"Hissing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weather beam. The fore and aft canvas was trimmed well, and the outer jibs lifted the ship along at a slapping rate. She was evidently fast in spite of her load, and I looked over the side at the foam that was seething past the lee channels in swirls and eddies which gave forth a cheerful hissing sound as they slipped aft at the rate of six knots an hour. The man at the wheel held her easily, and that was a blessing; for nothing is much worse for a mate's discomfort than a wild ship sheering from side to side leaving a wake like the path of ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... and I will resort to vulgar frankness, employed by the truculent commonplace, and say we live in an age of swaggering, badgering, immoral-begotten, vice-ridden, irreligious decrepitude—" Katherine made a hissing noise with her teeth, as if she had been suddenly and severely pricked by a pin, then put up her hands and stopped her ears—this day, Mistress Penwick thou shalt know the character of thy King—Nay, thou shalt know. I will tell thee that 'twill poison thy ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... can be likened only to the waves of the sea in time of storm, as if in fury at their sudden compression, rush over that rock, then curl back, and pause in the air a moment before tearing on, roaring and hissing with rage, to the whirlpool farther down the stream. See how they dash from side to side, see how the spray rises in the air for the dainty sunlight to play among its foam. Hear the noise, like that of thunder, as a great angry white horse dashes down that storm-washed ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the light. The sunlight failed; the day turned to gloom. Then an eddying fog of sand and dust enveloped Hare. His last glimpse before he covered his face with a silk handkerchief was of sheets of sand streaming past his shelter. The storm came with a low, soft, hissing roar, like the sound in a sea-shell magnified. Breathing through the handkerchief Hare avoided inhaling the sand which beat against his face, but the finer dust particles filtered through and stifled him. At first he felt that he would suffocate, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... was a faint white line, where the rollers spread their foam with mournful restless fugue of long drawn roar and hissing sigh. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... with practiseing to swime: A trout now here you would not thinke how soone Taken and drest for th'Emperour o'the Moone, The fixed Starres, though to our eyes were missing Wee knew yet were by their continuall hissing. Weomen were mermaides sailing with the wind, The greatest miracle was fish behind: But men were all kept chast against their wish, And could comitt but ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... blue around them; the sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer wonders of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the captain entered a room on the upper deck where was installed the wireless telegraph outfit. The hissing as of frying oil that the apparatus was sending out attracted him. The operator, a young Englishman, took off his nickel band with two earphones. Greatly bored by his isolation, he was trying to distract himself by conversing with the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Cathedral, high above the heads of the people, there flashed a white dove! It sped along a wire to the great black car, and the instant it touched it there was a terrific bang, then another, and another, as hissing rockets tore their way into the sky. The whole car seemed to blow up in a joyful burst ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to continue her supper-getting. In a remote part of the house bacon could be heard hissing over the fire. Robert and Corinne sat upright on black chairs, but their guardian put Carrie on ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... real child. Think how the actors crouched protectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye saw the child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied the vision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the other play where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns it with such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could write the fairy plays and the symbolic plays, all American, if Jeff liked, and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... night came on I went into I cave, where I thought I might repose in safety. I secured the entrance, which was low and narrow, with a great stone, to preserve me from the serpents; but not so far as to exclude the light. I supped on part of my provisions, but the serpents, which began hissing round me, put me into such extreme fear that I did not sleep. When day appeared the serpents retired, and I came out of the cave trembling. I can justly say that I walked upon diamonds without feeling any inclination to touch them. At last I sat down, and notwithstanding ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... full consciousness, with the din of some appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the panic-land which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence, except for the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window. But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again and once again it shrilled ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... movement, just as the French began to run out on their bowsprit, and, by the time six or eight were on the heel of the jib-boom, they were met by the hissing hot stream, which took them en echelon, as it might be, fairly raking the whole line. The effect was instantaneous. Physical nature cannot stand excessive heat, unless particularly well supplied with skin; and the three leading Frenchmen, finding retreat impossible, dropped ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... belonging to them to come and give them news,—restrained by force of habit from what would have been at another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter exceptionality of this time,—while down among the hissing engines and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the spectacle,—while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington Street, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... like a piece of thin lead. They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, rapidly ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... from steel the outer bulwark; Rises from the earth to heaven, Back again to earth returning; Double spears are used for railings, On each spear are serpents winding, On each rail are stinging adders; Lizards too adorn the bulwarks, Play their long tails in the sunlight, Hissing lizards, venomed serpents, Jump and writhe upon the rampart, Turn their horrid heads to meet thee; On the greensward lie the monsters, On the ground the things of evil, With their pliant tongues of venom, Hissing, striking, crawling, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... bed and Boris went out. She heard the two young men talking outside; at first they seemed to be playing cards, then they whispered eagerly in the Polish language, rapidly and with many hissing sounds. Billy closed her eyes and lay there motionless, wishing to sleep, but it seemed to her as if something stood beside her, something threatening that was trying to steal up on her, and it seemed as if she must wake, as if she must ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... followed I don't know, as I was unfamiliar with the surroundings — but there was a good deal of it. I heard a click — had no idea what it was — and then the same movement back again to the lamp. Of course, he now fell over the stool he had upset before. Meanwhile there was a hissing sound, and a stifling smell of paraffin. I was thinking of making my escape through the door, when suddenly, just as I suppose it happened on the first day of Creation, in an instant there was light. But it was a light that ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror, as they flew toward the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating by me, bright-eyed, and hissing, all made innocuous by fear—even the terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into the crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... reader of the "Femmes Savantes," which, strange to say, she had never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with Moli6re. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to Frances in what she called "a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle." But she had too much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and catcalled by her Daddy than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of Drury-lane theatre ; and she had too good ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... is all alone; she is exposed to the power of I know not what enemy. Can it be Mercanson? He may have spoken of my conversation with him, and, seeing that I was jealous of Dalens, may have guessed the rest. Assuredly he is the snake who has been hissing about my well-beloved flower. I must punish him, and I must repair the wrong I have done Brigitte. Fool that I am! I think of leaving her, when I ought to consecrate my life to her, to the expiation of my sins, to rendering her happy after ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... coals that bake And scorch his fevered skin; A fire no hissing hail may slake Consumes his heart within. Still must he hasten on to rake The furnace ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dark-visaged and apparently unemotional civilians threw off their armour of unconcern, and hurled epithets and shook clenched fists and defiance at their military fellow-countrymen. Then they all rushed out of the building in a body, hissing and spluttering like a badly constructed fuse in a powder trail. It was like the explosion of a small magazine. I had no idea what had happened, but took in the full significance of the scene I had witnessed when told that the notes which had acted ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... fermenting, and its heat hissing at the [25] "still, small voice" of Truth; but it can neither silence nor disarm God's voice. Spiritual wickedness is stand- ing in high places; but, blind to its own fate, it will ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... notify us by firing a revolver when they located one. We did not have long to wait before we heard the signal agreed upon, and, picking up the heavy camera, we plunged across the sands to where the sailors were awaiting us in the edge of the bush. While the bluejackets cut off the retreat of the hissing, snapping monster, Hawkinson set up his camera and, when all was ready, some one touched off a flare, illuminating the beach and jungle as though the search-light of a warship had been turned upon them. In this manner we obtained a series of motion-pictures which are, I believe, from the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... picked up a small stone and tossed it into the lake. No sooner had it disappeared beneath its dark surface than another column of water shot upward with a sort of hissing that was terrific, and in a moment the whole body was once more undergoing a series of ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... letter, I found sad news of poor Mr. Engelman. Time and change had failed to improve his spirits. He complained of a feeling of fullness and oppression in his head, and of hissing noises in his ears, which were an almost constant annoyance to him. On two occasions he had been cupped, and had derived no more than a temporary benefit from the employment of that remedy. His doctor recommended strict attention to diet, and regular exercise. He submitted willingly to the severest ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... you, or have had any one dream of the wretchedness locked in its chambers; but a week ago I was overwhelmed with humiliation, and now I am not ashamed to tell you. Now that Dr. Grey knows it, I would not care if the whole world were hissing and jeering at my heels, and shouting my shame with a thousand trumpets. I tried to keep it from him, and failing, the world is welcome to roll it as a sweet morsel under its busy, stinging, slanderous tongue. Miss Jane, I have intended to be sincere in every respect, but it ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... your service—a laborious and thankless calling it ever was to me—but now, dearest, as I drive the hissing goose across the smoking seam, I shall think of my own angel and my ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... there to find work; but when he reached a certain point whence the approach from the gate was visible, he started, stopped and stared. He rubbed his eyes. No; he was not asleep and dreaming by the cottage fire; the wind was about him, and the firs were howling and hissing; there was the cloudy mountain, with the Glashburn, fifty times its usual size, darting like brown lightning from it; but where was the iron gate with its two stone pillars, crested with wolf's-heads? where was the bridge? where was the wall, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... made against the wickedness, prejudice, and bigotry of mankind, as the main bravery of her life, and that if there has been heroism in any part of it, it was then displayed. "If as a woman," she says, "to take the platform amidst hissing, and scorn, and newspaper vituperations, to maintain the right of woman to the legitimate use of all the talents God invests her with; to maintain the rights of the slave in the very ears of the masters; ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... judgement upon the deeds of a sachem who hath sat in council with thy father's father? Look to thyself Black Snake, the hissing spirits in the boiling waters below are calling for thee. ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... the stove where the boiling milk was pouring over the sides of the pot in a hissing, bubbling stream. He clutched at the "billy," scalding his fingers badly, jerked it off the stove, upset the contents on the floor and flung the pot itself across the room, where it fell with a clatter upon a pile of dirty tin plates and pannikins. He swore ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and on, detailing the wretched circumstances under which she had recently been widowed, and her miserable prospects in a strange town whither she was going. Adela made an effort to speak in words of comfort, but her own voice sounded hopeless in her ears. In the station was a constant roaring and hissing, bell-ringing and the shriek of whistles, the heavy trundling of barrows, the slamming of carriage-doors; everywhere a smell of smoke. It impressed her as though all the 'world had become homeless, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... shewing the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... word More bitter, and your own, the bitterest Stung me to sullen anger, and I said: "My son shall be no coward of his line Because his mother choose"; you turned your head And your eyes grew implacable in mine. And like a trodden snake you turned to meet The foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled, And broke our life in pieces at my feet, "Your child?" ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... out his special affinities in this way, there is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing tumult—as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them, first into clear solutions, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a huge trunk began to move as though of its own accord. Hissing and crashing like some gray serpent, it glided down the hill-side, till it approached a group of figures and horses congregated at the head of the valley, near an engine puffing smoke. Then something invisible happened, and presently a trolley piled high ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the gunners again fled back to the squares. Once more the cavalry surrounded our footmen, like "heavy surf breaking on a coast beset with isolated rocks, against which the mountainous wave dashes with furious uproar, breaks, divides, and runs hissing and boiling far beyond." Yet, as before, it failed to break those stubborn blocks, and a perplexing pause occurred, varied by partial and spasmodic rushes. "Will those English never show us their backs"—exclaimed the Emperor, as he strained ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... miles away. The chief and his first assistant engineer watched the main engines in their twin compartments, while the subordinate aids and machinists attended to the dynamos, motors, and auxiliary cylinders that worked the turrets, pumps, and ammunition-hoists. All boilers were hot and hissing steam; all fire-pumps were working; all fire-hose connected and spouting streams of water. Perspiring men with strained faces deluged one ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the Evil One guide it, and give voice to blasphemies ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... water of the fountain was agitated, and foaming and hissing in a surprising manner; it seemed as if there were something within possessing life and will, that was struggling to free itself from confinement. But Undine only the more earnestly urged the accomplishment of her commands. This earnestness was scarcely required. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... sent some small animal or an arrow into them. Among the Yahgans the 'Yuccamoosh' (doctors) or magicians proceed to pretend to extract these objects by a form of squeezing and hugging the patient, in the meantime blowing, hissing, etc., to force the object or evil out. I have never known of their doing this, however, to a person suffering ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Racine, whose pieces give me an idea of that bird. The colouring of the swan is pure; his attitudes are graceful; he never displeases you when sailing on his proper element. His feet may be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk not natural; he can soar, but it is with difficulty:—still, the impression the swan leaves is that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the little room which was their home. At the door he paused and listened; then he opened it, and the floods of the white night poured in upon him as he stood with his eyes turned to where the cold, pale flashes of the aurora were playing over the pole. There came to him the hissing, saddening song of the northern lights—a song of vast, unending loneliness, which they two had come to know as the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... the cloak about her, as she spoke. They were equidistant from the two vessels, neither of which was to be seen, the rain fell fast into the hissing brine, their fate still uncertain. There was something strangely captivating and reassuring in this young girl's equanimity, and he did not cease speculating thereon till they had again reached the Osprey, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... theatre. This the common people took as an indignity done to them, and, therefore, when Otho appeared in the theatre they hissed him; the knights, on the contrary, received him with loud clapping. The people repeated and increased their hissing; the knights continued their clapping. Upon this, turning upon one another, they broke out into insulting words, so that the theatre was in great disorder. Cicero, being informed of it, came himself to the theatre, and summoning the people into ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... his soul though his body is forfeit to the devil. He tells them that at the stroke of twelve the demon will come to fetch him. He begs them to go quietly to bed, and not to be alarmed if they hear a great uproar. At midnight a mighty wind sweeps over the house, and a terrible hissing is heard as of innumerable serpents. Faust's cries for help gradually die away. They rush into the supper room and find him torn to pieces—eyes, brains, and teeth scattered in all directions. 'After this,' says our chronicler, 'it was so uncanny ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... "Relapse;" and the audience, supposing it was a new piece, on finding themselves deceived, expressed a considerable degree of disapprobation. I was terrified beyond imagination when Mrs. Yates, no longer able to bear the hissing of the audience, quitted the scene, and left me alone to encounter the critic tempest. I stood for some moments as though I had been petrified. Mr. Sheridan, from the side wing, desired me not to quit the boards; the late Duke of Cumberland,[26] from the stage-box, bade me take courage: "It is ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... morning some unusual charm about it, which I cannot even guess at. Mr. Vanderclump looked upon the bright and blazing fire; his eye rested, with a calm and musing satisfaction, on the light volumes of steam rising from the spout of the tea-kettle, as it stood, rather murmuring drowsily, than hissing, upon the hob. There was, he might have felt, a sympathy between them. They were both placidly puffing out the warm and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... hissing electric surf, running toward Jill. A hungry worm of light reared up, searching for Dio's gun. Gray's hand swept it down, to be instantly buried in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's hatchet face snarled at ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... The ocean, lashed to fury by the gale of yesterday, came booming and hissing upon the beach in great breakers white with foam; each billow as it dashed upon the jagged and broken rocks bore in its terrible embrace still more human victims, or some portion of the two unlucky ships that were fast breaking up. One wedged in between two rocks with just sufficient ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... cried Aggie, in a loud hissing whisper, which seemed to pierce the marrow of Cosmo's bones, "I rede ye say nae thing aboot that i' this chaumer. Bide till we're oot o' 't: I hae near dune. Syne we'll steek the door, an' lat the fire work. It'll hae eneuch adu afore it mak the place warm; the cauld intil this room's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... pretty bay window, which opened to the floor, but two fine cows, one fine horse, a great rooster, and twenty hens; turkeys, geese, and ducks; all lowing and neighing, and crowing, and cackling, and gobbling, and hissing, and quacking, enough to take your head off; but Mark and his mother and the fairy seemed to like it, for they clapped their hands and laughed ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of sufficient importance to be able to put a stop to bad or idle talk. Indeed, any attempt on your part to do so would make things worse. Acting as as I bid you to do you will remain unharmed amid the hissing of serpents and, like the strawberry, will not assimilate their poison even though ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid, cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day over, the ship's officers had ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... big floes with comparative ease and sometimes a small floe would bar our passage with such obstinacy that one would almost believe it possessed of an evil spirit; sometimes we passed through acres of sludgy sodden ice which hissed as it swept along the side, and sometimes the hissing ceased seemingly without rhyme or reason, and we found our screw churning the sea without ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... down in the little officers' cabin. After dark the sea grew more rough, and splashing over the deck drove even the most ill to find shelter. Whatmough staggered to the companion, tripped over something, and fell the length of the stair accompanied by a hard object which hit him and made hissing sounds like a bicycle pump. He was too seasick to investigate, but next morning found the ship's tortoise lying on its back and feebly waving its ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... terror. The sea reached for it; the greater waves boiled over and sucked it bare. It was wet, slimy, overhanging death. Beyond the brink was a swirl of broken water—a spent breaker, crashing in, streaked with irresistible current and flecked with hissing fragments. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... great juicy peach with a bruise on its side, and a crack through which its delicious essence was escaping. Pale creamy was the downy skin, with a bloom of softest crimson on the side beyond the bruise and crack, and making a soft hissing noise as I drew in my breath—a noise that I meant to express, "Oh, what a pity!"—I stooped down and reached over to pick up the damaged fruit, and to lay it upon one of the open shelves where I had seen ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... wonder that she felt sure she had not come back to earth? This is what she saw. In the grate there was a glowing, blazing fire; on the hob was a little brass kettle hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a thick, warm crimson rug; before the fire a folding-chair, unfolded, and with cushions on it; by the chair a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with our trusty companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... tomorrow and I will show you what it's like." The audience laughed, but next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. "You fools!" he cried, "see what you have been hissing," and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... when he perceived that here also the windows were covered with a fence of dry reeds and faggots, through which the hissing flames were already beginning to wriggle like fiery serpents—clouds of smoke were already coming through ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... flaming branch fell hissing into a little pool at the bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... almost in solid phalanx appealing to the South, and the South has responded—to come to their help.... Some of my friends from the South and elsewhere have said that this is not a sectional issue. I say it is a sectional issue. (Long prolonged hissing.) ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Doppel-brau for Herr Weber or, dexterously carved fowl for the aborigines' table, Frau Knapf was making the wheels go round. I discovered that it was she who bakes the melting, golden German Pfannkuchen on Sunday mornings; she it is who fries the crisp and hissing Wienerschnitzel; she it is who prepares the plump ducklings, and the thick gravies, and the steaming lentil soup and the rosy sausages nestling coyly in their bed of sauerkraut. All the week Frau Knapf bakes and broils and stews, her rosy cheeks taking on a twinkling crimson from the fire over ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... foremost man upon the earth until he had humbled in the dust the pride and arrogance of Babylon. But, with the fall of the Great City, the whole fabric of Semetic greatness was shattered. Babylon became "an astonishment and a hissing"—all her prestige vanished—and Persia stepped manifestly into the place, which Assyria had occupied for so many centuries, of absolute and unrivalled mistress ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... torpor, and he staggered to his feet. Meanwhile the ostrich and the young lady had come to the ground, and were rolling about together in a confused heap, over which the elegant neck and open hissing mouth wavered to and fro like a cobra about to strike. With a rush John seized the neck in both his hands, and, putting out all his strength (for he was a strong man), he twisted it till it broke with a snap, and after a few wild and convulsive ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... objects, but he shortly found, on following up the machine, that the cries for assistance proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going towards the town on business, was met on this lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One in propria persona. No further steps, however, were taken by Murdoch to embody his idea of a locomotive carriage in a more ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... and held it cautiously up for the sunlight to shine through the bars, and there saw to their disgust that they had captured only the old gray Cat. As soon as the lid was raised she bounded away, spitting and hissing, no doubt to hurry home to tell the Kittens that it was all right, although she ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... There was a sharp hissing. Something struck the rock above the Hunter as he was stooping over Venning, and fell down into the fire. It was a barbed arrow. He fired again, scattered the fire with a kick, and crouched over the boy. Several ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... be stealing. He can't mean it. Stephen can't be a thief." Half-formed, incoherent sentences like these floated in her mind, seemed to be floating in the air, pronounced by hissing voices. ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... off forming the tail between the white lustrous threads and films of which faint, grayish pencilings appear, while the outer, finer sprays of water-dust, whirling in sunny eddies, are pearly gray throughout. At the bottom of the fall there is but little distinction of form visible. It is mostly a hissing, clashing, seething, upwhirling mass of scud and spray, through which the light sifts in gray and purple tones while at times when the sun strikes at the required angle, the whole wild and apparently lawless, stormy, striving ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... had sat bolt upright, her little dumpling hands folded one within the other, the long transparent nails making deep indentures in the soft flesh, and her gray eyes emitting green gleams of scorn. The answer her husband sought came at length, and was characteristic of the woman. Hissing out the words from between her teeth, she replied, "When I take 'Lena Rivers into my family for my husband and son to make love to, alternately, I shall be ready for the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... thunder running along these iron rails; it grows louder; an object is seen afar off; it approaches rapidly, and comes down upon you like fate, swift and inevitable. In a moment, it dashes along in front of the station-house, and comes to a pause, the locomotive hissing and fuming in its eagerness to go on. How much life has come at once into this lonely place! Four or five long cars, each, perhaps, with fifty people in it, reading newspapers, reading pamphlet novels, chattering, sleeping; all this vision of passing life! ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... taken away from their owners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of arms proved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even more satisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop later became some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonous breath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not only carried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them, one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a lone man into a very genii of death, until the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at grinning ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame flung itself in the bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring face was buried ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Instantly a storm of hissing and hooting rose from the club, such as had rarely been heard in the walls of Templeton. None are so indignant at cowards as those who are not quite sure of their own heroism, and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... mortars, procured from the arsenal. Munitions of war they had in abundance—enough to last them, at the present rate of firing, for nearly three years. Long we gazed, fascinated at the scene before us. A dead silence had reigned for some time, when we were awakened from our dreams by the whiz and hissing of a shell fired by the enemy. It fell close below the tower and burst without doing any harm; but some jets of smoke appeared on the bastions of the city, and shells and round-shot fired at the ridge along the crest of which a ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. Not such his evening, who with shining face Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed And bored with elbow-points through ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... lifting the wooden decoys and winding their anchor cords around their placid necks. Lastly we gathered in the live ducks. They came, towed at the end of their tethers, with manifest reluctance; hanging back at their strings, flapping their wings, and hissing at us indignantly. I do not think they were frightened, for once we had our hands on them, they resumed their dignified calm. Only they enjoyed the fun outside; and they did not fancy the bags inside; a choice eminently creditable to ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Westport and I were determined to lose no part of the scene, and we went down with Lord Altamont to the house. It was about the middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space about the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up to the steps of that splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious hissing and hooting; and I was really agitated to think that Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath—a situation more terrific to him than to others, from his embarrassed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that I lay in the room immediately above the archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other faint sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing of the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... near the creamery. He gave her the fodder and—Heavens! was he suffering from delusions? Surely his ears were not deceiving him—from the creamery funnel there arose a dense volume of smoke mingled with the sharp hissing of steam and the rattling of cans, all as if the creamery were working, and it were broad daylight. His heifer became startled and bellowed frantically. O'Dwyer, himself a man of nerves, yet possessing all the superstitions of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... draws down the ears Into the head, as doth the slug his horns. His tongue continuous before and apt For utt'rance, severs; and the other's fork Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid. The soul, transform'd into the brute, glides off, Hissing along the vale, and after him The other talking sputters; but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!" So saw I fluctuate in successive change Th' unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... into the solitudes. When they had ridden a couple of miles, the valley narrowed again, the timber line crept in closer at every yard, the mountains drew in abruptly and rose more precipitously in sheer, frowning, dominant majesty, the river shot hissing down its rocky course, a wild thing plunging madly toward freedom and an ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... sight of that fleeing red maddened the bull. His feet stretched to a gallop, his broad horns lowered until his muzzle touched the grass, his tail sprang out to the level of his curly back. With the picket-rope hissing across his flanks, and with no eye for his mistress, he bore ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... beautiful greensward, but with scarcely a single tree. The waves are leaping in whiteness against the cliffs, and thousands of sea-birds are floating in long lines on the billows, or skimming past you singly, and diving into the clear hissing waters as they near your vessel. One of the very first objects which arrests your senses is the Coryvreckan, or great whirlpool of the Hebrides, an awful feature in all the poetry and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... daughter lets her in and goes about her work, setting the table or looking on the shelf, when the old witch suddenly stoops down and blows the ashes on the hearth; whereupon the pot makes a hissing sound as though boiling over, and the old witch catches hold of Monday and runs ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... him coming. His finger pressed down. But at that instant the Earth girl struck out with all the power of her slender arm. It was not much of a blow, but it managed to jar the weapon aside. The blue flame leaped hissing through the air. ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... as to the head of the shaft. But from thence to the spring and back again he made the best of his unaided way, staggering among the stones, and wading in low growth of the calcanthus, where the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his passage. Yet I liked to draw water. It was pleasant to dip the gray metal pail into the clean, colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with the water ripping at the edge, and a broken sunbeam quivering in ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sustained Mrs. Vimpany's courage. She played her assumed character against the contemptuous incredulity of Iris, as she had sometimes played her theatrical characters against the hissing and ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to death; this Christopher saw ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the three besieged men were suffering from intense thirst. The little adobe was like an oven. The sun burned down pitilessly, distorting the air with waves of heat, and drawing mocking mirages in the sky. Bullets still hummed and buzzed about them. Every hissing slug seemed to whistle the mournful tune of "Death—death—death!" Late in the afternoon, the elder Robbins could endure the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... silent. Rain; quivering streaks of lightning; hissing in the pine-trees. The wind howls. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... a priest by a peculiar kind of hissing sound, made by the tongue against the teeth, while they are kept closed, and the lips open. The nun within, who delays to open the door, until informed what kind of an applicant is there, immediately recognizes the signal, and replies with two inarticulate sounds, such ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets, too, although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told also—although I resent it—that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at midnight after society has ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... swell I was myself; which shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a long, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... according as ye have not kept my ways,' but have lifted up the face against my law.[9] (Mal. 2:9; Jer. 25:9, 18) 3. Such shall also be contemned and had in derision of the men of this world. They shall be a hissing, a bye-word, a taunt, and a reproach among all people. 'For them that honour me,' saith God, 'I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. (1 Sam. 2:30) I remember that Philpot used to tell the Papists that they danced with their buttocks ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some creature of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... was going it made a little crackling, hissing noise, but nothing to cause annoyance. And its convenience on a cruise of this sort outweighed ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... a firm earth, it was a loose sand and gravel mixture twenty feet above the river. Here for half a mile the entire bank was moving, slowly at the top, gathering speed at the bottom. While close to this I heard a peculiar hissing as of carbonated water all about me. At first I thought there were mineral springs underneath, but found the noise was caused by breaking air bubbles carried under the stream with the sands. All this day such phenomena continued, sliding sand-banks and tumbling jungles. In ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... did not take so well as the former efforts of the laird's wit. The lady drew up, and the Provost said, half aside, 'The sooth bourd is nae bourd; you will find the horse-shoe hissing ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... the forbidden fruit, and gives part to Adam. They propose, according to the stage directions, to make themselves, subligacula a folis quibus tegamus pudenda, cover their nakedness with leaves and converse with God. God's curse. The Serpent exits, hissing. They are driven from Paradise by four angels, and the Cherubim with a flaming sword. Adam appears digging the ground, and Eve spinning. Their children, Cain and Abel, enter, the former kills his brother. Adam's lamentation. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... dawn all the camp was astir. Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat. He was without a trouble in the world as he turned the hissing steak in the pan. Two black gins in brief garments—a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each—were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared to demonstrate clearly the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... shot out, palm up, his cousins noticed, and the rope went twisting and turning through the air, lengthening out like a long, thin snake, and almost hissing like one. Instinctively, as though roping a steer, Bud prepared himself for ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Mrs. Henry Dodge, winding a needleful of No. 20 thread off the spool, with the hissing sound familiar to the ears of the seamstress, and breaking it off with a snap, "I think it's the very best thing that could have been done. The minute I saw that girl's face last sewing-circle, I knew she'd make out to save that boy. Mark my words, he'll ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... nearly every night for a fortnight, was distressed because he had to retire from his squadron for awhile until his leg healed. In five days at the most he would go back again to hell—hating the horror of it all, fearing those screeching shells and hissing bullets, yet preferring to die for France rather than remain alive and inactive when his comrades ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Hissing, Lonnie cut the stereo switch. He'd seen enough. Darting across the den, he opened his communico. "Get me Sykes in our Mars unit," he ordered the operator. "Make sure what I say is scrambled. While you're waiting, get through to Denisen at Gov-Forn, then Raikes at ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... any one who had not by now realized that the ship was in danger, all doubt on this point was to be set at rest in a dramatic manner. Suddenly a rush of light from the forward deck, a hissing roar that made us all turn from watching the boats, and a rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us. Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... his task. And for seven days and seven nights the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... make your honorable entrance." They drew in their breath with a hissing sound. In Japan this is a polite thing to do. The teacher bowed to the children. Then each child ran to his little cushion on the floor and sat down on it. Taro and Take did not know where to go, because they had not been ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... before he wanted somethin' o' me, and did he come to fetch it himself like a man? Not he. He sent the son to rob the father." Then, leaning forward in his chair and glaring at the girl, "Ay, and mair than that! The night the lad set on me he cam'"—with hissing emphasis—"straight from Kenmuir!" He paused and stared at her intently, and she was still dumb before him. "Gin I'd ben killed, Wullie'd ha' bin disqualified from competin' for the Cup. With Adam M'Adam's Red Wull oot o' the way—noo ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... caught eight or ten fish as they came across, passing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling. It was pronounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... the earth beneath our feet—a shuddering movement that was transferred to one's own frame; and then I began to understand the meaning of the cry we had heard respecting the sea, for from where I supposed it to be, now came a singular hissing, rushing noise, gradually increasing to a roar, as of mighty waves, and mingled with that roar there was the creaking and grinding together of shipping and the hoarse shouting of ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... violence; but the madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos. On the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to God. It would kill me to see him brought before a hissing crowd to be tried for his life. Oh, Mr. Castrani, I ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead. Where we heard them hoot palaverous Drivel learned beneath unsavorous Moulds, and saw a glutton's head Grin to a hissing bat, That scraped ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... threw Smith upon the edge of the crevice, face downward, so that he could look below. With his staring, bloodshot eyes he saw them all—dozens of them—a hundred or more! Crawling on the shelves and in the bottom, writhing, wriggling, hissing, coiled to strike! Every marking, every shading, every size—Smith saw them all with his bulging, fascinated eyes. The Indians stoned them until a forked tongue darted from every mouth and every wicked eye ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... their lurking places; and yells and shouts of the most terrific and threatening character once more rent the air, and echoed through the woods. Their cries of anticipated triumph were, however, but of short duration. Presently, a hissing noise was heard in the air; and close to the bomb-proof, and at the very skirt of the forest, they beheld a huge globe of iron fall perpendicularly to the earth, to the outer part of which was attached what they supposed to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... central cavern, the receptacle for the stream of burning lava. It was entirely enclosed by rocks, and if ever a few icicles were formed there by the action of the cold, they were very soon melted by the fiery shower. Hissing and spluttering as the hot lava came in contact with it, the water was in a continual state of ebullition, and the fish that abounded in its depths defied the angler's craft; they were, as Ben Zoof remarked, "too much ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... of his victim's struggles, the trader's half insane rage cooled from its mad heat without losing any of its virulence. One of the Navahos had dismounted and run forward to stone the rattlesnake. Slade uttered a guttural hissing command. Instead of crushing the snake, the Indian teased it with the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... subject was cut short by a crash from the engine-room of the yacht, followed by a hissing noise as of escaping steam, and the propeller, which was being driven at many thousands of revolutions per minute, began suddenly ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... saloon on to the afterdeck. The place was crowded, and the confusion was indescribable. Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death beneath them,—combined to sweep away all human feelings save the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... height, states that Scaliger had observed women who were virgins emit urine in a high jet against a wall, but that married women could seldom do this. Bouaciolus also stated that the urine of virgins is emitted in a small stream to a distance with an acute hissing sound. (Parthenologia, p. 281.) A folk-lore belief in the reality of this influence is evidenced by the Picardy conte referred to already (ante, p. 53), "La Princesse qui pisse au dessus les Meules." There is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of crowding passengers getting on and off, tearful good-byes and joyful greetings, banging trunks, rattling trucks, hissing steam, the doctor watched. Then he saw him, his handsome head towering above the pushing, jostling crowd. The Doctor could not get to him, and with difficulty restrained a shout. But Dan with his back to them ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... Being close to the water, he could not see the rapids themselves but only the first great, green curve, and below it the white tops of a multitude of waves. Then the middle span swept back overhead, he heard the river, split by the sharp piers, hissing along their rough sides and the canoe sailed like a leaf into the first smooth dip. Came the vision of a distant shore sliding by, and the lower reach with a ferry steamer halfway across, and Belding felt the canoe lift and quiver, while a green wave flung its ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... ax, but Thurston, who was stout of arm and keen of eye, had managed to earn his bread with it one winter in an Ontario logging camp. When he swung aloft the heavy wedge of steel, it reflected the blast lamp's radiance, making red flashes as it circled round his head. It came down hissing close past his knee. Mattawa Tom's blade crossed it when it rose, and the first white chip leapt up. More chips followed in quick succession until they whirled in one continuous shower, and the razor-edged steel losing definite form became a confused circling brightness, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... sudden loud hissing sound from the motor. At the same instant the propeller ceased to revolve and the monoplane dashed downward ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... of insects seek shelter under leaves and trunks of trees. The wild Mammalia are tamed, and suspend their work of war and carnage; the cold-blooded Amphibia alone rejoice in the overwhelming deluge, and millions of snakes and frogs, which swarm in the flooded meadows, raise a chorus of hissing and croaking. Streams of muddy water flow through the narrow paths of the forests into the river, or pour into the cracks and chasms of the soil. The temperature continues to descend, and the clouds gradually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... know of a single friend who could help her. All the knowledge that she had imbibed taught her that there was no God either to hear prayer, or succour the wronged. Her name would become a laughing-stock and a hissing, to be put on a par with Clodia's or that of any other frivolous woman, unless she not merely gave up the man she loved, but also threw herself into the arms of the man she utterly hated. The craving for any respite was intense. She was young; ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... badly led (it often is); the singers may flat—or be out of voice; the performance may go all at sixes and sevens—there is never a murmur of dissent. Faults that would set an entire audience at Naples or Milan hissing are ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the enemy from behind a wall. Of the Cubapinos he could see nothing but the smoke of their guns and muskets here and there. Shells were falling in another part of the field, but nowhere near him. Bullets were flying thick through the air, and he heard them hissing constantly. As he looked he saw one of the Gatling crew fall over, doubled up in a heap. Sam moved along in the wood nearer to this gun, so that he might ask where he could find the brigade commander. As he approached he ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen-table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... 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. The work-oxen were killed, and a few among us, with the hope of a speedy return to Acadia, threw our silverware into the wells. Oh, the ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... its antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs; the man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this was the transformation which, during the reign of George the First, befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chair and sat down, pressing his lean hands to his aching temples and rocking himself to and fro, his breath hissing through his convulsively closed teeth. Still the fearful memory remained, and it grew into a prophetic vision of the future, reflecting what had been upon the distant scenery of what was yet to be. With that one deadly stroke of ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... tendency are obviously to annoy him, to make him feel, while at home, that he is a stranger and a pilgrim—nay more,—to make him "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;"—to make him "a hissing and a by-word," "a fugitive and a vagabond" throughout the American Union;—a system that is so irreconcilably opposed to the purpose of God in making "of one blood all nations for to dwell on all the face of the earth," that when the dying slaveholder, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... the very ice glared with the leaping flames. At last, pulling and pushing, they brought the little engine up the slope, and then with a great shout dragged it into the outskirts of the yard. They pumped furiously, and a small jet of water was played upon the nearest pile of boards. A hissing cloud of steam almost hid the volunteer firemen, but the flames leaped and tossed against the sky, and the sparks were sucked up into the cold air, and whirled in sheets across ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in which he had been engaged, he laid down in the hinder part of the ship and fell asleep. While he was lying there a sudden storm burst upon the sea. The wind howled in its fury. The angry waves rose in their might and dashed against the vessel in hissing foam. The ship was full of water, and in danger of sinking. The terrified disciples came to their sleeping Master with the earnest cry:—"Lord save us: we perish." He heard their cry. He rose at once. Quietly he took his stand by the side of the storm-tossed vessel. He rebuked ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... yellowish mountain-goats spring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though they found the midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time the girl seizes the herdsman's crook that lies beside her, and calls the goats with a hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance. A young kid comes dancing up to her. Few beasts can give expression to their feelings of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true. I stepped across, doctor, and got your boy to weigh me out a pound of salts, and have been mixing it with their swill. Ill bet a saddle of venison against a gray squirrel that they are better in a week. And now, Mrs. Hollister, Im ready for a hissing mug of flip. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Minos rous'd from torpid rest, Like thousand adders, rushing out, Entwin'd my shuddering limbs about.— Oh, strangers, hear!—the truth I tell— That fearful sight I saw was Hell. And, oh I with what unmeasur'd wo Did bitterness upon me flow, When thund'ring through the hissing air, I heard the sentence of Despair— 'Now never hope from Hell to flee; Yourself is all the Hell ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Panda," went on Zikali in an intense and hissing voice. "Many, many years ago, before Senzangacona, your grandfather, saw the light—who knows how long before—a man was born of high blood in the Dwandwe tribe, which man was a dwarf. Chaka the Black One conquered the Dwandwe, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... instinctively drawing his sword as he did so. For a moment he stood, paralyzed with horror. A gigantic snake had wound its coils round Ned's body. Its head towered above his, while its eyes flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... on the porch, Mr. Stamps appeared at the doorway, and, after his usual precautionary glance about him, made his way to the stove. His manner was at once propitiatory and friendly. He drew up a chair and put his wet feet on the stove, where they kept up a comfortable hissing ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... character and consideration to the lowest in the European family of nations? And as to the United States of America, has not the boasted liberty of our Republican countrymen, who colonized America, become a by-word, a hissing, and a scorn, amongst the nations of the earth? Have not these slave-holding Americans committed acts, nationally, within the last few years, which the most absolute Governments of Europe would blush to be guilty of? And what is one of their last acts, on a smaller ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... butter; a man of continuall dissolution, and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this Bath (when I was more then halfe stew'd in grease (like a Dutch-dish) to be throwne into the Thames, and coold, glowing-hot, in that serge like a Horse-shoo; thinke of that; hissing hot: thinke of that (Master Broome.) Ford. In good sadnesse Sir, I am sorry, that for my sake you haue sufferd all this. My suite then is desperate: You'll vndertake her no more? Fal. Master Broome: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare |
