"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes: Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords, He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could he the nearer to God's heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the widespread veins ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... from bliss, I heard a writhing chaos hiss; And thought, that moved in time no more, Wept on some wild, ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... blow on the shoulder, and in an instant he found himself enveloped in the coils of an enormous python, the great head of which towered threateningly above him, as it opened wide its gaping jaws within a foot of his face and emitted a loud, sibilant, angry hiss. Its hot, foetid breath struck him full in the face and, in conjunction with the overpowering musky smell of its body, affected him with a deadly nausea that, of itself, was quite sufficient to rob him of all power of resistance, apart from the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... have never known him to be quick, sharp, or loud with the cows. When things go wrong, the crooning ceases. When it is resumed, all is well in the cow world. The other man, French, who is an excellent milker, and who stands well with the cows, has a half hiss, half whistle, such as English stable-boys use, except that it runs up and down five notes and is lost at each end. The cows like it and seem to admire French for his accomplishment even more than Judson, for they follow his movements ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... nothing. Nothing but the hiss of the snow under their own runners, and the whimper of their ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... face down to hers. They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation; and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart. There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it, and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!" he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... blood would start With old King Hake; Not sneak in dark caves of the heart, Where curls the snake, And secret Murder's hiss is heard Ere the deed be done: He wove no web of wile and word; He bore with none. When sharp within its sheath asleep Lay his good sword, He held it royal work to keep His kingly word. A man of valour, bloody ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... we knew, they were open also to another soul. We could see nothing save the Altar and the Effigy, we could only hear the slow chant of the priests and priestesses and the snake-like hiss of the rushing fires. Yet we knew that our hearts were as an open book to One who watched ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... him all her secrets, and enveloped him in her delights. He discovered in the rising and setting of the sun sights unknown to the world. He knew what it was to tremble when he heard over his head the hiss of a bird's wing, so rarely did they pass, or when he saw the clouds, changing and many colored travelers, melt one into another. He studied in the night time the effect of the moon upon the ocean of sand, where the simoom made waves swift of movement ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... soft, and muddy, was a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... There was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck me. But she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... the degree of irritation that could so far get the better of the politeness of 400 Frenchmen as to make them hiss in the days of l'ancien regime! The dread of being the object of that species of antipathy or ridicule, which is excited by unfashionable peculiarity of accent, has induced many of the misguided natives ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... The hiss was followed by a rattle, and now, flashing the light around, the scout saw upon a flat rock the curled-up form of a ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... miserable east-end music-hall so that her father might find some sort of employment," Tavernake said. "The people only forbore to hiss her father's turn for her sake. She goes about the country with him. Heaven knows what they earn, but it must be little enough! Beatrice is shabby and thin and pale. She is devoting the best years of her life to what she imagines to ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appeared aware of the danger. The place seemed solitary and silent, save for the hiss ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss; a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chance to show the world his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a Von Moltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... despite as he stands before his victim and marks the utter unconsciousness of any offence with which his eyes meet his own. Such a look would blunt the very stiletto of a Corsican. What sweetness would there be in vengeance if the avenger, as he plunged the dagger in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his ear, 'Remember!' As well find satisfaction in torturing an idiot or mutilating a corpse. I am not talking now of brutish fellows, who would kick a stock or stone which they stumbled over, but of men intelligent enough to understand ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... a train, something which will hiss and whisper if mademoiselle moves about the room—yes, and I think one of mademoiselle's big hats," she said. "We will have mademoiselle as modern as possible, so that, when the great ladies of the past appear in the coiffure of their day, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the back part ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... surrounding neighbourhood, for the purpose of bringing in farmers and others to hold up their hands against "HUNT." Many, who inquired what they were to oppose, were told by this worthy, that they were to hiss, hoot, and make a noise, when Hunt spoke, and to hold up their hands against any thing that he brought forward. I recollect Mr. Power coming, in the morning, to the door of my bed-room, to inform me of the character and disposition of the farmers and yeomanry ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... night for the Apaches!" said Bart after a pause, as they crouched there listening to the hiss and roar of the falling waters. "Suppose they were to come; we ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... not what you mean by that: but I am sure, Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do the Players in the theatre, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, who can plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" a Mirabeau, who can struggle on ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... the white of breasts, of plump bodies flashing through the mist, the swishing hiss of many wings cutting the air, the rhythmic ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... wagon track, or "logslide," leading from a clearing on the slope, or the ominous saw-mill, half hidden in the forest it was slowly decimating. The woodland hush might have been broken by the sound of water passing over some unseen dam in the hollow, or the hiss of escaping steam and throb of an invisible engine in ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... again met with the steady westerly wind, which had already carried her so many hundred miles on her voyage. A change, however, again came over the ocean. Dark clouds were seen hurrying across the sky; the sea, hitherto rolling in regular billows, now began to foam, and hiss, and dance wildly about, the wind carrying the spray in thick sheets from their curling summits over the deck. Sail after sail was taken off the ship, till the topsails, closely reefed, alone remained ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... and curses broke forth. He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one man by the throat. The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none could say how it might end. Fortunately the person who had been collared only said, "If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I may laugh," and laughed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... kept quickening the time and playing with greater power, but suddenly he struck a false chord like the hiss of a snake, like the grating of iron on glass—it sent a shudder through every one, and mingled with the general gaiety an ill-omened foreboding. Disturbed and alarmed, the hearers wondered whether the instrument might not be out of tune, or the musician be making a blunder. Such ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... they twain flow on together in one and pour their waters into the Caucasian Sea. And through fear young mothers awoke, and round their new-born babes, who were sleeping in their arms, threw their hands in agony, for the small limbs started at that hiss. And as when above a pile of smouldering wood countless eddies of smoke roll up mingled with soot, and one ever springs up quickly after another, rising aloft from beneath in wavering wreaths; so at that time did that monster roll his countless coils covered ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... FIZZLE. Halliwell says: "The half-hiss, half-sigh of an animal." In many colleges in the United States, this word is applied to a bad recitation, probably from the want of distinct articulation which usually attends such performances. It is further ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... paper, sir. I haf heard dis from de chauffeur of de Biedermanns next door. He wass at de hotel himself wid hiss shentleman lars' night at de dance. Dey won't put dat ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... been several demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. The ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rise over him, gulp him down, the gray horses would gallop over him and the long weeds would wrap him when he rolled dead against some skerry. The soft vales of Caronne and the roses in Croy's gardens seemed like a dream. There was only the roar and boom of the northern sea, hiss of sleet and spindrift, crazed scream of wind, he was alone as man had ever been and he would go down to the ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... but it arrives. Well, he said that in his opinion practically everything that came to pass in my dream was originally suggested by some outside influence. Water being poured into a basin suggests a brook. A sewing-machine becomes a train. The hiss of a burning log escaping steam. So much for the ears. Now for the eyes. A maid helps the nurse to move a sofa—I see timber being hauled. The doctor shakes his thermometer, and there's Winchester wielding an axe.... It's a pretty theory, and the more you study it, the sounder it seems." ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... savage a woman who was once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... appearing before her own Parisian audience, when she had passed the limit at which it was possible for a woman of her advanced age to assume the appearance of youth, the part she was playing requiring that she should exclaim "Je suis jeune! je suis jolie!" a loud, solitary hiss protested against the assertion with bitter significance. After an instant's consternation, which held both the actors and audience silent, she added, with the exquisite grace and dignity which survived the youth and beauty to which she could no longer even pretend, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the most virtuous man, under the premises stated, was entitled to make a luxury of the fire, and to hiss it, as he would any other performance that raised expectations in the public mind, which afterwards it disappointed. Again, to cite another great authority, what says the Stagyrite? He (in the Fifth Book, I think it is, of his Metaphysics) describes what he calls [Greek: ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give His ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... up from out the waves' abyss— A monstrous little man with a black hide, Scarce four feet high, yet he was not remiss, But dash'd the waves about—and then he cried, With a demoniac laugh, or rather hiss, "Die, mortal, die!" and John sank down and died, The which, when Jeannie saw, she only sigh'd, "I come, my John, I come, to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... hiss from Elmer just then, as he wielded the pole, caused the two scouts to stop talking, and turn their attention to what was going on. The first thing they discovered was that the skiff was now heading for the near shore. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... slope, we reversed the stroke again, coming in on its mighty shoulders at racing speed. The instant our keels touched the beach we all leapt out, and exerting every ounce of strength we possessed, ran the boats up high and dry before the next roller had time to do more than hiss harmlessly around our feet. It was a task of uncommon difficulty, for the shore was wholly composed of loose lava and pumice-stone grit, into which we sank ankle-deep at every step, besides ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... stood at the end of the train, watch in hand, and at the moment when the hands indicated the appointed hour he leisurely climbed aboard and pulled the whistle cord. A sharp, penetrating hiss of escaping air answered the pull, and the train moved out of the great train-shed in its race against time. It was all so easy and comfortable that the passengers never thought of the work and study that had been spent to produce the result. The train gathered speed ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... around the family nest, and no bird, beast or man could pass that line without a fight. If any other goose, or a swan or duck, attempted to pass, the guardian gander would rush forward with blazing eyes, open beak, wings open for action, and with distended neck hiss out his challenge. If the intruder failed to register respect, and came on, the gander would seize the offender with his beak, and furiously wing-beat him into flight. That gander was afraid of nothing, and his courage and readiness ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... berth. Why the sun and the air In that soul-stirring canvas, seem fired with the glory Of such a brave ship, with so splendid a story! Well, look on that picture, my lads, and on this! And—no, do not crack out a curse like a hiss, But with stout CONAN DOYLE—he has passion and grip!— Demand that they give us back NELSON's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... not; all Berlin struggling there, all night, in vain. Such volumes of smoke: "the heavens were black as if you had hung them with mortcloth:" such roaring cataracts of flame, "you could have picked up a copper doit at the distance of 800 yards."—"Hiss-s-s!" what hissing far aloft is that? That is the incomparable big Bells melting. There they vanish, their fine tones never to be tried more, and ooze through the red-hot ruin, "Hush-sh-sht!" the last sound heard from them. ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Kukor. But Barber had known better, and contradicted her violently. "Und so I tells to him over that, 'Goot! Goot! if he runs away! In dis house so much, it ain't healthy for him!' Und I shakes my fingers be-front of hiss big nose!" ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple may smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with you with the implied ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Barrymore sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... are different kinds of shadows. The blind ones are the shadows of things. These are the tame shadows— they love to play on the wall with you and follow you about like cats and dogs. Sometimes they hiss at you softly like snakes that do not bite, or swish like women's dresses, but if you poke a candle at them they pull in ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... the body of a huge gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started—but with joy; and seeing the head resting on her shoulder, drew it towards her and kissed it. Then she drew it all out of the tub, and wound it round her body. It was one of those dreadful creatures ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... read the charge, had been such a friendly, tea-and-gossip book, not the kind to hiss a scandal at you. It was bound in blue cloth and was a heavy book, so that I held it on a cushion. (And this device I recommend to others.) It was the kind of book that stays open at your place, if you leave it for a moment to poke the fire. Some books will flop a hundred pages, to make ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the oars. While this was doing the creature appeared again with a glowing mass of fused metal (massam igneam de scoria) in pincers, which he hurled at them. Where it struck the water about a furlong from them, it made the sea boil and hiss. They had only escaped about a mile when they saw beings swarming out upon the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges and set ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... for freedom. Death might come, but such a death was preferable to the fate which must await her at the end of this journey. Her fingers had tightened on the reins, when the silence was suddenly broken, and, with a swift hiss, a streak of light cut through the darkness skyward, paused a moment, and then, with a muffled detonation, burst into globes of light which floated downward. The foremost of the troop reined in their horses sharply at the unexpected flight of the rocket, causing some confusion ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... not so perfect a philosopher as some others, would make a very good Abbot. Old Abbot Ording, still famed among us, knew little of letters. Besides, as we read in Fables, it is better to choose a log for king, than a serpent never so wise, that will venomously hiss and bite his subjects."—"Impossible!" answered the other: "How can such a man make a sermon in the Chapter, or to the people on festival-days, when he is without letters? How can he have the skill to bind and to loose, he who does not understand ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those that seek their lives; and I will give their corpses for meat to the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and I will make this city an astonishment and a scoffing. Every one that passes by it will be astonished and hiss at its misfortunes. Even so will I shatter this people and this city, as this bottle, which cannot be made whole again, has been shattered." Nor was Jeremiah contented to utter these fearful maledictions to the priests and elders; he made his way to the Temple, and taking his stand ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... of intense relief. As the thing went off under our hands, and I knew from a faint trembling and a low hiss that the weapon was functioning perfectly, I felt thankful indeed for the instinct which had made me get the gun on deck. It could be only a matter of seconds now until a whole section of the metallic cable was disintegrated completely and until ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... stood together upon the platform, among hurrying crowds, in black fumes that poisoned the palate with sulphur. This way and that sped the demon engines, whirling lighted waggons full of people. Shrill whistles, the hiss and roar of steam, the bang, clap, bang of carriage-doors, the clatter of feet on wood and stone—all echoed and reverberated from a huge cloudy vault above them. High and low, on every available yard of wall, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... the serpent were greatly changed. It approached her swift as an arrow, its body rolling in the most agitated contortions, its jaws were distended as if to devour her, its eyes flashed fire, its tongue was a forked flame, and its hiss was like a stormy wind. Proserpine shrieked, and the Queen of Hell awoke ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... gratification of hearing Lord Melville acquitted. The Prince had the good sense not to vote. The Court was as full as possible & when the two youngest Peers voted on the first charge & said Guilty, there was something like a hiss from the House of Commons. I am glad it is over & I hope the country will not be put to the expense of any more trials of the same kind for many years. The Princes went and shook Lord Melville by the hand as soon as ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... and the rest of the water. The heat of the water should be not less than 160 deg.F. as it will cool while the lime is being prepared. Slake the lime in a separate vessel by pouring about 5 oz. of water over it. When it begins to hiss and break, add more water little by little. When all the lumps have cracked up stir till a thick even cream is made. Add this to the other ingredients in the stock vat. Stir well. The stock vat should have a temperature of 120-140 deg.F. It should be stirred at intervals. The vessel should ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... the engineers have gone forward." He apologized and left. On another occasion, in the darkness of middle night, an Imperial soldier who had lost his way came down the steps and put his head into my door and began to stammer and hiss in such an extraordinary way that Alberta was roused and barked (p. 175) furiously. I woke up with a start and asked what the matter was, but all I could get from the poor man was a series of noises and hisses. I turned on my flashlight, and a very muddy face covered with a shock of red ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Riggs's hand and hurled it into the sea, and, as the briny spume closed over it, it went out with a spiteful, protesting hiss. ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... who is outside is allowed to enter, and he kneels in front of whom he thinks is the right one. If he should make a correct guess, the company clap their hands, and the person to whom he knelt goes outside. If, however, the guess is an incorrect one, the company hiss loudly, and the guesser has to go outside, come back, and try again. Of course, it will make more amusement if when a boy is sent outside the room a girl be chosen as the person to whom he has to kneel; and the opposite if a ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... dusk, shrouded as we were in black. They sent up a rocket once; it mounted above us in a slow flaming arc, hung poised an instant, and then descended, plunging into the sea a mile or so away. We heard distinctly the hiss of its contact with the water, and saw, like a quickly dissipating mist, the cloud ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... strength returned. All through the night we scoured between the hills: The moon went down behind us, and the stars Dropped after her; but long before I saw A planet blazing straight against our eyes, The road had softened, and the shadowy hills Had flattened out, and I could hear the hiss Of sand spurned backward by the flying mares.— Glory to God! I was at home again! The sun rose on us; far and near I saw The level Desert; sky met sand all round. We paused at midday by a palm-crowned well, And ate and slumbered. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... respectability which, at her age, would have been held as ridiculous and even insulting by any other woman belonging to the same profession, and many ladies of the highest rank honoured her with her friendship more even than with their patronage. Never did the capricious audience of a Parisian pit dare to hiss Silvia, not even in her performance of characters which the public disliked, and it was the general opinion that she was in every way above ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... shone more 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 ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... there once lived in that great forest a boy and his sister. Not being able to speak their language I do not know what their names may have meant; but they had names, one sounding like a grunt, the other a hiss. Better call them Umpl and Sptz, which is as near as I can come to it. Of course Sptz was the girl; and they both believed most firmly in hobgoblins, evil spirits, wicked elves, that were ever on the watch for them in the dark; ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... had been particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate, and sewing up his mouth, observed, with much satisfaction, that the viper could no longer hiss. Florus, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... hand he reached downward with a swift, sure clutch, and as Rufe's wrist flexed to cast his javelin Milo's hand gripped him by the neck from behind and swung him bodily off his feet, while the wide-flung cutlas flashed through the air and plunged with a hiss over ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The honest citizens who marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably knew better when to buy and when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the incredible effrontery to applaud ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... malhelpo. Hindermost lasta. Hindoo Hindo. Hindrance malhelpo. Hindu Hindo. Hinge cxarniro. Hint proponeti. Hip kokso. Hippodrome hipodromo. Hippopotamus hipopotamo. Hire dungi. Hire, cost of salajro. Hireling salajrulo. His lia, sia. Hiss sibli. Historian historiskribanto. History historio. History, natural naturscienco. Hit frapi. Hit against ektusxegi. Hitch malhelpajxo. Hive abelujo. Ho! ho! Hoard amaso. Hoarfrost prujno. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... filled, and heard, deep down, 'perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working spirit; and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.' In a little while, it would have been impossible to breathe an atmosphere thus saturated with carbonic acid gas; and the superintendents can only watch the process of nature by listening outside the door to 'the inarticulate accents ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... made a hiss which Bruno understood, and went at Muff more fiercely. It was glorious to see Muff spit fire, and hear her growl low and deep like distant thunder. Paul would not have Muff hurt for anything, but he loved to see Bruno show his teeth ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... blue steel he had recovered from the crack beneath the French window; he smoothed down the carpet with a quick sideways flirt of his foot, thrust the envelope into his coat, and had barely time to hiss one further admonition into Krech's ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the center of interest by a sharp hiss from a ghost on the edge of the assembly and a muffled cry of "No fair!" from ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... shut with a bang as Paddy and Capps, followed by Kennedy and myself, crept into the air-lock. Paddy turned on a valve, and compressed air from the tunnel began to rush in with a hiss as of escaping steam. Pound after pound to the square inch the pressure slowly rose until I felt sure the drums of my ears would burst. Then the hissing noise began to dwindle down to a wheeze, and then it stopped all of a sudden. That meant that the air-pressure in the lock was the same as ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... their placid dozing on the sandbanks. They squeak and gurgle out an unintelligible protest, then cosily settle their heads again beneath the sheltering wing, and sleep the slumber of the dreamless. A sharp sudden plump, or a lazy surging sound, accompanied by a wheezy blowing sort of hiss, tells us that a seelun is disporting himself; or that a fat old 'porpus' is bearing his clumsy bulk through ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... things. Presently a gay little fire was crackling and snapping against the face of the rock, and adding its smoke to the blackened stains left by those other smokes of long ago. The girls stood about, watching the blaze and listening for the first hiss of the kettle; but Mrs. Gray informed them that there was still work to ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it about, and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? Come forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter's will in Doctors' Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet this is so commonly dwelt upon—especially by the screws who give Waiters the least—that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit's sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when of the two we are much more likely ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... miss, I might be bitten as well as my friend. There was not a moment even for thought; with all my might I aimed a blow at the serpent's head. My axe, providentially, had been lately sharpened, and with one stroke I cut off the creature's head, which fell, in the act of uttering a hiss, close to my friend's side. The body still held him fast, and I had to exert some force to unwind it; after which I helped him to ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... swaying as with terror, And quivering does the vessel roll. The mad wind frolics with the billows, Now smooths them low, now lashes high. Now they are storming up like lions, And now like serpents sleek they lie; And wave on wave is ever pressing, They hiss, they whisper, soft of tone. Alack! was that the vessel splitting? Are sail and mast and rudder gone? Here, screams of fright, there, silent weeping, The bravest feels his courage fail. What stead our prudence or our wisdom? The soul itself can naught avail. And each one to his God is crying, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... political palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... roar, when, just as it was on the point of overtaking the now unarmed man, crack went the captain's rifle again, but without checking the monster in the least, and Johannes' fate seemed sealed, when, with a sharp hiss, Steve loosed the dog. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Then I turned on my heel and left him without a word. He ground his teeth and hissed, 'A time will come.' But Cheriton seems rather a rude man, all the same. He hurts my feelings too, whenever I meet him. I too hiss, 'A time will come.' But I don't believe it ever will. Do you suppose the water is shallow over there, or that the men walking on it are doing miracles? It must be fun, either way. Let's do it instead of buying well-heads, Leslie. The ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Pussy's side was the work of a moment both for him and for me, though with very different intentions; he to assail, I to defend her. The attack was so sudden, that Puss had not time to use her weapons to any purpose; she just managed to give one spirited claw at his nose with a loud hiss, and then sprang faster and higher than I had ever seen her spring before, and gained the top of the paling just in time to escape his seizure. If she had not been able to jump, she would have been a dead cat. Even then she was not quite out of his reach, ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... instinct; but the storm and the darkness seemed like twin enemies determined to bar her advance. She felt that Nature was her foe, even as man had been, and as Rehoboth would be when it knew of her return. Why did the rain hiss, and dash its cold and stinging showers in her face? Why did it saturate her thin skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... their pastures; the sheep crowd into their fold; and the dull stupor of universal nature, whether animate or inanimate, presages its speedily awakening into general convulsion and disturbance, when the lurid lightning shall hiss at command of the diapason ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... low hiss to a tardy recognition of Bower's fame as a mountaineer. Though the hour was noon, the light was feeble. Veritable thunder clouds had gathered above the mist, and the expression of Stampa's face was almost hidden in ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... said that he "felt easier," in a very uneasy voice, after which they both relapsed into silence, and no sound was heard save the crackling of the logs and the bubbling of the mysterious decoction in the pot. Suddenly Tom uttered a slight hiss,—that peculiar sound so familiar to backwoods ears, by which hunters indicate to each other that something unusual has been observed, and that they had better ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... moment, Worth tore buckles and latches free, yanked the thing open, reversed it in air—and out fell a coiled rope that curved itself like a snake—a three-headed snake; the triple grappling iron at its end standing up as though to hiss. ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale—great Nem'esis! Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution—just, Had it but been from hands less near—in this, Thy former realm, I ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the struggle waxed ever more fierce and deadly. To and fro the wrestlers swayed, locked in vicious grapple, grimly silent save for the dull trampling of their feet upon the moss and the gasp and hiss of panting breaths; writhing and twisting, stumbling and slipping, or suddenly still with feet that gripped the sod, with bulging muscles, swelled and rigid, that cracked beneath the strain, while eye glared death to eye. But Beltane's iron ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... question with him was whether the heat of the arc would melt the soft metal teeth at the right time and with even regularity. He was pale and nervous with the tension of the work, his loss of sleep and his goading of conscience, and when the carbons started to glow with the familiar hiss, he started back as if someone had come in, and looked around the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... atmosphere, my only hope of salvation lay in calling for help, and that as the paralysis was gaining on my whole body, not a moment was to be lost. I shouted with all my strength; but beyond a sort of hiss, not a sound escaped my lips. The profound silence of the car now struck me in a new light. Had Gazen and Miss Carmichael not committed the same blunder, and suffered a like fate? Perhaps even Carmichael himself had been equally careless, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... themselves, stupendous, huge, seemed suddenly to assume to itself shape. The roar of machinery was clearly audible. From the house came the mingled shouting of many voices. Something dropped into the sea a hundred yards away with a screech and a hiss, and a geyser-like fountain leapt so high that the spray reached them. Then there was a sharper sound as ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hiss went up from the pirate cats who stood nearest to the children. "Be quiet," muttered Growler, "unless you want your ears bitten off? Don't you see the Chief is ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... I watched tensely, hardly breathing. I think we both felt that something was about to happen: a pent-up force had been released, and it was raging. We could almost hear the rumble of the volcanic explosions and the ear-splitting hiss ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... better than by desert: then the worse luck, or the worse wit, or somewhat, for I shall not now deserve it. Well, then[207], I commit myself to my fortunes and your contents; contented to die, if your severe judgments shall judge me to be stung to death with the adder's hiss. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... brooded over the landscape, broken now and again by a noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot. As we took cover behind a wall of ruined houses we heard a sinister hiss, but whence it came or what invisible trajectory it traced through the leaden skies overhead neither of us could tell. Silence again fell like a mist upon the land; not a bird sang, not a twig moved. The winter sun was sinking in the west behind ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... and fierce; and they saw, directly across the open, the underbrush at the forest's edge sway violently, as the bull they had long suspected broke out in a towering rage. He was slow in advancing, however, and Mitchell glided rapidly across the thicket, where a moment later his excited hiss called his companion. From the opposite fringe of forest the second bull had hurled himself out, and was plunging with savage grunts ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to cast you into my arms. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... body of a tree. hist, hush! bowl, a vessel. hissed, did hiss. boll, a pod. paws, the feet of beasts. nose, part of the face. pause, a stop. knows, does know. faun, a sylvan god. mote, a particle. fawn, a young deer. moat, a ditch. pride, vanity. toled, allured. pried, did pry. told, did tell. wain, a wagon. tolled, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... how at the dinner on the previous night the Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung "Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition until they made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys when they are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he had been the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him until driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... wound its devious way, with serpentine crooks and curves, through the downs and across the meadow, emptying into the ocean some distance east of the gleaming beach. That its source was far up in the secretive hills was not a matter of conjecture, however; the incessant hiss and roar of a cataract was ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon |
