"Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorry that we have to part, my men," he said at last in a crackling voice. "It's a bad day for all of us, and for Brisport too. For three years we have been losing money over the works. We held on in the hope of a change coming, but matters are going from bad to worse. There's nothing for it but to give it up before the balance ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... misdirected, in slavery to popular passion or childishness, and spend itself, at its sweetest, in idle melodies, cold and ephemeral (like Michael Angelo's snow statue in the other art), or else in vicious difficulty and miserable noise—crackling of thorns under the pot of public sensuality—still, the attainment of this power, and the maintenance of it, involve always in the executant some virtue or courage of high kind; the understanding of which, and of the difference between the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... elder-bushes all about the mountain. I myself and my daughter Mary stayed to guard the little children, because it was not safe there from wolves. We therefore made a blazing fire, sat ourselves around it, and heard the little folks say the Ten Commandments, when there was a rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" [Our author afterwards explains the learned education of the maiden.] But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... drop of it in filter paper. If it is nitro-glycerine it will make a greasy spot. If the paper is now placed upon an iron anvil, and struck with an iron hammer, it will explode with a sharp report, if lighted it burns with a yellowish to greenish flame, emitting a crackling sound, and placed upon an iron plate and heated from beneath, it ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... me great satisfaction to hear that the pig turned out so well, [1]—they are interesting creatures at a certain age; what a pity such buds should blow out into the maturity of rank bacon! You had all some of the crackling—and brain sauce; did you remember to rub it with butter, and gently dredge it a little just before the crisis? Did the eyes come away kindly, with no Oedipean avulsion? Was the crackling the color of the ripe pomegranate? Had you no ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the thick trees where the shadow lay deepest was the work of a moment. She stood and watched. But the underbrush was dense, and the crackling which she made attracted the man's attention. He stopped for a moment, and then rushed straight toward ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... interject phrases or opinions into the "discourse," or replying in an animated strain. They listened with intelligent seriousness to what he had to say, weighed it apparently, replied to it with gravity, responded to some jest with a smile; but, although they were not people to approve of crackling thorns under a pot, or any form of folly, they were, in their way, appreciative of the culture, humor, and insight he showed. Mr. Aglonby begged to be favored with his "observations" on America, and added ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... short, crackling laugh. "Nevertheless, I shall go on with my story. I came home a few hours ago. My wife told me that Angelot was safe with his uncle at Les Chouettes." The General started violently, but neither of them noticed him. "We went there together, and found that the boy was gone ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... his knees gripped the low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... sicknesses, drying tears and giving back dear ones to mourners. He is as complete a contrast to his stern, solitary, forceful predecessor, as the 'still small voice' was to the roar of the wind or the crackling hiss ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... went out, and the stinging blast that swept in through the open door smote a smoky smear across the blinking lamp and roused a sharper crackling from the stove. Then one returned with the kettle and there was silence, when the fusty heat resumed its sway. Now and then a tired trooper murmured in his sleep, or there was a snapping in the stove, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the boys about him, straining their eyes to see the patches of fire which were visible here and there. Suddenly these patches seemed to merge and make the night lurid with a red glare, a perfect pandemonium of crackling and roaring assailed the silent night and clouds of ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... early winter night was at hand. It had thickened in the corners and over where Mr. Graham and Dave were meditating their game in silence. The flames crackling in the fireplace intensified the forming shadows. Lee recognized that it was time to be going. Nevertheless, he continued to linger for a while, with his eyes sometimes resting on his companion in enjoyment of her face, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... is only tenanted by an old man who keeps the place; we found him cooking his supper over a small crackling fire of sticks, which he had lighted in the main hall; his feeble old voice chirps about San Carlo this and San Carlo that as we go from room to room. We have no carpets here—plain honest brick floors—the chairs, indeed, have once been covered with velvet, but they are ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... tell anyone who lives in the country what happens on the fifth of November, for they are sure to know well. The beautiful fireworks, with their streams of coloured fire; the crackling of the squibs; the gorgeous catherine-wheels and the coloured Roman candles; the great rockets that shoot up into the air with a swish, leaving behind them a long tail of golden fire, and then burst into showers of stars—all these may be ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... war whoop rose and swelled through all the forest, died away, then swelled and died again. From the dark wall of the trees came the crackling fire of rifles. No one could be in ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... gentlemen," he cried in a high crackling voice, "worthy Christian cavaliers, will ye ride past and leave an aged pilgrim to die of hunger? The sight hast been burned from mine eyes by the sands of the Holy Land, and I have had neither crust of bread nor cup of wine these ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bolt-struck pine. As he rolled up to his feet again the savage old bull jumped for him and drove the brow antlers into his flanks. The next moment both bulls had crashed away into the woods, one swinging off in giant strides through the crackling underbrush for his life, the other close behind, charging like a battering-ram into his enemy's rear, grunting like a huge wild boar in his rage and exultation. So the chase vanished over the ridge into the valley beyond; ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... much empty sound; elements without which all writing is sent off, not weighted in one corner, that it may, like unto the toy, after never so much swaying to and fro, still find its upright equilibrium, but rather like unto the sky-rocket, sent up into empty space whizzing and crackling, to end in due time ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... struck out at something with her fist. A naked arm had reached out from the underbrush and grasped her wrist. Carr wheeled and his ray pistol spat crackling flame. The savage, an undersized red man with an enormous head, rose unsteadily from his hiding place, a look of terrible hate in his contorted features. Then, like a punctured balloon, his body collapsed into the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... in his breast-pocket at that moment, and as Roselle stirred against him he heard the slight crackling of the paper. It dropped like a trickle of cold water into his excitement and desire. He took Roselle's arm lightly in his hand, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... their tales of wreck and wrong, Of shame and lust and fraud, They backed their toughest statements with The Brimstone of the Lord, And crackling oaths went to and fro Across ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... grotesque shadows on the walls. Ruth and Louis in the library made no movement to ring for lights; it was quite cosey as it was. They had both drawn near the crackling wood-blaze, Ruth in a low rocker, Arnold in Mr. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... up; innumerable echoes repeated the sound of the discharge; a cloud of bright-coloured birds flew out of the woods screaming; a handful of leaves were scattered in the place where the shot had struck; a crackling of branches was heard; and some lithe but heavy creature sprang into the air, and fell forward, head down, over the ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... on breaking, it shows a distinct fibrous fracture. By sublimation in a current of hydrogen it can be crystallized in the form of regular octahedra; it is slightly harder than tin, but is softer than zinc, and like tin, emits a crackling sound when bent. It is malleable and can be rolled out into sheets. The specific gravity of the metal is 8.564, this value being slightly increased after hammering; its specific heat is 0.0548 (R. Bunsen), it melts at 310-320 deg. C. and boils between 763-772 deg. C. (T. Carnelley), forming a deep ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... what see I?—all the Gigs of Creation; all, all! Wo is me! Never since Pharaoh's Chariots, in the Red-sea of water, was there wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they wander in the wind. Higher, higher yet flames the Fire-Sea; crackling with new dislocated timber; hissing with leather and prunella. The metal Images are molten; the marble Images become mortar-lime; the stone Mountains sulkily explode. RESPECTABILITY, with all her collected Gigs inflamed for funeral pyre, wailing, leaves the earth: not to return ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... became audible from the floor above. A crackling of the boards, the muffled sounds of hasty footsteps, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... The hunter, thus, who long has toil'd O'er mountain rude, and forest wild, Turns from the dark and cheerless way, Where howls the savage beast of prey, To where yon curls of smoke aspire, Where briskly burns his crackling fire; Towards his cot delighted moves, Cheer'd by the voice of those he loves, And welcom'd by domestic smiles, Sings cheerly, and forgets ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... bursting among the British batteries, the British shells bursting short of their opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith. At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognised that it had been left to its fate. As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before, remains silent a minute, seems to become agitated, and bursts out thus: 'What is this I see? A great city, but of narrow streets and old-fashioned houses, many of which are of wood, resolving itself into ruins! How is it falling into ruins? Hark! I hear the crackling of a great conflagration, and, looking up, I behold a vast cloud of flame and smoke. The ground is covered with hot cinders too, and people are flying into the fields and endeavouring to save their goods. This great fire, this great wind, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... curious crackling or sweep of wind, and smoky smell. He ran round to the rear. Close up against the back door, quite out of the moonlight, something was piled. Forked tongues of flame were shooting out of it everywhere. He seized the chain attached to the factory-bell, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... fear, in the midst of the crackling of these parchments," said Alfred, folding up the deeds at which he had been at work. "However, I have now done my business for this day, and I am your man for what you please—if you are not engaged by some of your great people, we cannot do ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... doctor laughing. "Perhaps it would go better, my boy, if the dampers were not shut up tight. All it needs is a little draught,—see?" And in a moment there was a comfortable crackling sound going on ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... which have been hewn in the marble pavement by fishermen, and are now frozen over again, looking darker than the rest of the surface; spaces where the snow was more imperfectly dissolved than elsewhere little crackling spots, where a thin surface of ice, over the real mass, crumples beneath one's foot; the track of a line of footsteps, most of them vaguely formed, but some quite perfectly, where a person passed across the lake while its surface was in a state of slush, but which are now as hard ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its voracious attacks upon the carcass, the grinding of its jaws and the crackling of the pony's bones making horrible ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... gentle dreaminess with which he performed his duties. He was in the Inward Bills Department, one of the features of which was the sudden inrush, towards the end of each afternoon, of hatless, energetic young men with leather bags strapped to their left arms, clamouring for mysterious crackling documents, much fastened with pins. Owen had never quite understood what it was that these young men did want, and now his detached mind refused even more emphatically to grapple with the problem. He distributed the documents at random with the air of a preoccupied ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... delighting themselves with the races on their fleet steeds. . . . There are innumerable crowds of old men, women and children and beyond in the north and west, as far as the eye can reach, the sky is red as a flame, there is the roar and crackling of fire and the ferocious sound of battle. Who is leading these warriors who there beneath the reddened sky are shedding their own and others' blood? Who is leading these crowds of unarmed old men and women? I see severe order, ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... robbed each other, and cursed and fought, and slipped down in pools of molasses, and threw live pigs and coops of chickens into the river, and with one voiceless rush left the broad levee a smoking, crackling desert, when some shells exploded on a burning gunboat, and presently were back again like a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... relaxed a single day from shaking them. As a rule, it snowed all day, cleared up at night, and froze intensely, with the stars as bright as jewels, earth spread out in lustrous twilight, and the sounds in the air as sharp and crackling as artillery; then in the morning, snow again; before the sun could ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Djinns' wild streaming swarm Whistling in their tempest flight; Snap the tall yews 'neath the storm, Like a pine flame crackling bright. Swift though heavy, lo! their crowd Through the heavens rushing loud Like a livid thunder-cloud With its bolt ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... seized Jane's unwilling hands. She gathered those poor, stiff, knotted fingers into two crackling bundles within her own plump and warm palms, squeezed them forcibly, and looked into Jane's face with all imaginable kindness. "I had just that temper once ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest radical debaters a Roland for ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and crackling branches of the trees are weighted down with a three-inch ruching of snow. It is all silently fascinating, especially so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window announce Carlton ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... answered the preacher; "life was not lent to us to be expended in that idle mirth which resembles the crackling of thorns under the pot. I would only have you derive, if it so please you, this lesson from what I have said, that the best of our feelings, when indulged to excess, may give pain to others. There is but one in which we may indulge to the utmost limit of vehemence of ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... there came the sudden crackling of the air-tight bulkhead which separated the salon from the forward sections. Quirl knew what this meant. The pirates had succeeded in breaching a hole through the ship's skin, and the air of the forward section had rushed into space. It was sickening to think of those ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... and his frenzied cries were at last answered. The great bell overhead ceased ringing suddenly,—and its cessation created an effect of silence even amid the noise of the crackling fire and the continued grave music of the organ. Then came a quick tramp of many feet—a hubbub of voices—and loud battering knocks at the chapel door. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present we were safe. Life, no matter how uncertain, ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood breaking the dead silence ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... are red and gold; And the horns of vision Call across the crackling air Till we shout back to them there, Taken captive in the hold Of their ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... the little nook of shelter, everything was so subdued and still that the least particular struck in me a pleasurable surprise. The desultory crackling of the whin-pods in the afternoon sun usurped the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. I remember that I was haunted by two lines ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ticked in roundly again except when he rustled his paper in the turning. The fire was crackling now, too, in sharp explosions. Beyond the arc of lamp the room was deeper than ever in shadow. Finally John Burkhardt's head relaxed again to his shirt-front, the paper falling gently away to the floor. She regarded his lips puffing out as he breathed. Hands clasped, arms full ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the crackling of a twig came from behind us the voice of Messer Fifanti. "What do ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... why remember Foolish fancies that I thought? Every tree and every hedge-row From the well-known past I brought: I would picture my dear cottage, See the crackling wood-fire burn, And the two beside it seated, ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... passage of the ugly wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be full of the skeletons of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like the mouth of a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could hear the crackling of the pile on high within the iron grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm; the collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The black cloud and the red flame fought, serpent against serpent; live ashes, reft ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... way: it seemed to me that he was seeking for a guide-post. But, as I knew very well, there was no guide-post at any corner, and presently he came to the middle of the roads again and stood, looking this way and that, as if still in a dubious mood. And then I heard a crackling and rustling as of stiff paper—he was never more than a dozen yards from me all the time,—and in another minute there was a spurt up of bluish flame, and I saw that the man had turned on the light of an electric pocket-torch ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... behind him, there was a moment of silence. The steps of the child and his companion were heard on the frozen gravel, and dying away, left no sound save the crackling of the fire, the chirps of the sparrows on the eaves, the distant pianos, and an indistinct murmur of voices—the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... prayers perform'd the chiefs the rite pursue, The barley sprinkled, and the victim slew. The limbs they sever from the inclosing hide, The thighs, selected to the gods, divide. On these, in double cauls involved with art, The choicest morsels lie from every part, From the cleft wood the crackling flames aspire While the fat victims feed the sacred fire. The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress'd The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest; Then spread the tables, the repast prepare, Each takes his seat, and each receives his share. Soon as the rage of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... darker and darker with clouds; mists rose in the forests and froze into fine crystals which instantly covered Maciek's sukmana, the child's shawl, and the horses' manes with a crackling crust. The logs became so slippery that his hands could scarcely hold them; the ground was like glass. He looked anxiously towards the setting sun: it was dangerous to return with a heavy load when the roads were in that condition. He crossed himself, put the child into the sledge, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... followed him as he stepped through the door into the darkness; then her head dropped into the support of her hands. There was silence except for the crackling of the fire, until Neb moved uneasily. At the sound the girl looked up, seeing clearly the good-natured face of ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... her knees, and with slow and exasperating deliberation, unfastened a parcel carefully done up in white muslin. From the depths of this parcel she extracted a very thin and crackling silk of a shade between brick and terra-cotta, which was further shot here and there with little threads of pale blue and yellow. This texture she held up in many lights, not praising it by any words, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... unconsciously, found herself getting out of the buggy and following him in at the open door. They entered a decent kitchen with a fire crackling in the stove. An old woman with a kindly face was setting out cups and saucers on the table. She looked up and nodded as they came in, and Mr. Royall advanced to the stove, clapping ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... of my thoughts, I said: It may be that this Nymph, by al likelihoods, is some reuerend goddesse, and therefore my speeches will be but as the crackling reedes of Archadia in the moist and fennie sides of the riuer Labdone, shaken with the sharpe east wind, with the boisterous north, cloudy south & rainie south west wind. Besides this, the gods will be seuere reuengers of such an insolencie, for the ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... a crackling noise, he said, like a bonfire. Those were his very words: like the crackling of a bonfire," finished the soldier, with a ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... fortune to be taken into a boat belonging to the Aklerney sloop. The hull of the ship, masts, and rigging, were now in a blaze, bursting tremendously in several parts through horrid clouds of smoke; nothing was heard but the crackling of the flames, mingled with the dismal cries of terror and distraction; nothing was seen but acts of frenzy and desperation. The miserable wretches, affrighted at the horrors of such a conflagration, sought a fate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... all I wanted to know, except where he had gone since. As for the other thing I found, it was behind the hemlocks when I quartered the sides of the road in the silence and the frost-fog: and it was nothing but a patch of shell ice. But the flimsy, crackling stuff was crushed into two cup-like marks, as plainly telltale as if I had seen a man fall on his knees in them. And by them, frozen there, were a dozen drops ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... having a good time with their toys in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. On the hearth blazed a snapping, crackling ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... without my host. On tiptoe I stole into the kitchen, where my sweetheart was frying ham and eggs. I thought I might snatch a kiss. Above the noise of the sizzling frying-pan and the crackling wood, I plainly heard the voice of my—well, let us say it—bride, weeping and complaining to an old house servant: 'It's a shame and a sin to enter matrimony with a lie. I can't wed this Michael: not because he is ugly; that doesn't ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... crackling in the brush near by? Was it the Snakes on his trail? Mik-a'pi strung his bow and drew out his arrows. No; it was not a Snake. It was a bear. There he stood, a big grizzly bear, looking down at the wounded man. "What ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... a fire in the kitchen stove, for the weather during the day had been cold, and she could hear the embers crackling for more than an hour after her father went to his room. After that there followed a brief ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... applied a match to the sombre pile. A fiery tongue thrust itself out here and there, then suddenly the whole fabric burst into flames, blazing and crackling beautifully. This was a signal for the boys to join hands and dance around the burning barrels, which they did shouting like mad creatures. When the fire had burnt down a little, fresh staves were brought and heaped ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... first number of the "Autocrat" there is a passage upon puns, which, crackling with fun, shows his sensitive scepticism. The "Autocrat" says: "In a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking when charity was like a top. It was in evidence that Doe preserved ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... the lines, "I care not for wars and quarrels," etc. We sat talking in subdued tones for some time, expecting every minute to hear the thrilling war cry of the Doboduras, but nothing was to be heard but the crackling of the embers of the burning houses, the low murmur of our people around their camp fire, and the most dismal falsetto howls of the native dogs in the distance. These howls were not particularly exhilarating ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... dead branches and twigs that the trees had been too lazy to shed; short shrift for them on the first spring-cleaning night. Down they came, helter-skelter, and no notice taken of the tree's groaning, or its crackling cries of protest. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... comfort and saniitary principles, the elder girls were allowed to have fires in their bed-rooms at night, in winter. But seeing that these fires resembled the laughter of the wicked, inasmuch as they were brief-lived as the crackling of thorns under pots, the girls were driven to make predatory attacks on fuel wherever it could be found. Sometimes, one is sorry to say, they robbed each other's fireplaces, and concealed the coal in their pockets. But this conduct—resembling what is fabled of the natives of the ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... a sudden gust of wind arise, The brittle forest into atoms flies: The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And in a spangled shower the prospect ends. Or if a southern gale the region warm, And by degrees unbind the wintry charm; The traveller a miry country sees, And journeys sad beneath ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his back, his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each other. "Hah!" he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied and a bear paced into the light ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... to the grand burst of cheers with which "C" Troop goes tearing, thrashing into the heart of the village, swallowed up instantly in a dense cloud of dust. For a moment cheer and yell and rallying and war-cry, mingling with the thunder of hoofs and the sharp crackling of revolver and rifle, drown all other sounds. Then the screams of Indian women and children add to the clamor, and, with slashing knives, the startled braves hew their way out through the tepees. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... her not, is she not there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of your duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your little Beauteous Maiden, smiling with her sweet eyes! When moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when lids are closed, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... their property, and William, frightened for the only time in his life, was left alone with the priests. Not knowing what was next to follow, he was crowned king of the English by Ealdred, Archbishop of York, in an empty church, amidst the crackling of flames and the shouts of men striving for ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... in the chimney corner and sank into a state of half-dreamy reverie; his eyes fixed on the fairest sight one can see of a frosty autumn twilight—a crackling wood-fire. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Down through the scrubby thickets he strode; burr and thorn scraped his canvas jacket, blackberry-vines caught at elbow and knee. With an unfeigned scowl he kept his eyes on Jocelyn, who was still pottering on the stream's bank, but when Jocelyn heard him come crackling through the stubble and looked up the scowl faded, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... reverberation of whose voice revealed the distance it had to traverse and the emptiness of the room,—in which Cesar heard the crackling of a good fire, though the owner was ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... to help pick up the right kind of wood, for every scout has to learn such things early in his career in woodcraft. Soon a crackling little blaze sprang up, which, being carefully fed, presently amounted to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... him wonderingly. If he were aware of the weirdness of their situation no sign betrayed it. The crackling flames mounted straight in the air, the smoke made a pillar reaching into the darkness. Fifteen paces from Stonor lay his prisoner, staring unwinkingly at him with eyes that glittered with hatred; and from all around them in the darkness perhaps ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... and those that he might have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the women cast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brother crept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as the fire took hold of the brush and ran crackling up ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... appearance is a secret and an accident. They are a part of the busy life that goes on all about us as mysteriously as the movements of spirits. Consequently, when I was looking over a sloping field the other evening and, hearing a crackling as of sticks being trodden on, turned my eyes and saw a living creature making its way out of a wood into the grass, I was delighted to find that it was a hedgehog and not a man or a rat. I could see it only dimly in the twilight, and it was difficult to believe that so small an animal had made ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... researches, Mother Bunch, alone in her bed chamber, was seated in an arm-chair, close to a good fire. A thick carpet covered the floor; through the window-curtains could be seen the lawn of a large garden; the deep silence was only interrupted by the regular ticking of a clock, and the crackling of the wood. Her hands resting on the arms of the chair, she gave way to a feeling of happiness, such as she had never so completely enjoyed since she took up her residence at the hotel. For her, accustomed so long to cruel privations, there ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... far along the road without feeling that the burden of sorrow is a burden that we all have to carry. There are blessings in plenty, there is mirth more than enough. There is 'the laughter' which is 'the crackling of thorns' under a pot. There are plenty of distractions and amusements, 'blessings more plentiful than hope'; but yet the ground tone of every human life, when the first flush of inexperience and novelty has worn off, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there were added the intermittent explosions, the horrid crackling of millions of rock-masses meeting in the air, and the bubbling up of molten lava—verily it did not require the imagination of a Dante to see in all this the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused half-way, as though a new ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... may as well get used to it," Jim told her smilingly. But a few minutes later, when Susanna was busy with the coffee-pot, he looked up from a letter to say: "Here's a job for you, after all, to-day, Sue! This—" and he flattened the crackling sheets beside his plate, "this is ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... rainy night a little group were assembled around a crackling wood fire in the nursery; Mammy was seated in a low chair, with Tot in her arms; Dumps was rocking her doll back and forth, and Diddie was sitting at the table reading; Aunt Milly was knitting, and the three little darkies were nodding by ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... By day it was fitted with tables, picketed by chairs and all manner of boots. Noisy and crowded, a little dog that wandered about there was liable to be trodden upon. On that night of storm it was a vast, bright place, so silent one could hear the ticking of the wag-at-the-wa' clock, the crisp crackling of the flames, and the snapping of the coals. The uncovered deal tables were set back in a double line along one wall, with the chairs piled on top, leaving a wide passage of freshly scrubbed and sanded oaken ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... There was the crackling hiss of unleashed sub-atomic forces somewhere within the metal body. The machine moved in fumbling uncertainty for a moment as the slug fought to get control of mechanism that had lain idle for a thousand centuries! Then swiftly full control came, ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... Then she wheeled round and set off for the river through beds of burnt down jungle-grass, bad even to ride a pig over. In cold blood I should never have dreamed of going over such a country at night, but it seemed quite right and natural with the lightning crackling overhead, and a reek like the smell of the Pit in my nostrils. I rode and shouted, and she bent forward and lashed her horse, and the aftermath of the dust-storm came up and caught us both, and drove us downwind like ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... fire laid in the fireplace, and he lighted it. When it was crackling sufficiently he drew Edith's photograph from its frame and, after gazing at it long and bitterly, tossed it into the blaze. He watched it blister and writhe as though it had been a living thing. The flame seized on it slowly and unwillingly, biting at the edges in a curling ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... Berks, Oxford, and Bucks, possess a decided superiority over the eastern, of Essex, Sussex, and Norfolk; not to forget another qualification of the former, at which some readers may smile, a thickness of the skin; whence the crackling of the roasted pork is a fine gelatinous substance, which may be easily masticated; while the crackling of the thin-skinned breeds is roasted into good block tin, the reduction of which would almost require teeth ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... notice about German servants is, that they are allowed to dress anyhow, and that the results are most unpleasing. In Hamburg, the city that gives you ox-tail soup for dinner and has sirloins of beef much like English sirloins, the maids used to wear clean crackling, light print gowns with elbow sleeves. This was their full dress in which they waited at table, and fresh looking country girls from Holstein and thereabouts looked very well in it. This costume is being superseded in Hamburg to-day by the English livery of ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable regiments. Dead ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... room seemed to me so many or so steep. At length I gained the door; it stood ajar; I pushed it open and entered. Madame Jeannel sat at the foot of the little white-draped bed; Bambin lay beside his mistress; the only sound in the room was the crackling of the burning logs on the hearth. As I entered, Madame Jeannel turned her head and looked at me; her eyes were heavy with tears, and she spoke in tones that were hushed and tremulous with the awe which the presence of death inspires. "Monsieur, you come ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... situation fore and aft, and, as usual, arriving nowhere. At the end of an hour there was a stir caused by the arrival of C——, one of the young, important Members of Parliament. He stood surrounded by an enquiring group, hands hidden up the capacious sleeves of his crackling brocade coat, while he sucked in his breath with hissing noises, in deference to the honorable company. "Good news!" he exclaimed, "good news! Or so I think you'll find it! We have just decided to ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... incident, which excited such triumphant emotions as to cause it to be long remembered. About an hour subsequent to his noon halt, as he and Caesar were proceeding along at a moderate pace, he heard a rustling, crackling noise on the right side of the path and suddenly a deer, frightened and panting, flew across the road, turned for a moment an almost human, despairing look toward him, plunged into the tangled under-growth on the left and was gone from sight. John drew his reins instantly, bringing ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... this faster than any white man could possibly twirl it, and in a couple of minutes a coil of smoke came up from the pile of bark. Yarloo blew this into a flame and made a little fire. When it was burning well, he threw the blazing sticks into the needle-bush. There was a crackling sound for a moment or two and then a roar, as the flames licked up the dry fuel, till in a very short time the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... blaze gained headway; and a dense column of smoke and sparks rose straight upward to a great height. Owing to the snow and the darkening heavens, the fire wore a very ruddy aspect, and I vividly recall how its melancholy crackling was borne along the white shore, as we turned away ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... gun in his hand, to watch for Indians, while the others were sowing corn. As I came near the tree, I thought to myself, "I wish I could see these Indians. "I had partly filled with nuts a straw hat which I wore, when I heard a crackling noise behind me; I looked round, and saw the Indians; almost at the same instant, I was seized by both hands, and dragged off between two. One of them took my straw hat, emptied the nuts on the ground, and put it on my head. The Indians who seized me were an old and a young one; these, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... had set, and such light as remained fell cold and gray between the trees. The crackling of a stick under a horse's hoof, or the ring of a spur against a scabbard, were the only sounds which broke the stillness of the wood as we proceeded. We had gone some little way when M. Louis halted, and, turning in his saddle, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... prairie. I had chosen to pass the hours of waiting in the wagon, feeling that I could better protect my dear little baby in this way. So when all the tired ones were still, and the silence only broken by the crackling of the burning fagots, the occasional falling of a dry twig or branch from the bare, ghostly looking trees about us, the hooting of an owl, the dismal howlings of the wolves in the forest, I sat there looking at the weary forms so illy protected ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... Coliseum whence he might quarry stones for his own palaces. Even in his descriptive passages the dream-character of his scenery is notorious; it is not the clear, recognisable scenery of Wordsworth, but a landscape that hovers athwart the heat and haze arising from his crackling fantasies. The materials for such visionary Edens have evidently been accumulated from direct experience, but they are recomposed by him into such scenes as never had mortal eye beheld. "Don't you wish you had?" as Turner said. The one justification ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... at once he hesitated to say so. It was hard for the boy to have to go away now before the fire burnt, before the potatoes were roasted. So he said nothing, but stooped down, and as he was not far enough down even then he knelt down and blew the fire, that was faintly crackling, with all the breath he had in his broad chest. Sparks began to leap out at once, and a small flame shot up and soon turned ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... lad," said the boatswain good-humouredly. "He thinks if we waits for pork till I brings down a pig with a six-shooter the crackling won't ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... snow with the Pole Star ever twisting and turning and coming before them again, until the sky seemed lit up with wonderful colours, and great bands of light were shooting up and sinking down only to shoot up again with a crackling like packs of pop-crackers in ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... in the big woods: a Christmas temperature like frozen steel—thirty below in the clearing of Swamp's End—and a rollicking wind, careering over the pines, and the swirling dust of snow in the metallic air. A cold, crisp crackling world! A Christmas land, too: a vast expanse of Christmas colour, from the Canadian line to the Big River—great, grave, green pines, white earth and a blood-red sunset! The low log-cabins of the lumber camps were smothered ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... red-hot matter bubbled up violently, with a hissing and crackling noise, like that which attends the playing off of an artificial firework; and by the continued splashing up of the vitrified matter, a kind of arch, or dome, was formed over the crevice from whence the lava issued; it was cracked in many parts, and appeared red-hot within, like a ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... behind a rise. The Boers have guns in action to-day, and a shell of theirs has just burst about 400 yards to our right, and others are falling somewhere near the guns ahead. It seems to be chiefly an artillery duel so far, but a crackling rifle fire is going on ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... went slowly through the kitchen, which looked very bright and attractive with its crackling fire and the sunlight streaming through its open door, and which smelt delightfully of ham and eggs and new biscuit,—and down the narrow, dark passage, on one side of which was the sitting-room, and on the other a parlor, which was hardly ever used by anybody. Wealthy dusted it now and then, ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... in her lap, gazed and gazed at sky and earth, at moonlit paths, and darkly looming trees, but saw nothing of them all. Something broke the perfect stillness. It was neither summer breeze, nor rustling leaf; 'twas the crackling gravel that was being displaced by approaching footsteps. The sound was all unheeded by Laura, who heard nothing but the voice of her heart as it sang its first anthem ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... beautiful in the savage glow of the ravaging fire than ever on the gala nights of the exposition. The fantastic fury of the scene fascinated man and beast. The streaming lines of people raced on, and the horse snorted and plunged into the mass. Now the crackling as of paper burning in a brisk wind could be heard. There was a shout from the crowd. The flames had gained the Peristyle—that noble fantasy plucked from another, distant life and planted here above the barbaric glow of the lake in the lustrous atmosphere ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... our complex modern civilization," he said, "and the most difficult to deal with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever tell ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'Then I'll appeal; I'll send a representation to the Home Office.' 'Is it not to be considered, sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous light?' Then," continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking the two voices, "we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter, and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us. He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser; almost hump-backed, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cracked in front; the great diligence started with a groan and a crackling of joints; the little postilion set the cabriolet going with a chirp and a whistle; the priests and idlers looked up excitedly; the women rushed to the windows to flutter their handkerchiefs, and all the beggars gave sturdy chase, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... shadow crept out from the bottom of the door and began to spread; the howling wind shook the very walls of the staunch cabin, while all about them roared the ear-splitting cannonade, the crash of splintered skies, the crackling of musketry, the rending and tearing of all the garments that clothe ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... saw a light gleam, and supposed they had kindled it to search for her. Her pulse beat wildly; yet, still she hoped to escape. It was not probable that they would search a tree so near the cabin; they would rather suppose she had fled to a distance. Presently a crackling noise was heard in the cabin, and a bright light, as of flame, flashed from the door and window. Presently the Indians rushed out, and, raising their wild yell, danced around the cabin with their usual demonstrations of joy, when they have accomplished ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... pa wouldn't let 'em go under ninety! Think of that," added Caleb, dropping his voice, and appearing to talk to the beech-wood fire, which was crackling in the big fireplace. "Think of that! Ninety dollars! Enough to buy a small farm! Just what I should have got in the logging-swamp, winter before last, if Dascom hadn't cheated me out ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... approached the town, a scene of great magnificence burst upon her. The fires, driven with velocity before the wind, had swept over the prairies, and reached the belt of woods, in a portion of which were the eighty acres that her husband was at work upon. The flames were crackling and roaring in the forests, burning up the dry underbrush, shooting to the tops of the old dead pines, so that the scene being constantly on her left, was more or less in view ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... upon the staircase—the hurried unbolting and opening of distant doors, as the lighter one with which he was struggling at last yielded to his blind rage, and threw him crashing into the sitting-room. The back door was wide open. He could hear the rustling and crackling of twigs and branches in different directions down the hillside, where the fugitives had separated as they escaped. And yet he stood there for an instant, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in turning it? What is the difference between man and beast? Beast and bird devour what they find and have no power to change it. But we are Druids of those mysteries, having magic and virtue to turn hard grain to tender cakes, and the very skin of a grunting pig to crackling causing quarrels among champions, and it singing upon the coals. A cook! If I am I am not without good generations before me! Who was the first old father of us, roasting and reddening the fruits of the earth ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... a light, and set the grass on fire, and it was so dry that the flames spread all around the entrance to the cave, and made such a smoke and crackling that the sky-dragon put his head out to see what ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... ears acquainted us of the approach at that moment. The sound of crackling twigs was quite close, and we waited breathlessly, eying the green curtain through which we expected the unknown ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of fire began to jet, among the buildings; the crackling of shots started popping, like corn-kernels exploding. Dark figures were racing for the Palisade gate—the gate where, if any slightest thing went wrong with track or giant plane, the whole vast fabric might crash down, a ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... his hands to his face. In that moment his dazed senses adjusted themselves. The cabin was full of smoke. It partly blinded him, but through it he could see tongues of fire shooting toward the ceiling. He could hear the crackling of burning pitch, and he yelled wildly to Brokaw. In an instant the sergeant was on his feet. He rushed to the table, where he had placed a pail of water the evening before, and Billy heard the hissing of the water as it ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the crackling of the grass and thought of leaving our concealment at the risk of discovery; but our guide wisely remarked that the wind was the wrong way to bring the fire towards our hiding-place, so we felt safe. The feeling of security was more pleasant, because we ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... buckskin "that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of bunch grass." He wished he had taken that advice. A man looking for revenge could crouch in the chaparral and with a crook of his finger send winged death at his enemy. A twig crackling under the hoof of his horse more than once sent an electric shock through his pulses. The crash of a bear through the brush seemed to stop the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... was no idle one. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and the chops and bacon were sizzling in the frying-pan. Bob unpacked the sandwiches and the thermos bottle of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... occasioned by the wind suddenly rising when the farmers are burning roots of trees, stalks of beans, &c, with which they manure the ground. The devastation must, indeed, be terrible, when this, literally speaking, wildfire, runs along the forest, flying from top to top, and crackling amongst the branches. The soil, as well as the trees, is swept away by the destructive torrent; and the country, despoiled of beauty and riches, is left to ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... homewards over the crackling snow, he was obliged to confess the existence of a new and powerful excitement. Was it the chance of an adventure, such as certain of his comrades were continually seeking? He thought not; no, decidedly not. Was it—could it be—love? He really could ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels and thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation and distinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance than any other; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a diamond. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... pale and pink amid disheartened foliage. The damp began to shew on the North walls of the rooms. A fire in the study now daily, for the sake of the books: one in the drawing-room, weekly, for the sake of the piano and the furniture. And for Betty, in far-away Paris, a fire of crackling twigs and long logs in the rusty fire-basket, and blue and yellow flames leaping to lick the royal arms of France on ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... of the existent peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so, not only for the peasants, but for even the audience. For that form of the False Ideal has also its correspondent True Ideal,—consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in the gauze flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed and fed beauty of living men, and in the lights and laughs of happy homes. Night after night, the desire of such an ideal springs up in every idle human heart; and night after night, as far as idleness can, we work out this ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... was interrupted by the crackling of the dry twigs behind them, and Yates, who had been keeping his eye nervously on the fence, turned round. Young Bartlett pushed his way through the underbrush. His face was red; ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... furrow, Tim." The man who was loading prepared himself for the shock, and the waggon safely jolted over the furrow, and on between the wakes of light-brown hay, crackling to the touch as if it would catch fire in the brilliant sunshine. The pitchers, one on each side, stuck their prongs into the wakes and sent up great "pitches," clearing the ground rapidly, through emulation, for it was a point of honour to keep pace with ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... fell across the till top. Ling Foo raised his slanted eyes. His face was like a graven Buddha's, but there was a crackling in his ears as of many fire-crackers. There he stood—the man with the sluing walk! Ling Foo still wore a queue, so his hair could not very well ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... creaking and whizzing of a sledge upon the crackling snow was now heard; it came nearer and nearer, and then there was a knocking at the palace gate. The porter opened, and two ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... somewhat cooler than it had been. Half the plain lay in shadow, but the light was curiously sharp. A clump of ragged jack-pines stood on a sandhill miles away, and a lake twinkled in the remote distance. The powerful Clydesdale horses plodded through short crackling scrub; a fine scent of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... was kneeling beside a faintly crackling little pile of twigs, his face turned inquiringly toward Casey. Casey, glancing guiltily over his shoulder, felt the chill hand of discovery reaching for his very soul. It was as if a dead man were hidden away beneath that tarp. It seemed to him that the eyes of ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... reluctant foes, and to her cave Their bulky carcasses triumphant drags. So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades This world envelop, and th' inclement air Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood; Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk Of loving friend, delights: distress'd, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind: or sometimes mournful verse Indite, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... climb a bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... back in her chair, her eyes shining under the stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing herself—through the Times. Cliffe looked at the small figure a moment, then seized a chair and sat down in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an irritated crackling of newspaper could be regarded as such—and the next moment, to the accompaniment of much banging of doors and a final shout of: "Stand away there!" the train began to move ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the Cape, Lucknow might have fallen, before there were forces to relieve it. That would have lit, for our rule in India, a bonfire in which Bombay would only have been a crackling twig. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... invariably the same effect. If a fire be lit morning after morning in the same grate, with coal, wood, and paper of the same quality and similarly arranged, there will be each day the same flaming of paper, crackling of wood and glowing of coal, followed in about the same time by the same reduction of the whole mass partly to ashes and partly to gases and smoke that have gone up the chimney. The flaming, crackling and glowing are, physically, modes of energy; and the change of materials into ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... ready for the ensuing spring. Burning a chopping, or fallow, as it is called, of twelve or fourteen acres in extent, is a grand and even awful sight: rushing in torrents of flame, it rolls with the wind, crackling and roaring through the brushwood, and often extending beyond the limits assigned it, catching the dry stems of ancient trees, the growth of the earlier ages of this continent, which lie in gigantic ruins, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... the air was filled with them, like a snowstorm done in India ink. A little farther and he heard a faint crackling; topped a ridge and saw not far ahead, a dancing, yellow line. His horse was breathing heavily with the pace he was keeping, but Kent, swinging away from the onrush of flame and heat, spurred him to a greater speed. They neared the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... one another by nearly two hundred and fifty kilometres of such mountain roads as these. Oh yes, it was an experience, a splendid, dazzling experience; nevertheless, my cowardly thoughts would turn, sunflower-like, toward warmth; warm rooms, even stuffy rooms, without a single window open, fires crackling, and hot things to drink. Still, I wouldn't admit that I was cold, and stiffened my muscles to prevent a shudder when my brother asked me cheerfully if I would enjoy a visit to the Gouffre de Padirac, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Thought it was thunder, or an earthquake, or the cairn coming down on the top of me, or something of that sort. Turned out to be the Daily News crackling under my clothes. Everything's so quiet, it startles one to move a foot. I'll give it ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... my dog, and examining the prize, when I heard a crackling among the low bushes near me; and on looking up, perceived, about twenty paces distant, a short, thick-set man, whose fustian jacket and leathern gaiters at once pronounced him the gamekeeper; he stood leaning upon his gun, quietly awaiting, as it seemed, for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... confident words. When Hardbeen heard this, a demoniacal frenzy suddenly took him; he furiously bit and devoured the edges of his shield; he kept gulping down fiery coals; he snatched live embers in his mouth and let them pass down into his entrails; he rushed through the perils of crackling fires; and at last, when he had raved through every sort of madness, he turned his sword with raging hand against the hearts of six of his champions. It is doubtful whether this madness came from thirst for battle or natural ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... us both, broken only by the crackling of the turf and wood fire, I busy with the past, and he sunk in his own reflections. At ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan |
