"Sputter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the horse trough. With a new book waiting to be read, washing his hair seemed a waste of time. But if that was what Sarah wanted, he would do it. He lathered his head with soap and ducked it into the water. Some of the soap got into his eyes and he began to sputter. He ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... prattling than an echo and the worst of them able to outchat a hundred of the best picked gossips. And yet their condition would be much better were they only full of words and not so given to scolding that they most obstinately hack and hew one another about a matter of nothing and make such a sputter about terms and words till they have quite lost the sense. And yet they are so happy in the good opinion of themselves that as soon as they are furnished with two or three syllogisms, they dare boldly enter the lists against ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... Tomorrow morning he must rise while the windows still let in only the chilling gray of dawn. Yet he stopped with half his clothes removed, and, going to an improvised shelf in the corner, took down a battered volume. It was not until the lamp warned him of the spent hours with its dying sputter that he laid aside the resonant sentences in which Carlyle had been talking to him of heroes and their worship. In another room across the hall he had heard stirrings for an hour after the silence of sleep had fallen on ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... were presentable, and he had piled-up some more bush where the fire had burned into a hole, the meat began to sputter, and drops of fat to drip in the hot embers, producing odours so attractive to a hungry lad, to whom fresh meat was a luxury, that Dyke's thoughts were completely diverted from the loneliness of his position, and he thought of nothing but the coming dinner as he took from his ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... unlawful,— Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, On the bounds of the holy and the awful,— I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, And refer myself to THEE, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter, When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest! May truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Now I realized what it meant. It was war. The Austrians had taken this way to acknowledge Italy's defiance. The enemy had threatened to destroy Venice, and this was their first attempt. Above the sputter of the machine guns and the occasional explosions of shrapnel could be distinguished the buzz of an aeroplane that moment by moment approached nearer. Soon the machine itself became visible, flying ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the wrath in Jimmy's cup began to sputter, dissolving into that which in his older sister's heart would have been tears; in Jimmy's heart, it took the form of convulsive sniffling. The boy could hear his sister clattering the breakfast dishes in the kitchen. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... Clam, the harsh sound spoils the sport, And 'tis like Women keeping Dover Court For when all talk, there's none can lend an ear The others story, and her own to hear; But pull and hall, straining for to sputter What they can hardly afford time to utter. Like as a valiant Captain in the Field, By his Conduct, doth make the Foe to yield; Ev'n so, the leading Bell keeping true time, The rest do follow, none commits ...
— Tintinnalogia, or, the Art of Ringing - Wherein is laid down plain and easie Rules for Ringing all - sorts of Plain Changes • Richard Duckworth and Fabian Stedman
... very dark and windy, with dull clouds moving heavily across the sky and a constant sputter of rain. Yet a little after daybreak Monmouth's bugles were blowing in every quarter of the town, from Tone Bridge to Shuttern, and by the hour appointed the regiments had mustered, the roll had been called, and the vanguard was marching briskly out through the eastern ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 23d February, age eighty-six, King Stanislaus Leczinsky: 'his clothes caught fire' (accidental spark or sputter on some damask dressing-gown or the like); and the much-enduring innocent old soul ended painfully ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... like cloud after cloud of lightning-winged insects, and passing, by God's mercy and the Spaniard's bad marksmanship—passing high. Between two crashes, came a sudden sputter, and some singing thing began to play up and down through the trees, and to right and left, in a steady hum. It was a machine gun playing for the range—like a mighty hose pipe, watering earth and trees with a steady, spreading jet of hot lead. ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... played his part in a way to make me shiver. The great pines, the shady, brown trails, the sunlit glades, were as real to me as if I had been among them. Most vivid of all was the lonely forest at night and the campfire. I heard the sputter of the red embers and smelled the wood smoke; I peered into the dark shadows watching and listening for I knew ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... of course to her he's only a kid," he volunteered. "She's funny about that, too. She's emotional, of course, full of genius, and full of temperament. She says she needs a safety-valve, and Gardner is her safety-valve. She says she can sputter and rage and laugh, and he just listens and quiets her down. To-night she called him her 'bread-and-butter'—did ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... acquisition—this for her father, and that for her mother, and so much for everybody she could think of—that time had no time to be counted at all, but flew by with feathers unheeded. The mutter of the sea became a roar, and the breeze waxed into a heavy gale, and spray began to sputter through the air like suds; but Mary saw the rampart of the rocks before her, and thought that she could easily get back around the point. And her taste began continually to grow more choice, so that she spent as much time in discarding the rubbish which at first she had prized ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... so, if spoken heartlessly, regardless of sympathy, and flung at sufferers like a stone, rather than laid on their hearts as a balm. God lets a true heart dare much in speech; for He knows that the sputter and foam prove that 'the heart's deeps boil ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Hunter, and darts headlong through the timber back to the stream. There is a sudden burst of shots and yells and soldier cheers; a mighty crash and sputter and thunder of hoofs up the stream-bed; a foot dash, yelling like demons, of the men at the west end in support of the mounted charge in the bed of the stream. For a minute or two the welkin rings with shouts, shots (mainly those of the startled Indians), ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... range. The gun was trained and ready for firing when a sea rolled up on us. The ocean was smooth enough, but the swell was still on—a long swell of the kind that does not sputter, but walk right up and announce their arrival by arriving. This long blue swell rolled ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... air in drought, but he yells defiance at the red-eyed eagle, and in his ears are the bells of new philosophies, and their tinkling drowns the sputter of the burning sword. He shrieks, "God damn you! When you are broken, the word will ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... to leap along the lines, Leap up and hang and swoop and sputter out; A bullet hits a wiring-post and whines; I wish to Heaven that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... on her than you would have laughed to see how the rosy color came back to the dear child's cheek, and how she began to sneeze and sputter, and how astonished she was to find herself dripping wet and her father still throwing more ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... cautiously he seized the end of a fuse projecting from one of the canisters and held the crimson end of his cigar against it until a sputter of sparks showed that it had caught. From this fuse he turned to the one in the second ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... crushed under the weight of facts. There was Aunt Janet, she had no doubt, killed by her own nephew, and she was hiding the guilty murderer. She had visions of state prison for herself. She watched fearfully while the two men bent over the prostrate woman, who very soon began to sputter and gasp ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Frankland can't help being eloquent. Everybody present was deeply affected as she pictured the scene. As soon as the meeting closed, Mrs. Maginnis, all in a sputter of excitement, I fancy, sailed up to Mrs. Frankland, and laid her troubles before her, and wondered if Mrs. Frankland couldn't get her young friend to pray for her daughter Hilda. Phillida, by solicitation of Mrs. Frankland, visited the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... could tell him, and Sticky-toes continued to scold and sputter and swell himself up with anger. But everybody forgot Sticky-toes when they heard the voice of Blacky the Crow calling "Caw, caw, caw!" from the very same hemlock-tree. Now no one knew that Blacky the Crow had come to the party, for ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... lower in the musical staff, sounding precisely as if the soloist's performance had been suddenly choked off by the rising of water in the windpipe. It was something after the order of the purple martin's melodious sputter, only the tones were richer and fuller and the music better defined, as became a genuine oscine. His sudden and emphatic cessation seemed to indicate that he was in a petulant mood, perhaps impatient with the intruder, or angry with a ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... choke and sputter and gasp, the big snow turns to horsepondine. With us it stays still: but wind, sun, and rain get to work upon it, lest the texture and colour should not change daily. Rain makes a granulated crust over all, in which white shagreen the trees are faintly reflected. Heavy mists go up and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... course, the Bard of Avon had first call, because his plays went on the various stages like a torchlight procession, while those of his so-called compeers, struggled through the acts and scenes with only the flicker and sputter of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind to us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got the schooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefed topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it with the sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I kept this log regularly going, marking ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... accordingly on the alert, and the Spaniards must have strengthened their outlying parties in the jungle ahead of us, for they suddenly attacked one of our pickets, wounding Crockett seriously. He was brought in by the other troopers. Evidently the Spanish lines felt a little nervous, for this sputter of shooting was immediately followed by a tremendous fire of great guns and rifles from their trenches and batteries. Our men in the trenches responded heavily, and word was sent back, not only to me, but to the commanders ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... about fifty feet from the highway. The girl touched his hand again. "We're safe," she cried, her voice vibrant with excitement, "we're safe at last." From beneath the bonnet, as though in answer to her statement, came a sickly, sucking sputter. The momentum of the car diminished. The throbbing of the engine ceased. They sat in silence as the machine coasted toward the highway and came to a dead stop, with its front wheels upon the road to safety. The girl turned toward Barney with an ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "Oh, I can get along, in a little way." She looked intently out of the window at the arc streetlamp that was just beginning to sputter. "But it's silly to live at all for little things," she added quietly. "Living's too much trouble unless one can get ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Sally Gardner was suddenly turned against Patricia Langdon, with tenfold force and vehemence. It is an axiom that blue-eyed women have more violent tempers than black-eyed ones, once they are thoroughly aroused. Your brunette will flash and sputter, and say hasty things impulsively, or emotionally, but her anger is likely to pass as quickly as it arises, and it is almost sure to leave no lasting sting, behind it. Your fair-haired, fair-skinned, man or woman, when thoroughly aroused, is inclined to be implacable, unrelenting, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... strongly than ever an impression of wildness. Even the camp-fire seemed to burn wildly; it did not glow and sputter and pale and brighten and sing like an honest camp-fire. It blazed in red, fierce, hurried flames, wild to consume the logs. It cast a baleful and sinister color upon the hard faces there. Then the blackness of the enveloping night was ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... love to see things that bear a good gloss; yea, we choose to buy such kind of matter to work upon, as will, if wrought up to what we intend, cast that lustre that we desire. Candles that burn not bright, we like not; wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat; wherefore great folks care not much, not so much, for such kind of things, as for them that will better ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sleep under the shelter of the stockade. The soldier rushed upstairs to say a few words of comfort to the trembling Adele, and then throwing himself down upon a couch he slept the dreamless sleep of an exhausted man. When at last he was roused by a fresh sputter of musketry fire from the woods the sun was already low in the heavens, and the mellow light of evening tinged the bare walls of the room. He sprang from his couch, seized his musket, and rushed downstairs. The defenders were gathered at their loop-holes once more, while Du Lhut, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Sand!" and we to wave our hands, when she was astern and out of sight in a haze of spray. Presently a collier named the Fanny, with her foretopgallant-yard gone, passed us. She was cracking on to bring the news of the wreck to Ramsgate, and was making a heavy sputter under her topsails and foresail. They raised a cheer, for they knew our errand, and then, like the smack, in a minute she was astern and gone. By this time the cold and the wet and the fearful plunging were beginning to tell, and one of the men called for a nip of rum. The quantity ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... Before the sputter of the match had died out, Viner had recognized the man who lay dead at his feet. He was a man about whom he had recently felt some curiosity, a man who, a few weeks before, had come to live in a house close to his own, in company with an elderly lady and a pretty ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... around in the steady breeze, the privateersman rolled ominously towards the lolling Delft. A crash, a sputter of pistols, a crushing of timber, and grappling hooks had pinioned the two war-dogs in a sinister embrace. And—with a wild yell—the Frenchmen plunged upon the reddened decking of the flagship of the courageous Van Wassenaer, who cried, "Never give in, Lads! What will they think ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... side. Here and there in the extreme distance, mounted figures moved over the vast expanse—Boer scouts who marked in amazement the advance of this great array. Once or twice these men gathered together, and a sputter of rifle fire broke out upon our left flank, but the great tide swept on and carried them with it. Often in this desolate land the herds of mottled springbok and of grey rekbok could be seen sweeping over the plain, or stopping with that curiosity upon which the hunter trades, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... kine—I wished Jordan and Marsh could hear that, or Stewart's in New York, or Wanamaker's in Philadelphia. I never thought of Brother Gerrish once; and I don't presume one out of a hundred did either. I—" The electric light immediately over Gates's head began to hiss and sputter, and to suffer the sort of syncope which overtakes electric lights at such times, and to leave the house in darkness. Gates waited, standing, till it revived, and then added: "I guess I hain't got anything more to say, Mr. Moderator. If ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was not his forte, and his nervousness made him sputter. His speech was vibrant, trenchant, like hammerstrokes, and he said things to which there was no answer. He had a horror of discussion: he was ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of the cologne with a furious sputter, and springing to his feet: 'Why, you've given me the cologne to DRINK, Agnes! What are you about? Do you want to poison me? Isn't it enough to be robbed at six o'clock on the Common, without having your head soaked in brandy, and your whole ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... not stirred nor emitted a whisper of sound, though they knew the man inside was conning the controls in a fever of haste to leave the cavern. But they hadn't long to wait. There came a sputter, a starting cough from the rocket tubes beneath the sphere. Quickly they warmed into life, and the dully glimmering ball rocked in the hole it lay in. Then a cataract of noise unleashed itself; a devastating thunder roared through the echoing cavern as ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... bodies, or in one body, wherein the Tiers Etat shall have double representation? The notables are again summoned to decide, but vanish without decision. With those questions still unsettled, the election begins. And presently the national deputies are in Paris. Also there is a sputter; drudgery and rascality rising in Saint-Antoine, finally repressed by Gardes Suisses ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... A sputter sounded in the radio receiver. Carse turned away from the electelscope and listened to the heavy Venusian voice that was suddenly speaking to ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... it meant much innocent merriment among her guests, and with the lighting of the last lantern, her own day was done. So the brilliant eyes flashed with a fresh fire, and the olive cheek glowed anew. All the men and women laughed as children sputter laughter, when they are both pleased and yet a little ashamed to show their pleasure. It was so very ridiculous, this journey up a rock with a Chinese lantern! But just because it was ridiculous, it was also delightful. One—two—three—seven—eight—they ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... felt that I was a chicken in his grasp. "Rendez-vous, coqin; rendez-vous!" said he, and then suddenly doubled up with a scream, for someone had stabbed him in the bowels with a bayonet. There was very little firing after the first sputter; but there was the crash of butt against barrel, the short cries of stricken men, and the roaring of the officers. And then, suddenly, they began to give ground—slowly, sullenly, step by step, but still to give ground. Ah! it ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lady tells us this story in the late autumn evenings. Now the harvest is in, huge haycocks shelter the gable, the honey is strained and put by in jars, the apples are ripened and stored; the logs begin to sputter and sing in the big parlour at evening, hot cakes to steam on the tea-table, and the pleasant lamp-lit hours to spread themselves. Indoor things begin to have meaning looks of their own, our limbs grow quiet, and our brains begin to work. The moors ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... rate, let us go to Wittenberg," said I; "get a guide, a carriage, cannot you?" as I walked to one window of the station house and another, and looked out to see something wonderful. Nothing was in sight, however; and after the usual sputter of gutturals which precedes any arrangement in this country, we were mounted in a high, awkward carriage, and rode to the town. Two ancient round tower and a wall first met my eye; then a drawbridge, arched passage, and portcullis. Under this passage we passed, and at ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tempest, to despair. The flame also with smoke attended is, And in our holy lives there's much amiss. Sometimes a thief will candle-light annoy, And lusts do seek our graces to destroy. What brackish is will make a candle sputter; 'Twixt sin and grace there's oft' a heavy clutter. Sometimes the light burns dim, 'cause of the snuff, Sometimes it is blown quite out with a puff; But watchfulness preventeth both these evils, Keeps candles light, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hay, with corn-barns proportionable, lie smoking ashes and chaff, which man and beast would sputter out and reject like those apples of asphaltes and bitumen. The food for the inhabitants of earth will quickly disappear. Hot rolls may say, "Fuimus panes, fuit quartem-loaf, et ingens gloria Apple-pasty-orum." That the good old munching system ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... soaked in chemicals and sold together with little bottles of sulphuric acid. The splinter was expected to blaze when dipped into the acid. Sometimes it did blaze, and sometimes it did not; but it was reasonably certain how the acid would behave, for it would always sputter and do its best to spoil some one's clothes. Nevertheless, even such matches as these were regarded as a wonderful convenience, and were sold at five dollars a hundred. With the next kind of match that appeared, a piece of folded ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... as she accommodatingly handed over a small glass bowl from which Bess helped herself to a generous double spoonful. One swallow of her cocoa, and she began to sputter and gasp, and finally made a frantic grab ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... take it. They began at the bow of the barge and walked to the stern, making one after another of the excursionists deliver his valuables, and then slipped quietly over the stern of the barge; the pirate craft began to spit and sputter furiously; and the next moment it was tearing through the water like ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... opened a hole in the wire-work Across it, and dropped there a firework, And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled; A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, The blackness and silence so utter, By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter; Then earth in a sudden contortion Gave out to our gaze her abortion. Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot (Whose experience of nature's but narrow, And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... now with eyes that shone with a deep understanding. Under the sputter of the lamp above their heads the two men clasped hands, and the Little Missioner's grip was like the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... an ominous sputter, the port engine conked out. The plane lurched and slipped into a dive. Down it whirled again into the steady light of the ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... first aggressive tides of passion. What it was based on, what it arose from, he could not say. But in the flood-tide of his own tumultuous conquest he had watched her abandoned weeping and her tumbled brown hair. And as he watched, a vague and troubling tingle sped like a fuse-sputter along his limbs, and fired something dormant and dangerous in the great hulk of a body which had never before been stirred by its explosion of emotion. It was not pity, he knew; for pity was something quite foreign to his nature. Yet as she lay back, limp and ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... to sputter Hilary drew back, closed the door of the lantern, and walked backwards aft, towards where the men were gathered. The desire was strong upon him to run and rush right into the far corner of the cabin; ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... the chase, this only spurred them on. They gathered a bundle of wood, piled it up at the foot of the pine, and set fire to it. In a twinkling the tree began to sputter and burn like a candle blown by the wind. Pinocchio saw the flames climb higher and higher. Not wishing to end his days as a roasted Marionette, he jumped quickly to the ground and off he went, the Assassins close to ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... Secretary was near apoplexy. He could only sputter and cough. He was to be sent as an errand boy to the people of Charles Town, at the brutal behest of this unspeakable knave, but refusal meant death and there were his fellow captives to consider. He thought of his nephew and was about to plead that Jack be ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... King. "Where can we go? Be quick, Hobbs! Think! Don't sputter like that. I want to be personally conducted, and damned ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... plop of liquid in a pitcher. So if I spill my milk, I have not the excuse of ignorance. I am also familiar with the pop of a cork, the sputter of a flame, the tick-tack of the clock, the metallic swing of the windmill, the laboured rise and fall of the pump, the voluminous spurt of the hose, the deceptive tap of the breeze at door and window, and many ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... soft, let us take another word, such as feather. Here, again, we find that Mr. Wedgwood connects it with such words as Bav. fledern, Du. vlederen, to flap, flutter, the loss of the l being explained by such words as to splutter and to sputter. We have first to note the disregard of historical facts, for feather is O.H.G. fedara, Sk. pat-tra, Gr. pteron for peteron, all derived from a root pat, to fly, from which we have also penna, old pesna, pet-omai, peto, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... her face, then she dropped her lids haughtily, swept me from head to foot with one contemptuous glance, and without even the faintest nod in return to my "Bon jour, Madame," she turned to Mrs. P——, who, red with indignation, was trying to sputter out a demand for an ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... on, and Clay is as cunnin' as a coon too, if he don't get the word g'lang (go along) and the Indgian skelpin' yell with it, he knows I ain't in airnest, and he'll allow me to beat him and bully him like nothin'. He'll pretend to do his best, and sputter away like a hen scratchin' gravel, but he won't go one mossel faster, for he knows I ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... center of the room. Was it by accident or design that as he reached the table he threw his broad-brimmed hat, down with such an unnecessary flourish of the arm that he knocked over one of the heavy pewter candlesticks, so that it rolled down upon the floor, causing the tallow candle to sputter and die out with ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... their own medicine. The difference is that I am honest. I just say in plain English, 'if they don't treat you right, come to me.' They have only said it in actions and inferences. I want to teach Mag Sinton how her own doses taste, but she begins to sputter before I fairly get the spoon to ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... should Sir Thomas, Sir, behave? Why bounce, and sputter, surely, like a squib:— You would have done the same, Sir, if a knave, A frouzy Friar, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... words—spells and such-like—he'd sit on the Hill in the long shadows, worrying out bits of charms to try on passersby. And when the bird flew to him, or the tree bowed to him for pure love's sake (like everything else on my Hill), he'd shout, "Robin! Look—see! Look, see, Robin!" and sputter out some spell or other that they had taught him, all wrong end first, till I hadn't the heart to tell him it was his own dear self and not the words that worked the wonder. When he got more abreast of his words, and could cast spells for sure, as we say, he took more and ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... toward him. Instantly he had a scheme. In a subdued growl, yet distinctly, he threw over his shoulder an order that eight men should go to the right and eight to the left. Then, on his feet, he sent into the darkness a stern "Halt!" Instantly there was a sputter, arms thrown up, the inevitable "Kamerad!" and Hirondelle ordered the first German to pass him, then a second. Out of the darkness emerged a third. Hirondelle waved him on, and with that there was a fourth. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... General was only a man, after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that—a being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... our agreeable conversation was interrupted by the old Earl who began to bay at his son. "Arthur, Arthur, fling the rascal out; fling the rascal out! He is an impostor, a thief!" He began to fume and sputter, and threw his arms wildly; he was in some kind of convulsion; his pillows tossed, and suddenly a packet fell from under them to the floor. As all eyes wheeled toward it, I stooped swiftly and ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... peeled off my close and got ready, now said he, you jest wade in up to your waste and squat down and duck your head under. i said the water will get in my nose. he said no it wont jest squat rite down. i cood see him laffin when he thought i wood snort and sputter. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... crackling stopped and the spark went out with a sputter. The man stopped writing and wheeled about in his seat. He saw them looking in at ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... anything about this to Sallie?" he asked weakly as he dipped the end of his cigar into his glass of water and watched the sputter ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... public to my knowledge, nor within the memory of any man alive today. He was always vivacious, pugnacious, hardly sagacious. He would sputter with rage if you suggested that he was aged enough to be called "venerable." How old was he—for he died suddenly last September at his home somewhere in southeastern Europe? I don't know. His grandson, a man already well advanced ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... arn't been found out before. My hye! I never did see old Jarks in such a wax before. Makes him sputter finely what he does blaze up. I don't b'lieve as he knows then whether ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... heard, save the weird howling of the wind outside, with an occasional sputter as a stray gust of snow swept down the broad chimney to the roaring fire. Every Grammar School boy, as he dropped off to sleep, knew that a big ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... with different colored flags for our guidance; and when any of them called to him and pointed to the deepest water, he answered: 'Ay, ay, my dear, chalk it down, a damned dangerous navigation, eh! If you don't make a sputter about it you'll get no credit in England.' After we had cleared this remarkable place, where the channel forms a complete zigzag, the master called to his mate to give the helm to somebody else, saying, 'Damn me if there are not a thousand places in the Thames fifty times more hazardous than ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Turn 'im hout!' sings yours truly, a-thinkin' the fun was at 'and, But, bless yer! 'twas only a sputter. I can't say the meeting looked grand. Five thousand they reckoned us, Charlie, but if so I guess the odd three Were a-spooning about in the halley's, or ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... have let go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting to my thick head for easy lighting. Then I heard a little fizz and sputter from below. At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the breeze blow under my hat. For about six seconds I stood there like an imbecile, grinning amiably. Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... moved about the room on velvet paws like a cat. There Miss Crawley lay for days—ever so many days—Mr. Bute reading books of devotion to her: for nights, long nights, during which she had to hear the watchman sing, the night-light sputter; visited at midnight, the last thing, by the stealthy apothecary; and then left to look at Mrs. Bute's twinkling eyes, or the flicks of yellow that the rushlight threw on the dreary darkened ceiling. Hygeia herself would have fallen sick under such ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to make suddenly visible the tall pillars of the immense mournful palace, and after a long time, absolutely without a sound, save the sputter of enormous torches, an incredibly ghostly body of figures, black-robed from head to foot, with large eyeholes peering fantastically, swayed into the great arch of the hall. Above them was the enormous black coffin. It was a sight so appalling and unexpected ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... no hesitation about describing the impious behavior of little Ginx. Whatever swaddled infant could do in the way of opposition, with hands, and legs, and voice, was done by that embryo saint. The incense made him cough and sputter; the lights and singing raised the very devil within him. His cries drowned the prayers. He frightened his conductress by the redness of his face. He ruined the red cross with ejected matter. You would have ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Vesuvius was only a little sputter to what followed. For a moment we had hopes that old Scroggs would explode. I think if he had had us there alone he would have tried to hang us. But every tyrant has his master, so before long we began to see the halter on old Scroggs. And his daughter held the leading rope. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... perspicacity to see that something was weighing on the good man's mind; something he had come to say and for his honest life could not get out. His plight became more pitiable as the interview proceeded, and when he rose to go, he grew as red as a turkey-cock and began to sputter. I went to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... still trying to make himself heard, never noticing three men, who were rolling in behind him a barrel, which they had taken from a nearby store. "I demand that the law be respected, and that I be permitted to—to...." He stopped to sneeze and sputter, for having knocked in the top of the barrel, which contained flour, the three men had emptied its ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... may be shown by melting the butter; the water and fat will separate in two distinct layers. Oleomargarine has a distinctive meaty smell, like that of cooked meat, and lacks the characteristic odor of pure butter. If pure butter is melted in a spoon, it will not sputter; if oleomargarine ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... eggs. (Tho' the missus may sputter, You'll pay to her protest no heed.) A size-of-an-egg piece of butter, And milk as you happen to need. Now mix the whole mess with a beater; Don't get it too thick or too thin. (And I pause to remark that this ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... sinful experiment with the handkerchief I discovered by accident that I was not the only doubter in Polotzk. One Friday night I lay wakeful in my little bed, staring from the dark into the lighted room adjoining mine. I saw the Sabbath candles sputter and go out, one by one,—it was late,—but the lamp hanging from the ceiling still burned high. Everybody had gone to bed. The lamp would go out before morning if there was little oil; or else it would burn till Natasha, the Gentile chorewoman, came in the morning to put it out, and remove the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... pleased and seemed to like it very well: but what was the most surprising to him was to see me eat salt with it: upon which he made me understand, that the salt was very bad for me; when putting a little into his mouth, he seemed to nauseate it in such a manner as to spit and sputter at it, and then washed his mouth with fresh water: but to shew him how contrary his opinion was to mine, I put some meat into my mouth without salt and feigned to spit and sputter as much for the want of it, as he had ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... snake flew upwards with a sputter and a sizzle. Stas seized a bamboo pole with both hands in order not to fall and fixed his eyes on the distance. His pulse and his temples beat like sledge hammers; his lips moved in fervent prayer. His last breath, and in it his whole soul, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Berlin propos de salon for a scientifically accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was creditable to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to say, were it dull, were it not dull,—for his own satisfaction first of all! If you in a line or two could express at the right point something of that sort, it were well; yet ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... imply a kind of dissipation or expansion, especially a quick one, particularly if there be an r, as if it were from spargo or separo: for example, spread, spring, sprig, sprout, sprinkle, split, splinter, spill, spit, sputter, spatter. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... in wholemeal flour and milk, add a little pepper and salt, thin with hot water, and thus produce a sauce that helps down vegetables and potatoes. In making a brown sauce we put a little butter or olive oil in the frying-pan; let it bubble and sputter, dredge in Allinson wholemeal flour, stir it round with a knife until browned, add boiling water, pepper, salt, a little ketchup, and you then have a nice brown sauce for many dishes. If we wish to make it very tasty we fry a finely chopped onion first and add that to it. White sweet sauce ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... eyes narrowed and glinted; the coarse face reddened. Brodie's throat corded, the Adam's apple moved repeatedly up and down as he swallowed inarticulately. This old Honeycutt saw. He jerked about and quick lights sprang up in his despairing eyes. He began to sputter but Brodie's loud voice had come back to him and drowned out the old man's shrillings. Brodie ripped out ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... was very dark. There was service in the church, and the building glimmered through all its crevices like a dim Kirk Allowa'. I saw few other lights, but was indistinctly aware of many people stirring in the darkness, and a hum and sputter of low talk that sounded stealthy. I believe (in the old phrase) my beard was sometimes on my shoulder as I went. Muller's was but partly lighted, and quite silent, and the gate was fastened. I could by no means manage to undo the latch. No wonder, since I found it afterwards to be four or five ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Willie Winkie. Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more—Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box and a silver-handled "sputter-brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... astonished. She had sacrificed her own plans and come to bed for Ethelinda's sake, and now here was the electric light blazing full in her eyes, utterly regardless of her comfort. She was about to sputter an indignant protest when she looked up at the picture. It seemed to smile back at her as if it were a real person with whom she might exchange amused glances. "Did you ever see such colossal unconcern?" she whispered, as if the ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in putting this to the proof. That same evening I lay in wait after dusk at the study window, protecting my mother's repose. As soon as I heard the long-drawn wail, the preliminary sputter, and the wild stampede that followed, I let fly in the direction of the sound. I suppose I must have something of the national sporting instinct in me, for my blood was tingling with excitement; but the feline constitution assimilates lead without ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... years a clerk in Syvert Thorolfsson's warehouse. While not tall he was neither stunted nor crippled, and easily kept pace with Thorolf. As he set out the silver-bound horn cups to drink skal[1] with his friend in his own lodging, the croak and sputter of German talk sounded in ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... father and son were especially anxious that not a moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory summons into the air. Harris looked up from the ploughs, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... to his feet with a certain air of determination, which flamed up oddly above his general weakness, like the last sputter of a candle burned down. "I'm going over and take my medicine—face the music," he said almost sullenly, "She's too good for me—I always knew it. And I haven't treated her right—I've left her out there alone too much. But she wouldn't come to town with me—she said she ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... pot is steamin' An' de bacon good an' fat, When de chittlin's is a-sputter'n' So's to show yo' whah dey's at; Take away you sody biscuit, Take away yo' cake an' pie. Fu' de glory time is comin', An' it's proachin' very nigh, An' you' want to jump an' hollah, Do you know you'd bettah not, When you mammy ses de blessin' An' ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... tortoise-shell, gray, maltese, yellow, every color, size, shape of cat that was ever seen. And they were plunging and leaping and racing about so, that it looked like twice as many cats as there really were, and as if every cat had a dozen tails. "Sfz! Sfz! Sputter! Scratch, spp, spt! Growl, growl, miaow, miaow," they went, till, between the noise and the flying around, ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... my regiment had reached the plateau night had put an end to the struggle. A sputter of rifles would break out now and then, followed perhaps by a spiritless hurrah. Occasionally a shell from a far-away battery would come pitching down somewhere near, with a whir crescendo, or flit above our heads with a whisper like that made by the wings of a night ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... remark, when you see an English cutter officered by one of those volunteers, that the boy does not so strut and slap his dirk-hilt with a Bobadil air, and anticipatingly feel of the place where his warlike whiskers are going to be, and sputter out oaths so at the men, as is too often the case with the little boys wearing best-bower anchors on their lapels in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... in order that Andy might prepare supper. When this was almost ready peal after peal of thunder suddenly crashed among the cliffs, which seemed to collapse and fall down upon us, and a flood from the sky descended. The fire died without a sputter, everything not in rubber was soaked, and all we could do was to stand in the darkness, cold and hungry, and wait for the deluge to cease. At last we were able to start the fire once more, and had a half-cooked ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... there were two female neighbors at their windows, holding candles, which the fog caused to sputter. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... disposition, the material had run out, for the moment, nothing being left but a few remnants of other people's characters; so a living handful of these was taken up, roughly welded together, and then the mixture was sent whirling into space, to boil and sputter itself out ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... ceased to sputter. One person after another was examined by the health commissioner. Was it merely my imagination, or did I really hear a heart beating with wild leaps as if it would burst the bonds of its prison and make its escape if possible? ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... unripe parts, and put them on one side. Take a frying-pan and put into it one scant tablespoon of butter and the chopped ham fat. When the grease is colored put in the sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper. When the tomatoes are cooked and begin to sputter put the macaroni into the pan with them, mix well, add grated Parmesan cheese, ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... she met in society. She knew, however, how to make a fire; so that after she had laid the logs, Eugenia, who was terribly bored, found a quarter of an hour's entertainment in sitting and watching them blaze and sputter. She had thought it very likely Robert Acton would come and see her; she had not met him since that infelicitous evening. But the morning waned without his coming; several times she thought she heard his step on the piazza; but it was only a window-shutter shaking in a ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Rhine, if I recollect, "Islet of Larch near Bingen," where the French had a post; which and whom the Old Dessauer burnt away. And then Seckendorf, at the head of thirty thousand, he, after long delays, marched to Trarbach in the interior Moselle Country; and got into some explosive sputter of battle with Belleisle, one afternoon,—some say, rather beating Belleisle; but a good judge says, it was a mutual flurry and terror they threw one another into. [OEuvres de Frederic, i. 168.] Seckendorf meant to try again on the morrow: but there came an estafette that night: "Preliminaries ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... up the sticks on the stones, and how they did blaze and crackle away when Aunt Emma put a match to them. Puff! puff! out came the smoke; fizz—crack—sputter—went the dry fir branches, as if they were ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... went on smartly. The various societies and interests conferred amicably, and the whole centennial day was blocked out, from the hundred guns at early dawn to the last sputter of the fireworks at midnight. And everything and every one called for money; money for prizes, for souvenirs for entertainment of visitors, for bands, for carriages—a multitude of items, all to be settled for when the great event was over. If Cap'n ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... troopers had been dropped behind among the rocks and ledges of a donga; so that when twelve of them attempted to make their way up this natural zigzag approach in order to fire upon the retiring picket they were themselves received at 400 yards by a well-directed sputter of musketry, and were glad to make off with five riderless horses, two men upon one horse, and leaving three lying quite still on the ground. Thereafter the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... inducing the inhabitants to suppose that the world has reached its conclusion. The billets are usually piled up on end, so that the flames rise and twine round them with a fierce intensity that causes them to crack and sputter cheerfully, sending innumerable sparks of fire into the room, and throwing out a rich glow of brilliant light that warms a man even to look at it, and ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... "You must ride on one. Torrance has a rather grubby specimen. They're the wildest form of slimpsy-skimpsy flight you ever saw. About forty miles an hour, with just a board and a tremendous sputter between you and the flying rails. It makes your hair curl, yet you look ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... sincerely grateful. We broke into the boxes, and arrayed ourselves in various garments—which speedily fell to pieces—and appropriated gim-cracks of all sorts. There were some arms, but the ammunition had gone bad. Perdosa, out of forty or fifty mis-fires, got one feeble sputter, and a tremendous bang which blew up his piece, leaving only the stock in his hand. A few tinned goods were edible; but all the rest was destroyed. A lot of hard woods, a thousand feet of chain cable, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said Selinda, make a mighty sputter about exactness of plot, unity of time, place and I know not what, which I can never find do any play the least good (Peregrine smiled at her female ignorance). But, she continued, I have one thing to offer in this dispute, which ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... and delighted that he forgot that he was in the water and started to speak. Of course, the water poured into his open mouth and he began to sputter ...
— Hazel Squirrel and Other Stories • Howard B. Famous
... steamin' An' de bacon good an' fat, When de chittlins is a-sputter'n' So's to show you whah dey's at; Tek away yo' sody biscuit, Tek away yo' cake an' pie, Fu' de glory time is comin', An' it's 'proachin' mighty nigh, An' you want to jump an' hollah, Dough you ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... universally believed, That this Dr. Cameron was properly an "Emissary of the King of Prussia's;" that Cameron's errand here was to rally the Jacobite embers into new flame;—and that, at the first clear sputter, Friedrich had 15,000 men, of his best Prussian-Spartan troops, ready to ferry over, and help Jacobitism to do the matter this time! [Walpole,—George the Second,—i. 333, 353; and—Letters to Horace Mann—(Summer, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Monday, 9th, day when that sputter at Ottmachau began,—Prussian light-troops appeared transiently on the heights about Neisse, for the first time. Directly on sight of whom, Commandant Roth assembled the Burghers of the place; took a new Oath of Fidelity from one and all; admonished them to do their utmost, as they ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of its pungent odor, grows freely on the desert, but has little or no value and cattle will not touch it. Like many other desert plants it is resinous and if thrown into the fire, the green leaves spit and sputter while they burn like hot grease ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... without mama, anyhow," declared Kittie, departing for the kitchen, with her hands full of dishes, and scowling defiantly at the stove, where the fire was sizzling with a lazy sputter, while the dish-water taking advantage of the lull in heat, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... are little sapless twigs, chatterboxes, who twitter like the swallows, destroyers of the art, whose aptitude is withered with a single piece and who sputter forth all their talent to the tragic Muse at their first attempt. But look where you will, you will not find a creative poet who gives vent to a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... case," said Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do I say?—why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed a spaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. As he dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, the slow sputter of small-arms-fire, punctuated by the occasional whump-whump-whump of 40-mm. auto-cannon or ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... cat's paw of revivals of old melodramas. Again we catch a very faint northerly breeze from Ibsen, or a southeaster from Maeterlinck and Hauptmann. Sometimes we set our sails to woo that ever-clearing breeze of Shakespeare, only to be forced out of our course by a sputter of rain, an Irish mist, and half a squall from George Bernard Shaw; but the greater part of the time the ship of the stage is careering wildly under bare poles, with a man lashed to the helm (and let us hope that, like Ulysses, he has cotton wool in his ears), ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... who seemed very glad of it, and liked it very well; but that which was strangest to him was to see me eat salt with it. He made a sign to me that the salt was not good to eat; and putting a little into his own mouth, he seemed to nauseate it, and would spit and sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it: on the other hand, I took some meat into my mouth without salt, and I pretended to spit and sputter for want of salt, as much as he had done at the salt; but it would ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to fly about the kitchen like sputter-ings out of the frying-pan—filling the kettle, lighting the lamp, and getting together the baby's night-clothes. Kate watched her and glanced at ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... save us?" she gasped. "I fear 'tis for naught ye ventured yer life, bravest of men. I fear we'll soon both sputter on the coals." ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... a-play— 'Taint oder colong, though, by hodds; sulphur strong seems the local bokay. They call this the "Needle Bath," CHARLIE. It give me the needle fust off; 'Cos the spray would git into my eyes, and the squelch made me sputter and cough. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... out Frohman and hid behind a lifeboat to await the result. Soon he heard a sputter and a shriek of rage, and the two men came racing down the boat as if pursued by some terror. Up came Frohman, his face ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... he said to the head cook, "you take this long fork. And as soon as a weenie begins to sputter and brown, turn it over so it browns on the other ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... that the strangers were dangerous. Russian spies, he said. Do you think they are, Tru? It's perfectly thrilling. And to think, one actually held you in his arms! Who knows——" she began mischievously. There was a gurgling sputter of sounds, as if a hand had been placed over the teasing mouth. Then it was withdrawn and the offender was permitted to ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... electric current, and the apparatus began to sputter. The pungent odor of ozone from the electric discharge filled the room. Through the lead-glass bowl I could see the X-ray tube inside suffused with its Peculiar, yellowish-green light, divided into two hemispheres of different shades. That, I knew, was the cathode ray, not the X-ray, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the ripping of the tires, for the rubber is to a motorist as a baby to a loving mother. But in a moment came the sputter and roar of the motors, and the men had gone again back the road they ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... off—why, what's that? Yes, by Jove, there's a sputter Of rain on the pavement!—the sunshine retires; And I wish, oh, I wish that my tongue dared to utter The thoughts that this changeable weather inspires. Back, back to my rooms; I am drenched and disgusted; In thick boots and an ulster I'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... resolved, and therein set forth, that Aldermen Pennyworth, of the Sixth Ward, and Brandybottom, of the Second, together with Councilmen Bluster and Sputter, (the last named gentleman being clever at a speech,) be a committee of reception, invested with power to draw up and present a suitable address on behalf of the citizens of "this great metropolis." It was also resolved, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the permit was not forthcoming, "I thought as much. I appoint you witness, Monsieur le Cure, the fellow has no permit." And we swelled the merriment with a forced sputter ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more—Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box, and a silver-handled 'sputter-brush,' as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... Hence sometimes we resent a little the taking in vain of the name of some old friend. It is rather too hard upon Sam Johnson to be made a mere 'passive bucket' into which Horne Tooke may pump his philological notions, with scarcely a feeble sputter or two to represent his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Quinton and Barney Mordkovitz virtually ordered him to get some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, downed a spaceship-captain's-size drink of honey-rum, and slept until 1600. As he dressed and shaved, he could hear, through the open window, the slow sputter of small-arms' fire, punctuated by the occasional whump-whump-whump of 40-mm auto-cannon or the hammering ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... I'm made for," said the plate, shutting up again with a sputter of pride. "Oh, no, you ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... wild to have a man sputter at me. I'm an electrical and civil engineer, I tell you, and my two years of travel have been spent studying the installation and construction of big plants abroad." He commenced to chuckle softly. "I've known for years that our sawmill was a debilitated old coffee-grinder and would ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... to sputter and growl. A black-eyed boy is as spunky as a red-headed one. And we all stood up, ready, if there was to be a fight. But there wasn't. It wasn't necessary. General Ashley flushed considerably, but he kept ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... caustic comments failed to ruffle his temper. Having heard them ever since babyhood he was quite accustomed to their acid tang; moreover, he had learned to gage them for what they were worth and class them along with the froth on a soda or the sputter of a freshly lighted match. The thing underneath was what mattered and he knew well that beneath the torrent of words his mother was the best mother on earth, so what more ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... redding up the cabin, stowing the beds, washing out the lower deck, folding away the awning, and transforming the cockpit into a breakfast-room, with table neatly set forth. Meanwhile Euergetes has returned, and from the forecastle comes the sputter of red mullet cooking. Cynthia clatters the cups and saucers, while in the well by the cabin door I perform some acquired tricks with the new-laid eggs. There is plenty to be done on board a small boat, but it is all simple enough. Only, you must not let it overtake you. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... manage it, and by Thursday night the party was actually assembled at 'The Breakers.' There was a sou'easter on that night, but the drift-wood burned stoutly in the wide chimney-piece, with now and then a cheerful sputter as a few stray drops sought to immolate themselves in ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which were obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Vices, Virtues, Passions, Propensities, Attributes, and Qualities, and gave them each a dignified capital letter to wear. She said he used to come roaring to her with the passages in which these personifications flourished, and read them off with mock admiration, and then shriek and sputter with laughter. You know the way he had when a thing pleased him, especially a thing that had some relish of the quaint or rococo. As nearly as she would admit, in view of his loss, he bored her with these things. He was always ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... be, my Friend, to have some new utterances from you either in verse or in prose! What you say about the vast imperfection of all modes of utterance is most true indeed. Let a man speak and sing, and do, and sputter and gesticulate as he may,—the meaning of him is most ineffectually shown forth, poor fellow; rather indicated as if by straggling symbols, than spoken or visually expressed! Poor fellow! So ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... within reach of the life-belt. But here the demented man managed to wreathe his legs and arms in another and more terrible hold. The pair of them were now cursing horribly, cursing whenever a wave left choking them, and allowed them to cough and sputter for breath. They fought as two men whose lives had pent up an unmitigable hate for this moment. They fought, neither losing his hold, as their strength ebbed, and the weight of their clothes dragged them lower. ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... crash of the breaking night-gusts, and it might mean the north wind, storm, and snow. It whooped down the hollow, scattering the few scrub-oak leaves; it whirled the red embers of the fire away into the dark to sputter in the snow, and blew the burning logs into a white glow. Mescal slept in the shelter of the spruce boughs with Wolf snug and warm beside her. Hare stretched his tired limbs in the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey |
