"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well begun, there is also a special behaviour to observe: "It shall crowne you with rich commendation to laugh alowd in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper your tongue, be tost so high that all the house may ring of it: your lords use it; your knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ... be thou a beagle to them all.... [At] first, all the eyes in the galleries will ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... want money—power—luck—life's joy— Those take who can: we could, and fobbed Savoy; For those who live content with honest state, They're public pests; knock we 'em on the pate! They set a vile example! Quick—arrest That Fool, who ruled and failed to line his nest. Just hit a bell, you'll see the clapper shake— Meddle with Priests, you'll find the barrack wake— Ah! Princes know the People's a tight boot, March 'em sometimes to be shot and to shoot, Then they'll wear easier. So let them preach The righteousness of howitzers; and teach At the fag end of prayer: "Now, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... seconds. Then he stood on a chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper, wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry. He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps. He wanted ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... about the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then instantly all would be silent again. Theirs is an apt name,—Rallus crepitans. Once I watched ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... dem niggers am gwin' anyway. Dey ain't got sense nuff ter put dere han's in de bell ter keep de clapper from ringin', but dey does stuff de bell wid leaves an' it doan ring none, 'sides dat dey tears deir shirts, or steals sheets from missus clothes line an' fold dem ter make a scarf. Dey ties dese 'roun' deir necks ter hide de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... reciprocate one with each of you; but I reckon I have a heart big enough for you all; it's a whopper, you may depend, and every mite and morsel of it at your service.' 'Well, how you do act, Mr. Banks!' half a thousand little clipper-clapper tongues would say, all at the same time, and their dear little eyes sparklin' like so many stars twinklin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... at once by thrusting his left hand in its mouth and holding the clapper; but the little peal he had rung had done its work of setting all the mules in motion, bringing them all up close to the ringer, who found himself in the midst of a knot of squealing and kicking brutes, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... his head had too much snow on the top of it to let love lodge there. Then the good man perceived that he needed a wife in his manor, and it appeared more lonely to him than it was. And what then was a castle without a chatelaine? As well have a clapper without its bell. In short, a wife was the only thing that he had to desire, so he wished to have one promptly, seeing that if the Lady of Azay made him wait, he had just time to pass out of this world into the other. But during the baptismal entertainment, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Abbie got out of bed, picked up the dinner-bell by the clapper, and went back up-stairs to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, its chief benefactors, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music unless the clapper be silver. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... said,—"That barbarous tongue of thine is like the imperfect clapper of a broken bell that strikes forth harsh and undesired sounds suggesting nothing! Thy present duty is to hear, and not to speak,—therefore listen discerningly and write with exactitude, so shall thy poor blank scrolls of reed grow rich with gems, . . gems of high poesy that the whole ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... which the first brings about. The vibrations due to any one shock take place with great rapidity. They may, indeed, be compared to those movements which we perceive in the margin of a large bell when it has received a heavy blow from the clapper. The reader has perhaps seen that for a moment the rim of the bell vibrates with such rapidity that it has a misty look—that is, the motions elude the sight. It is easy to see that a shaking of this kind is particularly calculated to disrupt any bodies which stand free in the air and are ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... not to be, I say; and either, Sedgett, you does woman's work, gossipin' about like a cracked bell-clapper, or men's the biggest gossips of all, which I believe; for there's no beating you at your work, and one can't wish ill to you, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clapper strikes the lip of a bell it produces a sound and sends a tremor out upon the air. The vibrations thus made are ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... bows. At the second the applause begins, swelling at once to a roar. He steps up to the piano, bows three times more, and then sits down. He hunches his shoulders, reaches for the pedals with his feet, spreads out his hands and waits for the clapper-clawing to cease. He is an undersized, paunchy East German, with hair the color of wet hay, and an extremely pallid complexion. Talcum powder hides the fact that his nose is shiny and somewhat pink. His eyebrows are carefully penciled and ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... fire defenders." The night patrols of the village were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of the village. There stood up in every village a high perpendicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the ring of a bell to the clapper came Pierre Radisson on the third day, well pleased with what he had done and alert to keep two of us outside the fort in spite of Ben's urgings to bring the French ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... been adopted for this purpose on the Austrian lines, and is a simple contrivance. It consists of a cylindrical chamber, a, ending in a narrower tube, c, which forms the seating for a flap valve, d, to which the hammer or clapper, e, is fixed. Steam is admitted through a small pipe, b, at the bottom, and after a certain interval attains sufficient pressure to lift the valve. The opening being large compared with the pipe, b, steam escapes more rapidly than it arrives through the small orifice; the pressure falls, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... underneath that swelling skirt; that a scaffold, a framework, has been erected to support that dome of silk; and that the wearer is merely an automatic machine by which it is made to perambulate. A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by the neck ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... approach the dwellings of men, or to wash in running streams, or to handle the ropes of draw-wells, or to drink from the cups of wayside springs. He was forbidden the highways, and when he went abroad a clapper must give token of his coming and going. Nothing that might be used by others should he touch except with ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... open your folded wrapper Where two twin turtle-doves dwell; O Cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper, That hangs in ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... has long been dead. He was a leper; his cruel disease drove him from the haunts of men. The last we knew of him, he went forth with cup and clapper as they are wont. Soon after news arrived ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the great hall there stood many flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair and left nothing ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... down, dear man, sit ye down! Shut yer clapper, Nora! Sure it's mesilf that knows a paythriot whin I sees 'im. Tear-an-ages! Give me yer hand, me boy. Sit ye down an' tell us about it. We're all the same kind here. Niver fear for the woman, she's the worst o' the lot. Tell us, dear man. Be the light that shines! ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... intelligence who hasn't wept over little Cosette, been in love with Enjolras and "doted on" Gavroche and Jean Valjean! So ultra nice has the world become that we must skip the Canticles. Shakespeare's plays must now be clapper-clawed to make them palatable. Alexander Pope's philosophic rhyme must be deleted with dashes. Walt Whitman's poetry is too strong for the average stomach. But we continue to fire into the bosoms of our ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... closes of the lower town, followed by the bellman who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations, Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town hall of the same, at seven of the clock upon the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... The Clapper Rail, or Mud Hen, is one of the most remarkable, and like its relative, the Corncrake of England, makes its note heard all the night long. It is fourteen inches in length and eighteen in the stretch of the wings; the bill is two inches and a quarter long, slightly bent, and of a reddish-brown ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... to illustrate the principles of the electrostatic charge, involving the ringing of bells by electrostatic attraction and repulsion. It is used in connection with a frictional, or influence electric machine. Two bells are employed with a button or clapper suspended between them. One bell is connected to one of the prime conductors, q. v., of the machine. The other insulated therefrom is connected to earth, or if an influence machine is used, to the other ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into the steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus engaged, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... they sallied out, and that the gold-laced hat of the Captain was seen rising like Hesper above the dewy verge of the rising ground, the clash (for it was rather a clash than a clang) of the bell was heard from the old moss-grown tower, and the clapper continued to thump its cracked sides all the while they advanced towards the kirk, Duncan exhorting them to take their own time, "for teil ony sport wad be till ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I hear it," said Sir Archie; "there has been some alehouse brawl, I doubt not. Let it not fright you, Elsalill; it is but some fishermen that have come to clapper-claws ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper or a mylle ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... veritable bell which, in the days when "mother did it," had acted as a sort of Gabriel's trump, was still extant, minus clapper and handle, I was enabled to provide myself with its fac-simile. Armed with this instrument of retribution, I laid me down to sleep by Charlie's side, gloating in anticipation over my ripening ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... ordinary cow-bell suspended to the neck of an animal, have observed that the natural sound is an irregular one—that is, there is no system or regularity about the sound made by an animal in cropping the grass or herbage. There is the clapper's tink-a-link, tink-a-link—an interval of silence—then the occasional tink, tink, tink, to be followed, perhaps, by a repetition of the first-named sounds, varied occasionally by a compound of all, caused by the animal flinging its ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... wrapper, Where two twin turtledoves dwell! O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... unmistakable: the big bell was going as he had never heard it before—not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and were beating it against the side—Dang, dang, dang, dang—stroke following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when faintly, but plainly heard on the still night air, came ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... niece come o' age. He was a heap aboot the place afore his brither dee'd, an' they war freen's as weel 's brithers. They say 'at the lady Arctoora—h'ard ye ever sic a hathenish name for a lass!—is b'un' to merry the yoong lord. There 's a sicht o' clapper-clash aboot the place, an' the fowk, an' their strange w'ys. They tell me nane can be said to ken the yerl but his ain man. For mysel' I never cam i' their coonsel—no' even to the buyin' or sellin' ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... months at Nismes, the church, by the protestants called the Temple, was re-opened, and public worship performed on the morning of the 24th of December. On examining the belfry, it was discovered that some persons had carried off the clapper of the bell. As the hour of service approached, a number of men, women, and children, collected at the house of M. Ribot, the pastor, and threatened to prevent the worship. At the appointed time, when he proceeded towards the church, he was surrounded; the most savage shouts were ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... But never shall we forget the behaviour of the jade some two years ago. O the yell that she set up, the true mulish yell—knowing all the time that she had nothing to fear from her rider, knowing that he would not strike her between the ears. 'Come here, you scoundrel, and we will make a bell-clapper of your head, and of your bowels a string to hang it by'—that was the cry of the Barcelonese, presently echoed in every town and village throughout Spain—and that cry was raised immediately after he had ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and brandy too. Though the Lord knows they never cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her and that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... that it was half-past eight, so she leaped out of bed into the vibrant cold, and bathed and dressed. Her sense of ruin was like lead, but was somehow the cause of exultation in her heart as the clapper is the cause of the peal of a bell. She went and knocked on Ellen's door. There was no answer, so she stole in and stood at the end of the bed, and looked with laughter on the heap of bedclothes, the pair of unravelling plaits that were all ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... front of the entrance there was another bell. A long red streamer hung from its clapper, and under it was a great box with bars over the top. On the box there perched a great ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... circumlocution, beating about the bush; ceremony, everything pertaining to a certain condition; detail, particular CITRONISE, turn citron colour CITTERN, kind of guitar CITY-WIRES, woman of fashion, who made use of wires for hair and dress CIVIL, legal CLAP, clack, chatter CLAPPER-DUDGEON, downright beggar CLAPS HIS DISH, a 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 their approach CLARIDIANA, heroine of an old romance CLARISSIMO, Venetian ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... the rear of the silent house and through the servants' hall, then around by the kitchen garden, then felt his way along a hedge to a hutchlike lodge where a fixed iron bell hung quivering under the slow blows of the clapper. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... ten times the spirit and go that Rose had, and a far better figure. Now you know, Anne, I always take the ground that us women ought to stand by each other. We've got enough to endure at the hands of the men, the Lord knows, so I hold we hadn't ought to clapper-claw one another, and it isn't often you'll find me running down another woman. But I never had much use for Rose Elliott. She was spoiled to begin with, believe ME, and she was nothing but a lazy, selfish, whining creature. Frank was no hand to work, so they ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my venerable old friend ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but by this time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny. The play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and London discussed it the more because it was in French and not clapper-clawed by the vulgar. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... in a rough platform which was built round the bell, probably to allow workmen to attend to it now and then in case it were not hanging safely. It looked a great mass of metal, so large and heavy that even the clapper must be an ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... floating in the exact centre of the heat and sound waves, and he listened, listened for years, to the awful, brazen hum from which there could be no escape; at the same time it seemed to him that he was only a Freshman on the slippery roof of the tower, trying to steal the clapper of the chapel bell. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... present its convex surface, with the words STUDY HOURS upon it, distinctly to the school. In the drawing it is represented in an inclined position, being not quite drawn up, that the parts might more easily be seen. At d there is a small projection of the tin upward, which touches the clapper of the bell suspended above every time the plate passes up or down, and thus gives notice ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... the first catadioptric order, lighted by a first-class pressure lamp. By it stands the machine for striking the fog-bell, which weighs three hundredweight, and sounds about every two seconds by means of a double clapper. There is also a flagstaff, by means of which the light-keepers can hoist signals to passing vessels. The total height of masonry above high-water mark is one hundred and fifteen feet six inches; and the diameter of the tower over the outside of the cornice ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... her life, her daughter who had doubtless been eavesdropping, suddenly appeared and interrupted the conversation with, "Ma, now don't you git started 'bout dem old times. You knows your mind ain't no good no more. Tomorrow your tongue will be runnin' lak a bell clapper a-talkin' to yourself." "Shut your big mouth, Henrietta." Frances answered. "I been sick, and I knows it, but dere ain't nothin' wrong wid my mind and you knows it. What I knows I'se gwine to tell de lady, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... the bell upon the poop once more clanged loudly; and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper to strike ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... me now as if I could see myself in a mirror of anguish, altogether changed, as if my head were a complete void at times and became something sonorous, and then was struck violent, prolonged blows from a heavy clapper, as if it had been a bell, which fills it with tumultuous deafening vibrations, from a kind of loud tocsin and from monotonous peals, that were succeeded by the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the mound fifty musicians were playing on their barbarous instruments, elephants' tusks giving forth a husky note, deerskin drums, calabashes, guitars, bells struck with an iron clapper, and bamboo flutes, whose shrill whistle was heard over all. Every other second came discharges of guns and blunderbusses, discharges of cannons with the carriages jumping so as to imperil the lives of the artillery-women, and a general uproar so intense that even the thunder would ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... The clapper on his giant side Shall ring no peal for blushing bride, For birth, or death, or new-year-tide, Or festival begun! A nation's joy alone shall be The signal for his revelry; And for a nation's woes alone His melancholy tongue shall moan: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... beautiful wax figures, or of some monstrous beast more horrible than any in the caravan? I guess the latter. See how he uplifts the bell in his right hand and shakes it slowly at first, then with a hurried motion, till the clapper seems to strike both sides at once, and the sounds are scattered forth in quick succession ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... new fog-horn on that point now, Eel, but when I was quite a small shaver, in 1906, the fog signal was a bell, rung with a clapper. In July of that year the clapper broke and couldn't be used. A heavy fog came down and blanketed the island so that you couldn't see anything a foot away. That woman light-keeper stood there with a watch in one hand and a nail-hammer in the other ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... beautiful and remarkable are these headless Discophori, as they float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders are but so much sea-water, inclosed in so slight a tissue that it withers in the sun, and leaves only a minute spot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the North; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon be on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and clapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of houses full of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... clapper-rail, the "marsh-hen." One never finds such a combination of long legs, long toes, long neck and bill, with this long but heavy hen-like body, outside the meadows and marshes. The grass ought to have been alive with the birds: it was breeding-time. But I think the high tides ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Lat. campus, field, and Wright, originally the worker, Anglo-Sax. wyrht-a. Camp is sometimes for Kemp, but is also from the Picard form of Fr, champ, i.e. Field. Of similar formation to Webb, etc., is Clapp, from an Anglo-Sax. nickname, the clapper— ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... in Paul's, and gentlemen's teeth walk not faster at ordinaries than there a whole day togeather about inquirie after newes."—Theeves falling out true men come by their good, or the Belman wanted a clapper, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... doubt! The lamp was beating back and forth like the clapper of a great bell. Where was he? Billy sought a window. He found some little round, glass-covered holes near the low ceiling at one side of the room. It was only at the greatest risk to life and limb that he managed to crawl on all fours to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the engine in her bowels occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. From time to time a heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, and recall me to the obscure borders of consciousness; or I heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 'All's well!' I know nothing, whether for poetry or music, that can surpass the effect of these two syllables in the darkness of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... noise like a cow without cymbals. A certain latinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the authority of one Taponnus,—I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet, —who wished those bells had been made of feathers, and the clapper of a foxtail, to the end they might have begot a chronicle in the bowels of his brain, when he was about the composing of his carminiformal lines. But nac petetin petetac, tic, torche lorgne, or rot kipipur kipipot put pantse malf, he was declared an heretic. We make them as of wax. And ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the lung. There is symmetrical enlargement and deformity of the hands and feet; the shafts of the bones are thickened, and the soft tissues of the terminal segments of the digits hypertrophied. The fingers come to resemble drum-sticks, and the thumb the clapper of a bell. The nails are convex, and incurved at their free ends, suggesting a resemblance to the beak of a parrot. There is also enlargement of the lower ends of the bones of the forearm and leg, and effusion ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... be more genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the heartstrings ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... was all clad in white, and bare a full great cross, and each of the others a little one, and the more part came singing with sweet voices and bear candles burning, and there was one behind that carried a bell with the clapper and all ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of thread like this, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... much noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a-quiver with merriment. The old man draws himself up to his full height, all save that loving bend of the head over the beloved instrument. His long slender foot, in its quaint "Congress" shoe, beats time like a mill-clapper,—tap, tap, tap; his snowy curl dances over his forehead, his brown eyes twinkle with pride and pleasure. Other feet beside his began to pat the ground; heads were lifted, eyes looked invitation and response. At length the child Melody, with one superb outburst of song, lifted ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... like a dull colored King Rail, with reference to the markings of the back, or a bright colored Clapper Rail, as it has a cinnamon colored breast. It is an abundant species in nearly all the salt marshes along the coast. They make their nests on the higher parts of the marsh, where it is comparatively dry, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... of our light, And thus 'tis: Whether 't be a sin To claw and curry your own skin, Greater or less, than to forbear, 75 And that you are forsworn, forswear. But first, o' th' first: The inward man, And outward, like a clan and clan, Have always been at daggers-drawing, And one another clapper-clawing. 80 Not that they really cuff, or fence, But in a Spiritual Mystick sense; Which to mistake, and make 'em squabble In literal fray's abominable. 'Tis heathenish, in frequent use 85 With Pagans and apostate Jews, To offer sacrifice of bridewells, Like modern Indians to their ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... himself to the ancient German singer—the poor clerk of the Chronicle of Limburg—whose sweet songs were sung and whistled from morning to night all through Germany; while the Minnesinger himself, smitten with leprosy, hooded and cloaked, and carrying the lazarus-clapper, moved through the shuddering city. God's satire weighed heavily upon him, indeed. Silently she held out her hand, and he gave her his bloodless fingers; she touched the strangely satin skin, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... statuesque figure, intently listening, had been observed by the passengers, and there was a dead silence aboard, broken only by the thumping of the engines and the splash of the paddle-blades as they pounded the still waters. Presently the dreary clang of the bell, struck by the clapper as the sea rocked it, came to us in uncertain and fitful tones. It was a melancholy sound, but its effect was cheering, because it gave the people some idea of our whereabouts, and was an indication ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... planted on a chair, watching with a sort of stupor the turning of the fan of this word-mill, whose clapper kept up such an incessant noise. After having criticised to her heart's content her neighbours, including under that title emperors and grand-dukes, and having abundantly multiplied the et ceteras, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... o'clock Westerfelt saw a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell. Then it began to toll. The boy was an unpractised hand, and the strokes were irregular, sometimes too slow and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... you, though. Why, it's gone to ye'r head, an' has made yer tongue like a mill-clapper. Ye'd better shet ye'r mouth or the guy'll hear ye an' take to his heels before we kin ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... that line of talk! The clapper-jaw! He's altogether too free." She surveyed me keenly. "And naturally you couldn't understand ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... challenges its own violent destruction. It not only consecrates, like the character of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this feature to an unbearably contradictory extreme. The "play of constitutional powers," as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of 1848. On the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and qualified for re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... Sidney as saying that the "chief life of modern versifying consists in rhyme." Swift agrees with him. "Verse without rhyme," he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell without a clapper." He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatly improved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroic ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... recognized by the African who knows Europeans as "marimba." Thus Owen tells us (p. 308) "that at the mouth of the Zambesi it is called 'Tabbelah,'" evidently the Arabic "Tablah" Another favourite instrument is a clapper, made of two bamboos some five feet long, and thick as capstan bars,—it is truly the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... she has but ane, The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper tongue wad deave a miller: A whiskin beard about her mou', Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... even threw things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not whine—it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... came face to face each made a prodigious start in the style of a veteran stage champion. Then did they regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious tom-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw themselves into one attitude, then into another striking their swords on the ground first on the right side, then on the left; at last at it they went with incredible ferocity. Words cannot tell the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... delight and wonder, When they brought home some 'special plunder; Call'd them her darlings, and her white boys, Her ducks, her dildings—all was right boys— "Only," she said, "my lads, have care Ye fall not into BLACK BACK'S snare; For, if he catch, he'll maul your corpus, And clapper-claw you to some purpose." She was in truth a kind of witch, Had grown by fortune-telling rich; To spells and conjurings did tackle her, And read folks' dooms by light oracular; In which she saw, as clear as daylight, What mischief on her bairns would a-light; Therefore ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... part of it, is made to vibrate. This is evident to sense in the string of a violin or harpsichord, for we may perceive by the eye, or feel by the hand, the trembling of the strings, when by striking they are made to sound. If a bell be struck by a clapper on the inside, the bell is made to vibrate. The base, of the bell, is a circle, but it has been found that by striking any part of this circle on the inside, that part flies out, so that the diameter which passes through this part of the base will be longer than ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... But would it? Ah, Philip felt a twinge then. "Touche!" chortled some unseen imp who plied a venomous rapier. Thank goodness, a sailor was standing by the ship's bell, with his hand on a bit of cord tied to the clapper. It would soon be seven o'clock. Even the companionship of the uncouth skipper was ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... he went slowly up the narrow spiral staircase. Arrived at the top, the soft wind was murmuring through the great iron railings, the cages of the bells. From the centre of the vault hung the famous "Gorda," an immense bronze bell, with all one side split by a large crack; the clapper, which was the author of the mischief, lay below it, engraved and as thick as a column, and a smaller one now occupied the cavity. The roofs of the Cathedral, dark and ugly, lay at their feet, and in front on a hill rose the Alcazar, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. The fact is well known of the sentry at Windsor, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... at the top of a tower a hundred feet high, which vibrated with every stroke of the great bell hanging midway between his airy perch and the ground. He was sixty years of age, and had white hair, but he was as strong as younger men, and could swing the clapper against the side of the great bell with a boom that could be heard across rivers, and far into the peaceful country, on quiet nights. His eyes were so sharp, that, without the aid of a glass, he could read names on the paddle boxes of steamboats, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... few turbellaria we find otolith vesicles. These are little sacks in the skin, lined with neuro-epithelial cells and having in the middle a little concretion of carbonate of lime hung on rather a stiffer hair, like a clapper in a bell. Such organs serve in higher animals as organs of hearing, for the sensory hairs are set in vibration by the sound-waves. It is quite as probable that they here serve as organs for feeling the slightest vibrations ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... out hymns and notices, and with his own solicitude at home that the singing should go well or that the choirboys should not fidget. But there was a terrible confusion with chairs, and a hideous kind of clapper that was used, apparently, to warn the boys to sit and rise. The service, moreover, as a reverential congregational act of worship such as he was used to hope for, was marred by innumerable collections, and especially by the old woman who came round even ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... But towards Holyrood and the College, what a warren! You entered by deep archways into secluded yards. Here was a darksome passage where murder might be (and no doubt had been) done. Here was an echoing gateway to a coaching inn, with a watchman ready to hit evil boys over the head with his clapper if they tried to ring his bell, the bell that announced the arrival of the Dumfries coach "Gladiator" after thirty hours' detention at the Beeftub in Moffatdale, or the shorter breathed "four" from Selkirk ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... middle-aged matrons)—"I tell you, Pansey," she repeated, "it is all a mistake; the majority of young men in our world do not marry whom they please: they may think so, but in the majority of cases they marry whom we please. The bell responds to the clapper; but who is it that makes the clapper to speak? The ringer. Do you see the force of ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... termination, without any visible means of being rung, and we wondered how this was done, until we happened one day to be within sight at the Angelus hour, when we saw a man bring out a ladder and ascend to within reach of a short cord hanging from the clapper, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... watching them. These rafts, which with the figures upon them produced a most picturesque effect, were called "clappers," and were used, especially by strangers and summer guests, for orientation and description of location. E.g. "He lives down by Klempin's clapper," or "opposite Jahnke's clapper." Between the rafts or wash benches were regular spaces devoted to piers, and here the majority of the ships were moored, in the winter often three or four rows. The crews were on shore at this time, and the only ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... often noticed as "a sacringe bell;" but in an inventory of goods belonging to the chapel of Thorp, Northamptonshire, it is described as "a litle sanctus bell." A small sacringe bell, of bell-metal, with the exception of the clapper, which was of iron, was in 1819 discovered on the removal of some rubbish from the ruins of St. Margaret's Priory, Barnstable; and within the last few years a small sanctus bell was found on the site of a ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... moral to an improving tale of this order, I know, but the only one I can think of just now is that it takes a priest to get round a woman; and I always feel inclined to jump on to the table myself when I think of those poor dear creatures sitting on the floor and feeling that awful thing clapper-clawing its way up right ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... "Hold your clapper, you spooney, and be damned to you!" exclaimed the angry veteran.—"Had the Ingian fastened his paw upon your ugly neck as he did upon mine, all the pitiful life your mother ever put into you would have been spirited away from very fear; so ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... servant, with all my servants, to circumspect the abbey, and surely to keep all back-doors and starting-holes. I myself went alone to the abbot's lodging, joining upon the fields and wood, even like a cony clapper, full of starting-holes. [I was] a good space knocking at the abbot's door; nec vox nec sensus apparuit, saving the abbot's little dog that within his door fast locked bayed and barked. I found a short poleaxe standing behind the door, and with it I dashed the abbot's door in pieces, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... late, and the twenty-four hours were up while the reprieve was being carried over Laleham Ferry. But the knell for the death-stroke never sounded; Blanche had climbed the curfew tower and held the clapper of the great bell. The story has always been popular locally, but it first reached a really wide audience, perhaps, when Mr. Clifford Harrison embodied it in his poem The Legend of Chertsey. Since then, reciters' audiences have had ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... his head, to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth. He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; For what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks. "I hope he is in love." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to where we left off, quoth Panurge. Your words, being translated from the clapper-dudgeons to plain English, do signify that it is not very inexpedient that I marry, and that I should not care for being a cuckold. You have there hit the nail on the head. I believe, master doctor, that on the day of my marriage you will ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... charm your tongue] I know not whether I have read, or whether my own thoughts hare suggested, an alteration of this passage. It seems to me not improbable, that Shakespeare wrote clam your tongue; to clam a bell, is to cover the clapper with felt, which drowns the blow, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... taken off the leather so far that Nathan could see into the bellows. He saw that there was a little clapper over the hole, in one of ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my next neighbor said to me, "that man will be our valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That glib reciter did become the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... represents Old Fr. quercerelle (crecerelle), "a kastrell" (Cotgrave). Crecerelle is a diminutive of crecelle, a rattle, used in Old French especially of the leper's rattle or clapper, with which he warned people away from his neighbourhood. It is connected with Lat. crepare, to resound. The Latin name for the kestrel is tinnunculus, lit. a little ringer, derived from the verb tinnire, to clink, jingle, "tintinnabulate." Cooper tells us that "they ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... time had been resorted to from early eras. But the whole story is vague. It seems, however, that the method of counting the hours was influenced by the manner of striking them. Whether bronze bell or wooden clapper was used, three preliminary strokes were given by way of warning, and it therefore became inexpedient to designate any of the hours "one," "two," or "three." Accordingly the initial number was four, and the day being divided into six hours, instead of twelve, the highest number ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... heretical. From the remotest period of antiquity to which the archives have reference, the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. And, indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and watches in the borough. Never was such a place for keeping the true time. When the large clapper thought proper to say "Twelve o'clock!" all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and responded like a very echo. In short, the good burghers were fond of their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was greater than any I had heard before and set my heart a-beating like the clapper of the convent bell. But one only stayed in his chair, and his looks were heavy with anger. At him the rest pointed fingers and called on him derisively to pay the wager and be glad. Whereat he tugged from his belt a bag of gold which he flung at us as though with the will to injure. But ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... piece," remarked the Colonel. "The neglect is in a fashion systematic." He laid his hand on the chain of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to force ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... of Saint Augustine, Saint Benedict, Saint Cuthbert and Saint Dominic light upon him for a lewd fellow, a clapper-claw, a thieving dog who hath no regard for Holy Church—forsooth a most vicious rogue, monstrum nulla ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the neglect that he got for so long. Very lately, in the midst of the carnival, he announced his own literary death and burial, and even preached a burlesque funeral sermon upon his life and times. Such an artist, by the very nature of his endeavors, must needs stand above all public-clapper-clawing, pro or con. He writes, not to please his customers in general, nor even to please his partisans in particular, but to please himself. He is his own criterion, his own audience, his own judge and hangman. When he does bad ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... bit o' brag on the boy's part: he's so eager to save his neck as you or me either. Awnly Jonathan's bin here and tawld up summat that makes un want to be off to wance, for he says, what us all knaws, without he's minded to it you can't slip a knot round Jonathan's clapper; and 'tain't that Jerrem's afeared o' his tongue, awnly for the keepin' up o' pace and quietness he fancies 'twould be better for un to make hisself scarce ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... no nae doubt at ye lauoh at havers, an' there's mony 'at lauchs 'at your clipper-clapper, but they're no Thrums fowk, and they canna' lauch richt. But we maun juist settle this matter. When we're ta'en up wi' the makkin' o' humour, we're a' dependent on other fowk to tak' note o' the humour. There's no nane o' us 'at's lauched at anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare which was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow, incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not have been any great harm in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... valued at over a hundred thousand ducats decorated the bridge of his galley; one was cut in the form of a flower, another in the figure of a bird, and another was shaped like a bell, with an enormous pearl serving as a clapper. He was attended by persons who had been his companions overseas, and who had adopted exotic customs; slender hidalgos of sickly color who silently whiled away the time lighting bundles of herbs resembling pieces of rope, and puffing smoke ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... speaking before long. Herod could not get a word out of Christ when he 'asked Him many questions' because for years he had not cared to hear His voice. And conscience, like the Lord of conscience, will hold its peace after men have neglected its speech. You can pull the clapper out of the bell upon the rock, and then, though the waves may dash, there will not be a sound, and the vessel will drive straight on to the black teeth that are waiting for it. Educate your conscience by obeying it, and by getting into the habit of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Chinese characters consisting of extracts from the sacred writings, and the Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who is an expert in the Chinese language, says that there is "not one imperfect character among them.'' The bell when struck by the big wooden clapper emits a deep musical note that can be heard for miles. Such a magnificent bell vividly illustrates the stage of civilization reached by the Chinese while Europe was comparatively barbarous, for the bell was cast ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... taken down and removed to the town of Bethlehem for safety. In 1778 it was returned to the State House and a new steeple built for it. Several years after it cracked, for some unknown reason, under a stroke of the clapper, and its tone was thus destroyed. An attempt was made to restore its tone by sawing the crack wider, but without success. This bell was sent to New Orleans during the winter to be exhibited in the World's Fair there. The Pullman Company gave one of their handsomest cars for the transit. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... a floral wedding bell, which was supplied with not only one clapper, but a dozen. These clappers were ingenious little contrivances, and from each hung a long and narrow white ribbon. After the luncheon, each ribbon was apportioned to a guest, and at a given signal the ribbons were pulled, whereupon each clapper ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... first to forego his brass clapper, The Muffinboy speedily followed his shade; And, now, 'tis the Postman—that double-tongued rapper— Must give up his Bell for the eve's promenade. "Tantae Animis?' sage Legislators! Why rage against trifles like these? Prithee tell, Why leave the solution to rude commentators, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton |
