"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dey wove 'em crossways in and out of dem holes from one side to another 'til dey had 'em ready to lay de mattress mat on. I'se helped to pull dem cords tight many a time. Our mattress ticks was made of homespun cloth and was stuffed wid wheat straw. 'Fore de mattress tick was put on de bed a stiff mat wove out of white oak splits was laid on top of de cords to pertect de mattress and make it lay smooth. Us was 'lowed to pick up all de old dirty cotton 'round de place to make our pillows ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the old clock filled the night air with its measured beat. "Surely it does not tick so loudly in the ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... room. I wants to show you whar I burned my bed last night tryin' to kill de chinches: dey most eats me up evvy night." In the bedroom an oil lamp was burning. The bed and mattress showed signs of fire. The mattress tick was split from head to foot and cotton spilling out on the floor. "Dat's whar I sleep," declared Alice. The atmosphere of the bedroom was heavy with nauseous odors and the interviewer hastened to return to the front of the house ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... quality, exaggerated THRIFTILY, carefully THRUMS, ends of the weaver's warp; coarse yarn made from THUMB-RING, familiar spirits were supposed capable of being carried about in various ornaments or parts of dress TIBICINE, player on the tibia, or pipe TICK-TACK, game similar to backgammon TIGHTLY, promptly TIM, (?) expressive of a climax of nonentity TIMELESS, untimely, unseasonable TINCTURE, an essential or spiritual principle supposed by alchemists to be transfusible into material things; ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... possesses in such profusion, the most interesting of which we saw at Kampen. Kampen's oak seats are not, however, more beautiful than those of Nymwegen; and Kampen has no such clock as stands here, distilling information, tick by tick, of days, and years, and sun, and moon, and stars. The stadhuis has also treasures of tapestry and Spanish leather, and a museum containing a very fine collection of antiquities, including one of the famous wooden petticoats of Nymwegen—a painted ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... 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 the circumstance, ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... chirping all round the warm hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking together, one loud tick, and quick—a feeble, ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... from Muldro and they 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 a ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... suit." Mary Brackson, also very old, had two little grandchildren with her. Their mother was sold down the river when the youngest was a year old. Her life had been a sad one. She was crippled with rheumatism, and her arm had been broken by an overseer's club. I gave her a bed-tick, quilt, blanket, and a few clothes for herself and grandchildren. Then I visited and relieved four other families, to whom I gave advice, and with the most I read and offered prayer, which always seemed to be a ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... 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
... the windows; the wind also was rising; his room seemed to be full of sounds; even the clock which had a subdued tick and a most discreet manner of announcing the passing of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... said the 'late' Overland Red Summers. You took particular noise to make me hear that word 'late.' Have you got any objections to explainin' that there idea? I been examinin' the works of that word 'late,' and it don't tick right to me. 'Late' means ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... nothing was changed. Father, mother, brother, friends, gravitated mechanically in their accustomed orbits. The same daily facts repeated themselves monotonous and regular as the tick-tack of ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... number forty-eight, and each notch represents a broken heart. Number 1, is that of a haughty young damsel who had cut me on various occasions. Number 2, is that of the girl I loved, now an officer's wife. Number 3, is that of her husband, for they are separated." He continued to tick them off, giving each a short description with comments of almost diabolical cynicism. "I have two more in view," he continued, "and when I have completed my record of fifty, I intend to take a long rest and go for a trip to the Colonies. ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... 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.
... French farmers to bring a quantity of straw to the public square, where the soldiers, later in the afternoon, filled their bed ticks. It was on a tick of straw, thrown on the floor of the old dilapidated, vacated house, that one hundred of the battery spent their nights of sleep in Montmorillon while the other half occupied similar beds on ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... his own selfish way, Hen, with much grumbling, arranged the coats on two chairs not far from the fire. When he considered the coats dry enough he crawled into his chosen bunk, grumbling at the coarse tick filled only with dried leaves, and was covered by Dick and Greg. Then the other fellows, after replenishing the fire, ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... in the room for some time, save for the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. All seemed to be so overwhelmed by what they had heard that for the moment they ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." Apparently he was touched by the melancholy splendor of the poetry, for after reading a few verses he stopped. There was a dead silence, interrupted only by the tick of the clock. He cleared his voice repeatedly, and tried to go on, but in vain. He closed the book, and kneeled down to prayer. The energy of sorrow broke through his usual formal reverence, and his language flowed forth with a deep and sorrowful pathos ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this clock. It was of the good old-fashioned "grandfather" type. It stood eight feet high, in a carved-oak case, and had a deep, sonorous, solemn tick, that made a pleasant accompaniment to the after-dinner chat, and seemed to fill the room with an ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... to flick it off. Instead of being that, the thing burst into a blood splotch as soon as I hit it. That was the first time I had been bitten by one of those bugs. They are about the size of a sheep tick when empty, but they get on you and suck and suck, till they are full of your blood and size of a grape. Queer things, but ugly. Ista laughed as you would laugh if you saw a nigger afraid of a harmless snake. It's queer that it should be ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it is only thirst that would compel the intrusion. Yet perhaps Mrs. Pascoe would welcome it. The summer's day may be wearing heavy. Washing in her little scullery, she may hear the cheap clock on the mantelpiece tick, tick, tick ... tick, tick, tick. She is alone in the house. Her husband is out helping Farmer Hosken; her daughter married and gone to America. Her elder son is married too, but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister came along ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... when the noise up above has died down, when with the approach of darkness the rattling of the chains and the groaning of the windlasses has ceased, when only the slow step of the deck-watch finds an echo—then it can be heard. Inside the box you can hear a gentle but steady tick, tick, tick. The clock-work is wound up and set to the exact second. Tick, tick, tick it goes. When the ship is far out at sea and the passengers are asleep and the watch calls out: "Lights are burning. All's well!" then the works will have run down, the spring will ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... or eight shillings a week. I have often sat with him in the darkness that his "cruizey" lamp could not pierce, while his mutterings to himself of "ay, ay, yes, umpha, oh ay, ay man," came as regularly and monotonously as the tick of his "wag-at-the-wa'" clock. Hendry and he were paid no fixed sum for their services in the Auld Licht kirk, but once a year there was a collection for each of them, and so they jogged along. Though not the only kirk-officer of my time Hendry made the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... generations of Pages come and go. Additions have been made to it—an ell on one side, larger windows and a wide veranda in front. Inside it is much the same, for the open fireplaces remain in parlor and sitting-room and a tall clock of solemn tick stands in the hall where it stood when Paul Revere ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains; One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great soul of an ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... [Symbol: tick mark] A Chapter on Provincial or local organization is to be inserted under Chapter ..., providing for certain powers and rights to be given to local governments with the residual power left in the hands of the central government. The exact text ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... shouted Mulvaney. 'Whin you've fired into nothin' as often as me, over a better man than yoursilf, you will not make a mock av thim orders. 'Tis worse than whistlin' the Dead March in barricks. An' you full as a tick, an' the sun cool, an' all an' all! I take shame for you. You're no better than a Pagin—you an' your firin'-parties an' your glass-eyes. ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... 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 detained at something or another—French, I rather think. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... "and the awful silence. Day after day, year after year, not a sound. I have stood in that street at mid-day and heard a watch tick in my pocket. Think of it, Mr. de Windt. I myself arrived here only a few months ago, but even I shall soon have to get away for a change, or——" and ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... cried Trina, sitting back on her heels. In the stillness that succeeded, the water dripped from her hands with the steady tick of a clock. Then a brutal fist swung open the street door of the schoolroom and McTeague came in. He was drunk; not with that drunkenness which is stupid, maudlin, wavering on its feet, but with that which is alert, unnaturally ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... not," said Judge Carter flatly. James Holden's eyes widened, and he started to say something but the judge held up his hand, fingers outspread, and began to tick off his points finger by finger as he went on: "Where would we be in the case of enemy attack? Could our policemen aim their guns at a vicious criminal if they were conditioned against killing? Could our butchers operate; ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... tock! Forty 'leven by the clock. Tick, tock! Tick, tock! Put your ear to Grandpa's ticker, Like a pancake, only thicker. Tick, tock! Tick, tock! Catch a squirrel in half a minute, Grab a sack and stick him in it. Tick, tock! Tick, tock! Mister Bunny feeds on honey, Tea, and taters—ain't it funny? Tick, ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... to tick off a whole month's work. And remember, we've got the interest to make up, too. No parties this week, kiddo. No more Julias for yours. She'll have another fancier by the time ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... 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 ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... is ever so much better company than a clock," she said; "though when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to Dickey to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts exactly ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... beginning to end," and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous "tick! tick!" so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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
... hipsohopus 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 sent up sheets of flame, which ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... of that beastly hymn? It had got hold of him now! The measured tramp of the tune fitted itself to the tick of the clattering little tin clock on ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... ideas were running through his head and troubling him greatly, there came a "tick, tick" from the other side, then more of them, but they meant nothing. Some one was there who could ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... too much in vogue in the eighteenth century among divines as well as philosophers; the theory which Goethe, to do him justice—and after him Mr Thomas Carlyle—have treated with such noble scorn; the theory, I mean, that God has wound up the universe like a clock, and left it to tick by itself till it runs down, never troubling Himself with it; save possibly—for even that was only half believed—by rare miraculous interferences with the laws which He Himself had made? Out of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... therefore, has its hour or quarter hour in the daily program when its big problems are considered and settled on the tick of the clock. This schedule is flexible, since no two days bring from any division of production, distribution, or financing the same demands upon the owner's attention. Yet each keeps its place and comes invariably under his eye—through reports and his own ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... her cheeks are so fat. The captain is trying, by the language of signs, to get our host to understand that we are much in want of fresh meat. Sam Baker is making himself agreeable to the young people, and the plan he has hit upon to amuse them is to show them his watch, and let them hear it tick. Truly, I have seldom seen a happier family group than this Eskimo household, under their ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... she loosened the ring and staple with a cling-a-ring, and pushed open the door with a crick-a-tick; and while the breeze from the bamboo blind poured towards me laden with the scent of flowers, out she comes to me, and, "At your service, sir," says she, "though I am but a poor country maid." So in we went, hand in hand, to the parlor. But yet her first question, "Who's there?" had left me so ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... surmounted by the royal arms—the scarlet cushions of the bench, and the large, circular clock in the gallery, which was embellished with a gilded border and asserted its importance by a loud, aggressive tick. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... shut down again. Suliman went fast asleep, snoring with the even cadence of a clock's tick, using my knees for a pillow with a perfect sense of ownership. He was there to keep care of me, not I of him. The sleep suggestion very soon took hold of me, too, for there was nothing whatever to do but ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... had crooned her chant, I heard him say, With sobbing voice and deep heart-heaving sigh, "Dry up thae tears, my Jean, for things away, Time's but a watch-tick in eternity; We darena sing of earth, but lift our prayer To Him whose promises are never vain, That we may dwell in yonder Eden fair, And see youth's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... slippers thudded on the hard wood floor. Tick-Tick-Tick Lily's toe-nails clicked along beside him. It sounded ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... bit of weather herself, and can't quit station. I've turned in a General Call, so even if they don't see our beam some one's bound to help—or else we must. Shall I clear our slings? Hold on! Here we are! A Planet liner, too! She'll be up in a tick!" ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... "My sentiment to a tick," said he. "Now, Challenger, it's up to you to tell us where we are. We ain't nervous folk, as you know well; but when it comes to makin' a week-end visit and finding you've run full butt into the Day of Judgment, it wants a bit of explainin'. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 distant part ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it was so still she could hear the clock tick ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... moment a taxi 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
... of the back in our ladies of Circular rank is envied and imitated by the wife of a common Equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing, like the ticking of a pendulum; and the regular tick of the Equilateral is no less admired and copied by the wife of the progressive and aspiring Isosceles, in the females of whose family no "back-motion" of any kind has become as yet a necessity of life. Hence, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... Dere was a row of log houses, 'bout ten I think. Mammy and me lived in one dat had two rooms. De chimney was made of sticks and mud, but de floor was a good plank floor. De bed was a wood bedstead wid a wheat straw tick. Dere was no windows to de house, so it was warm in de winter time and blue blazing hot ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... the 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 ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... upright. The door by which he had entered was at one side, on the other side was another, and between the two stood a sofa, the shape of which was plainly discernible under the sand. Over this was a clock, which had ticked its last tick. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... harshly. "Ah didn' want she should plow," he protested. "Ah figgered t' git someone on tick, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... white-laid table stood against the wall; the tea-kettle steamed and rocked on the stove; the room was full of savory odors. Mrs. Field set the tea-kettle back where it would not boil so hard. These little household duties had become to her almost as involuntary as the tick of her own pulses. No matter what hours of agony they told off, the pulses ticked; and in every stress of life she would set the tea-kettle back if it were necessary. Amanda stood in the door, trembling. All at once there was a swift roll of wheels in the yard past the window. "Somebody's ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... standards of a cit, countrymen, I believe, are generally early risers; but even for a countryman, Anthony, next morning, rose at an unlikely hour. The tall clock in the hall, accenting with its slow sardonic tick the silence of the sleeping house, marked a quarter to five, as he undid the heavy old-fashioned fastenings of the door, the oaken bar, the iron bolts and chains, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... frightened, angry, very miserable. 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
... with sundry other hindrances and annoyances, delayed the usual morning work until far into the afternoon—something that was always particularly displeasing to methodical Aunt Polly, who ordered her own life, preferably, by the tick of ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... allowed, and the same in width, (as it takes up in making;) cut the side strips as deep as you wish the matress, fit the corners, cut out a place for the foot posts, or fit each end square alike; after the bottom and sides are sewed together, run a tuck all round to save binding, sew the tick in a quilting frame, and stay it to the end pieces as a quilt; put a table under to support the weight, (which can be shifted as it is sewed;) first put a layer of hair, then cotton, then husks alternately, till it is done; ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... monotonous heave-and-drop stunt. Course, it ain't any motion worth mentionin', but somehow it sort of surprises you to find that it keeps up so constant. It's up and down, up and down, steady as the tick of a clock; and every time you glance over the rail or through a porthole you see it's quite a ride you take. I didn't mind goin' up a bit; it's that blamed feelin' of bein' ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... 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 ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... sat there every tick of the clock stirred her to a new excitement. At last there came a knock upon the door, a cloak was thrown about her from behind, a heavy veil was drooped about her golden hair, and she was led, by whom she knew not, to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... discovered the now celebrated change of dimensions produced by the magnetization of soft iron by the current. The peculiar noise which accompanies the magnetization of an iron bar by the current, sometimes called the "magnetic tick," was thus explained. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... hands tightly. Her eyes never left the sea. The tick, tick of the watch was just audible in the stillness of the May ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Adults and larvae of these flies have been found in the stomachs of the 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
... under cover, 'n' he 'ands me somethin' wet (I've got a lick or two that leaves me feelin' pretty sick). "Lor love yeh, ole John Hop," sez I, "yiv buried me in debt." "Don't minton ut at all," he sez, 'n' eyes me arf-a-tick. 'N' back there in the trench I ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... conveyance of this request to some person in authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness that one would much ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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, laughing and dancing and dragging at Beauty's halter ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... pounding the table till it groaned. "Error? Not a bit of it. Can't you follow a simple calculation like that? Oh, I forgot to say that you get—and here is the nub of the thing—you get your first hen on tick. Anybody will be glad to let you have the hen on tick. Well, then, you let this hen—this first, original hen, this on-tick-hen—you let it set and hatch chickens. Now follow me closely. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Very well, ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... skillfully made. A bit of chintz fluttered at the window, and a flower in a can bloomed on the sill. The table had been smashed as by the blow of an axe, and pewter dishes were everywhere. The bed in one corner had been stripped of its coverlets, many of them slashed by a knife, and the straw tick had been ripped open in a dozen places. Coals from the fireplace lay widespread, some of them having eaten deeply into the hard ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... way guilty, she accused herself of disregard for that dear harp while it was brilliant and serviceable. "Now I remember what poor music I made of it! I touched it with cold fingers. The sound was thin, as if it had no heart. Tick-tick!—I fancy I touched it with a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very seldom used, it is true, and at each end of it there was a gate by which wayfarers occasionally passed to shorten the way. There we sat without speaking a word, shivering with cold and fear, listening to the clock which went slowly, tick, tick, and occasionally starting as the door creaked on its hinges, or a half-burnt billet fell upon the hearth. My sister was ghastly white, as white as the garment which was drying before the fire. And now half an hour had elapsed and it ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... gale—there are the flies in millions, most indefatigable and maddening of pests. And finally, to take home with you, to remind you pleasantly of her hospitalities when you have reached your own room, is the tick! ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... it Hell? I spent eight years trying to make that little mind of his tick properly. I wanted to know what was the right, proper, and logical way to bring up children. I had a theory, and I wanted to test it. And ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... silence. He heard her slip the picture from the envelope, and he knew that she was looking at it. He heard his watch tick in the stillness, and her absolute silence frightened him. It lasted, perhaps, a moment more and then he turned and looked at her. She was standing erect with the picture in her hand. He saw that she had ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... it now—and she knew also that her self-enforced exile from the sick-room was a hundred times worse. To stand there, knowing, with each tick of the clock, what was being said and done within—how the great luxurious room, with its pale draperies and scented cushions, and the hundred pretty trifles strewing the lace toilet-table and the delicate old furniture, was being swept bare, cleared for action like a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... those things are!" sighed the King. "This argument reminds me of the story of Tom Tick, which my ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... disturb us, after all," remarked Eva Allen. "It's a wonder those boys didn't put tick-tacks on the windows or do something ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... and subservient, I know you,' he retorted dryly. 'Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud—I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... hoard of merit to acquit myself. You will at least get thus much by this charming manner of obliging me: I look upon myself as double obliged; and when it cost me so much to ask one favour, and I find myself in debt for two, I shall scarce run in tick for a third. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick, said my friend, but thatd mean inquiries for you and for me, and Ive got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this line within ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 arc which ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... whether this new friend had been sent to take the place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged, most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him—the delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now gloriously rode—these things were of this ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... long passages and large rooms, was full of those nameless sounds which fill the air in the quiet of night. He heard his father's footsteps as he paced up and down in his study, he heard the tick-tack of the old clock on the stairs, the bureau creaked, the candle spluttered, but there was no human voice to break the silence, With a yawn he rose, stretching his long legs, and, throwing back his broad shoulders, made his ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... obvious motive for the deed; but when he began again, and in detail, to go over the evidence already adduced, Bobby ceased to listen. Only the monotonous cadences of the voice went on and on. The clock tick-tocked. People breathed. It reminded him ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... his industry so far that at night he would do all the washing that was to be done at the ranch house, for which he was paid extra. And here was the boys' chance. Injun was like most other boys when it came to mischief, and Whitey taught him the ancient game of tick-tack. In case you don't know it, I'll ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... glory as Nelson himself," he laughed. "But the Navy can't do it all, you know. Give us a chance.... When we've got the best pair of legs South of Thames trained to a tick, and fighting mad for their chance, we ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... sleep would not come. She missed her morning walk and the fresh air of out-of-doors, so she gave it up, opened her eyes again, and lay wakefully thinking of home and Mother, Dick and Jean, and school. The big clock on the mantelpiece seemed to go very, very slowly, its tick loud and deliberate, as though it would say: "Don't think you are going to get off one single minute—sixty minutes to the hour you have to live through, and there are still two hours till tea-time." The rain splashed against the ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the cheaper, titles or money in these days," said King. "I understand one can get a most acceptable duke for three or four millions, a nice marquis or count for half as much, and a Sir on tick." He eyed the Count speculatively. "Of course a prince of the royal blood ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a silence so utter that Barnabas could distinctly hear the tick of Natty Bell's great watch in his fob; a silence in which Mr. Smivvle stared with wide-eyed dismay, while Barrymaine sat motionless with his glass half-way to his lips. Then Mr. Chichester laughed again, but the scar ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... weak; I can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly I was always first, and had to hold in my pace not to leave the people altogether. I have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick of the chronometers. The appetite is good, but we have no proper food, chiefly maere meal or beans, or mapemba or ground-nuts, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... one might have heard a watch tick, Doble leaned forward, his body rigid, danger written large in his burning ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... in Rhode Island a good stock of winter clothing for himself and Eric, a couple of thick blanket rugs, and two empty bed-tick covers—to be afterwards filled with the down they should procure from the sea birds. He bought, too, a strong lamp, with a supply of paraffin oil, and several dozen boxes of matches; so that he and Eric should not have to adopt the tinder ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... single quote; quote; . Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; <closing single quotation ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Seth, Virginia Richmond walked up and down the floor of her home filled with vague alarms. Although on the next day she discovered, through an inquiry made by the town marshal, on what adventure the boys had gone, she could not quiet herself. All through the night she lay awake hearing the clock tick and telling herself that Seth, like his father, would come to a sudden and violent end. So determined was she that the boy should this time feel the weight of her wrath that, although she would not allow the marshal to interfere with his adventure, she got out a pencil and paper and ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... indistinctly visible. In a chair opposite is a young woman with such a mournful, careworn face, that a glance inspires you with sorrow; and from a bundle of clothes on her knee issues the fretful wail of a restless child. The monotonous tick of an old clock is the only sound, saving the longdrawn sigh of that young mother, or the quick, hollow breathing of the sleeping man. Now and then the wind whistles more shrilly through the crevices of the door, and the rain beats ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the young man, looking at her with admiration; 'I hadn't thought of that. I have dismissed my chauffeur,' he went on, 'because he was always wanting things. I said to him, "My good man, get anything you want if you can get tick for it." He was a maniac about ready money. I got on all right for the first forty miles or so after leaving London, and I was going on splendidly when my motor, to gain some private end, went mad. How do these things happen? Thank 'e, Jane,' as Jane fastened a silk handkerchief ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... motionless with surprise; the weights 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 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... "You take 'tick too; give 'em whack-whack," cried he, offering Austin another bamboo. "Dey no work proper widout ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the badness of its condition and his own poverty, as much as possible.' He now wished to say, 'That he was not nearly so badly off as he had stated; that he had plenty of potatoes and milk—that he had a bed-tick which was in the loft when we inspected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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. Em'ly ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Tick, tack, tock! Only look at the clock. He works away the whole day long, And every hour he sings a song. Ding, dong, ding! So we'll work ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... tin-pedler, stroking his long yellow goatee. "Go into the store: nobody speak to you; go to cattle-show: everybody follow you 'round; go to the wharf: nobody weigh your fish; go to buy seed-cakes to the cart: baker won't give no tick." ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert |
