"Clack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still had its meaning and application. When the smith's hammer resounded, it cried, "Strike away! strike away." When the carpenter's plane grated, it said, "Here goes! here goes." If the mill wheel began to clack, it said, "Help, Lord God! help, Lord God!" And if the miller was a cheat and happened to leave the mill, it spoke high German, and first asked slowly, "Who is there? Who is there?" and then answered quickly, "The miller! the miller!" and at last quite in a hurry, "He steals bravely! he steals ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... duke? yes, your beggar of fifty;—and his use was to put a ducat in her clack-dish: the duke had crotchets in him. He would be drunk too: that ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... while ago there lived near the Clack-clack Mountains an old man and his wife, who, having no child, made a great deal of a pet hare. Every day the old man cut up food and set it out on a plate for ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... clack of the gate she stood in suspense. It was a bright grey day. Paul came into the yard with his bicycle, which glittered as he walked. Usually he rang his bell and laughed towards the house. To-day he walked with shut lips and cold, cruel bearing, that ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... feature in the ball turning machine shown opposite is that the tool is stationary, while the work revolves in two directions simultaneously. In the case of an ordinary spherical object, such as brass clack ball, the casting is made from a perfect pattern having two small caps or shanks, in which the centers are also marked to avoid centering by hand. It is fixed in the machine between two centers carried on a face ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... about four o'clock, at the very moment when the Abbe de Sponde returned home, and just as mademoiselle began to think she had set the table with the best plate and linen and prepared the choicest dishes to no purpose, the click-clack of a postilion ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... in the silence a typewriter began to clack with a fierce, staccato note. It was Mary Fortune, writing her ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... cordite, trinitrotoluene, picric acid, picrates, mercury fulminate (arms) 727. whack, wham, pow. V. rap, snap, tap, knock, ping; click; clash; crack, crackle; crash; pop; slam, bang, blast, boom, clap, clang, clack, whack, wham; brustle[obs3]; burst on the ear; crepitate, rump. blow up, blow; detonate. Adj. rapping &c. v. Int. kaboom! ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the stubborn back Above the grinching quern, It's woe to hear the leg-bar clack And jingle when ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... heard the rhythmic clack of the oars on the thole-pins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper's voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... "Hold your clack, fool," interrupted M. Radisson, as if the fellow's prattle had cut into his mental plannings; and he bade us heap such a fire as could be seen by Indians for a hundred miles. "If once I can find the Indians," meditated ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... correspond, and what man can say more. I see visions, and am able to make them realities. I dream of a dovecote with a tiled roof, and straightway build it; I picture a gallery and a chapel and a library away from the clack of tongues, and behold there it is. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee.' To see and dream without the power of performance is heart-breaking. To perform without the gift of imagination is soul-slaying. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of pure joy; or crowds of people pressed their way, with the murmur of many, many voices. It was the humming of a bee-hive, varied with the calling of vendors, the thrumming of guitars, the nasal screaming of accordions, the clack-clack of castanets, the wailing of hand organs, all the kinds of noise that men with smoothed hair and soft white shirts can dance to, after internal baths with anything but water and preparatory to the return ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Highlands, where rock rises piled upon rock, and the impetuous cataract makes the stoutest eye reel in looking on it, to the wimpling stream that glides through some bosky dell, where wild flowers spangle the banks, driving some village mill, whose distant clack, mingling with the murmur of the stream and the song of birds from the woods, forms a concert so sweet to the lover of nature. Without an object further than amusement, Malcolm and I jogged on for the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... toilets while the train was stopped. He got up and went to the end of the car. The door was jammed. He got it open and went inside and closed the door behind him. The train was going slower, clack-clack ... clack-clack ... clack; clack ... ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... close up to the wire, stand in one spot, and in a quiet, confidential tone talk to me earnestly and gesticulate with his head for five minutes straight. I have heard senile old men run on in low-voiced, unintelligible clack in precisely the same way. The modulations of that bird's voice, its inflections and its vocabulary were wonderful. From his manner a messenger from Mars might easily have inferred that the bird believed that every word of the discourse was ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... rounds, and the gripper-iron slipped on the wet chain or grew hot in the sun, as she heard the clack of the wheel and the soft slow grind of the boat's broad lip on the pebbles, Grace Allen said over and over to herself, "It is so long, only so ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... makes an impression on a fool. Now, I want you to run down there, like a good child; that is, if your aunts can spare you. Run down and comfort the little fellow, who has been badly scared by the clack of tongues and the smarting of the tobacco-juice. Imbeciles! cods' heads! scooped-out pumpkins!" exclaimed the doctor, in a sudden frenzy. "A—I don't mean that. Comfort him up, child, and sing ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... wise, and this is just what we Russians lack. Oh, if we could educate our unusual powers and abilities, if we had the will to apply them actively in our chaotic, untidy existence, which is terribly blocked up with all kinds of idle clack and home-spun philosophy, and which gets more and more saturated with silly arrogance and puerile bragging. Somewhere deep in the Russian soul—no matter whether it is the "master's" or the muzhik's—there lives a petty and squalid demon of passive anarchism, who ...
— The Shield • Various
... colony is very active and thriving and growing fast, many other branches of industry have sprung up, so that the hiss of the saw and the ring of the anvil, the clatter of the water-mill, and the clack of the loom, may be heard in all parts ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... for that, of any thing that the devil and his wicked instruments can do against us, for we daily fight against him in a hundred other ways, and therefore as a valiant captain affrays no more being at the combat, nor stays from his purpose for the rummishing shot of a cannon, nor the small clack of a pistolet; not being certain what may light on him; even so ought we boldly to go forward in fighting against the devil without any greater terror, for these his rarest weapons, than the ordinary, whereof we ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the widow's daily paper which, by the way, he largely depended on for the news. Silence reigned for a while, save for the rustle of the sheet. The click-clack of the widow's knitting needles, and the rapid plying of Cicely's brush, were varied at last by the girl surreptitiously pulling a note out of her ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Clack, n. [clac] Ruido continuo y agudo; zumbido; parlera; charlataneria. Nakapangingil; hagint; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... to see a mowing-machine. You may think that was queer. But you see, it was summer now. And down in the valley Farmer Green was making hay as fast as ever he could. Early and late there sounded far up the mountainside the click-clack-click-clack of Farmer Green's mowing-machine. ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... "Clack—clack!" they went, the unmistakable sound of an automatic pistol or pistols, then a police whistle shrieked, and P. C. Habit broke into a run in the direction of the sound, blowing his own whistle ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, while the old man, with a look ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... Dawn was on the road, Far from my side, so silently he went, Catching his golden helmet as he ran, And hast'ning on along the dun straight way, Where old men's sabots now began to clack And withered women, knitting, led their cows, On, on to call the men of Kitchener Down to their coasts,—I shouting after him: "O Dawn, would you had let the world sleep on Till all its armament were turned to rust, Nor waked it to this day of hideous ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for," said Marilla shortly. "You and Diana walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don't think you're very badly off to see ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not sing loud, and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even Travis began to hum the words, but at that, Condy stopped ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... little buckhorse, if Nancy was there, 'Twas pleasure to look at, 'twas music to hear: But now that she's off, I can see it run past, And still as it murmurs do nothing but blast. Must you be so cheerful, while I go in pain? Stop your clack, and be damn'd t'ye, and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... his comfort, stone deaf, and could not hear her vituperation, and of a parish girl of twelve, to do the indoor work, who had been so used to be scolded all her life, that she minded the noise no more than a miller minds the clack of his mill, or than people who live in a churchyard mind the sound of the church bells, and would probably, from long habit, have felt some miss of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the way, there was small danger, so long as Mrs. Deborah continued in this life. ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... hand in hers as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer—the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk—were tuned to the harmony of the moment ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the country. I'll bet you don't talk at all but send little clicks, dots and dashes.... I'm right aren't I?" The foot shuffling and rising buzz from the adepts was a sure sign that he was hitting close. "I have an idea for you, I think I'll invent the telephone. Instead of the old clikkety-clack how would you like to really talk across the country? Speak into a gadget here and have your voice come out at the far end of ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... itself, which strengthens by using; And how that happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again. My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, —Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... preternatural gnarring, growling and screeching, which attended as running bass, there began, in a horrid, semi-articulate, unearthly voice, this song: "Once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I'm meeserable! Clack-clack-clack, gnarr-r-r, whuz-z: Once I was hap-hap-happy, but now I'm meeserable!"—Rest, rest, perturbed spirit;—or indeed, as the good old Doctor said: My dear fellow, it isn't of the slightest consequence! But no; the perturbed spirit could not rest; and to the neighbours, fretted, affrighted, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the clack of the three lines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now for a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... find Willy Wagtail," said the Kangaroo. "The chances are Click-i-ti-clack, his big cousin who lives in the bush, will be able to tell us where to find him; for he doesn't care for the bush, and lives almost entirely with Humans, and the queer creatures they have brought into the country now-a-days. We may ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... he roared, his anger lifting his voice high above the grumble and the sharp clack of the place. "I'll ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... would have been worse if we had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson. But this is what I am coming to: you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack. Now, take a warning from me, and don't let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips. I did all the shooting, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the eternal God, if you open your lips to a soul, I'll shoot you like a dog or a cannibal! Remember that, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the sensitive ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Republic. There was so little to pay in taxes, and we knew how to manage the black folk; but now I am English, I am English. I know the English Government means good money and safety, and if there isn't a Raad (assembly) now, well, what does it matter? Almighty, how they used to talk there!—clack, clack, clack! just like an old black koran (species of bustard) at sunset. And where did they run the waggon of the Republic to—Burghers and those damned Hollanders of his, and the rest of them? Why, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... weaving, auntie," says the little girl, working away, while the loom went clickety clack, ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Eastern mourning, and He put them all forth, taking with Him only the father and mother of the damsel, and Peter with James and John. When Peter goes into the upper room, where Tabitha is lying, there are the usual noise of lamentation and the clack of many tongues, extolling the virtues of the dead woman. He remembers how Christ had gone about His miracle, and he, in his turn, 'put them all forth.' Mark, who was Peter's mouthpiece in his Gospel, gives us the very Aramaic words which our Lord employed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... if you will have fewer orders in a commonwealth, you will have more; for where she is not perfect at first, every day, every hour will produce a new order, the end whereof is to have no order at all, but to grind with the clack of some demagogue. Is he providing already for his golden thumb? Lift up your heads; away with ambition, that fulsome complexion of a statesman, tempered, like Sylla's, with blood and muck. 'And ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... [sitting down beside her and beginning to shred rushes she gives him.] — If I didn't talk I'd be destroyed in a short while listening to the clack you do be making, for you've a queer cracked voice, the Lord have mercy on you, if it's fine to look on you ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... Academy in Wilbraham. Jenny was coming back ere long, and Mary's step was light and buoyant as she tripped singing about the house, unmindful of Miss Grundy's oft-expressed wish that "she would stop that clack," or of the anxious, pitying eyes Sal Furbush bent upon her, as day after day the faithful old creature rocked ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... The cloaked figures moved silently, swiftly, seldom in pairs, without speech, with footfall scarcely audible. Now and again Manvers heard the throb of a guitar, now and again, with sudden clamour, the clack of castanets. But such noises stopped on the instant, and the traffic was resumed—whatever it ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead them: but whosoever believes none of their fabling, he is free on the strength of this, and can do ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Job contending with the devil I saw It did my wonder, not my pity draw; For I concluded that without some trick, A saint at any time could match old Nick. Next came a fiercer fiend upon his back, I mean his spouse, stunning him with her clack, But still I could not pity him, as knowing A crab tree cudgel soon would send her going. But when the quack engaged with Job I spy'd, The Lord have mercy on poor Job I cry'd. What spouse and Satan did attempt in vain The quack will compass with his murdering pen, And on a dunghill leave poor ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... said well: for cravenhood it were Befitting man of straw, not warrior true, With whom so bright a lady deigned to pair, So wonderous sweet and full of nectarous dew, To clack like a poor cuckow to the fair, Hanging his coward wing, when he should woo, Shaping her speech to this in wary mode, My sister that she was ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... around the street lamps and drew a veil before the shop windows. Far away I heard the rattle of the elevated and the never-ceasing hum of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, but, save for these reminders of the city's life, the silence of the street was broken only by the click-clack of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... ill-buried, and the wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beat against the walls to the level of the window-slits and spattered its water upon the captive. At intervals the bell of a passing steamer, the clack of its paddle-wheels cut short the reflections of poor Tartarin, as evening, gray and gloomy, fell into the dungeon and seemed to ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... moved about, getting dinner on the table, Will sat with gloomy face, listening to the "clack" of the old man. The room was a poor little sitting room, with furniture worn and shapeless; hardly a touch of pleasant color, save here and there a little bit of Agnes's handiwork. The lounge, covered with calico, was rickety; the rocking chair ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... an exclamation. "Par dieu!" I said. "Yes, I had forgotten that. I think he was. I remember I heard his foot go cluck—clack, cluck—clack as he ran." ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... when a hawk's in air! I must have snoozed; yet, I caught the gabble. There'll be A clatter all day now, with two women's tongues, Clack-clack against each other, in the house— Two pendulums in one clock. Lucky I'm deaf. But, I remember. Give me back the bairn. Nay: this is not the wench. I want Jim's bride— The mother of his daughter. Judith, lass, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... Then because they hadn't gobbled us up here, what did the French Gover'ment do? They clapped a lot of 'em in irons and sent 'em away to South America, and my father with 'em. That's why we heard neither click nor clack of him all this time. He broke free a year ago. Then he fell sick. When he got well he set sail for Jersey, was wrecked off the Ecrehos, and everybody knows the rest. Diantre, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... about to replace the empty pot, when he heard the click-clack of a door behind him. He looked round, and saw the Superior, who had unlocked the door, and come to restore the boy to liberty. Oh, unhappy day! When the Abbe found the prisoner stealing his precious preserves, he became furious. "What! plundering ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... myself into one of the cribs appropriated to passengers, wishing him a good night. He put my coat down in the crib beneath, and as he could no longer hold the button, he laid hold of the side of the crib, and continued his incessant clack. At last I turned my back to him, and made no answer, upon which he made a retreat, and when I awoke the next morning, I found that he was too ill to spout politics, although as he progressed, he spouted ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a fellow walk Up or down the street and back, How you nod and wink and talk, Hurry-skurry, cluck and clack!— 'What, I wonder, does he lack Here about?'—'There's something wrong!' Till the poor man's made a song For the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... terrified yelp, Nuwell turned and raced back down the side corridor at top speed. They heard the clack-clack of his heels on the stone floor, fading in ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... and some folks are always a-dropping in, and a-setting theirselves down, and a clack-clacking till a body can't get a bit of peace! And the things they say! Eh? Miss Ruth, the things I have heard folks say, a setting as it might be there, in poor Eccles his old chair by the chimley, as ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon. Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty times more than I had said: she frowned and made him signs: but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it. -The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a numerous sect:—but, when I left a triumphant party in England, I did not come hither to be at the head of a fashion. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the great city! How strangely and deadly quiet! The heels of my two companions, and my own, made a click-clack down the pavements, as though we were walking through silent halls. Could this be Paris—this city of shuttered shops and barred windows and deserted avenues? There were no treasures displayed in the Rue de la Paix. Not a diamond glinted behind the window panes. Indeed, there were no windows visible, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Clack! Clack! The electrically controlled lock of the door was opening. Only Wilcox knew the wave combination. Wasil felt a chill of apprehension as the door opened and Scar Balta strode in. He was fully armed, dressed in the military uniform; but the former colonel was now wearing on his shoulder straps ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... for presuming to obscure the glory of the Roi Soleil, the thing is partly ludicrous, partly melancholy. One remembers that agreeable Bohemian, who at a symposium once interrupted his host by crying, "Man o' the hoose, gie us less o' yer clack and mair o' yer Jairman wine!" Only, in human respect and other, we phrase it: "Oh, dear M. de Balzac! give us more Eugenie Grandets, more Pere Goriots, more Peaux de Chagrin, and don't talk about ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... till we reached a narrow path which led us into a thick wood, where we soon became completely bewildered. On a sudden, after wandering about a considerable time, we heard the noise of water, and presently the clack of a wheel. Following the sound, we arrived at a low stone mill, built over a brook; here we stopped and shouted, but no answer was returned. "The place is deserted," said Antonio; "here, however, is a path, which, if we follow it, will doubtless lead ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... quite moped during the weeks that followed, for he was not even allowed to come into the kitchen for a comforting cup of tea as of old. "And if anybody can't have a bit of a clack sometimes," groaned poor Jabez, "nor a cup of tea neither, why he might so well be dumb to once. I've ackshally got to talk to the 'orses and the cat to keep my powers of speech from ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... an hour Black Bruin watched the stranger diving and reappearing. Then the great beast swam ashore, shook himself and went crashing off through the woods, his hoofs keeping time in a rhythmic clack, a-clack, clack. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a bombardment upon ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... wilderness, we are conjuring up cities and threading the continent with steel, we are feeding the world on the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clear and opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with its harvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breaking sod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows of umber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... ladies enveloped in warm woollen cloaks, holding up their petticoats, and the gentlemen all wrapped in their cloaks, or montecristos, with their trousers well turned up, breaking the silence of the night by the loud clack of their wooden shoes. For at the time of which we speak there were few that despised this comfortable shoe of the country, unless it were some new-fledged medical student from Valladolid, who considered himself above such old-fashioned things, or some fanciful young lady, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... time they were on their way. They laughed and talked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a cheerful ringing accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating than the hollow, regular ring and click-clack of good hoofs going well over a fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the junior assistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased by the prospect of seeing "this delightful and unusual girl." He had heard stories of her, as had Lord Westholt. He knew of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the rain ... death himself ... Death in the savage sunlight ... skeletal death ... I hear the clack of his feet, Clearly on stones, softly in dust, Speeding among the trees with whistling breath, Whirling the leaves, tossing his hands from waves ... Listen! the immortal footsteps ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... shaking funnels roar, with the Peter at the fore, And the fenders grind and heave, And the derricks clack and grate, as the tackle hooks the crate, And the fall-rope whines through the sheave; It 's 'Gang-plank up and in,' dear lass, It 's 'Hawsers warp her through!' And it 's 'All clear aft' on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, We're ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... to Gravesend and the common lodging-house, and a weary, sad, and very anxious man rose up from his place by the fire when the clickety-clack of the crutch sounded on ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... has a taste for busy celebrities who eat their dinner without thought of the cookery, and regard their fair neighbours much as the diners think of the band in a restaurant. She chose her company with care, and if at her table there was not the busy clack of a fluent conversation, there was always the possibility of bons mots and the off-chance of a State secret. So to have dined with the Montrayners became a boast in a small social set, and to the unilluminate the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... no more fer Young," he retorted. "I ain't goin' to have my woman keepin' house fer no professor, an' ye can make up yer mind to it 'out no further clack." In one bound, Sandy rounded the table. "If ye won't do what I tell ye, then, I'll make ye wish ye had. Ye throwed up at me once, ye brat, ye, I never had no kisses from ye! After today ye won't be ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... whole, has for base a cast-iron reservoir; A, to the top of which is fixed the pump properly so-called, B, as well as the clack box, A, and safety valve. The pump is placed opposite an upright, D, whose top serves as a guide to the prolongation, E, of the piston rod. This latter is traversed by a pivot, a (Fig 19), on which is mounted a lever, F, whose outer extremity is articulated with a connecting rod, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals, I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty: and his vse was, to put a ducket in her Clack-dish; the Duke had Crochets in him. Hee would be drunke too, that let ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on the floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his breath and clack his teeth like ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was a silence on the stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That's office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... across a continent, hearing the drumming clack of car wheels and rail joint ninety-six hours on end, acutely conscious that every hour of the ninety-six put its due quota of miles between the known and the unknown, may be either an adventure, a bore, or a calamity, depending altogether upon the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the rising bell, and instantly the girls arose and a bustle of low converse and the rustle of dresses and clack of shoes on the polished floor made up the usual confusion of sounds as the girls separated for their classrooms. Nearly four hundred girls manage to make ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack." ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... bower might sleep or sing,[6] Nor dread the adder's tooth, nor scorpion's sting. With omens oft I strove to warn thy swains, Omens, the types of thy impending chains. I sent the magpie from the British soil, With restless beak thy blooming fruit to spoil; To din thine ears with unharmonious clack, And haunt thy holy walls in white and black. What else are those thou seest in bishop's gear, Who crop the nurseries of learning here; Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate, Devour the church, and chatter to the state? As you grew more degenerate ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the damp cold or the burning heat, she might be seen coming quickly down the steep hill from Haworth every morning clack, clack, in her wooden shoes, with her child in her arms. In the evening her pace was slower, for she was tired, and the road was hard to climb, and the child, generally asleep, weighed heavily. ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... never get up along the Boyne at this rate. I went along the south side and, hearing the cheery clack of a loom, went into a cottage to see the weaver, a woman. She was weaving canvas for stiffening for coats. Could make threepence a yard, which was better pay a good deal than the Antrim weavers of fine linen make. She was much exercised in her mind against ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and presently there ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... the river—'" Catty sang as she went to and fro between the kitchen and the scullery. Catty was happy now that Maggie had gone and she had only you and Jesus with her in the kitchen. Through the open door you could hear the clack of the hatchet and the thud on the stone flags as Roddy, with slow, sorrowful strokes, chopped wood ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... summer of 1834, and in the city of New York. They were ushered in by the breaking up of an anti-slavery celebration on the Fourth of July by the clack and roar of several hundred young rowdies, gathered for the purpose. Their success but whetted the appetite of the spirit of mischief for other ventures against the Abolitionists. As a consequence New York was in a more or less disturbed state from the fourth to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... tried to hide from Bram any visible betrayal of the fact that every nerve up and down his spine was pricking him, like a pin. From Bram's throat there shot forth at the pack a sudden sharp clack of Eskimo, and with it the long whip ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... corridor there was some light—dim phosphorescence from the Martian night-rock lining the walls and tiling the floor. He walked swiftly, cursing the clack-clack his heels made on the ringing stone. When he reached the end of the corridor he ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... him less than any of the rest, and her first amusement was keeping silence to punish him for complaining of clack; but he explained that he did not mean quiet, sensible conversation—he only referred to those foolish women's raptures over the gabble they had been hearing at ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... she, giving a clack to her needles,—pleased enough though, I warrant you, and turning a very pretty pink about the cheeks for a four-years' wife. Seeing as how she was always a lady to me, and a true one, and a gentle, though ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... person becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren, who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house, where the worthy bourgeoise, frightened by your threatening step and the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... denticulations for petals and the two bright red dots, the stigmata at the bottom, for stamens. When the grubs, pressed one against the other, with their heads downwards in the fetid soup, make an unbroken shoal, the sight of those breathing cups incessantly opening and closing, with a little clack like a valve, almost makes one forget the horrors of the charnel yard. It suggests a carpet of tiny Sea anemones. The maggot ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... aim, and could make or wait for it; and it was big and real. Other men crowed or fumbled after petty and pinch-beck ends; impossible rhetorical republicanisms; vain senatorial prestiges; —or pleasure pure and simple—say rather, very complex and impure. Let them clack, let them fumble! Caesar would do things and get things done. He wore the whole armor of his greatness, and could see no chink or joint in it through which a hostile dagger might pierce. Even his military victories were won by some greater than mere military greatness.—Karma, perhaps, remembering ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... He had hardly done so when another man came running up, almost breathless—"Chief! They are at hand."—"Good: vamoose."—"Again 'vamoose'", grumbled Dentatsu openly.[24] "Why such strange words; and at least why not explain them?"—"Ah! Ha! A noisy priest; these clerics can do nothing but clack, clack, like a parcel of geese or women. Even the best of them—who thus consorts with Jimbei. Remember, Bo[u]zu—silence, or the Go Shukke Sama finds Nirvana—not Gion; or was it Chion." With a silent ferocious laugh, or expression ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were in the contemplation of the mighty ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... it. That scene in the Chinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll find to rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl" of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarling trumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with "Landy," ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... rumble of voices belonging to the unseen sailors; and the click-clack of oars working in the rowlocks also began ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to mend, eh!" he gruffly interposed. "So Carnac's been here! Putting up his independent clack, eh? He leaves his old father to struggle as best he may, and doesn't care a damn. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
