"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place. When I had taken off my Shuba and goloshes I was ushered into a magnificent room with a high gold clock on the mantlepiece, gilt chairs, heavy dark carpets and large portraits frowning from the grey walls. The whole room was bitterly silent, save for the tick of the clock. There was no fire in the fireplace, but a large gleaming white stove flung out a close scented heat from the further corner of the room. There were two long glass bookcases, some little tables with gilt legs, and a fine Japanese screen of dull gold. The only ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... agony. He goes back to his home feeling a changed man in a changed world. The very ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece of his sitting-room speaks to him with a portentous, voice, like the thunder-strokes of fate. Death is coming closer to him at every tick. His little home, his household goods, the daily routine of his toil for the worldly rewards of life, his paltry jealousies of next-door neighbours are dwarfed to insignificance. They no longer matter, for the judgment of God is at hand. The smugness of his self-complacency, his life-long ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... made up his mind to instant action, the vicar's brief discourse began to drag itself into supernatural length. Facing the preacher, and immediately beneath Reuben's feet, was a clock of old-fashioned and clumsy structure, and the measured tick, tick of its machinery communicated a faintly perceptible jar to a square foot or so of the gallery flooring. The mechanical rhythm got into Reuben's brain and nerves until every second seemed to hang fire for a phenomenal time, and the twenty minutes' discourse dragged into an age. Even ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... sudden accession of sharp stabbing pain. It seemed to tick through her body as might a clock, and each stab came as with the sway of the pendulum, and with a regularity that was exquisite torture. The stabs of pain came quicker, the pendulum was working faster. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... I see it," pursued Farr. He did not look at Citizen Drew. He was talking as much to himself as to his companion. "Spirit of a crusader harnessed by every-day habit! Righteousness in a rut! Achievement timed to the tick of the clock. But, once in, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... with brave smiles, hand in hand. And now their chatter became fast and furious, to drown the clock's impatient tick. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... scattered, as if she had been disordering it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em'ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... good-sized room with three large beds, one of which the Chancellor assigned to the Duke of Mecklenburg and aide, and another to Count Bismarck-Bohlen and me, reserving the remaining one for himself. Each bed, as is common in Germany and northern France, was provided with a feather tick, but the night being warm, these spreads were thrown off, and discovering that they would make a comfortable shakedown on the floor, I slept there leaving Bismarck-Bohlen unembarrassed by companionship—at ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... lusts of the primitive cultures and beast-man's gropings toward the stature of manhood, out of all red murders, and brute battlings, and matings with the younger brothers of the demigods, world-polished, Oxford-accented, twentieth century to the tick of the second, comes Prince Akuli, Prince Squid, pure- veined Polynesian, a living bridge across the thousand centuries, comrade, friend, and fellow-traveller out of his wrecked seven- thousand-dollar limousine, marooned with me in a begonia paradise fourteen hundred feet above the sea, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... them," said Dunkerley, ticking his way down the page. "Which (tick, tick) was damned hard ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... Mahound's coffin hung between heaven and earth—always in suspense, like the scales, till the weight of Germany or the gold of England brings one of them down to the dust—always in suspense, like the tail of the horologe—to and fro—tick-tack—we make the time, we keep the time, ay, and we serve the time; for I have heard say that if you boxed the Pope's ears with a purse, you might stagger him, but he would pocket the purse. No ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the intestine of the ossifrage, if worn as an amulet, is well known to be an excellent remedy for colic. A tick from a dog's left ear, worn as an amulet, was recommended to allay this and all other kinds of pain, but one must be careful to take it from a dog that is black. Alexander of Tralles recommended the heart of a lark to be fastened to the left thigh as a remedy for colic. Mr. Cockayne, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Clubs; and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely advice upon such living subjects as the spraying of fruit trees, and how to save them from blight and scale-insects, and how to get rid of flies, and cut-worms, and to fight the cattle-tick, which is our curse; and the preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm satisfied with it. It's a good enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wuz dooly elected, I shood hev the position uv Dorekeeper to the House uv the Lord (wich in this State means the Capital, & wich is certainly better than dwellin in the tents uv wicked grosery keepers, on tick, ez I do), and a joodishus exhibition uv this promise hed prokoored for me unlimited facilities for borrerin, wich I ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... toon me nick ah keeng e mah me quom ah kik e kewh me zeh ah mik e newh me squeh ahn doohm e qua me tigk ah nungk I yahdt nah maih ah owh kah yawsk ne gigk ah pa ke tahn ne peh ah pweh ke quis ne peeng ah sin ke nwazhe ne sing ah tick mah quah ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... would pass, shaking the ground with its tread; but so implicit was the travellers' trust in the vigilance of their mechanical and tireless watch, that they slept on as calmly and unconcernedly as though they had been in their beds at home, while the tick was as constant and regular as a sentry's march. The wires of course did not protect them from creatures having wings, and they ran some risk of a visitation from the blood-sucking bats. The far-away volcanoes occasionally ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the hills and brought into the little room faint threads of gold and amethyst that wove a luminous tapestry with the dusk. The clock ticked steadily, and with every cheery tick brought nearer that dear To-Morrow of which he had dreamed so long. He speculated upon the difference made by the slow passage of a few hours. To-morrow, at this time, his bandages would ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... time silence reigned, as befitted the close of such a story. Nothing but the solemn tick of the tall clock was to be heard. On and on it went, as steady as before. Ghosts were nothing special to the clock: it had to measure out the time both ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... wives will tick their Souls on Sin, Tis vain to make about their Ears a din, For that exasperates their will the more, And where in private may in publick Whore; So then the Scandal coming to all Ears, Each Neighbour will not ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... whose imagery was equal in ghastliness to anything that the Catholic Church could produce. I remember one of his most dramatic bits, borrowed from a much earlier preacher, a passage in his description of hell. In hell, he said, there was a clock, which, instead of "tick," "tick," said, "Eternity," "Eternity," and when the damned, weary of their tortures down in the depths, came up to see what time it was, they heard the sentence of the clock, and turned in despair to go down into the depths again as ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... furniture, however, from which my eye takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger than is needed, and it is the habit to scream in ordinary conversation. A clock, therefore, could not make itself heard by such ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... bound around the hull of ships and lifted into tower and steeple. It is drawn into wire, coiled into springs, woven into gauze, twisted into rope, and sharpened into needles. It is stretched into a web, finer by comparison than the gossamer of the morning along the bed of the ocean, and made to tick out the yesterday of Europe on the to-day of America. All of this variety of use has been made out of the stubbornness of metals by the sovereign touch of industrial and scientific education. There is inexhaustible promise ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... anoder; and fru eberyting, in de bery darkest days, de sun ob joy an' peace hab broke fru de clouds, an' sent him blessed rays down inter our hearts. We started jess like two young saplin's you's seed a growin' side by side in de woods. At fust we seemed way 'part, fur de brambles, an' de tick bushes, an' de ugly forns—dem war our bad ways—war atween us; but love, like de sun, shone down on us, and we grow'd. We grow'd till our heads got above de bushes; till dis little branch an' dat little branch—dem war our holy ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... green chestnuts. There was no game in the forest. The trout would not bite, for I had no tackle and no hook. I was starving. I sat me down, and rested my trusty, but futile rifle against a fallen tree. Suddenly I heard a tread, turned my head, saw a Moose,—took—my—gun,—tick! he was dead. I was saved. I feasted, and in gratitude named the lake Moosetookmyguntick.' Geography has modified it, but the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... short, spick and span, Well hated by Hunkers and kept under ban. My second it qualifies, also my third, Though a high fen between can't be crossed nor be stirred. Now my next, like a swindler when cleaned out of tin, Has always its tick, and takes most people in. Amphibious its habit, as frequently found Beneath the blue sea as on top of the ground: Yet, oddest caprice out of destiny's cup, Just when in full feather 't is always "sewed up." What ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Thou hast thy monthly bills, Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come; but all may yield To the true portrait of ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there in half a tick." ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... waistcoat pocket. There was something round and hard there—a lozenge? No, a shilling, which had remained there ever since I changed my winter clothes in the spring. Now at that time we were reduced to anchovy paste for breakfast, and our bare rations for tea. Money was spent, tick was scarce, stores were exhausted. Faithful to a friendship which has all things in common. I went out to Dell's and bought a pot of apricot jam for tea, the time for which had arrived. As ill-luck would have it, both you fellows were ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... seemed by no means flattered by the mistake; "we divide the Province, as in the Almanac, into circuits, in each of which we separately carry on our business of manufacturing and selling clocks. There are few, I guess," said the Clockmaker, "who go upon TICK as much as we do, who have so little use for lawyers; if attornies could wind a man up again, after he has been fairly run down, I guess they'd be a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a moment for swift thought and still swifter action; and 'tis the Ireton genius to be slow and sure and no wise "gleg at the uptak'," as a Scot would say. Yet for this once my good angel gave me a prompting and the wit to use it. In that clock-tick of benumbing despair when the success of the hazardous venture, and much more that I wist not of, hung suspended by a hair over the abyss of failure, I minded me of a boyish trick wherewith I used to fright the timid blacks in the old days at Appleby Hundred. So whilst the major was reaching ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... a genteel gentleman, and Madame Flamingo's heavy foot is heard advancing up the hall. Be a diplomatist now. Show a white glove, and a delicate hand, and a winning smile, and you have secured your passport to the satin and brocade of her mansion. A spring is heard to tick, a whisper of caution to some one within follows, and a block broad enough to admit your hat swings open, disclosing the voluptuous splendor of a great hall, the blaze of which flashes upon your ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... more dreadfully than the rest. It was the ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece; and I thought how this sound must have been familiar to Abel Slattin, how it must have formed part and parcel of his life, as it were, and how it went on now—tick-tick-tick-tick—whilst he, for whom it had ticked, lay unheeding—would never heed ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of them leaves the room while his confederate remains inside with the others. He hides an article which the rest of the players have selected, in an adjoining room which is totally dark, placing a watch with a moderately loud tick, either on, or as near to the hidden object as he can. The rest of the players must not know anything about the watch, as they are kept guessing how the player who is out, succeeds in finding the hidden article ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... that," said Uncle Ike, as he looked in the glass to see if the lather was all right on his face, and began to strop his razor. "I knew that boy when he was telegraphing. But he knew what all those sounds meant. You just keep ticking away, and don't know one tick from another." ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... doin' some figgerin', friend. Well, fer that matter, so was I. 'Tain't often she comes to spend the night here, an' when she does me an' Eliza give her our room an' bed an' we pull an extry straw tick out here in the room an' make the best of it. Now, as I figger it out, Eliza is usin' that straw tick herself, 'cause she certainly wouldn't ever dream of gettin' into bed with—with—er—her. Not but what she's ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Beetle's Gamasis, the Tick who so often soils the ventral amethyst of our Geotrupes. No; the prizes of life do not fall to the share of the useful. Necrophori and Geotrupes devote themselves to works of general salubrity; and these two corporations, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... a ol' Geo'gia hoss bed in it. It was up pretty high and us chillun had to git on a box to git in dat bed. De mattress was mek outer straw. Sometime dey mek 'em in co'n sacks and sometime dey put 'em in a tick what dey weave on de loom. I had a aunt what was de weaver. She weave all de time for ol' marster. She uster weave all ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Proctors who blandly demand six-and-eightpence, And, while toiling themselves, send all petticoats spinning; And Porters who tick off our names for our gate-pence; And Bull-dogs who help ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... come to see her, because "it made a disturbance;" she couldn't have a kitten, because "animals were a nuisance;" she mustn't talk to her grandmother, because "little girls must be seen and not heard." So she sat there, like a little automaton, and watched the clock tick, and counted the times her grandmother put on and took off her spectacles, and thought of her mother and little sister till she bit her finger nails so ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... of cork blocks, which project a wee bit beyond the case; this structure is supported by 4 feet of a club-like form. So far so good. Now we will raise the structure higher. A case in which the pendulum with its chain is supposed to be hanging and swinging and tick-tacking is formed likewise of bricks of cork: its length is 2-1/2 inches, its breadth is 1 inch. Now as the upper case is smaller, you see, than the lower one, there would be a cavity, and indeed nothing for the higher one to rest upon, so we put ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... can be tested by finding the distance at which the various members of the class can hear a watch-tick. The teacher can plan an experiment using whispering instead of the watch-tick. (See the author's Examination of ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... along for the next stand, fifty miles away. The lads were sitting in their cosy office, Teddy lounging back on the divan, Phil in an easy chair at the roll-top desk. The lights shed a soft glow over the room; the bell rope above their heads swayed, tapping its rings with the regularity of the tick ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the room stood out clearly to his uncaring sight; the snap of the fire, the tick of the clock smote like separate reports upon his hearing; and while he lived he was to recall, when he smelled burning pine, this tense moment. Presently he rose unsteadily and reached out for his coat and hat ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... lives burn Black-out: and when we, too, lie in the house That never knew housewarming, 'twill be glowing. Ay! and some woman's tongue's been going it, Like a wag-at-the-wa', in this steading, three hundred years, Tick-tocking the ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... heavenly music, heard in the lull of a tempest, this burst of feeling made a moment's blank pause. Legree stood aghast, and looked at Tom; and there was such a silence, that the tick of the old clock could be heard, measuring, with silent touch, the last moments of mercy and probation to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... kinds of Beans are cultivated by farmers. The principal are the Horse-Bean or Tick-Bean; the Early Mazagan; and the Long-pods. Beans grow best in stiff clayey soils, and in such they are the most convenient crop. The season for planting is either the winter or spring month, as the weather affords opportunity. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... the surgeon. I passed my time as I best could. Stretched on my bed, I either abandoned myself to reflection, or listened to the voices of the birds in the neighbouring garden. Sometimes, as I lay awake at night, I would endeavour to catch the tick of a clock, which methought sounded from some ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... thousand dinars it cost me, too. I was chosen priest of Augustus without paying the fee, and I hope that I won't need to blush in my grave after I'm dead. But you're so busy that you can't look behind you; you can spot a louse on someone else, all right, but you can't see the tick on yourself. You're the only one that thinks we're so funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good enough for him, but you're only a brat with the milk still in your nose and all you can prattle is 'ma' ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the rocky mountains, we've plodded o'er the plain, We've bid a wild defiance to the drizzling, drenching rain; And yielding to the influence of your coquettish weather, We've grilled beneath the sunshine on thy "tick" ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... tic, or epileptic fit, I know not; but I never heard of such a cure for it before. I threw the fellow half a pictareen, as much for the amusement he had afforded me as to get rid of him. "Tanky, massa; now man-of-war man, here de tick for you again to keep off all the dam niggers." So saying, he handed the stick to Swinburne, made a polite bow, and departed. We were, however, soon surrounded by others, particularly some dingy ladies with ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... little Croesuses first cry, because they haven't received more, and then fight over what they have; then they eat too much French candy, and get sick and cross, and the whole house is filled with their noise. So mamma has a headache; and papa longs for his office, and misses the tick-tick of the stock telegraph, and thinks what a confounded nuisance holidays are. That is what Christmas is like in ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenalin into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has to be ...
— Dead Ringer • Lester del Rey
... She had stirred Jon up so fearfully, yet nothing definite was promised or arranged! But the more uncertain and hazardous the future, the more "the will to have" worked its tentacles into the flesh of her heart—like some burrowing tick! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from his pillow. "It's as easy as falling off a log. A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for its bottle. And—on the square—there isn't its equal on the market, Miss Vanderpoel—there isn't." He fumbled beneath his pillow and actually ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of freight on steel rails was sixty-five ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to-morrow morning, when at nine o'clock he must meet Mr. Gray, grew upon him. That his interference had been resented, even while it was accepted, Reggie had seen quite plainly, and to-morrow was coming nearer with each tick of the clock. ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... the best images the jew had on his head, over the mantlepiece; and was I to leave you all alone by yourself, isn't there an eight day clock in the corner, that when one's waiting, lonesome like, for any body, keeps going tick-tack, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... and Mop and Drop so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip that were To Mab, their sovereign, ever dear, Her special maids of honour; Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin, Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin, Tit and Nit and Wap and Win, The train that ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... only could but would squirt, with or without provocation, the triple compound essence of malaria into veins brought up on oxygen, and on water through which you could see the pebbles at the bottom. A bosom friend of the mosquito, and some say his paramour, was little Miss Tick. Of the two she was considerably the more hellish, and forsook her dwelling-places in the woods for the warm flesh of soldiers where it is rosiest, next the skin. The body, arms, and legs of Miss Tick could be scratched to nothing by poisonous finger-nails, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... reigned throughout the house, all, with the exception of Sir Jasper, had retired to rest, and there was no sound, save the ticking of the old-fashioned time-piece, with its monotonous and never varying tick, tick, and the scratching noise made by the quill as it traced its inky characters on the yet incomplete codicil the Baronet was preparing. The candles had burned low in their sockets, and the fire on the hearth had died out unheeded by him who sat writing ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... Bumville, whom I thought I recognized as a Mr. Huckster. I spoke to him, but found myself in error. He said his name wasn't Huckster, of Bumville, but Bogle, of Bogle's Cross Roads. I apologized, left him, and at the corner whom should I see but Tommy, the Tick. Incidentally I mentioned to Tommy the curious circumstance of my having mistaken Mr. Bogle, of Bogle's Cross Roads, for Mr. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... the big clock in the corner of the kitchen. The early dark was already creeping into the room, hiding itself under table and chair, showing the light of the isinglass doors of the cooking-stove with a fitful radiance, making Marion lonely and homesick, for you could hear the clock tick, the room was so still. Then Aunt Betty lighted two yellow tallow candles that stood in iron candlesticks on the mantel-shelf, put up a leaf of the kitchen table, covered it with a clean homespun cloth, ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... hard spell. Everything about the house was real handy, so't I'd get my work cleared away, and set down to sew early; and them long summer-days that was still and hot, I'd set, and set, never hearin' nothin' but the clock go "tick, tick, tick," (never "tack," for a change,) and every now'n'then a great crash and roar in the woods where he was choppin', that I knew was a tree; and I worked myself up dreadfully when there was a longer spell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... burning sulkily in the great open fireplace, throwing out a pungent, juicy smell. The aggressive tick of an old and pompous clock endeavored to talk down the gay chatter of the birds beyond the closed windows. The wheeze of a veteran Airedale with its chin on the head of a lion ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of a tick at that billiard-room; I shall have that boatman dunnin' me. Why hasn't Milliken got any horses to ride? Hang him! suppose he can't ride—suppose he's a tailor. He ain't MY tailor, though, though I owe ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... left quote; left single quote; open quote; ; grave. Rare: backprime; [backspark]; unapostrophe; birk; blugle; back tick; back glitch; push; <opening single quotation ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... nest there was only one bee, And only one berry to pick, And only one drink in the jug at the tree: But that boy was as full as a tick. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, "but that'd mean inquiries for you and for me, and I've got my hands full these days. Did you say you were travelling back along this line ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... vision—with those eyes darkly clear, That looked the sun in the face and were not blinded— Across the centuries The march of their enduring flesh? Did they hear— Under the molten silence Of the desert like a stopped wheel— (And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...) The infinite procession of ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... the manor-house, we spent our last hour at Brandon; for Gadabout was to sail away next day. It was a colonial hour; for Brandon clocks tick off no other, nor would any other seem natural ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... it down to mark the ground. 'Ten paces,' he said, and, turning on his heel, counted aloud. I looked half-instinctively at his bared head. The tonsure was still visible to any who sought it; for it was but half-grown over. Mateo counted his steps and then turned. The clock gave a little tick, as such clocks do, four minutes before they strike. It seemed to me to hurry its pace as we three stood listening in that silence. We could hear the whisper of the clouds as they hurried through the mountains. The clock gave another click, and the two men raised ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... stay in that cursed room?" he mutters, striding wildly among the sand-hills. "The very tick of the clock was enough to drive one mad in those long fearful pauses—solemn and silent as death! Can't the fools do anything for her? What is the use of nurses and doctors, and all the humbug of medicine and science? My darling! my darling! It was too ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... try give you sumpin to make start on like cow and ting. They ain't treat you like a beast. Ain't take no advance o' you. What the Cap'n do he do for you good. I b'long Dr. Ward. I entitle to bring him two string o' bird. Rice bird come like jest as tick as dat (thick as that) Sometimes ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the door of the clock and began winding the weights that had hung idle for nearly a year. When the swinging pendulum once more began its deep-toned tick-tock, he looked back over his shoulder ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... the worst, my dear," he went on, seeing that his wife still looked pale, "they could burn down a tick or two, on a windy night in winter and, to satisfy you, I will have an extra sharp lookout kept in that direction, and have a watchdog chained up ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer. Two species of shorebirds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by devouring the North American fever tick. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The palace was gone, Strether ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... idlers, playing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of her Brown. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Canonical Law from morn to dewy eve in the lecture-hall or the library of my inn, and, as soon as the shades of night are falling fast, in returning to my domicilium at Ladbroke Grove with the undeviating punctuality of a tick? ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Tick, tick, went the clock, and the farmer was nearly tired of waiting; he had to bite his little finger to keep himself awake, when suddenly the door of his house flew open, and in rushed maybe a thousand pixies, ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... Then I saw again the beach, with the girl's figure in the pool. The picture grew hazy; I realized Mercer was trying to picture the bottom of the sea. Then he pictured again the girl lying in the pool, and once again the sea. I was aware of the soft little tick in the center of my brain that announced that the switch had been moved to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... hour, it would be bright enough to travel by starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest, slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... two thin blankets, As thin as a slice of ham, A German spy was likely the guy Who made them for Uncle Sam. How did I sleep? Don't kid me— My bed-tick's filled with straw, And lumps and humps and big fat bumps That pinched till I ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... ever felt how calm and well Sleep may be had in that deep den of all. There anguish does not sting; nor pleasure pall: Woe-hurricanes beat ever at the gate, 530 Yet all is still within and desolate. Beset with plainful gusts, within ye hear No sound so loud as when on curtain'd bier The death-watch tick is stifled. Enter none Who strive therefore: on the sudden it is won. Just when the sufferer begins to burn, Then it is free to him; and from an urn, Still fed by melting ice, he takes a draught— Young Semele such richness never quaft In her ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... complete. The fish did not half like it at first; but habit is every thing, and when he shewed me his tank, they were swimming about as merry as a shoal of dace; he fed them with fennel chopped small, and black-pepper corns. 'Come, doctor,' says I, 'I trust no man upon tick; if I don't taste, I won't believe my own eyes, though I can believe my tongue.'" (We looked at each other.) "'That you shall do in a minute,' says he; so he whipped one of them out with a landing net; and ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... completed, will afford sufficient additional room so that each prisoner can have a cell. In these small rooms there are two bunks or beds when two convicts occupy the same cell. The bed-rack is made of iron or wood slats, and the bed-tick is filled with corn-husks; the pillow is also filled with the latter material, and when packed down becomes as hard as a board. When the beds are not in use they are fastened to the side of the wall with a small chain. When down and in use they take up nearly the entire space of the cell, so that ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... when he went to bed, his mind was made up. In the morning when he arose it was unmade. As he told Captain Hunniwell: "I'm like that old clock I used to have, Sam. The pendulum of that thing used to work fine, but the hands wouldn't move. Same way with me. I tick, tick, tick all day over this pesky business, but I don't get anywheres. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... home, of wife and children, of country, of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed away—not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers and boards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time—each pain an everlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... his ear) It has a good strong tick, anyway. I'll give you the ten shillin's for it. Here ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... "Tick," sounded the wheel and the sound reverberated like sudden thunder in his ears. His hand was iron, and he raised it slightly. "Six," said the wheel—his ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... wuz old enough to drive cows and work in de 'bacco fields, pickin' worms off de leaves. De other brudders worked wid my father on another plantation. De house where I lived wid de white Massa Lewis Northsinge and his Missus, wuz a log house wid just two rooms. I had just a little straw tick and a cot dat de massa made himself and I hed a common quilt dat de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... had stopped, the listener whispered to us when we touched him gently on the leg, so we lay there all three listening for it to start again, the tick-ticking of our wrist-watches and the pulsing of our hearts sounding loud to ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... nearly we approach a goal which a little while ago seemed far before us? Do we observe how quickly we shoot by it? Do we mark with what increasing swiftness the line of our life seems reeling off, and how close we are coming to the end? Time never stops! Each tick of the clock echoes our advancing footsteps. The shadow of the dial falls upon it a shorter and shorter tract, which we have yet to pass over. Even if a long life lies before us, let us consider that thirty-five years is high noon with us,—the meridian of that ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... One's eyes sought Dicky like a flash. Without a word, and as quick as the tick of a clock, Dicky tossed over his pistol to the Lost One, who caught it smoothly, turned it in his hand, and levelled ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the house. The tick-tick of the clock, very even, slow, dryly metrical, increased the silence and solitude. I put my ear to the door of the room, in hope of hearing a groan, a word, an insult, anything that would be a sign of life, that might bring back peace to my conscience; I was ready ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... recrudescence of pessimism has along with it, as one of the main thoughts which cut the nerves of effort, doubt of, and disbelief in, a future. It is because the very little opens out into the immeasurably great, and the passing moments tick us onwards into an unpassing eternity, that the moments are worth living through, and the fleeting insignificances of earth's existence become solemn and majestic as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a huge clock in one of the corners, whose loud tick filled up every interval of silence. By this clock it was just ten minutes to eight when two gentlemen—I should say men, and coarse men at that—crossed the open ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... to understand his meaning. He proceeded to tick off upon his ringers those particular instances in which he knew her to have had a share, and mentioned the names of the gentlemen. He omitted Drake's, however, and Clarice noticed the omission. For the rest she listened quite patiently until he came to an end. Then ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... devil are you doing, opening the letters before I get here?" he exclaimed. "I'm punctual, am I not? Twenty-two minutes past nine to the tick. Get ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... harder to grasp the other side of the paradox, picture-motions considered as time measured without sound. But think of a lively and humoresque clock that does not tick and takes only an hour to record a day. Think of a noiseless electric vehicle, where you are looking out of the windows, going down the smooth boulevard of Wonderland. Consider a film with three simple time-elements: (1) ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Tick, tock, tick, tock. The only sound in the room was the soft refrain of the old clock on the mantel. Barbara held her breath, but she knew she was foolish to feel ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... then made up his mind to go to a shopkeeper called Madame Tsitrinnikov to try and get it from her on tick: who knows? perhaps the woman would feel for them and let them have it. The jeune premier went off, and half an hour later returned with a bottle of brandy and some castor-oil. Shtchiptsov was sitting motionless, as before, on the ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... each other and let go in one tick of the clock, but she had stood a long time seeing his eyes arrested in their rush of ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the flame or the sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor, watches even the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a rhythm in the tick. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of the afternoon when even the most industrious of grammar-school pupils feels his zeal for learning grow less with every tick of the clock. Isabel and Phebe, however, were never remarkable for their zeal. In fact, their teachers had never been able to decide whether they were more bright or more lazy. Both characteristics were so well developed ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... a persistent, relentless, remorseless regularity. Tick, tick—tick, tick. Every moment it appeared to be louder and louder. His brow wrinkled and his head bent forward more deeply, while his eyes were set straight before him. Tick, tick—tick, tick. The solemn beat became human as he listened. He could not raise his head—he could ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... hearing got bad about twenty years ago, caused I think by a cold in the head. When in bed I can hear the tick of a watch with the left ear but the other is almost stone deaf. I am not much at a loss in ordinary conversation, but in trying to hear people speak I lose much of what is said. Although I have ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... that he had a headache and would confer with me on the morrow. Neither did I see Lois again that evening, a gill of rum having been issued to every man, and I sticking close as a wood-tick to my red comrades—indeed, I had them out after sunset to watch the cattle-guard, who were in a sorry pickle, sixty head having strayed and two soldiers missing. And the manoeuvres of that same guard did ever ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... go back after all to the hotel," Eurie said, as she dived both hands into the straw tick and tried to level the bed. "We have too fine a lady among us; she cannot sleep on a bedstead that doesn't rest its aristocratic legs on a velvet carpet. She doesn't see the fun at all. I thought Flossy would ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... when he died, he left me five male camels, a he-mule, a shop and a house; but the poor man is never satisfied; or, if he be satisfied he dieth. So I said to myself, 'I will go up to Al-Hijaz'; and, taking a string of camels, bought goods on tick, till I had run in debt for five hundred ducats, all of which I lost in the pilgrimage. Then I said in my mind, 'If I return to Cairo the folk will clap me in jail for their goods.' So I fared with the pilgrims- caravan ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... on-rushing mare, one foot a little advanced, his arms partly raised, and bent: remarked what a marvelous mingling of grace and power was in his form and bearing: as the watch ticked again, she saw him spring forward and upward, grasping and dragging down both reins in his hands: another tick—he was dashed against Dolly's shoulder, and his body swung around along the shaft, but without loosening his hold upon the reins: tick, tick, tick, the mare's headway was slackened; the dragging at the bit of that great weight was more than she ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... dulcimer and feed upon sweetmeats. But away from his home the sport is an integer. He does not, as men of other races in Manhattan do, become the convoy in his unoccupied hours of fluttering laces and high heels that tick off delectably the happy seconds of the evening parade. He herds with his own race at corners, and delivers a commentary in his Carib lingo ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... I scarcely know. I am naturally very orderly (some people call me precise) and it probably fretted me to see so valuable an object out of its natural position. However that was, I lifted it up and set it upright, when to my amazement it began to tick. Had the hands not stood as they did when my eyes first fell on the clock lying face up on the floor at the dead girl's side, I should have thought the works had been started since that time by Mr. Gryce or some other officious person. But they pointed now as then to a few minutes before five ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... discuss at length under "Form." Now the pleasure of enumeration, like that of a refrain, is in part at least a pleasure in muscle pattern. My two-year-old daughter composed a song which well illustrates the fascination of enumeration. The refrain "Tick-tock" was borrowed from a song which ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... back to the dressing-room. In the darkness of the corridor she ran against some one—a man. As she turned to apologize she was caught up in a pair of strong arms and kissed. It was all over in the tick of the clock, and then she ran—ran into the room, frightened, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... three hundred dollars of debts. He then comprehends that the insidious chit is loaded; is pregnant with the disgrace germ, if he cannot raise the wherewithal to redeem the sheafs of them reposing in a dozen tills—so many notes going to protest with every tick of the clock. "I'll write home for funds," he decides; "but how am I to live while awaiting the remittance?" By giving more chits, only. He does this with a bold front for another month or so, and is doubly insolvent when the remittance finally comes to hand. Then he gives ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... that had now cut off steam, was capable of providing was positively bewildering. They whirled through Miss Mapp's head like the autumn leaves which she admired so much, and she tried in vain to catch them all, and, when caught, to tick them off on her fingers. Each, moreover, furnished diverse and legitimate conclusions. For ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... luck, and positively nothing to do but have a good time for three solid weeks in the wilderness. The pestiferous telephone can not play the earwig on board this ship; the telegraph, with metallic tick, can not once startle us by precipitating town tattle; the postal service is cut off; wars and rumors of wars, the annihilation of a nation, even the swallowing up of a whole continent, are now of less consequence to us than the possibility of a rain-shower this afternoon, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... son. Don't you believe it. Stands to reason it must have been because the poor girl was broke. You wouldn't have done it and I wouldn't have done it, but Underhill did, and that's all there is to it. I mean, a tick's a tick, and there's nothing more to say. Well, I know he's been a pal of yours, Freddie, but, next time I meet him, by Jove, I'll cut him dead. Only I don't know him to speak to, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... If a tick could express anything, my reply at that moment must have satisfied him his parting wish would not be forgotten. Then returning me to my new master, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... this miscellaneous assortment of influences,—through the order and gravity and solemn monotone of life at home, with the unceasing tick-tack of the clock forever resounding through clean, empty-seeming rooms,—through the sea, ever shining, ever smiling, dimpling, soliciting, like a magical charger who comes saddled and bridled and offers to take you to fairyland,—through acquaintance with all sorts of foreign, outlandish ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... him into the old, quiet parlour (as if he could not have found the way thither himself), and there left him. It was very still. Nothing broke the silence but the sleepy tick of the clock, and the sound of some one (Jakes, perhaps) raking gravel on the garden path. Everything was unaltered. There was the little bust of Minerva that Barbara had once adorned with a paper bonnet; the fretsaw bookcase that the two boys had made at ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... drumming As the clock goes tick-a-tack, And the chiming of the hours Is the music of his pack. You may hardly note their growling Underneath the noonday sun, But at night you hear ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up the colts with merry tick-tack of the brush and comb, and after the last stroke on their shining limbs, threw his tools in the box and went ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... got only that small mess of greens. Knew you'd be disgusted, and sat down to see what we could do. Then Jack piped up, and said he'd show us a place where we could get a plenty. 'Come on,' said we, and after leading us a nice tramp, he brought us out at Morse's greenhouse. So we got a few on tick, as we had but four cents among us, and there you are. Pretty clever of the little ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... odds, found that Eyot's price was chalked up at five to one, and backed him for four pounds. He had to push and elbow his way through a struggling crowd; immediately after the bet was made, Eyot's quotation was reduced by two points in response to signals tick-tacked from the inclosures. This, of course, argued a decided following for Dale's selection, and these eleventh hour movements in the turf market are illuminative. Before he got back to the car there was a mighty shout of "They're off!" and he saw Cynthia Vanrenen stand on the seat ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... slumbers were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled deeper ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... requested, and stood back when the machine began to work with a scarcely audible tick-tick. Picard pulled out his watch, and exactly at the third minute the hammer fell on the bell. "That is very satisfactory," said Picard; "now, can you make the next one slightly concave, so that a man may strap it under his coat without attracting attention? Such a shape is useful ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... cents left!" he groaned. "Thet won't buy no supper nor nuthin! It's lucky I've got a train ticket back. But I'll have to walk to hum from the station, unless they'll tick ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... see What held her scared, I saw a man— A fat man with dull eyes aleer— Within the shadow of the van; And I was on the point to rise To send him spinning 'mid the wheels And stop his leering grin with mud ... And would have done it in a tick ... When, suddenly, alive with fright, She started, with red, parted lips, As though she guessed we'd come to grips, And turned her black eyes full on me ... And as I looked into their light My heart forgot the lust of fight, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... fantastic appearance, and look like fabulous birds gazing at the sky. By day in the distance they look like enormous pieces of fireworks; they turn, stop, curb and slacken their speed, break the silence by their dull and monotonous tick-tack, and when by chance they catch fire—which not infrequently happens, especially in the case of flour-mills—they form a wheel of flame, a furious rain of burning meal, a whirlwind of smoke, a tumult, a dreadful magnificent brilliance that gives ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... "If you're going to make pretty speeches, it's time for me to run indoors," and she left him with a warning that dinner would be ready in ten minutes, or at one o'clock to the tick. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... there was a fellow come down pretending to be a reporter. He stopped over with me, got me full's a tick, and then robbed me." ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... which had been flung over the end of the bed, corded it about him, and switched on the electric light. Then he passed out into the big common room, with its chairs drawn together in overnight comradeship, and the solemn tick of the big clock to emphasize the desolation. He paused a second to switch on the lights, then went to the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... doon the corridor in the one way, and syne I'd look doon in t'ither, but it aye seemed to me as though there was something coming up frae the side that I wasna lookin' at. I had a cauld sweat on my broo, and my hairt was beatin' twice tae ilka tick o' the clock, and what feared me most of a' was that the dust frae the curtains and things was aye gettin' doon intae my lungs, and it was a' I could dae tae keep mysel' ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the slumbering Watts, and turning toward the opposite side of the room, proceeded cautiously through the blackness until her feet came in contact with her "shake-down," which consisted of a pair of blankets placed upon a hay tick. The odor of the blankets was anything but fresh, but she sank to the floor, and with much effort and torturing of strained muscles, succeeded in removing her boots and jacket and throwing herself upon the bed. Almost at the moment her head touched the coarse, unslipped pillow, she fell ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... I recall, carried the mail that winter. 'Twas a thankless task: a matter of thirty miles to Jimmie Tick's Cove and thirty back again. Miles hard with peril and brutal effort—a way of sleet and slush, of toilsome paths, of a swirling mist of snow, of stinging, perverse winds or frosty calm, of lowering days and the haunted dark o' night—to be accomplished, once a week, afoot and alone, by way ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... read it of course. By dad! I don't think you are up to dominoes; you must go back to skittles. He's evidently enclosed the sovereign in the note; for he never could have been fool enough to think that two gentlemen like us are to give tick for such a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... hung speechless; and each member felt disposed to lay the blame on the others. At length the dial instituted a formal inquiry into the cause of the stoppage; when hands, wheels, 10 weights, with one voice, protested their innocence. But now a faint tick was heard below from the pendulum, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... always one night in a girl's life that stands above all other nights. One night when the moon shone bright and clear and the clock on the wall went tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. One night when each tick said, "You're beautiful! ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... the Lord's visitation of mercy at Chioh-be? Again, truly, are we as those that dream. The general features of the work are very similar to what you witnessed at Pechui-ia. The instrumentality has been native brethren almost entirely. Attention was first awakened in one or two by I-ju and Tick-jam, who ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... one corner, a well, whose stagnant waters you shuddered to look upon; a stairway covered with old shells; at the farther end a gallery, with wooden balustrade, and hanging upon it some old linen and the tick of an old straw mattress; on the first floor, to the left, the stone covering of a common sewer indicated the kitchen; to the right the lofty windows of the building looked out upon the street; then a few pots of dried, withered flowers—all was cracked, somber, moist. Only one or ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and there was an air of peace and rest strangely and uncomfortably in keeping with the conversation to which he had just been listening. He looked in at his own door; the furniture seemed stiffer than usual and the tick of the clock more deliberate. He closed the door again and, taking a deep breath, set off towards the life and bustle of ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Lucilla. This time when the corners of her mouth began to tick upward, she made no attempt to stop them. (Of course you can, darling. And I can answer you the same way, and ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... shirt-sleeves prowled backwards and forwards—as the tigers do about feeding time in the Zoo. They, too, had super-hearing. From little funnels that looked like electric light shades they caught the tick of the messages, and chalked the figures of the latest prices as they altered with the dealing on the floor upon a huge blackboard that ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... now he takes the open air, Drawes up his wings with tactick care; Whilst th' expert falcon swift doth climbe In subtle mazes serpentine; And to advantage closely twin'd She gets the upper sky and wind, Where she dissembles to invade, And lies a pol'tick ambuscade. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... flashed up, there stood the old clock, the pendulum swung back and forth, the ticking went on, and its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone. It was all natural as life. The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight came creeping in at the windows, filling with sepulchral greyness the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe shrill or oyster-strumpet; Methinks I see thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick with Hunter,) Methinks I see a blackguard rout Attend thy coach, and hear them shout In approbation of thy tongue, Which (in their style) is purely hung. Now! now you carry all before you! Nor dares one Jacobite or Tory Pretend to answer one syl-lable, Except ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... bank became a magic house. The brass-barred windows before the tellers; the wire cages; the tiled floors; the great doors of the vault, with the tick-tick-tick of the time locks; all seemed to him to be parts of a powerful chieftain's house. The vault itself, with its store of gold and currency, and its cabinet of mysterious treaties, which the tyee ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... Sylvia sighing, 'what shall that gamester set, who has already played for all he had, and lost it at a cast?' 'O, madam,' replied Antonet,'the young and fair find credit every where, there is still a prospect of a return, and that gamester that plays thus upon the tick is sure to lose but little; and if they win it is all clear gains.' 'I find,' said Sylvia, 'you are a good manager in love; you are for the frugal part of it.' 'Faith, madam,' said Antonet, 'I am indeed ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... on your wrist, and keep very still for a moment. Listen. You feel something, do you not? Something alive, and it goes beat, beat; one, two, three, like the ticking of a watch. As long as you live, that tick, tick will go on; but for this little girl it had stopped, because her heart had ceased to beat. When the doctor put his hand upon her wrist, he could feel nothing moving there. "She is quite dead," he said, as he took her body up from the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... imaginary keys. The blue flame darted and quivered through the gloom. The hushed purr of the spring broke the stillness in metallic tinklings. A smile flitted across the sleeper's face. Her lips parted. The crackle of the flame seemed loud as tick of ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... she asked in a loud voice, "why do you crow, cock?" And again: "Who makes you tick, clock, who ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... told us that it was come.... Mr. Mompesson and I and a gentleman that came with me went up. I heard a strange scratching as I went up the stairs, and when we came into the room I perceived it was just behind the bolster of the children's bed and seemed to be against the tick. It was as loud a scratching as one with long nails could make upon a bolster. There were two modest little girls in the bed, between seven and eight years old, as I guessed. I saw their hands out of the clothes, and they could not contribute to the noise that ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... is the one which has stood in the corner of my study for years. I have taken an especial pride in its unvarying correctness, and the man in the moon is unfailing in his calculation, showing his face at the appropriate season. The clock's tick is strong and well becomes the old veteran, and the coat of mahogany he wears is one that can never need a stitch. To you, above all others, I would yield this treasure; it is worth far more to me than any gift I might purchase, and I know that you," turning to Louis, "rejoice in ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... studying, climbed up in a chair by the window to watch the birds hop over the veranda and pick up worms in the grass beside the carriage drive. And then came Mrs. Pepper with the big mending basket, and ensconced herself opposite by the table; and nothing was to be heard but the "tick, tick" of the clock, and an occasional dropping of a spool of thread, or scissors, from the busy hands flying in and out among ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... happens once in so often, Luke—a situation like this. Everett is lugging too much. Last fire we had in the village here Ed Stilson tried to lug an old-fashioned bureau on his back and a feather tick in his teeth, but he couldn't ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... The steady tick of the clock in the corner forced itself upon his notice. He swore at it under his breath, and ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... Woodburn!" called the gypsy in a hoarse staccato voice. "There she is—your sort to the tick. Black Death blood. Throw you a National winner ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... "Tick-tock, tick-tock," said the clock in a deep mellow voice. Hortense thought he said, "Welcome, welcome," and was sure he winked ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... Superior on it for weights, and set it running. We were then hauling grain into the barn. Father at this period devoted himself entirely to the Bible and did no farm work whatever. The clock had a good loud tick, and when he heard it strike, one of my sisters told me that he left his study, went to the parlor, got down on his knees and carefully examined the machinery, which was all in plain sight, not being enclosed in a case. This he did repeatedly, and evidently ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... rendered significant. Was a dog heard to howl and moan during the night, with his head in the direction of the house where the patient lay; was there heard in the silent watches of the night in the room occupied by the sick person, a tick, ticking as of a watch about the bed or furniture, these were sure signs of approaching death, and adult patients hearing these omens, often made sure that their end was near. Many pious people also improved ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... of a brief silence followed. I could hear them slowly dripping out of eternity in the tick of a watch near me. I felt the stare of many eyes invisible to me. A broad beam of bright light shot through the gloom, resting full upon my face. I started back upon the strong hands behind me. Then I felt my muscles tighten as I began to measure the fall ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... Bee louse of Europe (Fig. 33 b, Braula caeca), which is a singular wingless spider-like fly, allied to the wingless Sheep tick (Melophagus), the wingless Bat tick (Nycteribia) and the winged Horse fly (Hippobosca). The head is very large, without eyes or ocelli (simple eyes), while the ovate hind-body consists of five segments, and is covered with stiff hairs. It is one-half to two-thirds of a line ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... thus enabled to understand the allusions I had already heard to Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene |
