"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ached when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the devil for him. And just as his tendency was to magnify the success and utility of his patent purchases, so he would lend himself more or less to gross impostures simply because they interested him. This confirmed his reputation for being a bit of a crank; and as he had in addition all the restlessness and eccentricity of the active spirits of his class, arising from the fact that no matter what he busied himself with, it never really mattered whether he accomplished it or not, he remained an unsatisfied ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Levantine vessel. Also, a graceful skiff seen in perfection at Constantinople, where it almost monopolizes the boat traffic. It is fast, but crank, being so narrow that the oars or sculls have their looms enlarged into ball-shaped masses to counter-balance their out-board length. It has borne for ages the wave-line now brought out in England as the highest result of marine architecture. It ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that doesn't change the distinction between men and animals. He is your son, madam—and he's going to be mine. But, fine boy as he is, I call him a crank ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... to talk to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go South yesterday. She cry, say 'I so sorry, Katie; you been so good to me.' I cry, too. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Friday, August 4, 1807, a crowd of curious people might have been seen along the wharves of the Hudson River. They had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a "crank" who proposed to take a party of people up the Hudson River to Albany in what he called a steam vessel named the Clermont. Did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current up the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... apprehension of foundering. On the 20th we could not see the Success; and this storm so terrified the greatest part of the crew, that seventy of them were resolved to bear away for England, alleging that the ship was so very crank she would never be able to carry us to the South Sea. But by the resolution of the officers they were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... could penetrate the paper. The paper was next sanded by permitting its lower surface to pass over dry sand in a box standing on the floor. A workman rolled off the paper, and with his hand he strews sand on the upper surface. The rolling taking place on the edge of a table, by means of a crank, the excess of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... rung of every chair must be gone over, though ever so clean; every article put up or put out of the way; Miss Fortune made the most of the little province of housekeeping that was left her; and a fluttering tape escaping through the crank of the door would have put her whole spirit topsy-turvy. When all was to her mind, and not before, she would have her breakfast. Only gruel and biscuit, or toast and tea, or some such trifle, but Ellen must ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and something kinder to the eye. So him they burned, her they buried alive and me they tormented into the wrack ye see. But I escaped wi' my life, the Lord delivered me out o' their bloody hands, which was an ill thing for them, d'ye see, for though I lack my starboard blinker and am somewhat crank i' my spars alow and aloft, I can yet ply whinger and pull trigger rare and apt enough for the rooting out of evil. And where a fairer field for the aforesaid rooting out o' Papishers, Portingales, and the like evil men than this good ship, the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... all right. The lad at the camera begun to turn a crank and Vida begun to act like she wasn't acting at all. The director just give her a low word when she had to move. He didn't bark now. And say, that crying scene! Darned if I didn't near cry myself looking at her, and I heard this stonefaced director breathing ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... jump over the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Mr. Choate arrived at the same hotel on the day I took up my abode there, so that some of the toil he had inspired went on in his proximity, if not in his presence. I carefully kept out of his sight, however, lest he should think me a "crank" on the subject of reform, ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... were out of the train, walking up toward the engine. About it were men and women, and the children saw a man with a black box on three legs grinding away at a crank. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... hear, but do know that in their wanderings they received much charitable assistance from British shipmasters and missionaries—in some cases their passages were paid to the United States—the natural and proper country for the ignorant religious 'crank'." ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... patriotic Street devised the bucket-chain, the crank of which was in the hand of the Street, while the "chain" ran through the Treasury of the United States. Every bucket came out filled with gold. Lazard Freres emptied out the gold and shipped it abroad to their confederates. This created the necessity for buying it back with bonds. The ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... abstinence. Won't allow any literature with the least smell of a drink in it, not even in the singing-class. Would not have 'Here's a health to King Charles' inside the door. Narrowing, that; as many of the finest classics speak of wine freely. Eastman is useful, but a crank. Now take 'Lochinvar.' We are to have it on strawberry night; but say! Eastman kicked about it. Told the kid to speak something else. Kid ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... too) a tolerable song, and is certainly a deuced clever fellow. What a rise in the world he has made! Do you recollect what a poor sort of way he was in when you introduced him at Gentleman George's? and now he's the Captain Crank of the gang." ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... types—four-cycle and two-cycle. The former is by far the more common. In a four-cycle engine the piston must travel twice up and down in each cylinder, to deliver one power stroke. This results in one power impulse in each cylinder every two revolutions of the crank shaft. On its first down stroke, the piston sucks in gas. On its first up stroke, it compresses the gas. At the height of this stroke, the gas is exploded by means of the electric spark and the piston is driven down, on its power stroke. ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... who drinks good, hot, dark, strong coffee for breakfast! A man who smokes a good, dark, fat cigar after dinner! You may marry your milk-faddist, or your anti-coffee crank, as you will! But I know the magic of the coffee pot! Let me make my Husband's coffee—and I care not who makes eyes at him! Give me two matches a day— One to start the coffee with, at breakfast, and one for his cigar, after dinner! And I defy all ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Alice, who had not heard her sister's last burst of eloquence, and whose thoughts were still running on her nephew, and his various talents. "He's found out summut about a crank or tank, I forget rightly which it is, but th' master's made him foreman, and he all the while turning off hands; but he said he could na part wi' Jem, nohow. He's good wage now; I tell him he'll be thinking of marrying ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... old-fashioned hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all winter and its spattering slop all summer. Besides all this there were some ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lines coiled in them, which not only gives them great stability, but, with good management, makes it difficult for a bear, when swimming, to put his paw upon the gunwale, which they generally endeavour to do; whereas, with our boats, which are more light and crank, and therefore very easily heeled over, I have more than once seen a bear on the point of taking possession of them. Great caution should therefore be used under such circumstances in attacking these ferocious creatures. We have always found a boarding-pike the most useful ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... regard such movements as merely mechanical and artificial. You will be tempted to think they are just the ideas of some crank. Put all this aside. Begin your exercises joyously and happily, for the very pleasure of ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... The repeated bellowing of a great liner, blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this, as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting, ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid, sordid, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... regatta was M. Forcat, whose peculiar system of propelling boats I have mentioned in the account of a former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they see where they ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... trials had been made with two crank engines; so it was now decided to construct another set of engines for 150 lb. pressure, having a crank to each cylinder. These engines had cylinders 201/2 inches, 33 inches, and 58 inches diameter by 36 inches stroke, and were fitted into the screw steamer Rosario, whose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... thorough books on vivisection yet published is by Dr. Albert Leffingwell, entitled 'An Ethical Problem.' It is not the book of an extremist or a crank. Dr. Leffingwell admits the necessity of vivisection in certain circumstances and for certain purposes. His endeavour is not so much to get rid of vivisection as to prove that the problem connected with it is an ethical ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... State of New York. Fulton took out two patents for his invention; but unfortunately they were not adequate to his protection, for they covered only the application of the steam-engine to the turning of a crank in producing the rotary motion of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... does not appreciate you at all. He regards you as an erratic philanthropist with a crank for assisting deserving boys." ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the section-boss esteemed his aged guest. On the contrary, Dallas' evident interest in the stranger had stirred the unnatural jealousy in her father's wizen brain. Already, he hated David Bond, and had set him down for a crank. But Dallas needed a lesson. It was all very well for her to do the outside duties as if she were a man; that did not privilege her to ride roughshod over his opinions, or to rule affairs in general with a heavy hand. However, he found no opportunity for questions. She, reading ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... old one-lung machine,—to get her expression right, so the boss kept hollerin',—why, I gets sick and tired. If there's anything doin', why, I'm game, but such monkeyin'! There was that picture-machine idiot workin' the crank as if he was shellin' a thicket-full of Injuns with a Gatling, and his fool cap turned round with the lid down the back of his neck, and me and Collie, the only sensible-actin' ones of the lot, because ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises. Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was always a crank," said Mr. Rogers, "and doubtless will be to the end. By the way, I heard a rumour to the effect that you are soon going to take a course at the business college in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... crank, has been made to speak words, but nothing below a human being has been able to get thought from a written or printed page and convey it to others. To make the machine requires a vast amount of labor expended upon ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too well. He made two voyages for me; and the letters I received, complaining of his brutal conduct to some of his passengers, I can show ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and I'd hate to spend my life cutting paper figures for my wife. No, sir! If I ever seize a frill, I want her to know as much as me; then she won't tear away with the first dark-eyed diamond broker that stops in front of my place to crank up his whizz-buggy. You never heard of a wise woman breaking up her own home, did you? It's the pink-faced dolls from the seminary that fall for Bertie ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... and the poor fellow had to effect a compromise, they agreeing to come into the 'Chapel' and let Lizzie read them a chapter 'of suthin' outer the Bible,' if they could have the rest of the day for their usual Sunday recreations—euchre or kangarooing. I never thought Lizzie would turn out to be a crank, but a crank she is, and I'm afraid Westonley is not at all a happy man, though he yields to her ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... wandering among the many cities, the intimate knowledge of streets and of public places burst upon my comprehension. I could see our host looking upward, his strong white teeth flashing in an ingratiating fascinating smile, his right arm revolving with the crank of his organ, his little brown monkey with the red coat and the ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This is, no ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... "Greeting—You take the prize as an educated fool. According to reports to me by less stupid and more honest men than you, the matter is...." It is surprising how often the handwriting is pretty, coquettish, or affected, but almost half of my crank correspondence is typewritten. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Carlton, smiling pleasantly, "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have sustained a ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... protections against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense Most satisfactory ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... and then crumpled the attack with another burst of fire from the flank. With cries of alarm, the Russians turned and fled toward their trucks. McCready ran along the ravine until he was within fifty yards of the standing machines. As the Russians approached, one of them stepped to the truck crank. McCready's pistol spoke and he dropped. A second shared his fate. With cries of despair, the Russians climbed into the remaining truck whose motor was running. Rapidly it drove away across the plain. McCready rose from the ravine and ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... Bunker Blue. "The auto-van's got a self-starter on. That's the best of all, I think. You don't have to get out to crank up now. It's great. See, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—he was naturally and constitutionally so odd. Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks: rather be crank than president. All the cranks look up ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... renewed exertions as it did when he began his career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment to-morrow. The public demands snappy ball, and the young ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... Wheels.—Steel drop forgings, hardened. Gear.—68 regular; other gears furnished if so desired. Bearings.—Made of the best selected high-grade tool steel, carefully ground to a finish after tempering, and thoroughly dust-proof. All cups are screwed into hubs and crank hangers. Hubs.—Large tubular hubs, made from a solid bar of steel. Furnishing.—Tool-bag, wrench, oiler, pump and repair kit. Tool Bags.—In black or tan leather, as may be preferred. Handle bar, hubs, sprocket ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me? That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess I'll never see either ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Kennedy took three black boxes. They seemed to have an opening in front, while at one side was a little crank, which, as nearly as I could make out, was operated by clockwork released by an electric contact. His first problem seemed to be to dispose the boxes to the best advantage at various angles about the counter where the Kimberley Queen was on exhibition. With so ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... sweetly when the crickets chirped, or the summer rain beat upon the roof, and where the song of the birds in the morning is the happiest music God has given to the country. Back of the woodshed I found the remains of an old grindstone, perhaps the same heavy crank I had so often perspiringly and reluctantly turned. Indeed my reviving memories were rather too generously connected with the strenuousness and not the pleasures of youth, but I thought of the well-filled lot in the ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... To crank it and leap to the driver's seat required but a moment. The big car moved smoothly forward. A turn of the steering wheel brought it around headed toward the wide gates. Barney shifted to second speed, stepped on the accelerator and the cut-out ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Libbey. She said sorrowfully she supposed she ought not to read novels at all since her father disapproved. We found out later on that Mr. Ponsonby's way of expressing disapproval was to burn any he got hold of, and storm at his daughter about them like the confirmed old crank he was. Poor Miss Ponsonby had to keep her Laura Jeans locked up in her trunk, and it wasn't often ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... crank, you know. It's his hobby. He knows more about these things than any man in England. But I wish he wouldn't! Ah, he's beginning ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... To crank the motor (for the self-starter had not yet arrived) was a task of magnitude, but he accomplished it and pulled himself into the seat. For a moment he lay upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... maintenance case coming on—to the usual well-ventilated disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth was not ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Alexander Crummell. And before the bluff, kind-hearted man the shadow seemed less dark. Beriah Green had a school in Oneida County, New York, with a score of mischievous boys. "I'm going to bring a black boy here to educate," said Beriah Green, as only a crank and an abolitionist would have dared to say. "Oho!" laughed the boys. "Ye-es," said his wife; and Alexander came. Once before, the black boy had sought a school, had travelled, cold and hungry, four hundred ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... laziness on the part of the Negro is that, as a rule, the cruel sentiment of the country has closed the doors of every machine shop, cotton mill, and similar factories to all persons of color. Again, almost every class of labor which once was done by hand is now being turned off by the crank of invention. The old-fashioned washboard has been turned into a steam laundry and the old spinning wheel has given place to the American cotton mills. The same is true along all lines of common labor. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... sake of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy of ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he turned the crank, and raised the sinker and the cask, so that the skids which supported them could ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... pitiful diversions of the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up the lane in a car that needed but one twist of the crank to release a great many clattering things. All of them Kenny felt should be anchored more securely. There was an occasional hour in the open. At nightfall he sent for Kenny and by nine he ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... that a third man was needed; if not for the duties of camp making, helping with the cooking and portaging; at least, for turning the crank of the motion-picture camera. Emery and I could not very well be running rapids, and photographing ourselves in the rapids at the same time. Without a capable assistant, therefore, much of the real purpose would ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... quiet perusal may demonstrate that the fare has, at any rate, a grain of logic on his side if he looks upon himself as defrauded. We don't, you know, take your cabs for the joy of sitting in them, or for the pleasure of watching you struggling with a crank, but to be conveyed quickly from place to place. It is wrong to ask us to pay for the time spent by you in persuading your engine to behave, and it is indecent to become abusive when we act on that assumption. If I had not been so busy I should have refused to pay at all and forced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... back and forth along the bank trying to think of some way to cross the river. He found a high flagpole with a rope going over to the other side. The rope went through a loop at the top of the pole and then down the pole and around a large crank. A sign on ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... dirt with 'em. I don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. I guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. He was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. The country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. It got to be a kind of joke with us; and I guess ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and die under the same dispensation, and then be damned to all eternity, if they be not converted from under that covenant into and under the Covenant of Grace, of which I shall speak in its place; and yet for all this, how brag and crank 6 are our poor wantons and wicked ones in this day of forbearance! as if God would never have a reckoning with them, as if there was no law to condemn them, as if there was no hellfire to put them into. But O how will they be deceived ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... done by machinery, which is the custom in Europe, with large lenses, the polisher is slid back and forth over the lens by means of a crank attached to a revolving wheel. The polisher is at the same time slowly revolving around a pivot at its centre, which pivot the crank works into, and the glass below it is slowly turned in an opposite direction. Thus the same effect is produced as in the other system. Those who practice ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... denunciatory language of that day he was called a "proud and pestilent seducer," or, as the modern newspaper would say, a "crank." It is well to make due allowances for the prejudice so conspicuous in the accounts given by his enemies, who felt obliged to justify their harsh treatment of him. But we have also his own writings from which to form an opinion as to his character and views. Lucidity, ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... wagon-wheel had once gone over his tail (when nine dogs out of ten would have lost their lives by receiving the wheel on their hind quarters), and this appendage now had a curious bend in the middle of it, making it rather like a bulldog's "crank" tail, but long and bushy. He was far from being a handsome dog; but he looked every inch a fighter, and there was a certain invincibility about his appearance which, combined with his swiftness in action and the devastating severity of all his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... of the rudder is communicated to the steam cut-off by means of the shaft, C, crank, J, rod, K, crank, I, and the hollow valve spindle. When the tiller is amidships the valve handle, H, is at right angles to the cylinder, and parallel to the tiller. By moving the lever, H, to right or left, steam is ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... of coarse rock salt. You may pack the freezer with a layer of ice three inches thick, then a layer of salt one inch thick, or mix the ice and salt in the tub and shovel it around the freezer. Before beginning to pack the freezer, turn the crank to see that all the machinery is in working order. Then open the can and turn in the mixture that is to be frozen. Turn the crank slowly and steadily until the mixture begins to freeze, then more rapidly until it is completely frozen. If the ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... depression are accomplished by rotating the axle in the wheels of the carriage. This is done by means of a crank which, through an endless screw and pinion, controls a toothed sector ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... and Varus standing where I am. There,—Caesar having in a few moments brought the wires—the body you perceive is confined in this manner.—You observe there can be no escape and no motion. Now at the word of the judge, this crank is turned. Do you see the effect upon the wire? Imagine it your body and you will have a lively idea of the instrument. Then at another wink or word from Varus, these are turned, and you see that another part of the body, the legs or arms as it may be, are subjected to the same force as this ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... surnamed, from the flatness of his feet, Plautus, was the greatest among the comic poets of Rome. Of humble origin, he was driven to literature by his necessities, and it was while turning the crank of a baker's hand-mill that he began the work by which he is now known. He wrote three plays which were accepted by the managers of the public games, and he was thus able to turn his back upon menial drudgery. Born at an Umbrian ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... that Monsen was the richest man in the town, and that he had become so by provisioning ships with spoiled foodstuffs, and refitting old crank vessels, which he heavily insured. And he knew who was a thief and who a bankrupt speculator, and that Merchant Lau only did business with the little shopkeepers, because his daughter had gone to the bad. Pelle knew the secret pride of the town, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Strauss or Josef Holbrooke, and Beethoven did not loom nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great hour ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... was thrown to the lions not because he was a Christian, but because he was a crank: that is, an unusual sort of person. And multitudes of people, quite as civilized and amiable as we, crowded to see the lions eat him just as they now crowd the lion-house in the Zoo at feeding-time, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... alluded to her as that "pretty grey ship." Pretty! A scurvy meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent sea-boat ever launched. We tried to forget that, like many good sea-boats, she was at times rather crank. She was exacting. She wanted care in loading and handling, and no one knew exactly how much care would be enough. Such are the imperfections of mere men! The ship knew, and sometimes would correct the presumptuous human ignorance by the wholesome ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new. Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank. But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again. No, it would not start. Lucas leapt down too. "Get out of the way," he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine: "I'm not going to stand any of your infernal nonsense!" But ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... half-cycles, one complete rotation of the magnet producing one such cycle. Obviously the result would be the same if the magnet were stationary and the coils should rotate, which is the construction of more modern devices. The turning of the crank of a magneto-bell rotates the armature in the magnetic field by some form of gearing at a rate usually of the order of twenty turns per second, producing an alternating current of that frequency. This current is caused by an effective electromotive force which may be as great as 100 volts, produced ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... and dropped to the ground. "Thank God!" he said again. "The two men who were to have come with me didn't show up. I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only the chauffeur. He's waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I give the word. The car's just a few yards away, headed out for the road. How are we to ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... in 1694. Besides The Isle of Pines he wrote satirical tracts (the Parliament of Ladies being the best known), translated Machiavelli, and was evidently a man of parts, though, like his friend Harrington, something of a "crank." He seems also to have been, as some others of the extremer Puritans certainly were, pretty loose in ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... whose father was a lascivious, egotistical crank, married a man absolutely devoid of will power and energy. She was gifted; the marriage a failure. Of the two children, one was an indolent, thoroughly useless, good-for-nothing boy, whose only thought was of wasting money on pretty neckties and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Bert, rubbing his hands, "it feels good to get opposite you once more. Pony, you're a crank. We might have had a hundred games like this during the past year, if there wasn't ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... (ten minutes later) and rescind. Others came with a vast show of hurry and despatch, but I observed it to be principally show. The agricultural model for instance, which was practicable, proved a kind of flypaper for these busybodies. I have seen them blankly turn the crank of it for five minutes at a time, simulating (to nobody's deception) business interest: "Good thing this, Pinkerton? Sell much of it? Ha! Couldn't use it, I suppose, as a medium of advertisement for my article?"—which was perhaps toilet soap. Others (a still worse variety) carried us to neighbouring ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... this perpetual task. Fancy being entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... striking fact that the great mass of Chinese critical scholarship is entirely adverse to the claims put forward on behalf of the treatise,—a man who believes in it as the genuine work of Lao Tzu being generally regarded among educated Chinese as an amiable crank, much as many people now regard any one who credits the plays of Shakespeare to Lord Bacon,—and I think we may safely dismiss the question ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... your entire day sprawled under a balky car, with a piece of dirty mat between you and the cement floor, your view limited to crank-case, transmission, universal, fly-wheel, differential, pan, and brake-rods you can do with a bit of colour in the evening. And just here was where ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdroeckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... was true! You played me double and you knew it, too, Nor cared a wad of gum how I would feel. Can you not see that Murphy's handy spiel Is cheap balloon juice of a Blarney brew, A phonograph where all he has to do Is give the crank a twist ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... the ease with which the spar was lifted. It was an improved crank windlass, and the purchase it gave was enormous. Of course, what it gave us in power we paid for in distance; as many times as it doubled my strength, that many times was doubled the length of rope I ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. "Oh!" he said, "I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... believe they tried a larger check with the same result. She doesn't seem to be an impostor; only a crank." ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... him, sayin' you was tolerable busy, he up an' says he was hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me. Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I hev. An' beggin' your pardon, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... her. It could not be deadly earnest, she thought. It was so exactly like some movie thrill, planned carefully in advance, rehearsed perhaps under the critical eye of the director, and done now with the camera man turning calmly the little crank and counting the number of film feet the scene would take. A little farther and she would be out of the scene, and men stationed ahead would ride up and stop her horse for her and tell her how well she had ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... a crank. And follows all the psychic thrills which run To cackles o'er the world. It's Looking Backward, Or Robert Elsmere, Spencer's Social Statics, It's socialism, Anarchism, Peace, It's non-resistance with ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... "Don't crank up till we're ready!" Lite expostulated. "These cayuses of ours are pretty sensible, and they'll stand for a whole lot; but there's a limit. Wait till I get the ropes fixed, before you start the engine. And the rest of you all be ready to give ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... liked new and unwonted sights, and called them romantic; he used to say that he had a romantic head, but truth to say he was an out-and-out crank. Sometimes when chasing a fox or a hare he would suddenly stop and gaze mournfully at the sky, like a cat when it sees a sparrow on a tall pine; often he wandered through the wood without dog or gun, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... activity which will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the matter. Their bellwether is an old deacon named Isham Swift, and you couldn't turn him with a forty-horsepower crank." ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... thousand five hundred acres of land. He had several farms. Little Hill and Creek farms. They had a rock walk from the kitchen to the house. I slept in a little trunnel bed under my mother's mistress' bed. The bed was corded and had a crank. They used no slats in them days. We called Master Bob Young's wife Miss Nippy; her name was Par/nel/i/py. They was good old people. His boys was rough. They drunk and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
