 8th of August passed pleasantly enough, and for those souls which can absorb the sublimity of water, and soar to the infinity of space, the scene might have seemed wondrous in width and height; but the subsequent day, while sitting below and reading, I heard a tremendous racket on deck, and before I could exactly arrange the different sounds, the main-sail and gaff-topsail came to the deck "with a run;" and for aught I knew to the contrary, but strongly imagined, the gib and foresail followed ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... fishing! The net we fasten; This minute hasten! Follow me! Don your skirt and jacket And veil, or you'll lack it; Pike and trout wait a racket; Sails flap free. Waken, Amaryllis, darling, waken! Let me not by thy smile be forsaken: Then by dolphins and fair sirens overtaken, In our gay boat we'll sport ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Old Jo Racket played this instrument more than sixty years ago; so far back I can answer for it. You remember Jo, Mrs. Bower, ma'am? Yes, yes, you can just remember him; you was a little 'un when he'd use to crawl round from the work'us of a Sunday to the "Green Man." When he went into ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... grunted Slimmy Jack. "You could blow the roof off, and no one would be the wiser with that racket downstairs. We can't ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... he made a great racket. And the hens, who had become used to his more stealthy visits, began to flutter and squawk. They made such an uproar at last that Major Monkey wanted to hurl the pitcher at them. But he couldn't do that, with his hand stuck inside it. And besides, ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of nature, the enemy chose this mad moment to add his artillery to the cataclysm, and turned a merry whizz-bang battery on to the Top. For an hour the racket lasted, and then fell in gradual diminuendo; and Mac thought of sleep notwithstanding vermin, dust and shrapnel. It was not to be. A fatigue party was wanted immediately. A number were told off. Warmly and extensively apostrophizing the originators of this nocturnal expedition, they gathered ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Weller, having dispatched Job Trotter to procure his formal discharge, his next proceeding was to invest his whole stock of ready money in the purchase of five-and-twenty gallons of mild porter, which he himself dispensed on the racket-ground to everybody who would partake of it. This done, he hurra'd in divers parts of the building until he lost his voice, and then quietly relapsed into his usual collected and philosophical condition, and followed his master out of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... possessed a thousand ears they would have been rendered useless in the stormy racket made by Peter's muffler and the thunderous roar of the exhaust as the car got ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... varieties of duck among the countless flocks which I saw, notably mallard, teal, pochard, and shoveller. Likewise there were many coots, while herons, disturbed in their meditations by the untoward racket, flapped heavily away ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... might be taken for an enlivener; he was dead on his favourite spot the ensuing round, played postman on it. So cleverly, easily, dancingly did he perform the double knock and the retreat, that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his wagers and exclaim: 'Racket-ball, by Jove!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... once the despair and delight of engineers. The mountain fell away rapidly as the long, clumsy train raced down its flank at a breakneck pace. Pobloff shivered and clutched the arms of his seat. He saw nothing but deep blue sky and the tall top of an occasional tree. The racket was terrific, the heat depressing. She sat in her corner, apparently sleeping, while the giant smiled, always smiled, never removing his ugly eyes from the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... overspread Herbert's countenance, whenever the shrill call of "Come and say your task, Master Herbert!" was heard; and the continual use of the imperative mood—"Let that alone, do, Master Herbert!"—"Don't make a racket, Master Herbert!"—"Do hold your tongue and sit still where I bid you, Master Herbert!" operated so powerfully upon this young gentleman, that, at eight years old, he partly fulfilled his tormentor's prophecies, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... successive days, I saw one carrying into his hole buckwheat which he had stolen from a near field. The hole was only a few rods from where we were getting out stone, and as our work progressed, and the racket and uproar increased, the chipmunk became alarmed. He ceased carrying in, and after much hesitating and darting about, and some prolonged absences, he began to carry out; he had determined to move; if the mountain ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... despairing gesture, "only courage failed me. Yes, I say courage, no one having yet dared to declare himself openly against the Fathers of the Grotto. One hesitates and recoils in the fear of stirring up a religious scandal. Fancy what a deplorable racket all this would create. And so those who are as indignant as I am are reduced to the necessity of holding their tongues—preferring a continuance of silence to anything else." Then, by way of conclusion, he added: "The ingratitude and rapacity of man, my dear child, are sad things to see. Each ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ma'm," said Buck, smiling quietly at the old woman's volubility, but deliberately cutting it short. "I mean about the shock racket. Y' see she needs fixin' right, an' I guess it's up to you to git busy, while I go an' haul her ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Varengo wished to compel his host to pay him two florins, or four livres ten sous, per day for his pleasures. He had no right to exact this. To succeed in making it to his interest to comply he set himself to make a continual racket in the house. The poor carpenter, not being able to endure it longer, resolved to complain, but thought it prudent not to carry his complaints to the officers of the company in which Varengo served. He knew by his own experience, at least by that of his neighbors, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... a young Fredericksburg woman who visited the Washingtons one Christmas week: "I must tell you what a charming day I spent at Mount Vernon with mama and Sally. The Gen'l and Madame came home on Christmas Eve, and such a racket the Servants made, for they were glad of their coming! Three handsome young officers came with them. All Christmas afternoon people came to pay their respects and duty. Among them were stately dames and gay young women. The Gen'l seemed very happy, and Mistress Washington ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Barcelona can think for himself with all of that terrific mental racket going on do not know that Barcelona is one of those very rare birds who can really concentrate to the whole exclusion of any distraction short of a vigorous threat to ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... she complained. "I had no idea you'd all get up so early and make such a racket. Why, when there isn't school, I never ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with "Landy," and got interested in his work, and she broke him of wearing red neckties and playing poker, and she made him work, she did, for she grew to realize how much that meant to him, and she jacked him up when ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... She wasn't tipping dice, exactly, but she sure was calling the turn. She was tall, as well as skinny, and our eyes weren't far apart. "Billy Joe," she whispered above the racket of the gambler in the casino, putting her mouth close to my ear. "I told you, sugar. And now you lost. You lost!" Her perfume was cheap, but generous, and pretty well covered up ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... flash young chief from Likieb had stuck him up and drank my toddy, and had said something about my wife—you know how they talk in parables when they mean mischief. I would have shot him for the toddy racket, but I was waitin' for a better reason.... The old hag who bosses my cook-shed said to me as she passed, 'Go and listen to a song of cunning over there'—pointing to a clump of bread-fruit trees. I walked over—quietly. Le-jennabon and ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... latter half of April, we pass through what I call the "robin racket,"—trains of three or four birds rushing pell-mell over the lawn and fetching up in a tree or bush, or occasionally upon the ground, all piping and screaming at the top of their voices, but whether in mirth or anger it is hard to ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... and the guards were expected to make their appearance at any moment. The outsiders, taking advantage of this apprehension, went to the farther end of the cook-room, and, in the darkness, made a racket with pots and kettles, which sounded very much like the clashing of fire-arms; while some of their number in the crowd sang out: 'Guards! guards!' In an instant every man was gone from the tunnel, and a frantic rush took place for the single stairway by about ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... bit of it," answered Tom Shocker. "He'll be out of that room inside of an hour. He wasn't tied very hard, and he's sure to make a racket sooner or later." ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... him then. Evan could not make out what it was all about. But his conscience was easy. He could afford to smile at the racket. Finally George ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... am going tout de bon, and I heartily wish I was returned. It is a horrid exchange, the cleanness and verdure and tranquillity of 'Strawberry, for a beastly ship, worse inns, the pav'e of the roads bordered with eternal rows of maimed trees, and the racket of an h'otel garni! I never doat on the months of August and September, enlivened by nothing but Lady Greenwich's speaking-trumpet—but I do not want to be amused—at least never at the expense of being put in motion. Madame du ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... little more than ten minutes he was swinging a racket on the private sward that separates Elm Park Gardens East from Elm Park Gardens West, and is common to the residents of both. He had not encountered Lois at home, and had not thought it necessary to seek her out. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... it was with swift laughing glances. Her cheeks and hands were-already brown,—an honest brown won from May and June in the open field,—not that blistered, peeling scarlet that marks the insincere devotee of racket, driver and oar, who jumps into the game in August, but the real brown conferred by the dear mother of us all upon the faithful who go forth to meet her in April. Her hands interested him particularly. They were long, slender and supple; and she had a pretty way of folding them upon her knees ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... attitude: the old chief stood right in front of the big machine—he was uncertain about it all, but game. I threw her in and waved to the feeders, who tossed in the great stalks as the big iron arms started to revolve in the air. It did make an infernal racket—but it did strip hemp. The fiber came out of one end, the juice ran into ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... met the most wounded man who ever came out of France alive, it was my turn to be in hospital. He came to visit me there, and told me that he'd been all through the Vimy racket and was again ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... given up to harmless racket. Nowhere has the tradition of the Latin Saturnalia been fitted with less change into the Christian calendar. Men, women, and children of the proletariat—the unemancipated slaves of necessity—go out this night to cheat their misery with noisy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... before a fall! We had not gone far when—whir, whir, whir—a fearful racket! bits of broken steel springs whizzed past my ears, and the whole machine came to a dead stop. It was not to be moved either forward or backward. The vibration of the one-bladed propeller had brought the lead line little by little within the range of the fly-wheel, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... right," mocked Shandor. "I've been in the newspaper racket for a long time, Mariel. I've got friends in PIB—real friends, not the shamus crowd you're acquainted with that'll take you for your last nickel and then leave you to starve. Never mind how I found out. You hated Ingersoll so much you handed him bouquets all the time. How ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... in showing the ridiculous nature of some of them. The Third House is usually held on some evening during the first or second week of the session, and is opened by the Speaker calling the house to order with a thundering racket of the gavel—"made from the wood of trees grown on the prairies of the State"—and announcing the squatter governor. Since the State was a territory, this announcement, after due formalities, has been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... flitting about in the trees, plunging into the little snowbanks on the twigs, sometimes standing in them up to their white bosoms, and often brushing a segment to the ground, thus making numerous breaches in the white drifts. The racket they made with their scolding and piping might have been called a musical din. Deciding to watch them a while, I flung myself down upon the snow. This act was the signal for a precious to-do among the nervous ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the artist had meant to make game of the ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... he saw a magnificent brigade going with the evident intention of driving the enemy from a wood. They passed in out of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring racket in the wood. The noise was unspeakable. Having stirred this prodigious uproar, and, apparently, finding it too prodigious, the brigade, after a little time, came marching airily out again with its fine formation in nowise disturbed. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... down with the others. Don't make such a racket, children." That was their mother coming in, good-natured and triumphant, with ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... crackling merrily. But alas! the Camellia Buds, being rather overwrought and flustered with their experiments, did not calculate on the fact that the smoke of their bonfire would give away their secret. Rachel had handed her tennis racket to Phyllis, and was taking a turn among the orange trees to try to memorize her recitation for the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... curses directed at some one; loud confused babbling, and then a woman's voice raised in a seemingly endless succession of hysterical shrieks. Thinking that an animal had gotten loose, or something of that kind, I wheeled. Unmistakably the racket ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... the morning and, like old men and women, go to the mills to do their day's labour; and, when they return home, "wearily fling themselves on their beds, too tired to take off their clothes." Many children work all night—"in the maddening racket of the machinery, in an atmosphere insanitary and clouded with humidity ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the street—an old friend of mine—I was overjoyed at the rencontre and told him the idea I'd been brooding over for months and he promised to stand all the racket." ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... rattled through the quiet streets of Tonneins, and the postilion smacked his whip with the French love of racket, I looked out for the house where, forty years before, I had seen the quilting party. I believe I recognized the house; and I saw two or three old women, who might once have formed part of the merry group of girls; but I doubt whether they recognized ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... voice. "What's the use of making such a racket? I can't hear myself think. I say stop your noise! ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the fete-day. She was at a corner of a booth covered with flags, where the shows are given. Her comrades, all in Polish costumes, were making a horrible racket. I watched her standing there, silent and dumb, and I thought I saw a melancholy expression in her face; in truth there was enough about her to sadden a girl of twenty. ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... looking up at the sky over Shattuck mountain where there was a great big—shoot now, I d'no as I can call its name but it was like a trail of fire in the sky, and it was makin' the dangdest racket you ever heard, Rev'rend. Looked kind of like one of them Fourth-of-July skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Marthy was screaming and she grabbed me and hollered, "Hez! Hez, what in tunket is it?" ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... big time some of dese days. See here, child, I has dis piece of oilcloth cross my bed en when it rains on a night, I sleeps in dat chair over dere en lets it drop on de oilcloth. Den when it comes a storm, my Lord, dere such a racket! I be settin here lookin for dat top up dere to be tumblin down on me de next crack en seems like it does give me such a misery in my head. Yes, mam, dat misery does strike me every time I hear tell bout dere ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... refreshment I had ordered untouched, I bolted out of the house in much the same way as a thief might have done, and ran, as if for my life, right down the Alexandra Road until I reached Wareham's office. And there I seized the knocker in a frenzy, and made such a racket as might have awakened the dead. The door suddenly opened, and I fell into the arms ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Uncle Ephraim's innocent rejoinder, spoken loudly enough for Wilford to hear, "I don't need it an atom. I shan't catch cold, for I am used to it; besides that, I never could stand the racket this hot weather." ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... young oak-tree thickly festooned with lanterns Austin found an unoccupied table. There was a great deal of racket and laughter from the groups surrounding them, but this seemed to be the only available spot; besides, Austin was ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... with a startled consciousness that the village was wide-awake. At last matters grew so uproarious that the grandsire's red kerchief came down from his face with a jerk. What decent old gentleman could sleep in such a racket! Mynheer van Gleck regarded his children with astonishment. The baby even showed symptoms of hysterics. It was high time to attend to business. Madame suggested that if they wished to see the good Saint Nicholas, they should sing the same loving invitation ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... herd is moving at the rising of the sun, And the prairie is lit with rose and gold; And the camp is all a-bustle, and the busy day's begun, He leaps into the saddle sure and bold. Through the round of heat and hurry, through the racket and the rout, He rattles at a pace that nothing mars; And when the night-winds whisper, and camp-fires flicker out, He is sleeping like a child ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... sundry windows placed at some little distance above the floor, and looking into a gravelled area bounded by a high brick wall, with iron CHEVAUX-DE-FRISE at the top. This area, it appeared from Mr. Roker's statement, was the racket-ground; and it further appeared, on the testimony of the same gentleman, that there was a smaller area in that portion of the prison which was nearest Farringdon Street, denominated and called 'the Painted Ground,' from the fact of its walls having once displayed the semblance of various men-of-war ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the Boston massacre about which you have heard so much that it would almost seem to rank with that of St. Bartholomew. But, as the Irishman remarked, the man who gets his finger pinched makes a lot more racket than the one who gets his head cut off; and the Boston massacre, for all the hullabaloo that was raised about it, was merely an insignificant street riot. No doubt Samuel Adams did his full share in fanning that ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... asleep and then the impatient cook, who had orders to have dinner strictly upon the hour, would be compelled to seek the shore and roar at him. Old Jack would waken and upon rowing to shore would inquire angrily: "What you all mek such a debbil of a racket for hey? I wa'nt ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... flat, marshy banks of the Thames, and the wooden toy light-house at Dungeness, to the vast, spreading harbour, with its busy multitude of steam boats and ferry boats, its wharf upon wharf, and its tall statue of Liberty dominating all the racket and bustle of the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... three ships met, and the merchant-man staggered on like a stag with two wolves hanging to its haunches. The three became but a dark blurr amid the smoke, with the top spars thrusting out in a bristle, and from the heart of that cloud came the quick red flashes of flame, and such a devils' racket of big guns and small, cheering and screaming, as was to din in my head for many a week. For a stricken hour the hell-cloud moved slowly across the face of the water, and still with our hearts in our mouths we watched the flap of ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle |
