"Cranny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rain Sizzled when it hit him. He picked a rag Up from the ground and put it in his sack, And grinned and rubbed his hands. There was a thing Moving inside the bag upon his back— It must have been a soul! I saw it fling And twist about inside, and not a hole Or cranny for escape. Oh, it was sad. I cried, and shouted out, "Let out that soul!" But he turned round, and, sure, his face went mad, And twisted up and down, and he said "Hell!" And ran away.... Oh, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... transliteration of the Sanscrit Sarameyas, under which he appears in the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house, is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet further, for as Sarameyas is derived from the root sar, to ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... The frightened cortege had not left the palace far behind it before the maddened citizens burst open its doors, searched every nook and cranny of the building for the queen and her body-guard, and, finding they had fled, wreaked their wrath on all that was left, plundering the apartments of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... lookin' for a cobweb to stop the blood where she cut me in our fight the other day, an' it came tumblin' out of a cranny ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... them on their side. They have never wanted mine. That I have known—KNOWN. She believes that her Deity is in Apple Blossom Court—in the dire holes its people live in, on the broken stairway, in every nook and awful cranny of it—a great Glory we will not see—only waiting to be called and to answer. Do I believe it—do you—do any of those anointed of us who preach each day so glibly 'God is EVERYWHERE'? Who is the one who believes? If there ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... western machinery, modern mining plants and other evidences of how China is coming out of her shell, cause one to rejoice in improved conditions. The animosity occasioned by these inventions that are being so gradually and so surely introduced into every nook and cranny of East and North China is very marked; but on close inspection, and after one has made a study of the subject, one is inclined to feel that it is more or less theoretical. So it is to be hoped it will be in Szech'wan and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... mistakes, owing, no doubt, to the fact, which he admits, that he gathered his information from any Tom, Dick or Harry he came in contact with during his wanderings. In describing his visit to the "George," he found incidents from Pickwick to fit every nook and cranny in the building and quoted them with much conviction. But he quoted no facts, nor did he give any data to substantiate his statements. Someone told him it was the original of the "White Hart," as they told him that the house named ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... have been the result of some earthquake, and when this was passed they were in a sheltered nook, at one side of which the face of a precipice hung right over, affording ample protection from the wind and rain. Through quite a cranny a stream of perfectly clear water trickled, and on the other side was a small deep pool, slowly welling over at one side, the steam rising therefrom telling that it was in some way connected with the noisy jet which ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... Hunt-Grubbe thought he recognised. For a long time the face puzzled him, but at last he remembered having seen a counterfeit presentment of it, or one very similar, in a photographic group of the Bester family. A Bester would know every rock and cranny of that hill with a familiarity which would make light or darkness indifferent to him. Lieutenant Hunt-Grubbe made mental notes also of Boer tactics, by which they gave a great impression of numbers. A group would gather at one point and keep up ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... shone for a few minutes after its rising through a rift in the clouds, but soon went in again; the rain still poured down, and the distance was hidden in mist that clung to the hillsides and filled each ravine and cranny in the rocks. They were near Orvieto when the car broke down; Vincenzo was out on the road at once, but his master sat quite still. He could not endure the thought of ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable rush-lights and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been written ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... unbearable to Dick. The crew seemed never to notice it, which caused the boy much wonderment that noses had ever been given them. He was glad when a strong wind came and swept some of the smell away instead of leaving it to settle in chunks in every nook and cranny on the boat. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... came upon such a thing as this,' touching a delicate film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, 'why, he could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It is a pity they don't take honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would be ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enjoyed themselves on that day more than these two, who prowled about and visited every nook and cranny of the old place—studies, passages, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... this order must occupy an elevated position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs—to see everything. This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of Criticism. I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY. 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hand gropes its way till it feels an iron gate oppose it; nor can he discover a single chink, but at length perceives by his touch a loose nail; he places his sword in its head and screws it out. Through this cranny he sees Melusina in the horrid form she is compelled to assume. That tender mistress, transformed into a monster bathing in a fount, flashing the spray of the water from a scaly tail! He repents ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... could reach, the face of the walls was covered with letters and legends cut by many generations of captives. The floor was composed of old foot-worn slabs, firmly cemented together. The closest search failed to show any hole or cranny where a rat could have escaped, far ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had enjoyed the society, not only of the friends who went with her, but the companionship of the invisible ones, whose presence seemed to haunt every nook and cranny of ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... one ignorant of the craft would have said, but still always on the scent of that doomed beast. From one thicket to another he tried to hide himself, but the moist leaves of the underwood told quickly of his whereabouts. He tried every hole and cranny about the house, but every hole and corner had been stopped by Owen's jealous care. He would have lived disgraced for ever in his own estimation, had a fox gone to ground anywhere about his domicile. At last a loud whoop was ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... darkness which they seemed to have entirely to themselves. Not a hand was raised to them, not a threatening figure sprang up to dispute their going, not a fierce curse cursed them. The would-be assassins, if such there were, presumably still lurked in some Main Street cranny, patiently and stupidly waiting, entirely unaware that they had been neatly outwitted by the clever ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... as they rummaged among the mouldering mass, setting them coughing and sneezing. Now and then a great gray rat would shoot out beneath their very feet, and disappear, like a sudden shadow, into some hole or cranny in the wall. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... In the corner stood a cupboard,—but a momentary examination showed that that was as bare as the other. The door at the side, which Sydney had left wide open, opened on to a closet, and that was empty. I glanced up,—there was no trap door which led to the roof. No practicable nook or cranny, in which a living being could lie concealed, was anywhere ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... a single any," remarked Allee, poking into every nook and cranny in hope of finding their treat. "I guess she licked ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... stream, and flows nearly due west down a beautiful valley, where the terraced slopes are covered with vineyards and mulberry groves, and every little dell, every nook and corner among the jagged rocks, every ledge and cranny on precipice-side, which the foot of man can reach, or on which a basket of earth can be deposited, is occupied with patch of corn or fruit-tree.[150] Lower down near Canobin the valley contracts into a sublime chasm, its rocky walls rising perpendicularly ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... to the old man who was the sole tenant of that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as it would go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Food he procured us—rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and some goat's milk—and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been a ducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to account anything ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... was France, scene of the bloodiest revolution that has ever dyed red the pages of history—a revolution that proved supreme the tremendous, onrushing power of the masses. And there was Rome itself, where every inch of soil, where every nook and cranny of the famous catacombs marked some great historic drama played in the days when "to be a Roman were better than ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... touch with your cane the low edge of the broad, overhanging eaves. The batten shutters at door and window, with hinges like those of a postern, are shut with a grip that makes one's knuckles and nails feel lacerated. Save in the brick-work itself there is not a cranny. You would say the house has the lock-jaw. There are two doors, and to each a single chipped and battered marble step. Continuing on down the sidewalk, on a line with the house, is a garden masked from view by a high, close board-fence. You may see the tops of its fruit-trees—pomegranate, peach, ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... points of the obedient Netherlands to the sea-coast, without coming within reach of the Hollanders and Zeelanders, who were keeping close watch on the outside. But those Hollanders and Zeelanders, guarding every outlet to the ocean, occupying every hole and cranny of the coast, laughed the invaders of England to scorn, braving them, jeering them, daring them to come forth, while the Walloons and Spaniards shrank before such amphibious assailants, to whom a combat on ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... condition these words produced on her a slightly suffocating effect. Mrs Verloc's mental condition had the merit of simplicity; but it was not sound. It was governed too much by a fixed idea. Every nook and cranny of her brain was filled with the thought that this man, with whom she had lived without distaste for seven years, had taken the "poor boy" away from her in order to kill him—the man to whom she had grown accustomed in body and mind; the man whom she had trusted, took the boy away to ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... up and looked out of his hole, there was as usual no supper for him, and the cellar was close shut. He peered about, to try and find some cranny under the door to creep out at, but there was none. And he felt so hungry that he could almost have eaten the cat, who kept walking to and fro in a melancholy manner—only she was alive, and he ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... time the officers, accompanied by Corbet, entered, and all followed the doctor in a body to aid in the search. The search, however, was fruitless. Every room, cell, and cranny that was visible in the establishment underwent a strict examination, as did their unhappy occupants. All, however, in vain; and the doctor now was about to assume a tone of insolence and triumph, when ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... where different mushrooms love to dwell. Some are always found on roadsides, as if seeking the notice of passers-by. These are the Clitocybes and Stropharia, and many of the cup-fungi, while the Boleti take shelter in clay banks and hide in every cranny and nook that they can find. Russulas are seen in open woods, rising out of the earth, also the Lactarius, which seems to like the shade of trees. The Cortinarius also prefers their shelter. The Coprinus loves the pastures and fields, near houses and barns, and dwells in ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... small companion-way and shouted into the cabin, door, calling loudly. Then he went back, got the Stella's lantern, and Bill, having made fast, limped along after, gun in hand. The two silently explored every nook and cranny finding, to their utter astonishment, no one aboard. The door to one of the staterooms, ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed, and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness. The wind extinguished her candle, but an imperfect ray of clouded moonshine gleamed through a cranny in the roof of the vault and fell directly on the spring of the trap-door." But Walpole's medievalism was very thin. He took some pains with the description of the feudal cavalcade entering the castle gate with the great sword, but the passage is incorrect ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... altogether," answered Julian, with eyes that flashed with excitement; and drawing a step nearer his brother, he said in changed tones, "Now must that rascally priest have fled, and it behoves us to search the precincts of the place with all diligence. We must not leave a nook or a cranny unvisited, and must make a mighty coil. Thou takest me, ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... around it, and became their sport and playground. The mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the damp odor of leaves in the dining-room. There was the cry of night birds in the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... they could be recalled. Explosive bombs literally tore the pirate vessel to fragments, while vials of pure corrosion dissolved her substance into dripping corruption and reeking gases filled every cranny of the wreckage as its torn and dismembered fragments began their long plunge to the ground. The space-ship followed the pieces down, and Rodebush sent ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs. Companies of redpolls and crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, busily seeking their food. The fearless, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily, while he leads his family to explore every nook and cranny of the wood. Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks. The Canadians call them "recollets," because they wear a brown crest of the same colour as the hoods of the monks who came with the first settlers to New ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... himself over the edge, and moving from cranny to cranny and stone to stone, went cautiously down, while she watched him with her hands closed tight. What the actual peril was she could not estimate; but it looked appallingly dangerous, particularly when ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... might even now be in the jaws of death. Not a word was spoken. The sound of the waves, as they dashed on the rocks alone broke the stillness. Trembling with excitement, they swept the boat close around the rocky promontory. John, standing up in the bow, held aloft a lantern, so that every cranny of the rocks might be brought out into full relief. At length ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a cautious glance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously knelt down beside the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny. There he encountered merely the tiny, pale-green, faintly conspicuous eyes of a large spider, confronting his own. It was for the moment an alarming, and yet a faintly fascinating experience. The little almost colourless fires remained so changeless. But still, even when at last they had actually ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... education. If we know how one gets and spends money, we know what a man is. "So many are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of mankind, that an insight which would search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. He who, like St. Paul, has learnt how to want and how to abound, has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up—honesty, justice, generosity, charity, ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... that the figures and situations are wholly strange to us; that we don't know them or recognize them. The reason is possibly that the artists are not in perfect sympathy or intelligence with the story; they do not know every turning, corner and cranny of it, as did "Phiz"—and indeed as did everyone else living at that time; they were not inspired, above all, by its author. But there was a more serious reason still for the failure. It will be ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... know ourselves the richer to have sat Upon this dusty floor and dreamed our dreams. No other place to us were quite the same, No other dreams so potent in their charm, For this is ours! Every twist and turn Of every narrow stair is known and loved; Each nook and cranny is our very own; The dear, old, sleepy place is full of spells For us, by right of long inheritance. The building simply bodies forth a thought Peculiarly inherent to the race. And we, descendants of that elder time, Have learnt to love ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... low, that the rushing of the waters ran through their melody, like a hollow accompaniment. The natural taste and true ear of David governed and modified the sounds to suit the confined cavern, every crevice and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flexible voices. The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... be diverted from the straight path of help to the most useful man in England on all possible occasions. Forster I will speak to carefully, and I have no doubt it will quicken him a little; not that we have anything to complain of in his direction. If you ever see any new loophole, cranny, needle's-eye, through which I can present your case to "Household Words," I most earnestly entreat you, as your staunch friend and admirer—you can have no truer—to indicate it to me at any time or season, and to count upon my being Damascus ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Bec-du-Nez to the Moie de Bretagne,—a sight the like of which one might travel many thousand miles and still not equal. And they promised themselves a still finer view when the setting sun washed every cliff and crag and cranny ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... more they dug into the facts, however, and into Arnold's reputation, the more it appeared that he was telling the truth. Besides having an unquestionable character, he was an excellent mountain pilot, and mountain pilots are a breed of men who know every nook and cranny of the mountains in their area. The most fantastic part of Arnold's story had been the 1,700-miles-per-hour speed computed from Arnold's timing the objects between two landmarks. "When Arnold told us how ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... existing circumstances I confess I did not much like the responsibility of the charge committed to me, but fortunately our conductor soon returned with permission to pass. We got out while he drove his 4 in hand quietly into the boat, every cranny of which was filled up by soldiers and artillery horses, which, as if to shew off the pomp of war, capered and reared before our sedate steeds, who only wanted pipes in their mouths to rival the impenetrable gravity of their driver. It is necessary to cross the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of gnomes to be kept to their tasks. Some built strong barriers to hold back the fiery rivers in the earth's heart, and some had scalding vapours to change dull stones to precious metal, or were hard at work filling every cranny of the rocks with diamonds and rubies; for Ruebezahl loved all pretty things. Sometimes the fancy would take him to leave those gloomy regions, and come out upon the green earth for a while, and bask ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 265 Let blood from her weasand,— Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, With my snaky tail, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... safe or so private nowadays, believe me, my young friend," he said "I have tried every sort of nook and cranny in this accursed town, now riddled with spies, and I have come to the conclusion that a small avant-scene box is the most perfect den of privacy there is in the entire city. The voices of the actors on the stage and ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times especially, not only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, and Sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or dog-hole in Nature or Art can remain unilluminated,—it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written on the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... delivery. But privateersmen frequently captured the boats that carried them, and very often the letter-bags were dropped overboard. Still another circumstance deprived the world of many of his writings. When revolutionists took possession of the Lafayette home in Chaviniac, they sought in every nook and cranny to find evidence that they would have been glad to use against these representatives of the nobility. Madame de Lafayette had carefully stuffed all the letters she could find into the maw of the immense old range ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... near him the tire of the cartwheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eyes, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... swell, as from the returning tide of some dead sea, so long ebbed that men had ploughed and sown and built within its bed, stole in, swift and black, filling every cranny of the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... cranny spies, And seems to point her out where she sits weeping; To whom she sobbing speaks: 'O eye of eyes, Why pry'st thou through my window? leave thy peeping: Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... to bring the papers to light, and Raeburn was so much vexed about it, and so determined to search every nook and cranny of the hotel, that it was hard to get him away even for meals. Erica could not help feeling that it was hard that the brief days of relaxation he had allowed himself should be ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... had been covered when the corporal stopped, drew out his flashlight and sent out a stream of radiance that illumined every nook and cranny of the trench. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... word or two of my old nurse, by chance caught in some cranny of a child's memory and recovered after many days, told me that the charm was still practised by the woman-folk, or had been practised not long before her death. So I began to hunt for it, and, almost ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cause upon the bench. I daresay John Bull's joy was equal to that of either of the two; he skipped from room to room, ran up-stairs and down-stairs, from the kitchen to the garrets, and from the garrets to the kitchen; he peeped into every cranny; sometimes he admired the beauty of the architecture and the vast solidity of the mason's work; at other times he commended the symmetry and proportion of the rooms. He walked about the gardens; he bathed himself in the canal, swimming, diving, and beating the ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... the top. Into this barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... equal flame did burn. No man was privy to their thoughts. And for to serve their turn, Instead of talk they used signs: the closelier they suppressed The fire of love, the fiercer still it raged in their breast. The wall that parted house from house had riven therein a cranny, Which shrunk at making of the wall: this fault not marked of any Of many hundred years before (what doth not love espy?) These lovers first of all found out, and made a way whereby To talk together secretly, and through the same did go Their loving whisp'rings very light and ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... But the grand support of the soft-billed birds in winter is that infinite profusion of aureliae of the lepidoptera ordo, which is fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks; to the pales and walls of gardens and buildings; and is found in every cranny and cleft of rock or rubbish, and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... vast encampment before Petersburg a biting wind blew that Thanksgiving day. It came through every cranny of our hut; it bellied the canvas on one side and tightened it on the other; it pressed flat down the smoke from a hundred thousand mud chimneys, and swept away so quickly the little coals which fell on the canvas that they had not time ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... forth a life in accord with the waking experience of his own day. "A poet never dreams," said his philosophical Don Juan, "we prose folk always do"; and the epigram brilliantly announced the character of Browning's poetic world,—the world of prose illuminated through and through in every cranny and crevice by the keenest and most adventurous ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... light our torch, but with the help of some wool from my cap as tinder I set to work with flint and steel, and at last we got the tar rope in a blaze. Thora took the torch in hand and picked her way over the rocky floor, exploring every nook and cranny of the cave. So rapidly did she skip from stone to stone and climb over the intervening boulders, that I frequently found it difficult ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... "I wanted to ask what you meant by stating that it was your habit always to be abroad in the hours immaculate? I happened by the merest chance to be abroad in them myself this morning. I examined every nook and cranny of them, I turned them inside out; but not one jot or tittle of you ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... burnt—set on fire accidentally, or on purpose, while a man's asleep. Under the house—or in some crack, cranny, or crevice? Something told him it wasn't that. The anguish of mental effort contracted Ricardo's brow. The skin of his head seemed to move in this travail of vain ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Jiuyemon; so she determined to kill him, were it only that she might die with Hichirobei. So hiding a kitchen knife in the bosom of her dress, she went at midnight to Jiuyemon's house, and looked all round to see if there were no hole or cranny by which she might slip in unobserved; but every door was carefully closed, so she was obliged to knock at the door and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... practicable one—had occurred to both; and, avoiding the main street, they made their way through side lanes and back alleys until they emerged at a spot only a few yards distant from the unsuspecting sentinel. Then, watching through a convenient cranny until his back was turned, they ran swiftly forward and concealed themselves behind a low stone wall which the man was passing and repassing ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... mouse,' said Paul to himself, 'peeping out of her cranny at an assemblage of cats, without ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... filigrain duties, in the room of all virtues, which they abolished on their road to the adoption of philosophy and atheism. Yes, though for ever busied in exercising services and charities for individuals, or for whole bodies of people, you do not leave a cranny empty into which you can slip a kindness. Your inquiry after me to Miss Berry is so friendly, that I cannot trust solely to her thanking you for your letter, as I am sure she will, having sent it to her as she is bathing in the sea at Bognor Rocks; but I must with ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... narrow in proportion to her build, for she was what is technically called a Tennessee cotton boat. To those who have never seen a cotton boat loaded, it is a wondrous sight. The bales are piled up from the lower guards wherever there is a cranny until they reach above the second deck, room being merely left for passengers to walk outside the cabin. You have regular alleys left amid the cotton in order to pass about on the first deck. Such is a cotton boat carrying from 1,500 to ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... nearness of some great adventure. Interrogate a thousand men, and you will find that none of them has first set eyes upon his greatest friend in the Mosque of Cordoba or in Trafalgar Square. Every adventure of lasting consequence has confronted all of them, without exception, in some hidden nook or cranny of the world,—some place unknown to fame. Anybody is as likely to meet the woman who is destined to become his wife, at Essex Junction on a wintry night, as in the Parthenon by moonlight in the month of May. The most romantic places in the world are often those that promised, in advance, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... election, and redemption, and shall see and know as thoroughly, all the things of heaven, and earth, and hell, even as perfectly, as now we know our A, B, C. For the Spirit, with which we shall in every cranny of soul and body be filled, I say, "searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Cor 2:10). We see what strange things have been known by the prophets and saints of God, and that when they knew but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... master brain of the British army that it was useless longer to chase De Wet up and down over the face of the earth. The Boer general was familiar with every crack and cranny of that earth. He knew where to hide, where to dodge, where to scurry away as fast as his convoy train could bear him company. Behind him, plucky, but totally in ignorance of the natural advantages of the country, toiled and perspired ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... afternoon, and don't forget to tell your captain that if he chooses to come on board in a friendly way, my owner here will be very pleased to see him, and to show him all over the ship. He can look into every nook and cranny of her if it will afford him ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... old man only shook his head; and at last bade David be silent with great anger. They rowed slowly out, and David could see the great rocks, that had now been his home so long, rising, still and peaceful, in the morning light. Every rock and cranny was known to him. There was the place where, when he first came, he was used to fish. There was the cliff-top where he had made his fire; he could even see his little window in the front of the rocks, and he thought with grief that it would be dark and silent ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sunlight of a sultry afternoon in the early part of July forced its way through every crevice and cranny of the closely drawn shutters in the luxurious private offices of Mainwaring & Co., Stock Brokers, and slender shafts of light, darting here and there, lent a rich glow of color to the otherwise subdued tones ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... might go into the Wind's presence, to have her request granted immediately. Seldom did she trust herself to such boisterous company, but the occasion was urgent. So she entered, though not without some uneasiness, and went on and up the rough uneven way, till she reached the huge cranny in the Chimney where the Wind sat, humming a whining song to himself, as he ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... deeply interesting pages we seem to get right back into the dawn of history. We seem to enter into the feelings of the inhabitants when the ships of the sea-rovers hove in sight. Here a carpenter's kit lies concealed in a cranny; there a carefully mended anvil stands at the door of the village smithy. In the palace at Knossos the system of drainage is superior to any known in Europe between that day and the last century. Most wonderful of all is the art; two small ivory figures of youths leaping, display a life ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... of woods all gray, Whom I meet on my walk of a winter day — You're busy inspecting each cranny and hole In the ragged bark of yon hickory bole; You intent on your task, and I on the law Of your wonderful head ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... a cranny or cleft of the same there is a little flower growing. You cannot do what you will with that flower. It has its exigencies and requirements. Had it a voice, it could say, what the stone never could: "I must have this or that: ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and again her strange potent eyes fell on my face. They were like a burning searchlight which showed up every cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to be horribly difficult to act a part under that compelling gaze. She could not mesmerize me, but she could strip me of my fancy dress and set ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... never going out? That is what it means TO HAVE ALREADY gone out too much. Monsieur craves Syrias, deserts, dead seas, dangers and fatigues! But nevertheless he can make Bovarys in which every little cranny of life is studied and painted with mastery. What an odd person who can also compose the fight between the Sphinx and the Chimaera! You are a being quite apart, very mysterious, gentle as a lamb with it all. I have had a great desire to question you, but a too great respect for you ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... tremendously expansive gas resembling carbon monoxide," he went on. "It seeps into every cranny of the dirigible, killing everything. The crews got no warning; they didn't know what was happening; couldn't see him! Well, I managed to wound him on the ZX-1. He beat it. I'm following him. If he lasts out, he'll go to where he came from, and we'll find out who's ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... trample them all, I will, some day," he says, and dances a banshee dance with shuffling feet and flinging arms. The spiders—who are all misers—glare down on him with a poison joy, and hasten to spin a web over the cranny where the can of treasure is buried. "No thief will suspect what is hidden there now," says Tim; and opens another deposit in another cranny, where a spider with golden spots mounts guard. But the mice having set their ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... abrupt halt by the side of a low wooden box, and as I foolishly made an abortive attempt to reach it with my hand, it vanished instantaneously. I searched the area thoroughly, and was assured that there was no outlet, save by the steps I had just descended, and no hole, nor nook, nor cranny where anything the size of Robert could be completely hidden from sight. What did it all mean? Ah! I knew Robert had always had a weakness for exploring areas, especially in H—— Street, and in the box where his wraith disappeared I espied ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... and the very men who receive the highest favours from the post-offices of this country, in which a letter is carried five-and-twenty hundred miles for ten cents, penetrating, through some fourteen or fifteen thousand offices, into every cranny of a region large as half Europe, kicks and grows restive because he has not the liberty of doing a few favoured portions of the vast enterprise for himself; while he imposes on the public the office of doing that which is laborious and unprofitable! Such is man; such did he become when he ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... have two of our most active lads well-armed. Take pistols yourself, and be careful with them. Go and search every hole and cranny you can. Find the thing you saw last night, and bring him or it to me. I'm satisfied it was no one from the Sirius, and it may be some young black sent across and landed to ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... but a hawk we have frightened from his nest. This old tower is a complete brooding-place for vagrant birds. The swallow and martlet abound in every chink and cranny, and circle about it the whole day long; while at night, when all other birds have gone to rest, the moping owl comes out of its lurking place and utters its boding cry from the battlements. See how the hawk we have dislodged sweeps away below us, skimming over ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... must have found me out; that fe-fa-fum of a keeper would have smelt the blood of a cuckold-maker: They say, he was peeping and butting about in every cranny. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... not go to bed, or even undress, for she knew that Ishmael was locked out; and so she threw a light shawl around her, and seated herself at the open back window, which from its high point of view commanded every nook and cranny of the back grounds, to watch until Ishmael should wake up and approach the house, so that she might go down and admit him quietly, without disturbing the servants and exciting their curiosity and conjectures. No one should know of Ishmael's misfortune, for she would ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pretence of thoroughly seeing into everything, walked about all over the place. He did not find the stick, and he was quite sure that nobody else had found it. Finally he went away, convinced that it lay in some nook or cranny of the shelving slope on to which he had kicked it in his sudden passion of rage. There, in all probability, it would remain for ever, for it would never occur to the police that whoever wielded whatever weapon it was that struck the blow would not ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... as I stir and stand, And move from the arched recess, And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand, And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny In a ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... melancholy day, clinging mist had blurred the outline of even the nearest hills; distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then west along the darkening road. No moving thing broke the monotony of the depressing outlook, and the groom turned to his work of bedding down ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... few words, and in fairly good English. The grizzly had come upon him unawares, and in his haste to fire he had inflicted only a slight wound. Then he fled, and took shelter in the rock cranny as a last resort. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... as well as he could, for he was very stiff with lying so long, and stumbled on toward some dark nook or cranny where he could huddle unseen until the morning; his head full of plans for the morrow, and his heart beating ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... to search beyond the places he had already looked. His further knowledge of the hotel grounds was a negligible quantity; so he began, consistently to eliminate all possibilities. From one corner he zigzagged back and forth, testing every nook and cranny that might contain a human being. Thus he examined every foot of the place; but without results. He was puzzled; but he would not give up. Methodically, and to the vast disgust of the others, he began over again at the corner from which he had ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... little girl. A second's hesitation at the wrong stage of the operation, a slip of bistoury or scalpel, a tremor of the wrist, a single instant's clumsiness of the fingers, and the Enemy—watching for every chance, intent for every momentarily opened chink or cranny wherein he could thrust his lean fingers—entered the frail tenement with a leap, a rushing, headlong spring that jarred the house of life to its foundations. Lowering close over her head Lloyd felt the shadow of his approach. He had arrived there in that commonplace little room, with its commonplace ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... to cellar, and room to room; through pantry and coal-hole—along passages, and into the hundred-and-one little blind alleys and hidden nooks that form the basement of the old house. Then, when I knew I had been in every corner and cranny large enough to conceal aught of any size, I made ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... trousers, aprons, petticoats, and stockings. To complete the picture, there were no candles burning, not even a rosin taper; but here and there a piece of blazing bog-pine, either stuck in some cranny, or borne about in the hands of a domestic, cast over the scene a dark red light. I dare say we should have been delighted with all this, had we been assured of obtaining an apartment, into which, when tired of the sublime and ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... meet Hogarth: no harm in that; but it was stealthily that he hurried down the stair and carried himself across the yard, grinning a grimace of self-conscious caution, to peep through a cranny. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of the Platonists and Pythagoreans. By little and little, he began to consider that the very spectra he had seen—even that one phantom so horrid in its aspect—were but the delusions which Mejnour's science had enable him to raise. The healthful sunlight, filling up every cranny in his chamber, seemed to laugh away the terrors of the past night. His pride and his resentment nerved his habitual courage; and when, having hastily dressed himself, he rejoined Paolo, it was with a flushed cheek and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... regarded kindly at my non-appearance. So, stealing out of my hiding place I sauntered as composedly as I could along the corridor to come face to face with the officer, who with his guard was diligently searching every nook and cranny and cross-questioning the other passengers. Directly he caught sight of me he sprang forward, uttering a command. The next instant I was surrounded by soldiers. I ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... broods, one in October, and now again in December-January. The starling was not, therefore, deceived by the chance of mild weather; her own bodily condition led her to the nest, and had she been a robin or thrush she would have built one instead of resorting to a cranny. It is certain that individuals among birds and animals do occasionally breed at later periods than is usual for the generality of their species. Exceptionally prolific individuals among birds continue to breed into the winter. They are not egregiously deceived any more than we are by a mild interval; ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... of suspicion swelled and spread and penetrated into every cranny and level of society. No servants would come near the house, or if they did they soon stumbled on a copy of the shocker while doing the drawing-room, read it voraciously and rushed screaming out of the front-door. When he took a parcel of washing to the post-office ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... can forgive you, probably, but he cannot forget; we must leave that to women. And here we were, searching every nook and corner of the house, and every hole and cranny, for that dress-suit, which you'd poked away in tissue-paper and Chuddah, while you were enjoying yourself at ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... vttering many mumuring, broken, and imperfect speeches, as this Cicely did both heare and see, there being no other partition between the chamber wherein shee performed these rites, and the house of her maister with whom she then dwelt, but only a thin seeling of boord, through a cranny or rift of whereof she looked, listned attentiuely vnto her words, and beheld diligently her behauiour, and might haue seene and heard much more, but that she was with the present spectacle so affrighted, that she hastened downe in much ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... don't want along—fear. We will never get anywhere with that, nor with any of its uncles, aunts or cousins—Envy, Malice and Greed. In justice to our own best interests we should search every crook and cranny of our hearts and minds lest we venture forth with any such impedimenta. There is no excuse, and we have no one to blame if we allow any of them to journey along with us. We know whether they are there or not just as we would know Courage, Trust and Honor were they ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... expedient, and I know not how long I had been a prisoner when one day I fancied that I heard something near me, which breathed loudly. Turning to the place from which the sound came I dimly saw a shadowy form which fled at my movement, squeezing itself through a cranny in the wall. I pursued it as fast as I could, and found myself in a narrow crack among the rocks, along which I was just able to force my way. I followed it for what seemed to me many miles, and at last saw ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... a truth well known to most, That whatsoever thing is lost. We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right. The Retired ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... upon my torch. Faith 'twas a moving letter—very moving! His life in danger—no place safe but this. 5 'Twas his turn now to talk of gratitude! And yet—but no! there can't be such a villain. It cannot be! Thanks to that little cranny Which lets the moonlight in! I'll go and sit by it. To peep at a tree, or see a he-goat's beard, 10 Or hear a cow or two breathe loud in their sleep, 'Twere better than this dreary ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... blew with bitter keenness through every chink and cranny, roaring and whistling round the bare gray house, rattling the doors and windows with every angry gust. In the little parlour at the back of the house it was not heard so plainly. A bright fire burned in the grate, and the crimson curtains gave ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... were quietly serving their government, all unknown even to their own friends, and were collecting pieces of information and hints here and there that, in the end, were of great value. If the Germans had spies in every nook and cranny of our nation, so did we—business men, secretaries, cooks, doctors, and laborers. The Secret Service was everywhere. Again and again, when some devoted German was busily doing his duty to his Fatherland, an American ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... rendered accessible by the slope of fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's chair. Each girl perched herself there, and was complimented on her strong head and active limbs, and all their powers were needed in the long breathless pull up craggy stepping-stones, then over steep slippery turf, ere they gained the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... late afternoon, after a long period of inactivity and silence, that an inspiration came to Kendric. Meantime they had poked into every crack and cranny, they had scraped at any loose dirt on the ground, they had gone back and forth and up and down over every square inch of the place repeatedly. And Kendric thought that he had given up when the last idea came to him. He went quickly back to the boulder. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... searching through the house after Bunny. It was a good thing they took Sue with them, for she knew many "cubby holes" in which she and her brother often took turns hiding. And some of these even her mother had forgotten about, though Mrs. Brown thought she knew every nook and cranny of ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... go and fasten it," cried Tom, beginning to dress rapidly, and waking up more and more to the fact that a wild storm was raging. Every now and then, after a great deal of shrieking and howling, as if the wind was forcing itself through crack and cranny, there came a loud heavy bass booming sound, as a vast wave of air broke upon the house, making the windows seem to be on the point of falling in, while the slates upon the roof ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... and plucked an anemone blossom from a rock cranny. "Isn't it wonderful how brave they are? You wouldn't think they would have courage to grow up so fine and delicate among the rocks without any ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... feet upon the edge of the narrow causeway. It was a hazardous experiment, and the result of it startling, for there was a crash and a rattle, and Geoffrey remained clinging to the rock, with one foot in a cranny, while a mass of earth and timber slid down the steep-pitched slope and disappeared over the face of the crag. A hollow splashing rose suggestively from far beneath the rock. Helen, who had been too angry to notice the consideration for herself implied ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... awaiting her commands. The Prince was astonished exceedingly to behold this strange and wondrous spectacle, and said to himself, "An I should wander the whole world over for ten years or more and search in its every corner and cranny, I shall never find aught so rare and precious as this tube of ivory." Then quoth he to the broker, "The virtues of thy pipe I find are indeed those thou hast described, and right willingly I give to thee its price the thirty thousand Ashrafis." Replied the sales- man, "O my lord, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... had searched the boudoir from end to end. Her sharp eyes had not missed a cranny big enough to hide a pin, to say nothing of a rope of pearls or a large envelope with five red seals. Both the pearls and the envelope must have been stolen. Were there two ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... odds and ends in a drawer. Now little miss, being installed as housekeeper to papa, and for the first time in her life being queen—at least so she fancied—of all she surveyed, went to work searching every cranny, and prying into every drawer, and woe betide anything which did not come up to my idea of neat housekeeping. When I chanced across the drawer of scraps I at once condemned them to the flames. Such a place of disorder could not be tolerated ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... ranged the valley round, high and low, until we had visited, as we thought, every nook and cranny in it and then, much ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Prglitz village. The great Bishop was soon as bright and active as ever. By day he buried his tools in the ground; by night he plugged every chink and cranny, and applied himself to his labours. Not yet was his spirit broken; not yet was his mind unhinged. As his candle burned in that gloomy dungeon in the silent watches of the night, so the fire of his genius shone anew in those ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... are gone now. Certainly the trees have been cut away and the underbrush burned; cornfields cover the former scenes of valorous achievement; but none the less the woods are there; each nook and cranny is as it was, despite the cornfields. Scattered about the sad old earth live men who could walk blindfolded over the dam, across the millrace, around the bend, through the pawpaw patch to the grapevine home of the "Slaves of the Magic Tree;" who could find their trail under the elder ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... come true no less in the death." Then they betook themselves to a place without the city, where he builded him a mansion of solid stone and white stucco and stopped its inner walls and plastered them; leaving not therein or cranny or crevice, and he set in it two slavegirls whose services were sweeping and wiping, for fear of spiders. Here he abode with his wife a great while, till one day the man espied a spider on the ceiling and beat it down. When his wife ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton |
