"Clack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning on, tied up in a voluminous apron, she was cooking in the kitchen, very hot and floury and preoccupied, drawing grating shelves out of the oven, greasing tins and patty-pans, dredging flour. The click-clack of egg-beating resounded continuously; and mountains of sponge-cakes of all shapes and sizes rose under her hands. This would be the largest, most ambitious party she had ever given—the guests expected numbered ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... party; while much overhauling of the cable in the tanks, and daily drills given to the Signal Corps soldiers in cable telegraphy and the care of the instruments kept those aboard ship busy. Tic—tack, clic—clack, went the little telegraph instrument at one end of the quarter-deck, and clic—clack, tic—tack answered an instrument at the other end, hour after hour through the long, warm mornings, and the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... for my daughter Julian, I would she were well bolted with a Bridle, That leaves her work to play the clack, And lets her wheel stand idle; For it serves not for she-ministers, Farriers nor Furriers, Cobblers nor Button-makers, To descant ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... the place impressed itself on her in a rough way. She did not venture to look around, but above the clack of the machine she could hear an occasional remark. She could also note a thing or two out of the side ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish; the Duke had Crochets in him. Hee would be drunke too, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Depots for the accumulation and shipment of cocoa-nuts, where tons and tons of freshly gathered nuts are stacked up like measured mounds of earth, are frequent along the river. Jute factories with thousands of whirring spindles and the clackety-clack of bobbins fill the morning air with the buzz and clatter of vigorous industrial life. Juggernaut cars, huge and gorgeous, occupy central places in many of the towns passed through. The stalls and bazaars display a variety of European ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sing loud, and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even Travis began to hum the words, but at that, Condy stopped abruptly, laid the instrument across his knees with exaggerated solicitude, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... de Wren and de Thrush go clackety-clack, Dey bofe talk at once an dey bofe talk back, Dey say: "Jim Crow, my but you is black!" 'Taint ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also in the firmament, began to clack, and the glittering, steel-shod nose of that trunk burrowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets within the trunk were flying upon ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... manage the black folk; but now I am English, I am English. I know the English Government means good money and safety, and if there isn't a Raad (assembly) now, well, what does it matter? Almighty, how they used to talk there!—clack, clack, clack! just like an old black koran (species of bustard) at sunset. And where did they run the waggon of the Republic to—Burghers and those damned Hollanders of his, and the rest of them? Why, into the sluit—into a sluit with peaty ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... with another bow; bowed silently and loftily round the room, and disappeared, and a general buzz and a clack ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... from within Alleyne could see the bearded fellows cleaning their harness, while their wives would come out for a gossip, with their needlework in their hands, and their long black shadows streaming across the yard. The air was full of the clack of their voices and the merry prattling of children, in strange contrast to the flash of arms and constant warlike challenge ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... paved causeway raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... flicker of firelight in the windows of the nearest house. It was Tom Daly's house. They could see Tom's shadow as he sat at his loom, weaving flax into beautiful white linen cloth. They could hear the clack! clack! of his loom. It made the Twins feel much safer to hear this sound and see Tom's shadow, for Tom was a friend of theirs, and they often went into his house and watched him weave his beautiful linen, which was so fine that the Queen herself used it. Up the road, in the window of the last house ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... indefatigable, with triple and quadruple rows of pumps, several thousand horse-power, the Schwalbach pump, the Bois l'Hery pump, and how many others as well? Some enormous and noisy with screaming pistons, some quite dumb and discreet with clack-valves knowingly oiled, pumps with tiny valves, dear little pumps as fine as the sting of insects, and like them, leaving a poison in the place whence they have drawn life; all working together and bound to bring about if not a complete drought, at least a serious ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... know I saved your life?' returned the other, not deigning to look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the sails. 'Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we'll have no more of you at the mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one leg, my son, what's left of them, and the rest are dead. (Set your boom tackle, Mr Hay.) Struck you, did I? Lucky ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... A duck said, "Quack!" Up in the tree-top A crow answered back, Two of us amusing, Two of us confusing: So we had to give up talking, And just listen to their clack. ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... his honest old father when he had proved that he had been faithful to the end? No, they thought they were virtuous and only denouncing injustice, but when that charge was taken out of their mouths they would clack on out of jealousy at his success. It was envy that really poisoned their minds and made them spit forth spleen, envy and chagrin at their ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... not the Duke? yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too; that let me 120 ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the foot fall. Another instant and my ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... footstep. There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray gloom ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are a part of all the haze-filled hours, The happy, happy world all drenched with light, The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers, And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight; And they to me will ever bring in dreams Far mist-clad heights and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... nervously, "I've a few chores to do," he seized his hat, and hastening out, wandered disconsolately around the barn. "I'm never going to be able to stand her," he groaned. "I know now why my poor wife shook her head whenever this woman was mentioned. The clack of her tongue would drive any man living crazy, and the gimlet eyes of that girl Jane would bore holes through a saint's patience. Well, well! I'll put a stove up in my room, then plowing and planting time will soon be here, and I guess I can stand it at mealtimes ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the weather. The weather and the set of the wind always come first in a Polpier man's interest. They form the staple of conversation on the Quay-side. Fish ranks next: after fish, religion: after religion, clack about boats and persons; and so we come down to politics, peace and war, the manner of getting to foreign ports and the kind of people ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... newspaper, Stock Exchange, or Cortes. The cloaked figures moved silently, swiftly, seldom in pairs, without speech, with footfall scarcely audible. Now and again Manvers heard the throb of a guitar, now and again, with sudden clamour, the clack of castanets. But such noises stopped on the instant, and the traffic was resumed—whatever it ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into flabby ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... that I was afraid, and being so near to the house, I hastened thither, driving the goats, and when I had tethered them in the shed of the croft, I crept trembling up to the house, and when I was at the door, heard the clack of the loom in the weaving-chamber, and deemed that the woman was weaving there, but when I looked, behold there was no one on the bench, though the shuttle was flying from side to side, and the shed opening and changing, and the sley coming ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... fought it. He used to write communications to the weekly newspaper in Moffitt—they've got three dailies there now—and throw cold water on the boom. He couldn't catch on no way. It made him sick to hear the clack that went on about the gas the whole while, and that stirred up the neighborhood and got into his family. Whenever he'd hear of a man that had been offered a big price for his land and was going to sell out and move into town, he'd go and labor with him and try ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, "it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... but so far as the supper was concerned Lavinia could not, to use Betty's words, "make much of a fist of it." She was glad enough to escape the clack of tongues and the fire of questions ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... wold mill, My naighbour playmeaetes' happy hwome, Wi' rollen wheel, an' leaepen foam, Below the overhangen hill, Where, wide an' slow, The stream did flow, An' flags did grow, an' lightly vlee Below the grey-leav'd withy tree, While clack, clack, clack, vrom hour to hour, Wi' whirlen stwone, an' streamen flour, Did goo the mill ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... For ten years I haven't heard the sound of a human voice, and now they was buzz, buzzin' all the time; it seemed as if there was a swarm of wasps round my ears the everlastin' day. Buzz! buzz! and then clack! clack! like an everlasting mill-clapper; and folks starin' at my brown face and white hair, and askin' me foolish questions. I couldn't stand it, that was all. I heard that a light-keeper was wanted here, and I asked for the place, and got it. And that's ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... to bend the stubborn back Above the grinching quern, It's woe to hear the leg-bar clack ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... do; and some folks are always a-dropping in, and a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh? Miss Ruth, the things I have heard folks say, a setting as it might be there, in poor Eccles his old chair by the chimley, as the Lord took ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... and "Landy" almost went to pieces for joy of her doing it. That scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll find to rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with "Landy," and got interested ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... hear my damned obstreperous spouse! What, can't you find one bed about the house! Will that perpetual clack lie never still! That rival to the softness of a mill! Some couch and distant room must be my choice, Where I may sleep ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... upper part of the walls the golden light of the setting sun was slowly moving—so slow, and yet a motion gives the feeling of rest to the weary yet more than perfect stillness. The old clock on the staircase told its monotonous click-clack, in that soothing way which more marked the quiet of the house than disturbed with any sense of sound. Leonard still slept that renovating slumber, almost in her arms, far from that fatal pursuing sea, with its human form ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he flew away. He had the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left, and he flew right away to a mill, and the mill went 'Click clack, click clack, click clack.' Inside the mill were twenty of the miller's men hewing a stone, and as they went 'Hick hack, hick hack, hick hack,' the mill went 'Click clack, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... John, and I am weary of its endless clack!" said Sir Hubert, his yellow mustache bristling from a scarlet face. "If you claim my harness, do you yourself come and take it. If there is a moon in the sky you may try this very night ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had more manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good as ordering him to declare war on England at once. I had heard that clack before on the Embuscade. He said he'd stir up the whole United States to have war with England, whether Big ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Job contending with the devil I saw It did my wonder, not my pity draw; For I concluded that without some trick, A saint at any time could match old Nick. Next came a fiercer fiend upon his back, I mean his spouse, stunning him with her clack, But still I could not pity him, as knowing A crab tree cudgel soon would send her going. But when the quack engaged with Job I spy'd, The Lord have mercy on poor Job I cry'd. What spouse and Satan did attempt in vain The quack will compass with his murdering ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... us by the simple process of turning off the ray which emanated from the tube in his hands. Then a veritable legion of Orconites had come to the cavern in which the cruiser rested, and we had been marched through the very heart of the power rooms, with their hum and clack and dazzle of mighty machinery, to the ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... and Susan and myself) were accustomed to have a good time of it whenever the master first came home and the mistress was taken up with him. We used to count half an hour more in bed, without any of that wicked bell-clack, and then go on to things according to their order, without any body to say any thing. Accordingly we were all snug in bed, and turning over for another tuck of sleep, when there came a most vicious ringing of the outer bell. 'You get up, Susan,' I heard the cook say, for there only was a ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... frequently got choked by the sand drawn in at the bottom of the well through the snore-holes, or apertures through which the water to be raised is admitted. The barrels soon became worn, and the bucket and clack leathers destroyed, so that it became necessary to devise a remedy; and with this object the engineman proceeded to adopt the following simple but original expedient. He had a wooden box or boot made, twelve ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... down against his shoulder. She had no mind to be separated from this new-found playfellow. When he produced a battered silver watch from the pocket of his velveteen waistcoat, holding it over her ear, she was charmed into a prolonged silence. The clack of Tippy's spoon against the crock came in from the kitchen, and now and then the fire snapped or the green ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Yard, Pall Mall, or Downing Street: Are hills, and dales, and valleys half so gay As bright St. James's on a levee day? What fierce ecstatic transports fire my soul, To hear the drivers swear, the coaches roll; The Courtier's compliment, the Ladies' clack, The satins rustle, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... we daily fight against him in a hundred other ways, and therefore as a valiant captain affrays no more being at the combat, nor stays from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a cannon, nor the small clack of a pistolet; not being certain what may light on him; even so ought we boldly to go forward in fighting against the devil without any greater terror, for these his rarest weapons, than the ordinary, whereof we have ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... daily paper which, by the way, he largely depended on for the news. Silence reigned for a while, save for the rustle of the sheet. The click-clack of the widow's knitting needles, and the rapid plying of Cicely's brush, were varied at last by the girl surreptitiously pulling a note out ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... I should have smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon. Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said: she frowned and made him signs: but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. -The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect:—but, when I left a triumphant party in England, I did not come hither to be at the head of a fashion. However, I have been sent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... as he had received the rent and signed the receipt, would cut short her reiterated complaints—which he privately called her "clack"—by saying that he'd see to it, he'd speak to the landlord; and, later on, that he had spoken to him, or could do nothing more in the matter—that it wasn't his business. Neither it was, to do the agent justice. It was his business to collect the rent, and thereby earn the means of paying his ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... inconsiderateness as well as their ignorance of music. This trait is most marked in domestic fowls. There was a guinea-cock, once, that chose to do his wooing close under the window of a farm-house where I was lodged. He had no regard for my hours of sleep or meditation. His amatory click-clack prevented the morning and wrecked the tranquillity of the evening. It was odious, brutal,—worse, it was absolutely thoughtless. ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... distance, till we reached a narrow path which led us into a thick wood, where we soon became completely bewildered. On a sudden, after wandering about a considerable time, we heard the noise of water, and presently the clack of a wheel. Following the sound, we arrived at a low stone mill, built over a brook; here we stopped and shouted, but no answer was returned. "The place is deserted," said Antonio; "here, however, is a path, which, if we follow it, will doubtless lead us ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... alone was sufficient cause for amazement. From a stiff red-plumed gun captain issued a brief series of commands which set the wonderfully drilled crew to silently adjusting their training and elevating mechanism. Click! Clack! Sis-s-s-s! ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... a triumphant toss of his head, "I have done Terry O'Sullivan, at any rate, the devil a half so far he ever was, and that's a comfort. I have muzzled his clack for the rest iv his life, and he won't be comin' over us wid the pride iv his Fingal while I'm to the fore, that was a'most ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... and beautiful. The waters from the lake were falling. Tide was going out, and the murmuring clack of a distant sawmill added a strange sweetness to the hour, and mingled harmoniously with the mysterious goings on of midnight. The starlight, not brilliant, was yet very soft and touching. Isolated and small clouds, like dismembered ravens' wings, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the empty pot, when he heard the click-clack of a door behind him. He looked round, and saw the Superior, who had unlocked the door, and come to restore the boy to liberty. Oh, unhappy day! When the Abbe found the prisoner stealing his precious preserves, he became furious. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... sweetheart cooms noo upo' Setterday nights, An' he swears at he'll mak me his wife; My mam grows sae stingy, she scauds an' she flytes,(3) An' twitters(4) me oot o' my life. Bud she may leuk sour, an' consait hersen wise, An' preach agean likin' young men; Sen I's grown a woman her clack(5) I'll despise, An' I's—marry!—tak care ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... warm. He was in a glass coach driven rapidly on a rough road, and outside the weather seemed to be wild, for the snow was crusted on the window. There were riders in attendance; he could hear the click-clack of ridden horses. Sometimes a lantern flashed on the pane, and a face peered dimly through the frost. It seemed a face that he ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... eyes passed with carelessness over hundreds of farm-towns, snug sheltered villages, mills with little threads of white wimpling away from the unheard constant clack of the wheel, barns, byres and stackyards—all were his, but of these he ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... called the electrical atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... of an hour brought them to their destination, as they learned from a preliminary howl of the conductor through the rear door of the car. The engine bell rang, the whistle screamed, the clack of the wheels gradually ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... stirring within me; but Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my window but I was stunned with shouts and noises from the cricket ground. The late quiet road beneath my window was alive with the tread of feet and clack of tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a "show house!" the tower and its contents being shown to strangers ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... artists—not sham poets like Bulbul, or quack artists like that Pinkney—but to the best members of all society. It is there I made this sketch, while Miss Chesterforth was singing a deep-toned tragic ballad, and her mother scowling behind her. What a buzz and clack and chatter there was in the room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exasperated, nor aggravated, nor provoked, but mad: not mad according to the dictionary, that is, crazy, but mad as we common folk use the term. So I say my friend Pitkin was mad. I thought so when I heard the angry click-clack of his heels on the cement walk, and I carefully put all the chairs against the wall; I was sure of it when the door slammed, and I set the coal scuttle in the corner behind the stove. There was ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... held his tresses in my fingers wound, And more than one tuft had I twitched away As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a hound; When one cried out, 'What ails thee, Bocca? say,— Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws, But thou must bark too! What fiend pricks thee now?' 'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what thou wilt, relate: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... and wise, and this is just what we Russians lack. Oh, if we could educate our unusual powers and abilities, if we had the will to apply them actively in our chaotic, untidy existence, which is terribly blocked up with all kinds of idle clack and home-spun philosophy, and which gets more and more saturated with silly arrogance and puerile bragging. Somewhere deep in the Russian soul—no matter whether it is the "master's" or the muzhik's—there lives a petty and squalid demon of passive anarchism, who infects us with a careless ...
— The Shield • Various
... I've been staying at their house till I was driven out of it by the perpetual clack about that Thornton girl's marriage. It was too much for Thornton himself, though she was his sister. He used to go and sit in his own room perpetually. He's getting past the age for caring for such things, either as principal ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lonely travel across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point of view, upon conditioning ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with drawn sword. His own blade met that of the enemy, and both flashed fire. But the Tagal was a fine swordsman and kept at his work, feeling certain that he could run the Americano through and through. Clack! clack! went the blades, up and down, side to side, and ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... Mariner's vessel came riding into the port; the watchers saw her drop anchor, saw the boats being lowered, and the sailors coming ashore. Soon the pirates and the sailors were at it hammer and tongs; a ceaseless clack clack of steel beating upon steel rose to the turrets of the palace; there were dreadful duels in the alleyways and battles in the public squares. Alas! just as the sailors were carrying the day, the Master Mariner received a blow on the head ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... our sympathies as they ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious. The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and where the highway ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that mean?" said the blacksmith to himself as he watched the disappearing rider, while the click-clack of the loosened shoe became fainter and fainter ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... his hat: So all the rest are busy found Before old Slug gets on the ground; Then he must stand and take his wind Before he's ready to begin, And ev'ry time he straights his back He's sure to have some useless clack; And tho' all others hate the Slug, With folded ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... you about that!" he roared, his anger lifting his voice high above the grumble and the sharp clack of the place. "I'll ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone. When he reached the end of the corridor he tried ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... a thousand lights; clack and mutter of innumerable voices, laughter, footsteps; hiss and rumble of passing trains taking gamblers back to Nice or Mentone; fevered wailing from the violins of four fiddlers with dark-white skins outside the cafe; and above, around, beyond, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... woman, Melody, for fright is the only thing that makes an impression on a fool. Now, I want you to run down there, like a good child; that is, if your aunts can spare you. Run down and comfort the little fellow, who has been badly scared by the clack of tongues and the smarting of the tobacco-juice. Imbeciles! cods' heads! scooped-out pumpkins!" exclaimed the doctor, in a sudden frenzy. "A—I don't mean that. Comfort him up, child, and sing to ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... enthusiastic ideas of American progress, and the extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the improvements he would make when he had a fortune. I was feeling uneasy again, when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky trail that joined my own. At the same instant a horseman dashed past me at full speed. I had barely time to swerve my own horse aside to avoid a collision, yet in that brief ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... it had been four, at which time the office closed. He looked round the court, which seemed very dean and rather empty—stables, barns, buildings, and dwelling-house not showing much sign of life, excepting the ceaseless hum and clack of the mill, and the dash of the water which propelled it. The windows nearest to him were so large and low, that he could look in and see that the first two or three belonged to living rooms, and the next two showed him business fittings, and a back that he took to be Leonard's; but he paused ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... means and tastes to correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of imagination is soul-slaying. The man is blessed ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... aberrations at such periods caused a breaking up of the maternal conclave. The babies were borne away to simmer between blankets until called for. The women unpacked baskets, brooded over teapots, and kept up an harmonious clack as the table was spread with pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a place on ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... beyond Contin; but there was no sign of the carter; and we were informed by the innkeeper, to whom he was well known, that we might have to wait for him all day, and perhaps not see him at night. Click-Clack—a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by which he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish register—might no doubt have purposed in the morning joining us at an early hour, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... long and difficult for Julia to undertake. They could not then journey as now, on the rapid railway, winding green valleys, ascending great hills, and gliding through cities and towns, with as gentle a whirl, and as jocund a clack as if spinning skeins of silk. They mounted the tardy wagon, and rattled and jounced along behind a loitering team. But Julia had fortitude and spirit, to meet fatigues and discouragements bravely. Her early experience now furnished ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... happy for your little niece that you have so much the habit of expressing to her your kind feelings; I really think that if my thoughts and feelings were shut up completely within me, I should burst in a week, like a steam-engine without a snifting-clack, now called by the ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always interrupted at the instant the interesting point was reached. The men bestirred themselves ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... "Stop your clack!" said the master, turning toward her with an angry glance, "and get a bite of something to eat while she is putting her water on and building a fire. I shall be at home through the day to superintend matters and see that all is done to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... heard the rattle of the elevated and the never-ceasing hum of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but, save for these reminders of the city's life, the silence of the street was broken only by the click-clack of our ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Clack! Clack! The electrically controlled lock of the door was opening. Only Wilcox knew the wave combination. Wasil felt a chill of apprehension as the door opened and Scar Balta strode in. He was fully armed, ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... In each dull, lonely hour; And though misfortunes lie around, Thicker than hailstones on the ground, I'll rest upon thy power. Then while the coxcomb, pert and proud, The politician, learned and loud, Keep one eternal clack, I'll tread where silent Nature smiles, Where Solitude our woe beguiles, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... haunted with them, brother Toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? Nothing,—he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... The brazen clack of typewriters beyond the glass partitions of her little private office left her unaffected. It was incessant. She would have missed it had it not been there. She would have lost that sense of rush which the tuneless chorus of modern commercialism inspired. And, to a woman ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... clack of a hoof on stone? Faint and far away another hoof clacked. He reached up to his hatband for a match. There were no matches in his hatband. Feverishly he searched his pockets. Not a match—not a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... hour Black Bruin watched the stranger diving and reappearing. Then the great beast swam ashore, shook himself and went crashing off through the woods, his hoofs keeping time in a rhythmic clack, a-clack, clack. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... home through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was drowned in a sodden swish as Lawler struck. His fist had shot upward with the weight of his body behind it, landing fairly on the point of Singleton's chin, snapping his teeth shut with a clack. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sport at the quilting bee Held at the farm on the Tappan Zee! Jovial labor with quips and flings, Dances with wonderful pigeon wings, Twitter of maidens and clack of dames, Honest flirtations and rousing games; Platters of savory beef and brawn, Buckets of treacle and good suppawn, Oceans of cider, and beer in lakes, Mountains of crullers and honey-cakes— Such entertainment could never pall! Rambout Van Dam took ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Willy Wagtail," said the Kangaroo. "The chances are Click-i-ti-clack, his big cousin who lives in the bush, will be able to tell us where to find him; for he doesn't care for the bush, and lives almost entirely with Humans, and the queer creatures they have brought into the country now-a-days. We may have to go a long ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the cracked grain. These two young women have evidently been very industrious this morning; they have half-buried themselves in the product of their labors, and are still grinding away as though for their very lives, while the constant "click-clack " of the carpet weavers prove them likewise the embodiment of industry. They seem rather disconcerted by the abrupt intrusion and scrutinizing attentions of a Frank and a stranger; however, the fascinating search for bits of interesting experience ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... for you, the right way, so that you'd be happy. I can do a great deal, but all the cursed nickel in the world won't bring back the—' he checked himself suddenly, shutting his hard lips with an audible clack, and looking down. 'I beg your pardon, my dear,' he said in a ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... indistinguishable to me. Day and night, for many months, it had been in my mind. Of late some instinct had prompted me to finish it. I had worked at it far into the night, until I marveled that the ancient occupants of the surrounding rooms did not enter a combined protest against the clack-clacking of my typewriter keys. And now that it was gone I wondered, dully, if I could feel ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... to show. Marks! I ha' marks o' more than burns—deep in my soul an' black, An' times like this, when things go smooth, my wickudness comes back. The sins o' four and forty years, all up an' down the seas, Clack an' repeat like valves half-fed.... Forgie's our trespasses. Nights when I'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, The couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; Years when I raked the ports wi' pride to fill my cup o' wrong— Judge not, O Lord, my steps aside at Gay Street in ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... HIS DISH, a clap, or clack, dish (dish with a movable lid) was carried by beggars and lepers to show that the vessel was empty, and to give sound ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... work-girls were hired. So a new phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a bombardment upon ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... silly clack!" ordered her mother. "A runaway bond-servant on his Excellency's staff, quotha! Though he does head the rebels, General Washington is a man of breeding and would ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford |
