"Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room left for any remembrance of the man. He was in a perfect ecstasy of rage at the insolence of the buck, and rushed upon him like a cyclone. Against that irresistible charge the buck had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o'clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call "bari-outang." This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the rind of a lemon being rubbed with some lumps of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... Hawker and Mr. Pickles were flying low at the time of their accidents, and so their machines were smashed; fortunately Mr. Brock was comparatively high up in the air, and though his machine rocked about and banked in an ominous manner, yet he was able to gain control just in the nick of time. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... is a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog.' Letters of Boswell, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody speech that had fixed on him the nick-name of Starvation! Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds:—'The happily coined word "starvation" delivered a whole continent from the Northern harpies that meant to devour it.' The speech in which Dundas introduced starvation was made in 1775. Walpole's Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... cover-point of silk, and bore him down toward the sea. But therewith had he pity of the child, and said that by him should he never be drowned; so he left him, all wrapped up as he was, on a midden before the gate of a certain abbey of monks, who at that very nick of time were singing ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... "Maxime is right. Don't you see, old fellow, that generous actions are like Couture's investments?—you should make them in the nick of time." ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... on the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was any hidin' out 'mongst the Bivinses er the Sanderses—bless you, no! bekaze here's what wa'n't afeared er all the Wornums in the continental State er Georgy, not if they'd 'a mustered out under the lead er ole Nick hisse'f, which I have my doubta if he wa'n't somewheres aroun'. I never seen 'er, but I heern tell er how she was a-cuttin' up. You mayn't think it, but that 'oman taken it on herse'f to call up all the niggers ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... done in the majority of cases when the wound was in the body, for the gash made by the entry of the enormously broad spears used by the Kukuanas generally rendered recovery impossible. In most instances the poor sufferers were already unconscious, and in others the fatal "nick" of the artery was inflicted so swiftly and painlessly that they did not seem to notice it. Still it was a ghastly sight, and one from which we were glad to escape; indeed, I never remember anything of the kind that affected ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... dear girl, if it had rested with me, we should both be lying in smithereens at the present moment, on the rocks below. She realised the drop just in the nick of time, and wheeled before we got ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... grimly. "Old Nick has more influence with York than I have. He crosses the street when he sees me. I like him about as much as he likes me. He's boss of his own show—his directors cut no ice. Anyway, it's none of ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of the 'Cambridge' this large company of men, I observe God's providence at work in my own life, for doubtless I should have been included in the draft, having been in harbour three years, which is considered a long stay. My discharge was granted me in the nick of time. "He doeth all ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... cutlasses while engaged in repairing the rigging. Lieutenant Mason and Lord Reginald were aft, at supper. So sudden and silent had been the rising, that they had only just before reached the scene of action when the lugger ran alongside. "Thank you, Voules; you came in the nick of time," cried Lieutenant Mason, when the Frenchmen ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... years old when de war commence poppin' in Charleston. Mammy and pappy say dat I was born on de Graham place, one of de nineteen plantations of my old marster, Nick Peay, in 1854. My pappy was name Bob and my mammy name Salina. They had b'longed to old Marse Tom Starke befo' old Marse Nick bought them. My brudders was name Bob and John. I had a sister name Carrie. They was all ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... morning, but not to take part in it: he "wished to look round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text from ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from the infernal regions," explained Dick, with an air of truthfulness, "and they came from there because the old Nick turned 'em out. They were upsetting things and giving the place a bad name. Mrs. Holmes says she's Aunt Rebecca's cousin, but nobody knows whether she is or not. She's come here every Summer since Aunt Rebecca died, and poor old uncle couldn't help himself. He ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... oiled and moved smoothly. He carried a gleaming axe to prove he was a woodman, but seldom had cause to use it because he lived in a magnificent tin castle in the Winkie Country of Oz and was the Emperor of all the Winkies. The Tin Woodman's name was Nick Chopper. He had a very good mind, but his heart was not of much account, so he was very careful to do nothing unkind ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending the money, the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance and sing, eat fricasseed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... expiatory offering for the whole country. So the people decked him with garlands like a victim and led him to the altar, where they were just about to sacrifice him when he was rescued either by his grandson Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from Colchis, or by Hercules, who brought tidings that the king's son Phrixus was yet alive. Thus Athamas was saved, but afterward he went mad, and mistaking his son Learchus for a wild beast, shot him dead. Next he attempted the life ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper—is 'pressed down, and shaken together, and running over;' but his 'mission' and Cooper's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... self-indulgent mouth,—there was the weakness, there, as usual! Evidently, the strength his mind and character gave him went in pandering to physical appetites. In confirmation of this, there were two curious marks on him,—a nick in the rim of his left ear, a souvenir of a bullet or a knife, and a scar just under the edge of his chin to the right. When he compressed his lips, this scar, not especially noticeable at other times, lifted ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... mention without a due thrill of horror: namely, that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there was not found one penny to distribute to the Poor that they might pray for his soul! By a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings did, in the very nick of time, fall due, or seem to fall due, from one of his Farmers (the Firmarius de Palegrava), and he paid it, and the Poor had it; though, alas, this too only seemed to fall due, and we had it to pay again afterwards. Dominus Hugo's apartments were plundered by his servants, to the last portable ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... schoolin', victuals, an' a heap o' clothes. I've knocked some horse sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Abnegation Mings as you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay to that, my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... you are like to be heir of Avenel at last, Master Roland, after my lord and lady have gone to their place," said Adam; "and as I have but one boon to ask, I trust you will not nick me with nay." ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... eternally about himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night of that,—and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had sense enough to keep ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... of I was ever so glad to see a feller like wot I am you. Teacher," he cried in huge delight, "the country's saved! Providence fetched you here in the nick of time! You always was a friend to Tillie, and you kin help ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... prize could be worth so great an exertion. As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both rolled helplessly into ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... began at six o'clock and lasted for two hilarious hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat two whole fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a gingerbread pig which Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated with red candies ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... pedigree To the very root of the family tree Were a task as rash as ridiculous: Through antediluvian mists as thick As London fog such a line to pick Were enough, in truth, to puzzle old Nick, Not to name ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... bars. Even if the hero is merely an honest boy trying to get his living, he is not permitted to do so in a natural way, by hard work and years of patient effort, but is suddenly adopted by a millionaire whose pocket-book he has returned; or a rich uncle appears from sea just in the nick of time; or the remarkable boy earns a few dollars, speculates in pea-nuts or neckties, and grows rich so rapidly that Sinbad in the diamond valley is a pauper compared to him. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... all that's wonderful, if this isn't a pretty how-do-you-do. Mrs. Fairfax and her girl are penniless, and I came so near marrying Claire. I have found this thing out quite in the nick of time. The girl is clever enough, but it takes money, and plenty of it, to make me put my head ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... knew I'd kill the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. Bart, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... with an air of comprehension. He did not, however, comprehend. He only felt that the boy was wonderful. Imagine the boy saying that! He bent lower. "Come on up," he said. "I'll give you a hand. Stick your feet into that nick there." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... stiff—rumped, wall—eyed, old first lieutenantish—looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,—it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal—skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat—flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the "last of the sea—monsters," ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... as well as the boy. Nicodemus is a long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides, as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy young Nick, and of course I shall be styled old ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... "Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... lives in our Buildings, immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... fellows!" I roared—"this is all very fine, and very loyal, but, damn it! don't it strike you that it's an infernally cowardly thing to pitch into an old man in this style? He may be a Fenian, and he may be Old Nick himself, but he's never done you fellows any harm. What the devil do you mean by kicking up such a row as this? You touch him, if you dare, that's all! You see my uniform, and you know what I am. I'm a Bobtail. This man is my friend. He's going out with me, and I'd like to see the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... men and horses. 'Practically all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and haversacks of our soldiers. One of them snatched a bayonet from a dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself...The feature of the action was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.' So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body. It was four hours before ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... struck the earth not far from the bank of the pond toward which Peggy was at that moment valiantly struggling, the two young aviators leaped out and set out at a run to the rescue. They reached the bank in the nick of time to pull out ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... it allus was, I guess," with a chuckle at his own wit, "but Ol' Swaller-tail sold it, long ago. Ol' Nick Cragg, his father afore him, sold a lot of it, they say, and when he died he left half his ready money an' all his land to Hezekiah—thet's Ol' Swallertail—an' the other half o' his money to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I wish that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... vagabond returns from the mountains after the twenty years' sleep Gretchen is dead. The apex is reached when the old man, sitting dazed at a table in front of the tavern in the village of Falling Water, asks after Derrick Van Beekman and Nick Vedder and other of his cronies. At last, half twinkle of humor and half glimmer of dread, he gets himself to the point of asking after Dame Van Winkle, and is told that she has been dead these ten years. Then like a flash came that wonderful Jeffersonian change of facial expression, and as ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... air, lad. Dave wanted to look for you, an' wouldn't stay by the game nohow. Can't blame him, nuther, seein' as we came up jest in the nick o' time," added ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... protested the other, with pretended severity. "And I won't be called 'Hel,' just because my name's Helen. It—it sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they've been spending their pay at Dirty O'Brien's. Besides, it doesn't alter facts at all. It won't take much more climbing to find ourselves right on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... companion, Brown, I think, always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with children, and had never failed of interest in the church—nor in him. They had always been the best of friends, he and she; did it not seem that Providence had decreed they should be more? Why had he been sent to the dam in the nick of time, when he had intended to stay at Redford until morning? Why was she sitting here now, alone with him in his study, cut off from everybody else in the world? The hand of the Lord was in it. Looks were of small account when one considered her rank ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... never bought but one bill of the other dry goods house, and did not like their traveling man; but now he would have bought of Old Nick rather than buy of Luce. He went over to Keeler's and again introduced himself (the task was getting as disagreeable as it was monotonous), saying he wanted to buy some goods. The gentleman made an excuse to go to the desk for a moment, and Solomon knew ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... the morning till 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... sutural angle on the outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... reach Gangoil sooner than he could the mill. You are better here, and we will send for Mrs. Medlicot as soon as the men have had a rest. How was it all, Mr. Medlicot? Harry says that there was a fight, and that you came in just at the nick of time, and that but for you all the ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... "Hadrian has nick-named him 'the obscure.' The more difficult it is to understand the discourses of these gentlemen the more highly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it must be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent now. There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that is two thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come just in the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I should have a right to ask for interest; for, after all, business is business, but I will let you off the interest. Well, how ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... northern metropolis, and there settle for ever a case which apparently had kept the newsmongers of Edinburgh in aliment for a length of time much exceeding the normal nine days. Opportune and happily come in the very nick of time as the latter was—for the delay allowed by the court had all but expired—Mr. White saw the danger of promising anything which could be construed into a reward; but he could use other means ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... muscles for the fraction of an instant. Roaring Dick lowered his head, rammed it into Bob's chin, and at the same time reached for the young man's gullet with both hands. Bob tore his head out of reach in the nick of time. As they closed again Roaring Dick's right hand was free. Bob felt the riverman's thumb fumbling ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh. This crisis ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to a conviction before he passed by me, apologizing almost humbly to those whom he displaced, and courteously to all; and this, and perhaps also the fact that the mass of those present belonged to my patron's party—who in the streets had the nick-name of "The Importants"—so that they were not quick to make room for him, rendered his progress so slow that, my name being called and everybody hustling me forward, I came face to face with the Queen almost at ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation in a ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... backward just in the nick of time. The Koeln flagship of the German commodore, was soon staggering off in a blaze, and was later sunk with her total complement of 380 officers and men. The Ariadne, steaming at high speed across the bows of the British flagship Lion, was put ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... must take care of me, but that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the sort which other people rub in, but the ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... others of his unhappy class, Poll Doolin's son, "Raymond-na-hattha," for it was he, and so had he been nick-named, in consequence of his wearing such a number of hats, had a remarkable mixture of humor, simplicity, and cunning. He entertained a great penchant, or rather a passion for cock-fighting, and on the present occasion ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... could not muster sufficient support to become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time. Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the new tariff debates should be known. The failure of the Verplanck measure, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman for all future time. He found the men of substance, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... told him no woman with Sioux blood in her veins ever deserted a brother—or lover. And so she had returned with a packet, presumably of money, and there they found the Indian clinched with Kennedy. Kennedy was rescued in the nick of time, and pledged to silence. The Indian rode away triumphant. Nanette climbed back to her window, exhausted, apparently, by her exertions, and Field started for his quarters, only to find the entire garrison astir. The ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... in the North-west of India, had been employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals themselves, ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... persevere after what had been said to her. Lizzie was sure that, a month since, her cousin would have yielded himself to her willingly, if he could only have freed himself from Lucy Morris. But now, just in this very nick of time, which was so momentous to her, the police had succeeded in unravelling her secret, and there sat Frank, looking at her with stern, ill-natured eyes, like an ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the silent, rigid immobility of the man whose money had come in the nick of time to save him from utter ruin, his voice died out in ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... of blood—be warned by the fate which thy cruelty well-nigh drew down upon thy head this day! If God in His mercy had not sent us, in the very nick of time, to save this youth out of thy murderous hands, thou wouldst have passed ere now to the scathing fires of purgatory, whence there be few to offer prayers for thy release. Be warned by this escape. Repent of thy bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Seek ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... she peered from the window of the "ark," which had been moored beneath the screening foliage of overhanging trees. It was through these waters, and through the outlet, soon afterward, that Floating Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry, aided by Deerslayer, drew the ark back into the lake in the nick of time to escape a band of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... appearance in life ought more to dread than having any ridicule fixed on him. In the estimation even of the most rational men, it will not only lessen him, but ruin him with all the rest. Many a man has been undone by a ridiculous nick-name. The causes of nick-names among well-bred men, are generally the little defects in manner, air, or address. To have the appellation of ill-bred, aukward, muttering, left-legged, or any other tacked always to your name, would injure you more than you are aware of; avoid then these little defects ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... But the heart of the Saint Ne'er once turned faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' Said St Cuthman, 'To me it is perfectly clear, If you talk of the devil, he's sure to appear!' 'With my spade and my pick I am come,' said old Nick, 'To prove you've no power o'er a demon like me. I'll show you my power— Ere the first morning hour Thro' the Downs, over Poynings, shall roll in the sea.' 'I'll give you long odds,' Cried the Saint, 'by the gods! I'll stake what you please, only say what your wish is.' Said the devil, 'By ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... especially pleased—he and Worse were acquaintances of old, up at the northern fishery; and Sivert Gesvint, as he was nick-named, was, when outside the meeting-house, a lively and enterprising man. Whilst, on the one hand, his tongue was always ready with texts and hymns, he was no less ready at a pinch to give any one a helping hand, ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... know what's going to happen to us. Even if the girls were to hunt for that beastly Sammyadd and find it, and get it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think we hadn't looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and nick them - or else the police will think WE'VE got them - or else that she's been fooling them. Oh, it's a pretty decent average ghastly mess this ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... players are sent Where all their false notes are protested, I am sure that Old Nick will play him a trick, When his bad trump and he are arrested, And down in the regions of Discord's own legions His head with two French horns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea for ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... heaple steeple There I met a heap o' people; Some was nick and some was nack, Some was speckled on ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... road. She recalled the glisten of the sunlight on the river, and the crimson of the hard maples stained by the first early frost, and she knew it was not the sunshine nor the tingle in the air nor the beautiful way in which Ned and Nick flew along stride for stride over the hard white road, but something else, something quite different, which had made her glad that Sunday morning. She looked straight ahead and tried to imagine that not the wooden English groom, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... I'll be only fifteen den. Dat's long time 'go, eh? Well, for sure, I ain't so old like what I'll look. But Old Man Savarin was old already. He's old, old, old, when he's only thirty; an' mean—bapteme! If de old Nick ain' got de hottest place for ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Kemp, it shall be done as well as if it was for my own 'usbind, an' I can't say more than thet. Mr. Footley thinks a deal of me, 'e does! Why, only the other dy as I was goin' inter 'is shop 'e says "Good mornin', Mrs. 'Odges." "Good mornin', Mr. Footley," says I. "You've jest come in the nick of time," says 'e. "This gentleman an' myself," pointin' to another gentleman as was standin' there, "we was 'avin' a bit of an argument. Now you're a very intelligent woman, Mrs. 'Odges, and a good customer too." "I can say thet for myself," ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... had such blooming bad luck as we have," Ed observed, "they're probably in jail somewhere! I don't think I ever saw anything in a worse mess! The very Old Nick seems ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Esquire," who gave a nick-name to the next parliament, was a leatherseller of London, and was summoned by Cromwell to sit as member for the city. "I, as commander-in-chief of the armies of the Commonwealth," wrote Cromwell to him, "summon ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... meaning nothing offensive to the Romish faith, I must be allowed to say that most assuredly I can conceive nothing less qualified to excite feelings of devotion, or more certain to awaken contempt and loathing, than the images of this description, the tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... quiet smile, as he reloaded his gun; "this is not the first time that you and I have helped one another in the nick of time, Arrowhead; we shall be brothers, and good friends to boot, I hope, as long ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... was incumbent on Mr. Slope first to secure the bishop. He specially felt that it behoved him to do this before the visit to the archbishop was made. It was really quite providential that the dean should have fallen ill just at the very nick of time. If Dr. Proudie could be instigated to take the matter up warmly, he might manage a good deal while staying at the archbishop's palace. Feeling this very strongly, Mr. Slope determined to sound the bishop that very afternoon. He was to start on the following ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to extricate itself ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Cicero seems to have been a person worthy to be remembered; since those who succeeded him not only did not reject, but were fond of that name, though vulgarly made a matter of reproach. For the Latins call a vetch Cicer, and a nick or dent at the tip of his nose, which resembled the opening in a vetch, gave ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... agitated circle, in his praiseworthy efforts to do business. Old Crocky, too, was there, mounted on a subdued wretch of the horse-species, tenanted, according to the Pythagorean doctrine, by the evil spirit of some defunct croupier, and ready to "return on the nick" as usual. In this "mess tossed up of Hockley-Hole and White's," in addition to our foregoing ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... hear it," said Ellen, kissing her. "I don't know what makes me say it I never used to. But I've got more to tell you I've had more visitors. Who do you think came to see me? you'd never guess Nancy Vawse! Mr. Van Brunt came in the very nick of time, when I was almost worried to death with her. Only think of her coming up here unknown to every body! And she stayed an age, and how she did go on! She cracked nuts on the hearth; she got every stitch of my clothes out of my trunk, and scattered ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... down in massa's chair an' took a smoke. Bimeby Cap thought,—'Ef massa come an' ketch him!'—an' put down de pipe an' went to work, and bimeby I smelt mighty queer smell, massa, 'bout de house, made him tink Ol' Nick was come hissef for Ol' Cap, an' I come back into dis yer room an' Massa Reuben's letters from Indy was jist most done burnt up, he cotched 'em in dese yer ol' brack han's, Mass Roger, an' jist whipt 'em up in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone. "Shut up, Nick! This is ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... so high up as that?" said one of the ship-boys, gaping with wonder. "Why, your master must be Old Nick himself." ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... cut a dash over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole, and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and one day this fellow, who was exceedingly hot-tempered, attempted to strike Dave down with a heavy Indian club. It was a most foul attack and justly condemned by nearly all who saw it, and thoroughly scared over what he had attempted to do, Nick Jasniff ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... to see you! I have been dreaming about you the whole night, the whole night, and I was afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you only knew how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of time! You will be my salvation! You are the only person who can save me! There is to be a most original wedding here tomorrow," she went on, laughing, and tying her husband's cravat. "A young telegraph clerk at the station, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named "Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with which he cleared the way for Odo ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... fired it," replied Morgan, "and he done it just in the nick of time. The killing of that officer was all that ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... gift, Tittany's for twisting words to sugarsticks. But la, there, what wots your trickling whey of that coal-piffling Prince of Flies! I'm Bottom the weaver, I am. He knows not his mother's ring-finger that knows not Nick Bottom. Back, back, ye jigging dreams! 'Tis Puckling nods. Ha' done, ha' done—there's no sweet sanity in an asshead more if I quaff their elvish ... Out now ... Ha' ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... had wrenched himself loose from Zita's arms and was struggling with the ropes that still bound him even after he had managed to roll out from under the elevator in the last nick of time. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... cold-blooded and generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the luster of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... was rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote: General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its absolute extinction, and some ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of his wet feet. A smile of tender amusement visited his lips as he took hold of the door-handle. Exactly as he touched it, the key on the other side turned. The lock had been stiff, but it had shot out in the nick of time, and he found himself brought up short in his impulsive career and hurtling against a solid barrier. He knocked, but no one answered. He could have fancied he heard panting breaths on the other side of the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... all his predicaments and frailties, at his decease we resolved, in our trouble, that we would never own another dog. But this, like many another resolution of our life, has been broken; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lying sprawled on the mat. He has a jaw set with strength; an eye mild, but indicative of the fact that he does not want too many familiarities from strangers; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild duck across the meadows; knows ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... forming. It pays to do this, because the second year you will have a good yield. Remember that strawberries which flourish in certain localities may fail utterly in others. That is why you and I are experimenting with this new berry. I am going to give you five plants of Marshall, five of Nick Ohmer, and five of Brandywine. Remember, shorten back the roots three inches before you plant. I shall be around to see your strawberry bed. Remember to cultivate after every rain, and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... But Thoas has yet to be reckoned with. He is furious at the interruption of the sacrifice, and is about to execute summary vengeance upon both Iphigenia and Orestes, when Pylades returns with an army of Greek youths—whence he obtained them is not explained—and despatches the tyrant in the nick of time. The opera ends with the appearance of Pallas Athene, the patroness of Argos, who bids Orestes and his sister return to Greece, carrying with them the image of Diana, too long disgraced by the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... rewarded by clearer knowledge of God's will. If Hilkiah had not been busy in setting wrong things right, he would not have found the book in its dark hiding-place. We are told that the coincidence of the discovery at the nick of time is suspicious. So it is, if you do not believe in Providence. If you do, the coincidence is but one instance of His sending gifts of the right sort at the right moment. It is not the first time nor the last that the attempt to keep God's law has led to larger knowledge of the law. It is not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... If old Nick were to lose his tail, where should he go to supply the deficiency?—To a gin-palace, because there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... exclaimed Mr. Stanley, looking out from time to time, "we got in our potatoes just in the nick ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... must pass swiftly to each in turn, keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata |
