"Boom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regarded by no less a theological expert than the Widow Weatherwax as "spiritoolly edifyin' and condoocive to grace." Drifting between cat-naps Shelby usually found it a fillip to the fancy. He would detect infant damnation and argument for sprinkling in the deep boom of the Presbyterian bell, and instant dissent in the querulous note of the Baptist, whose echo droned "i-m-m-e-r-s-i-o-n" to infinity. This was the cue for a jaunty flaunting of apostolic succession on the part of the Episcopalian sexton, only to be himself reminded by the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... was now in full swing. The grating British volleys, the ceaseless mill of independent firing, the sharp flash of the British guns, the fierce whirr of our French shells, the deep boom of Long Tom resounding through the valleys. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... Suddenly a dull boom was heard from somewhere, the exact direction could not be located. The next thing was a shrill whistle overhead, and then a most startling report. The first Spanish shell exploded about twenty feet above the surface of the ground, and about twenty yards in rear of the crest of the hill. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... don't you see, it's no use starting to-night—the last trains have gone long ago." As he spoke, the night wind bore across the square the sound of Big Ben striking the quarters in Westminster Clock Tower, and then, after a pause, the solemn boom that announced the first of the small hours. "To-morrow," thought Ventimore, "I'll speak to Mrs. Rapkin, and get her to send for a doctor and have him put under proper care—the poor old boy really isn't fit ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... vehicles] turnstile, turnpike; gate, portcullis. beaver dam; trocha[obs3]; barricade &c. (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne[obs3]; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c. 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock[obs3]. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance[obs3]; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, drag chain, drag weight; stay, stop; preventive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... eyes or affect absorption in her programme; she was looking at the stage. . . . As in "The Bomb-Shell," there came a sudden laugh, sharp as a dog's bark; it was followed by other single laughs, by a boom of throaty, good-tempered chuckling; and the whole house was warmer. Barbara did not laugh, but her white-gloved hands clapped like a child's. She stopped suddenly and touched George Oakleigh's arm, pointing ruefully ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... of him, I can quite believe it. So having met some years ago in Venice (D'Aubigne seemed frightfully amused at something that had happened in Venice) when Carville suddenly found himself able to command a large capital, he had D'Aubigne over, and between them they are going to boom a new long-distance machine. D'Aubigne's admiration of Carville almost amounts to worship. He told me that when Carville went over his place at Avranches, he spent about ten minutes looking over a monoplane, and then climbed into the seat. 'Set it away,' he said. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... miles below the city, might be seen senators and merchants, bankers and clergymen, digging parapets and hauling timber, in company with parties of soldiers and gangs of slaves. Heavy guns were mounted. A great boom was constructed across the stream. When the ships approached they were easily driven back, and men once more breathed freely in the streets of Richmond. The example of the "Unterrified Commonwealth," as Virginia has been proudly ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... appeared to hang in midair. His hand wavered, then clutched suddenly, and they saw a flash of metal, not the actual motion of drawing the gun. Just that gleam of the barrel at his hip, hardly clear of the holster, and then in the dimness of the big room a spurt of flame and the boom ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... that you're right," Vetch responded whimsically, "but you'll have to convince a few others of that, I reckon, before we begin to plan for the White House. First of all, you'll have to convince the folks that started the boom to make me Governor. It looks as if some of them were already thinking that ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... steaming up to St. Louis, glad to have slipped through safely. They were not quite through, however. Abreast of Jefferson Barracks they heard the boom of a cannon, and a great ring of smoke drifted in their direction. They did not recognize it as a thunderous "Halt!" and kept on. Less than a minute later, a shell exploded directly in front of the pilot-house, breaking ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as the drums—and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his restive legs: "Whoa, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" Then, waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud March! Halt! Carry harms!" He "carried arms." ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... and Vienna are put down by the military. There are bloody battles fought between the Austrians and the Piedmontese on the one hand, and the Germans and the Danes on the other; and, in a state of profound peace, the people of a British port hear from their shores the boom of the hostile cannon. The Emperor of Austria abdicates his throne, the Pope flees his dominions, and a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte is elected President of France. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the ebullitions of the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... intently; but there was not a sound to be heard but the distant boom of the breakers on the barrier reef, the beating of his heart, and the growling of the dog. Once only came a shrill chizzling chirping, evidently made by some kind of cricket, otherwise there was the stillness of a torrid day when the very ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... it twenty leagues behind us. And now, to make the ship as stiff as possible, I knocked down our after bulk-head, and got two of the boats under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... town hall ceremonies came to an end and the guard marched off. Then G. P. W. demolished the rifle-range, and ran a small branch of the urban railway uphill to the town hall door, and on into the zoological gardens. This was only the beginning of a period of enterprise in transit, a small railway boom. A number of halts of simple construction sprang up. There was much making of railway tickets, of a size that enabled passengers to stick their heads through the middle and wear them as a Mexican does his blanket. Then a battery of artillery ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... estate, and with a rude aristocracy building upon the blood of the sow and the tallow of the bull, its atmosphere discourages one artist while inviting another to rake up the showered rewards of a "boom" patronage. Feeling that naught but sleepiness and sloth should be censured, it resents even a kindly criticism. Quick to recognize the feasibility of a scheme; giving money, but holding time as a sacred inheritance. It is a re-gathering of the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... upon an outspread blanket; while a grizzled old sergeant, a God-fearing man, had drawn forth his well-worn pocket Testament, and was reading over again the familiar story of the Nazarene. The sullen boom of the great guns, deep, ominous, began to blend with the sustained rattle of musketry, telling plainly of heavy fighting by massed infantry; the smoke clouds, obscuring the blue sky, rolled high above the fringe of trees; the battle-line lying along the crest at our front ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... else. But our captain only laughed and ordered them from alongside. After cordially shaking hands with the captain and all the crew, Jack requested to be allowed to assist in clearing away the wreckage caused by the collision, and fixing the spare jib-boom, for that was the only spar carried away. Jack told us the pirates thought they had a soft thing on, as we seemed so undecided what to do, and that we could not have adopted a better move than we did. 'There is nothing frightens them like ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... jeers at their more powerful enemy who thus strove to avoid the conflict. Both vessels were under full sail; and the size of the schooner was beginning to tell, when, in jibing, she carried away her main boom. Nevertheless, she was so far ahead of the sloop that she was able to put into Holmes Bay, and take a spar out of a vessel lying there, before the sloop overtook her. But the delay incident upon changing the spars brought the sloop within range; ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... distress and providing as much work as possible through governmental agencies. Now I come to the links which will build us a more lasting prosperity. I have said that we cannot attain that in a nation half boom and half broke. If all of our people have work and fair wages and fair profits, they can buy the products of their neighbors and business is good. But if you take away the wages and the profits of half of them, business is only half as good. It doesn't help much if the fortunate half ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... population. Idle rich, the employees of the government, and tourists of all countries are missing. They leave a great emptiness. When you walk the streets you feel either that you are up very early, before any one is awake, or that you are in a boom town from which ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... feeling all the while as if I should like to be exactly over Walters' head and let myself fall right upon him, they went on to where Bob Hampton stood at the wheel, while I scanned eagerly the long boom of the mizzen-spanker, the great fore and aft canvas running off astern and towering up till it was all in darkness, for the lantern-light was only a poor gleam. Then Jarette began talking to Bob Hampton, but I could not and did not want to hear what the traitorous wretch said, feeling ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... native shore; and few, I fancy, have the disposition. As regards the opportunity, anchors are to be got in off the bows, and stowed; cables are to be unbent and coiled down; studding-gear is to be hauled out and got ready; frequently boom-irons are to be placed upon the yards, and the hundred preparations made, that render the work of a ship as ceaseless a round of activity as that of a house. This kept us all busy until night, when the watches were told off and set. I was in the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... kettles began to bubble cheerfully. The invaders contented themselves with building huge bonfires, intended for warmth rather than for cooking, since their light marching order precluded the carrying of anything more than cold rations. From far up the avenue came the boom of an ox-horn, militant, almost brazen in its sonority. A drum, beaten noisily, rattled back an impudent defiance from ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the boisterous, bold boom of the batteries of Metz. They seemed to speak in glorious wide-mouthed joy of Til Eulenspiegel and the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was an intolerable rending of woodwork. But, whatever the damage, the powerful hull rose triumphantly from the clutch of its assailant. Shattered streams of water poured off the decks like so many cascades. Loud above the splash of these miniature cataracts vibrated the tense boom of the fog-horn. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the pirate, five in number, pulled away in different directions, evidently with the intention of attacking the ship at different points. They were full of men armed to the teeth. While they rowed towards the ship the schooner resumed its fire, and one ball cut away the spanker-boom and slightly wounded two of the men with splinters. The guns of the ship were now brought to bear on the boats, but without effect, although the shot plunged into the water all round them. As they drew nearer a brisk fire of ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... at Bangor told me that the largest pine belonging to his firm, cut the previous winter, "scaled" in the woods four thousand five hundred feet, and was worth ninety dollars in the log at the Bangor boom in Oldtown. They cut a road three and a half miles long for this tree alone. He thought that the principal locality for the white-pine that came down the Penobscot now was at the head of the East Branch and the Allegash, about Webster Stream and Eagle and Chamberlain Lakes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... then the party halted at the edge of a thick jungle, lighted a fire, and began to cook. The prisoners were allowed to sit down with their captors. These were matchlock-men, on their way to join the forces besieging the Residency at Cawnpore, toward which town they had been making their way, as the boom of the guns sounded sharper and clearer every mile that they traveled. Ned gathered from the talk that their capture was the effect of pure accident. The party had sat down in the wood to eat, when they ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... noise of guns proclaimed that the engagement had begun. The boom of the cannon of the ships was answered by an incessant fire from the far more numerous artillery of the fortress, while now and then a heavy explosion, close at hand, told of the bursting of the bombs from the mortar vessels, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... which represented more the Civil War days than it did those of the boom times of silver mining, she seemed prettier than ever to Robert Fairchild, more girlish, more entrancing. The big eyes appeared bigger now, peeping from the confines of a poke bonnet; the little hands seemed smaller with their half-length gloves and shielded by ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... figure of one Peter Jackson who belonged in the brig Ceres. While running down the river from Calcutta she was thrown on her beam ends and Peter, perhaps dumping garbage over the rail, took a header. Among the things tossed to him as he floated away was a sail-boom on which he was swiftly carried out of sight by the turbid current. All on board concluded that Peter Jackson had been eaten by sharks or crocodiles and it was so reported when they arrived home. An administrator was appointed for his goods and chattels and he was officially deceased in the eyes ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... the use of the army, a flock of some thirty sheep, forty bushels of rice, some other provisions, tools, oars, and a little lumber, leaving all possible space for the bricks which we expected to obtain just below. I should have gone farther up the river, but for a dangerous boom which kept back a great number of logs in a large brook that here fell into the St. Mary's; the stream ran with force, and if the Rebels had wit enough to do it, they might in ten minutes so choke the river with drift-wood ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... For I heard the boom of a gun strike doom; And the gleam of a blood-red star Glared at me through the mirk and gloom From the lighthouse tower afar; And I held my breath at the shriek of death That came ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... tossed the handkerchief into Dona Juana's lap, and stared through the grating. Against the faded sky a huge cloud, shaped like a fire-breathing dragon, was heavily outlined. The smoky shadows gathered in the woods. The hoarse boom of the surf came from the beach; the bay was uneasy, and the tide was high: the earth had quaked in the morning, and a wind-storm fought the ocean. The gay bright laughter of women floated up from the town. Monterey had taken her ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... cowering over the wheel, obeyed, and the little vessel ran up the narrowing water—in which she had become involved—on an even keel. The crew were already on their feet, they had loosened the sheet, and squared the boom; they stood by to lower the yard. All—the skipper with a grim face—stood looking forward, as the inlet narrowed, the green banks closed in, the rocks that fringed them approached. Silently and gracefully the sloop glided on, more smoothly with every moment, until ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... blasts, or to the long tail of a grey courser at furious speed. Through the profusion of long silvery threads or hairs, or what looked such, I could here and there see the black sides of the crag down which the Rhyadr precipitated itself with something between a boom and a roar. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... to-morrow," and again covering his eyes with his hand, he resumed his attitude of meditation. Night came. One by one the stars came out. The moon rose brilliantly in the cloudless sky. The soldiers moved with noiseless footsteps, and spoke in subdued tones. The rumbling of wagons and the occasional boom of a distant gun alone disturbed ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... task was to boom my scheme by successful advertising, and with this in view I persuaded Gottlieb to issue free policies to a dozen or so of the worst rascals that he knew. Naturally it was not long before one of them was arrested for some offence, and Gottlieb as ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... ammunition-belts high, and wriggled their hips against the butting force of the stream. It all became very business-like. The battalion first across, set out to flank the native works; a rapid-fire gun started to boom from an opposite eminence, and the infantry took to firing at the emptying trenches. The Tagals were poked out of their positions, and in a sure leisurely way that held ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... seemed sometimes as if he had always been here, splashing along in the mud, soaked with rain, sleeping in muck at night, never quite dry, never free from cold and discomfort, never quite clean, always training, the boom of the battle afar, but never getting there. Where was the front? Why didn't they get there and fight and ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... federal captives had been held. Instantly the sectional hatred flared up and Blaine, already a well-known leader, became a prominent candidate for the nomination. Republican reformers generally favored Bristow. A third-term boom for Grant was effectively crushed by an adverse ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and listened, and wondered. She would not move to get up and look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the boom of a ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... showers, but in a sidelong, terrifying torrent, drenching, biting, cutting in its violence. The swift weight of the rain gave to the trees more burden than they could bear. As before the storm, when all was still, there had come time and again the warning boom of a falling tree, stricken with mysterious mortal dread of that which was to come, so now, in the riot of that arrived danger, first one and then another wide-armed monarch of the wood crashed down, adding with its downfall to the testimony of the assailing tempest's strength and fury. The lightning ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... down from sheer fatigue, in that cool hour which precedes the dawn. It happened to be the steps of a church. She fell into a doze, was startled back to consciousness by the deep boom of the bell in the steeple; it made the stone vibrate under her. One—two—three—four! Toward the east there shone a flush of light, not yet strong enough to dim the stars. The sky above her was clear. The pall of smoke rolled away. The air felt clean and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... now. After the logs had rested in the log "boom," they went on their way to the saw mills, where they were sawed into lumber to build houses; and then the father ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... unprepared for this movement, nor were the resources of science unequal to the occasion. We had surrounded the William Wilberforce with a belt, or cordon, of torpedoes, and as each of the assaulting boats touched the boom, a terrible explosion shook the water into fountains of foam, and the waves were strewn with scalded, wounded, and mutilated men. Meanwhile, we bombarded the city and the harbour, and the night passed ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... to fearful violence, and sometimes the wind sounded like sheets flapping against the walls, sometimes like the deep boom of the waves that roll on themselves in mid-ocean and never know a shore. It began to groan in the chimney as if it were a wild beast struggling to escape, and then the smoke came down in whorls and filled ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... tranquil existence of the maiden ladies. One day at the end of the first summer, an easterly day, when the sky was beginning to be obscured by scud and the sea was swelling with the approach of a storm, Dan Anderson, the only son of his father, was knocked overboard by the boom while showing the heels of his thirty-foot knockabout to the hired boat of his neighbor, Miss Mabel Ripley. They were not racing, for his craft was unusually fast, as became a multi-millionaire's plaything. Besides, he and the girl had merely a bowing acquaintance. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... centre of the Nation, had gone mad with the insane passion for money at all hazards—by all means, fair or foul. The Nation was on the tidal wave of the most wonderful industrial boom in its history. The price of stocks had reached fabulous figures and still soared to greater heights. Millionaires were springing up, like mushrooms, in a night. Waiters at fashionable hotels, who hung on the chairs of rich guests with more than usual fawning, were boasting of fortunes made ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... of the ticking of a clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. There was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen boom came floating ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... flash with intolerable brilliancy, and immediately would follow the thunder with a rattling leap as if springing from its lair, and then with a deafening, awful weight, as if it had fallen and been splintered into pieces in the sky. Then would re-open the steady deep boom of the rain, and the stern rushing of the chainless wind. At length the air became clearer—the lightning glared at less frequent intervals—the thunder became more rolling and distant, and the tramp of the rain upon the roof less ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a torrent falling in a glen Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split; The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it All made a magic symphony; but when I thought upon the coming of hard men To cut those patriarchal trees away, And turn to gold the silver of that spray, I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then Did wake me ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the fleet was arranged in a semicircle some miles out to sea from the entrance to the strait. It afforded an inspiring spectacle as the ships came along and took up position, and the picture became most awe-inspiring when the guns began to boom. The bombardment at first was slow. Shells from the various ships screaming through the air at the rate of about one ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... fine rich voice came to her from a long way off. Let him boom as loudly as he pleased, he could not touch her any more. She had escaped, and for ever. She saw, then, Morris as she had seen him at that tea-party months ago. She recovered that strange sense that ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... critic, and much that passed as tolerably good taste when it fell in with the fashion, looks hopelessly vulgar when the tide of popularity has retreated. Miss Greenaway's work appears as refined ten years after its "boom," as it did when it was at the flood. That in itself is perhaps an evidence of its lasting power; for ten or a dozen years impart a certain shabby and worn aspect that has no flavour of the antique as a saving virtue to atone for ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... a syndicate from Chambersburgh are thinking of locating a big shoe factory here. If they do that, Westville will have a boom." ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... is't the splendor of the song the kiddies sing, Or the whipping of the flags aloft that sets your heart a-swing? Is't the cheering like a paean of the toss- ing, teeming crowds, Or the boom of distant cannon flatly bumping ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... dollars for a map showin' the location of the Lost Injun mine, from a paralytic partially roomin' at the Inter-Cosmopolitan Hotel. The Inter-Cosmopolitan had got pretty near finished, when the boom exploded with a ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... The boom of the river sank and rose as the passage twined. Soon I saw a gleam of light ahead which was not the moon. It grew larger, until suddenly the roof rose and I found myself in a gigantic chamber. So high it was that I could not make out anything of the roof, though the place was brightly lit with ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... they fell in play and the furious scratching of the adjutant-general's pen as he turned off countless pages of words without sense were the only sounds heard. No—there was another: at long intervals the distant boom of a heavy gun, followed by the approaching rush of the shot. The ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... vulgar irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much compunction for my behavior by the ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... know"; and he finds a blue woollen shirt,—for the boy is of good height for his years,—and a foremast hand shortens in a pair of old duck trousers for him, in which Reuben paces up and down the deck, with a mortal dread at first lest the boom may make a dash against the wind and knock him overboard, in quite sailorly fashion. The beef is hard indeed; but a page or two out of "Dampier's Voyages," of which an old copy is in the cabin, makes it seem all right. The shores, too, are changing from hour to hour; a brig drifts within hail ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... got far from the laboratory door when he felt a sudden jar and a rush of air, and then followed the dull boom of an explosion. Like an echo ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... "Stumbling all around, stumbling all around, stumbling all around so funny—" Close-packed the couples moved slowly about the gymnasium, body pressed tight to body, swaying in place—boom, boom, boom, boom—"Stumbling here and there, stumbling everywhere—" Six dowagers, the chaperons, sat in a corner, gossiped, and idly watched the young couples.... A man suddenly released his girl and raced clumsily for ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... taking his aim, and preparing to draw the trigger, I turned round my back, not being able to stand it, and brizzed the flats of my hands with all my pith against the opening of my ears; nevertheless, I heard a faint boom; so, heeling round, I observed the miserable bleeding creature lift her head, and pulling up her legs, give them a plunge down again on the divots: after which she lay still, and we all saw, to our satisfaction, that death had come ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... go near Washington. It was the time of Kansas City's great boom. He went there and bought up city lots, and sold out at the right time, and that's why he's rich today. In the meantime, the Indians didn't know what had become of him, and Red Feather's daughter died from shame over her desertion—just pined away and hid herself from her people till she was starved ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... But the waistcoat was of the old pattern and the top button loose, as usual. The Colonel earned his living—and a very comfortable one it was—by promoting various enterprises—some of them rather shady. He had also a gift for both starting and maintaining a boom. Most of the Mukton stock owned by the Southern contingent had been floated by him. Another of his accomplishments was his ability to label correctly, with his eyes shut, any bottle of Madeira from anybody's cellar, and to his credit, be it said, he never lied about the quality, be ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... bundles had hit the right spot. Ammunition went off with a dull boom that shook the ground, and the light was too bright to look into. I went flat and so did the others; I wondered about solid shells exploding and going wild, but there weren't any. The light faded, and then it ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... At periodical intervals a boom in cattle-country arises in the cities, and syndicates are formed to take up country and stock it. It ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... dashed with a vehemence equal to a heavy surf breaking against cliffs. It had undermined this lava cliff, and for a space of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet the lava beat and surged into glaring, red-hot, cavernous depths, and was repelled with a dull, heavy roar, not exactly like the boom of breakers, because the lava is so much heavier than water, but with a voice of its own, less resonant, and, as we who listened thought, full of even more ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... last look at the spot where I had spent nearly sixteen months, on which I shall always look back with kindly memories. Clinging to the rough railing, and walking quickly over the floating logs, we were soon across the boom in Lake Deception, and over the first short portage to Lake Beau-Beau—or "Champagne Charlie" Lake—a beautiful sheet of water, with several pretty islands, along whose southern shore the Canada ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... spread out, and covered considerable ground, for it had taken on quite a building boom during the last few years, when new enterprises were started, and more ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... was the lap of the water at her side, Or the pounding of the launch as she rode at her boom? The groan of the anchor as she swung with the tide, Or the blowing off steam, which demanded ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! 375 How could poet ever tower, If his passions, hopes, and fears, If his triumphs and his tears, Kept not measure with his people? Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves! 380 Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple! Banners, adance with triumph, bend your staves! And from every mountain-peak Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... this to write them a novel of adventure! What MORE can you want? Oh!" she exclaimed impatiently, "that's so like you; you would tell everybody about your reverses, and carry on about them yourself, but never say a word when you get a little boom. Have you an idea for a thirty-thousand-word novel? Wouldn't that diver's ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... resources, and the economy depends heavily on lobster fishing, offshore banking, tourism, and remittances from emigrants. In recent years the economy has benefited from a boom in tourism. Development plans center around the improvement of the infrastructure, particularly transport and tourist facilities, and also light industry. GDP: exchange rate conversion - $23 million, per capita $3,300; real growth rate 8.2% (1988 ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... record of a mid-western land boom, with Illinois land at six dollars an acre, tells the story of everything that was to follow. Even in 1832 there was not enough of the good land to go around. Already the community was dividing itself into two ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... Madness in the Room Where last week's Lion had his little Boom Ourselves must go and leave that flattering Din And let them brew another ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... had been up in the woods logging all winter on the Snake River. The logs were all in Cross Lake in the boom waiting for a rain to carry them down to the boom at St. Croix. There was a tremendous amount of them, for the season before, the water had been so low that it was impossible to get many out and we had an unusual supply just cut. One day in May, there was a regular ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... she roared along in fine style. In two hours the vessel was putting her lee rail nearly under, and a single sharp squall would have hove her down, so the hands were called up to reef her. Joe was out on the boom, getting the reef-earrings adrift, when the first of the chapter of accidents came. A man sang out, "Look out for a drop o' water!" and a black mountain smashed over the Esperanza in an instant after. Joe saw the third hand slip, and the next second the man was whisked overboard. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... seemed less boisterous for a few seconds, and the thunder ceased. We listened breathlessly for the loud boom we had just heard, but it was not repeated. In a moment afterwards our ears were startled by the most terrifying combination of screams, shrieks, cries, and wailings I had ever heard. My blood seemed chilled ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... of starvation. Perhaps the example of humanity set to them by General Hamilton was not without its effect, for kindness and cruelty seem equally contagious in time of war. Kirke's squadrons at last passed the forts, broke the boom, and relieved the garrison, who could not have held out forty-eight hours longer. It was suspected that English gold had procured their admittance, and that the officers who commanded the forts were bribed to let them pass unscathed. The siege ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... nothing of the shellfish about her; she's a live woman, as well as a mighty pretty one, and she cares enough about you to keep you awake and in the game. I congratulate you, Kent, and I'm almost as happy as you are. Also I shall play the optimist at our next directors' meeting; I see signs of a boom in the literature factory. Go to it, my son. You have ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... true. Before one could count five there broke upon the stillness the swelling rush and tramp of an approaching multitude of men and horses, with hoarse cries of command; and then out of the distance came the muffled deep boom!—boom-boom!—boom! of cannon, and straightway that rushing multitude was roaring by the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... after dinner the rigger came to do his part of the work. Samuel Rodman was now so much interested in the progress of the labor on the new yacht, that he spent nearly all his time on board of her. The top mast, gaff, and boom were all ready to go into their places, and the Maud looked as though she was nearly completed. All the members of the Yacht Club were impatient for her to be finished, for the next regatta had been postponed a week, so ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... bell was suspended by order of the Emperor, and expectation was at its height to hear it rung for the first time. The Emperor himself was present. The bell was struck, and far and near was heard the deep tone of its sonorous boom. This indeed was a triumph! Here was a bell surpassing in size and sound any other that had ever been cast! But—and the surrounding multitudes were horror-struck as they listened—the heavy boom of the bell was followed by a low wailing sound like the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the burning factory, smoke issued from between the tiles of the roof and rolled out of the open windows of the first story. Within the fire rumbled and crackled. There was a slow groaning sound, that turned into a rolling and crashing, and ended in a dull boom. Smoke, sparks, and flames issued in torment out of all the openings of the house. And then the flames began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and redoubled clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the first floor ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Manchester, and to the cotton and silk industries of Lancashire generally, the tragedy of France meant on the whole a vast boom in trade. So many French rivals crippled—so much ground set free for English enterprise to capture—and, meanwhile, high profits for a certain number at least of Manchester and Macclesfield merchants, and brisk wages for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their looms of dark kamooning wood each week keep them supplied with their one article of dress—the sarong. They never heard of the Bible, but they are very religious, and at sunrise and sunset, at the deep-toned boom of the hollow log that hangs before their little thatched mosques, they fall on their faces and pray to "Allah, the All ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... born in Jamestown. There may have been others, but as to that I am not sure. It was a great lift for that little village to have my parents come there. It was hoped that they would stay, so that it would become a city. It was supposed that they would stay. And so there was a boom; but by and by they went away, and prices went down, and it was many years before Jamestown got another start. I have written about Jamestown in the "Gilded Age," a book of mine, but it was from hearsay, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... over the situation, and hearing that a manufacturing boom was on in Cleveland, he thought it might be wise to try his luck there. If he succeeded, the others might follow. If Gerhardt still worked on in Youngstown, as he was now doing, and the family came to Cleveland, it would save Jennie from ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... were illy prepared for the trying ordeal through which they were to pass. I had not proceeded more than two miles, at the head of the column, before I was informed that the rear guard had been attacked, and just at that moment I heard the boom of artillery in the rear of the column. I had previously learned that the gap through which we were passing was easily flanked by gaps through the mountains, both above and below; consequently, I sent orders to the rear to hold ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... flashing through the gloom, Which robes the cannon as he wings a tomb, Had ceased; and sulphury vapours upward driven Had left the Earth, and but polluted Heaven: The rattling roar which rung in every volley Had left the echoes to their melancholy; No more they shrieked their horror, boom for boom; The strife was done, the vanquished had their doom; The mutineers were crushed, dispersed, or ta'en, Or lived to deem the happiest were the slain. 10 Few, few escaped, and these were hunted o'er The isle they loved beyond their native ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... spoke, the low boom of a far distant gun was heard. Montague started, and glanced inquiringly in the face of his companion, whose looks expressed a slight ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... used as a tavern. All the windows were wide open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking. He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect, when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidrigailov, sitting at a ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Kukin was detained in Moscow. He wrote he would be back during Easter Week, and in his letters discussed arrangements already for the Tivoli. But late one night, before Easter Monday, there was an ill-omened knocking at the wicket-gate. It was like a knocking on a barrel—boom, boom, boom! The sleepy cook ran barefooted, plashing through the puddles, to open ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... calm!—a calm that rested not only on the sea, but also on the spirits of the voyagers, as the vessel slipped through the waters, gently bending over every now and then as the wind slightly freshened, and almost dipping her studding- sail boom into the sea, which glittered in one long pathway of quivering moonbeams, while every little wave, as far as the eye could reach, threw up a crest of silver. The captain stood near the binnacle. He was giving a lesson in steering to Jacob Poole, who felt very proud at taking his place at the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... affairs were going on upon the ship, the southern horizon was lit up again and again by vivid flashes. It appeared to sink into a deeper gloom afterward, but in another moment we heard the distant boom of thunder. Before we could get the topgallantsail set there was a blinding flash off the bow-port, followed by a deep rolling peal of thunder. I was standing in the waist and sprang ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... the boat for the next five minutes, as the boys sat with their heads bent down. More than one choking sob might have been heard, had the wind lulled, as they thought of the dear ones at home. Suddenly there was a flash of light ahead, and the boom of a gun directly afterwards came upon their ears. Then a rocket soared up ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Crack! Crack! Boom!—rifle fire and cannonade. Above us and all around, it crackles and rolls, in long gusts or separate explosions. The flaming and melancholy storm never, never ends. For more than fifteen months, for five hundred days in this ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with a shameless, resolute boom! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... York evening paper was some of the material of which the "atmosphere" on shore was composed:—"Stunned by the terrific impact, the dazed passengers rushed from their staterooms into the main saloon amid the crash of splintering steel, rending of plates and shattering of girders, while the boom of falling pinnacles of ice upon the broken deck of the great vessel added to the horror.... In a wild ungovernable mob they poured out of the saloons to witness one of the most appalling scenes possible to conceive.... For a hundred feet the bow was a shapeless mass of bent, broken ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... stop. There ought to be a clear view, but it is evening—because of the bad weather and because the sky is full of black things and of chemical clouds with unnatural colors. Storm is blended with war. Above the fierce and furious cry of the shells I heard, in domination over all, the peaceful boom of thunder. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the deep boom of a gun announced to the city that the great battering cannon had begun their work. In the fort the sleeping knights sprang to their feet at the concussion that seemed to shake it to its centre. They would have rushed ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... the thudding of hooves on the ground. He rose, dizzy and unnerved, to see the dim shapes of some cattle that had gathered down about the place from the upland. He felt the rain beating upon his face, the clothes hung dank and clammy to his limbs. His boots soaked and slopped when he stepped. A boom of thunder sounded overhead and a vivid flash of lightning lit up for an instant a great elm tree. He saw all its branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke in upon ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the boom of water rolling in and rolling out again, with the regularity and rhythm of an organ swell, but he caught an echo of something else besides, which piqued his curiosity and provoked him to a touch of unusual excitement,—it was the sweet and apparently quickly suppressed sound of a woman's ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Wheel, as she spun round and round. Boom! Boom! went the Roman Candle. Then the Squibs danced all over the place, and the Bengal Lights made everything look scarlet. "Good-bye," cried the Fire-balloon as he soared away, dropping tiny blue sparks. Bang! Bang! answered the Crackers, who were enjoying themselves immensely. Every ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... Boom! Boom! Boom, boom, boom! The drums beat, and away marched the three companies forming the Colby Hall battalion. They marched around the school building, as was the custom, and then marched into the place, put away their rifles, and entered ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... and speckled teals; Ye fisher herons, watching eels; Ye duck and drake, wi' airy wheels Circling the lake; Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels, Rair for his sake. [Boom] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... finest and most perfect use of machinery, I have come to think, is this one the soul has, this awful, beautiful daily joy in its presence. To have this communion with it speaking around one, on sea and land, and in the low boom of cities, to have all this vast reaching out, earnest machinery of human life—sights and sounds and symbols of it, beckoning to one's spirit day and night everywhere, playing upon one the love and glory of the world—to ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... somewhere unseen and high above, there was a sudden roar, a terrific crash, then a rushing sound, followed by a dead silence of a few seconds, and then the earth seemed to receive a quivering blow, resulting in a boom like that of some monstrous gun, and the noise now ran up the valley, vibrating from side to side, till it died away ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the positive answer. "Boom—book—crk!" was the graphic description of the crash she added as she squirmed back among the violets and the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Shandon, sitting very still and tense and erect, his eyes upon the form of a girl, his life in Little Saxon's keeping, had essayed the thing that no one had expected even Red Reckless to do. The white froth of the water flashed under them, the jagged rocks menaced, the boom of the river deafened them. As he had leaped before, that first day when Shandon and Big Bill had come upon him, Little Saxon leaped now. And as he landed his hind feet sent a rattle of stones down into the hungering ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... afterward another smaller one to Potosi, a little village four or five miles to the northward of Rivas, bearing orders to Captain Finney's rangers, who had gone to scout in that direction. The rest of us ate supper, and then lay listening for the boom of the little field-piece, which should tell us that the rifles had met the enemy. But the extraordinary toils and watchings of the last fortnight were too overpowering, and we were all soon buried ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... painted water when The Aloha cast anchor. In the late light the rugged sides of the island had an air of almost sinister expectancy. There was a great silence in their windless shelter broken only by the boom and charge of the breakers and the gulls and choughs circling overhead, winging and dipping along the water and returning with discordant cries to their crannies in the black rock. Before the yacht, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... was done by the month. Buildings were rented by the month; money was loaned by the month; ten per cent per month was the regular interest. There was but one bank, called the Miners', on the corner of the plaza, owned by three parties. During my absence a great boom had taken place—influenced by new arrivals and most favorable news from the gold mining sections. This was the fall of 1849. The lots that I had thought of trading six of my houses for had tripled in value, but lumber was still bringing fabulous ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... David Betts, William Birdsley, Johiel. Beardsley, Josiah Barnum, Zadoc Burret, Daniel Barley, Abigail Boult, John, Junr. Billings, Increase Brush, Thos., Esq. Bosworth, Nathanael Beach, David Bump, Stephen Bowdy, Nathanael Bennet, Henry Brush, Thomas, Junr. Beardsley, Nehemiah Boom, Sarah Burdick, Ephraim Brown, Joseph Burtch, Nathanael Bull, Abraham Brownell, William Barlow, David Bass, Thomas Burrett, Israel Burtch, Increase Birchard, Jonathan Beers, James Brayton, Gideon Burdick, Nathan Brady, William Bostwick, Ichabod Botheford, ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... tantalized in their distress; for they had the mortification to see some ships which had arrived with supplies from England, prevented from sailing up the river by the batteries the enemy had raised on both sides, and a boom with which they had blocked up the channel. At length a reinforcement arrived in the Lough, under the command of general Kirke, who had deserted his master and been employed in the service of king William. He found means to convey intelligence to Walker, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... side of the lake, the thunder rolled up, and with the distant boom came the thought of Lafe's infinite faith, and the memory fell upon Jinnie like a benediction ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... that nothing more could be done that night, and that he would telegraph in the morning to Scotland Yard for some detectives to be sent down immediately. Just as they were passing out of the dining-room, midnight began to boom from the clock tower, and when the last stroke sounded they heard a crash and a sudden shrill cry; a dreadful peal of thunder shook the house, a strain of unearthly music floated through the air, a panel at the top of the staircase flew back with a loud noise, and out on ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... sloop's deck was perpendicular, we had unbent the boom- lift from below, made it fast to the wharf, and, with the other end fast nearly to the mast-head, heaved it taut with block and tackle. The lift was of steel wire. We were confident that it could stand the strain, but we doubted the holding-power ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London |
