"Scraping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the benediction of the sun. All the way home, she continued under the intoxication of these sky-scraping spirits. At table she could talk freely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off-hand and with a loud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well-mannered and sensible-like, but it was a pity he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the distant scraping of the violin could be heard, and Betty, seizing Kitty by the hand, tripped up to Clarissa and repeated Peter's request. Clarissa ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... swift, sweeping curve he shot toward the bank, the brutes immediately converging to head him off. The slight, familiar scraping on the ice told him that Fred and Jennie were at his heels. He kept on with slackening speed until close to the shore, and it would not do to go any further. An overhanging limb ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... to bed," he said, and slipped quietly out of the room. As he lay in his blankets he could see the gleam of light from the barred window and hear Jeff scraping his boots uneasily on the floor. True indeed, his hands were like burnt rawhide from gripping at ropes and irons, his clothes were greasy and his boots smelled of the corral, and yet—she had given him a kiss! He tried to picture it in his mind: ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... have. The state of analytical chemistry is well advanced. We could, I think, take a dry scraping out of the cauldron used by MacBeth's witches, and determine whether Shakespeare had reported the formula correctly. Now, young man, if you think that something is added to the human flesh to make it Mekstrom's Flesh, you are wrong. Standard analysis shows ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... went up and then down and then up again. Robin had almost given up her search and had just about decided she was lost, for turn whichever way she might, nothing seemed familiar, when she heard the harsh, scraping strains of a violin, vibrant with ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... found in nearly all parts of the world. Many careful studies have been made of this procedure, particularly by the great anatomist and surgeon, Paul Broca, and M. Lucas-Championniere has covered the subject in a monograph.(2) Broca suggests that the trephining was done by scratching or scraping, but, as Lucas-Championniere holds, it was also done by a series of perforations made in a circle with flint instruments, and a round piece of skull in this way removed; traces of these drill-holes have been found. The operation was done for epilepsy, infantile convulsions, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... he ran toward the mass, Elliot noticed that the only sounds were grunts, stertorous breathings, and the scraping of feet. The attackers wanted no publicity. The attacked was too busy to waste breath in futile cries. He was fighting for his life with all the stark energy nature and ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... smiled in a half-pitying way, took an old broomstick that he used for a poker, and scraping the ashes of the fire aside rolled the clay pig-pudding into the middle of the fire, and then covered it over with the burning ashes, and piled on some bits of wood and dry cabbage-stumps, making up a good fire, which he set ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... and had set shrubs in their proper places. And the plants had repaid her with a riot of blossoms. A breeze set the gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan's ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. "It's great," ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... to go to bed—for he was still following Mr. Crow's plan—Buster noticed Johnnie and wondered what he was doing. But as soon as he went inside the house he forgot all about Johnnie Green. And when, a few moments later, there was a terrible sound of scraping and scratching in the long hall that led to the innermost part of the house, Buster Bumblebee never once thought to mention to anyone that he had seen Johnnie ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... critical moment the lad at the helm of the other craft, which bore the name Speedaway, appeared to lose his nerve. He sheered off and merely grazed the Curlew's side, scraping off a ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his forsaken domicile. Habit—for he is a man of habits—takes him by the hand and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the step.—Wakefield, whither are ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when I lay comfortably in my bunk, I was awakened by hearing the anchor scraping and thumping against the schooner's bow; then there was a hauling of ropes on deck and a creaking of timbers as the sails were run up, and I fell to sleep again before we had got out beyond the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... to collect fuel, and kindle a fire, in order to prepare some food. Assuming, as usual, the entire superintendence and control of the culinary department, and every thing connected therewith, he set Browne to work washing and scraping tara-roots, despatched me after a fresh supply of fuel, and sent Morton with the hand-net down to the fish-pond to take out a couple of fish for a broil. But while thus freely assigning tasks to the rest of us, with the composed air of one accustomed to the exercise of unquestioned authority, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... vent his ill-humours, and is sensible of no pleasure so much as the itching of his sores. He hates death for nothing so much as because he fears it will take him away before he has paid all the ill-will he owes, and deprive him of all those precious feuds he has been scraping together all his lifetime. He is troubled to think what a disparagement it will be to him to die before those that will be glad to hear he is gone, and desires very charitably they might come to an agreement like good friends and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... time he heard something moving, scraping, and snorting against the wall outside. It was the old fellow who lay there ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... an intolerable heaviness of spirit, went early to bed, leaving Roland in the hall. After a short and broken sleep, he awoke, and lighting a candle, read idly and gloomily to pass the heavy hours. The house seemed full of strange noises that night. Once or twice came a scraping and a faint hammering in the wall; light footsteps seemed to pass in the turret—but the tower was always full of noises, and Mark heeded them not; at last he fell asleep again, to be suddenly awakened by a strange and desolate crying, that came ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stir behind the partition and a sound of chairs scraping the floor. Patsy slid out the door and flew down the stairs at the imminent danger of breaking her neck. James was seated in the buggy outside, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... them an elaborate description of Sir Raffle Buffle, standing up with his back to the fire with his hat on his head, and speaking with a loud harsh voice, to show them the way in which he declared that that gentleman received his inferiors; and then bowing and scraping and rubbing his hands together and simpering with would-be softness,—declaring that after that fashion Sir Raffle received his superiors. And they were very merry,—so that no one would have thought that Johnny was a despondent lover, now bent on throwing the dice for his ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the box in his hand, and bowing and scraping said in broken English: "Permit to me, most gracious princess, that I may have the honor to offer on behalf of my august master, this little testament of his high admiration and love." With this he bowed again, smiled like a crack in a piece ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... so that children that are mouth-breathers are often two or more grades behind in school, poor students, and even stunted and undersized. You can often tell them at sight by their open mouths and vacant, stupid look. A very simple and harmless scraping operation will remove these adenoids entirely, and what a wonderful improvement the mouth-breather will make! He will often catch up two grades, and gain two inches in height and ten pounds in ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... Then there was the scraping of a boat-hook against the side, close to the gangway, and the dimly-seen figure of ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... undermined. Opium is worse than drink in both respects: and if things ever reached such a pass—which God forbid—it would mean losing my commission; just going under, like dozens of ill-fated chaps, and sinking in the scale: or at best scraping along in the army by means of constant subterfuges, at the hourly risk of discovery and disgrace. A nice sort of life for you, my proud little woman. And for——" he broke ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... all my life I had been putting on my left boot first. If you had asked me five minutes before which boot I put on first, I should have said that there was no first about it; yet now I found I was in the grip of a habit so fixed that the attempt to put on my right boot first affected me like the scraping of a harsh pencil on a slate. The thing couldn't be done. The whole rhythm of habit would be put out of joint. I became interested. How, I wondered, do I put on my jacket? I rose, took it off, found that my right arm slipped automatically ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... smashed to pieces, and fainted. During the affray abroad, the sisters of the neighborhood collected at my room. I called for a blanket; they threw me one and shut the door; I wrapped it around me and went in.... My friends spent the night in scraping and removing the tar and washing and cleansing my body, so that by morning I was ready to be clothed again.... With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached [that morning] to the congregation as usual, and in the afternoon of the same day ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased. Motionless, we sat in that humid ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... rather worse than motherless! Well—I will find some excuse for taking her out for a drive now and then; I don't know how to speak to the others about having the chair for her, for they are barely scraping on.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The portress set to scraping away the grass from what she called her pavement, with an old knife, and, as she tore out the blades, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... feeling of relief that he turned the key in the lock of No. 18, and heard the scraping of a chair on the kitchen floor as ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... the black Body of Horn into a White immediately with Scraping, without changing the Substantial form, or without the Intervention of Salt, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... me and the officers of the vessel were on deck. The various buoys were being pointed out and a map of the channel was lying before us. Some mention was made of a buoy that ought to be near the place where we were to mark the location of a rock, but none was found, and suddenly we heard the scraping of the vessel upon the rock. The cutter trembled and careened over. The captain was somewhat alarmed and turned the vessel toward the beach, where it was speedily examined and found to be somewhat injured. We ascertained afterwards that the buoy had been ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... day, when he was on the point of leaving, he walked for the last time along the rows of carts, and all at once he saw between three other horses fastened to the railings—he saw Malek-Adel! How he knew him at once, and how Malek-Adel knew him too, and began neighing, and dragging at his tether, and scraping the earth ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... and dancing too—just all kinds of dancing that could be done to fiddle and banjo music. My Pa was one of them fiddlers in his young days. One of the dances was the cotillion, but just anybody couldn't dance that one. There was a heap of bowing and scraping to it, and if you were not 'quainted with it you ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... a few days by Steyn, left the Delagoa Bay line on September 17, and succeeded in scraping past Buller without serious excoriation, but he was compelled to send the greater part of his force under B. Viljoen by a circuitous route through ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... smile upon her face, and looking at each of the three by turns, Miss Brass took two or three more pinches of snuff, and having by this time very little left, travelled round and round the box with her forefinger and thumb, scraping up another. Having disposed of this likewise and put the box carefully ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... begun when they abruptly ceased. Her ears caught the sound of the anchor chain scraping through the hawse-hole. The anchor came aboard with a clatter, the mainsail was sent to the peak in short order, the boom swung over and the big sail caught the faint breeze that drifted in from the sea. The sloop, to her amazement, moved out from ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... got things nearly straight by the long years of scraping in little stations in Chitral and Burma—stations where living is cheap in comparison with the life of a county magnate, and where, moreover, liaisons of one sort or another are normal and inexpensive too. So that, when Mrs Maidan came along—and the Maidan affair might have caused trouble ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... to hurt him, ma'am," he said. "You see, he was right in the way, an' I reckon I was feelin' a bit wild right at that minute, an'—" His gaze went to Masten, who was scraping mud from his garments with a small flat stone. The rider's eyes grew wide; more wrinkles ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... come back, unable to get farther than Frankfort. We are beginning to feel hopeless. Nothing about England is in the German papers, and, of course, we see no others. It is quite terrible being without news. Last night there was great scrubbing and scraping of Altheim shop windows, and all the notices: "English spoken ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... bundles into the coach, seized his scandalized companion under the arms, and deposited her bodily upon a seat. Without waiting to hear from her, he dashed away through the bedlam. Under horses' heads he went, past flying hoofs and scraping wheels, jostling pedestrians, and little, brown policemen, until he had reached the outskirts of the crowd, where he vaulted into a vacant vehicle and called upon ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... been given to particular cases:—amphicyrtic (Gr. [Greek: amphi], on both sides, [Greek: kyrtos], convex) or cissoidal (Gr. [Greek: kissos], ivy), biconvex; xystroidal or sistroidal (Gr. [Greek: xystris], a tool for scraping), concavo-convex; amphicoelic (Gr. [Greek: koilae], a hollow) or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had even struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... screeching noise, that seemed to spread a panic amongst the flock, and after hurrying through the glen, the sheep dispersed both right and left. Gilbert ran after first one group and then another, scraping away at his fiddle as hard as he could, but it was all of no use—he could not overtake them. At length he was so tired that he was obliged to sit down and rest. He began to feel hungry, too, not ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... rubbing of the wires of the swinging lantern against his clothing. He set down the light and listened; the sound was evidently on the other side of the partition; the sound of some prolonged, rustling, scraping movement, with regular intervals. Was it due to another of Mr. Nott's unprofitable tenants—the rats? No. A bright idea flashed upon Mr. Nott's troubled mind. It was de Ferrieres snoring! He smiled grimly. "Wonder if Rosey'd call him a gentleman if she heard that," he chuckled to himself as ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... to draw a walking figure in attitudes like some of these. The swinging limb is so much shortened that the toe never by any accident scrapes the ground, if this is tolerably even. In cases of partial paralysis, the scraping of the toe, as the patient walks, is one of the characteristic marks of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... at about fifteen miles below Tientsin. This must remind you of some of my letters from the Yangtze, two years ago. We started this morning at 6.30 in the 'Granada:' the General and I, with both our staffs. We had gone on famously to this point, scraping through the mud occasionally with success. In rounding a corner, however, at which a French gunboat had already stuck before us, we have run upon a bank. It is very strange to me to be going up the Peiho river again. The fertility of the plain through ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... scarcely think of anything but America. I read every letter from there that I could obtain. I was constantly seeking information about the country and the opportunities it held out to a man of my type, and cudgeling my brains for some way of scraping together the formidable sum. I was restless, sleepless, and finally, when I caught a slight cold, my health broke down so completely that I had to be taken to the hospital. Shiphrah visited me every day, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... drawing-rooms, and I had to listen to them twenty times in a single day. Another had read Montesquieu, and gave lessons in law to the oldest magistrates. A third used to play the harp execrably, but it was agreed that her arms were the most beautiful in France, and we had to endure the harsh scraping of her nails over the strings so that she might have an opportunity of removing her gloves like a coy little girl. What can I say of the others, except that they vied with one another in all those ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... stepping, and then splendid bulls with wreaths on their horns and garlands round their—waists shall we say?—are led before the king, standing at the foot of the steps and handing the prizes to the farmers, who present themselves, ducking and scraping. It seems a shame to tie up the creatures' legs so, and put rings through their noses: some have even a cloth bound over their heads; and if all these precautionary measures are necessary, it ought to be a relief when the procession ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... a similar ordeal, and when I was well enough to go and look for him, I found him scraping away at a beef bone, from which he had just removed the ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... last settlement which they pass, a woman and a small, pale-faced boy are gathering in their corn crop. They are the wife and son of Bolin Brazle, an idle but good-natured vagabond, who spends his days scraping upon his fiddle up at the store, or occasionally, upon the promise of a drink, lending a hand in rafting tar-barrels. In consequence of the presentation of a worn-out mule, Bolin swears by the planter, wants to run him for the presidency, and obstinately ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Pernambuco. He added that she was a Maltese and he had learned Italian from her. I was so oppressed by this amazing knowledge of languages that I couldn't say a word in any language. It seemed silly for us to spend years scraping together a few French words at school when a foreigner like this could gather a dozen tongues in less time. And yet, when you go about the world you will find such people by the score, and you will find them working for and being governed by Englishmen who know no language but their own and ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... trustees, partly to indulge their own aversion to her, taking upon them a larger discretionary power than rightly belonged to them, kept her too straitened, which no doubt in the recoil had its share in poor Stephen's misery. It was only after scraping for a whole year that she could escape to Paris or Hamburg, where she was at home. There her sojourn was determined by her good or ill ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and must be careful, soft, polite. Dorn felt the man and his power. Not a puppy on flabby legs but a brute mastiff with a wild bay that must come out in little whines, because the music was playing, because he was talking to Somebody. A man physically beaten by life, his body scraping, bowing; his words mumbling confusedly in the presence of other words. Yet a powerful man with a tremendous urge that might some day hurl him against the stars. He ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... responded evenly, scraping the adobe off Banjo with a flat rock. And the subject ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... spirit I could summon, threading my way through the dark, deserted streets, pausing for a moment in front of a small house with closed doors and closely, shuttered windows, where I heard suppressed voices, the monotonous scraping of a fiddle, and a lively shuffling of feet, and passing on finally entered, drawn by the musical strains, a quaint old place, where a blind harper, seated in the corner of a rude kind of coffee and sitting room, was playing on a harp. I liked the atmosphere of the place, so primitive and wholesome, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the idiot in his eager endeavour to reach the ground—I watched the action, expecting him to start, to speak, to claim acquaintance—and having completed the polite intention, he stood smiling and scraping. I looked at him, then at the idiot, and saw at once that they were strangers. A dozen idlers stood about the door. I waited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... proved a happy resoce to us in our present situation as I believe it would have been difficult to have devised any other method to have procured corn from the natives. the Indians are extravegantly fond of sheet iron of which they form arrow-points and manufacter into instruments for scraping and dressing their buffaloe robes- I permited the blacksmith to dispose of a part of a sheet-iron callaboos which had been nearly birnt out on our passage up the river, and for each piece about four inches square he obtained from seven ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... balconies overhung the rows of showy shops and stores open for trade this Sunday morning, and pretty Latin faces of the higher class glanced over their savagely pronged railings upon the passers below. At some windows hung lace curtains, flannel duds at some, and at others only the scraping and sighing one-hinged shutter groaning toward Paris ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... which I referred, is caused by men hurrying to and fro on deck—by men heavily laden. I fancy I can also hear a similar noise in the hold beneath my cabin floor, the entrance to which is situated abaft the foremast. I also feel that something is scraping against the schooner's hull. Have boats come alongside? Are the crew engaged in ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... like dogs over a bone—what profit comes of it? are you happier? are you wiser? are you better? are you more at peace with your neighbours; more at peace with your own hearts and consciences? If you are, money has not made you so, nor plotting, and scraping, and struggling, and pushing your neighbour down, that you may rise a few inches on his shoulders. No. Hear what the voice of your Father says is the true way to wealth and comfort, after which you all struggle and labour so hard ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... the tug which had the connecting cable on board. In stepping from one to the other of the small boats, the water being very rough and the boats having a good deal of motion, I made a misstep, my right leg being on board the outer boat, and my left leg went down between the two boats scraping the skin from the upper part of the leg near the knee for some two or three inches. It pained me a little, but not much, still I knew from experience that, however slight and comparatively painless at the time, I should be laid up the next day and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... that the walls of the metropolis are constantly covered by advertisements in various colours, blue, red, green, and yellow, announcing balls of different descriptions. The silence of streets the least frequented is interrupted by the shrill scraping of the itinerant fiddler; while by-corners, which might vie with Erebus itself in darkness, are lighted by transparencies, exhibiting, in large characters, the words "Bal de Societe." —"Happy people!" says Sterne, "who can lay down all your cares together, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... remove the butter from the plate? A piece of paper or a knife. What are you doing with the knife or paper? Scraping or rubbing off the foreign substance. Then how was it removed? It was removed by scraping ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... needed, no scraping of fiddles, to excite or charm me as I pass from the echoing corridor, through the swing-doors, into the well of this or that court. It matters not much to me what case I shall hear, so it be of the human kind, with a jury and with witnesses. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Scraping with his pick beneath the rock, to see if the emblem was the sign of hidden treasure or relic, he ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... coal man had tipped back in his chair against the coal shed and was scraping his nails with his pocket knife. He did it with exquisite care, and his half-closed eyes had a look of sleepy contentment; he might have been shaping a peaceful destiny. His glimmer of responsiveness ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... about it, Phelps, and don't misunderstand me. I believe in every man doing his best and then just resting there and not crying over what he can't ever have. If a man does his best and then doesn't have the whole world bowing and scraping before him because he isn't very high up, that isn't any reason why he should kick. Take what you've got, use it, test it, and then if you find you're not a star but only a candle, why, just shine as a candle and don't go sputtering around because you can't twinkle like a star. At least that's the ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... from where he had climbed to, and his foot slipped on the weather-worn stone, so that he made a loud scraping sound in saving himself from a fall; but not so loud that he was unable to hear the scuffling of feet close at hand, followed directly after by ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... a blow from behind in the legs, a sure sign of good breeding and pleasant, easy manners), and then smiled, raised my hand, and softly and carefully brandished it twice in the air. The girl at once turned away from me, took a little piece of board out of the cage, began vigorously scraping it with a knife, and suddenly, without changing her attitude, uttered the following words: 'This is papa's parrot.... Are you fond of parrots?' 'I prefer siskins,' I answered, not without some effort. 'I like siskins, too; but look at him, isn't he pretty? Look, he's not afraid.' (What ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cousin," said Mr. Fleming, "and now go along with the stewardess, and go to sleep and get a good night's rest." Patty did as Cousin Tom directed, and never wakened until she heard the steamer scraping against the ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... wood in the fireplace, the rustle of papers hurriedly turned over, the indolent voice of the duke indicating in a sentence, always precise and clear, a reply to a letter of four pages, and the respectful monosyllables of the attache—"Yes, M. le Ministre," "No, M. le Ministre"; then the scraping of a rebellious and heavy pen. Out of doors the swallows were twittering merrily over the water, the sound of a clarinet was wafted from somewhere near ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... look at her. She listened intently. There was a heavy, scraping foot upon the floor below. To her mind, it did not sound like Tom ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... obeying him, Lecoq armed himself with a fragment of one of the broken bottles, and began scraping away furiously at the plastered wall ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... specimen of this kind we have obtained is another of those miracles which recall the wonders of Arabian fiction. On a slip of glass, three inches long by one broad, is a circle of thinner glass, as large as a ten-cent piece. In the centre of this is a speck, as if a fly had stepped there without scraping his foot before setting it down. On putting this under a microscope magnifying fifty diameters there come into view the Declaration of Independence in full, in a clear, bold type, every name signed in fac-simile; the arms of all the States, easily made out, and well finished; with good portraits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the rising sun, radiant with good fun, good humour, good deeds, good news, and good living. His coat was scarlet once; but purple now. His leathers and boots were doubtless clean this morning; but are now afflicted with elephantiasis, being three inches deep in solid mud, which his old groom is scraping off as fast as he can. His cap is duntled in; his back bears fresh stains of peat; a gentle rain distils from the few angles of his person, and bedews the platform; for Mark Armsworth has "been ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... declared itself a window, it gave no light. And illusions came to Lieutenant Fevrier, such as will come to the bravest man so long as he listens hard enough in the dark—illusions of stealthy footsteps on the floor, of hands scraping and feeling along the walls, of a man's breathing upon his neck, of many infinitesimal noises and movements ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... men's heads. When the fog lifted, the light showed a more curious spectacle than most of you have perhaps ever seen. It was the custom, whenever we halted in a sandy desert, for each man to scoop out for himself a shallow grave. In this he lay, scraping the loose sand over his body for bed-clothes, and leaving his head, wrapped in his poncho, above ground. It was, indeed, a most comfortable and delicious bed, as in those days, or rather nights, I ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Toffy steering anything,' said Jane, laughing with great enjoyment at the recollection of Toffy's mad riding; 'he can never take his horse through a gate without scraping his leg ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... failing, he snapped viciously at the horseman's leg, which was instantly thrown up out of reach. Then the maddened brute rushed against the bars of the corral in an effort to crush the rider. But again the uplifted leg foiled the maneuver, and the severe scraping that the horse himself received took away from him all desire of repeating that ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... not tell the ending of the feelie; he recreated it. He was the monster slurching across the floor toward her, step by scraping step and in spite of her fist on her mouth a tiny nervous scream escaped Robina. Jason wanted to stop then but she badgered him into continuing. Now he was the hero, Gregg Mason, battling the unspeakable ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... we shall have to make a tunnel,' Oswald said, 'to reach the rich treasure.' So he jumped into the hole and began to dig at one side. After that we took it in turns to dig at the tunnel, and Pincher was most useful in scraping the earth out of the tunnel—he does it with his back feet when you say 'Rats!' and he digs with his front ones, and burrows with ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... Scraping together the old wood and debris in the rear of the shed, and extricating with some difficulty a small tin match-box from his saturated clothes, he knelt before the pile and used all of his persuasive powers ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... himself, who followed the plough in summer-time to pay their college fees in winter; and this inequality struck him with some force. He was at that age of a conversible temper, and insatiably curious in the aspects of life; and he spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of man- and woman-kind. In this way he came upon many depressed ambitions, and many intelligences stunted for want of opportunity; and this also struck him. He began to perceive that life ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for so inadequate a purpose. The walls were of wood, but the floor consisted of a large iron trough, and when I came to examine it I could see a crust of metallic deposit all over it. I had stooped and was scraping at this to see exactly what it was when I heard a muttered exclamation in German and saw the cadaverous face of the colonel looking down ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... on one wheel, sometimes even scraping the corners of houses, and causing those pedestrians in their line of flight to skip like young unicorns. Then, recovering, the startled wayfarers would hurl their choicest blessings after the cab. To these, the madcap driver would reply with a shrill and fiendish yell, belabouring his frantic ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... ice-stream, rested on the surface of the ice-sheet, were borne along by it through hundreds of miles, and when, in the course of ages untold, the climate became milder, and the glaciers gradually shrunk and eventually disappeared, these fragments, often bearing the marks of ice-scraping, and oftener rounded by ice-action, fell to the soil beneath, and remain to this day, to bear their silent witness to the course once taken by the giant ice-stream. The period through which this process was going on has been variously computed, from 18,000 years, according ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... bridge, Jan's horse refusing, so he went through the river, and out into the new road which is being made to Ipek. Men and women, almost all in Albanian costumes, were scraping, digging, drilling and blasting; some of the women wore a costume we had not yet seen, very short cotton skirt above the knees, and long, embroidered leggings. We passed this high-road "in posse" and, the little horses stepping along, presently caught up a trail of donkeys, the proprietor of ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... have held their own ever since, over the grassy steppes of Russia and on the confines of the plains of Tartary. Sometimes they live almost alone, especially on the barren wastes where they have been seen in winter, scraping the snow off the herbage as our ponies do on Dartmoor. At other times, as in the south of Russia, where they wander between the Dnieper and the Don, they gather in vast herds and live a free life, not fearing even the wolves, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50 For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... well the wondrous quickness of the jungle folk and their almost unbelievable powers of hearing. To them the sudden scraping of one blade of grass across another was as effectual a warning as her loudest cry, and Sabor knew that she could not make that mighty leap without ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bottom of the ditch,' said Sir Gervas, scraping the mud off his dress with his sword-blade. ''Tis now half-past two,' he continued, 'and we have been at this child's-play for an hour and more. With a line regiment, too! It is not what I ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... retired to bed that night the last remnant of strangeness had vanished, and she felt like a lifelong friend and confidante. She had seen the menu for the Christmas dinner, and had helped to manufacture jellies and creams, while Pixie perched upon the dresser, industriously scraping basins of their sweet, lemony, creamy leavings, with the aid of a teaspoon and an occasional surreptitious finger when her sisters were looking in an opposite direction. She suggested and achieved such marvels in the way of garnishing that Molly was greatly impressed, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... texture; vacation now for six days. They stop to pick nuts and berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their leisure. Good religious men, with the love of men in their hearts, and the means to pay their toll in their pockets. We got over this ferry chain without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel,—no toll for us ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... pickled, Benjamin fished it out of the green liquid and washed it in a bowl of clean water. A little filing and scraping, a little rubbing with emery-paper, and the goldsmith burnished the yellow circlet till ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... scraping their fiddles, blowing their clarionets and banging their czimbalom with all the vigour of which they were capable. They, at any rate, were determined to be heard above the din. The leader, with his violin under his chin, had already begun his round of the two huge tables, pausing for awhile ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... boats were hauled in, and lowered to the deck, where they were turned over to be painted. Bitts and Gage rowed the vice-principal ashore, while Peaks and Cleats, laying aside the dignity of their temporary positions, went to work scraping and painting the bottoms of the boats, which seemed to have been removed from the davits solely for the purpose of preventing any of the crew from escaping. Mr. Fluxion was absent only an hour, and during his absence Dr. Carboy watched ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... complete destruction of the town by the "Knights of the Cross." Although Macko, the Bohemian, and the two girls, had already heard the narrative from the prior of Sieradz, nevertheless they listened with much interest to the tale of the old man who was sitting at the fireside scraping in the cinders. It seemed as if he discovered among them the events of his earlier days. At Lenczyca, as well as at Sieradz, they spared not even the churches and clergy, and the knives of the conquerors were covered with the blood of old men, women and children. Always the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
