"Hissing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I too dwell in a beautiful cavern in the chamber of the rock, and, lo, all the wealth have I that we behold in dreams; ewes in plenty and she-goats abundant, their fleeces are strown beneath my head and feet. In the fire of oak- faggots puddings are hissing-hot, and dry beech-nuts roast therein, in the wintry weather, and, truly, for the winter season I care not even so much as a toothless man does for walnuts, when rich pottage is ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... for the very sin of rejecting their true Messiah, killing Him and imprecating His blood upon them and on their children, that they have been scattered among the nations and have become a hissing and a byword ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... servants developed into a serious riot at Ranelagh, special attention being paid to those members of the nobility and gentry who would not suffer their employees to take vails from their guests. "They, began," says a chronicle of the time, "by hissing their masters, they then broke all the lamps and outside windows with stones; and afterwards putting out their flambeaux, pelted the company, in a most audacious manner, with brickbats, etc., whereby several were greatly hurt." This attack was not received in the submissive spirit of Dr. Hill; ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... her in and goes about her work, setting the table or looking on the shelf, when the old witch suddenly stoops down and blows the ashes on the hearth; whereupon the pot makes a hissing sound as though boiling over, and the old witch catches hold of Monday ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... as he strode into the shrine, clashed against the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhagat's direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... and in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held it between my eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualified amazement; but it was not this which had so violently moved me. It was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissing utterance; and, above all, it was the character, the tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables, which came with a thousand thronging memories of by-gone days, and struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery. Ere I could ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... heart have failed him, had he not been cheered by the sunbeam presence of Greyfell. For filling the wide, deep ditch, were angry, hissing flames, which, like a thousand serpent-tongues, reached out, and felt here and there, for what they might devour; and ever and anon they took new forms, and twisted and writhed like fiery snakes, and then ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... he ran until he had covered a goodly number before his strength began to fail. At length he was panting so that each hissing breath was a stab, and his eyesight grew dim. He plunged, almost headlong, down the precipitous side of a ravine and at its bottom, fell, face downward, into the cool waters of a rippling brook. How deliciously refreshing were the two or three great gulps that he swallowed. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... red-hot matter bubbled up violently, with a hissing and crackling noise, like that which attends the playing off of an artificial firework; and by the continued splashing up of the vitrified matter, a kind of arch, or dome, was formed over the crevice from whence the lava issued; ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... great blanket of heat wrapped the city in its smothering folds. The air was still and tainted, like that of a sick-room. Through Mrs. Cortlandt's open windows came hardly a sound; even from the sea below rose only a faint hissing, as if the rocks at the water's edge were superheated. Earlier in the evening the temperature had been bearable, but now it had reached an intensity to strain tired nerves to the snapping-point. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... trimmed well, and the outer jibs lifted the ship along at a slapping rate. She was evidently fast in spite of her load, and I looked over the side at the foam that was seething past the lee channels in swirls and eddies which gave forth a cheerful hissing sound as they slipped aft at the rate of six knots an hour. The man at the wheel held her easily, and that was a blessing; for nothing is much worse for a mate's discomfort than a wild ship sheering from side to side leaving a wake like the path ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... quality, a true sign that it has no affinity with poison. And so it is with human virtues," &c. "In conversation take everything peacefully, no matter what is said or done. In this manner you may remain innocent amidst the hissing of serpents, and, as a little Strawberry, you will not suffer contamination from slimy things creeping near you."—ST. FRANCIS ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... disputatious counsel with itself. It was rough and frank and spasmodic, but was lively and vivid and, in spite of the serious character of the piece, often exceedingly droll: while it gave Sherringham, oddly enough, a more present sense than ever of bending over the hissing, smoking, sputtering caldron in which a palatable performance is stewed. He looked into the gross darkness that may result from excess of light; that is, he understood how knocked up, on the eve of production, every ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... hissing serpents of speech Gemma's clinched teeth bit back, I never knew—for my eyes were on Faustina, and her face was a ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... deepened. There were many days when the sun shone, but the snow slid across the plain with a menacing, hissing sound, and the sky was milky with flying frost, and the horizon looked cold and wild; but these were merely the pauses between storms. The utter dryness of the flakes and the never-resting progress of the winds kept ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... of each limbe, Forgott to goe with practiseing to swime: A trout now here you would not thinke how soone Taken and drest for th'Emperour o'the Moone, The fixed Starres, though to our eyes were missing Wee knew yet were by their continuall hissing. Weomen were mermaides sailing with the wind, The greatest miracle was fish behind: But men were all kept chast against their wish, And could comitt but the cold ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... thinks, and of "his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, large-coiled hydra, encircling the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... about 15 deg. and boils at 46 deg.. A trace of moisture causes it to solidify into a mass of silky white crystals, somewhat resembling asbestos fiber in appearance. In contact with the air it fumes strongly, and when thrown upon water it dissolves with a hissing sound and the liberation of a great deal of heat. The product of this reaction is sulphuric acid, so that sulphur trioxide is the anhydride ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffed and snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound of the weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each side of me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat's sides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness—for anything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw I never came across; and from time to time I had to stop my engine—which ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... pass easily through the flesh, take the hindquarters from the kettle, drain and place them in the frying pan with pork fat hissing hot. Fry to a light, rich brown. It is the only proper way to cook squirrels. The forequarters are to be left in ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... A curtain o'er the world at once! Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes, There scuds His raven that hath told Him all! It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move, And fast invading fires begin! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eyes and sat up, looking around the Australian's hut, almost fancying that we were still dreaming. A spluttering tallow candle was dimly burning, stuck in the neck of a porter bottle, and a fire was lighted in the old broken stove, on which was hissing a spider filled with small bits of beef and pieces of potatoes. A sauce pan was doing duty for a coffee-pot, and the fragrant berry was agreeable to the nostrils of hungry men. Our host, the convict Smith, after he had aroused us, seated himself upon a three-legged stool, and was busily ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... letter: but the same kind of ill breeding prevails too often, and in too many places. The giglers and the whisperers are innumerable; they beset us wherever we go; and it is observable, that after a short murmur of whispers, out comes the burst of laughter: like a gunpowder serpent, which, after hissing about for some time, goes off in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... is seated along the neck or a limb it appears as a tumor in the course of an artery and pulsating with it. The tumor is round, soft, and compressible, and yields a peculiar fluctuation upon pressure. By applying the ear over it a peculiar purring or hissing sound may sometimes be heard. Pulsation, synchronous with the action of the heart, is the diagnostic symptom. It is of a slow, expansive, and heavy character, as if the whole tumor were enlarging under the hand. Aneurisms ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... fire and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And, while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steaming column and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, So let ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... hot iron into his tub of water, so that the hissing of the heated metal and the angry puff of steam might conclude in fitting eloquence the thing he ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... turmeric-like (yellow) colour and a deep copper-coloured mouth of the form of a cave supplied with four teeth; and with glaring eyes, it was constantly licking the corners of its mouth. And it was the terror of all animated beings and it looked like the very image of the Destroyer Yama; and with the hissing noise of its breath it lay as if rebuking (an in-comer). And seeing Bhima draw so near to him, the serpent, all on a sudden, became greatly enraged, and that goat-devouring snake violently seized Bhimasena in his grip. Then by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... There was a sharp, hissing sound as the line of white water approached them, and then the squall struck them with such force and fury that the lads instinctively grasped at the shrouds. The mizzen had brought the craft in a moment head to wind, and Joe ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... moment obscured the moonrays from the top-light; the gas-jet choked with air, spluttered, burning with a tiny, blue, hissing flame; then the white path lay across the floor again, and the yellow flare of gas spurted up into its pitiful fulness—and in Smarlinghue's stead stood another man. Gone were the stooping shoulders, gone ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... seemed to shake to its very foundations. Ear-splitting detonations echoed from crag to crag, and down deep into the valleys and canyons, setting the world alive with a sudden chaos. Peal after peal roared over the hills, and the lightning played, hissing and shrieking upon ironstone crowns, like a blinding display ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... childhood; I saw every apparition that had ever glided before my fancy: the Sea-Serpent twisted his folds round my neck, and the keel of the Flying Dutchman grated along my back. When the vessel rose at last, and I rose with her, the waters gurgling in my throat and hissing in my ears, I did not attempt to spring up the shrouds. I looked round in horror for the objects of my excited thoughts; and as I saw another enormous wave advancing till it overhung me, instead of getting ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... instant and they were back, screaming and hissing and circling towards their nest in the eaves. Caspar put his head out at the open casement, and listened anxiously to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... balcony. Madame de Thianges thought they were going to serenade me, but I distinctly heard sounds of hissing. My niece De Nevers was greatly upset; she would eat no supper, but began to cry. "What are you worrying about?" quoth I to this excitable young person. "Don't you see that we are stopping the night on the estates of the Princess Palatine,—[The boorish Bavarian princess, the Duc d'Orleans's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for life, these beautiful humors and transactions must have been! A crook-backed boy, dear to the Great Elector, pukes, one afternoon; and there arises such an opening of the Nether Floodgates of this Universe; in and round your poor workshop, nothing but sudden darkness, smell of sulphur; hissing of forked serpents here, and the universal alleleu of female hysterics there;—to help a man forward with his work! O reader, we will pity the crowned head, as well as the hatted and even hatless one. Human creatures will not GO quite accurately together, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... remark about the weather—but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased. The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall, had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy, mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her, seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by his own ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... lay just where he fell, Soddening in a fervid summer's sun. Guarded by an enemy's hissing shell, Rotting beneath the sound of rebels' gun Forty consecutive days, In sight of his own tent. And ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid, cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day over, the ship's officers had kept out of the way, glad of a little breathing-time. Soon after ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... very oasis of modernity, a marvelous creature of another world and another time. There was just light enough for me to see that her lines were those of a giant yacht. Then a curtain of rain beat hissing down on the sea, and the ship and the vague darkening landscape disappeared—disappeared as if they had melted away in the shower. Presently the bulk of the vessel appeared again. At once we drew ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... and murmured something to Eloise. And thereupon, in this sweet and cordial frame of mind, they entered the breakfast-room, where Mrs. Arles awaited them behind a hissing urn,—and a cheery meal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... walked on fellows glared at him from a distance, and others passing closer cut him dead. A few of the most ardent Parrett's juniors took the liberty of hissing him and one ventured to call out, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... 7. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burnt incense, nor offered burnt-offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel. 8. Wherefore the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and He hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes. 9. For, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword; and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. 10. Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel, that His fierce ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... penetrated, he found no difficulty in approaching the Rocky Mountain sheep, which there exhibited the simplicity of character so remarkable in the domestic species; but that where they had been often fired at they were exceedingly wild, alarmed their companions on the approach of danger by a hissing noise, and scaled the rocks with a speed and agility that baffled pursuit." The mountain men of early days tell precisely the same thing of the sheep. Fifty or sixty years ago they were regarded as the gentlest and most unsuspicious animal of all ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... let you go." And she hid her love closely in her heart. It was difficult, and it hurt her to hide it from him and to assume indifference. It was difficult to remember that she must make a show of reluctance when she was longing to give unreservedly. She dropped the end of the cigarette hissing into the dregs of the coffee and turned a page, and, as she did so, she looked up suddenly, the magazine dropping unheeded on the floor. Close outside the tent the same low, vibrating baritone was singing the Kashmiri love song that she had heard last the night before ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... seal snapped open and the spaceman heaved. Air exploded outwards, and Doc went with it. He was alone in space, gliding away from the ship, with oxygen hissing softly through the valve ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... cold clear west, whence winter peers, All spectral stood the bleached stalks thin-leaved, Dry as papyrus kept a thousand years, And hissing whispered to the wind that grieved, It was a dream—we have no goodly ears— There was no ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... juncture there did not arise one of those rare spirits to perform an act of noble self-sacrifice. There have been those who have tossed spluttering bombs into the sea; who have trodden out hissing fuses. But just then no one seemed to care for the exclusive and personal custody ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... activity. She was remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati—the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his desire to escape. This wind of Broadway—this first warning of winter—it was hissing in her ears: "Take hold! Winter is ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... without minding where he was going, and the only light he had was the shimmering moonlight, which descended as faintly through the waters as if it came through muffled glass. He had not gone very far when he heard a horrible hissing, and straight before him he saw what he thought were two flaming coals. After a few more steps he found himself face to face with the dragon of the lake, the guardian of the palace of the fairy queen. Before he had time to raise his spear, the dragon had wound its coils ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... friend, after you had pledged your honor to your mother, your God, yourself, and your friends, to be a true and honorable shark. It isn't the hot sun broiling you and covering you with bursting blisters, and changing the marrow of your bones to melted iron and your blood to hissing lava—it isn't the sun that hurts; and the hunger that gnaws your intestines to rags, and the thirst that changes your throat into a funnel of hot brass, and blinding bursts of red fire in your head, and lying dead in the waist of the boat while the sun steals thirty ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... down the platform, doubled up with laughing. It was good to know that with sufficient cause he could laugh like this; a smile had thus far been his limit of external mirth. Rice now flew against my hat, and hissing gusts of rice spouted on the platform. All the men left in Medicine Bow appeared like magic, and more rice choked the atmosphere. Through the general clamor a cracked voice said, "Don't hit her in the eye, boys!" and Uncle Hughey rushed proudly by me with ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... drifted gently away, and in their wake followed an awkward silence. The logs were hissing in the fire. I could hear the clock in the hall outside, and the beating of the vines against the window panes. It was no sound, certainly, that made me whirl around to look behind me,—some instinct—that was all. There was Brutus, not two feet from ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... a much bigger man than I. My idea is that he was thoroughly cowed by the moral force of my attack. I had to turn him round in order to get at him. Then I cut him again and again as hard as I could, hissing out 'Hawk!' with each stroke. Oh, you can take my word for it, everything was done in the cleanest and most correct fashion possible. I always like ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot-plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... from his mouth, moving them rapidly in the manner of a snake's tongue, with a hissing sound.) Snake of two tongues! Now I know you for the man you ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... away again, and passed through the main channel; and in another hour she was in the midst of the Union fleet. There was a rattling of drums, a hissing of steam, and energetic commands heard as soon as the Judith was made out in the darkness, and doubtless a vision of prize-money flitted through the brains of officers and seamen. But Christy soon impaired the vividness of these fancies by ordering the foresail of the ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... kind of a lamp out on the floor beyond, and it burned with a sputtering and a hissing and a roaring, and it threw a big bluish kind of a flame straight out, like water ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... cloak over my head, and we had to shut the door to exclude the slant sheets of rain. All gathered in the upper end of the room where my chair stood, the only seat there except the floor. To the accompaniment of hissing rain and angry winds, the gruesome particulars of the triple funeral were narrated. Mariposa—with the baby on her lap—was chief spokeswoman, but nearly every one present had some item of his own, authentic or imaginary, to add. All were sure that ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... flowering plants half round from the fireplace roughly, so that the pots fell up against each other, or rolled on the floor; then he fetched the burning coals from the kitchen, and heaped them on till the grate was full. The kettle had been boiling on the hob, so he brought it in now hissing, with brandy to make a drink. But he must have more light. Where are the matches? Nowhere, of course. They never are when they're wanted. However, it didn't matter, a piece of paper would do as well, and he twisted a piece up and stooped among the scattered roses to light it at the fire, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... is not as idle ore, But heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the strokes of doom To shape ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for still the tone was heard, "Revenge once more! gather and rage! dash to ruin ship and sailors!" And still the tempest clattered, and still the hissing of the gallant ship's prow was heard cleaving the maddened waves. On, on! a dash; a crash; a march of maddening waves; a stunning tempest howl, and then the hiss was heard no more. But far and wide were ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... glitter. For our foreground we have the white table on deck in shade, with a heap of roses and white orchids in a silver bowl; the fallen petals blend into the half-tone of the table cloth, and there's peace and quiet and sleep, to the pulsation of the paddles and the hissing of the foaming water ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... having imprudently trimmed the ballast to windward—a most dangerous practice—a tremendous squall took the sails aback, and in a moment capsized her. Brock being a good swimmer, struck out to get clear of his companions, his ears assailed by their cries, mingled with the hissing of water and the howling of the storm. After a moment or so he swam back to help an old man to get hold of a spar; he then himself got on the boat, and stood upon its side; but finding that she was ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... as he fell he heard the snow and ice he had broken away go hissing and whispering down for what seemed long after he had dropped; and this gave him some idea of the terrible depth of the ice crack, and a cold chill, that was not caused by the icy coldness of the place, ran through him, as he wondered whether the rope, which now looked thin and worn, would ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... instinctively drawing his sword as he did so. For a moment he stood, paralyzed with horror. A gigantic snake had wound its coils round Ned's body. Its head towered above his, while its eyes flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the pleasantly hissing and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... with his papers, I had seized the valve-cord without his perceiving it. I feared, however, that he might hear the hissing noise, like a water-course, which the gas ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... of the Inquisition are more piercing than those of the whole world combined," answered Don Gonzales, in a low voice, which came hissing forth from between his almost clenched lips, in a tone which was calculated to produce more effect on the mind of the hearer than the loudest ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... himself. I do not observe Lamb's name appended to any of the articles in the first volume; but the second comprises the Essays on Hogarth and on Burial Societies, together with a paper on the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres, under the signature of "Semel Damnatus." There is a good deal of humor in this paper (which has not been republished, I believe). It professes to come from one of a club of condemned authors, no person being ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Cook about 10 minutes on split or flesh side, and 8 upon other. Have ready sauce made by rubbing 2 tablespoons Crisco to cream with lemon juice and finely-minced parsley, adding little red pepper, and baste lobsters with this while hissing hot. Serve ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... rejoiced over a victory gained over the northern despot were those who had successfully resisted the despotism of a band of rebels. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds who thronged them. Hand-rockets exploded almost into people's eyes—serpents and squibs were hissing and cracking over the pavements—and people were rushing in all directions for fuel for the different bonfires. The largest of these was opposite the St. Lawrence Hall. It was a monster one of tar-barrels, and lighted ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but he had still a boy's love of getting wet, and stayed where he was, on the stone. Some people saw fairies in woods and down in water, or said they did; that did not seem to him much fun. What was really interesting was noticing that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for twelve Days successively, and then pour the Liquor into a Cask and make a Toast of Bread, and while it is hot, spread it on both sides with Yeast or Barm, and put it into the Vessel to the Wine, and it will make it ferment gently, which you may know by its making a hissing Noise; during the time of working, the Bung of the Vessel must be left open, and as soon as that is over, stop it up close. This will be fine and fit for Drinking in about four Months time; but if you make twice the quantity, it should stand ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... received with that hearty greeting common to a man of such prominence at first, while the organization that had been picketed in different parts of the hall at once commenced hissing at the first sight of the tall, slender form of the speaker. Until his introduction the emotion was the same, and as soon as he commenced to speak he was interrupted with jeers and insults from what Nasby, in his paper, called the 'hoodlums of the city,' who came organized ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... It was very warm; the door of the dining room which looked on the garden was half open. The chevalier, with back turned to this door, was seated in an arm chair with a wooden back which was not very high. A sharp hissing sound was heard and a quick blow vibrated in the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... clutch of death beyond it but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run within his reach. The next second out of the darkness what seemed to the man in the sail a mountain of blackness rushed hissing at him from the chaos beyond, actually swept across him into the belly of the sail, and tore him from his rapidly weakening hold of the spar. With the energy of despair his hands went up and caught something, probably a bight in the now slackened ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... me, O auspicious King, that the young ensorcelled Prince said to the King, "When I smote the slave with intent to strike off his head, I thought that I had slain him; for he groaned a loud hissing groan, but I had cut only the skin and flesh of the gullet and the two arteries! It awoke the daughter of my uncle, so I sheathed the sword and fared forth for the city; and, entering the palace, lay upon my bed and slept till morning when my wife aroused me and I saw that she had cut off her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... ladies who are in exile. But even these think of the quiet churches in sweet English places; they think of the purple hedges, the sharp scent of frost-bitten fields, the glossy black ice, and the hissing ring of the skates. I know that, religiously as Christmas is kept up even on the frontier in India, the toughest of the men long for home, and pray for the time when the blessed regions of Brighton and Torquay and Cheltenham may receive the worn pensioner. One poet says something ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... as we walked together beside the dark river toward the railroad, after our call. But, when we came abreast of the dam, with its sudden burst of noise, and its continual hissing murmur, he stopped short, with a look ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... with no one to bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom threshing and splintering from rail to rail. The air was thick with flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... warning—an instant's rustling hissing in the air above—less than an instant's. But that was all, and for the first time in his life—perhaps because he was tired, fagged—Gulo failed to take it. And you must never fail to take a warning if you are a wild creature, you know! There are ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... theater, but those ears were not Pauline's, were not in Olivia Pierson's box. And then came tumbling and roaring, huge waves of adulation, with his name shouted in voices hoarse and voices shrill like hissing foam on the triumphant crests of billows. And Pauline felt as if she were lifted from her bodily self, were tossing in a delirium of ecstasy on a ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... shell-fire to huddle under cover, adding to the wretchedness of life in trench or bombproof as nothing else can. And the Doctor, biting hard upon the worn stem of the old briar-root, as he goes swinging along through the hissing deluge with his chin upon his breast and his fierce eyes sullenly fixed upon the goal ahead, recalls, even more vividly than upon Sunday, the angry buffalo ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to madness, and, taking the bits in their teeth, they do their first free running that day. Past the citizens' team like a whirlwind they dash, clear the intervening space, and gain the flanks of the bays. Can the bays hold them? Over them leans their driver, plying for the first time the hissing lash. Only fifty yards more. The miners begin to yell. But Baptiste, waving his lines high in one hand seizes his tuque with the other, whirls it about his head and flings it with a fiercer yell than ever at the bronchos. Like the bursting ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... Dimly there seems to loom The sheen of targes; Hark, with a swift rebound, Loudly the weapons sound Upon them falling; While from each rattling string Death-dealing arrows ring, Hissing and sighing; Trembles the bloodstained plain, Trembles and rings again, Beneath the charges; But through the deafening roar, And moans of those who sore Wounded are lying, Rises Caradog's cry, Rises to heaven on high, His warriors calling— "Welshmen! we ne'er will sell Country we love so well! ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... Rockets went hissing up—cannon thundered—Roman candles shot out their blazing balls—squibs flashed and darted—wheels spun round, first singly, then in pairs, then all at once, faster and faster, one after the other, and more and more together. Edward, whose bosom was on fire, watched ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... recollection, after the lapse of seventy years, and in his extreme old age, had still power enough to set his Scotch blood aboil. While scores of cottages were flaming in the distance, and blood not unfrequently hissing on the embers, the men and women of the army used to be engaged in racing in sacks, or upon Highland ponies; and when the ponies were in request, the women, who must have sat for their portraits in Hogarth's "March to Finchley," took their seats astride like the men. Gold circulated ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... with swords-blows, while a vigorous shove sent the Intrepid clear of the frigate and free from the danger which had threatened her. As she swung clear, the flames reached the rigging, up which they shot in hissing lines, the ropes being saturated with tar which had oozed out through the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... letter, I found sad news of poor Mr. Engelman. Time and change had failed to improve his spirits. He complained of a feeling of fullness and oppression in his head, and of hissing noises in his ears, which were an almost constant annoyance to him. On two occasions he had been cupped, and had derived no more than a temporary benefit from the employment of that remedy. His doctor recommended strict attention to diet, and regular exercise. He submitted ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... pest th' undaunted Hero rushes, With massy club her hundred heads he crushes, In vain. One crush'd, two hissing heads arise, Till good Iolas to each wound applies The burning brand. Dipt in the Hydra's gall, His arrows slightest wound is death ...
— The Twelve Labours of Hercules, Son of Jupiter & Alcmena • Anonymous
... never seen before. It was one hundred feet long, twelve feet wide and seven feet deep. There was a staff or mast at the bow, another at the stern. From a tall chimney there issued volumes of smoke, while from a smaller pipe there came the hissing of boiling water and white steam. Two great, naked paddle-wheels were on the boat, one on each side near the middle. Fernando thought this must be the toy of which he had heard so much, being constructed by Robert Fulton and Chancellor Livingston. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... to a dark object floating near the ship, from which presently came a small light with a hissing sound. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I understand," he said aloud; but added in a low tone to himself, almost hissing the words between his teeth, "No, no, I do not understand yet. But it is all the same, for here is the order for it." And then he added, "I will lead the way, monseigneur," and he conducted Aramis ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... arriving on track two!" The voice boomed over the loud-speaker system; and as the long, gleaming line of monorail cars eased to a stop with a soft hissing of brakes, the three cadets of the Polaris unit moved eagerly ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... altered; but it had not stopped, though it advanced but slowly. Still it grew, and grew, and extended wider and wider on either hand, and grew darker and darker till it formed a black canopy over their heads; and then there was a pattering, hissing noise heard over the calm sea, and down came the rain in large drops thick and fast. The men lifted up their grateful faces to heaven to catch the refreshing liquid in their mouths as it fell, but Hemming lowered the sail, and, ordering ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... He climbed the High Street, his head down, feeling a physical satisfaction in the fierce soaking that the storm was giving him. The town was shining and deserted. Not a soul about. No sound except the hissing, sneering, chattering whisper of the deluge. He went up to his room and changed, putting on a dinner jacket, and came down to his father's study. It was too late for dinner, but he was not hungry; he did not know how long it was since he had felt ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... leave the eight-inch howitzer six miles away, then in a high tenor pitch, it rushed toward you with a crescendo of sound, moaning, wailing, screaming, hissing, bursting with frightful intensity apparently in the center of your brain. Falling here, there, and everywhere in the ruins and environs of the village, mustard gas, flying steel and mortar, levied cruel toll on six boys, whose mangled bodies I laid away ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... but even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving them, like ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... mountains; close by my feet hissed and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating by me, bright-eyed, and hissing, all made innocuous by fear—even the terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... logic it seemed to Lady Biddy—by an imperious, silencing gesture, and a sudden unfurling of his stockwhip, which made a hissing sound as it writhed along the ground like a snake. The black boy sprang aside. McKeith pointed to the gidia scrub and issued a terse ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Bert looking at the strange dog, who was standing in front of Snoop. And Snoop had her back arched up round; her tail was as large as a sausage, and her fur stuck out all sorts of ways, while she made a hissing sound like a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... and away she went by the back-yard, through the stables. There she heard the little horse-boy whistling and hissing after the manner of horseboys; and there she learned that Mrs. Score had been inventing an ingenious story to have her out of the way. The ostler said he was just going to lead the two horses round to the door. The Corporal had been, and they ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the province of Sirena; and hath a body in length and in breadth as the cockatrice, and a tail of twelve inches long, and hath a speck in his head as a precious stone, and feareth away all serpents with hissing. And he presseth not his body with much bowing, but his course of way is forthright, and goeth in mean. He drieth and burneth leaves and herbs, not only with touch but also by hissing and blast he rotteth and corrupteth all things about him. And he is of so great venom and perilous, that ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... fresh signs of natives were observed, and at last, one evening, they came in sight of an encampment of them. It was at a place where the current of the great river was so strong that it was in actual ebullition, and produced a hissing noise like a kettle of water in a moderate boiling state. The region was mountainous, and just before them they perceived a high ridge covered ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she could not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great, distracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out. There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's sides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his back. A faint voice said, "You there?" ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... I hear some footing; officers, the saffi, Come to apprehend us! I do feel the brand Hissing already at my forehead; now, Mine ears ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... her task that in a very short time the flames were leaping up the chimney, the shadows dancing cheerfully over the ceiling, the kettle hissing and puffing on the fire. The sight and sound drew Francis once more from his bed to the basket chair, where he sat and lazily watched his wife as she cut bread, made tea, fried bacon and eggs, with the ease and celerity of a woman to whom ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... before I had passed on many steps, I was surprised to see another shoal of imprisoned wenches, twice more detestable than they. Some had been changed into toads, some into dragons, some into serpents who were swimming and hissing, glavering and butting in a fetid, stagnant pool, much larger than Llyn Tegid. {84} "In the name of wonder," said I, "what sort of creatures may these be?" "There are here," said he, "four sorts of wenches, all notoriously bad. First, there are ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... but hard and sure of itself. It became also, like a rising tide, the law of the oppressed, a dark struggle between two contrary pressures. Where the metal had worn thin—in Russia first—the boiler had burst. Where there were cracks in the cover—as in neutral countries—the hissing steam escaped, but a deceitful calm reigned over the countries at war, kept down by oppression. To the oppressors this calm was reassuring; they were armed equally against the enemy or their own citizens. The machine of war is double-ended, the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... Sex hath still chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples, not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin, (worse in effect than the Apples of Discord,) whereas sometimes the hissing sounds of displeasure, as I hear, do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave, and diabolical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... rushing with its monotonous roar as if rejoicing at or indifferent to the terrible tragedy above. At first she saw nothing but clouds of suffocating smoke pouring from the windows, then showers of sparks floating downwards and vanishing in the water, and finally tongues of fire hissing and roaring from within the house and mingling in ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... of the surrounding meadows. And, although the main body still remained unbroken, yet the deep, dull reports that rose in quick succession to the ear from the cracking mass in every direction around, and the sharp, hissing, gurgling sounds of the water, which was gushing violently upwards through the fast multiplying fissures, together with the visible, tremor-like agitation that pervaded the whole, plainly evinced that it could not long withstand the tremendous pressure of the laboring column ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... can trust," he had answered, stuttering rather, as was his way when moved. "And—and I assure you, Mrs. Bunting, that I hardly have to speak to a human being—especially to a woman" (and he had drawn in his breath with a hissing sound) "before I know exactly what manner of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... little tiny child—only four years old—but there are some scenes one never forgets. I can see it all as plainly as possible, the room in a hotel, the very doll I was playing with. There was a great noise in the street, trampling, hissing, hooting. I ran to the window, an immense crowd was coming nearer and nearer, the street was black with the throng, they were all shouting and yelling—'Down with the infidel!' 'Kill the atheist!' Then I saw my father, he was there strong and ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Natal battery unlimbered and opened fire. A round or two—and then suddenly came a flash from a kopje two thousand yards beyond the station on the right. The Boer guns! And the next thing was the hissing shriek of a shell—and plump it dropped, just under one of the Natal limbers. By luck it did not burst; but if the Boer ammunition contractor was suspect, it was plain that the Boer artillerist could lay a gun. Plump: plump: they came right into the battery; down went a horse; over went an ammunition-waggon. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... joyful thing it is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy! to see the birds twittering in the bushes, and to hear the murmuring of a rill, or the soft hissing ripples as they fall upon the seashore! At any time and in any place such sights and sounds are most charming, but more especially are they so when one awakens to them, for the first time, in a novel and romantic situation, with the soft sweet air of a tropical ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... a strange hissing sound heard below the window; then there was a sudden, loud report, as if a hand-grenade had gone off. A spectral sort of light gleamed into the room, and a tall, gaunt-looking figure rose slowly ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the Warsaw, the latter gave steam to her engines. Breast to breast the gladiators charged across the sea, roaring, flaming, and smoking. A torpedo left the side of the Warsaw, pointed diagonally ahead, to intercept the Argyll. But it was badly aimed, and the hissing bubbles passed under her stern. Before another could be discharged, the torpedo-room, located by the Argyll's officers, was enlarged to the size of three by the succeeding bombardment and the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... is a well of mercy that cannot long or widely be pent up by exclusiveness. And the kindliness of the Jew overflows the line of division between him and the Gentile. On the whole, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of this scattered people, made for ages "a scorn and a hissing" is, that after being subjected to this process, which might have been expected to be in every sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come out of it (in any estimate which allows for numerical proportion) ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... gusty autumnal night; Glastonbury sat alone in his tower; every now and then the wind, amid a chorus of groaning branches and hissing rain, dashed against his window; then its power seemed gradually lulled, and perfect stillness succeeded, until a low moan was heard again in the distance, which gradually swelled into storm. The countenance ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... along the cliff-edge and dropped hissing brands into the lake. Old moss logs and pine-trees dry as tinder sent out sickening heat. The light ran like a flash up the tree over their stove, and in an instant its crown was wavering with flames. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... shortly found, on following up the machine, that the cries for assistance proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going towards the town on business, was met on this lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One in propria persona. No further steps, however, were taken by Murdoch to embody his idea of a locomotive carriage in a ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... he uttered these words than the gentleman came back again, while, among the lookers-on, some hissing was heard. He raised both hands with an air of authority, and speaking with quite incredible vehemence and fire, he successfully harangued ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... life began to grow burthensome. The lies became too manifold, too palpable, and, to me, too onerous. They had been extremely inconsistent—ridicule began to raise her hissing head. Shame became my constant companion—yet I lied on. I think I may safely say, that I would, at the time that I was giving myself out as a future king, have scorned the least violation of the truth, to have saved myself from the most bitter punishment, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Triffitt, who faced a mirror, started, dropped his cigarette, upset his liqueur glass and turned pale. For an instant he clutched the tablecloth, staring straight in front of him; then with a great effort he controlled his emotion and with a cautious hissing of his breath, gazed ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... vanity; but remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with our trusty companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should get at ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... long drawing-rooms, and pictures and books lined the stairs. In the garden at the back dwelt, at the time of which I am writing, two weird gray geese, with quivering silver wings and long throats, who used to come and meet their master hissing and fluttering." In 1866 an owl—for Browning still indulged a fantasy of his own in the choice of pets—was "the light of our house," as a letter describes this bird of darkness, "for his tameness and engaging ways." The ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... into its head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent, which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and said to the third spirit, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... and the four who had stood in the centre of the ring, vigorously shaking hands, now moved hastily toward the train and scrambled up the steps. The conductor waved his signal to the engine-driver and swung aboard. The locomotive bell began to ring, there was a hissing of steam, and a puffing of the great locomotive, and the train slid gently forward. On the car platform stood the four departing members of the wireless patrol, waving fond farewells to their less fortunate members. Then they turned and entered the coach, with the cheers ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... twang, a hissing sound, and a thud followed in lightning-like succession. Topanashka bends over, and at the same time tumbles forward on his face. There he lies, the left cheek and shoulder on the ground. The left arm, with which he has sought to support the body, has slipped; and it now lies fully extended ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... as the taxi floated down on hissing roter blades and settled to the platform. Sliding down from the railing he walked toward it, stiff-legged. The light was out inside it, and the cabby did not climb out or attempt to open the door for him. Bryce turned his head and looked back as if for a last glance at the watching figure, ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... live who choose in their own hissing world of fireworks. My heart longs for thy stars, ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... remedy! I thought to escape By means of this accursed gold; but now I dare not use it, show it, scarce look on it. 180 Methinks it wears upon its face my guilt For motto, not the mintage of the state; And, for the sovereign's head, my own begirt With hissing snakes, which curl around my temples, And cry to all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... watering of the horses, etc. Each one groomed her own mount, but in some cases one was shared between two girls. "Grooming time is the only time when I appreciate having half a horse," one of these remarked cheerily to me. That hissing noise so beloved of grooms is extraordinarily hard to acquire—personally, I needed all the breath I had ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... out; and as he did so the rain broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter of light ran along the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... are tamed, and suspend their work of war and carnage; the cold-blooded Amphibia alone rejoice in the overwhelming deluge, and millions of snakes and frogs, which swarm in the flooded meadows, raise a chorus of hissing and croaking. Streams of muddy water flow through the narrow paths of the forests into the river, or pour into the cracks and chasms of the soil. The temperature continues to descend, and the clouds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... from the steps and walked very slowly to the door, and then as his fingers touched the handle there was a sound—a whisper, very soft and then louder; it grew about his ear like a shot ... the whole school, motionless as before, was hissing him. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... nearer to her, and in a hissing whisper went on: "I can tell how it was through you that a certain factory in Flanders was shelled, and eighty Englishmen were killed. And if I tell ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... board of the tender much better. The rolling and pitching motion of the ship was excessive; and, excepting to those who had been accustomed to a residence in the floating light, it seemed quite intolerable. Nothing was heard but the hissing of the winds and the creaking of the bulkheads or partitions of the ship; the night was, therefore, spent in the most unpleasant reflections upon the condition of the people on the beacon, especially in the prospect of the tender being driven from her moorings. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The nineteenth letter of the alphabet, which is called a sibilant, because it makes a hissing sound like ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... walked along in the silence of the sea-twilight, on the soft white ocean floor, he was aware of a hissing, and a roaring, and a thumping, and a pumping, as of all the steam-engines in the world at once. And, when he came near, the water grew boiling-hot; not that that hurt him in the least: but it also grew as foul as gruel; and every moment he stumbled over dead shells, and fish, and sharks, ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... do you take your hand away, Fanny? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I would hurt you? Not for all the world, my dear little girl. And—and look how beautiful the moon and stars are, and how calmly they shine when the rockets have gone out, and the noisy wheels have done hissing and blazing. When I came here to-night, I did not think I should have had such a pretty little companion to sit by my side, and see these fine fire-works. You must know I live by myself, and work very hard. I write in books and newspapers, Fanny; and I was quite tired out, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... answered with a word More bitter, and your own, the bitterest Stung me to sullen anger, and I said: "My son shall be no coward of his line Because his mother choose"; you turned your head And your eyes grew implacable in mine. And like a trodden snake you turned to meet The foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled, And broke our life in pieces at my feet, "Your child?" ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... read, or seemed to read, these words, with scarce an accent to mar their impetuous flow, Dr. Englehart drew in his breath with the hissing sound of passion, and folded his arms tightly across his padded breast, as if they enfolded the bride he was ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the wind and the beating and hissing of the rain was terribly confusing. The waves, too, lapped loudly against the sides and threatened to leap in; and while we glanced to right and left in the hope of being blown in under shelter of the land, we found that the boat was rushing through the water, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... in spite of him, and swept them away down its dancing waves, and let them go again only to sweep them down again and again, till his brain felt a delicious dizziness from the everlasting rush and the everlasting roar. And then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirled into transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, polished glass-wreaths, huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bottom, and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under dark weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... black tea, almost as strong as the cognac which flanked it; a dish of beautiful fried perch, with cream as thick as porridge, our own loaf sugar, and Teachman's new laid eggs, hot wheaten cakes, and hissing rashers of right tender pork, furnished a breakfast forth that might have vied successfully with those which called forth, in the Hebrides, such ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... name for the display of electric fire which sometimes plays about the masts of ships, steeples, &c., accompanied at times with a hissing noise; commoner in southern climates, known by other names, e. g. Fire of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the time, as she had walked across the fields to that particular stop to meet the car on its scheduled hour. She had stood upon the track and waved the flag placed in the shed at the stop for that purpose, but to her disgust the car had rushed by at full speed. She had heard the hissing of the air as the car whirled by, and there being no other car for an hour she had been obliged to return to the farm and wait for her uncle to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... grey light of the early dawn found them still hissing and clawing and screeching at one another as to the best way to dispose of the captive. Then, when the first rosy ray shot up from the Sun, they grew afraid. Some scuttled away, but those who remained hastened to do something—anything ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... These fell hissing upon Truella's veil, but could not penetrate it, for they all bounded off and were scattered upon the rocky floor, where they soon burned themselves out. Seeing this the Wizard gave a sigh of disappointment and turned off the faucet, when ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... reach for she is not very active, weighing, I am sure, upwards of eighteen stone. Then she went back into her room and got out her beautiful English paraffin lamp, which she keeps in a box, and taking it into the cook-house, picked up a bit of wood from the hissing, spluttering fire, and lit it. When she picked up the wood she noticed that it was covered with the same sticky abomination she had met before that evening, and it smelt of the same faint smell she had noticed as soon as she had reached her house, and by now the whole ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... doubt, for he too must have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success than his successor. And if he had anything like the same inspiring weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare inn-chamber—the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... house he could see, as his eyes grew gradually accustomed to the murky gloom, a strange and savage scene, such as he had never before in his life dreamt of. In the pit of the hut some embers glowed feebly, from whose midst a fleecy object was sputtering and hissing. A second glance assured him that the savoury morsel was the head of an antelope in process of roasting. Two greasy black women, naked to the waist, were superintending this primitive cookery; all round, a group of unclad little imps, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... he was looking straight out ahead, so that he didn't see little Jacob. And the Industry was pitching a good deal, for the storm had made great waves, like mountains, and the waves that were left were still great. The ship made a sort of growling noise as she went down into a wave, and a sort of hissing noise as she came up out of it, and little Jacob was—well, not afraid, exactly, but he didn't just like to go out there where little Sol was, with the ship making all those queer noises. You see, it was little Jacob's first storm at sea. ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... ten paces before he heard the puffing of the express. Then he ran for the curve, but it was too late. In a horrible minute the engine of the express had telescoped the standing train, and the shrieks of the mangled passengers mingled with the hissing ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... flourish; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact,—emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming; undertook a Hercules' Labour and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean Hydra-coil, wide as England, hissing heaven-high through its thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quack-heads; and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest wrestle I have heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed and cut ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... man had a shepherd who had served him faithfully and honestly for many years. One day, as the Shepherd was tending his sheep, he heard a hissing noise in the forest, and wondered what it could he. He went, therefore, into the wood in the direction of the sound, to learn what it was. There he saw that the dry grass and leaves had caught fire, and in the middle of a burning circle a Snake was ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... could not have been simpler, more audacious or more impressive, till I saw some women in pretty frocks go up and peer at the hissing gas-valves. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... above him, and the floor betwixt us half gone to decay, so that in parts of it no boards intervened betwixt his lodging-room and mine. He was very restless and fretful; and had Medusa been my wife, there could not have been more continued and disagreeable hissing in the bed-chamber that night. At daybreak I sent to borrow ten of the negroes who were cutting wood at a distance; I could have done with half that number, but judged it most prudent to have a good force, in case he should try to ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... of opinion as to the invariability of the rule concerning singular nouns in s. DeVinne advises following the pronunciation. Where the second s is not pronounced, as often happens, to avoid the prolonged hissing sound of another s, he recommends omitting it ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... at once, where none the pass defend, The harmless freedom, and the private friend. The guardians yield, by force superior ply'd, To Int'rest, Prudence; and to Flatt'ry, Pride. Here Beauty falls betray'd, despis'd, distress'd, And hissing Infamy proclaims the rest. Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find? Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind? Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise, No cries invoke the ...
— English Satires • Various
... reach. The great night prowler knew that in the daylight he could not catch them—that, indeed, if he did succeed in catching one in his claws the others would throw caution to the winds and all be down upon him at once. He sat there, straight and stiff, for a while, snapping his terrible beak and hissing at them like an angry cat. Till at last, realizing that there was no more chance of a peaceful sleep for him there, he spread his huge, downy wings and sailed off smoothly to seek some more secluded neighborhood. The whole flock pursued him, with their tormenting ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the centre and, seating himself thereon, fell to wondering at the lake and the stools, and he marvelled till drowsiness overcame him and he drops asleep. Presently, he was aroused by a loud snorting and hissing and rustling, so he opened his eyes; and, sitting up, saw each stool occupied by a huge serpent, an hundred cubits in length. At this sight, great fear get hold of him; his spittle dried up for the excess of his dread and he despaired of life, as all ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... young kind voices ring one above the other; while a little farther, at the end of the snug room, other hands, young too, fly with unskilled fingers over the keys of the old piano, and the Lanner waltz cannot drown the hissing of ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev |
