"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... display. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as, therefore, this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fiercely than a fire in daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw the trees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept up the fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heard the bents hiss and crackle under her, as if she set ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... landing, in the darkness, sipping our first tot of rum. Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard that Achi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war on Turkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due to certain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the Kishlar Rocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smiles she is so charming; but when she frowns, ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... "Hist—Skip! Crackle!" came a volley from far away to the north, and Eben cast himself down behind a heather bush to draw breath. They had fired, and he was a proven man. He had faced death to certify his truth to the salt he was eating, and now nothing remained but to withdraw as carefully ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... woods shot a beam of the greenish-red light. It darted to and fro for an instant, almost vertically in the air, and Mercer heard the crackle of the tree-tops as they burst into flame under its heat. Then it swung downward, but before it could reach the water level the rise of ground at ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... saw you get so much—so much fun out of your food. I've heard about gourmands. I think I can guess now what they are and act like. Hark! What's that noise? Kind of a crackle, as if a cat or something was overhead among those vines. I hope it isn't. Cats love fish. I always have to shut up Lady Rosalind when Mother Martha has it for dinner. Isn't 'finnan ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... and again worked over Jean, so that, when the fire had begun to crackle and give out heat, he saw the upturned eyes swim down, and the blessed look of consciousness take the place of terrible blankness. Then, with a sob of joy, he gathered her in his arms, and laid her down in the zone of life-giving ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... speculations in land, cities undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all its labor,—these are what have made possible this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... were two flying bodies headed toward the gully's bottom. Corporal Noll Terry, standing there, had heard the ominous crackle of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... paintings are neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... afire!" caught up by a hundred throats, And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats; Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood, And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could feel it where ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... possessed of esper, cried out as soon as she read this new menace in my mind. I rode the brakes easily and came to a stop long before we hit it. In back sounded a crackle of rifle fire; in front, three men came out waving their rifles ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... when fortunately, as it seemed to Hale, the character of the storm changed. The snow no longer fell in such large flakes, nor as heavily. A bitter wind succeeded; the soft snow began to stiffen and crackle under the horses' hoofs; they were no longer weighted and encumbered by the drifts upon their bodies; the smaller flakes now rustled and rasped against them like sand, or bounded from them like hail. They seemed to be moving more easily and rapidly, their ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... and from the smoking-car drifts back a visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in and out as if the long low windows were monstrous dragons' mouths, from which the darting forks came to play over golden stony lips, and lick the mullions and buttresses around. Then came a fresh explosion, as pent-up gases, generated by heat, burst forth to augment the fire with hiss, crackle, and flutter, as it seemed to gain its climax, and then sank down with a low ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... crackle and Retief stiffened. Magnan heard a sharp intake of breath. The globe slowed, and ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... forest arcades the clearing which he must cross to reach the spot where he was expected. The angry barks of the wolves had increased during the last quarter of an hour, and the sound of their paws making the snow crackle inspired the old man with an indescribable terror. The number of animals seemed momentarily to be augmented; it resembled an ant-heap seen through the magnifying-glass of a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... night when the palace-guard Had passed the measured rounds, The young princess awoke to feel A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel Within ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or to assume terrestrial ones;—and the occasional inspection of surprising shapes might strengthen this fancy. Queer flat-lying and many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in juiciness and color and consistency, crackle under your feet from time to time; the moist and weighty air seems heated rather from below than from above,—less by the sun than by the radiation of a cooling world; and the mists of morning or evening appear to simulate the vapory exhalation of volcanic forces,—latent, but ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... substances, when heated, have this property. Some bodies give out flashes and sparks by being rubbed. If you stroke a black cat briskly in the dark, you will see faint flashes of light come from her fur; and on very cold nights in the winter season, flannels that are worn next the skin crackle, and give sparks when taken off ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... dinner and he was himself again and would have spoken alone with me, I ran and got on my horse, and all the brothers stood on the corridor to see me go. He came up to me and blessed me, and whispered: 'Tell no one, my son. If you do'—and he gave me a look that made my hair crackle at the roots. And to this day I have told no one. Did I tell my parents the priest would know in six hours. No boy has stayed here that ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... writhed, I heard him cry, I felt the life-light leap and lie, I saw him crackle there, on high, I ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... big bucket of water, which they always kept in a certain spot. She flung the water on the flames, but water will not quench the flames made from oil. The rail began to crackle, the sparks to fly. The "Merry Maid" was afire, with only one, feeble girl to ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... have a fire in the fireplace, then we can have a crackle of our own." He had noticed how nervous Mrs. Reece grew, and that the little girls were watching her. He could not help thinking that it was foolish, even wicked, to waste strength in fear of something which no one of them could stop. "Build a ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented the flames from extending. But the inhabitants cared so little for the hazard, that not a single ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... cracking on both sides, and the bullets with furious spat drove deep into the adobe or whizzed through the gunny-sacks into the barley. The unseen foe was once more investing them on every side and not a shot could be wasted in return. Once more the furious crackle and roar of flames was heard close at hand, and then the smoke grew thicker, the heat increased, and poor Ned Harvey, his eyes smarting, knelt steadfast at his post and prayed, prayed for the coming ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... hills across the fields and captured the city streets with a blare of northern winds, which had been met and tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so that, with lungs filled with the intoxicating draught of this late wine of October, everybody had ridden, driven, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... anxiously grouped around the spot where Philips had fallen. At first, only the outline of a man of large stature and proportions could be seen lying in a cramped position, as if produced by some strong convulsive agony, and then when the fire began to kindle and crackle, the dress could be distinguished, and then as the light grew brighter, the scalpless head, and then the marked and distorted features of the murdered master of the house, who lay in a pool of blood that slowly trickled along the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... season, when the leaves and twigs crackle under foot, the rifle is as good as useless, for it becomes impossible to approach a deer within shooting range. And there are other times when ammunition is exhausted, and the trapper is thus forced to rely only on his traps for his supply of food. In such circumstances, the necessities ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... I heard the crash away off here, even with all that thunder from Big Berthas and the crackle of hundreds ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... of my remembrance I was disguised as a midshipmite, with white duck trousers of a prodigious width. They used to crackle, I remember. There was room ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... did once hire a horse and carriage of a friend and took Alice for a drive! More than thirty-five years have passed since that adventure and yet I can see every turn in that road! I can hear the crackle of my starched shirt and the creak of my suspender ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... had been reading last night's paper, dropped it quickly and tiptoed toward us. He peered between the partly open curtains, closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn, to his seat. The very crackle with which he opened his paper added to the bursting curiosity of the car. For the passengers knew that something was amiss: I was conscious of a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with my head half in the field, I don't know how long, all dead asleep. At last it seemed to me that I heard a noise in my sleep, something like a thing moving, very faint, however, far away; then it died, and then it came again upon my ear, as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time without hearing it. All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on the ridge of the hill, with my cheek on the ground towards the stubble, with ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... dew sent them back to the camp. Piute and Peon were skinning coyotes by the blaze of the fire. The night wind had not yet risen; the sheep were quiet; there was no sound save the crackle of burning cedar sticks. Jack began to talk; he had to talk, so, addressing Piute and the dumb peon, he struck at random into speech, and words flowed with a rush. Piute approved, for he said "damn" whenever his intelligence grasped a meaning, and the peon twisted ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... first heard nothing, and was just about to say that it must be the screech-owl come closer, when from a corner of the house there came a distant and sharp crackle. I heard Alf scuffle to his feet. "We ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... a fine thing to talk about the perfumed and restful bed of balsam boughs, and the crackle of the campfire at dusk, and the dip in the mirrored bosom of the pellucid lake at dawn—old Emerson Hough does all that to perfection; but these things assume a different aspect when it rains. There are three conditions in life when any latent selfishness in a man's being, ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... I could do more," said Mrs. Bradford, comfortably turning her page with a rustling crackle. "But my legs have given way ever since I was married. I don't know why, I'm sure; but marriage does seem to affect the constitution in ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... was allowed to be brought home. All the parish waited at their cottage doors in the evening for its arrival: I remember how, as a very little girl, I stood by my mother's side. About eight o'clock, as we hearkened on our door-stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road. The noise was lost as the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered down the next long incline, and presently it entered Longpuddle. The coffin was laid in the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... highway, we could see through the trees the whitewashed walls and red pottery roofs of Weerde, while a short distance to the right, in a heavily wooded park, was a large stone chateau. The only sign that the town was occupied was a pall of blue-grey vapour which hung over it and a continuous crackle of musketry coming from it, though occasionally, through my glasses, I could catch glimpses of the lean muzzles of machine-guns protruding from the upper ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... The crackle of a match told him that the leader of the couple wished to take a look at him, so as to be satisfied. And when the little piece of wood flared up, Max was able to see that both men were, as Steve had declared, dressed in ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... securely had he entangled himself in the head-rope that, despite the freedom of his heels, and spasmodic efforts to regain his feet, he remained pinned to earth, not many yards from where the fire was raging,—his fear and misery increased by wind-blown fragments of lighted straw, by the roar and crackle of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing through them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward, a thud and a crashing of branches. Some twigs hit ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... gave him a convulsive little squeeze—and felt the crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it, Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was wondering if he could show ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes—the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred it, the sudden roar of the English ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... were obliged to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... supposition was well founded, for Cyril was feeling unusually grave as he sat opposite to his father and sister in a room of the homestead. A brief silence had fallen upon the group, emphasized by the crackle of poplar billets in the stove. Jernyngham, in whose appearance there had been a marked improvement since his son's return, wore an eager expression; Gertrude was watching her ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... love a great many things—birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for the hot, still afternoons of summer. As in every house, there are things that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but which would not mean much to others. Naturally, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... The crackle of musketry increased; the dust rolled up and intermingled with the wreathes of drifting smoke, and through it came the vicious whine of ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... concealed beside it, its laughter so outrivaled every other sound that she had difficulty in discerning the Howes' approaching tread, and it was not until the distinct crackle of underbrush reached her ear that she became aware they were approaching. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... to help them. Only to send a message," was the reply, as the wireless spark began to crackle again. "We are telling the Government about her plight and a revenue cutter will be sent out to tow the schooner into some near port. She has drifted a good way off shore, but the weather is settled and there is nothing ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... the steady pull, growing weaker and weaker as the strength of the fish was exhausted. Suddenly into the idler's lotus-eating Paradise came a rushing sound. A sharp swerve of the horse was followed by an exasperating crackle, and, lo! the beloved fishing-rod was broken,—yes, broken, and that delicate, quivering, responsive, tapering end lay trailing in the dust which whirled in eddies around ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the steps. Already the stinging rain had lashed the drive into the semblance of a frothy estuary; all round the lightning jagged its course through the incessant tremulous glow of more distant lightning, while the thunder only ceased its muttering to turn at close quarters and crackle viciously. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... the road they heard the crackle of a dozen rifle shots. The Southern advance undoubtedly had come into contact with the Union sentinels and skirmishers. After the first shots there was a moment's breathless silence, and then came a scattered and rapid fire, as if at least a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Alfred, King of England, Bade blow the horns of war, And fling the Golden Dragon out, With crackle and acclaim and shout, Scrolled and aflame ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... was discovered by the pursuing party, who mistook it for a general flight of the fugitives. They rushed forward with a shout. They had a rugged and barren hill to ascend. Half way up the slope they saw flashes of fire burst from the rocks above, heard the rapid "crack—crackle—crack!" of a dozen pieces, and retreated in confusion down the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... avoid them. But ought he not to turn back? He resolved not to be frightened from his object. After lying still awhile, he went back along the road, then turned aside, walked softly from tree to tree, careful not to crackle a twig beneath his feet, crept on his hands and knees through the thick underbrush, and gained the road in the rear of the picket. Being inside of the enemy's lines, he knew that he could move more freely, for if any of the sentinels ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed, "and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't—don't, please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnaped and chained to a tree by a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... penetrates the woods like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noiselessly from the stern; and over the bow there is the glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now continuous on the summit of the last low ridge. Twigs crackle, and branches snap. There is the thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush, the pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and straight down the great bull rushes like a tempest, nearer, nearer, till he bursts with tremendous crash through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy point.—And ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... drink," she said, as if these actions were the cardinally important ones of life. "Flo, you carry her bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we want to love Lolomi." Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire, making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near Carley and beamed ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away in ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... minutes of that interval had made quite another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in amazement. "Why, God a'mighty, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the bushes on the alert for a charge from the wounded bull; but nothing stirred. No sound came to his ears except the soft padding noise of his horse's hoofs upon the turf. There was not a crackle of the brushwood, and the trees seemed carved out of metal. He rode through absolute silence in a suspension of all movement. Once his horse trod upon a bough, and the snapping of the twigs sounded like so many cracks of a pistol. At first the silence ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him and the edge of the bluff, cutting off his road to the prairie. It was evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs, and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them. There alone remained the river. It ran fast below him, and the ice was thin, and for just a moment he tightened ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without permitting a single crackle, she ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... the street he heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'Ecole. The Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going back into the prison; but a body of Vengeurs de Lutece, in full ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... without only the steady roaring crackle. Could it be possible the petition had not been heard? The childish hands met more tightly than before. The small body ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft and noiseless as down under his tread. The stately trees grew far enough apart to ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... helplessness, with blind, unappeasable rage against the chance that had crippled him, with bitter and useless questionings as to why such a moment should have been selected for the one accident of his young life. Outside he could hear the crackle of the little fire, the unusual sound of the Indian girl's voice as she talked low to the dog, the animal's whine of appreciation and content. Suddenly he felt the need of companionship, the weariness of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... streaked with faint blue lines where wandering airs came down from the heights above, and now and then an elfin sighing fell from the ragged summits of the firs. When it died away, the silence was broken only by the pounding of a heavy hammer and the crackle ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... remark no sort of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... smoke and upflung billowing clouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns and shell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note began to weave itself into the uproar—the sharper crackle and clatter ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... Brock lived with these merchant princes on terms of close intimacy. He was sensible enough, as a man of the world, to enjoy the creature comforts of life. The blazing log-fire, with its glow and crackle, in contrast to the blizzard that raged outside; the dim-lighted splendour of spacious dining-hall, with hewn rafters and savage trophies of the explorers; the polished oak floor and carved ceiling, hung with rare fur and gaudy feathers, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... air, and although it was three o'clock in the afternoon the light was fading, when Charnock opened the door of the caboose. A bitter wind rushed past him and eddied about the car, making the stove crackle. The iron was red-hot in places and a fierce twinkle shone out beneath the rattling door. Half-seen men lay in the bunks along the shadowy wall, tools jingled upon the throbbing boards, but the motion was gentler ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... came from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no sound ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Compromise but in Success. Use a worm if you will, but you must have fish to show for it, if you would escape the finger of scorn. If you find yourself camping by an unknown brook, and are deputed to catch the necessary trout for breakfast, it is wiser to choose the surest bait. The crackle of the fish in the frying-pan will atone for any theoretical defect in your method. But to choose the surest bait, and then to bring back no fish, is unforgivable. Forsake Plato if you must,—but you may do so only at the price of justifying yourself in the ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the first time since Shann had heard the crackle of the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the dull routines which required no technical training but which had ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... pointed his revolver—and again the expected match failed to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled his pent-up breath ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Mother Corey kicked four grumbling men out of a four-by-seven hole on the second floor. Gordon's money had carried more weight than his brother's reputation; for that, Corey humored his guest's wish for privacy. "All yours, cobber, while your crackle's blue." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... lip, lip, lip, clippety, lip, lip, lip! comes the bread horse down the street. He stops in front of Ruth's house. Ruth hears him. Then she hears the driver jump out and pat, pat, pat, she hears his feet coming to the door. Rattle, crackle, goes the paper as he puts down the loaves of bread all wrapped up to keep them clean. Then fast she hears his feet, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. "Go on, Bill!" she hears him call and clippety, lip, lip, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... But they were trees,—tall, slender poplars,—or a clump of elms—those lovely old elms which grow to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother formerly rocked him ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... her little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone." Analysis. It is not an easy matter ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... but his mouth was too dry for speech. He could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet. He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They danced ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to crackle and fly. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... been practically abandoned, others are being erected very cautiously, very quietly, and without any ostentation, as if the enemy were preparing for eventualities which he knows must inevitably occur. Sometimes, too, there is even a little crackle of musketry in some remote corner, which remains quite unexplained. A secret traffic in eggs and ammunition is still going on with renegade soldiery from Tung Fu-hsiang's camp; but no longer can these things be purchased ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... runs swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had our little ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... head firmly against the wood, he drew it downward vigorously and long. There was a faint crackle, a little splutter, and—glory of glories!—a tiny flame faltered ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me, Seignior, I should crackle like a wicker Bottle in her Arms— no, Seignior, there's no venturing without a Grate between us: the Devil wou'd not give her due Benevolence— No, when I'm marry'd, I'll e'en show her a fair pair of Heels, her Portion will pay Postage —But what if the Giant should carry her? that's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people were striking thousands ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... loves nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. "I shall get by very well," I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to the commander of the column, and soon the trumpets were calling the men to battle. The crackle of rifle shots ahead increased rapidly. The skirmishers were already pulling trigger, and, as Dick galloped back to Hertford he saw many puffs of white smoke down the road and in the fields and woods on either side. The Union men began to cheer. In the ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... innocent gift from some of the young men who had asked in the past to be allowed to paint Joan and received a curt negative from Gray Michael. But the other discovery meant more. Pushing her hand about the drawer she found a pile of paper, felt the crackle of it, and pulled it eagerly to the light. Then, and before she learned the grandeur of the sum, she was seized with a sudden palpitation and sat down on Joan's bed. Her mouth grew full as a hungry man's before a feast, her lips were wet, her hand shook as she opened and spread ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the distant mountains to the westward came a low, soft, almost inaudible murmur, such as one hears when many miles from the calm ocean, and which has been called the voice of silence itself. In the stillness he heard the faint crackle of one of the embers as it fell apart, and, though the night wind scarcely stirred the leaves over his head, he caught the rustle. The fact that there was nothing from the direction of the ponies showed they had ceased to crop the grass and were lying down. The safety of the camp ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... life-giving, stimulating, purifying, but also transforming and assimilating energy. For every lump of coal in your scuttles may be a parable; black and heavy, it is cast into the fire, and there it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow, and redden, and crackle, and break into a blaze. That is like what you and I may experience if we will. The incense rises in smoke to the heavens when it is heated: and our souls aspire and ascend, an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to God, when the fire ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... splashes muddily against the very thresholds of the cottages. It penetrates the brine-soaked soil and wells turn brackish. It wanders far inland through winding straits. The wayfarer, stepping across what seems to be a ditch at the end of a field far from the sea wonders to hear brown wrack crackle under ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... lake nearest the fawns' hiding-place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight; ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... "I think though, the wireless one has a crackle the hospital brand lacks. Kitty's nurse was ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... distinctness, and there with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... full depth of the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... began to hear the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful shriek as ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; And the captain he was bawling, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of night fell swiftly, and it was dark by the time the hunters finished the meal. Then the campfire had burned low. One of the three dragged branches of dead cedars and replenished the fire. Quickly it flared up, with the white flame and crackle characteristic of dry cedar. The night wind had risen, moaning through the gnarled, stunted cedars near by, and it blew the fragrant wood-smoke into the faces of the two hunters, who seemed too ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was filled with ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... ripping the sleeve from the neck. According to Mrs. Webb's ideas, it had been basted in. According to Mrs. Tate's, it had been sewed, but as there was no argument, and the needle was indeed gone, Mrs. Tate got up and went over to the fire. Punching it, she made the coals crackle and blaze cheerily, and, pulling up her skirt, she leaned against the mantel and looked happily around the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... the noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron gate ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach |
