"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasion of a New Year's day, when he went to pay his respects to the Jesuit Fathers, and to the good ladies of the Ursulines, to present, with the compliments of the season, the usual New Year's gifts, was he driven in a cariole, and in the summer season in a caleche? Here, again, is a nut to crack for commentators. [12] ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... are tall and square with thin glass sides. Imported from Holland, many were made as early as 1625. One gin bottle was miraculously unearthed intact, and not as much as a chip or crack was found on this 300-year-old ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... at all," he said. "I made it plain as a pikestaff to them both. It mustn't be thought I countenanced their crack-brained troth-plighting. 'T was by reason of my final 'Nay' that Will went off. He 's gone out of her life, and she 'm free as the air. I tell you this because you may have heard different, and you mix with the countryside and can contradict ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... not doubt but that such an old crazy vessel would be the better for being taken in tow. "But howsomever," added this arch adviser, "I'd have you take care of your upper-works; for if once you are made fast to her poop, egad! She'll spank it away, and make every beam in your body crack with straining." ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the shame of soldiers, Above the best of generals? crack the world, And bruise the name of Romans into dust, Ere we ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... the same body would be sinful waste, with one like the Sergeant's daughter in danger. I shall hold myself in resarve against accident, lest a fourth reptile appear, for one of your hands may prove unsteady. By no means fire until I give the word; we must not let the crack of the rifle be heard except in the last resort, since all the rest of the miscreants are still within hearing. Jasper, boy, in case of any movement behind us on the bank, I trust to you to run out the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... of our peppery little Captain!" cried Billington. "Some day thou 'lt see me take him between thumb and finger and crack him like a flea if he mells too much ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... rock. She opened the door and put the hot lid of the skillet on it to cool. Stood it up sideways. Then they heard a noise at that door. It was pegged. So she went along with the cooking. It wasn't late. He found a crack at the side of the stick and dirt chimney, put the muzzle of the gun in there and shot her through her heart. The man flew. She struggled to the edge of the bed and fell. The children was asleep and I was afraid to move. The moon come up. I couldn't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ANTI-DEAD CENTER FOR FOOT-LATHES.—A flat, spiral spring (A), with its coiled end attached to firm support (B), has its other end pivotally attached to the crank-pin (C), the tension of the spring being such that when the lathe stops the crack-pin will always be at one side of the dead-center, thus enabling the operator to start the machine by merely pressing the foot downwardly on the ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only my ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... serjeanty; for which, on Christmas day every year, before our sovereign lord the King of England, he should perform altogether, and at once, a leap, puff up his cheeks, therewith making a sound, and let a crack. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Like the crack of doom came the last gabbled utterance, and the croupier's rake descended sharply on a claw-like hand which was attempting to insinuate a coin on to the cloth "after ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... for me," he reflected. "Trevanion is always there, and any one can see he's madly in love with her. He bears one of the oldest names in England too, he's heir to an old title, and he's Captain in one of the crack regiments. And Nancy loves a soldier. She comes of a fighting race, and thinks there's no profession in the world worthy of being compared with ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Malachi; "for as soon as the boy hears the crack of the rifles, he will leave his prisoners, and join us; that I'm sure of. No, sir, the Strawberry can be left with the prisoners. I'll give her my ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... left off to trouble me. Oh methought Christ, Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes. I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green upon me, were yet but like those crack-groats, and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, while their gold is in their trunks at home. Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home. In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Further the Lord did lead me into the mystery ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... room was just opened, and in the crack I saw the face of Zinaida, pale and pensive, her hair flung carelessly back; she stared at me with big chilly eyes, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear what I've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all you're his daughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... some men there is no need now to dwell upon. By slow, imperceptible, certain degrees the evil gains upon them. Yesterday's sin smooths the path for to-day's. The temptation once yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a great hole which lets in a flood. It is easier to find a man who has never done a wrong thing than to find a man who has done it only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the crack of ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... thousands of peasants employed under our engineers in getting up some tremendous works some fifteen miles this side of Lisbon. I should not be surprised yet if Massena finds the chief a nut too hard to crack, with all his force." ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... million pounds in the last few years and expects to treble or quadruple its business this season if supplies can be secured. The trouble with most walnut cracking machines is that they crush instead of crack and small bits of shell are apt to stick to the meats. But there is machinery now to remove these bits of shell. There are wild black walnuts that run 16 to 18 per cent kernels, though the average ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... Cousin Rachel ten years ago," said Cecily, "and asked her if she might open the chest to see if the moths had got into it. There's a crack in the back as big as your finger. Cousin Rachel wrote back that if it wasn't for one thing that was in the trunk she would ask mother to open the chest and dispose of the things as she liked. But she could not bear that any one but herself should see or touch that one thing. So she ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... week I got one. Before I procured him I examined into the merits, and price, of about one hundred dogs. My dog was named Pete, but I determined to make a change in that respect. He was a very tall, bony, powerful beast, of a dull black color, and with a lower jaw that would crack the hind-leg of an ox, so I was informed. He was of a varied breed, and the good Irishman of whom I bought him said he had fine blood in him, and attempted to refer him back to the different classes of dogs from which he had been derived. But after I had had him awhile, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... rolling, coiled together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters, struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry, Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all the confusion and uproar, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fellow who was the crack sprinter of his town—somewhere in the South—was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress. One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... One day, however, he was in the furthest recess of his cave, when he felt that among the rocks a little thin wind blew constantly from one corner; and feeling about with his hands, he found that it came out of a small crack in the rocks. The stone above it seemed to be loose; and he perceived after a while that the end of the cave must be very near to the seaward face of the crag, and that the cave ran right through the rock, and was only kept from opening ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... within, the daughter of Petamounoph approached, though not a pebble cracked under her light step, nor a dog marked her presence by a bark. She went around the hut, pressing her hand to her heart and holding in her breath, and discovered, by seeing it shine against the dark ground of the clay wall, a crack wide enough to allow her glance to penetrate the interior. A small lamp lighted the room, which was less bare than might have been supposed from the outward appearance of the cabin. The smooth walls were as polished as stucco. On wooden pedestals, painted in various colours, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... closer, listening again, but when she heard a short groan mingled with the sobs, she immediately tapped on the door. Instantly the sobs ceased and the room became still. Kate put her lips to the crack and said in her off-hand way: "It's only a school-marm, rooming next you. If you're ill, could I ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... look of her eggs, apart from the fact that his mother would not permit him to buy them. Mrs. Dobbs used some artificial dyes which stained the eggshells a horrible purple or a less horrible red, and John had a feeling of sickness when he looked at them. Mrs. MacDermott said that if the eggs were to crack during the process of boiling, the dye would penetrate the meat and might poison anyone who ate it; and even if the shells remained uncracked, the dye would soil the fingers and perhaps soil the clothes. She wondered at ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... the post! Her heart-strings like to crack; For much she feared the grisly Ghost Would leap upon ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... is a very mean village in the United States—particularly in the South and West—that does not furnish one or more public billiard-tables; and among Americans may be found some of the most expert (crack) players in the world. The "Creoles" of Louisiana are ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... made the discovery that tri-nitro-cellulose, when combined with pyro-nitro-cellulose, could be much more readily gelatinated and made an excellent smokeless powder, while powder made from pure nitro-cellulose would warp and crack all to pieces in drying. The present German powder is made from such a compound ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... satisfaction of seeing at work among the squads of labourers several real kings, the Arabian chiefs who had been pursued and captured in the heart of the desert by Assur-bani-pal's generals; they plodded along under their heavy baskets, stimulated by the crack of the whip, amid insults and jeers. This palace was one of the largest and most ornate ever built by the rulers of Assyria. True, the decoration does not reveal any novel process or theme; we find ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... "The big thing the Legion's got to teach is Americanism and let those crack-brained fools know just what this country stands for." While still another injected, "The average 'long-beard' has been so crazed by persecution in Russia that he would mistake Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for a Siberian ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... photograph of himself at the age of thirteen, holding a puppy in his arms. He had given it to Anne on the last day of the midsummer holidays, nineteen hundred. Also he found a pair of Anne's slippers under the bed, and, caught in a crack of the dressing-table, one long black hair. This room leading out of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... hotel, and as he lay for a long time in the bathtub, letting the warmness drift away from the water, the thought ran over and over in his mind. They might be able to stay there, Allenby said to himself. They might be able to stay there. He smiled warmly at a crack in the plaster as he thought of the first of the week ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... messenger on horseback, And he must alarm the city: 'Put up quickly all your banners, Load your cannons for saluting, And erect an arch of honour!' Then we enter the next evening Through the ancient gate in triumph, And my whip I'll crack so loudly That the town-house windows rattle. Then I hear the aged Baron Asking sharply: 'What's the meaning Of these banners and this uproar?' From afar I shout already: 'Heaven's blessing rests upon us; Here a bridal ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... Annabel, inwardly raging, struggled to put a bold face on her defeat, Persis was busy with the gown she was resolved to make her masterpiece. The children were not allowed to enter the room where the work was progressing, though they sometimes took awe-stricken peeps through the crack at the mysterious, sheet-draped object suspended from hooks, and in the twilight taking on an aspect distinctly ghostly. It was necessary, too, to carpet the floor of the workroom with sheets when Diantha had a fitting, all of which ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... this dinner, this festival for the consummation and celebration of the betrothal of beautiful Laetitia and Laetitia's darling Harry. That sick dis-ease of hers had wonderfully vanished when she came into the house, when she was hugged fit to crack her to Aunt Belle's bosom with "Dear child! Dear child! He's just arrived! He's with your uncle downstairs. Look at Laetitia! Lovely! Isn't she lovely? Kiss me again, again, dear child!" When she was floated to by Laetitia, exquisitely arrayed, pink and white, doll-faced, doll-headed, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... pain. "Now you see you are where you ought to be," repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horsewhip over him, "and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads are ready for you with the darbies, and they'll clink them on in the crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first." They then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their hands (strait waistcoats being then little known or used), and showed, by their frightful countenances and gestures, no unwillingness to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... anything with Othello; that he were best to apply to the lady Desdemona to mediate for him with her lord; that she was of a frank, obliging disposition, and would readily undertake a good office of this sort, and set Cassio right again in the general's favour; and then this crack in their love would be made stronger than ever. A good advice of Iago, if it had not been given for wicked purposes, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bring you up to the point where I began to suspect," Ren continued. "I described the feeling I had that was something like watching a large chunk of the bank of a stream break away, starting first as a jagged crack in the turf, with it widening slowly at first, then faster, until the broken chunk becomes a separate THING, dissociated from the bank. It breaks away, drops into the stream—and vanishes; while the bank itself remains, enclosing and ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer, and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in metal and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at every wayside house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment for a draught from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... already had them. But an adult criminal who had the money to invest in robotic components, or went to the trouble to steal them, had something more lucrative in mind than street fights or robbing barrooms. To crack a bank, for instance, took a cleverly constructed, well-designed robot and plenty of ingenuity on the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dere, yo' sassy feller," he sputtered. "Ah jus' like to get one good crack at yo' an' Ah rip yo' side open. Don' yo' perambulate dis yer way again if yo' know what ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... that you are a penman, which means that you could be a forger; you have said that you are a mechanic, which means that you could crack a crib if necessary; you called yourself a druggist, which means that you know how to use the chemicals, and the poisons, too, if necessary; and you would not refuse to tackle a bank job if one should come your way. Do you happen to have the mark of ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... basement to Avrillia's kitchen. A smell of something delectable scorching enveloped them as they opened the door. And there beside the stove, all deliciously sticky and comfortable, lay Yassuh, fast asleep and half melted; while little wisps of smoke curled out of the crack between the oven and the door. The stove was almost as big as the tin one Jimmy had given Sara for Christmas, but much more massive and efficient-looking. On the table, looking so delicious that they made your mouth ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... partly 'polished after the similitude of a palace,' while much remains in the rough. The builders of these temples have mouldered away and their unfinished handiwork will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it centuries ago, till the crack of doom; but stones for God's temple will be wrought to completeness and set in their places. The whole threefold divine cause of our salvation supplies the measure, and lays the foundation for our hopes, in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to feel the presence of the nearest antagonist, whom he could by no means see; for he struck out with both bare, clenched fists, one after the other, with his weight behind each, and both blows landed. The sounds of their impact rang like pistol-shots, and beneath his knuckles he felt naked flesh crack and give. Something fell away from him with a grunt like a poled ox. And then, in an instant, before he could recover his poise, even before he knew that the turned-in stone of the emerald ring had bitten deep into his palm, he was the axis of a vortex of humanity. And he fought ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the midst of the longest winter night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen when the northern lights are shooting and blazing across the sky. Nor is this all. Wherever there ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... in taking any man's dollars unless I gave him something for it—something in the way of rolled gold jewelry, garden seeds, lumbago lotion, stock certificates, stove polish or a crack on the head to show for his money. I guess I must have had New England ancestors away back and inherited some of their stanch and rugged fear ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... the lip arises as a small lump, like a wart generally, on the lower lip in men from forty to seventy. Sometimes it appears at first simply as a slight sore or crack which repeatedly scabs over but does not heal. Its growth is very slow and it may seem like a trivial matter, but any sore on the lower lip in a man of middle age or over, which persists, should demand the immediate attention of a surgeon, because ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each other, the eyes of the press followed them with more persistent interest than it has ever followed the daily ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... Lord always,' says Paul. That is a hard nut to crack. I can fancy a man saying, 'What is the use of giving me such exhortations as this? My gladness is largely a matter of temperament, and I cannot rule my moods. My gladness is largely a matter of circumstances, and I do not determine these. How vain it is to tell me, when my heart is bleeding, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you; that's why I want to pin him first. I might hit him a good crack, but snakes are hard to kill, and he might throw his head about and bite even then, though I arn't quite sure even now that they don't sting with ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... child whom Grandma Padgett still held upon her lap, refused food and continued to demand her mother. She leaned against the old lady's shoulder seeing every crack in the walls, every dish upon the cloth, the lawyer who sat opposite, and the concerned faces of Bobaday and Corinne. Supper was too good to be slighted, in spite of Carrie's dangerous position. The man of the house was a Quaker, and while his wife stood up ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and was allowed to pass on with his charge. In less than a quarter of an hour they were at the Palazzo Saracinesca. Gouache made Faustina stand in the shadow of a doorway on the opposite side of the street and advanced to the great doors. A ray of light which passed through the crack of a shutter behind the heavy iron grating on one side of the arch showed that the porter was up. Anastase drew his bayonet from his side and tapped with its point against ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... philological trouble for which the Sanscrit could not afford at least a conjectural cure? A dictionary of that extremely venerable tongue is an ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hardest etymological nut. The Sanscrit name for the Lotus is simply Padma. The learned Brahmins call the Egyptian deities Padma Devi, or Lotus-Gods; the second of the eighteen Hindoo Puranas is styled the Padma Purana, because it treats of the "epoch when the world was a golden Lotus"; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... was a hard nut to crack then as now. As to Nero's edict, New York enacted it for its own protection ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... trees of their bark some years before they are felled, is as old as the time of Vitruvius, but is much less followed than it deserves, partly because the timber of trees so treated inclines to crack and split, and partly because it becomes so hard as to be wrought with ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the snake angry. He partly raised himself up and began to rattle, when K[)u]t-o'-yis cut him into pieces with his knife. Then he turned around and killed all his wives and children, except one little female snake, which escaped by crawling into a crack in the rocks. "Oh, well," said K[)u]t-o'-yis, "you can go and breed young snakes, so there will be more. The people will not be afraid of little snakes." K[)u]t-o'-yis said to the old woman, "Now you go into this snake's lodge and take it for yourself, and ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... a century of rule by France, Algeria became independent in 1962. The surprising first round success of the fundamentalist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) party in December 1991 balloting caused the army to intervene, crack down on the FIS, and postpone the subsequent elections. The FIS response has resulted in a continuous low-grade civil conflict with the secular state apparatus, which nonetheless has allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties. FIS's armed wing, the Islamic ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... had just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack. Her chairs were not meant for such usage. A shade fell over her rosy countenance as ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... succour was very seasonable, and compelled Hannibal to sound a retreat. The latter, as he was retiring, said, "That the cloud which had been long hovering on the summit of the mountain, had at last burst with a loud crack, and caused a mighty storm." So important and seasonable a service done by the dictator, opened the eyes of Minucius. He accordingly acknowledged his error, returned immediately to his duty and obedience, and showed, that ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... in the dimly defined shapes about him; his attention had been attracted by a crevice in the smooth rock ledge at his feet. This ledge, barren of vegetation, and as level as a slab of rough marble, showed a long black line like a crack in a stone pavement. At the man's feet the crevice was perhaps two feet wide, but as it stretched toward the west it narrowed gradually, and disappeared under a mass of disorganized stones, as a ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... these unwieldy vessels and away to the North? I'll lead thee to a better land than Egypt—a land of lake and mountain, and great forests of sweet-scented pine; ay, and find thee a girl fit to mate with—my own niece—a girl strong and tall, with wide blue eyes and long fair hair, and arms that could crack thy ribs were she of a mind to hug thee! Come, what sayest thou? Put away the past, and away for the bonny North, and be a ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... that relieve mild depression, increase energy and activity, and include cocaine (coke, snow, crack), amphetamines (Desoxyn, Dexedrine), phenmetrazine (Preludin), methylphenidate (Ritalin), and others ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the storm came the thud of torn branches striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... you," said Major Hunt-Goring, his eyes boldly passing her to rest upon Violet. "Managed to crack my thumb tinkering at my old motor. Dr. Wyndham tells me that you have been kind enough to ask me to lunch. How do you do, Miss Campion? Charmed to meet you! Someone told me you were ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely browned fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them crack the small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the oily marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole body. "Hin-hin-hin!" sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks across his red-painted cheeks. Smacking their lips, the ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... occupied almost the whole of the back seat, and Jo was squeezed into the crack which was left. Jan was perched on a sort of ledge, facing them. The carriage was narrow, six legs were two too many for the space. Jan's were the superfluous ones. He tried this pose, he tried that, but in spite of his contortions he endured much of the seven hours' ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Terry heard a sharp out-cry from one of the guards, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Whirling, he saw the brush on his right agitated by the movements of a figure that crashed unseen through the tangle of vegetation. Two soldiers flung themselves off their ponies and leaped in pursuit, pausing fruitlessly for sight of the fleeing ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... defect; was an insatiable and universal reader; meant for the Church, took to poetry and philosophy, became an author, putting forth the strangest books with the strangest titles; considered for a time a strange, crack-brained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon; was recognised at last as a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration; his writings procured him friends and fame, and at length a wife and a settled pension; settled ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was at least as dear to him as religion. And when he came au Caho',[1] he hadn't a word for a poor man. At Prairie du Pont he had built himself a fine brick house; the bricks were brought from Philadelphia by way of New Orleans. You have yourself seen it many a time, and the crack down the side made by the great earthquake of 1811. There he lived like an estated gentleman, for Prairie du Pont was then nothing but a cluster of tenants around his feet. It was after his death that the village grew. Celeste did not stay at Prairie du Pont; she was ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... strength. Now comes the culminating point, a truly terrifying moment, the very anguish of which frightened me, as I looked around for the lifeboat, and I saw that even the commodore's cold and self-satisfied dignity was disturbed. The hawsers strain again. Creak, crack! creak, crack! The lifeboat watches and comes nearer to us. There is a mighty yell. We cannot go! Yes, we can! There is a mighty pull, and you feel the boat almost torn asunder. Another mighty pull, a tremendous quiver of the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the passage—it is perfectly pellucid in meaning, rings on the ear like the crack of a rifle, is sonorous, rich, and swift. One can fancy the whole passage spoken by an orator; indeed it is difficult to resist the illusion that it was "declaimed" before it was written. We catch the oratorial tags and devices, the repeated phrase, the incessant antithesis, the alternate rise ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... a tin baking-sheet in the bottom of a pan, as without it the fish can not be easily taken up. Lay the fish on this; pour a cup of boiling water into the pan, and bake in a hot oven for one hour, basting it very often that the skin may not crack; and, at the end of half an hour, dredging again with flour, repeating this every ten minutes till the fish is done. If the water dries away, add enough to preserve the original quantity. When the fish is done, slide it carefully from the tin sheet on to a ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... could do this; and that with no rash potion, But with a ling'ring dram, that should not work Maliciously like poison: but I cannot Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress, So sovereignly being honourable. I ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... afraid to trust it, if it were not for the dogs. He can't crawl out between the logs, that much is certain; but the door is almost ready to drop from its hinges, and has a good deal of play back and forth behind the bar. If he had a thin, stout stick he could slip it through the crack, lift the bar and take ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... and wheeled in behind her, shooting steadily at the horde of men who poured in upon them, and, with a groan, Gaston seized her bridle and urged the horses back in the direction from which they had come. The noise was deafening, the raucous shouting of the Arabs and the continuous sharp crack of the rifles. Bullets began ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... in the evening, soon after he had waked up, Benjamin was positively ferocious. But the more he ate, the pleasanter he grew. And by the time faint streaks of light began to show in the east he could smile and crack a joke ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cut the lashings of the ship's long-boat and stayed there all the time, having put on board the nautical instruments, two or three fish-hooks, a gross of lucifer matches, and a sauce-pan. At last the storm struck the ship, as I have stated, and at the first crack away went the vessel to the bottom, leaving my grandfather floating alone on the surface of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... you tell him that his course is ruinous—ruinous to imbecility? If he thinks I am going to throw away a winter's work on that bill he's mistaken his man. It's taken me the whole session to get that measure through the legislature, and I'm not going to have it defeated now by any crack-brained moralist. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small fire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets. Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... thee hard, Ne'er may disease thy steps attend: Listen, ye gents; rude Boreas hold your tongue! The pomp advances, and my lyre is strung. First comes Marshal Thackeray, Dress'd out in crack array; Ar'nt he a whacker, eh? His way he picks, Follow'd by six, Like a hen by ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... rifle went up to his shoulder; there was a sharp crack, a dark figure leapt up from the snow fifty yards away and then fell headlong down again. It seemed to Tom almost magical. His eyes had been fixed in that direction for the last five minutes, and he could have sworn that ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Presently came the crack of an arquebus, and spattering sounds behind me told me where the shot had struck the water. I turned to swim upon my left side, and so I got a glimpse of the quay that I had left. By the hurried movement of torches, I saw that the body that had gone to ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... suffer hell so to prevail? My breast I 'll burst with straining of my courage, And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder, But I will ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... ashore; he went to the nearest house he saw and thumped on the door. There was no light to be seen, and for long there was no sound to be heard inside; but at last he heard the bolts drawn back. A white-faced woman peered at him through a crack. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... furious raids on the mob of spectators who pressed round the door, and stood with their eyes glued to every crack in the bark of which the hut was made. The next door neighbours on either side might have amassed a comfortable competence for their old age, by letting out seats for the circus. Every hole in the side walls had a human eye in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was well worth the labour. The silk skirt crackled and rustled and glistened with every movement; the new hat was perched on her head with all its ribbons and flowers nodding. She was now engaged in painfully forcing on a pair of lemon-coloured gloves, but suddenly there was the sound of a crack, and her smile changed to a ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... I trust in God that you are not all given over to "hardness of heart and reprobacy of mind." A word to the reader. Pass on—hear me through—never mind my harsh expressions and uncouth language. Truth is not very palatable, to any of us, at all times. Crack the nut; it may be that you will find a kernel within that will reward you ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... as a lesser evil than talking of the burglary in the street; and in my rooms I told him of his late danger and my own dilemma, of the few words I had overheard in the beginning, of the thin ice on which he had cut fancy figures without a crack. It was all very well for him. He had never realized his peril. But let him think of me—listening, watching, yet unable to lift a finger—unable to ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... which sends out flames and ashes from the tops of high mountains, or makes the solid earth tremble and crack, is at work also below the bed of the sea, and from time to time islands are raised there either slowly or by some sudden convulsion, just as we have also reason to believe that other islands are even now sinking ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... thump-pet-ty crack! In go the shoe-nails with many a smack. Zu! zu! pull the thread through; Soon will the shoe be, done, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... roared; and, as though at a thunder-clap, the velvet curtain split asunder: Patti-Patty was revealed on the stage, while the band played as if possessed. Lily, in the shadow of the wings, put her hand to her heart; her veins were ablaze. And that audience, at which she peeped through a crack in the scenery; that audience was hers, with its rustling silks, its bare shoulders, its diamonds, its flowers! She would have liked to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... private concern. But as that did not satisfy him, and as he seemed to be one of those quarrelsome fellows that are the bane of every community, I took him suddenly by the throat and the shoulder, and bent his neck with the old, quick turn till I heard it crack, and had unhanded him before any of his neighbours had seen what had befallen. The fierce press of the crowd held him from slipping to the ground, and so he stood on there where he was, with his head nodded forward, ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... alimentary canal, with constipation and much flatulence in the bowels. My teeth are decaying quickly, my nails have got softer, and I have become anaemic and generally debilitated, being unable to properly assimilate my food. All my joints crack when moved, and the knee joints creak as well. Is this a uric acid condition, or do you think it merely due to a lack of nourishment, causing a lack of synovial fluid? The joints are not swollen and not painful, they merely crack. My whole ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... later Virginia Page, sitting fully dressed in the darkness of her bedroom, got quietly to her feet and went to the door leading to her office. With wildly beating heart she stood listening, seeking to peer through the crack of the door she had left ajar. She had heard the faint, expected sound of some one ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... fired his big revolver in the air, and in another moment there was an echo of many shots, the sharp crack of the forty-fives mingling with the thunder of hoofs, the yells, and the clatter of ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well knew that he would not accomplish anything of the kind—knew well that he would wait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika lingered over her toilet till crack o' doom. He had no desire that was not centred in her. Take away his love for her, and what remained? Nothing—though only in the past twenty-four hours had this love been added to him. Ah, why had he ever seen her? He ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... was a fizz, a sharp hiss, a writhing worm of quick flame, and then came a fearful report that split the air like the crack of doom. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... tooth to know who they were.(137) [Looking around.] Where is my gun? I left it on a little bush. [On examining he finds the rusty barrel of his gun.] Hillo! [come up, here's a grab!](138) the unmannerly set of sharpers! stolen one of the best fowling-pieces that ever made a crack; and left this [worthless,](139) rusty barrel, by way of exchange! What will Dame Van Winkle say to this! By the hookey! but she'll comb my hair finely! Now, I went to sleep beneath that hickory;—'twas a mere bush. Can ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... such a ludicrous little thing; for, you see, the whole story turns upon nothing but a crack in ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... It was rather tight for me, and was much too small for him. He put it on, nevertheless, but with great difficulty, bursting all the seams. Saveliitch uttered something like a smothered howl, when he heard the threads crack. As for the vagabond, he was well pleased with my present. He re-conducted me to my kibitka, and said, with a profound bow: "Thanks, my lord, may god reward you. I shall ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... was sitting with his chin clasped in both palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introduction which the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when the door of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed open a crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons had gone out over the wire, and made him lift ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... perilous delight of this bad eminence, I was (again, I think, rather like the Arabian prince) forthwith plunged into the cellar; where I curled myself up on the upper step, close to the heavy door that had been locked upon me, partly for the comfort of the crack of light that squeezed itself through it, and partly, I suppose, from some vague idea that there was no bottom to the steps, derived from my own terror rather than from any precise historical knowledge of oubliettes and donjons, with the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the slow and ordinary action of natural powers. Leisurely movement is the eternal and universal law. And it is no use complaining; you cannot alter it. You cannot make a hen hatch her eggs in less than three weeks, do what you will. You may crack the shells, thinking to let the chickens out a little earlier; but you let death in, and the chickens never do come out at all. "The more haste the less speed." I have had proof of this more than once in my own experience. I once lived in a house terribly infested with rats, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... cautious steps, Toward the middle skates; They hear a crack! They cry, "come back To ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... mortar, and spread over the glass or stone retorts. The latter is made of pure clay and pounded stone-ware mixed together, and used in the same manner. This dries and hardens by the fire, so as to form a true supplementary retort capable of retaining the materials, if the glass retort below should crack or soften. But, in experiments which are intended for collecting gasses, this lute, being porous, is of ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... of that fireless, empty, forsaken house, where the winter sun shines in and creeps slowly along the floor; the bitter cold is in and around the house, and the snow has sifted in at every crack; outside it is untrodden by any living creature's footstep. The wind blows and rushes and shakes the loose window-sashes in their frames, while the padlock ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... gay bold tones, calling, "Up! up! my merry men, all! Let not the French dogs find the wolf asleep in his den. They will find our inner bartizan a hard stone for their teeth—and it will be our own fault, if they crack it before the coming of our brave comrades ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But that yon rosy maiden, early afoot, Is o'er her shoulder watching, with wild fear, A horned host that rushes by amain, Bellowing bassoon-like music. Angry shouts Of drovers, horrid menace, and dire curse, Shrill scream of imitative boy, and crack Of cruel whip, the tread of clumsy feet Are hurrying on:—but now, with instinct sure, Madly those doomed ones bolt from the dread road That leads to Brighton and to death. They charge Up Brattle ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... out, some fifty years before this, had become the property of a certain Mr. Armstrong, a civilian who had made a great fortune in the East, in an age when great fortunes were commonly made by East-Indian traders. His only son had been captain in a crack regiment, and had sold out of the army after his father's death, in order to marry Lady Laura Challoner, second daughter of the Earl of Calderwood, a nobleman of ancient lineage and decayed fortunes, and to begin ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... again, from one side street into another. Inside his head everything seemed to be going round, and at every step he felt as if it would crack. Suddenly he seemed to hear hasty but familiar steps behind him. Ellen! He turned round; there was no one there. So it was an illusion! But the steps began again as soon as he went on. There was something about those steps—it ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to say to the farmers about their farms, and seemed to know all their horses by name. There was an old fellow, with a round, ruddy face, and a night-cap under his hat, the village wit, who took several occasions to crack a joke with him in the hearing of his companions, to whom he would turn and wink hard ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... needs them water-holes in his business bad. Without 'em he loses the whole Round Top range. He might take a crack at turning the screws on ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... there was a loud crack, and the great limb of the cedar swept rattling down across his shutters, twisted, snapped off at the trunk, rolled over in the air, and striking the ground on its back, lay like a huge ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war behind, and the fight had made him as vicious as a wild cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and so says he to me, for I war right afore him, 'Git out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a crack at 'em!' And so I got out of his way, for I war mad at being called a damned big rascal, especially as I war doing my best, and covering him from mischief besides. Well! as soon as I jumped out of his way, bang went his piece, and bang went another, let fly ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... are none of us surprised when we find in our newspaper criticisms artiste, ballet, conservatoire, comedienne, costumier, danseuse, debut, denoument, diseuse, encore, ingenue, mise-en-scene, perruquier, pianiste, premiere, repertoire, revue, role, tragedienne—the catalogue stretches out to the crack ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... The clepsydrae that measure the centuries as they drop from the dizzy cliffs—the glaciers, by the descent of which "time is marked out, as by a shadow on a dial," and which thunder out the high noon of each revolving year with their frozen tongues, as they crack beneath the summer's sun—have registered a new centennial circle, and at the very hour of its completion, Switzerland vindicates her ancient renown in these fair pages, at once pledge and performance, of another of her honored children. May the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gazed where the Singing Mouse pointed, quite beyond the dusty walls, and there I saw as it had said. I heard not the thunder of the hoofs of buffalo, nor the faint crack of the twig beneath the panther's foot. I saw not the lurching gallop of the long-jawed wolf, nor the high, elastic bounding of the deer. The level swinging speed of the antelope, the slinking of the lynx, the crashing flight of the wapiti—no, it was none of these that came to mind; nor ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... eagerly; "Brandenstein, Schweppermann, and Heidenab brought the tidings. The Emperor received them at the gate of the citadel, where he was keeping watch ere he mounted his steed. He heard him call to the messengers, 'So our Heinz Schorlin will have a hard nut to crack.'" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brain in an instant moment, like things happen in a dream, and then he was brought up sudden and fell so light that he knew he weren't dead yet, but heard something crack at the same moment. And then Amos discovered he was on a rotten landing-stage of old timber, with the shaft hole above him and a head, outlined against the stars, looking down, and another hole extending below. He was, in fact, catched ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... It is a term which, under various titles, has been applied to every American patriot since our gran'- sires held the British lion up by the caudal appendage and beat the sawdust out of the impudent brute—since they appealed from a crack-brained king to the justice of heaven and wrote the charter of our liberties with the bayonet on the back of Cornwallis' buccaneers. Its synonym was applied to Thomas Paine, the arch-angel of the Revolution, whose pen of fire made independence imperative—who through ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
