"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans; and above all, strange and terrible sounds, like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphurous smoke came drifting over his head. And ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... front of the old chateau Is a blaze of light above and below; There's a sound of wheels and hoofs in the street, A cracking of whips, and scamper of feet, Bells are ringing, and horns are blown, And the Baron hath come again to his own. The Curate is waiting in the hall, Most eager and alive of all To welcome the Baron and Baroness; But his mind is full of vague ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat, under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the sun fell straight on the heavy caps ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... confusion was at its height, and attackers and defenders were wild with excitement, the battering-ram threatening, the gates cracking, missiles flying, and both parties shouting with all their might, Donald Dhu was blowing his best, stamping up and down, gazing wildly at the participators in the fray, when in his excitement he stepped upon a loose stone near the edge of the tower, where ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... ringing their merriest chimes; the streets are thronged with citizens in holiday attire; the guilds of work and trade are out in their uniforms; the army, late the organ of Cromwell, is drawn up on Black Heath, and is cracking its myriad throat with cheers. In the words of Master Roger Wildrake, "There were bonfires flaming, music playing, rumps roasting, healths drinking; London in a blaze of light from the Strand to Rotherhithe." At length the sound of herald trumpets is heard; the king is coming; a cry bursts forth ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and purple—are all bad. The madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad effect on the picture from cracking. ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... arms and wiped away the tears; he told her everything would come out all right about God, and the mystery, even. Then he picked me clear off the ground, and he tried to see how near he could come to cracking every bone in my body without really doing it, and he kissed me over and over. It hadn't been so easy, but I guess you'll admit that paid. Then he rode away with the damask rose waving over his heart. Mother and I stood beside the hitching ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come—is it so?" "Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, sees even when one lies a dying they say—for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... to her dressing-room under the floor, and Glory sat at a table with a yellow-haired lady and a dark-eyed man. A negro without the burnt cork was twanging a banjo and cracking the jokes of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... myself before the train leaves at five o'clock and I adore this sort of thing, riding around Paris in an open carriage. Let's follow the Spaniard!' And then the chase commenced, down the boulevards, across the squares, through the streets, the three drivers cracking their whips and urging their horses on. This man-hunt began to get exciting. It recalled to my mind the romances in the Petit Journal. Finally, in a little street, belonging to the Temple Quarter, the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... aloft was ballooning out, and the ropes slatting and cracking, with blocks banging against the spars, all making a regular pandemonium of noise, in conjunction with the hoarse shriek of the sou'-wester and the clashing of the billows when they broke, buffeting the Denver City as if they would ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... exclaim, for with the house rocking frightfully, now came from outside the peal as of a thousand thunders, accompanied by the clang of bell, the crash of falling walls, the sharp cracking and splitting of woodwork, and the yelling and shrieking of people running ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... shrugged. "Then why make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... It was one of his beliefs that a merciful Heaven had granted eggs and oranges to earth for the benefit of fastidious travellers who could wreak their appetites in comparative security, especially if they did their own cracking and peeling. At length the breakfast appeared, and with it the innkeeper, who sat ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... she said to herself; and she pined for a little amusement also. Still, she knew that if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they did ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... another's heels, with bowed heads and sidelong, hang-dog looks, the dejected gait and bearing of the vanquished to whom had been left not even so much as a knife with which to cut their throat. The harsh, curt orders of the guard urging them forward resounded like the cracking of a whip in the silence, which was unbroken save for the plashing of their coarse shoes through the semi-liquid mud. Another shower began to fall, and there could be no more sorrowful sight than that band of disheartened soldiers, shuffling along through the rain, like beggars ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... tribe is regular and well proportioned, presenting no traces of negroid antecedents. Noses are slender and slightly retroussed, lips clean-cut, chins modestly assertive with lower jaws superbly adapted to cracking cocoanuts and oysters, foreheads low with sufficient projection at the eye-line for shade purposes. All in all, they are entitled to an A-plus in beauty and reminded me less of Polynesians than of a hand-picked selection ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... look out, Bob!" cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh danger ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... gamut is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch,—for such slight things; But he's such a very great musician Grimacing and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... sallied forth into the street. His first destination was intended to be the Governor's mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the Governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to himself. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sensibly lost ground with his excellency; for he was too deeply occupied, and had too many resources of his own, to find his amusement in my society. During the few days I sat at his table, I entertained his diplomatic guests with cracking nuts, extracting the kernels, peeling oranges, talking broad Scotch and Parisian French, chanting the "Gloria," dancing "Gai Coco," and, in fact, exhibiting all my accomplishments. I was, however, soon sent to the secretary's office ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... been going off in his ears, and they hurt most awfully. And when it had done cracking his earache had gone away. And Dorothy had brought him a trumpet from Rosalind's party and Michael a tin train. And Michael had given him the train and he wouldn't take the trumpet instead. Oughtn't Michael to have had ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Adelina Patti. Since the time of the Civil War, however, the city has suffered a decline in this department of art. Opera seasons have not been regular, and in spite of occasional attempts to revive the old-time spirit, the ancient Opera House, with its brave columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its surrounding of little vari-colored one story cafes and shops (which are themselves like bits of operatic scenery), does not so much suggest to the imagination a home of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... released by the next shock. An ordinary dwelling house sways and strains with the alternations of temperature and moisture to which it is subjected in the round of climatal alterations. Now and then we note the movements in a cracking sound, but by far the greater part of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... his slaves to inform anyone who wished to know, that they belonged to J.D. Ingram. "Once," said Pattillo, "my brother Willis, who was known for his gambling and drinking, left our plantation and no one knew where he had gone. As we sat around a big open fire cracking walnuts, Willis came up, jumped off his horse and fell to the ground. Directly behind him rode a 'paterroller.' The master jumped up and commanded him to turn around and leave his premises. The 'Paterroller' ignored ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of day, a dozen or more horsemen started off, dividing, so as to get round the pasture. Each had a stock-whip in his hand: the handle is but a foot long, but the lash is about fifteen. A loud cracking sound can be made with it, and its lash strikes through the thickest skin. The cattle, when roused, as is usual, made for the low ground, where Joseph and his sons, with one or two other men, were ready ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... could not help but see them; there was a large cue on the boarding half-way down Orange Street, just opposite the Doctor's; a poster with a coloured picture of "Wombwell's Circus," a fine affair, with spangled ladies jumping through hoops, elephants sitting on stools, tigers prowling, a clown cracking a whip, and, best of all, a gentleman, with an anxious face and a scanty but elegant costume, balanced above a gazing multitude on a tight-rope. There was also a bill of the Fair setting forth that there would be a "Cattle Market, Races, Roundabout, Swings, Wrestling, Boxing, Fat ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... the humour of it: and this was a satisfaction to him, founded on his practical observance of two or three maxims quite equal to the fullest knowledge of women for rightly managing them: preferable, inasmuch as they are simpler, and, by merely cracking a whip, bring her back to the post, instead of wasting time by hunting her as she likes to run. Police were round his house. The General chattered and shouted of the desperate lawlessness and larcenies of that Jew—the things that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... next day, however, he could not quite make out what was going on in the place. There was a strong smell of gunpowder in the air, and he could hear the cracking reports of small cannon, let off at frequent intervals with much noise in the streets by a crowd of boys, whose voices mingled with the excruciating sound of squeaking trumpets and the shrill, ear-piercing scream ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... brothers couldn't understand about Stefan was why he was always laughing and joking. He did the work of two men but whether he was working or resting you could always hear him cracking his merry jokes ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my hitting out two or three times—getting in one smasher on the mate's jaw that was a comfort to me—and then something hard cracking me on the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea, sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... suppose that all of them violate the law. May not this constant dodging or hurdling of statutes be a sign that there is something the matter with the statutes? Is it not possible that graft is the cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried to constrain the business of this country? It seems possible that business has had to control politics because its laws were so stupidly obstructive. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... forehead, to hold in her cracking brain, and wabbled out into new scenes of mud and wetness, but she came up to the young man with the most rain-washed and careless of smiles. "Won't you come back and meet my father? He's terribly grateful to you—as I am. And may we—— You've ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... you, Doctor A. If I owe gratitude any where I have my debt with you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured it must have been the den of some of the servants ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... company, picking my way out of a mass of bullock waggons, carts, mules, and every imaginable vehicle; men asking for this brigade and that division on every hand; transport officers cursing, conductors exhorting, and niggers yelling and cracking whips. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... making Presents to her, and you cannot fail of Prevailing: The Gentleman lik'd her counsel very well, and was resolv'd to take it: And accordingly took an opportunity to buy a Silver Snush-Box; and having before bought some fine French Walnuts, he presented his Mistress with some, and by cracking of them, had an opportunity to tarry longer in the Shop, and gaze more on that Beauty which had already overcome him. In two or three days after, he comes again and buys half a dozen Silver Spoons and Forks, and then brought some peaches to his Mistress and presents her with them; and a Week ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... swung along at a cracking pace, for he could walk as well as he could run, and a finer three-quarter had never been known at Rushmere. He was a tall, powerful lad, nearly nineteen years of age, five foot ten and a half inches in his stockings, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... came on the air a cracking sound, and one of the boards which served the purpose of a pew broke in the centre and came down with a crash, precipitating nearly half a score of buxom, screaming girls into a promiscuous heap upon the floor. This was too much for Fernando. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... (the refectory of the ancient knights) was almost entirely rebuilt in 1816. The roof was overloaded with timber, the west wall was cracking, and the wooden cupola of the bell let in the rain. The pointed arches and rude sculpture at the entrance doors showed great antiquity, but the northern wall had been rebuilt in 1680. The incongruous Doric ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that slope up from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... a good roper, nor more than an average rider, according to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents, and of these I had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed of itself. When I had the opportunity I broke my own horses, doing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hail dashes on the old bay window! Like an occasional discharge of mimic musketry, it comes clashing, beating, and cracking upon the small panes; but they resist it—their small size saves them; the wind, the hail, the rain, expend ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... sergents de ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Cafe des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, a ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... through keyholes after knowledge; could never see a cold pie with the legs dangling out at top, but my fingers were for lifting up the crust,—just to try if it were pigeon or partridge,—for no other reason in the world. Surely I think my passion for nuts was owing to the pleasure of cracking the shell to get at something concealed, more than to any delight I took in eating the kernel. In short, Sir, this appetite has grown with ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... the humiliated ringmaster, Briggs by name, was cracking his whip in the middle of the ring, mighty lord of all he surveyed, although, to his chagrin, there was no clown present to receive the attention. In those good old days the circus carried but one clown. He was the most overworked man in the ring, but he had the satisfaction of knowing ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... materialism of our own days. "Never was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and directress. The natural heads of the nation, the priests ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. 'The cordial,' Raleigh says, 'will cure him or any other of a fever, except in case ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... deacon's horse knew before the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally concluding that he was practically left standing, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... uttering piercing cries. Every object of spoil was destroyed, and the torch was applied to the houses. The fire, fanned by a too willing breeze, spread rapidly, and in a moment's time, St. Gabriel was wrapt in a lurid sheet of devouring flames. We could hear the cracking of planks tortured by the blaze; the crash of falling roofs, while the flames shot up to an immense height with the hissing and soughing of a hurricane. Ah! Petiots, it was a fair image of pandemonium. The people seemed an army of fiends, spreading ruin and desolation in their path. ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... pass the books up to her. "He's a good sort, and I like him well enough, but he's the kind of man that gets up a reputation for being clever and artistic by running down the very one particular thing that every one likes, and cracking up some book or picture or play that no one has ever heard of. Just let anything get popular once and Sheldon Corthell can't speak of it without shuddering. But he'll go over here to some Archer Avenue pawn shop, dig up an old brass stewpan, or coffee-pot that some ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... of.' I am told of another house he abused and that is now deserted: 'Frenchforth of the soot, that was wedded to the smoke, that is all that remains of the property.... There were some of them on mules, and some of them unruly, and the biggest of them were smaller than asses, and the master cracking them with a stick;' 'but he went no further than that, because he remembered the good treatment used to be there in former times, and he wouldn't have said that much if it wasn't for the servants that vexed him.' A satire, ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... for the fort, my little party carrying rifles and sidearms but no packs; and there waited across the ditch in the sunshine my Indians, cross-legged in a row on the grass, and gravely cracking and munching the sweet, green hazelnuts with which ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... shell struck the forward side of the pilot-house directly in the sight-hole or slit, and exploded, cracking the second iron log and partly lifting the top, leaving an opening. Worden was standing immediately behind this spot, and received in his face the force of the blow, which partly stunned him, and filling his eyes with powder, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and not too good, for the animal disappeared in the farther bush, and the cracking of twigs told the young hunter that the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... Tomlinson, cracking his filberts,—Tomlinson was fond of filberts,—"were I to choose a home, it is in such a home as this that I would be ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sounds, sometimes sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion, sometimes sharp, like a quick splintering of an iron-hard substance. These noises, I presently gathered, were made by the ice stretching and cracking in fifty different directions. The mass was so vast and substantial you could not but think of it as a country with its foot resting upon the bed of the sea. 'Twas a folly of my nerves no doubt, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... lucky, for soon up came a nice maskalonge. Then, a few minutes later, came a rock bass—something for which he had not been looking. He grew interested, and forgot all about the noise he had heard, until the cracking of some ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... retaining an upright posture. The straw figures are furnished with fire-works, which are made to take fire when the birds escape from within, and it sometimes happens that the bull has the flaming and cracking figure upon his horns. Sometimes the bull is maddened by fire-works being fastened on him, which go off in succession. The crackers being expended, the animal usually stands gazing around with rolling tongue, panting sides, and eyes sparkling with rage. He is then faced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... denied again and again; but at last it stood a proud and hideous fact, like a gray prison, towering above the bare, undecorated brick stores and the frame houses on the prairie around it, new, raw, and cheap, from the tin statue on the dome to the stucco round its base already cracking with the sun. Piles of lumber and scaffolding and the lime beds the builders had left still lay on the unsodded square, and the bursts of wind drove the shavings across it, as they had done since the first day of building, when the Hon. Horatio Macon, who had worked for the appropriation, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... after bull went down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Maluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip. Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: "Here you are, missus; thought you might ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... trunk there are some old silk dresses, and such things, which are also to be kept. Moths do not touch silks, but these, too, must be taken out and shaken and refolded once in awhile to keep them from cracking in the places where they have laid. Once a year, at least, all trunks must be emptied, wiped out, and relined with fresh papers, the things ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... Fleetwood's wife, cracking sconces,—a demoiselle Moll Flanders,—the world's Whitechapel Countess out for an airing, infernally earnest about it, madly ludicrous; the schemer to catch his word, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the letter of it; now persecuting, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the whole top seemed about to be going by the board. We scrambled up, and I heard Jack's voice calling for me to come out. The cover-bows were bent far over, and the canvas pressed in on the side to the southwest till it seemed as if it must burst. The front end of the top had gone out and was cracking in the wind. I crept forward, and us I did so I felt the wagon rise up on the windward side and bump back on the ground. I concluded we were doomed to u wreck, and called to Ollie to get out as fast us he could. I supposed a hard storm had struck ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... mastheaded twice, and Dickey Snookes five times, since we came to sea; once for dressing up the sheep in some of the men's clothes just before the crew were mustered, and then letting them out on the deck; and another time for cutting poor Polly's hammock down by the head, and very nearly cracking his skull—luckily it's rather thick. After leaving Free Town we touched at Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Have you ever read about that settlement? It was established by the people of the United ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... head. There was a glass of water by his side. He thrust his finger into it and passed it across his lips. They were dry, almost cracking. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... noisy: at her table there was an incessant clamour of screams and shouts of laughter. One ate oysters a la poulette, terrapin-salads, and croquettes; the wines were Sauternes and champagnes. With the nuts and dessert the caps came on, and in a few minutes were cracking and snapping all ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... brought for you to taste the juice, which is dipped out of the boiling vat for your service. It is very like balm-tea, unduly sweetened; and after a hot sip or so you return the cup with thanks. A loud noise, as of cracking of whips and of hurrahs, guides you to the sugar-mill, where the crushing of the cane goes on in the jolliest fashion. The building is octagonal and open. Its chief feature is a very large horizontal wheel, which turns the smaller ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... said Priest, sitting on the edge of Joel's bunk, "that I had my ear to the ground and heard the good fighting. Yes, I heard the sleet cracking. You never saw me, but I was with you the night you drifted to the Prairie Dog. Take it all along the line, wasn't it ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was glad to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... animal, the dog, if, in tracking his master, he met three ways, after smelling the two, boldly pursued the third without any such previous investigation; which, if true, would be an instance of a disjunctive hypothetical syllogism. Also Dugald Stewart spoke of the case of a monkey cracking nuts behind a door, which, not being a strict imitation of anything which he could have actually seen, implied an operation of abstraction, by which the clever brute had first ascended to the general notion of nut-crackers, which perhaps ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... cards and consulting the signs of the zodiac, predict how a man would die? Denver made himself at home with a party of hobo miners who had come in from the railroad below, and that night they sat up late, cracking jokes and telling stories of every big camp in the West. It was the old life again, the life that he knew and loved, drifting on from camp to camp with every man his friend. Yet as he stretched out that night by the flickering fire he almost regretted the change. He was free from the great fear, ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... a deep silence; the log cracking; and just then the door swung on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the wounded took a pride in cracking jokes, and they did so in words to which circumstances lent a poignant picturesqueness. These jests drew a laugh from us which was often closely akin ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... reversing his rifle. There was a cracking sound as the gun butt struck the orator from Tete in the middle of the forehead. With a drowsy look the smitten man sank down as gently as if falling into a mound of feathers, and deliberately composed himself in sleep, his brown face against the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... the Palatinate tomorrow. This was not enough. When he arrived within ten leagues of Paris, he put on an enormous pair of jack-boots, mounted a post-horse, and arrived in the court of the palace cracking his whip. If this had been real impatience, and not charlatanism, he would have taken horse twenty leagues from Paris."—"I don't agree with you," said a gentleman whom I did not know; "impatience sometimes seizes one towards the end of an ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... low on one side, disclosing the squalid desolation of its lean ribbed and naked interior, producing all the phantasmic effect of a great swampy desert; old pools of water overgrown with a green scum, lay in the hollows between its rotting timbers, and the upper planks were baking and cracking in the sun. Near where they lay a steep path ascended the cliff, whence through grass and ploughed land, it led across the promontory to the fishing village of Scaurnose, which lay on the other side of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... been frequenters of the building, who now were waifs. I reviewed the gaping, glassless windows through which they had been wont to watch the human comedy. There they had stood, puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... purpose, and we were not left long to wonder what the purpose was. A tremendous battle was brewing, and rumours placed its magnitude at from three army fronts to the whole allied front. Anyhow, the chief thing that concerned us was that the 42nd was to take part in the cracking of the hardest nut in the German defence, namely, the Hindenburg system. The enemy had had three weeks in which to consolidate his already perfected ramification of trenches and dug-outs, and there was no doubt as to their determination to definitely stop the British ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... and flinging his plumed hat on the table, as who should say, Lie there, authority! he swallowed a hearty cup of wine to the happiness of the married couple, and began to amble about the room, mumping, laughing, and cracking jests, neither the wittiest nor the most delicate, but accompanied and applauded by shouts of his own mirth, in order to encourage that of the company. Whilst his Majesty was in the midst of this gay humour, and a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... thick. Besides this, a small pane of the window was open; so that the crunching of the wheels as they turned on the freshly-laid metalling, the encouragements of the drivers to their horses, and the cracking of the whips, could be distinctly heard. Even the steps of the passers-by were audible, and a word here and there of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... said. "Listen, Silvo, they never would've got onto us if it hadn't been for your stupid tricks. Slugging a cop on the dome. Cracking up a car. You and ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... will be made further on. A round basket-tray, either loosely or closely woven, is evenly coated inside with clay, into which has been kneaded a very large proportion of sand, to prevent contraction and consequent cracking from drying. This lining of clay is pressed, while still soft, into the basket as closely as possible with the hands and then allowed to dry. The tray is thus made ready for use. The seeds or other substances to be parched are placed inside ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... the careless and the unscrupulous, I shall recommend improvements in the Food and Drug laws—strengthening inspection and standards, halting unsafe and worthless products, preventing misleading labels, and cracking down on the illicit ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... dun dusk, thunder Rolling and battering and cracking, The caverns shudder with a terrible glare Again and again and again, Till the land bows in the darkness, Utterly lost and defenceless, Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed By the crashing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... bandoliers apiece, which gave them the appearance of being armed to the teeth—a more determined-looking band cannot be imagined. The horses of these burghers were well bred and in good condition, and, although their clothes were threadbare, they seemed cheerful enough, smoking their pipes and cracking ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of agony rang through ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... now his play. 1. He bore all in hand by swearing, and cracking, and lying, that he was as well to pass as he was the first day he set up for himself, yea that he had rather got than lost; and he had at his beck some of his companions that would swear to confirm ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door would ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... inspiration of ayre, and can not but breake foorth with an incredible strength) doeth bring to passe: and so (euen as in vndermining trenches and engines or great warrelike ordinance, huge yron bullets are cast foorth with monstrous roaring, and cracking, by the force of kindled Brimstone, and Salt-peeter, whereof Gunne-powder is compounded) chingle and great stones being skorched in that fiery gulfe, as it were in a furnace, together with abundance of sande and ashes, are vomitted vp and discharged, and that for the most part not without an ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... with you, and a year passed. A man came to order boots that should wear for a year without losing shape or cracking. I looked at him, and suddenly, behind his shoulder, I saw my comrade—the angel of death. None but me saw that angel; but I knew him, and knew that before the sun set he would take that rich man's soul. And ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... the awe-struck wonder and veneration creep into his face. In the silence and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined. Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... a delightful chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and Richard his one, and they were about to pass in although Mrs. Fayal said it was early yet, when ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... pervade all around, while we enjoy the perfect stillness. There is not a sound, except the ripple of the water. Houses, streets, ships, men, women, and children, all seem resting peacefully in the silent night. But, hark! there was a sound of cracking from the window! Again and again we hear it, and whispering too outside. A few moments more, and the window is opened, and two men have crept in. They are some of the guests of the evening come to recover thus what they and their companions have wasted here to-night, that they may have it to ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the rabbit gentleman, "I fear something is broken," for he heard a cracking sound as ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... of cracking nuts with the teeth, or of lifting heavy bodies, and the constant habit of biting thread, should be avoided, as they ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... Lady'. So I hired a big gray squirrel coat from a furrier whom I know, and I ripped up my muff and made me the very best sort of a hot, gray, smothery face that I could—and I went out to Cambridge and sat three hours on the footboard of a bed, cracking jokes—and nuts—to beguile a little child's death-pain. And somehow it broke my heart—or my spirit—or something. Somehow I think I could have stood it better with my own skin face! Anyway the little girl doesn't need me any more. Anyway, it doesn't ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Once a day, however, a huge gong sounds, the glass doors of the inner courtyard are thrown open with a flourish, and enters the huge bus fairly among those peacefully sitting at the tables, horses' hoofs striking fire, long lash-cracking volleys, wheels roaring amid hollow reverberations. From the interior of this bus emerge people; and from the top, by means of a strangely-constructed hooked ladder, are decanted boxes, trunks, and appurtenances of various sorts. In these people, and in these boxes, trunks, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... does strike it's going to hit a mighty blow unless all signs fail. I've seen 'em gather before, and this is going to be a king of storms! Hear that thunder now! It doesn't growl any more, but goes off like the cracking of big cannon." ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... of metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left him floating helpless ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... the rings from her finger and flung them against the window, cracking the glass across. "I will never look on your face again, I hope. This is my reward, is it, for giving up everything for you? I boasted of your trust in me a minute ago, but you have shamed me; you have dragged my ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... an inscription to Constantine. Vallauris has long been famous for the manufacture of kitchen pottery, "Potteries Rfractaires," earthenware utensils, principally of the "marmite" or stewpan class, capable of bearing great heat without cracking. A dozen marmites, in assorted sizes, are sold for 2frs. To this the Massiers and others have added the manufacture of artistic pottery, of which there is a good display, both in the showrooms in ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Ghibelline war-arrow. Behind them, young Foresto drew in his breath with a hiss, laid his hand on his dagger, and turned the colour of clay. Old Baldo raised the bow, put all his remaining strength into the draw, and uttered a cracking shout of bliss. The mannikin no longer danced; but toward him, from the hillside, some men in steel were running. Baldo, sinking back into Cercamorte's arms, at last allowed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... had started the dog appeared to us to proceed from a tent some distance off; but we were not certain in that respect, and listened attentively. For a few minutes all was quiet, and then we distinctly heard the cracking of a stick, and then all was still for the space ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... ground in turps, with only a sufficient quantity of varnish to bind it, thinning to a proper consistency with turps. It is as well to add a little of the ordinary white-lead ground in oil, as it helps to prevent cracking. Give the work four or five coats of this, and allow each coat to dry thoroughly. When it is hard and ready for rubbing down, commence with a soft piece of pumice-stone and water, and rub just sufficient to take off the roughness. ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Pennroyal, smiling and cracking filberts, "you're going too far. Things are not so ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... spalpeens down there without the rope, they might never find the way out, and would starve to death, and it would always grieve me to think I had starved six Apaches to death, instead of affording meself some enjoyment by cracking 'em over the head wid ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked again. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans tilted to sun against the underpinning of the L, and Mrs. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... torn up with five hundred others, and sold for waste-paper. And now at last, and when it might least have been expected, here was this Joe Toddyhigh turning up and claiming acquaintance with a great public character, who on the morrow would be cracking jokes with the Prime Minister of England, and who had only, at any time during the next twelve months, to say the word, and he could shut up Temple Bar, and make it no thoroughfare ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... was known as Shaking Mountain, for strange sounds and tremors were heard there, and every moonshiner who had his cabin on that hill joined the church and was diligent in worship until he learned that the trembling was due to the slow cracking and separation of a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he slipped. There was no regaining his grip. With a howl of fright he felt himself plunging head downward more than thirty feet to the hard floor of the gym. He was in a fair way of landing on his head, cracking his skull and breaking his neck. Worse, in his sudden dread, he seemed to have lost ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... fellow myself;" and Mrs. Treat lifted her slim husband into a chair, where he was out of her way, and again greeted Toby by kissing him on both cheeks with a resounding smack that rivalled anything Reddy Grant had yet been able to do in the way of cracking his whip. ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... bound, Master Prosper?" demanded Captain Jo. "For 'tis ill biding for orders after cracking on to be punctual; and tho' I say naught against the anchorage as an anchorage, the wind, what with these hills and gullies, is like Mulligan's blanket, always coming and going; and by fits an' starts as the ague took the goose; and likewise backwards and forwards, like Boscastle ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Carolina, in 1886, the injury caused by it being largely due to the fact that it passed through a populous city. As it occurred after many of the people had retired, the confusion and terror due to it were greatly augmented, people fleeing in panic fear from the tumbling and cracking houses to seek refuge in the widest streets and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... then a dish of chickens stewed with rice, nicely flavoured and coloured with red Spanish pimenton. A fowl roasted or boiled, as we eat them in England, is wasted, compared with this delicious guiso de potto which one gets in any rancho in the Banda Orient. After the meats we sat for an hour cracking walnuts, sipping wine, smoking cigarettes, and telling amusing stories; and I doubt whether there were three happier people in all Uruguay that morning than the un-Scotched Scotchman, John Carrickfergus, his un-ding-donging native wife, and their guest, who had shot his man on the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the same noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and cracking of the poor churchyard ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... over the landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds sweep across the scene. Ruodi, the fisherman, comes out of his cottage. Werni, the huntsman, descends from the rocks. Kuoni, the shepherd, ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... denser. The pines began to be mingled with other trees. The undergrowth was thicker and more tangled. It was not always easy for Cuthbert to force his way along. He paused sometimes in fear lest his steps and the cracking of the boughs should be heard by the man ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... pompous, and so distressingly polite, that everything like sociability was out of the question. When the ladies left us, matters did not improve; Freddy, finding the atmosphere ungenial to jokes, devoted himself to cracking walnuts by original methods which invariably failed, and attempting to torture into impossible shapes oranges which, when finished, were much too sour for any one to eat; while his father, after having solemnly, and at separate intervals, begged me to partake of every ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... answer to the rough query. I saw that my last summons had been sufficient. I could hear the hewn floor-planks cracking under a heavy boot; and knew from this, that my questioner was passing towards the door. In another instant he stood in the doorway—his body filling it from side to side—from head to stoop. A fearful-looking ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... honestly dissatisfied with himself. Folding his arms, he leaned idly on the deck-rails, and looked gravely and musingly down into the motionless water where the varied lines of the sky were clearly mirrored,—when a slight creaking, cracking sound was heard, as of some obstacle grazing against or bumping the side of the yacht. He looked, and saw, to his surprise, a small rowing boat close under the gunwale, so close indeed that the slow motion of the tide heaved it every now and then into a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the dark markings under their eyes and, above all, the terrible look of suffering and despair that was beginning to reveal itself in the eyes themselves. Yet not a word of discouragement or complaint passed their black and cracking lips; they simply lay about, moving as little as possible, and endured silently. As for me, I could think of nothing, do nothing to help ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... father, the poor girl sat down under a fir-tree at the edge of the forest and began to weep silently. Suddenly she heard a faint sound: it was King Frost springing from tree to tree, and cracking his fingers as he went. At length he reached the fir-tree beneath which she was sitting, and with a crisp crackling sound he alighted beside her, and ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so thickly that another torture is added. Half the nationalities of Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already invaded by men lying on long chairs, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... of hay there sounded a fusillade of pistol shots, cracking out with viciousness. This was instantly followed by the appearance of three men who came running from around the load of hay, down the road toward the thieves. Each man carried a pitchfork, and as they ran, one of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... finding no other avenue of escape, the herd commenced the ascent of the hill, cracking the branches and boughs, and rolling the loose stones down into the valley, as they made their ascent, and now adding their own horrid shrieks to the din which had been previously created. On they came, bearing everything down before them, carrying havoc in their ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Mendouca was still prosecuting a search for us—as I felt sure he was, he having of course failed to discover any evidence of the ship having foundered—he was looking for us in a northerly direction, very probably cracking on in the belief that we had gone that way and that there was still a chance of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... judgment, and, seizing his canoe, he dashed into the foaming waves and boldly stemmed their fury to the object of his mission. The overjoyed crew, as they heard his voice hailing them through the storm, cast out a rope, by which they hoisted him into their cracking ship. The most rapturous acknowledgments from the captain, greeted him as soon as he jumped on the deck; and the eager seamen called him their deliverer. He was happy! he said, he was happy in the achievement of what he had done; he had obeyed the wish of his beloved Berea, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... much. They eagerly inquired the distance to food, which I thought they might possibly reach that night. Meanwhile I had opened my sack of hard bread and had given each a cracker, at the eating of which the sound resembled pigs cracking ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... knew what that meant: my chimney had been wrenched from its foundations, and the upper part of it had now toppled over. I could hear, through the storm, the bricks banging and sliding upon the slanting roof. Continuous sounds of cracking and snapping came to me through the closed front windows, and these were caused, I supposed, by the destruction of the stakes of my vines as the ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... and the flying pace of the two outer horses alone gave them any idea of the speed they were making. Nicolas glanced back at the other two drivers; they were shouting and urging their shaft-horses with cries and cracking of whips, so as not to be quite left behind; Nicolas's middle horse, swinging steadily along under the shaft-bow, kept up his regular pace, quite ready to go twice as fast the moment he should be ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... a nimble squirrel from the wood Ranging the hedges for his filbert food Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking, And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking; Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys To share with him come with so great a noise That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke, And for his life leap to a neighbor oak, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... me L20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors." ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... feet from the margin, so that it was unsafe to stand near the edge of the spring. This, however, I did not at first perceive; and, as I was unconcernedly passing by the spring, my weight made the border suddenly slough off beneath my feet. General Washburn noticed the sudden cracking of the incrustation before I did, and I was aroused to a sense of my peril by his shout of alarm, and had sufficient presence of mind to fall suddenly backwards at full length upon the sound crust, whence, with my feet and legs extended over the spring, I rolled to a place of safety. But for ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... coming at so late an hour? Perhaps the second physician, who had been sent for early in the day, but had not yet answered the summons; perhaps some one from Ostwalden, where the news had been sent late. The carriage turned into the broad road, and came on crunching and cracking over the icy ground, and drew up under the wide porte cochere at the side of the house. Hartmut, who was virtually master of the place, left his room and hastened to see who had come or what ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies in Michigan, Bed Bugs in Wisconsin, Lice in Wyoming, ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... dark forms were seen by the best-sighted of the men on watch, creeping cautiously up the ravine towards the hiding-place. The cracking of twigs and an occasional grunt were heard, and we knew the Indians were approaching. Word was passed not to fire until our leader gave the signal, which was finally given. Two of the old flintlocks went off, the others missed ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by dividing their forces against the united ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... GENTLEMEN,—but then they were greatly superior to these clowns, who took no notice of her, and rode off without lingering or formal leave-taking when their selfish affairs were concluded. It must be the contact of the vulgar earth—this wretched, cracking, material, and yet ungovernable and lawless earth—that so depraved them. She felt she would like to say this to some one—not her father, for he wouldn't listen to her, nor to the major, who would laughingly argue with her, but to Mrs. Randolph, who would understand her, and perhaps ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... layer by bolts at the corners and one in the middle of each square. The surface is flush. (See Fig. 9.) The end sought by the above system is to break up the shot by the hard steel face and to restrict any starring or cracking of the metal to the limit of the squares or scales struck. The bolts are of high carbon and are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... as if they had been roused by the wind from a deep magic trance, groaned hoarsely in a responsive chorus. The bare black walls of the castle towered above the snow-covered ground; we drew up at the gates, which were fast locked. But no shouting or cracking of whips, no knocking or hammering, was of any avail; the whole castle seemed to be dead; not a single light was visible at any of the windows. The old gentleman shouted in his strong stentorian ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... if I composed and preached sermons, I should by no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects— should preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach of Reason—Predestination, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
