"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up the siding. The spare man shuffled back to the uneasy group. "Jim's ez full ez a tick, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... lady once," said she, "though I don't look like it, my dear. These fal-lals have been over as dainty a body as your own in their day; and that was fifteen years ago to a tick. She gave 'em all to me when she took to the black, and now they shall go to my son's wife. Think of that, you who come from who knows who or where. If they fit you not like a glove, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... with his snuffers is prowling about And his shaky old fingers will soon snuff us out; There's a hint for us all in each pendulum tick, For we're low in the tallow and long ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Gammon clutched at the only possible method of appeasing his conscience, and postponing decisive words he took Polly's hand—poorly gloved—and secretly pressed the palm with a coin, which Polly in less than a clock-tick ascertained to be one pound sterling. She ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... Anvers." A tooth-mug of substantial earthenware dropped to the floor with a crash. A slimy soap-dish of the same manufacture slid across the table and into Brentwick's lap. A battered alarm clock with never a tick left in its abused carcass rang vacuously as it fell by the open bag.... The remainder was—oranges: a dozen or more small, round, golden globes of ripe fruit, perhaps a shade overripe, therefore the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... indeed, is on the sand flies. Wherever there is not a howling gale—there are the flies in millions, most indefatigable and maddening of pests. And finally, to take home with you, to remind you pleasantly of her hospitalities when you have reached your own room, is the tick! ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... glad she had seemed, let loose in the moonlight with the Limited behind her. How gracefully, easily, she lifted the huge, vestibuled train from swale to swell. How she always passed station after station on the tick of the clock, keeping to the time-card, unvarying as the sun. Proud and queenly, yet gentle, she always answered the signals of the less fortunate locomotives that stood panting on the side tracks, with their ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... Danny. Tommy had his mouse's nest; Patsey had the hawk's nest; Bugsey had a fungus. Danny was the only empty-handed one, but Pearlie cheered him up wonderfully by predicting that he would get the very first wood-tick ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... of the clock and began winding the weights that had hung idle for nearly a year. When the swinging pendulum once more began its deep-toned tick-tock, he looked back over his ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Flamingo's heavy foot is heard advancing up the hall. Be a diplomatist now. Show a white glove, and a delicate hand, and a winning smile, and you have secured your passport to the satin and brocade of her mansion. A spring is heard to tick, a whisper of caution to some one within follows, and a block broad enough to admit your hat swings open, disclosing the voluptuous splendor of a great hall, the blaze of which flashes upon your senses, and fills you instinctively with curious emotions. Simultaneously a broad, cheerful ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the hummingbird, gees ducks &c today. the tick has made it's appearance it is the same with those of the Atlantic States. the Musquetoes have also appeared but are not yet troublesome.- this morning at 10 OClock Sergt. Gass returned with Collins and Windsor they had not succeeded in killing the female ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... DE LA PRYME'S suggestion as to the origin of the expression "going tick" is ingenious; nevertheless I take it to be clear that "tick" is merely an abbreviation of ticket. (See Nares's Glossary, and Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, under "Ticket.") In addition to the passages cited by them from Decker, Cotgrave, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... memories of Portuguese officials trying to tax calves'-foot jelly; voluble doctors insisting that true typhoid was unknown in the island; nurses who had to be exercised, taken out of themselves, and returned on the tick of change of guard; night slides down glassy, cobbled streets, smelling of sewage and flowers, between walls whose every stone and patch Attley and I knew; vigils in stucco verandahs, watching the curve and descent of great stars or drawing auguries ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... cupboard-door were as clean as water could make them; and the bed, while it looked hopelessly hard and dreadful to Mrs. Roberts, was really a pattern of neatness and purity to every dweller in that attic. There was a straw tick, covered with a dark calico spread, which did duty as a sheet, and the boy who lay on it was covered by a patched quilt that had been mended, and was clean. Wonderful things these to say of such a locality! Mr. Roberts ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... as befitted the close of such a story. Nothing but the solemn tick of the tall clock was to be heard. On and on it went, as steady as before. Ghosts were nothing special to the clock: it had to measure out the time ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and it should be preferable to think him sound of heart, sincere though mistaken. Cecilia could not decide upon what she dared wish for his health's good. Friend and foe were not further separable within her bosom than one tick from another of a clock; they changed places, and next his friend was fearing what his foe had feared: they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him famous, and whose imagery was equal in ghastliness to anything that the Catholic Church could produce. I remember one of his most dramatic bits, borrowed from a much earlier preacher, a passage in his description of hell. In hell, he said, there was a clock, which, instead of "tick," "tick," said, "Eternity," "Eternity," and when the damned, weary of their tortures down in the depths, came up to see what time it was, they heard the sentence of the clock, and turned in despair to go down into the depths again as ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... right-hand waistcoat pocket. There was something round and hard there—a lozenge? No, a shilling, which had remained there ever since I changed my winter clothes in the spring. Now at that time we were reduced to anchovy paste for breakfast, and our bare rations for tea. Money was spent, tick was scarce, stores were exhausted. Faithful to a friendship which has all things in common. I went out to Dell's and bought a pot of apricot jam for tea, the time for which had arrived. As ill-luck would have it, both you fellows were ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... liked to pretend that she was indistinguishable from the rest, and that when a wet day drove her to the Underground or omnibus, she gave and took her share of crowd and wet with clerks and typists and commercial men, and shared with them the serious business of winding-up the world to tick ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... perhaps on the average doubled; but cheap automobiles have improved roads and have made others available that were useless ten years ago. The development of the Southern states, with eradication of the cattle tick (the cause of "Texas Fever") and irrigation and rotation of crops, has opened up new countries. N. O. Nelson writes he has bought many Louisiana farms for his cooperative enterprise for about ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end," and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... stroll backwards and forwards by the lakeside. Encouragement was all very well; but... "Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not?" The eternal question went tick-tack, tick-tack, to the rhythm of his march. He glared at vacancy, and tried hard ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the solemn ticking of that clock? Tick-tack; tick-tack. And oh, friend, do you know what day it inexorably ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Marlow when he stopped of himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy, or—perhaps—(I wouldn't be too hard on him) on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted with that perversity, you know how vexing it is—such a stoppage. I was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. He even laughed a little. And then ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... gave a sardonic smile. "Don't," he said, "again allude to any such thing as selling on tick! Some time back a partner in our establishment got several ounces of goods for his relatives on credit, and up to this date the bill hasn't as yet been settled; the result being that we've all had to make the amount good, so that we've entered into an agreement that we should no more ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... in the dim light of a late October afternoon, to form shadowy backgrounds for autumnal reverie, or for silent, solitary listening—listening to the tales told by the soughing wind outside, to the whisper of embers in the fireplace, the slow somber tick of the tall clock telling of ages past and passing, the ghostly murmur of the old house ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone. It was all natural as life. The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... does not, as a rule, give rise to that perception. I cite a simple example in which I first observed this fact. Since I was a child there had been in my bed-room a clock, the loud ticking of which habit of many years prevented my hearing. Once, as I lay awake in bed, I heard it tick suddenly three times, then fall silent and stop. The occurrence interested me, I quickly got a light and examined the clock closely. The pendulum still swung, but without a sound; the time was ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a thousand. Each number means a workman—each tick of the clock a moment of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the window of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... a poll parrot, the best images the jew had on his head, over the mantlepiece; and was I to leave you all alone by yourself, isn't there an eight day clock in the corner, that when one's waiting, lonesome like, for any body, keeps going tick-tack, and ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... upon the tick of nine Today the Pansy got aboard my ship And sprung the Trans-Suburban for a trip. Say, she's the shapely ticket pretty fine! Next to her pattern Anna Held looks shine And Lilly Russell doesn't know the grip. But oh! she's got a deep ingrowing tip That she ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... off de leaves. De other brudders worked wid my father on another plantation. De house where I lived wid de white Massa Lewis Northsinge and his Missus, wuz a log house wid just two rooms. I had just a little straw tick and a cot dat de massa made himself and I hed a common quilt dat de missus made ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... for a piece of bread. She got up and fed the child, then said: "Come in dis here room. I wants to show you whar I burned my bed last night tryin' to kill de chinches: dey most eats me up evvy night." In the bedroom an oil lamp was burning. The bed and mattress showed signs of fire. The mattress tick was split from head to foot and cotton spilling out on the floor. "Dat's whar I sleep," declared Alice. The atmosphere of the bedroom was heavy with nauseous odors and the interviewer hastened to return to the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... she continued: "I saw you frown when I began my wicked speech. We'll tick off tabooed subjects, and make an index expurgatorius, and then ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... little girl. I could tell you now just how she was dressed, and which way she bent her head with the wreath of flowers on it. You have noticed the old clock in Ruth's room at grandpa's? That's the one. I never see it now but its slow tick-tock calls to mind my sad experience ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... may; as well for the encouragement 180 of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I'll to her. ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... tick," said he. "Now, Challenger, it's up to you to tell us where we are. We ain't nervous folk, as you know well; but when it comes to makin' a week-end visit and finding you've run full butt into the Day of Judgment, it wants a bit of explainin'. What's the danger, and how much ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking together, one loud tick, and quick—a feeble, ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence M^r Wilbur's disease I hevn't hed no one thet could dror out my talons. He ust to kind o' wine me up an' set the penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I seemed to go on tick as it wear tell I run down, but the noo minister ain't of the same brewin' nor I can't seem to git ahold of no kine of huming nater in him but sort of slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a mow. Minnysteeril natur is wal enough an' a site better'n ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... will tick their Souls on Sin, Tis vain to make about their Ears a din, For that exasperates their will the more, And where in private may in publick Whore; So then the Scandal coming to all Ears, Each Neighbour will not only fling his Jeers Upon us, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... much; she is rather corpulent, but has a remarkably fine face; the Grecian character is finely portrayed in it; she excels to admiration in deep tragedy. In Mrs. Beverly, in the play of the 'Gamesters' a few nights ago, she so arrested the attention of the house that you might hear your watch tick in your fob, and, at the close of the play, when she utters an hysteric laugh for joy that her husband was not a murderer, there were different ladies in the boxes who actually went into hysterics and were obliged to be carried ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... earnest meditation. I looked on in silence and wonderment. Heliobas spoke not another word, and together we watched the pensive figure in the chair, so absorbed in serious thought. Some minutes passed. The gentle tick of the clock in the outer hall grew almost obtrusive, so loud did it seem in the utter stillness that surrounded us. I longed to speak—to ask questions—to proffer sympathy—but dared not move or utter a syllable. Suddenly the Prince rose; his manner was calm and dignified, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... absolute control of this wood, and I proceed to lay an English lever watch on several places of it, keeping my ear near to that nodal point where I know will come the inner bout, or D of the violin, consequently the bridge, which I mark with a X. The tick-tack of the watch varies in strength as I get farther from or nearer to a nodal point, as, of course, it was bound to do; but, from experience, it is a fine-toned piece of wood. I detach it from the glass rod, and I try it by my finger and thumb ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... manor-house, we spent our last hour at Brandon; for Gadabout was to sail away next day. It was a colonial hour; for Brandon clocks tick off no other, nor would any other ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Tick, tack, tock! Only look at the clock. He works away the whole day long, And every hour he sings a song. Ding, dong, ding! So we'll work ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... illusions concerning sinners with engaging smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... is WILL I cum back? And that's no Bullsheveki, fur you know derie when one of them tin fish strikes a transport, yer jest as well let your voice fall. Say Julie, I'm not fur this country down here a-tall. It has ticks; chiggers and nats all open fur biz at one and the same time. You never had a tick on you did you Julie? Well a dog with two sets of flees isn't any busier than said tick. They ought to draft a lot of 'em into the engineers. They are the best lil' trench diggers on earth. They always selects a place between your ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... the rich men stick, As to the fattest sheep the thrifty tick— Ed'ard to Stanford and to Crocker Ben (To Ben and Ed'ard many meaner men, And lice to these)—who do the kind of work That thieves would have the honesty to shirk— Whose wages are that your employers ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... table or two, plain chests, rude, low bedsteads, with home-made ticks filled with straw or pine needles. The best room may have had a carved oak chest, brought from England, a tent or field bedstead, with green baize, or white dimity curtains, and generous feather bed. The stout tick for this, the snow-white sheets, the warm flannel blankets, and heavy woollen rugs, woven in checks of black, or red, and white, or the lighter harperlet, were all the products of domestic wheel and loom. There were no carpets. The floors were sprinkled with fine, white ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... side of the ingle. The kitten, with a bell attached to a ribbon about its neck, sported with the bows of her dainty slippers. Only the click of the needles, and the tinkle of the bell, and the hollow tick of the great clock in the corner broke ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sheeting is the Russian, which will last three times as long as any other. It is never perfectly white. Unbleached cotton is good for winter. It is poor economy to make narrow and short sheets, as children and domestics will always slip them off, and soil the bed-tick and bolster. They should be three yards long, and two and a half wide, so that they can be tucked in all around. All bed- linen should be marked and numbered, so that a bed can always be made properly, and all ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hard and bunchy, rip them, take the hair out, pull it thoroughly by hand, let it lie a day or two to air, wash the tick, lay it in as light and even as possible, and catch it down, as before. Thus prepared, they will be as good ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... fallen beneath the axe's stroke 'live in his description,' and the turnips that he transplanted from Botley 'look green' in prose! How well at another time he describes the poor sheep that had got the tick and had bled down in the agonies of death! It is a portrait in the manner of Bewick, with the strength, the simplicity, and feeling of that great naturalist. What havoc be makes, when he pleases, of the curls of Dr. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... far wall, with a face like the gibbous moon, stood a massive clock of carved rosewood, clacking ponderously, almost painfully, as if each tick were ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... softly that she did not hear him. There was no sound but the drowsy tick of the great clock in the hall and the low ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... every step I take jars in the chest, and I am very weak; I can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly I was always first, and had to hold in my pace not to leave the people altogether. I have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick of the chronometers. The appetite is good, but we have no proper food, chiefly maere meal or beans, or mapemba or ground-nuts, rarely ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Milton. Well, it's lucky for them that it's not worth my while, as I may say, to break spears With the hirelings, forsooth, of the press who assert that Othello was Shakespeare's. When he that can run, sir, may read—if he borrows the book, or goes on tick— In my poems the bit that describes how the Hellespont joins the Propontic. There are men, I believe, who will tell you that Gray wrote the whole of The Bard— Or that I didn't write half the Elegy, Bill, in a Country Churchyard. When you know that my poem, The Poet, begins—"Ruin ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... but so implicit was the travellers' trust in the vigilance of their mechanical and tireless watch, that they slept on as calmly and unconcernedly as though they had been in their beds at home, while the tick was as constant and regular as a sentry's march. The wires of course did not protect them from creatures having wings, and they ran some risk of a visitation from the blood-sucking bats. The far-away volcanoes occasionally sent up sheets of flame, which in the distance ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... a fresco peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains; One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was so high she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it was so still she could hear the clock tick in ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... become a very Palace of Slumber, and as you waited your turn in one of the wooden arm-chairs beside the wall, what with the quiet of the hour, and the low drone of Jeff's conversation, the buzzing of the flies against the window pane and the measured tick of the clock above the mirror, your head sank dreaming on your breast, and the Mariposa Newspacket rustled unheeded on the floor. It makes one drowsy just to ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... whipping-post. When he had money he spent it royally in tarts for himself and his friends; he has been known to disburse nine and sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. When he had no funds he went on tick. When he could get no credit he went without, and was almost as happy. He has been known to take a thrashing for a crony without saying a word; but a blow, ever so slight from a friend, would make ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of life, And the future a haze of gold! Oh, merry was I that winter night, And gleeful our little one's din, And tender the grace of my darling's face As we watched the new year in. But a voice—a spectre's, that mocked at love— Came out of the yonder hall; "Tick-tock, tick-tock!" 't was the solemn clock That ruefully croaked to all. Yet what knew we of the griefs to be In the year we longed to greet? Love—love was the theme of the sweet, sweet dream I fancied might ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... then made up his mind to go to a shopkeeper called Madame Tsitrinnikov to try and get it from her on tick: who knows? perhaps the woman would feel for them and let them have it. The jeune premier went off, and half an hour later returned with a bottle of brandy and some castor-oil. Shtchiptsov was sitting motionless, as before, on the bed, ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... straightened out, and then to complete the cure, for want of something better, gave it my long suffering watch to nibble. The little creature may have recognized the soothing effect of a woman's hands, or it may have been the bright tick, tick which it was gazing at now with pleased expression, and with its untutored tongue was already trying to imitate. What the cause was I could not say; but when the father returned, silence reigned in the car so far as his offspring was concerned. His face brightened ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... spring out of his chair as though electrified. Watch how, regardless of the laws of buttons, he frantically tears his trowsers from his limbs; he has him! no he hasn't!—yes he has!—no—no, positively he cannot get him off. It is a tick no bigger than a grain of sand, but his bite is like a red-hot needle boring into the skin. If all the royal family had been present, he could not have refrained from tearing ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... expression from the seeds or nuts of Croton Tiglium, an evergreen tree, 15 to 20 feet in height, belonging to the same order as the castor oil plant, producing whitish green flowers, and seeds resembling a tick in appearance, whence its generic name. It is a native of the East Indies. 100 parts of seeds afford about 64 of kernel. 50 quarters of croton nuts for expressing oil were imported into Liverpool from the Cape Verd ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of the Southern States by the advance of the boll weevil. The Department is doing all it can to organize the farmers in the threatened districts, just as it has been doing all it can to organize them in aid of its work to eradicate the cattle fever tick in the South. The Department can and will cooperate with all such associations, and it must have their help if its own work is to be done ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... full of this clock. It was of the good old-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with an air of ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... for your seals, Nor listen where your tick-tick lies,— Nor dare to call in anger down The heavy lashes ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... personality, its little tricks. One doesn't like a cold room, perhaps, and as a protest will stop or lose time; another shows its disapproval of the heat by being ten minutes fast. Still another balks at an incline in the mantelpiece, so slight that nobody can see it, and will not tick even. So it goes. And it is not always the most expensive clocks and watches, either, that keep the best time, for sometimes a cheap affair will, for reasons not to be fathomed, put to shame your costly ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... supposed. The pen follows the thoughts mechanically, and few ready and habitual writers could, if suddenly called upon to do so, say what peculiarities their writing possessed. For example, how many could say off-hand how they dotted an i—whether with a round dot, a tick or a dash—whether the tick was vertical, horizontal or sloping; what was the proportional distance of the dot from the top of the i. Again, ask a practised writer how he crosses the letter t—whether with a horizontal, up or down stroke? It is safe to ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... wait of four hours for the east bound express, and Hattie sat in the depot where she could watch the clock, tick, tock, tick, tock—swinging the pendulum in these moments of suspense and waiting. Those monotonous sounds persistently repeated the single theme, seconds were born and ushered into eternity with the slow swing of the ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... established practice both of legislative and judicial bodies. This could not well be otherwise. If the precise moment of actual time were to settle such a matter, it would be material to ask, Who shall settle the time? Shall it be done by public authority, or shall every man observe the tick of his own watch? If absolute time is to furnish a precise rule, the excess of a minute, it is obvious, would be as fatal as the excess of an hour. Sir, no bodies, judicial or legislative, have ever been so hypercritical, so astute to no ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... death-moth tick and stir, Slow-honeycombing through the bark; I heard the cricket's drowsy chirr, And one lone beetle burr the dark— The sleeping ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... on day after day. Tama began to grow weak and ill. He was haggard with anxiety, spending his days in listening to the regular tick-tick of the watch, and his nights in trying to keep it alive. In vain he sat up with it night after night, holding it in his hands, caressing it, wrapping it in warm clothes, and laying it beside the fire, even, so he told us, reading ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... runs without an error, Not too slow nor too quick, And better than alarum clocks— She doesn't have to tick! ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... my bed back of the quilt. You'll find a hoe there. You can dig up the dirt under the shuck tick with it—which helps astonishingly. What would the world say if it could know that judge Slocum Price makes his bed with a hoe! There's Spartan hardihood!" but the boy, not knowing what was meant by Spartan hardihood, remained silent. "Nearing threescore ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... taxi was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there in half a tick." ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... tick of the clock stirred her to a new excitement. At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown about her from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair, and she was led, by whom she knew not, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... about as much use for the Front Benches as a big-game hunter for mosquitoes. The bayonet professor indicates his row of dummies and says to his lads, "Just imagine they are Cabinet Ministers—go!" and in a clock-tick the heavens are raining shreds of sacking and particles of straw. The demon bomber fancies some prominent Parliamentarian is lurking in the opposite sap, grits his teeth, and gets an extra five yards into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... Blighty. Parcels and mail came along with perfect regularity on that hike. It was and is a marvel to me how they do it. A battalion chasing around all over the place gets its stuff from Blighty day after day, right on the tick and without any question. I only hope that whatever the system is, our army will take advantage of it. A shortage of letters and luxury parcels ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... platform men in shirt-sleeves prowled backwards and forwards—as the tigers do about feeding time in the Zoo. They, too, had super-hearing. From little funnels that looked like electric light shades they caught the tick of the messages, and chalked the figures of the latest prices as they altered with the dealing on the floor upon a huge blackboard that made the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... number of years, each slave, or each man and his wife, had one coarse blanket and enough coarse linen for a "bed-tick." He never had any bedstead or other furniture kind. The men had no hats, waistcoats or handkerchiefs given them, or the women any bonnets. These they had to contrive for themselves. Each labouring man had a small "patch" ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... each other and let go in one tick of the clock, but she had stood a long time seeing his eyes arrested in their ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... a persistent, relentless, remorseless regularity. Tick, tick—tick, tick. Every moment it appeared to be louder and louder. His brow wrinkled and his head bent forward more deeply, while his eyes were set straight before him. Tick, tick—tick, tick. The solemn beat became human as he listened. He could not raise his head—he could not turn ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... motion, for he never was still. Fortunately, he was not mischievous, nor very brave; so he kept out of trouble pretty well, and vibrated between father and mother like an affectionate little pendulum with a lively tick, for Rob ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea. The tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the May ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... to tick in the up-stairs hall forty years ago—I remember—" Grandma stopped as if a sudden thought had struck her. She dropped an old faded lamp mat and a rag rug and came over to look at the face of what had been an old friend. Many and many a time ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... salle a manger. A piece of furniture, however, from which my eye takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger than is needed, and it is the habit to scream in ordinary conversation. A clock, therefore, could not make itself heard by such people as ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... everywhere And chirrups like a cricket; As if it said with anxious air, "Don't lose your tick-tick-ticket!" ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... give you sumpin to make start on like cow and ting. They ain't treat you like a beast. Ain't take no advance o' you. What the Cap'n do he do for you good. I b'long Dr. Ward. I entitle to bring him two string o' bird. Rice bird come like jest as tick as dat (thick as that) Sometimes a bushel ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... ago. The hands were perfectly motionless. All who had watches simultaneously drew them from their pockets. The motion of each was suspended; so intense, in turn, was the hush of the breathless crowd, that you could have heard a single tick, but there ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... disturbance;" she couldn't have a kitten, because "animals were a nuisance;" she mustn't talk to her grandmother, because "little girls must be seen and not heard." So she sat there, like a little automaton, and watched the clock tick, and counted the times her grandmother put on and took off her spectacles, and thought of her mother and little sister till she bit her finger nails so ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... ebony, where her skin was discoverable through its perfect incrustation of dirt—with a thick mat of frizzly wool upon her skull, which made the sole request she preferred to him irresistibly ludicrous:—'Massa, massa, you please to buy me a comb to tick in my head?' Mr. —— promised her this necessary of life, and I promised myself to give her the luxury of one whole garment. Mrs. —— has sent me the best possible consolation for the lost mutton, some lovely flowers, and these will not ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... an order to the rebellious member—it stirs with sullen reluctance—it moves an inch—and then it breaks from the prison of its waking nightmare. Summoning his entire array of vital forces, our patient leaps, and smites his breast, kicks, whirls his arms, and little by little feels his heart tick again. By the time a feeble and sickly but regular pulse is re-established he has gone through enough agony to punish the worst enemy, my dear Sir, that you or I ever had. The vague, overpowering fear of death which during such an attack afflicts ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... kitchen 'd look by night, With just a clock, — But they could gag the tick, And mice won't bark; And so the walls ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... tick," said Jacky, over her shoulder. "Here, doctor, you might get a kettle of water—and Bill, see if you can find some bacon or stuff. And you, uncle, came and sit by the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the floors and the house had a slight smell of carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... ran and they ran till they reached their dwelling, and entered, and stood at the north window, looking over toward the dim house from which they had escaped. Out from the still night of darkness, came a low thunder from beyond the Yser. In the tick of a pulse-beat, the moaning of a shell throbbed on the air and, with instant vibrancy, the singing string of the piano at their back answered the flight of the shell. And in the same breath, they heard a roar at the railroad, and the crash ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... he wuks fur is got one an' Jeffy gits the borrowin' use of her—it's a mare—w'enever he want to, ez I knows frum whut he tells me an' frum whut I seen. Purfessor, that mare is jes' natchelly ordained an' cut out fur peradin'—broad ez a feather-tick, gentle ez the onborn lamb, an' mouty nigh pyure white—perzactly the right color fur a gran' marshal's hoss. Crowds ain't goin' pester that lady-mare none. Music ain't goin' disturb her ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... closer. Through the warm richness of her tresses his lips pressed her lips, and they ceased to breathe. And up to their ears, pounding through that enveloping shroud of her hair came the tick-tick-tick of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... on all sides of us to-day. And the modern recrudescence of pessimism has along with it, as one of the main thoughts which cut the nerves of effort, doubt of, and disbelief in, a future. It is because the very little opens out into the immeasurably great, and the passing moments tick us onwards into an unpassing eternity, that the moments are worth living through, and the fleeting insignificances of earth's existence become solemn and majestic as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are out; Wake!" said the knight, "be quick! For high street, bye street, over the town They fight with poker and stick." Said the squire, "A fight so fell was ne'er In all my bailliewick." What said the old clock in the tower? "Tick, tick, tick!" ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... you call that great clumsy dog 'Watch'? A watch goes 'tick, tick,' as busy as can be all the time; and this dog is a ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various
... apartment by the advice of the surgeon. I passed my time as I best could. Stretched on my bed, I either abandoned myself to reflection, or listened to the voices of the birds in the neighbouring garden. Sometimes, as I lay awake at night, I would endeavour to catch the tick of a clock, which methought sounded from some distant part of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a cit, countrymen, I believe, are generally early risers; but even for a countryman, Anthony, next morning, rose at an unlikely hour. The tall clock in the hall, accenting with its slow sardonic tick the silence of the sleeping house, marked a quarter to five, as he undid the heavy old-fashioned fastenings of the door, the oaken bar, the iron bolts and chains, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... solitude. At night in the midst of the trees they have a fantastic appearance, and look like fabulous birds gazing at the sky. By day in the distance they look like enormous pieces of fireworks; they turn, stop, curb and slacken their speed, break the silence by their dull and monotonous tick-tack, and when by chance they catch fire—which not infrequently happens, especially in the case of flour-mills—they form a wheel of flame, a furious rain of burning meal, a whirlwind of smoke, a tumult, a dreadful magnificent brilliance ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... motionless, suddenly begins to tick or strike, it is a sign of approaching death or misfortune. Newark, N.J., ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... noon at the nest there was only one bee, And only one berry to pick, And only one drink in the jug at the tree: But that boy was as full as a tick. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... course. By dad! I don't think you are up to dominoes; you must go back to skittles. He's evidently enclosed the sovereign in the note; for he never could have been fool enough to think that two gentlemen like us are to give tick for such a sum ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... cottage. It had but one room, and that was wretched enough. Many of the windows were broken, and pieces of shingle were stuck over the holes in the glass. In one corner stood a miserable bedstead, with a ragged coverlet partially spread over a dirty bed tick filled with leaves. There was only one chair, and that was a broken rocker, on which the unhappy mistress of the cottage was seated. But there were two or three rough stools, made of pieces of pine slab, standing beside the rickety table. Pointing to these stools, Mrs. ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... Gersey, that ez soon ez our candidate for Governor wuz dooly elected, I shood hev the position uv Dorekeeper to the House uv the Lord (wich in this State means the Capital, & wich is certainly better than dwellin in the tents uv wicked grosery keepers, on tick, ez I do), and a joodishus exhibition uv this promise hed prokoored for me unlimited facilities for borrerin, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... Ad'line's has been too much for her all along," she announced, "she's wild as a hawk, and a perfect torment. One day she'll come strollin' in and beseechin' me for a bunch o' flowers, and the next she'll be here after dark scarin' me out o' my seven senses. She rigged a tick-tack here the other night against the window, and my heart was in my mouth. I thought 'twas a warnin' much as ever I thought anything in my life; the night before my mother died 'twas in that same room and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear, Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon? Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere? For your sake, I would go and seek the year, Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune, Blown sands of drifted ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... just once too often Have you tried that slippery trick; Hearts like mine you cannot soften, Vainly do you ask for tick. Christmas and its bills are coming, Soon will they be showering in; Therefore, once for all, my rum un, I expect ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... for it all—heights of glory, depths of tribulation; thanked Him for whatsoever Infinite Love had given in the days of that dark, dark year now ending. The clock gave a warning tick—it was going; a moment, and it would be gone forever. Into his heart came a great purpose—the purpose to leave the past with the past, and in the new year go out to a new life—a life of love for all the world, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... true, and at each end of it there was a gate by which wayfarers occasionally passed to shorten the way. There we sat without speaking a word, shivering with cold and fear, listening to the clock which went slowly, tick, tick, and occasionally starting as the door creaked on its hinges, or a half-burnt billet fell upon the hearth. My sister was ghastly white, as white as the garment which was drying before the fire. And now half an hour had elapsed and it was time to turn. . . . This we did, I and my sister, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the hour after a preliminary groaning sound as this clock did. Mrs. Forest tried to occupy herself with the stocking she was knitting, but she was uneasy and let her work fall in her lap while she reflected to the accompaniment of that metallic "Tick-tick" of the clock. "My mother always said that my temper would get me down and worry me," she meditated; "and I believe ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... the tick-tick! Aw, I wouldn't bite into it... oh, well, darn it, if nothing else'll do yuh, why, eat ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... and a sensible song is a worthy and excellent thing; But how could I sing you that sort of a song, if there's never a song to sing?) At ten to the tick, by the kitchen clock, I marked him blundering by, With his eyes astare, and his rumpled hair, and his hat cocked over his eye. Blind, in his pride, to his shoes untied, he went with a swift jig-jog, Off on the quest, with a strange ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... luxury through war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by "old missus," and intrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... four-sided case stands on a basement formed of cork blocks, which project a wee bit beyond the case; this structure is supported by 4 feet of a club-like form. So far so good. Now we will raise the structure higher. A case in which the pendulum with its chain is supposed to be hanging and swinging and tick-tacking is formed likewise of bricks of cork: its length is 2-1/2 inches, its breadth is 1 inch. Now as the upper case is smaller, you see, than the lower one, there would be a cavity, and indeed nothing for the higher one to rest upon, so we put little bevelled pieces on the lower case, which ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... rendered significant. Was a dog heard to howl and moan during the night, with his head in the direction of the house where the patient lay; was there heard in the silent watches of the night in the room occupied by the sick person, a tick, ticking as of a watch about the bed or furniture, these were sure signs of approaching death, and adult patients hearing these omens, often made sure that their end was near. Many pious people also improved the circumstance, pointing out ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... series of cases, which today seem irreconcilable with Hammer v. Dagenhart, it sustained federal laws penalizing the interstate transportation of lottery tickets,[30] of women for immoral purposes,[31] of stolen automobiles,[32] and of tick-infested cattle.[33] It affirmed the power of Congress to punish the forgery of bills of lading purporting to cover interstate shipments of merchandise,[34] to subject prison made goods moved from one State to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin |
