"Rasping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours of brutal strength sufficed to lay it low. Which of these dolts could make a tree? I'd like to see them do anything like it. How noisy and clumsy are all their movements,—chopping, pounding, rasping, hammering. And, after all, what do they build? In the forest we do everything so quietly. A tree would be ashamed of itself that could not get its growth without making such a noise and dust and ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pressed till the iron railings cut her shoulders. She stretched the forefinger of her extended arm; at great peril of slipping forward and rasping her nose along the rails effected to scratch the top of the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... it hanging by the lashings, which were then cut adrift. The Webb passed up following the Queen. The latter, having gained sufficient distance, turned and charged down, but as the Indianola was turning up at the same moment the blow on the starboard bow glanced, the vessels rasping by each other; and as the Queen cleared the stern of her enemy, the latter planted two IX-inch shot successfully, killing 2 and wounding 4 of her crew and disabling two guns. During all this time ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... listening. There were the thud of hammers, the rasping of a saw, and the clatter of wood from the other side ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... none," returned Raikes with a rasping lack of emotion, "for the last ten years. It is too late to begin to ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... on earth should you think that these fellows are?" I demanded, as that brazen voice came rasping through a ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... distinguish vaguely, in the faint lights of the lanterns, the bows of a three-masted schooner, which had sheared through the port-side of The Bonita. The bowsprit hung far over the smaller ship, a wand of doom. The beating of the waves against the boat's side came gently under the rasping, crunching complaint of timber against timber in combat. The schooner's sails flapped softly in the light breeze. Zeke, watching and listening alertly, despite bewilderment, heard the roaring commands of a man invisible, somewhere above him, and guessed that this ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... became dimly conscious of a sense of alarm. At first, scarcely roused to understand the fear or its cause, he soon recognized a noise that filled his soul with terror—the stealthy sound of a midnight assassin; a faint rasping, intermittent and cautious, a sawing or filing the bolt of his door. He made a motion to spring up, upset a glass of water by his bedside and—frightened the rats from the particular hole they were trying to gnaw. In their sudden fright they dropped all pretense of secresy. They called each ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... there was not, but she reached for a small pile of letters in a pigeonhole on her right and glanced over them rapidly. Her sour visage and rasping voice softened perceptibly as she smiled on the little old man ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... it, Admiral Bruix,' cried the Emperor, in the same terrible rasping voice, 'that you did not ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... words had hardly left his lips before the aeroplane was back on a level keel once more. At the same time a rasping, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... words, The proud music in the throat?... Not a note, not a note? Doubtless they were not so pleasant As the brains of a young pheasant, Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty Never was to utter beauty. But they sang, but they fluted And your rasping lies confuted, And your ugliness laid bare With a lyric in the air. So you bought them on a string, Dangling balls that used to sing, And you gave them to the cook With a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... than two hours I sat perfectly still, alert and waiting, behind the little blind of ferns and grass. There was nothing to break the silence other than the incessant bleating of the goats and the unpleasant rasping call of the mountain jay. I had about given up hope of a shot when suddenly the huge head of the man-eater emerged from the bush, exactly where I had expected he would appear and within fifteen feet of the kids. The back, neck, and head of the beast ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... resentment, a fierce, passionate hatred, swept over her as he shouted in her ear. A hundred times she had informed him politely that she was not deaf when she wore her ear-'phone, and a hundred times he had listened impatiently and gone on in his sharp, rasping snarl. She drew away shuddering as he looked over some papers and cleared his throat for a fresh start; and then, without reason that he could ever divine, she ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... like the travesty of laughter on a skull. His eyes were lost in the caverns of their sockets. His thin nostrils were wide, and through them and through the parted lips the breath came and went in strong, rasping gasps, audible even at this distance of two hundred paces. One live thing this wreck of a man expressed. His forces were near their end, but such of them as remained were concentrated in a determination ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... came home late from the store. The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... sure sign that somebody lies dead in the parish. In this gloomy place the sexton keeps his dismal apparatus,—the hearse, with its curtains of rusty sable, the bier, the spades and shovels for digging graves; and in a corner lies a coil of soiled ropes, whose rasping sound, as they slipped through the coffin-handles, while the bearers lowered the corpse into the earth, has grated harshly on many a shuddering mourner's ear. The leaves of the hearse-house door are fastened together ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... logically enough from his viewpoint, had jumped to the conclusion that, since they had not come together, only one of them, the Adventurer, was acting in the affair to-night, and—Danglar's voice was rasping in her ears. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... malady of the age, or rather was it that girl herself; and it was she who, with her pale, halfmocking features and rasping voice, came and sat with me at the ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have visited upon me the peevishness which ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... his ribs sleepily. There was something obscene in the sight of his naked flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy as though he had sweated out his fat in his sleep. He pronounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... are seized with the belief that you are trying to play the prelude to "Lohengrin," and they run up and down in front of the car in extreme agitation. You frustrate their plans for a beautiful death by rasping your tires against the curb, together with your nerves. At Seventy-second Street two women are saying good-bye in the middle of the street. You swerve to one side and they pursue. You snap your spinal column ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... instances of the application of chemical and physical science to practical purposes. Thus, the first operation in making sugar from beetroot is to separate the juice from the flesh, the former being as much as 95 per cent. of the whole weight. Formerly this was accomplished by rasping the roots into a pulp, and then pressing the pulp in powerful hydraulic presses; in other words, by purely mechanical means. This process is now to a large extent superseded by what is called the diffusion process, depending on the well known physical phenomena ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... have lain in this state of felicity it is impossible to say, for his slumbers were rudely interrupted by a slight lurch of the schooner, which caused the blocks and cordage attached to the sheet of the jib to sweep slowly, but with rasping asperity, across his face. Any ordinary man would have been seriously damaged—at least in appearance—by such an accident; but this particular sea-dog was tough in the skin,—he was only awakened by it—nothing more. He yawned, raised himself lazily, and gazed round with that vacant stare ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Gov'nor," Dollops added as he looked down on the whirling waters, "what an egg-beater it would make, wouldn't it, sir? Ain't got such a thing as a biscuit about yer, have you? Me spine's a rasping holes in me necktie, and I'm so flat you could slip me into a pillar box and they'd take me home for ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... woman was teasing him, and instead of being angry, as she expected, he looked so worried and distressed that she was sorry, and her rasping old voice became gentle ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... alkaline salts which are found in them. Many of them are used as potherbs, and some are emetic and vermifuge in their medicinal properties. The root of garden or red beet is exceedingly wholesome and nutritious, and Dr. Lyon Playfair has recommended that a good brown bread may be made by rasping down this root with an equal quantity of flour. He says that the average quality of flour contains about 12 per cent. of azotized principles adapted for the formation of flesh, and the average quality of beet contains about 2 per ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... concealed beneath this rugged bark, the wild, flashing dreams of Boecklin, the raucous heroism of Hodler, the serene vision and humor of Gottfried Keller, the living tradition of the great popular festivals, and the sap of springtime swelling the trees,—the still young art, sometimes rasping to the palate, like the hard fruits of wild pear-trees, sometimes with the sweetish insipidity of myrtles black and blue, but at least something smacking of the earth, is the work of self-taught men not cut off from the people by an archaic culture, but, with them, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... odour de pension. And yet, if you compare it with the dining-room which adjoins, you will find the sitting-room as elegant and as perfumed as a lady's boudoir. There misery reigns without a redeeming touch of poesie—poverty, penetrating, concentrated, rasping. This room appears at its best when at seven in the morning Madame Vauquer, preceded by her cat, enters it from her sleeping chamber. She wears a tulle cap, under which hangs awry a front of false hair; her gaping slippers flop as she walks across the room. Her features are ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... close against each other, were still for a long moment, and then my gasping, rasping ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... here," he began, with a rasping leisureliness, "that I hope no member of this honoured body will take my remarks as personal or unparliamentary—but"—he raised a big forefinger and shook it with menace at the presiding officer, at the same time suddenly ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... is given in the words of Lamon: "The judge never could whisper, but in this case he probably did his best. At all events, in attempting to whisper to Mr. Lincoln he trumpeted his rebuke in about these words, and in rasping tones that could be heard all over the court room: 'Lincoln, I have been watching you and Lamon. You are impoverishing this bar by your picayune charges of fees, and the lawyers have reason to complain of you. You are now almost as poor as Lazarus, and if you don't make ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... nothing better than to show off all his pigs, and if I were a native I would pass them in review as we Europeans visit picture-galleries; but I refuse as politely as I can. We return to the cook-house, where the cocoa-nut rasping is finished; the man washes his hands in the water of a nut, splitting it open and squeezing the water in a little spray on to his hands. Mrs. Agelan knows a simpler way; she fills her mouth with water and squirts it on her hands. The cocoa-nut ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... here reviles The almost whispered warble from the hedge, And takes a locust's rasping voice and files The silence to ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They made me think of defeated armies, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... to rest he had studied scents. When he straightened again he was occupied with every voice of earth and air around and above him, and the notes of singing hens, exultant cocks, the scream of geese, the quack of ducks, the rasping crescendo of guineas running wild in the woods, the imperial note of Ajax sunning on the ridge pole and echoes from all of them ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... stands before us. We see the crisp, erect figure, bristling with aggressive vigour, the coarse, red hair, the keen, grey eyes, piercingly fixed on his opponent's face, and reading at a glance the knavery he sought to hide; we hear the rasping voice, launching its dry, cutting sarcasms one after another, each pointed with its sting of truth; and we can well believe that the dislike was intense, which could make an enemy provoke the terrible armoury of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... attempt at loquacity, Skipper Billy lifted his voice in song—a large, rasping voice, little enough acquainted with melody, but expressing the worst of the rage of those days: being thus quite sufficient ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... slowly away, there was a rasping and creaking as of keys and bolts, followed by the clang of an opening door and the clatter of hurrying feet. From my window I saw my father and Corporal Rufus Smith rush frantically out of the house hatless ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whip-poor-will stationed himself in a treetop to complain over and over of the darkness and loneliness of the world. Just at Scotty's right hand, from behind a screen of scented basswood, came a sudden discordant sound, the rasping "meyow" of the cat-bird; a moment's silence followed and then arose a burst of delirious, bubbling melody, as though the naughty songster, hidden within his aromatic curtains, were laughing impudently at having deceived his hearers into thinking he was ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... part in the causation of sand-crack. Removal of the periople by excessive rasping of the wall is most certainly a predisposing cause. Cracks, or their starting-points, may also be caused by using too wide a shoe, or by the use of nails too large in the shank. Also, they may arise from unskilful fitting of the toe-clip, especially in the hind-foot of a heavy animal. It ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... house where the blue paper curtains were hanging before the windows and Eunice Plympton's face was pressed against the pane. The daisies and violets and summer grass were withered and dead, and the naked branches of the lilac bush brushed against the house with a mournful, rasping sound, which reminded her of the tall sign-post in Chicopee, which used to creak so in the winter wind, and keep her Aunt Barbara awake. To the right of the house, and a little in the rear, were several large, square corn-cribs, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... veil, so dense, opaque, and wide and high that its cause was altogether concealed in its reddish, glittering convolutions. But the Virginian knew the land well enough to recognise the phenomenon and surmise its cause, even before his ears began to be assailed by the hideous rasping screech of wheels of solid wood revolving reluctantly on rough-hewn axles guiltless of grease. And as the tonga swiftly lessened the distance, his gaze, penetrating the thinning folds, discerned the contours of a cotton-wain drawn by twin stunted ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... away. So he put the lantern behind him, and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was good sagacity. The first time his foot touched a surface that did not grind under it he announced that the trail was found again; and after that we kept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The rasping broadcast cut off in the middle of a syllable. Somebody had come to believe that he really heard what he thought he heard. Now there would be reaction. At the sunrise-line on Tralee only a handful of people were awake. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the Acme Film Company cleared his throat with a rasping noise that sounded very loud, coming as it did after fifteen minutes of complete silence. Luck, smoking a cigarette absent-mindedly by the window while he stared out across two vacant lots to a ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... words 'wives,' 'women,' lifted them into an atmosphere of awe and solemnity, and his tone in speaking of 'rape' and 'torture' gave them an ineffable loathsomeness. It seemed as if so much soul had never been put into a Saxon speech. Keen satire, rasping rebuke, an avalanche of indignation, rapier-like thrusts to the vital fibre of the situation, and withal the invincible cogency of argument against the Turkish Government, gave the oration a primary place amongst ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... closer to the girl, and his voice grew harsh, almost rasping in its intensity. "I can beat the game. And I will beat it—now! Just to show you and your kind what a man can do—a man, I mean," he added, "'whose sole recommendation seems to be that he can lick most anybody—and can drink more and stay soberer than any of the sports he ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... naturally shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent each other mutual support, and people stood in awe of her. As for poor Pons, his ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... contrast to the baleful fire that glowed in the right, Malabanan gathered his fast ebbing strength in a last effort and staggered toward the unconscious Moro, his glittering weapon upraised, heedless of the pale American who stepped out with a rasping: "Halt!" ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... steering apparatus were undamaged, as was also the binnacle, although this had a severe list to starboard; but, the skylight in the centre of the poop had been swept away, as well as a portion of the bulwarks on the side that had been under water, the rasping of the mizzen-mast having sawn them off flush ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perspiration and so nearly exhausted with his suffocating imprisonment, that his voice was rasping and hollow. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead I believe I should have stamped the life out of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... managed to keep silence, fearing that my voice might be heard. It was not yet time. If heard, I should be dragged forth, and sent packing without ceremony. I therefore lay as still as a mouse, and listened to the great chain harshly rasping through the iron ring of the hawse-hole. Harsh as it may have sounded in other ears, it was music to mine at ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving- knife; at any rate, he slid it to one ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... stroke of fortune were to rid us at the same time from the Mammoth of the land as well as the Leviathan of the ocean, the people of England might lose their fears, and recover their sober senses again. Tell my old friend, Governor Gerry, that I gave him glory for the rasping with which he rubbed down his herd of traitors. Let them have justice and protection against personal violence, but no favor. Powers and pre-eminences conferred on them are daggers put into the hands of assassins, to be plunged into our own bosoms in the moment the thrust can go home to the heart. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was the place so marked as by an indefinable oppressive atmosphere. The strong musk and edged perfumes, the races, distinct and subtly antagonistic or mingled and spoiled, the rasping instruments, combined in an unnatural irritating pressure; they produced an actual sensation of cold and staleness like that from ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hurt, and each time he had stopped at the corral on his way to the house. So she closed the screen door behind her, careful that it should not slam, and ran down the path in the heavy dusk wherein crickets were rasping a ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... his rasping tongue or their own growing resentment at the impudence of the minor leaguers, the All-Americans broke the ice ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... they haven't a rasping, mean, cold, starving, bony, freezing, busy-bodying side,' was the reply, delivered energetically; whereat Waring concluded the little man had had his own page of history back somewhere among the decorous ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... moving; coming forward; holding the light upon us. I thought I heard its voice—and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... an order at the beginning of each term," said he, in a thick, rasping voice. "But you must ask me for an order if ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... came the rasping voice of Dalis. "You hear? Look into your Beryl! See the clenched fists of the earth's myriads being shaken at you! Listen to the protests of the millions who hear your every word! See what Earthlings think ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... of the anchored submarine became more acute. A weird grating sound—the noise made by the hull rasping over the bed ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... face, so pathetic in its youth, with the ravages of disease visible in the hectic cheek, and harsh, rasping cough, touched the strong young officer. He stooped down and put his hand on the young lad's forehead; it was cold and ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... into silence again. Nor did either of them speak again till the music ceased. A vaudeville turn followed. A disgustingly clad, bewigged soubrette murdered a rag time ditty in a rasping soprano, displaying enough gold in her teeth to "salt" a barren claim. No one gave her heed. The lilt of the orchestra elicited a fragmentary chorus from the audience. For the rest the people pursued the prescribed purpose of these ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... brass to his lips again. The tonal stairway which leads up to the chorus of Egypt rose in rasping wailfulness. It culminated in an excessive, unendurable, brazen shriek—and the Honorable William Linder experienced upon the undefended rear of his person the most violent kick of a lifetime not always devoted to the arts of peace. It projected him clear of the window-sill. His last sensible ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... been painfully exercising the minds of the editor and readers of the Church Times; and it was then that the curate's friend, without moving a muscle of his face, suddenly leaned forward and said, in a rasping voice: ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... rasping edge to the rumble. It isn't like anything I ever knew," Asher said, watching the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a disagreeable, rasping voice. "Everybody knows that I'd won that same race only for trouble with my engine. Frank was lucky, just like he generally is when he goes in for anything. Look at him today, being called in to pitch in the tenth! We had 'em badly rattled, and they were ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... minds, therefore, the people prepared themselves for more, and the precentor, with the brazen but tuneful voice, sang the first line of the psalm which the young preacher gave out—"I to the hills will lift mine eyes"—with rasping energy. At the second line the congregation joined in, and sang praise with reverent good-will, so that, when a chapter of the Word had been read and another psalm sung, they were brought to a state of hopeful expectancy. The text still further pleased them, when, in a quiet voice, while ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... The rather rasping, authoritative voice was so well known and familiar that the girls scrambled up and turned round, to find—no desperate villain armed with revolver and bowie-knife, but Miss Gibbs, in a neat, shiny-black mackintosh and rainproof hat to match. She advanced breathless ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... men of less than modest fortune. He was intent, he was earnest, he was even a bit peremptory; but she felt perfectly certain that he was not treating her as a subject and a subject merely. His black eyes looked at her with a sort of sharp severity across the leg of the easel, and his rasping crayon promptly scratched down his impressions upon the promising blank of his canvas. Preciosa was slightly puzzled, but on the whole pleased. She knew she was worth looking at, and felt herself fit to stand the keenest scrutiny. She leaned back easily in her chair. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... such decision. Tang, tang, tang, tang, tang, spat the machine-gun in the black night, now rasping out bullets at the rate of three hundred a minute, as the gunner under the excitement of the hour and his surroundings forgot his instructions, now steadying to a slow second fire. This was something like a counter-excitement; we were beginning to speak ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... rough, with the deep rasping intonation of a savage. "Garn out o' this or I'll——" He took a step forward with uplifted hand, but in an instant down came cut number three upon his wrist, and cut number five across his thigh, and cut number one full in the center ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that flat in the evening, this was always the picture I came upon: Putohin would be sitting at his little table, copying something; his mother and his wife, a thin woman with an exhausted-looking face, were sitting near the lamp, sewing; Yegoritch would be making a rasping sound with his file. And the hot, still smouldering embers in the stove filled the room with heat and fumes; the heavy air smelt of cabbage soup, swaddling-clothes, and Yegoritch. It was poor and stuffy, but the working-class faces, ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a hoarse, rasping voice, "I'm in a hurry. Guess natur' don't wait fer nuthin' when she gits busy on matters wot interest her; an' seein' Barnriff needs all the population that's comin' to it with so energetic a funeral maker as our friend, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... prove to be so in Russia, the first Socialist State, as yet unindustrial, able to draw on the industrial experience of the whole world, were it not that one discovers with a certain misgiving in the Bolshevik leaders the rasping arid temperament of those to whom the industrial machine is an end in itself, and, in addition, reflects that these industrially minded men have as yet no practical experience, nor do there exist men of goodwill to help them. It does not seem reasonable to hope that Russia can ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... out to the stable with the milking pail. Her father had spread fodder for the cow and she could hear the rasping of the ears of corn against each other as he tumbled them into the trough for the old sorrel. She put her head against the cow's soft flank and under her sinewy fingers two streams of milk struck the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... could not work in the woods because of the rain, and his presence irritated his father all the time. They were never in the house together but what something unpleasant was said between them, and Austin's spirit was becoming worn with the constant rasping. He thought he could not endure it much longer, and since his presence made the home so filled with contention he doubted whether he ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... settled to the satisfaction of all. Example is more powerful than precept in all cases. Were our constitutions free from all class distinctions, with what power our representatives could now press their example on the Southern States. Is there anything more rasping to a proud spirit than to be rebuked for shortcomings by those who are themselves guilty of the grossest violations of law and justice? Does the North think it absurd for its women to vote and hold office, the South thinks the same ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the little battle, no dead left as luck had it, but many a gout of blood. The white gables clanged back the cries, in claps like summer thunder, the crows in the beech-trees complained in a rasping roupy chorus, and the house-doors banged at the back of men, who, weary or wounded, sought home to bed. And Splendid and I were on the point of parting, secure that the young laird of MacLachlan was at liberty, when that gentleman himself came ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... came forward out of the cottage, and then Elise looked up and saw Marie. She smiled and nodded. "I am coming," she called up in her rasping voice; and she did seem in high haste to get to Marie Famette, but Marie saw that she looked beyond her at some one or something else. The girl looked over her shoulder, and there was Leon Roussel, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the two, the long and the short, went out together, it was like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza setting forth in quest of adventures in the land of Strand. The short man indulged in none of the loud, rasping affectation of humour that was so maddening in the long; he was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the teeth—dusty and bitter. He kept a pocket-book, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the sun shines on," they say, but the sun did not shine on Diana. The ninth of July dawned gray and blustering, with a queer rasping chill in the air like an autumn day slipped back in the calendar. I hated the thought of seeing Di married to Sidney Vandyke. It seemed like aiding and abetting the enemy, but unless I had another accident at the last minute, such as falling downstairs, I could see no way ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Tennyson makes his ideal man an optimist. "Maud" is a study in pessimism. The lover's blood is tainted with insanity. He raves, is suspicious, is at war with all things and all men; rails at the social system, not from any broad sympathy with better things, but from a strident selfishness, rasping and self-proclamatory, lacking elevation, save as his love puts wings beneath him for a moment and lifts him, as eagles billow up their young; is weak, and tries to cover weakness up by ranting. We pity, then despise him, then pity him once more, and in sheer charity ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... another tone, might have put rebuke, indirectly, into those words. But old Etienne, rasping his hard palms nervously, was merely vowing himself to sacrifice because there was no one else left to do so. Farr ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... was a grinding, rasping crash as if some great object were brushing resistlessly past a smaller one, and then the whistle ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was much creaking of locks and rasping of bolts, which ended in the door swinging slowly open, and disclosing the person who ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... knew then that they were in the kitchen garden at the rear of old Kitely's cottage. Quietly and stealthily, moving herself as if her feet were shod with velvet, Miss Pett made her way with her captive to the door; Mallalieu heard the rasping of a key in a lock, the lifting of a latch; then he was gently but firmly pushed into darkness. Behind him the door ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... other hand, I find a thin neck attached to a thin body, and I also find a whole pack of wolves, hollow, rasping tone, and difficult of production—in ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... little to one side of me, with eyes on the old hag's and my hand held between her two, Maga began chanting in English. The fact that her voice was musical and low where the bag's had been high-pitched and rasping heightened interest, if ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... Covillage or Wench-tribute of Promoters. (Jabolenus de Cosmographia Purgatorii.) Quaestio subtilissima, utrum Chimaera in vacuo bonbinans possit comedere secundas intentiones; et fuit debatuta per decem hebdomadas in Consilio Constantiensi. The Bridle-champer of the Advocates. Smutchudlamenta Scoti. The Rasping and Hard-scraping of the Cardinals. De calcaribus removendis, Decades undecim, per M. Albericum de Rosata. Ejusdem de castramentandis criminibus libri tres. The Entrance of Anthony de Leve into the Territories of Brazil. (Marforii, bacalarii cubantis Romae) de peelandis aut unskinnandis ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... "Dividend hunters{7} I suppose," said a knowing looking fellow, sarcastically, "ear wigging{8}—Hey, Mr. Principal, something good for the pull out{9}? Well, if the gentlemen wish to put on the pot, although it be for a pony,{10} I'm their man, only a little rasping,{11} you know." To this eloquent appeal succeeded a similar application from a son of Israel, who offered to accommodate us in any way we wished, either for the call{l2} or put{13}; to which friendly offer little Principal ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... reveal the existence of life. The line of advance lay along the river; but no road relieved the labour of the march. Sometimes trailing across a broad stretch of white sand, in which the soldiers sank to their ankles, and which filled their boots with a rasping grit; sometimes winding over a pass or through a gorge of sharp-cut rocks, which, even in the moonlight, felt hot with the heat of the previous day—always in a long, jerky, and interrupted procession of men and camels, often in single file—the column toiled painfully like the serpent to ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... was hard as a rock, his voice rasping in its restraint, when he came near and spoke to her. 'You have not ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... say this hyar stranger calls hisself, Peanuts?" he demanded, bluntly, and when the other had told him he repeated the name thoughtfully. Then he shot out another question with the sharp peremptoriness of a prosecuting attorney, and in the high, rasping voice of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... had reached this height, he heard rasping in a large pine that grew close to him, and saw a squirrel come down from the tree, hotly pursued by a marten. Neither of them noticed Smirre; and he sat quietly and watched the chase, which went from tree to tree. He looked at the squirrel, who moved among the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... his speech to a close, and sat down to wipe his streaming face, a brother rose and said, in a harsh, rasping voice, "I want to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of rock that so eerily resembled eyelids, blinked heavily. He could hear a faint rasping like the rustle of sandpaper, as they did so. One of the great leg stumps moved distinctly, independent of the other one. Three columnar masses of rock—arms, or tentacles, with a dozen hinging joints in each—slowly moved away from the parent ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... who had hooked one leg over the saddle-horn and was riding sidewise, smoking a meditative cigarette and staring out between the ears of his horse. They were tired; horses and men, they were tired to the middle of their bones. But they went ahead without making any complaints whatever or rasping oneanother's tempers with ill-chosen remarks; and for that Luck's eyes brightened ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... a foot, an' knowed it tu, A-rasping on the scraper; All ways at once her feelin's flew Like sparks in ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... delivered himself of a few incisive rasping sentences. The muleteer rose slowly and wiped a little blood from ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... they never whipped up business sufficiently to attract the required number of boarders. Nevertheless, I must admit that old Trigger, with all his faults and severity, was really good-hearted. He was a little sniffing, rasping man, with small, spare, feeble, bent figure; mean irregular features badly arranged round a formidable bent, broken red nose; thin straggling grey hair and long grey mutton-chop whiskers; constantly blinking little eyes and very assertive, energetic manners. He had a constant air of objecting to ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... a lot more of those infernal skeletons hanging on the poles by the fire?" he concluded in a rasping whisper. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... coming late. He scolded them for leaving early. Once he scolded them for coughing. They continued the rasping noise. After the intermission, on Stoky's orders, the 100-odd men of the orchestra walked out on the stage barking as if in the last stages of an epidemic ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Each night the Katydids' rasping chant was repeated again and again: Katy did, Katy did; she did, she did! But since in any crowd there are always a few that want to be different from the rest, now and then some member of Kiddie's clan insisted that Katy didn't—somewhat in ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... for under instructions from the Council," Bright assented, in his hard, rasping voice. "He has been most of the time under the influence of some new form of anaesthetic gas with which I have been experimenting. To-night, however, I must have made a mistake in my calculations. Instead of remaining in a state of coma until midnight, he ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in doing so. There came the sound of doors rasping open, of footsteps echoing on metal stairs and corridors. Once a giant Cossack passed within four feet of them. But at length, all was silent within ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... than he had a right to expect, for the leaden pellet bored its way through the skull of the wolf, who, with a rasping yelp, made a sidelong plunge, as if diving off a bank into the water, and, striking on the side of his head, rolled over on his back, with his legs vaguely kicking at the moon, and as powerless to do harm as a ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... about his arms. Lee Randon now cursed himself, he cursed Savina, but most of all he cursed William Grove, sleeping in complacent ignorance beside his wife. His imagination, aroused and then defrauded, became violent, wilfully obscene, and his profanity emerged from thought to rasping sound. His forehead, he discovered, was wet, and he dropped once more into the chair by the laden tray, took a deep drink from a fresh concoction. "This won't do," he said; "it's crazy." And he resumed the comforting relief that tomorrow would be different: he'd say good-bye to the Groves ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... A very loud rasping noise, like a vicious menace, sounded from the street, shivering instantaneously the delicate placidity of Mrs. Maldon's home. Mrs. Maldon gave ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... at a gallop, the animal sometimes coming on silently, with the mouth shut, and sometimes with the jaws open, the lips drawn back and teeth showing, uttering at the same time a succession of roars or of savage rasping snarls. Certain bears charge without any bluster and perfectly straight; while others first threaten and bully, and even when charging stop to growl, shake the head and bite at a bush or knock holes in the ground with their fore-paws. Again, some of them charge home with a ferocious ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... real pain, although he knew that his lips were cut and bleeding, that his cheeks were bruised and cut where Tommy Ashe's hard-knuckled fists landed with impressive force, that his heart pounded sickeningly against his ribs, and that every breath was a rasping gasp. Nor was he conscious of pity when he saw that Tommy Ashe was in no better case. It seemed fit and proper that they should struggle like that. There was a strange sort of pleasure in it. It seemed natural, as natural ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with a sure stroke and in perfect time, but the instant that young Ingmarsson came into the room he drew his bow across the strings, making a rasping noise that brought all the dancers to a stop. "It's nothing," he shouted. ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... loud, rasping voice, and turning his eyes askance as he usually did in conversation, "you are Lieutenant Crawford! I have not forgotten you. How is it that you still have only two stripes?" pointing to the stripes of silver lace round my cuff, which ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... told, A lake in the U.S.A., And first the Indians, the red sort, owned it, But later to Uncle Sam they loaned it, Who afterwards made no bones, but boned it In the fine Autolycus way; And though life wasn't a matter vital He kept with the lake its rasping title, Which recalls the croak of an amorous frog Or a siren heard in an ocean ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... they had they'd of give you a good name!" And the agreeable youth instantly rewarded himself for the wit with another yell of rasping laughter, after which he pointed suddenly at Penrod's ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... broke through flying clouds, with a bitter, wet, west wind rasping the bleak highlands. There were spiteful showers with intervals of mocking sunshine; it was a mischievous and prankish bit of weather, no day for riding. But the Lady was indomitable, so we left the Patriarch in his tent, wrapped ourselves ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of the talk about obligation. It set him at a distance, immediately. He ceased to look lovingly, to indulge in the nerve-rasping little caresses. He became carefully formal. He was evidently eager to prove the sincerity of his protestations—too eager perhaps, her perverse mind suggested. Still, sincere or not, he held to all ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... see one another, but it was impossible for them to make their voices heard above the rasping of the beetles' legs. Hours went by, while the moon crossed the sky and dipped toward the horizon. Tommy knew that the moon would set about the hour of dawn. And the stars were already beginning to pale when he saw a line of telegraph poles, then two lines of shining metals, then a small settlement ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... burro gave a rasping bray, and a hee-haw answered from the bush. It was Miguel's burro. He had come at last! Leaping to her feet, in her impatience, she ran to meet him, and found him lying on the earth, staring silently at the sky. All that day she sat beside him, caressing his hand, talking, crying, bathing ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... lawyer Dempster, in a loud, rasping, oratorical tone, struggling against chronic huskiness, 'as long as my Maker grants me power of voice and power of intellect, I will take every legal means to resist the introduction of demoralizing, methodistical doctrine into this ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... long stride, a short one, a long one, and toe and pigskin came together. Pearse was down and Smith was shouldering valiantly at a big guard. Two blue-clad arms swept upward almost into the path of the rising ball; there was a confused sound of crashing bodies and rasping canvas, and then a Robinson man bounded against Neil and ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Fifth, to Saint-Saens' Arabian music. Ah! those men understand my instrument. It is no instrument of percussion to them. It has a soul. It is the heart of the orchestra. Its rhythmic throb is the pulse of musical life. What are your strings, your scratching, rasping strings! What signifies the blare of your brass, or the bilious bleating of your wood-wind! I am the centre, the life giver. From me the circulation of warm, musical blood emanates. I stand at the back of the orchestra ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... A rasping word made echoes in the silence, and Garry saw the girl's eyes widen as she turned them upon the black one, who had spoken. He saw her face lose its color and go dead white, and plainly her wide eyes showed the fears that swept in upon ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... studio,—of the Poles, who will kill themselves with overwork if they are not checked; of the French, who talk at great length of much more than they will ever accomplish; of the slovenly English, who toil hopelessly and cannot understand that inclination does not imply power; of the Americans, whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot afternoon strain tense-drawn nerves to breaking-point, and whose suppers lead to indigestion; of tempestuous Russians, neither to hold nor to bind, who tell the girls ghost-stories till the girls shriek; of stolid Germans, who come to learn one thing, and, having mastered ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... settled into a less rasping routine than that of the early years, grew rotund and comfortable in expression, and though the festivities of training days, and the more solemn one of ordination or Thanksgiving day, meant sermon and prayers ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... carriage and pairs," shouted a rasping voice at last. It was Black Tom. "Who says the fortune is belonging to the lad at all? It's mine, and if there's law in ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... laughter upon the stage were laborious on his part and mystifying to the thoughtful observer. He took noticeable means to change from his real self. It mattered not what was the nature of the part he filled, he invariably assumed an unnatural, rasping voice; he stretched his mouth to its utmost reach and lowered the extremities of his lips; he turned his toes inward (naturally his feet described an abnormal angle) and bowed his arms. Brought up in the school which teaches that ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of best black tea, good quality—yours is generally atrocious, Mrs. Oswald—that's the next thing on the list,' said poor trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black tea, and mind you don't send it all dust, as you usually do. No good tea to be got nowadays, since they took the duties off and ruined the country. And I see a tall young man lounging about the place sometimes, and never touching his hat to me as he ought to do. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... sentence was interrupted by a sharp, rasping sound of Big Jim clearing his throat and shuffling to his feet. He, too, looked the minister full in the face with a searching gaze, shook his head sadly, and walked leisurely down the aisle and out of the door. The minister paused again and frowned. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... call came from a brooding curlew, a faint sigh from a plover, and the wild rasping cry of a lapwing greeted them overhead. Yet there was a silence, a silence broken for a moment by the cries of the birds, but a silence thick and heavy. Between the calls of the birds Mysie could almost hear ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... is known by various names: "Brant Bird," "Bead-bird," "Horse-foot-Snipe," "Sand-runner," "Calico-back," "Chicaric" and "Chickling." The two latter names have reference to its rasping notes, "Calico-back," to the variegated plumage ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-and Clarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: "I can never hear that thing sung without wanting to ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... uniform and consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on hazelnut; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that one could wonder how the kernel can be extracted through ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Slade. She was in the common dressing-room—a littered, infamous, foul, place, situated below stage. Behind her the gas flared and screamed. Still in her panderous disguise, within hearing of the rasping music and the tramp of the dance, within hearing of the coarse applause, this tender mother sat alone, unconscious of evil—uncontaminated, herself kept holy by her motherhood, lifted by her love from the touch of sin. To her all the world was a temple, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... convinced that in flight lay her surest chance of escape, the hare leaped from her "seat," and with the utmost speed, though from the ease of her motions appearing to run slowly, made her way towards the hedgerow. There was a quick rush behind her as she started from the furrow, and then a loud, rasping exclamation from the sportsman, but nothing more; no shot was fired. She owed her life to several circumstances. The dogs were young, and in strict training; their master, knowing the natural fondness of "first season" setters for "chasing fur," had purposely refrained ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... sounded an answer. How the blood coursed through the old man's veins as he listened! There it was again. It was coming nearer, but very slowly. He wondered how many were in the flock, and called once more. This time, to his surprise, an answer came from a different direction—a long, rasping sound, a sort of cross between a cock's crow ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... began to roar, and great masses of snow, dislodged from the tall trees above the cabin, fell upon its roof with sounds like those of soft, slow footfalls. Strange noises of creaking and groaning and rasping penetrated to Alice's ears, and she cowered half in fear, half in joy of her shelter and her male protector. Men were fine animals for ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... and grating were the sounds to be heard around me! Lack, nay, not lack, but utter freedom from the first instincts of cultivation, was to be heard even in the great heavy footfalls and the rasping sharp voices which fell on my ears. So different had I been listening in a room at Caddagat to my grannie's brisk pleasant voice, or to my aunt Helen's low refined accents; and I am such a one to see and feel ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the boarding to be clear of the ladder, and made out the figure of a man, crouched down and feeling his way along the passage. He stumbled up the ladder, and then I heard Petrak close behind him, panting and cursing, and the broken chains on his hands rasping along ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the harsh, rasping voice of the father was saying, "that daughter of mine would give her heart to a murderer. Which of these cut-throats may ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the failure properly to wash, cleanse, and ventilate the skin. Some of the lesser disturbances come from the chafing of collars, wristlets, and belts, and are, of course, relieved by loosening the clothing or substituting soft, comfortable cotton for rasping flannels. Others come from the use of too strong soaps, or the too frequent use of hot water, or too vigorous scrubbing of the skin, and these can be relieved by ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... landlady, who has good sense and experience, thinks G. will not get well. Sometimes, in awful moments, I think so too; but then I cheer up and get quite elated. Last night as I lay awake, too weary to sleep, I heard a harsh, rasping sound like a large saw. I thought some animal unknown to me must be making it, it was so regular and frequent. But after a time I found it was a dying young soldier who lives farther from this house ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... of voice is not of so great moment as distinctness of utterance, yet its cultivation is by no means to be neglected. Harsh, rasping sounds and nasal twangs are disagreeable to hear, and no speaker can afford to offend his audience in this way. An unpleasant voice may be the result of some physical defect; more often it is caused by sheer carelessness. In most cases a little practice will produce ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... This was said with a contemptuous, rasping inflection that irritated the new scholar. His eyes twinkled, partly with annoyance and ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... that I could rarely describe, much less imitate, the sound, or even tell the direction whence it had come. Under the dusk of the lake shore I would sometimes come upon a pair of the huge animals, the cow restless, wary, impatient, the bull now silent as a shadow, now ripping and rasping the torn velvet from his great antlers among the alders, and now threatening and browbeating every living thing that crossed his trail, and even the unoffending ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... footsteps sounded again; there came a noise of clattering chains and the rattle of the key in the lock, and the rasping of the bolts dragged back. Then the gate swung slowly open, and Baron Conrad rode into the shelter of the White Cross, and as the hoofs of his war-horse clashed upon the stones of the courtyard within, the wooden gate ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... cares wear on us so,— More cruel than our great despairs, More rasping than a mighty ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... woman, seeing Virginia, came to whisper to her in a rasping aside. She "had St. Joseph" for Easter, she said, would Virginia help her "fix him"? Virginia nodded, she loved to assist those devout young women who decorated, with exquisite flowers and hundreds of candles, the various side altars of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... had expected that realization of the facts would produce these symptoms in him, but now that they had presented themselves she was finding them rasping to the nerves. "I should have thought the reason ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... crucible. The desert had multiplied weeks into years. Heat, thirst, hunger, loneliness, toil, fear, ferocity, pain—he knew them all. He had felt them all—the white sun, with its glazed, coalescing, lurid fire; the caked split lips and rasping, dry-puffed tongue; the sickening ache in the pit of his stomach; the insupportable silence, the empty space, the utter desolation, the contempt of life; the weary ride, the long climb, the plod in sand, the search, search, search for ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the curious populace gather round him. In one hand he ostentatiously displayed the paper on which what he had to cry was written, but, like the minister, he scorned to "read." With the bell carefully tucked under his oxter he gave forth his news in a rasping voice that broke now and again into a squeal. Though Scotch in his unofficial conversation, he was believed to deliver himself on public occasions in the finest English. When trotting from place to place with his news he carried his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... a Friend, who had declared his intention of writing no more Poetry." In reading the Poem immediately after it was written, the rasping force which Mr. C. gave to the following concluding ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... in the rasping of his throat, and, though he shrieked into my ear to make sure that I understood him above the howling of the wind, I could only make out that it was an endless ballad telling the fortune of a young ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge |
