"Clack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... technicals in each extreme, Exclusive talk, whate'er the theme, The proper boundary passes: Nobles as much offend, whose clack's For ever running on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... why I shouldna bide wi' yet Jennie; but dinna ye clack aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... almost breathless—"Chief! They are at hand."—"Good: vamoose."—"Again 'vamoose'", grumbled Dentatsu openly.[24] "Why such strange words; and at least why not explain them?"—"Ah! Ha! A noisy priest; these clerics can do nothing but clack, clack, like a parcel of geese or women. Even the best of them—who thus consorts with Jimbei. Remember, Bo[u]zu—silence, or the Go Shukke Sama finds Nirvana—not Gion; or was it Chion." With a silent ferocious laugh, or expression of such, he ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... attention from the car, but before another mile had been traversed, the clickety-clack noise grew too loud to be ignored, the car drew up with a jerk, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... A terrible wind blew through the rotten boards, moans came up from the pit as from victims ill-buried, and the wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beat against the walls to the level of the window-slits and spattered its water upon the captive. At intervals the bell of a passing steamer, the clack of its paddle-wheels cut short the reflections of poor Tartarin, as evening, gray and gloomy, fell into the dungeon and ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... almost went to pieces for joy of her doing it. That scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll find to rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the adder's tooth, nor scorpion's sting. With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains, Omens, the types of thy impending chains. I sent the magpie from the British soil, With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil; To din thine ears with unharmonious clack, And haunt thy holy walls in white and black. What else are those thou seest in bishop's gear, Who crop the nurseries of learning here; Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate, Devour the church, and chatter to the state? As you grew more degenerate and base, I sent you millions ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Mr. Archer?" he cried shrilly, with a clack of laughter; and then he came close up to her, stooped down with his two palms upon his knees, and looked her in the eyes, with a strange hard expression, something like a smile. "Do I mind for God, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues, set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into flabby cheeks and red ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Nuwell turned and raced back down the side corridor at top speed. They heard the clack-clack of his heels on the stone floor, fading in ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... the mist has concentrated, lying like a foot-pad to garrote such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge guys rattle to the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming to say to him: "Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir—but not from our river. Litmus paper all along the banks ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... down against his shoulder. She had no mind to be separated from this new-found playfellow. When he produced a battered silver watch from the pocket of his velveteen waistcoat, holding it over her ear, she was charmed into a prolonged silence. The clack of Tippy's spoon against the crock came in from the kitchen, and now and then the fire snapped or the green fore-log made a ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... kept knocking him about, against the trunks of the trees and over the fallen branches and roots, till he had scarcely a whole bone left in his body. The Leechie did not say a word, but only went clack, clack, clack, and chuckled with pleasure. Poor Koulik was almost dead with terror and pain, but still he never thought of his cross. Had the Leechie once got him well inside the forest, I do not know what would have become of him. He would ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... for a considerable distance, till we reached a narrow path which led us into a thick wood, where we soon became completely bewildered. On a sudden, after wandering about a considerable time, we heard the noise of water, and presently the clack of a wheel. Following the sound, we arrived at a low stone mill, built over a brook; here we stopped and shouted, but no answer was returned. "The place is deserted," said Antonio; "here, however, is a path, which, if we follow it, will doubtless lead us to some human ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Ferme. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a shake. O, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... get up along the Boyne at this rate. I went along the south side and, hearing the cheery clack of a loom, went into a cottage to see the weaver, a woman. She was weaving canvas for stiffening for coats. Could make threepence a yard, which was better pay a good deal than the Antrim weavers of fine ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... morning at the little bureau under the window of the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window, counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt to death every one who looked like a gentleman, as an aristocrat: ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... it was not for the old glaur! What for does heaven—or hell—send the worst of its temptations to the young and ignorant? If I had met her twenty years ago! Twenty years ago! H'm! 'Clack!' goes the weaver's shuttle! Twenty years ago it was her mother, and Sim MacTaggart without a hair on his face trying to kiss the good lady of Doom, and her, perhaps na' half unwilling. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... little clicks, dots and dashes.... I'm right aren't I?" The foot shuffling and rising buzz from the adepts was a sure sign that he was hitting close. "I have an idea for you, I think I'll invent the telephone. Instead of the old clikkety-clack how would you like to really talk across the country? Speak into a gadget here and have your voice come out at the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a bombardment upon her ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... clap, or clack, dish (dish with a movable lid) was carried by beggars and lepers to show that the vessel was empty, and to give sound of ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... finished, he flew away. He had the chain in his right claw and the shoes in his left, and he flew right away to a mill, and the mill went 'Click clack, click clack, click clack.' Inside the mill were twenty of the miller's men hewing a stone, and as they went 'Hick hack, hick hack, hick hack,' the mill went 'Click clack, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... then just after seven o'clock, and the October evening was drawing in with chill airs from the recesses of the forest. The road plunged straight from the railway clearing into its depths, and in a very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the clack of his boots fell dead and echoless against the serried stems of a million firs. It was very black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from another. He walked smartly, swinging his holly stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on his way to bed, and the guttural "Gruss Got," unheard ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... rose, while she put on her clothes, 'Twas vain to endeavor to still her; Nor once did she lack to continue her clack, Till again she lay down ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... you see a fellow walk Up or down the street and back, How you nod and wink and talk, Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack!— 'What, I wonder, does he lack Here about?'—'There's something wrong!' Till the poor man's made a song ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... your little niece that you have so much the habit of expressing to her your kind feelings; I really think that if my thoughts and feelings were shut up completely within me, I should burst in a week, like a steam-engine without a snifting-clack, now called by the grander name of ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... that makes an impression on a fool. Now, I want you to run down there, like a good child; that is, if your aunts can spare you. Run down and comfort the little fellow, who has been badly scared by the clack of tongues and the smarting of the tobacco-juice. Imbeciles! cods' heads! scooped-out pumpkins!" exclaimed the doctor, in a sudden frenzy. "A—I don't mean that. Comfort him up, child, and sing to him and tell him about Jack-and-the-Beanstalk. You'll soon bring him round, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... corridor there was some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone. When he reached the end of the corridor he tried the ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... the undergrowth all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodpecker drilling a tree, but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... and thy suppliant attend In each dull, lonely hour; And though misfortunes lie around, Thicker than hailstones on the ground, I'll rest upon thy power. Then while the coxcomb, pert and proud, The politician, learned and loud, Keep one eternal clack, I'll tread where silent Nature smiles, Where Solitude our woe beguiles, And ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... who you are!" Bellowing with fear, Carl ran forward, furiously waving his stick and clamoring: "You better not touch me!" The stick came down with a silly, flat clack upon the watcher—a roadside boulder. "It's just a rock, Gertie! Jiminy, I'm glad! It's just a rock!... Aw, I knew it was a rock all the time! Ben Rusk gets scared every time he sees a stump in the woods, and he always thinks it's ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... ago there lived near the Clack-clack Mountains an old man and his wife, who, having no child, made a great deal of a pet hare. Every day the old man cut up food and set it out on ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... summer, intending with the money thus earned to go the next fall and winter to the Academy in Wilbraham. Jenny was coming back ere long, and Mary's step was light and buoyant as she tripped singing about the house, unmindful of Miss Grundy's oft-expressed wish that "she would stop that clack," or of the anxious, pitying eyes Sal Furbush bent upon her, as day after day the faithful old creature rocked and tended ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... rumble of voices belonging to the unseen sailors; and the click-clack of oars working in the rowlocks also ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... there is to whom these things, That nobody else's mind calls back, Have a savour that scenes in being lack, And a presence more than the actual brings; To whom to-day is beneaped and stale, And its urgent clack But a ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... conjuring up cities and threading the continent with steel, we are feeding the world on the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clear and opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with its harvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breaking sod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows of umber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture, something ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... releasing the old man's hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack, "it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I am very glad to ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... been huzza'd out of my Seven Senses, I made a Visit to the Women, who were guzzling very comfortably. Mrs. Mayoress clip'd the King's English. Clack was the Word. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to be taken, and Abimelech and his men were to do it. I see the dust rolling up from their excited march. I hear the shouting of the captains and the yell of the besiegers. The swords clack sharply on the parrying shields, and the vociferation of two armies in death-grapple is horrible to hear. The battle goes on all day, and as the sun is setting Abimelech and his army cry "Surrender!" ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... morrow his attempt to examine the deserted edifice, and turned his attention to the noise. It was compounded of steam barrel- organs, the clanging of gongs, the ringing of hand-bells, the clack of rattles, and the undistinguishable shouts of men. A lurid light hung in the air in the direction of the tumult. Thitherward he went, passing under the arched gateway, along a straight ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... in the unbroken silences of nature so long, that the clack, and crash, and clamor of what we call ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... go—clack, clack, clack, clack; Now listen well, I pray, And let me see you both improve ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... patiently to this mill-stream, or mill-clack, for three weary years! Perhaps; for many another year before; but into that Christian would not allow her lightest thoughts to penetrate: the sacred veil of Death was over ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... open, and against the yellow glare from within Alleyne could see the bearded fellows cleaning their harness, while their wives would come out for a gossip, with their needlework in their hands, and their long black shadows streaming across the yard. The air was full of the clack of their voices and the merry prattling of children, in strange contrast to the flash of arms and constant warlike ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... break. 'Tis true, your asses and your apes, And other brutes in human shapes, And that thing made of sound and show, Which mortals have misnamed a beau, (But in the language of the sky Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly), Will make your very heartstrings ache With loud and everlasting clack, 30 And beat your auditory drum, Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb. But to our story we return: 'Twas early on a Summer morn, A Wolf forsook the mountain den, And issued hungry on the plain. Full many a stream and lawn he past And reach'd a winding vale at last; Where from a ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the Duke? yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the Duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too; that let me 120 ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... daily paper which, by the way, he largely depended on for the news. Silence reigned for a while, save for the rustle of the sheet. The click-clack of the widow's knitting needles, and the rapid plying of Cicely's brush, were varied at last by the girl surreptitiously pulling a note out of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... cried the old hag in her drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do what his heart ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... on the guitars, gradually increasing in volume, and in which the tap of the tomtom mingled like the rolling of distant thunder, opened the dance. Then came the sharp and yet mellow clack of the dancers' castanets, and finally the soft tones of the flute, blending the whole into harmony. The dancers seemed to follow and imitate by their action each change of the music: at first, and with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... brought her indictment against a raucous timepiece which was wont to lead up to its striking with a long, preliminary clack-and-whirr, alleging that twice, when she had quit her sculping early because the clay was obdurate and wouldn't come right, and had gone for a walk to clear her vision, the clock had accosted her in ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a night-hawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Clym's feet white miller-moths flew ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... time they were on their way. They laughed and talked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a cheerful ringing accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating than the hollow, regular ring and click-clack of good hoofs going well over a fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the junior assistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased by the prospect of seeing "this delightful and unusual girl." He had heard stories of her, as ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cotton, nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose, plastic explosive, plastique, TNT, cordite, trinitrotoluene, picric acid, picrates, mercury fulminate (arms) 727. whack, wham, pow. V. rap, snap, tap, knock, ping; click; clash; crack, crackle; crash; pop; slam, bang, blast, boom, clap, clang, clack, whack, wham; brustle^; burst on the ear; crepitate, rump. blow up, blow; detonate. Adj. rapping &c v.. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was so little to pay in taxes, and we knew how to manage the black folk; but now I am English, I am English. I know the English Government means good money and safety, and if there isn't a Raad (assembly) now, well, what does it matter? Almighty, how they used to talk there!—clack, clack, clack! just like an old black koran (species of bustard) at sunset. And where did they run the waggon of the Republic to—Burghers and those damned Hollanders of his, and the rest of them? Why, into the sluit—into a sluit with peaty banks; and there it would have ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... cicadas at this season not ascending so high on the mountain. A dense mist shrouded every thing, and the rain pattered on the leaves of our hut. At midnight a tree-frog ("Simook," Lepcha) broke the silence with his curious metallic clack, and others quickly joined the chorus, keeping up their strange music till morning. Like many Batrachians, this has a voice singularly unlike that of any other organised creature. The cries of beasts, birds, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... street lamps and drew a veil before the shop windows. Far away I heard the rattle of the elevated and the never-ceasing hum of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but, save for these reminders of the city's life, the silence of the street was broken only by the click-clack of our ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... she-goat in the painful fit of an absolute birth, in doing whereof he did cough and sigh exceeding heavily. This done, after that he had made demonstration of the want of his codpiece, he from under his shirt took his placket-racket in a full grip, making it therewithal clack very melodiously betwixt his thighs; then, no sooner had he with his body stooped a little forwards, and bowed his left knee, but that immediately thereupon holding both his arms on his breast, in a loose faint-like posture, the one over the other, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of imagination is soul-slaying. The man is blessed that hath both eye and hand, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... giving a clack to her needles,—pleased enough though, I warrant you, and turning a very pretty pink about the cheeks for a four-years' wife. Seeing as how she was always a lady to me, and a true one, and a gentle, though she wasn't much at manners or book-learning, and though I never gave ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... up, in the buzz and clack of tongues that followed the close of the game, Captain Lake glared round for a moment, like a man called up from sleep; the noise rattled and roared in his ears, the talk sounded madly, and the faces of the people excited and menaced him undefinably, and he felt as if he was on the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... travel across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the individual point ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... came up so great a storm of thunder and lightning, and huge drift of rain, that I was afraid, and being so near to the house, I hastened thither, driving the goats, and when I had tethered them in the shed of the croft, I crept trembling up to the house, and when I was at the door, heard the clack of the loom in the weaving-chamber, and deemed that the woman was weaving there, but when I looked, behold there was no one on the bench, though the shuttle was flying from side to side, and the shed opening and changing, and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... John H. Clack, a master commandant in the Navy of the United States, having rank as such from the 24th April, 1828, was on the sentence of a court-martial, which was approved by me, ordered to be dismissed from the service. On a reexamination of the record of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... betide the dear wold mill, My naighbour playmeaetes' happy hwome, Wi' rollen wheel, an' leaepen foam, Below the overhangen hill, Where, wide an' slow, The stream did flow, An' flags did grow, an' lightly vlee Below the grey-leav'd withy tree, While clack, clack, clack, vrom hour to hour, Wi' whirlen stwone, an' streamen flour, Did goo ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... he say the same?' 'No, Sir!' answered I with eagerness; that I might if possible, by a single word, put an end to the eternal clack and false deductions of this very loving young lady. 'Lord! Mr. Trevor!' exclaimed Miss, her passions all flying to her eyes, part fire and part water. 'Sure you are not in earnest? You don't mean as you say?'—'I am very serious, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... tresses in my fingers wound, And more than one tuft had I twitched away As he, with eyes bent down, howled like a hound; When one cried out, 'What ails thee, Bocca? say,— Canst thou not make enough clack with thy jaws, But thou must bark too! What fiend pricks thee now?' 'Aha!' said I, 'henceforth I have no cause To bid thee speak, thou cursed traitor thou! I'll shame thee, bearing truth of thee to men.' 'Away!' he answered: 'what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... by man and maid, She felt her heart grow prouder: But ah! the more the white goose laid It clack'd ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... nets or finer thread for the looms that now began to clack—for at last some few women had arrived, and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveled stowed in crates ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... cracked grain. These two young women have evidently been very industrious this morning; they have half-buried themselves in the product of their labors, and are still grinding away as though for their very lives, while the constant "click-clack " of the carpet weavers prove them likewise the embodiment of industry. They seem rather disconcerted by the abrupt intrusion and scrutinizing attentions of a Frank and a stranger; however, the fascinating search for bits of interesting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... about, getting dinner on the table, Will sat with gloomy face, listening to the "clack" of the old man. The room was a poor little sitting room, with furniture worn and shapeless; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save here and there a little bit of Agnes's handiwork. The lounge, covered with calico, was rickety; the rocking chair matched ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... lay drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... flicker of firelight in the windows of the nearest house. It was Tom Daly's house. They could see Tom's shadow as he sat at his loom, weaving flax into beautiful white linen cloth. They could hear the clack! clack! of his loom. It made the Twins feel much safer to hear this sound and see Tom's shadow, for Tom was a friend of theirs, and they often went into his house and watched him weave his beautiful linen, ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... satisfied with the sprightliness of her genius, could she have curbed her imagination with judgment; but she laboured under such a profusion of talk, that I dreaded her unruly tongue, and felt by anticipation the horrors of an eternal clack! However, when I considered, on the other hand, the joys attending the possession of twenty thousand pounds, I forgot her imperfections, seized occasion by the forelock, and tried to insinuate myself into her affection. The careful mother kept a ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... The train was slowing. He remembered you couldn't use the toilets while the train was stopped. He got up and went to the end of the car. The door was jammed. He got it open and went inside and closed the door behind him. The train was going slower, clack-clack ... clack-clack ... ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... about to replace the empty pot, when he heard the click-clack of a door behind him. He looked round, and saw the Superior, who had unlocked the door, and come to restore the boy to liberty. Oh, unhappy day! When the Abbe found the prisoner stealing his precious preserves, he became ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... space, was always to be heard; it ceased only when the village slept. There was an incessant clicking accompaniment to this noisy street life; a music played from early dawn to dusk over the pavement's rough cobbles—the click clack, click clack of the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... habits, we may well conclude from Fitzstephen's account of this community at a little later period than that of which we are writing. To the north of the city were pasture lands, with streams on whose banks the clack of many mills was pleasing to the ear; and beyond was an immense forest, with densely wooded thickets, where stags, fallow-deer, boars, and wild bulls had their coverts. We have seen that in the charter of Henry I the citizens had liberty to hunt through a very extensive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson. But this is what I am coming to: you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack. Now, take a warning from me, and don't let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips. I did all the shooting, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... touch our sympathies as they ought, and we could not see the pathetic side of them as at another time, the day was so full of cheer and the sky and earth so glorious. The very fields looked busy with their early summer growth, the horses began to think of the clack of the oat-bin cover, and we were hurried along between the silvery willows and the rustling alders, taking time to gather a handful of stray-away conserve roses by the roadside; and where the highway made a long bend eastward among the farms, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the great city! How strangely and deadly quiet! The heels of my two companions, and my own, made a click-clack down the pavements, as though we were walking through silent halls. Could this be Paris—this city of shuttered shops and barred windows and deserted avenues? There were no treasures displayed in the Rue de la Paix. Not a diamond glinted ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Clack! was the sound that followed the first cry. Like a flash the marine sentry had thrown his rifle to the deck. A single bound carried him to one of the night life buoys. This he released, ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... for a ball Of worsted was thy pride; With dangling stockings great and small, And world of clack beside! ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... not by any means ended, I hope. I attended a drawing-room meeting at Lady Clack's yesterday," said the Archbishop, smiling benignantly on his questioner, "and this morning I have sanctioned proceedings against a vicar who for some time has been wavering heretically in his opinions. I think we can effectually silence ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... perceptible to Miss Kilburn through her own humiliation. "There's some in every community that's bound to complain, I don't care what you do to accommodate 'em; and what I done, I done as much to stop their clack as anything, and give him the right sort of a start off, an' I guess I did. But Mis' Bolton she didn't know but what you'd look at it in the light of a libbutty, and I didn't know but what you would think I no business to ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... such wrath, For warming fingers—cooling broth. No statutes old or new forbid it, Although with the same mouth he did it: Yet this beware of old and young, What Esop meant—a double tongue; Which flatters now with civil clack, And slanders ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... a hawk's in air! I must have snoozed; yet, I caught the gabble. There'll be A clatter all day now, with two women's tongues, Clack-clack against each other, in the house— Two pendulums in one clock. Lucky I'm deaf. But, I remember. Give me back the bairn. Nay: this is not the wench. I want Jim's bride— The mother of his daughter. Judith, lass, Where are you? Come, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, while the old man, with a look half turned to Harley and half to heaven, breathed ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... Carlyle, that horrible blow that fell upon us, that shameless disgrace. Well, because the parish can't clack enough about the fact itself, it must begin about Barbara, saying that the disgrace and humiliation are reflected upon her, and that nobody will come near her to ask her to be his wife. One would think, rather than lie under the stigma and afford the parish room to talk, she'd ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... were well filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always interrupted at the instant the interesting ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of thy silly clack!" ordered her mother. "A runaway bond-servant on his Excellency's staff, quotha! Though he does head the rebels, General Washington is a man of breeding and ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... merit quite unique, His gift of mixing Latin up with Greek," Unique, you lags in learning? what? a knack Caught by Pitholeon with his hybrid clack? "Nay, but the mixture gives the style more grace, As Chian, plus Falernian, has more race." Come, tell me truly: is this rule applied To verse-making by you, and nought beside, Or would you practise it, when called to plead ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... instrumentes can do against vs: For we dailie fight against the Deuill in a hundreth other waies: And therefore as a valiant Captaine, affraies no more being at the combat, nor stayes from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a Cannon, nor the small clack of a Pistolet: suppose he be not certaine what may light vpon him; Euen so ought we boldlie to goe forwarde in fighting against the Deuill without anie greater terrour, for these his rarest weapons, nor for the ordinarie whereof wee haue daily ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... [sitting down beside her and beginning to shred rushes she gives him.] — If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look on you ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for," said Marilla shortly. "You and Diana walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don't think you're very badly off to see ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... up, very still, his legs a little apart, listening to Genet, that French Ambassador, which never had more manners than a Bosham tinker. Genet was as good as ordering him to declare war on England at once. I had heard that clack before on the Embuscade. He said he'd stir up the whole United States to have war with England, whether Big Hand liked it ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... rather it had been four, at which time the office closed. He looked round the court, which seemed very dean and rather empty—stables, barns, buildings, and dwelling-house not showing much sign of life, excepting the ceaseless hum and clack of the mill, and the dash of the water which propelled it. The windows nearest to him were so large and low, that he could look in and see that the first two or three belonged to living rooms, and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... does that mean?" said the blacksmith to himself as he watched the disappearing rider, while the click-clack of the loosened shoe became fainter and fainter in ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... talking it over. Can't you imagine the clack of tongues; the 'I says to her,' and 'she told me,' ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... sand strata. The pumps frequently got choked by the sand drawn in at the bottom of the well through the snore-holes, or apertures through which the water to be raised is admitted. The barrels soon became worn, and the bucket and clack leathers destroyed, so that it became necessary to devise a remedy; and with this object the engineman proceeded to adopt the following simple but original expedient. He had a wooden box or boot made, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and, slip, slap, click, clack, it went round the pawl belaying every inch of cable ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... not know whether he heard much of my clack, and I got very tired of it myself at last. When I had finished my blackberries, he asked mechanically, in an echo of my former visit, with a repetition of his gesture towards the coffee-pot, "More?" I shook my head, and ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... people is, as might be expected, agricultural; but, as the colony is very active and thriving and growing fast, many other branches of industry have sprung up, so that the hiss of the saw and the ring of the anvil, the clatter of the water-mill, and the clack of the loom, may be heard in all ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand, with another bow; bowed silently and loftily round the room, and disappeared, and a general buzz and a clack of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... clack of the gate she stood in suspense. It was a bright grey day. Paul came into the yard with his bicycle, which glittered as he walked. Usually he rang his bell and laughed towards the house. To-day he walked with shut lips ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... reconnoitre, but came back, cursing, for spades. The children of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and twenty minutes were lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress recommenced, to be varied with more shots, more shoutings, the steady clack and kick of the machine guns, and a final difficulty with a half-lifted rail ere the train came under the protection of the roaring ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... monsieur," replied the concierge, with an expressive shrug. And the clack of his sabots was soon ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his stick of sugarcane, and making way for no one under the status of a priest. They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... by one, and one by one the loosened turns of the bandage were uncoiled. The trenches at this point were apparently very close, for Macalister could hear the crack of the British rifles, the clack-clack-clack of a machine gun at close range, and the thought flitted through his mind that over there in his own trenches his own fellows would hear presently the crack of the officer's pistol with no understanding of what it meant. But with luck and his loosened hands he ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... come the reaction, and he was going HOME. Home! It was that one word that caused a shadow to flit over his face, and only once or twice had he forgotten and let it slip between his lips. At least he was returning to civilization—getting AWAY from the everlasting drone of breaking ice and the clack-clack tongue ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... but she hears him moaning and rolling on the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his breath and clack his teeth like ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... happened at the school, where she was daily sent to learn the art of reading, and the use of her needle; for the moment she came home, and before she had well entered the parlour door, and made her courtesy, her little tongue began to rattle like a mill clack."—"Mamma, said she, Tommy Careless was flogged for tearing his book, Jackey Fidget because he was a naughty boy and would not sit still, Polly Giddybrains, for losing her needle and thread paper, and, Lord bless me! my ma'am ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... not even a footstep. There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... show. Marks! I ha' marks o' more than burns—deep in my soul an' black, An' times like this, when things go smooth, my wickudness comes back. The sins o' four and forty years, all up an' down the seas, Clack an' repeat like valves half-fed.... Forgie's our trespasses. Nights when I'd come on deck to mark, wi' envy in my gaze, The couples kittlin' in the dark between the funnel stays; Years when I raked the ports wi' pride to fill my cup o' wrong— Judge not, O Lord, my steps aside ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... clack of the oars on the thole-pins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper's voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... comparison with the parish manse. It was a narrow, two-storied house, with but the causey (pavement) between it and the street. Across the close, which separated it from a still humbler dwelling, came the "clack, clack" of a hand-loom, and the same sound, though the night was falling, came from other ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... was good enough, but so far as the supper was concerned Lavinia could not, to use Betty's words, "make much of a fist of it." She was glad enough to escape the clack of tongues and the fire of questions and crawl ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... had been very different on this occasion. She had met him with his burden some distance down the trail, whither she had followed her young mistress, whose fleetness had left her far behind. Her tongue had started to clack at once, but Buck was in no mood to put up with unnecessary chatter. A peremptory order had had the astonishing effect of silencing her, and a further command had set her ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... click-clack of the horses' feet lulled the tired child into blissful drowsiness. He had had too many ups and downs in his eleven years of life to be alarmed at this unexpected turn of fortune, and he was still too young to grasp how great a change ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... if they do; and some folks are always a-dropping in, and a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh? Miss Ruth, the things I have heard folks say, a setting as it might be there, in poor Eccles his old chair by the chimley, as the Lord ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... myself to speculate who it might be, when suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the foot fall. Another instant and my servant had ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dull life fostered. Dress, gossip, and wages were the three topics which absorbed them. Christie soon tired of the innumerable changes rung upon these themes, and took refuge in her own thoughts, soon learning to enjoy them undisturbed by the clack of many tongues about her. Her evenings at home were devoted to books, for she had the true New England woman's desire for education, and read or studied for the love of it. Thus she had much to think of as ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren, who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house, where the worthy bourgeoise, frightened by your threatening step and the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Mistress Clo. "They cannot keep their mouths shut. If they have a secret they must tell it, whether 'tis their own or another's. They clack, they tell lies, they cry and scream out if they are hurt; but they will hurt anything which cannot hurt them back. They run and weep to each other when they are in love and a man slights them. They have no spirit and no decency." She ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon. Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said: she frowned and made him signs: but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. -The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect:—but, when I left a triumphant party in England, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... funny noise? It didn't sound like that before. Kind of a clickety-clack. . . . Don't ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish; the Duke had Crochets in him. Hee would be drunke too, that ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Misteaching. Departure from Tenets. Violation of Christian Fellowship. Moral Offences. Illegal Adoption. Broken By-laws. Violation of By-laws. (What is the difference?) Formulas Forbidden. Official Advice. (Forbids Tom, Dick, and Harry's clack.) Unworthy of Membership. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... during the weeks that followed, for he was not even allowed to come into the kitchen for a comforting cup of tea as of old. "And if anybody can't have a bit of a clack sometimes," groaned poor Jabez, "nor a cup of tea neither, why he might so well be dumb to once. I've ackshally got to talk to the 'orses and the cat to keep my powers of speech from ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch |
