"Hissing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Express now arriving on track two!" The voice boomed over the loud-speaker system; and as the long, gleaming line of monorail cars eased to a stop with a soft hissing of brakes, the three cadets of the Polaris unit ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... the next order, he cast his glance out upon the bay, and there, not a hundred and fifty yards away, her spotless sails tense, her cordage humming, her immaculate flanks slipping easily through the waves, the water hissing and churning under her forefoot, clean, gleaming, dainty, and aristocratic, the Ridgeways' yacht "Petrel" passed like a thing of life. Wilbur saw Nat Ridgeway himself at the wheel. Girls in smart gowns and young fellows in white ducks and yachting caps—all friends of his—crowded ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... he was in the rear of the others he could not see what became of his companions. He heard one shout from Gunston, and that was all—"Good God, Luttrell, we're lost!" And then the avalanche swept them onwards, first with a sharp, hissing sound, and then with a grinding roar as of thunder, and Brian gave himself up ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... foresail and fore-topsail, emptied of the wind by the manoeuvre, and with no one to bring in the sheet in time, were thundering into ribbons, the heavy boom threshing and splintering from rail to rail. The air was thick with flying wreckage, detached ropes and stays were hissing and coiling like snakes, and down through it all crashed the gaff of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... never to be any perfect rest. Even in Eden the snake rears its head among the laden boughs of the Tree of Knowledge. The silence of the dreamless night is broken by the roar of the avalanche; the hissing of sudden floods; the clanging of the engine bell marking its sweep through a sleeping American town; the clanking of distant paddles over the sea.... Whatever it is, it is breaking the charm of my Eden. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... deep copper-coloured mouth of the form of a cave supplied with four teeth; and with glaring eyes, it was constantly licking the corners of its mouth. And it was the terror of all animated beings and it looked like the very image of the Destroyer Yama; and with the hissing noise of its breath it lay as if rebuking (an in-comer). And seeing Bhima draw so near to him, the serpent, all on a sudden, became greatly enraged, and that goat-devouring snake violently seized Bhimasena ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... muttered—"the dark hour! To-day when I came away over the moors I felt it creeping upon me! Last night it whispered to me, and I felt its cold breath hissing against my ears! When I climbed down the rocks to the seashore, I heard it wailing in the waves!—and through the hollows of the rocks it shrieked an unknown horror at me! Who was it that said to-day—'He is only a child ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... The embankment shudders; the house quivers; the doors, windows, cups, saucers, and pans rattle. Outside, all the sledge-hammers and anvils in Vulcan's smithy are banging an obbligato accompaniment to the hissing of all the serpents that Saint Patrick drove out of Ireland as the express comes up; still Gertie's rest is unbroken. She does indeed give a slight smile and turn her head on the other side, as if she had heard a pleasant ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... hurries on to his repast, the embodiment of everything ghoul-like and ghastly. In his wake comes another, then twos and threes, anon tens and twenties, till hundreds have collected, and the ground is covered with the hissing, tearing, fiercely clawing crowd. It is a horrible sight to see a heap of vultures battling over a dead bullock. I have seen them so piled up that the under ones were nearly smothered to death; and the writhing contortions ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... he fell, Soddening in a fervid summer's sun. Guarded by an enemy's hissing shell, Rotting beneath the sound of rebels' gun Forty consecutive days, In sight of his own tent. And the remnant ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... daughters and one son-in-law. One day, as the mother was cooking some meat, she threw a clot of blood into the pot containing the meat. The pot began to boil, and then there issued from it a peculiar hissing noise. The old woman looked into the pot, and was surprised to see that the blood-clot had become transformed into a little boy. Quickly he grew, and, in a few moments, he sprang from the pot, a full-grown young man." Kutoyis, as the youth was named, became an expert hunter, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... and I looked up. I saw the boat pass astern as the man made fast the line round the fore thwart, with his eyes on the wave that came. Then he sprang to the steering oar, and in a moment the boat rounded to on the back of a great wave and was safe before the crest of the next roller ran hissing past me, to ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... realized that I lay in the room immediately above the archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other faint sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing of the gas from ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... canoe seemed to leap into the air in the center of a volcano of light, and then all three came down in a rain of hissing and steaming fragments. The crash was stunning, and the light for a moment or two was intense. Then it sank almost as suddenly and again came the darkness, in which Henry heard the steaming of burning wood, the turmoil of riven waters and the shouts ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I gained the platform of the station. There was a sound of hissing steam, a rolling cloud of sulphurous smoke, a shouting of railway captains, a creaking of the wheels. Without volition of my own, I was on my northward journey. Presently I looked around and found seated at my side the man ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... so calm and collected, M. Mauperin, very fine—very fine indeed," said Mme. Bourjot, and her low, hissing ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... words, all the lights were at once extinguished with a hissing noise. Philipson felt once more the grasp of the hands of the officials, to which he resigned himself as the safest course. He was gently prostrated on his pallet-bed, and transported back to the place from which he had been advanced to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... to his cost!" was the bitter rejoinder, and I heard her draw in her breath hard between her closed teeth, with the hissing sound so familiar to me, and peculiar to her when she labored under excitement—a sound like that of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... below. The man's fingers clawed at her back. In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a hissing roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the river beach beneath, carrying down bushes, trees, stones—and ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... suddenly—one from the kitchen, admitting Monkey with a tray of cups and saucers, steam from the hissing samovar wrapping her in a cloud, the other from the corridor, letting in Jane Anne, her arms full of packages. She had been shopping for the family in Neuchatel, and was arrayed in garments from the latest Magic Box. She was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... and a hissing behind me, and, looking round, sprang to my feet with a cry of horror. Against the warm dawn great tumultuous masses of black smoke were boiling up out of the enclosure, and through their stormy darkness shot flickering threads of blood-red ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... square man ever since we were stationed at Russell," and, linking his arm in that of the astonished official, McCrea drew him a few paces away from the point where they found him, with a great passenger-engine hissing and throbbing close at hand, waiting to take the Flyer whirling eastward toward the Missouri. Geordie stood silently and watched them. He saw the wonderment in Anthony's strong face give way to interest as McCrea talked ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... story came out, how, years before, when a city hotel was on fire, and one of its guests in imminent danger from the locality of his room, and his own nervous fear which made him powerless to act, another guest braved fearlessly the hissing flame, and scaling the tottering wall, dragged out to life and liberty one who, until that hour, was to him ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... encountered a strange phenomenon. In the heart of the desert a fountain rose perpendicularly fifty feet into the air, with a cool and pleasant hissing sound. It differed, however, from a fountain in this respect—that the water of which it was composed did not return to the ground but was absorbed by the atmosphere at the summit. It was in fact a tall, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... even for the babes did the snow cease or the keen wind rest; the very fire could scarcely struggle against it. Snow-rain and ice-rain; frost-formed snow-granules, driven along like shot, stinging and rattling against the tent-cloth, hissing in the fire; roar and groan of the great wind among the oaks of the forest. No kindness to man, from birth-hour to ending; neither earth, sky, nor gods care for him, innocent at the mother's breast. Nothing good to man but man. Let man, then, leave his gods and lift up his ideal ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... great pyramid of Cheops, in Egypt, during a storm, noted that an electrical discharge flowed from his hand when extended toward the heavens. The current manifested itself in such a manner that the hissing ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... up the hut, leaving a lantern burning in it, and started down toward the ocean. Through the darkness Larry could see a line of foam where the breakers struck the beach. They ran hissing over the pebbles and broken shells, and then surged back again. As the two walked along, a figure, carrying a lantern and clad as they were, in yellow oilskins, loomed up ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... perfect and absolute play, so that all things mett to make us unhappy that night, and had not Time him selfe (whose lines and actions were thought good) somewhat pleased them, they would never have endured us without hissing, howsoever in the end they gave us two or three cold plaudites, though they departed no way satisfyed, unlesse it were in the shew about the quadrangle, wherein the Prince was carryd to his chamber in the same state that hee came from ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... came into view, emerging from a cluster of poplars. She rode up to the doors, dismounted and entered. Old Bauer himself was at the bellows, and the weird blue light hissing up from the blown coals discovered another customer. She turned and met his frank glance of admiration. (If she hadn't turned! If his admiration hadn't been entirely frank!) Instantly she sent Bauer a warning glance which that old worthy seemed immediately to understand. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... time a man had a shepherd who served him many years faithfully and honestly. One day, whilst herding his flock, this shepherd heard a hissing sound, coming out of the forest near by, which he could not account for. So he went into the wood in the direction of the noise to try to discover the cause. When he approached the place he found that the dry grass and leaves were on fire, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... with scales, nauseous as charcoal, howling, hissing, bellowing, flinging at each other armour and dead men's bones. Some of them spirted out flames through their nostrils; others spread around darkness with their wings; others carried chaplets of fingers that had been cut off; others drank the venom of serpents out of ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... he fell he heard the snow and ice he had broken away go hissing and whispering down for what seemed long after he had dropped; and this gave him some idea of the terrible depth of the ice crack, and a cold chill, that was not caused by the icy coldness of the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... not kept long in suspense. After being assured that their attention was attracted, the voice that had made the hissing signal whispered through some aperture of which the boys ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of the tissues of the neck following the operation. They may reach the trachea at the time of the operation, but as soon as the reactionary swelling occurs, the end of the tube is pulled out (Fig. 103) of the tracheal incision; the air hissing along the tube is considered by the attendant to indicate that the tube is still in place, and the increasing dyspnea and accelerated respiratory rate are attributed to supposed pneumonia or edema of the lungs, under which erroneous diagnosis ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... gold, and the tongues of fire which kept leaping up and up to the high branches, there was still a green spire dark and dimly seen as it rose to some two hundred and fifty feet above where we stood. But that upper portion was catching alight fast now, and the hissing crackle of the burning was accompanied by sharp reports and flashes, the heat growing so intense that one had to back away, while quite a sharp current of cold air began to rush past our ears to sweep out ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... out of the carriages now, and suddenly there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon. Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the wind. The tender was twisted like a patent hairpin in the middle. The first coach, a luggage-van, stood upright, and seemed scarcely damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... saw every apparition that had ever glided before my fancy: the Sea-Serpent twisted his folds round my neck, and the keel of the Flying Dutchman grated along my back. When the vessel rose at last, and I rose with her, the waters gurgling in my throat and hissing in my ears, I did not attempt to spring up the shrouds. I looked round in horror for the objects of my excited thoughts; and as I saw another enormous wave advancing till it overhung me, instead of getting out of its ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... drop my camera to help Jones and Jim pull the animal from her perch. The branches broke in a shower; then the lioness, hissing, snarling, whirling, plunged down. She nearly jerked the rope out of our hands, but we lowered her to Emett, who noosed her hind ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels! One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people —then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy—for there, fair and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my brave Pegasus!" cried Bellerophon. "With another stroke like that we will surely stop either its hissing or its roaring." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... himself to peep over the rim. Shots were now scattering, and all appeared to come from below. Emboldened by this he rose higher. A shot from in front, a rip of bullet through the choya, a spat of something hitting Ladd's face, a steel missle hissing onward—these inseparably blended sounds were all registered by Gale's ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... had occurred, the citadel recommenced its fire, and a shell, descending with that terrific hissing peculiar to itself alone, struck the main-bitts on the quarter deck, and, rolling aft, exploded. Its fragments scattered death around, and one piece took the hat off the head of little Willy, who was standing before ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... while Mr. Count, the mate, fairly chuckled again at the thought of how the little Britisher had wiped the eyes of these veteran fishermen. The captive was cut open, and two recent flying-fish found in his maw, which were utilized for new bait, with the result that there was a cheerful noise of hissing and spluttering in the galley soon after, and a mess of fish for ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... so great that it came rolling back in echo after echo, but for a few moments there was no other sound save the echo. Then followed a rain of burning wood, many pieces falling in the supply fleet, burning and scorching, while others fell hissing in the forest on either shore. Darkness, too, came over land and water. All the firing had ceased as if by preconcerted signal, though the combatants on either side were awed by the fate of the vessel. The ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and saw a large viper crawling across their path, its hideous head upraised in defiance, hissing venomously at ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... infatuated glee, mocking the whistle of the wind with an angry swish of their tall bodies. Around the cornices of the Inn of the Hawk and Raven scurried the singing breezes, reluctant to leave a playground so pleasing to the fancy. Soon the night became a cauldron, a surging, hissing, roaring receptacle in which were mixing the ingredients of disaster. Night-birds flapped through the moaning tree-tops, in search of shelter; reeds were flattened to the earth, bowing to the sovereignty of the wind; ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... discovered and completely surrounded. It was a hideous creature, upwards of ten feet long, and evidently of prodigious strength, had it been in a condition to exert it, but consternation completely paralysed it. It started to its feet and turned round in a circle hissing and clanking its bony jaws, with its ugly green eye intently fixed upon us. On being struck with a stick, it lay perfectly quiet and apparently dead. Presently it looked cunningly round, and made a rush towards the water, but on a second blow it lay again motionless and feigning death. We ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... and thunder under the earth deafened and terrified every soul. Fierce, wide, jagged ribbons of awful flame came out of the blackened heavens. Scores of thunderbolts, red and flaming, leaped out of the blackness of cloud above, and, hissing as they came, wrought awful death among the mobs upon which they descended. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... and bending over invoked their champion to come forth and do battle for them. Presently it came forth, shooting out little eager red tongues that danced and leaped, glad to be coming forth, growing larger in leaps and bounds. Dave Fellows watched anxiously the direction in which the hissing tongues sprang. "The wind will take it," he said at last. Fitfully the breeze pressed up against the back of the newly born, pushing more and more strongly as the tongues sprang higher and higher, until finally it swept the full-grown monster down the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a hearty laugh from Chew-chew showed there was nothing to fear. Chew-chew knew that the hissing sound was not the hiss of a snake. It was the sizzling of the water when ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... his sigh of sorrow like a trodden, hissing snake, Sad Yudhishthir to his mother thus his inward ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... penetrated him. Again he heard the prince saying "that honest Kranitski," and a wave of blood rushed to his forehead. Everything that he had forgotten a moment earlier returned to his mind; the prince's voice roared in his ears: "That honest Kranitski." He repeated a number of times to himself, in a hissing whisper, "honest! honest!" And then ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... to their fire with a vigor which kept us from hearing one half the hissing and roaring of theirs, but could not silence it, and the horrible cry of "Close up the ranks! Close up the ranks!" was ever ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... was alive with menace. What was he going to do after he had finished treating us as honored guests? For the third time he answered my unspoken question. His eyes narrowed till they were black, glittering slits. His voice, as he leaned toward us, was no more than a hissing whisper. ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... Hell's lightning loose, the Orient burst like a gigantic shell and crashed like Doomsday thunder. The nearest ships reeled under the terrific shock, which racked their hulls from stem to stern and set some leaking badly. Masts, boats, and twisted rigging flew blazing through the air, fell hissing on the watered decks, and set two British vessels and one French on fire. But the crews worked their very hardest, and they ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... it should be known that, without right vowel, or tone, formation, efforts at good articulation are futile. Every technical vocal fault must be referred back to the fundamental condition of right formation of tone, that is, the vowel. Sputtering, hissing, biting, snapping, of consonants is not enunciation. The student should learn how without constraint, to prolong vowels; learn, if you please, the fundamentals of singing, and articulation, the formation of consonants, the jointing of syllables, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... temples were hanging, His teeth were like teeth of a jack; His lips were inaudibly "slanging"; His eyes were all muddy and black; And water-snakes, round his neck twining, Were hissing; and water-rats swam At his feet; so without much divining I recognised Old ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... haunts not guilty men, As I'll haunt thee, to summon thee to this; Nay, shouldst thou take the Stygian lake for refuge, I'll plunge in after, through the boiling flames, To push thee hissing down the vast abyss. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati—the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his desire to escape. This wind of Broadway—this first warning of winter—it was hissing in her ears: "Take hold! ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the opening of the window; he worked with desperate strength, and we gazed breathlessly on. Now we saw him drop the rod again. The tender arms of his bride were around his neck, a fair head was thrust out, the whole form was emerging, when with a tremendous crash, and a hissing, spluttering, crackling noise, the whole fabric shook and trembled, and husband and ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... questions raised; secondly, minds have been so inflamed by party conflicts that pure and disinterested enjoyment has been excluded from places where one's innermost feelings are violated and the tyranny of an applauding or hissing majority is exercised with the openness for which the theatre gives a chance; and, finally, there has been no new form devised for the new contents, and the new wine has ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... ill-feeling towards the Queen or any of the ministers, there was no demonstration of good will beyond the usual civility of lifting the hats as she passed. Indeed, Horace Wilson told me that, when he was crossing the park at the time of her driving through it, there was some—though not much—decided hissing. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... into the picture and was riding slowly across. The desire of murder rose in my heart. Now for a bag! Bang! I jumped at least a foot, disarranging the telescope, but there was plenty of time to reset it while the shell was hissing and roaring its way through nearly five miles of air. I found the kraal again and the group still there, but all motionless and alert, like startled rabbits. Then they began to bob into the earth, one after ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... mouthful of corn, but plenty to drink, little meal and water here, and a bottle of porter in water there, and he brings you in handsomely. Zounds! how would you yourself, Tom, like to dine on turtle soup and venison, in the middle of a hissing hot ride of sixty miles, thirty of them to be covered after the feed? Lord! what between the rich food and the punch, you would have fermented like a brewer's vat before you reached the end of the journey; and if you had not a boll imperial measure of carbonate of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... I have the floor," continued Greusel. "I am not attempting oratory, but trying to disentangle a skein in which we have involved ourselves. I wish to receive neither applause nor hissing until I have finished the business. You say it is the case. I say it is not. Roland gave Herr Kurzbold the alternative either of apologizing or of paying over the money, so that it might be returned to the merchant. As I understand the matter, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... a little hissing voice that came from the inside of the oak-and-silver cellaret. And it sang a song that the man who sat near had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and it rose above her, hissing death; another, and the boat was caught high in air, tottered on the summit, and then with a shiver shot swiftly ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... S. Sutton, English Secretary of the Chinese-American League of Justice, on this point. "The most asinine whine in the world," he says, "is that of 'America for the Americans' or 'China for the Chinese', etc. It is the hissing slogan of greed, fear, envy, selfishness, ignorance and prejudice. No man, no human being who calls himself a man, no Christian, no sane or reasonable person, should or could ever be guilty of uttering that despicable wail. God made the world for all men, and if God has any preference, if God ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs; the man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this was the transformation which, during the reign of George the First, befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an unmistakably hissing sound. 'He wants nothing, and he is not the Baron Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him away—go away yourself—and never let me see ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... "that the cuckoldly Roundhead ate enough of our fat beef yesterday to serve him for a month; and a little fasting will do his health good. Marry, for drink, he shall have plenty of cold water to cool his hot liver, which I will be bound is still hissing with the strong liquors of yesterday. And as for bedding, there are the fine dry board—more wholesome than the wet straw I lay upon when I was in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... you particularly want to." He almost ran out of the room, and the two followed swiftly on his flying coat tails. He knocked at an ordinary varnished door in the corridor. When a voice said, "Come in," MacIan's breath went hissing back through his teeth into his chest. Turnbull was more impetuous, and opened ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... genius of the waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared to demonstrate clearly the existence of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... invectives; he fancies his style resembles that of the apostle in Patmos. Animals and monsters fight and scream; the common people have been turned into beasts, oxen, hogs, dogs, foxes, flies, frogs; all are hideous or dangerous. Cursing as he goes along, Gower drives before him, with hissing distichs, the strange herd of his monsters, who "dart sulphureous flames from the cavern ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... slugs, which scattered like hail when they were discharged. Once and again the assailants rushed up the breaches, but always the sword-blades, immovable and impassable, stopped their charge, and the hissing shells and thundering powder-barrels exploded unceasingly. Hundreds of men had fallen, hundreds more were dropping, still, the heroic officers called aloud for new trials, and sometimes followed by many, sometimes by a few, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... by the nuthatch's glutinous saliva, leaving in the center a circular hole just large enough to afford entrance and exit for the little owner. Says the author quoted above: "When the sitting bird is interfered with, she defends her treasures with great courage, hissing like a wryneck, and vigorously striking at her aggressor with her sharp bill." Like our common white-breast, the British bird may be attracted to human dwellings by furnishing him a regular supply of food suited to his taste, and may grow so trustful as to come when called, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... grasp something, struggle with it, and finally the diver's form appeared on the gunwale and was dragged safely into the boat. At this moment a towering billow reared itself just beyond the labouring hull, sweeping down upon it, green and solid, with a curling crest of hissing, snow-white foam. The men in the gig fortunately saw it too in time, and, with a warning shout to each other, stretched out to their oars for dear life. On swept that hissing mountain of angry water, heaving the wreck up on its steep side until she lay all along upon it, presenting her ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burnt incense, nor offered burnt-offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel. 8. Wherefore the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and He hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes. 9. For, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword; and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. 10. Now it is in mine heart to make a covenant with the Lord God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... walking apart in their own thoughts, to Jury's Gap. In a few moments the horse was put to, and they were lurching in the ruts of the road to Broomhill. The air was full of the sound of hissing rain, as it fell on the shingle and in the sea and on the great brackish pools of the old flood. Round the pools were thick beds of reeds, shivering and moaning, while along the dykes the willows tossed their ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... if blasted with leprosy. The same scourge that had maddened the poor laird fell hissing on his soul, and its knotted sting was the same word mother. He turned and walked slowly away, fighting a tyrannous impulse to thrust his fingers in his ears ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Russian lands afar, Beneath the smoke-cloud cope of shrouded Heaven Where hissing shot and shell and War's red levin Spread far and wide the canopy of War! Where Nature shudders and seems to abhor The awful scene; where myriad souls, unshriven, From life and all its joys at once are riven, Behold the Kaiser now 'neath ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... tour, and, for more, to country districts where good cheer and dances sped the night. A dozen five- and seven-passenger cars with drivers were for hire. Most nights until eleven or later the rented machines dashed about the narrow streets, hooting and hissing, while their care-free occupants played accordions or mouth-organs and sang songs of love. Louis de Bougainville, once a French lawyer, and afterward soldier, sailor, and discoverer and a lord under Bonaparte, had a monument in a tiny green park hard by the strand and the road that, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... pretty, eh?" the boxer challenged him, and Max started with surprise at sound of the Cockney accent, which came with a hissing sound from the defaced mouth. Pelle was ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... a loud hissing whisper, which seemed to pierce the marrow of Cosmo's bones, "I rede ye say nae thing aboot that i' this chaumer. Bide till we're oot o' 't: I hae near dune. Syne we'll steek the door, an' lat the fire work. It'll ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... half hidden with trees, to the right it loomed straight and open, leading to Montreal, and the motion of the horses, now abreast and flinging foam from their bits, seemed like the tossing of the boiling rapids, and amidst the thunder of the hoofs the hoarse voice of him who rode behind her, hissing with earnestness and fear like an ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... up that it was impotent to hurt. How such a beast had ever been caught alive I know not. I could see its green cat's eyes glowing in the dark, and the striving of its muscles, and hear the breath hissing from its muzzled jaws. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... so in keeping with his own that Selwyn's senses experienced a numbing pleasure; the ghostly mariners of the night, the motionless ships at their moorings, the eerie hissing of the sleet upon the water, combined to form a drug that left his ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the smoke across the stream, And faster flashed the flame: The water plashed in hissing jets As ball and bullet came. Yet onwards pushed the Cavaliers All stern and undismayed, With thousand armed foes before, And none behind to aid. Once, as they neared the middle stream, So strong the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... bending over me. I caught a handful of whiskers and pulled, shouting something. The hand that held my shoulder was instantly at my throat. The man became insane; he stood over me, choking me with one fist and beating me in the face with the other, hissing and chuckling and letting out a flood ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... words of sorrow—more than once mingled with sobs—grew fainter, and there was a terrible silence, through which came the sharp hissing and crackling of the burning wood, with again and again a dull thud as some beam went down. At such times the flames seemed to glow with twofold brilliancy, and the sparks were doubled in size, while after a few minutes the fire, that had been temporarily ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... our descent, as only now I knew by its cessation—a hissing sound as of wire whirring from a draw-plate. In the profound enormous silence that, at last, enwrapped us, the bliss of freedom from that metallic accompaniment fell on me like a balm. My eyelids closed. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... found myself without a rival, as it were, able to enjoy my room and my night's pleasure as well. In the meantime, Eumolpus, locked out as he was, was being very roughly handled by the cooks and scullions of the establishment; one aimed a spitful of hissing-hot guts at his eyes; another grabbed a two-tined fork in the pantry and put himself on guard. But worst of all, a blear-eyed old hag, girded round with a filthy apron, and wearing wooden clogs which were not mates, dragged in an immense dog on a chain, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... his mouth—wedged into his broadest and silliest grin. And that wasn't all. The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed and waggled over the burning sticks into the blaze; Andy had slit and nicked the firing end of the fuse well, and now it was hissing and ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... outhouses, chimneys fell, windows were blown in, and, as Dinah, terrified by the uproar and destruction racing round her, stood holding her uncanny child in her arms, through the roof and ceiling came crashing a monstrous thunderbolt, surrounded by flames, and fell hissing at the very foot of Cruel ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... torn!" exclaimed the thin man bitterly, as he saw her drape the car with leather curtains whose windows of mica had long since been cracked and torn away. The snow was hissing on the radiator and melting on the road, and there seemed no wind left anywhere to drive the weight of the mauve cloud further across the sky. It hung solid and low above them, so that between the surface ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... red, and the very ice glared with the leaping flames. At last, pulling and pushing, they brought the little engine up the slope, and then with a great shout dragged it into the outskirts of the yard. They pumped furiously, and a small jet of water was played upon the nearest pile of boards. A hissing cloud of steam almost hid the volunteer firemen, but the flames leaped and tossed against the sky, and the sparks were sucked up into the cold air, and whirled in sheets across ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... reached the banks of the river, and were trekking up them towards the spot where it issued from the side of the mountain. Everywhere was spoor, but we saw no people, although here and there the vultures were hissing and quarrelling over the bones of a ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... only, under whose wings I will shelter an apology for Racine, whose pieces give me an idea of that bird. The colouring of the swan is pure; his attitudes are graceful; he never displeases you when sailing on his proper element. His feet may be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk not natural; he can soar, but it is with difficulty:—still, the impression the swan leaves is that of grace. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of hissing and hooting rose from the club, such as had rarely been heard in the walls of Templeton. None are so indignant at cowards as those who are not quite sure of their own heroism, and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rain clouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks to water-line, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... eighteen, who was accompanied by his mother and a considerable party, all of whom have been duly presented to the reader in the former volumes of the series, lay in the middle of the river. The black smoke was pouring out of her smokestack, and the hissing steam indicated that the vessel was all ready to go down the river to the China Sea. Her anchor had been hove up, and the pilot was in the pilot-house waiting for the commander to strike the gong in the engine-room to ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... head, as the slug does its horns; and each creature kept its impious eyes fixed on the other's, while the features beneath the eyes were changing. The soul which had become the serpent then turned to crawl away, hissing in scorn as he departed; and the serpent, which had become the man, spat after him, and spoke words at him. The new human-looking soul then turned his back on his late adversary, and said to the third spirit, who remained unchanged, "Let Buoso now take to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... they ever forget how she saved the baby,—Jane Pegrum's baby,—that had been forgotten by its frantic mother in the burning house? They shuddered as they recalled the scene: the writhing, hissing flames, the charred rafters threatening every moment to fall; and the blind child walking calmly along the one safe beam, unmoved above the pit of fire which none of them could bear to look on, catching the baby from its cradle ("and it all of a smoulder, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... place they could have chosen, as no hand could get into the small hole by which they entered. These Tits show great affection and care for their young. While hatching their eggs, if a hand or stick is put into the nest they rise with enlarged throats, and, hissing like a snake, peck at it till it is withdrawn. On one occasion I told my horse-keeper to put his hand into a hole into which I had seen one of these birds enter. He did so, but soon drew it out with a scream, saying a 'snake ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... young women at the back of the stage giggled obsequiously at this piece of graceful wit, but the orchestra manifested its indignation by hissing. Thereupon the director rapped on his desk more ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... progress of the lava-flood; trees, houses, everything yields to its massive assault, The trees take fire before its approach, and when it reaches them they emit a hissing noise almost amounting to a shriek, and then plunging into the molten flood are seen no more. Even the sea cannot withstand the lava-stream, but retires on its approach; so that promontories stretching to a considerable distance from the shore are formed in this manner, when the ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... came for, he once more shouldered his crowbar, and let himself out into the dark passage. Here he stopped in terror! Something was snorting and hissing without, something that sounded as if it might be ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... shoot back. The hissing lead went wide of the pursuer and he gave over firing and settled down to good, hard running, disappearing from Hampton's staring eyes. But Shorty was still to be seen, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... thy friends (when thy help is most needed). O Karna, save in battle all my warriors. Our combatants are now encompassed on all sides by the Panchalas, the Kaikeyas, the Matsyas, and the mighty car-warriors of the Pandavas, all filled with rage and resembling hissing snakes. Yonder the Pandavas, solicitous of victory, are roaring in joy. The vast car-force of the Panchalas is possessed of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... And afterwards, what tremors, what unhappiness! Why had she not been open with him from the first? His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to the quick. But he was not looking at her. His stare was directed to Heemskirk, who, with his back to him and with his hands still up to his face, was hissing curses through his teeth, and (she saw him in profile) glaring at her balefully with one ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the restless sea, and rocky isles, with patches of the most beautiful greensward, but with scarcely a single tree. The waves are leaping in whiteness against the cliffs, and thousands of sea-birds are floating in long lines on the billows, or skimming past you singly, and diving into the clear hissing waters as they near your vessel. One of the very first objects which arrests your senses is the Coryvreckan, or great whirlpool of the Hebrides, an awful feature in all the poetry and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... jangle of meaningless noises had never been heard by human ears. There were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the flapping of birds' wings. There were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. The lines running east and west were noisier than the lines running ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... tree. His resuscitation and flight now pleased me doubly, a malicious pleasure combining with the prettiest sight in the world; and I was on the point of sending all the other Greeks after him, when suddenly hissing waters spurted at me on all sides, from stones and wall, from ground and branches, and, wherever I turned, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... brawny native Maltese, with a form a Hercules might envy. He has just taken from the fire a slender rod of iron, one end of which is hissing hot, even red. ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne |
