"Cracked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scattered. As no one gave the usual agonized yell of a prisoner when shot, we supposed the ball had not taken effect. We could hear the sentinel ramming down another cartridge, hear him "return rammer," and cock his rifle. Again the gun cracked, and again there was no sound of anybody being hit. Again we could hear the sentry churning down another cartridge. The drums began beating the long roll in the camps, and officers could be heard turning the men out. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... The shafts of light from the machine's tube ceased; creamy liquid dribbled out from the cracked dome, and, as it met the air, frothed into billows of dense gray smoke. In seconds, the room was choked with a thick, foggy vapor that obscured every object in it as well as the blackest ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... took Miss Dearsley's hand in his brown, ragged, cracked paw, and kissed it—which is offence number three against the proprieties. But then you know the soldiers used to kiss ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... the earth gan to tremble! Together they charged as if heaven would fall! First they let fly, exceedingly quick darts all as thick as the snow down falleth; stones they let afterwards sternly wind through the air. Then cracked spears; shivered spears,—helms rolled, noble men fell;—burnies brake in pieces, blood outflowed;—the fields were discoloured, standards fell! Wounded knights over all wandered over the weald, and sixty hundred there were trodden to death by horses! Knights there ...
— Brut • Layamon
... soluble in water, and which was probably made from the gum of some kind of acacia. It was not always used in the same manner. Some painters varnished the whole surface, while others merely glazed the ornaments and accessories, without touching the flesh-tints or the clothing. This varnish has cracked from the effects of age, or has become so dark as to spoil the work it was intended to preserve. Doubtless, the Egyptians discovered the bad effects produced by it, as we no longer meet with it after the close ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... "He is a cracked brain that will go and drown himself," said a frequenter of the place. He looked round about at the other players, who all ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... nights, I used to steal a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... Reddy cracked his whip without producing any effect upon the patient steed, but, after much coaxing, Bob succeeded in starting him again, while Toby bounced up and down much like a kernel of corn on a griddle, such a decided ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it were on his face, and changed to a nervous grin the sort of grin men wear when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to realise what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the drop-side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and it was giving way under her. 'What are you doing?' said the Man's Wife. The Tertium ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... police were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... stepped up to the old man and whispered something in his ear. The wrinkled face cracked into a hideous grin that showed his ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... was Gama; cracked and small his voice, But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind On glassy water drove his cheek in lines; A little dry old man, without a star, Not like a king: three days he feasted us, And on the fourth I spake of why we came, And my bethrothed. ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... rainy season was over, and just after he had finished the fence round his tent, one day when Robinson was at work in the cave, all of a sudden the earth began to fall from the roof, and the strong props he had put in cracked in a way which frightened him terribly. At the same time there was a curious moaning, rumbling noise, that he could not understand. He rushed out, and so afraid was he that the roof was falling in, and that he should be buried, that he got over the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... curiosities that have already been discovered; a library containing the fine works of Mazois, of Raoul Rochette, of Gell, of Zahn, of Overbeck, of Breton, etc., on Pompeii, enables the student to consult them in Pompeii itself; workshops lately opened are continually busy in restoring cracked walls, marbles, and bronzes, and one may there surprise the artist Bramante, the most ingenious hand at repairing antiquities in the world, as likewise my friend, Padiglione, who, with admirable patience and minute fidelity, is ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... was afraid you were going to pinch them all. I'll tell you. It was easy. I piped the Magpie off to a chap named Kenleigh having the bonds up there in his rooms in an apartment house. I couldn't crack Kenleigh's safe myself, but it was nuts for the Magpie—see? He cracked the safe. I was with him, and I copped that near-diamond pin of his, and left it there so there wouldn't be any guessing as to who pulled off the job, and then we beat it back to his place to divide—and I beaned him. I wasn't looking into ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... His whip cracked suddenly, and the lash leapt serpentlike into the air, to descend and coil itself about La Boulaye's head and face. A cry broke from the young man, as much of pain as of surprise, and as the lash was drawn back, he clapped his hands to his seared face. But again he felt it, cutting ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the sheath; he was over-matched, for the giant was possessed; but yet he reached out, caught his sword, and struck the giant his death-blow. Then the giant cast his hands about Cormac, and gripped his sides so hard that the ribs cracked, and he fell over, and the dead giant on top of him, so that he could not stir. Far and wide his folk were looking for him, but at last they found him and carried him aboard ship. Then ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... breakfast consisted of ham and eggs and champagne. Yes, sir; don't think Aunt Mollie had overlooked the fashionable drink. Hadn't she been reading all her life about champagne being served at wedding breakfasts? So there it was in a new wash boiler, buried in cracked ice. And while the women was serving the ham and eggs and hot biscuits at the long table built out in the side yard, Uncle Henry exploded several bottles of this wine and passed it to one and all, and a toast ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... have cracked all at once, their easy-going, timid, incapable guardians having allowed things to take their course. Society, accordingly, disintegrated and a pell-mell, is turned into a turbulent, shouting crowd, each ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... agreed in one thing—they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... barrel of beer take two bushels of wheat just cracked in the mill, and some of the flour sifted out of it; when your water is scalding hot, put it into your mash-vat, there let it stand till you can see your face in it; then put your malt upon that, and do not stir it; let it stand two hours and an half; ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... sheet of paper. But she was burning up with fever; the quill cracked in her nervous fingers. "There," she said, throwing it down after a few seconds, "I don't know what's the matter with me to-day. I'll write it for ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... functions. The choir ceased from wrangling, the Sunday School plucked up courage and flourished like a green bay tree. She managed the deacons, she braced up the missionary societies, she captivated the parish, she cheered the depressed and depressing old ladies and cracked jokes with the invalids. ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that's positively invaluable; a Zeiss lens, in perfect condition. I've got several good photographic outfits from time to time, but the lenses are always cracked by heat,—the things usually come down on fire. This one I got out of a plane I brought down up at Bar-le-Duc, and there's not a scratch on it; simply ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... 39th Regiment! What visions are conjured up when this name comes on the scene! Cracked and gaping plains, desolate, desert and abandoned of life, scorched beneath a lurid sun of burning fire, waterless, hopeless, relentless, and accursed: that is the picture he draws of the great interior. He had followed ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... found a perfect nest of small servants' rooms, with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane-bottomed chairs, chests of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs, small windows, and badly plastered walls—a depressing and dismal region which they were glad ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... it,—"Live! live! he is here!" I still chatted with Leonora and made her laugh, and the child for the first time thoroughly liked me. We were finishing our dessert, when we heard John's knock. We allowed him to come in for a moment, and gave him some almonds, which, he leisurely cracked and ate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... little girls and the two mothers got off the train at a little country station. Mr. White came to meet them. He and Billy, the hired man, piled all the trunks and bags in a wagon. Then Billy climbed up on the high seat and cracked his whip, saying, "Get-up! Get-up!" The horses pulled, the dust flew, and away the wagon went. Then Mr. White packed the mothers and the little girls into his automobile and away they also went ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... eyes were luminous with belief. Lizzie had smiled, and shaken her head slightly, looking at the battered rubbish in the bag—the little, tarnished mirrors, one of them cracked; the two small lenses, scratched and dim; the handful of rusty cogs and wheels. With what passion he had dreamed that he would see that which it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive! He began ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... 'called' from parish to parish, one of the churchwardens of X complained to the churchwardens of Y that his late importation from the Y pulpit was not very satisfactory. 'And yet,' he said, 'you all cracked him up enormously.' 'Yes,' replied the churchwarden of Y, 'and you will have to crack him up too before you get ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... waited long in the darkness, and heard at last the slapping and shuffling of shoes along the pavement within, as the portress and another nun came to let him in. Then there were faint rays of light from their little lamp, quivering through the cracks of the old weather-beaten door upon the cracked marble steps on which Sor Tommaso was standing. A thin voice asked who was there, and Sor Tommaso answered that he was the doctor. Then he heard a little colloquy in suppressed tones between the two nuns. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the only time that I have ever seen my father weep. But as the stout timbers cracked and groaned under the strain it seemed to him as if the ship that he loved was calling piteously to him for help that he could not give, and it was too much for him. The gale that was yet raging overhead and the sea that was still terrible in the wide waters of the river ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... piano, too, was thrumming a waltz in the parlor, and two or three couples were throwing embracing, slowly-twirling shadows on the windows. Over in the bar-and billiard-rooms the click of the balls and the refreshing rattle of cracked ice told suggestively of the occupation of the inmates. Keeping on beyond these distracting sounds, he slowly climbed a long, gradual ascent to the "bench," or plateau above the wooded point on which were grouped the glistening white buildings of the pretty summer resort, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... thought that Mercy had heard his unuttered prayer. The air and sea were intense darkness, till a light as intense for one moment annihilated it, and the succeeding darkness seemed shattered with the sharp reports of the thunder that cracked without reverberation. He who had shrunk from battle with his fellowmen, rushed to the mainmast, threw himself on his knees, and stretched forth his arms in speechless energy of supplication; but the storm passed ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... until six months after the wedding. You'll be back by that time, thirstier than ever. By the way, that reminds me: the gang's going to give you a blow-out at the club. Kind of an Auld lang syne business, 'champagny-vather an' cracked ice,' chimes at midnight, won't go home till morning, all good fellows and the rest of it. Edgington spoke to you about it, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... or Clematis, it is customary to cut a slight gash on the underside of each limb to be laid down, just cutting inside of the bark; this will arrest the flow of sap, and new roots will form at this point. Where vines are layered, such as the Grape, a simple twisting of the vine until the bark is cracked, will answer in place of cutting, and we believe it is just as well. It should be understood, however, that in layering, the entire shoot is not to be covered; a good portion of the tip of the shoot should be in sight, and only the ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... only one person, that is, the sacristan's wife, a big, hard-faced woman with a faint mustache and a wart on her chin, who sat by the great column near the door dispensing holy water out of a cracked saucer and whining for pennies. Nothing escaped the hawklike eyes of Mother Bonneton, and now, with growing curiosity, she watched the scene between Coquenil and the candle seller. What interest could a great detective have in this girl, Alice, whom she and her husband had taken in as a ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... their heads, a perfect little shower of it fell all about them. The animals, too, struggling to their feet out of the little mounds that had formed around them, were covered with a thick coat of grayish dust. It was a sorry-looking party. With red-rimmed eyes, cracked, parched lips and swollen tongues, they looked as if they had been dragged through a ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... properly there? Would any of the most besotted followers of this pretender retain a rag of belief in His Messiahship if He was crucified? Could it be possible that, if there was a God at all, He should leave a man that really trusted in Him, not to say who was really His Son, to die thus? A cracked mirror gives a distorted image. The facts were seen, but their relation was twisted. If we will take the guidance of these gibes, and see what is the real explanation to the anomaly that they suggest, then we shall find that the taunts turn to Him for a testimony, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the sea-wall among the boulders and howled so dismally. She leaped down after and caught me to her in the wildest distress, and even when I stopped howling could not seem to put me down. Indeed, she held me so tight that if any of my bones had been cracked by the tumble she must have finished by breaking them. The pathos of her efforts to romp with us as in happier days was lost upon me, I am happy to say. Nor did I, recalling to her what Braddish had said of robbers being inevitably caught, realize that I was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... "Or cracked me rib," the captain growled. "But I didn't, so what's the use of worryin' about things that didn't happen. I'm here, with nuthin' worse than a sprained ankle. You an' Flo had better go to bed. I'm all right now. I want to stay right by this ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die[1107].—I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it: but the superstructure did ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... boot-hose for the laird, which were annually presented at Christmas with great form. The aged sibyls blessed the bridal bed of the laird when he married, and the cradle of the heir when born. The men repaired her ladyship's cracked china, and assisted the laird in his sporting parties, wormed his dogs, and cut the ears of his terrier puppies. The children gathered nuts in the woods, and cranberries in the moss, and mushrooms on the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... conducted by himself. She afterwards fell into extreme poverty, and at the age of about seventy (!!!!), was induced to come forward to sing again at the oratorios. "I had the curiosity to go, and heard her sing He was despised and rejected of men in The Messiah. Of course her voice was cracked and trembling, but it was easy to see her school was good; and it was a pleasure to observe the kindness with which she was received and listened to; and to mark the animation and delight with which she seemed to hear again the music in which she had ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... baskets, saw the sedan-chair and saw the lady in it. Under black hair, which made to tower high on her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very smart face, a brightly red mouth, like a freshly cracked fig, eyebrows which were well tended and painted in a high arch, smart and watchful dark eyes, a clear, tall neck rising from a green and golden garment, resting fair hands, long and thin, with wide golden ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... pipe with its cane stem and knocked it on the heel of his boot, then he put it into his mouth and blew through it till the liquid nicotine cracked audibly. "I've been huntin'," he said, dryly. "In my day an' time I've been on all sorts o' hunts, from bear an' deer down to yaller-hammers, but I waited till I wus in my sixty-fifth year—goin' on sixty-six—'fore I started out huntin' ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... pint of cracked oatmeal in a quart of milk till tender; add a pound of grated bread, pennyroyal, leeks, a little onion cut small, mace, pepper, and salt, to your judgment. Melt some of the leaf of the fat, and cut some of the fat small, according to the quantity made at once; and ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... particularly desirous of supplying myself with as much of it as I could procure, because most of the preventatives we had brought out were either used, or spoiled by keeping. By the time we had prepared a hogshead of it, the ship's copper was discovered to be very thin, and cracked in many places. This obliged me to desist, and to give orders that it should be used as sparingly for the future as possible. It might, perhaps, be an useful precaution for those who may hereafter be engaged in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... to understand he had belonged to her five years, I inquired if he knew Lieutenant Bowling? "Know Lieutenant Bowling!" said he, "Odds my life! and that I do; and a good seaman he is as ever stepped upon forecastle, and a brave fellow as ever cracked biscuit—none of your Guinea pigs, nor your fresh water, wish-washy, fair-weather fowls. Many a taugt gale of wind have honest Tom Bowling and I weathered together. Here's his health, with all my heart: wherever he is, a-loft, or a-low, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... speaking with contempt or depreciation of the tadpole tails. Without their aid most of us bourgeois socialist frogs would never have been able to get out of our old conservative shells. It was the utopianism of our tails, in most cases, that first cracked the shell. ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... nightfall, I came to the chateau of Murol. The old fortress, an enormous tower standing on a peak in the midst of a large valley, where three valleys intersect, rears its brown, uneven, cracked surface into the sky; it is round, from its large circular base to the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... brought back, having driven many miles with the stream. In the mean time, I sent another party to fetch the guanicoes which our people had shot the night before; but they found nothing left except the bones, the tygers having eaten the flesh, and even cracked the bones of the limbs to come at the marrow. Several of our people had been fifteen miles up the country in search of fresh water, but could not find the least rill: We had sunk several wells to a considerable depth where the ground appeared moist, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... and went on: 'Now it so happened that the house opposite to the one taken by the mechanician was peculiar. It was a tall narrow building, wholly unornamented, the walls covered with a layer of white plaster cracked and soiled by time. I seem to see that house now! Six stone steps led up to the door, with a rusty iron railing on each side, and under these steps were others which went down to a cellar—in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... house the boys were hurrying into their "war togs"— which is, being interpreted, their best clothes. There was a nervous scramble over the cracked piece of a bar mirror—which had a history— and cries of "Get out!" "Let me there a minute, can't yuh?" and "Get up off ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... care,' answered the Shifty Lad. 'I never spent Hallowe'en yet without cracking a nut'; and he cracked one. ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 'fractious,' and ready to turn on his companion for every remark he made. Roger understood the case by instinct, as it were, and bore it all with his usual sweetness of temper. They entered the house by the front door; it lay straight on their line of march. On the old cracked yellow-marble slab, there lay a card with Lord Hollingford's name on it, which Robinson, evidently on the watch for their return, hastened out of his pantry ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Captain Reed. "Your apprentice, Kraybo. He broke down during a Misfit attack on the way here; he was never cut out to be a Master Guesser, and even though he tried to kill you to get the job, he couldn't handle it. He cracked completely as soon as he tried to co-ordinate alone. We've actually missed ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... assemble, all silent, at the place appointed. Laid on its bier, covered with sable pall, and borne in solemn state, the corpse (i.e. the book) is carried with slow procession, with the moaning music of flutes and fifes, the screaming of fiddles, and the thumping and mumbling of a cracked drum, to the open grave or the funeral pyre. A gleaming line of blazing torches and twinkling lanterns wave along the quiet streets and through the opened fields, and the snow creaks hoarsely under ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of the skirt. The next morning when I got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with the dinner dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard Aunt ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... compared to Mozart, and Beethoven unbeautiful. Some day, and there are portents on the musical horizon, some day, I repeat, the reign of beauty in art will reassert its sway. Too long has Ugly been king, too long have we listened with half-cracked ear-drums to the noises of half-cracked men. Already the new generation is returning to Mozart—that is, to music for music's ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... sharp, hatchet-face, a small sunken eye, and long, loose hair, brushed back and falling over the collar of a seedy black coat. He looked like nothing in the world I have ever seen, and his pale, sallow face, and cracked, wheezy voice, were in comic keeping with his discourse. His text was: 'Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.' And addressing the motley gathering of poor whites and small-planters before him as the 'chosen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... imperfections with pitiless insistence, and the torn edges of the green paper shades that half concealed the rooms within were plainly to be seen, as well as the dismantled knocker which hung by one nail to the old cracked door. The vision of Knapp with his ear laid against this door added to the forlorn and sinister aspect of the scene, and gave to the constable, who remembered the brothers in their palmy days when they were the life and pride of the town, a by ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... his head, with rather a grim smile. "Told you once I worked in a pottery. Supposing the clay of a piece wasn't mixed right, it wasn't the dish's fault if it cracked in the firing. Just the same, it got ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... top of four stout posts previously firmly planted in the earth. Around these holes were then hung blankets, and all the cooking utensils of the deceased, pots, kettles, and pans, each with a hole punched through it, and all her crockery-ware, every piece of which was first cracked or broken, to render it useless; and then, when all was done, they left her to remain for one year, when the bones would be buried in a box in the earth directly under the canoe; but that, with all its appendages, would never be molested, ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... to scream until the sky cracked with the noise, and she had no knowledge of her journey home. She found herself sitting at the dinner-table with Helen, and heard her ask, "Don't you ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Gus Schmidt, gaily, and cracked the long whip he carried. The Canadians understood and cracked their own whips, and away went the whole party, over the fields of ice and snow, ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... arms folded and our backs bent double, and were borne jogging along by two native porters, our heads every now and then bumping up against the roof, till we couldn't help laughing and shouting out to each other to ascertain if our skulls were cracked. I suppose the natives have a mode of glueing themselves down ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... basha appeared, both driver and guard got up in a fine dark-green uniform, a spruceness it much tickled our vanity to mark. With a feeling akin to princely pride we stepped in, the driver cracked his whip, and, amid the bows of the inn household, we went off up the street. Barring the loss of an umbrella, which had happened somewhere between the time we boarded the basha on the yestereen and the hour of departure that morning, and an exhaustive but vain hunt for the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... shudder ran through her frame—the ice of artificial years cracked, and the clear stream of her woman's nature welled up to the light, as pure as when she first lay on her mother's bosom: she lifted up her eyes, and with one long look of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... noblemen's houses, with their wives and daughters, who all aped the manners of their betters in the most ridiculous way; nobody knew me and I was known to nobody, and I cut a sorry figure amongst them all, for in a company of this sort the wittiest man is the greatest fool. Everybody cracked his joke to the bride, she answered everybody, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... asked her if she would be kind enough to let me take it, as if I thought she were there for a purpose. "I'll bring you a chair," said I; and she said, "Certain, dear." And I helped her up, and I'm sure she had the good look she had coveted while I took the bowl to the window. It was badly cracked, and had been mended with putty; but the rich, dull colour of it was exquisite. One often comes across a beautiful old stray bit of china in such a place as this, and I imagined it filled with apple-blossoms or wild roses. Mrs. Wallis wished to give it to me, she said ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... my tree bears fruit, I shall sell it and buy three varas of cloth to wear in place of this cracked shell." ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... only two or three times. The little ones were already wild; they had forgotten all about our first meeting, and when I showed myself, or cracked a twig too near them, they would promptly bolt into the brush. One always ran straight away, his white flag flying to show that he remembered his lesson; the other went off zigzag, stopping at every angle of his run to look back and question me with ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... her, and he sat always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice. And he could not help but contrast it with the weak pipings and shrill quaverings of factory girls, ill-nourished and untrained, and with the raucous shriekings from gin-cracked throats of the women of the seaport towns. She enjoyed singing and playing to him. In truth, it was the first time she had ever had a human soul to play with, and the plastic clay of him was a delight to mould; ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... woman would only stamp her foot. There was that morning when your fire would not burn, and a little black child bawled with the cold and angered you; if its body is ever dug up where it was laid, the skull cracked with the billet of wood will tell the tale. You once suspected me of truantry from your charms—Quedo, quedo! exacting dame—and the pale offspring of poor Hagar you threw upon the blazing backlog, and grimly watched it burn. The pursued children whose cries you could ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... of others, and his religious disbelief, are illustrated by an incident related of him, that, having in a moment of weakness made a promise to some friends that he would offer a sacrifice to Diana, he repaired the next day to her temple, and, taking a louse from his head, cracked it upon her altar. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... at last. He stopped until the cracked bell of the chapel had done striking the Angelus, and then put on his overcoat, and went out. The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to some keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... looking at one's self early in the morning in a cracked mirror. I had no idea I had grown so old. As for Lancelot, he must have a beard. A beard? The word struck me, and without knowing why I glanced across the room at my bearded friend on the sofa. Oddly enough he was looking at me, with a half-defiant, half-sullen expression; ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... buried her nose every time, so that I feared I should next be cold in the water, seeing England from the top of a wave. Every time she rose the jib let out a hundredweight of sea-water; the sprit buckled and cracked, and I looked at the splice in the forestay to see if it yet held. I looked a thousand times, and a thousand times the honest splice that I had poked together in a pleasant shelter under Bungay Woods ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... could see not an enemy shell reached it, though when our troops were in the town of Gaza there were many crumps and woolly bears to disturb the new occupation. But all went swimmingly. It was true we had only captured the well-cracked shell of a town, but the taking of it was full of promise of greater things, and those of us who looked on the mutilated remnants of one of the world's oldest cities felt we were indeed witnesses of the beginning of the downfall of the Turkish ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... buried cities which have no history; and that on these real marvels he built up his own romances of the Great Stone City, where the captain encountered an awful race of giants with no legs, who carved stones into ornaments with clasp-knives, as the Swiss cut out pretty things in wood, and cracked the cocoa-nuts with their fingers. I am sure he invented flowers as he went along when he was telling me about the forests. He used to look round the garden (which would have satisfied any one who had not seen or heard of what the ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... later we had a little reunion in the Purdy-Pell lib'ry. Robin was holdin' some cracked ice to a lump on his forehead, and Uncle Noah was sittin' uncomf'table on the edge ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... contribution of amateurs, and in the other an Italian bravura, which she sung or rather screamed out with a thousand indescribable shruggings, contortions, and grimaces, and in a voice to which a cracked tea-kettle, or a "brazen candlestick turned," had seemed the music of the spheres. A little farther on we found two elderly gentlemen playing at see-saw; one an immense corpulent man of fifteen stone at least, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... drink to success!" cried Krag, seizing a bottle and breaking its head off between his fingers. There were no glasses, but he poured the amber-coloured wine into some cracked cups. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... own tea with me. (Takes a little paper bag of tea out of one of the slippers and crosses to MISS CAREY.) If I had struck him with the vase, I could understand his calling me "Vixen" (Beginning to weep again.)—but I only flung it at him, 'cause I cracked it by accident in the morning, and I didn't want him to find it out. He was always calling me "butter-fingers." (Sits at ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the total length of this fragment that fell was two hundred and fifty-one yards. About fifty acres of land suffered from this violent convulsion; two houses were entirely destroyed; one end of a new barn was left in ruins, the walls being cracked through the very stones that composed them; a hanging coppice was changed to a naked rock; and some grass grounds and an arable field so broken and rifted by the chasms as to be rendered for a time neither fit for the plough nor safe for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... by hungry waves. In some places they overhung their base so as to look like leaning towers that might topple over at any minute. In other parts they were scooped into niches or caverns. Here and there they were cracked in deep fissures, some of them of such width that one might enter them, if he cared to run the risk of meeting the regular tenants, who might treat him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... themselves in a large gloomy house, which likewise belonged to the cacique of Moyahua. The previous occupants had already left strong evidences in the patio, which had been converted into a manure pile. The walls, once whitewashed, were now faded and cracked, revealing the bare unbaked adobe; the floor had been torn up by the hoofs of animals; the orchard was littered with rotted branches and dead leaves. From the entrance one stumbled over broken bits of chairs and other furniture covered ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... roar between bitter laughter and pain, Urgan smote Sir Tristram with such fury that he cracked his shield in half, and then before Sir Tristram could recover himself he smote him again so that he would have killed him had not the blow by great good chance turned aside. But, turning aside as it did, it gave Sir Tristram ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... make it cheerful too; So you may view the country, which to some may be quite new. Come, take your seats, this Family Coach it can no longer wait, Or else at night,' the coachman said, 'we shall be very late.' The whip he cracked, the wheels went round, so very, very fast, The people at each other some anxious glances cast. The coachman said his horses were the steadiest in town; 'I'm sure I don't agree with him,' cried frightened Mrs. Brown. 'Take care, my dear, or I am sure you will ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... could not have spelled if she had known. She was differently and superiorly educated. In the university that life is, she had acquired encyclopedias of recondite learning. She knew that ice is not all that it is cracked up to be: that a finger in the pie is better than two in the fire, and that angels have been observed elsewhere than at Mons—learning which, as you may ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... renewed. The best lac was chosen and applied to the wire i, so as to be in good contact with it everywhere, and in perfect continuity throughout its own mass. It was not smaller than is given by scale in the drawing, for when less it frequently cracked within a few hours after it was cold. I think that very slow cooling or annealing improved its quality in this respect. The collar g was made as thin as could be, that the lac might be as wide there as possible. In order that ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... gifts would pick their way among the sketchers, and search the shops for cracked china and bits of brass. Few if any of them left without purchasing one of the famous Tilling money-boxes, made in the shape of a pottery pig, who bore on his back that remarkable legend of his ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... showed none of the old-time animation on the subject. What a different man, I mused to myself, from that enthusiastic engineering student that I used to come upon dreaming over his blue-prints. He was considered "half-cracked" in those days when he would enthuse over his undersea railroad, but his animated face was lit with inspiration. Now the light ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... engaged by a venerable chapel, which stands yet entire, except that the roof is gone. It is about sixty feet in length, and thirty in breadth. On one side of the altar is a bas relief of the blessed Virgin, and by it lies a little bell; which, though cracked, and without a clapper, has remained there for ages, guarded only by the venerableness of the place. The ground round the chapel is covered with gravestones of Chiefs and ladies; and still continues to ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... every window, and opening every door, was, as Bluebeard judiciously pointed out to his wives, fatal to their practical usefulness in society. One could not stop to chase doubts as though they were rabbits. One had no time to paint and putty the surface of Law, even though it were cracked and rotten. For the young men whose lives were cast in the generation between 1867 and 1900, Law should be Evolution from lower to higher, aggregation of the atom in the mass, concentration of multiplicity in unity, compulsion of anarchy in order; and he would ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... country. Good wine is wealth, drugged wine is not; good meat is wealth, putrid meat is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce many potters ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... all the same, and I won't tell your father you're paying court to his queen," replied Serejka, passing his tongue over his dry and cracked lips. ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... little man had in some measure recovered from his alarm, his small, squeaky, cracked voice was heard saying, "Couldn't you have held me more gently? See my little coat; you have rent and damaged it in a fine manner, you clumsy, officious things!" Then he picked up a sack of jewels, and slipped out of sight behind ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... window. He was too low down and I too much buried in foliage to see clearly. Was it the rattle? I took a hasty step downwards at the thought. Or was it the blunderbuss? In my sudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten one with my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, and sent a walnut—pop! on to Jem's hat, who had already ducked to avoid the fire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullest conviction that he had ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... you to continue to live—perhaps in the mines. But certainly, Peter the foolish, you must not yield to that present impulse. Of course, you are armed. But do not move! Two feet behind you stands an excellent shot with a pistol aimed at your backbone. Men with cracked spines do ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... two-thirds of the way they did very well, but at last coming to a steep pitch, suddenly the whole span stopped, and refused to budge an inch farther. Frantically the driver lashed and lashed, and cracked his whip, the reports resounding like a sharp fire of musketry amid the hills. It was of no avail, and had not two of the men rushed up with two huge masses of rock, which they placed behind the wheels, the waggon would have gone backwards, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... dead. I looked at his stiff body again and shuddered. The whistle of a train sounded from the valley below, and then an errand-boy passed along the road at the back of the house (for the second or third time that day) singing in a cracked voice the fragment of a popular melody, of which I am sorry to say I know ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... fled. Out in the street, he looked up at the sky. "Is there a new moon?" he asked himself, gravely. "Am I cracked? Why did I pitch into that chap? If I'm not careful, I shall get myself into trouble to-day. I wonder if Jack Seymour will lend me enough to take me to South Africa? They say that war is brewing there. That is what I want—gore, bomb-shells, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... know me,' he said to himself, as out of a sort of half melancholy mischief he glanced at his face in the little bit of cracked looking-glass which was all he had to adorn himself by. He was feeling utterly worn out and depressed—so many of his friends and companions were dead or dying—knocked down at that time quite as much by disease as by Russian bullets—in many cases the more terrible death of the two. And things ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was, I could not help gasping, "Are you enjoying your sea trip?" and she replied sepulchraily, "It isn't what it's cracked up to be." We could say no more. That time we groaned ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... merely the reflection of films, but the one hundred thousandth of an inch thick, yet they give forth oral sounds as creatures of flesh and blood. In fact every sound is produced harmoniously with the action on the screen. An iron ball is dropped and you hear its thud upon the floor, a plate is cracked and you can hear the cracking just the same as if the material plate were broken in your presence. An immaterial piano appears upon the screen and a fleshless performer discourses airs as real as those heard on Broadway. ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... Aberdeen, Mississippi. They wouldn't sell her mother because she brought fine children. I think she said they had a regular stock man. She and Aunt Polly was sold several times and together till freedom. When they got off the boat they had to walk a right smart ways and grandma's feet cracked open and bled. 'Black Mammy' wrapped her feet up in rags and greased them with hot tallow or mutton suet and told her not to cry no more, be a good girl and mind master ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... And you shall see how lively and cheerful I will be." He forced a smile that hovered on tears. "We shall be two rackety young students, every night raising a thousand devils. Gaudeamus igitur." He began to hum in his cracked hoarse voice the Burschen-lied of his early days at ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a sobbing cry, a cry in spite of himself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forward into the pit of that darkness, seated on the cross wood and holding the ropes with the clutch of death. Something cracked, something rapped smartly against a wall. He heard the pulley of the cradle hum on its rope. He heard the aeronauts shout. He felt a pair of knees digging into his back.... He was sweeping headlong through the air, falling through the air. All his ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the imperial mantle, and this indicated that the newly born infant was destined to sovereignty. Great was the rejoicing. The purple marvel was shown even to me who could but just walk. I, like a naughty boy, flung it down; the shell cracked, and the contents poured out on the pavement. My mother saw it, and her exclamation, 'Wicked child, you have murdered your brother!' was often repeated to me in after-years. It never struck me as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... morning as she first took up the elaborate silken thing, to which pale girls in hot Parisian workrooms had given so much labour of hand and head, and then caught sight of her own face and shoulders in the cracked glass upon the wall, she was seized with certain ghastly perceptions that held her there motionless in the semi-darkness, shivering amid the delicate lace and muslin which enwrapped her. Finished!—for her—all the small feminine joys. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up to the means of finding out the real turtle from the mock," said my master. "It's difficult to tell by the ring. Silver, if it's at all cracked—as lots of money is—don't ring no better than pewter; besides, people can't try every blessed bit o' tin they get in that way; some folks is offended if they do, and some ain't got no counter. As for the color, I defy any body to tell the difference. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... though he still laughed and cracked his jokes, was beginning to get sort of discouraged. But Si Perkins used to go round and cheer him up by telling him that it was bound to come his way in the end, and that when it did come it ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence, steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio, where every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... the poor. My darling mother, like a frightened dove, sheltered herself in the bosom of the princess, who pushed her away, laughing. The poor distraught girl, trembling, weeping, knelt down in the midst of that infamous room. It was St. Anne's Day; all at once the house shook, the walls cracked, cries of distress rang out in the streets. My mother was saved. It was the earthquake that destroyed half Naples. You know all about it, my lord, since your old palace is ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Half of the cracked stone came up a few inches, far enough to allow them to get their fingers underneath it. So it ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... while of the Beamish family's banter. This had set in, the evening before, as soon as he and Polly returned to the house—pacing the deck of the little steamer, he writhed anew at the remembrance. Jokes at their expense had been cracked all through supper: his want of appetite, for instance, was the subject of a dozen crude insinuations; and this, though everyone present knew that he had eaten a hearty meal not two hours previously; had been kept up till he grew stony and savage, and Polly, trying hard not to mind but ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with the laconism compulsory on him from his knowledge of the Swedish tongue, "Aland?" This was the name of the halting-place. "Intet tu," (not yet,) replied the postillion, as he took his arm from the sheepskin which surrounded his shoulders. At the same time he cracked his whip, as if to show how impatient he was to reach his halting-place. The animals, thus excited, set forth at a long gallop across that portion of the Gulf where the frequent passage of the fishermen had to a degree leveled the snow, and ascended with much difficulty a hill covered by ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hastily planted with rare shrubs and sycamores. Fragments of furniture and of the roughest of the utensils contained in the different chambers are still unearthed from among the heaps of rubbish, and the cellars especially are full of potsherds and cracked jars, on which we can still see written an indication of the reign and the year when the wine they once contained was made. Altars of massive masonry rose in the midst of the courts, on which the king or one of his ministers ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and his partner were not dancing. It was warm and they were among the lucky ones who had succeeded in getting something besides a cheque from the waiters. Two tall glasses of ginger ale with a long curl of lemon peel sepentining through the cracked ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... ball-player. I leaned over and let that block go with all my strength. It wasn't the ordinary shell-block, but a solid carving of lignum-vitae; and it fetched that lion a smash on the head that must have cracked his skull, for he sank down, then got up and wabbled, rather than walked, forward along the alley to ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... what devotion we nursed the one with the broken head, in those early days when new heads were not to be bought at the nearest shop. And even if they could have been purchased for us, would we, the primitive children of those dear, dark ages, have ever thought of wrenching off the cracked blonde head of Ethelinda and buying a new, strange, nameless brunette head, gluing it calmly on Ethelinda's body, as a small acquaintance of mine did last week, apparently without a single pang? Never! A doll had a personality in those times, and has yet, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... quiet young chap, from Sydney, except when he got drunk—which was seldom—and then he was a customer, from all round. He was cracked on the subject of spielers. He held that the population of the world was divided into two classes—one was spielers and the other was the mugs. He reckoned that he wasn't a mug. At first I thought he was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was a mug. He used ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... putting a new dissected puzzle together. Before he knew how it came about his bashfulness had vanished and he was a part of that circle. When the puzzle was completed Mary brought out a chafing-dish and a bowl of nuts, which she commanded him to "pick out" while Jack cracked them. She was going to try a new kind of candy. Later, when he disclosed the fact that he could play a little on the guitar, Norman brought out his mother's, bidding him "tune ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... this morning, Berselius was mildly cheerful. He washed and had his wound dressed, and then sat down to a miserable breakfast of cold tinned meat and cassava cakes, with water fetched from the pool in a cracked calabash. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... reply,—"by and by you see." He liked rum and biscuit, and was only to be animated by the conversation turning upon seals, or poussies, as the natives call them. Then indeed Frederick's face was wreathed in smiles, or rather its oleaginous coat of dirt cracked in divers directions, his tiny eyes twinkled, and he descanted, in his broken jargon, upon the delight of poussey with far more unction than an alderman would upon turtle. After threading the islets we struck to north-east by compass, from the northernmost rock of the group, which our guide assured ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... his desk, hiding himself from the Speaker by the soles of his boots .... After a few experiences of this sort, the Speaker threatens, in a laugh, to call the 'gemman' to order. This is considered a capital joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... their room from a man who styled it a furnished apartment, in virtue of a rickety table, a broken chair, a worn-out sheet or two, a dilapidated counterpane, four ragged blankets, and the infirm saucepan before mentioned, besides a few articles of cracked or broken crockery. For this accommodation the landlord charged ninepence per day, which sum had to be paid every night before the family was allowed to retire to rest! In the event of failure to pay they would have been turned out into the street at once, and the door padlocked. Thus the necessity ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the darkness a shriek split the night like a sudden flash of flame—a great ringing scream that cracked and swelled and stopped. With one wild effort the man hurled himself out the door and plunged through the darkness. Panting and cursing, he flashed his huge revolver—"bang! bang! bang!" it cracked into the night. The sweat poured from his forehead; the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... flat, dry sponge over knee thus held, and bandage this in place. Keep sponge and bandage wet with ice water. If no sponge is available, half fill rubber hot-water bottle with cracked ice, and lay this over knee joint. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... screams of "Perro, perro, gringo perro!" A crackling noise, a coming shadow, and forward I fell on my face, ever on the alert, ever ready. An unearthly yell and a great body flew over, fierce claws grazing me. Two balls of fire shone in the bush, but my rifle cracked and a great lion fell in its tracks. I expected my companions to meet me soon, coming my way. Instead, I found them, after my all-night's walk, snugly camped where I had left them. Don Juan explained that with God's favor they had found the water soon after I had left them. He said that ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... capable of playing in any time except dancing time, and the character of the baile, funeral and sacred music is the same. The only distinction is the addition of a continuous tremolo to the latter two, which produces the same unpleasant effect on the nerves as a comic song chanted by the shaky, cracked, piping and quavering voice of senility. As the fiddles invariably play their parts in funerals as well as on festive processions, it requires some familiarity with the customs of the country to distinguish one from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the elastic stomach-tube, some fluid should be introduced into the stomach before attempting to empty it, or a portion of the mucous membrane may be sucked into the aperture. The tube should be examined to see that it is not broken or cracked, as accidents have happened from neglecting this precaution. The bowels and kidneys must also be stimulated to activity, to help in the elimination ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... oars and pulled for the opposite shore. He had not taken more than a couple of strokes when a dozen rifles cracked simultaneously from the bushes, and as many bullets struck the boat and glanced over ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... were going to listen to me, seriously!" he said, bitterly. "If you won't believe me; what about the chap the Second Mate saw? What about Tom? What about Williams? For goodness sake! don't try to put me off like you did last time. I nearly went cracked with wanting to tell someone who would listen to me, and wouldn't laugh. I could stand anything, but this being alone. There's a good chap, don't pretend you don't understand. Tell me what it all means. What is this horrible man that I've twice seen? You know you know something, ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... back to his little line, and two men came slowly, one with a pick, one with a shovel. They started in the direction of the Rostina sharp-shooters. Bullets cracked near their ears. "Dig here," said Lean gruffly. The men, thus caused to lower their glances to the turf, became hurried and frightened merely because they could not look to see whence the bullets ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... her into the house, trying to lessen his weight as if he were walking on thin ice; and the old house cracked its knuckles, but his foot-fall made not a sound. She placed a chair for him and sat down with her hands in her lap, and how expressive they were, small and thin, but shapely. She was pale and neat in a black ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... does not surge through cracked brains alone, or only in the world of adventurers, charlatans and pretenders generally; it has spread abroad in all the domains of life, spiritual and material. Politics, literature, even science, and—most odious of all—philanthropy and religion are infected. Trumpets announce a good deed done, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... trainer was not so easy a matter. He lay in the very centre of the ring, beyond the reach of any weapons; and not a man would venture within the great cage. The attendants shouted at the lioness, brandished irons, cracked whips. She heard them unmoved. Once she shifted her position slightly and a moan ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the room are for the most part hidden by books. The shelves are simple affairs of stained maple, covered heavily with successive coats of varnish, cracked, as is that of the desk, by age and heat. The contents are varied. Of religious works there are the Septuagint, in two fat little blue volumes, like Roman candles; Conant's Genesis; Hodge on Romans; Hackett on Acts, which the minister's small children used to spell out as "Jacket ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... thou bearest, and thy knees Among the silent caves of Palestine Wear the sharp flints away with midnight prayer; Or thou shalt keep the fasts of Barbary, Shalt wait amid the crowds that throng the well From sultry noon till the skies fade again, To draw up water and to bring it home In the cracked gourd of some vile testy knave, Who spurns thee back with bastinadoed foot For ignorance or delay ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor |
