"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, however, was the broken and blackened skin of the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... you have the decency to humor the dear old fellow as we all do, and treat him with the same courtesy with which he treated you, instead of insulting him by throwing the letter in his face. You'll excuse me, Mr. Klutchem, when I say it gets me pretty hot when I think of it. I don't blame him for cracking you over the head, and neither would you, if you understood him as ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... night that the chair shook under me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only the first night, and I suppose proceeded ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the spectators, whose shouting and clapping ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... either copy, but that both are offered to you by a bookseller at precisely the same price. What will be your feelings as you handle the repaired copy? It is more than probable that you will sigh 'Poor thing' as you open it gently for fear of cracking the old piece pasted on to the back. But, 'What a nice clean copy' you will say as you take up the other; and it is improbable that you will hesitate ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... wince still as she had winced in the beginning. She had contracted the habit of wincing in response to them. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw her blink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blink followed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flash follows the snap ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... noises of the market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably—in particular the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... him cracking of nuts, with half a cloak about him, for all means are cut off, or borrowing sixpence, to shew his ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... The cracking of guns was incessant, and now came a fierce hand-to-hand conflict, as the first and second companies of the Riverlawns rode directly upon the front rank of the enemy. Infantry and cavalry splashed ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... him like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered together—the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands, and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the thunder of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... forward, cracking the fellow's head with the butt of his clubbed gun. Just as he did so Prescott fired squarely over Hal's left shoulder, knocking over a Moro bent on stabbing the sergeant from behind. The noise of that explosion, so close to his ear, deafened ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... hostile shores; Beneath the storm their shatter'd navies groan; The trembling deep recoils from zone to zone— Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke, The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke; Tom from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew, And gripes and lashings all asunder flew; Companion, binnacle, in floating wreck, With compasses and glasses strew'd the deck; The balanced mizen, rending to the head, 460 In fluttering fragments from its bolt-rope fled; The sides convulsive shook on groaning beams, And, rent ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... wish was destined to be fulfilled today, as my road lay between a burning forest and a burning rost. {40} The intervening space was not, at the most, more than fifty paces broad, and was completely enveloped in smoke. I could hear the cracking of the fire, and through the dense vapour perceive thick, forked columns of flame shoot upwards towards the sky, while now and then loud reports, like those of a cannon, announced the fall of the large trees. On seeing my guide enter this fiery gulf, I was, I must confess, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... long after him, for he got queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand, cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that's how the Warrens come to be Charity ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... themselves in the warm sun on the shores of the lake. The gay woodpecker was tapping the hollow beech; the swallow and the martin were skimming along the level of the green vales. He heard no more the cracking of branches of trees beneath the weight of icicles and snow;—he saw no more the spirits of departed men dancing wild dances on the skirts of the Northern clouds(2); and the farther he travelled the milder grew the skies, the longer was the period of the sun's stay upon the earth, and the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... street. His first destination was intended to be the Governor's mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the Governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to himself. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... there must have been some sinister purpose back of the robbery. In that respect it was like the scientific cracking of Langhorne's safe. Langhorne, too, though he had been robbed, had been careful to disclaim the loss of anything of value. I frankly had not believed Langhorne, yet Carton was not of the same type and I felt that his open face ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so me and Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organized a trust; and we ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... few seconds she seemed to tremble like a living creature, and every timber creaked. Then she was turned slowly on one side, until the crew of the Dolphin could see down into her hold, where the beams were giving way and cracking up as matches might be crushed in the grasp of a strong hand. Then the larboard bow was observed to yield as if it were made of soft clay, the starboard bow was pressed out, and the ice was forced into ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... landau, of ancient and decayed splendour, driven by two white horses. They came dashing up at a wild gallop. The native driver, in his red fez and white cotton jacket, barely gave Freddy time to jump into the carriage after Meg was seated when, with a noisy cracking of his whip, he urged the horses to a still more ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... don't know whether he liked her, and I don't care, but what I'm not going to do is to wait here listening to you all cracking up a landlady's ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... drawing rein; and in a moment we had regained our former position behind the infantry. We had scarcely time to congratulate ourselves upon the success of our scheme, when a tremendous clattering noise in front, mingled with the galloping of horses and the cracking of whips, announced the approach of the artillery as they came along by a narrow road which bisected our path; and as they passed between us and the column, we could hear the muttered sentences of the drivers, cursing the unseasonable ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... pang of the disillusionment was none the less keen and sickening, and the pain was as that of a corporeal wound. It seemed strange and foreboding, when we entered the breakfast-room, not to find everybody cracking whips, jumping over chairs, and whooping. In ecstatic rehearsal of the wild ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... a little flattened,—often bursting or cracking longitudinally before attaining its full dimensions; skin deep scarlet; flesh rose-colored, crisp, mild, and pleasant; neck small; leaves few in number, and of smaller size than those of the common Scarlet Turnip-rooted. Season quite early,—two or three days ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... so lost, that he did not reply to the man even by a look. "Now, my lads, now: one, two, three, and a —-." Obedient to the call of the officer, with a simultaneous jerk at the sail, the holdfast of the stupid peasant was plucked from his cracking fingers; he fell back with a loud shriek from the yard, struck midway on the main rigging, and thence bounding far to leeward in the sea, disappeared, and for ever, amid the white froth of the curling wave, that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Island with the splendor of something new, and yet it was simply the old-time spirit in which Scott had steeped himself, which found a new birth—a Renascence. Scott was a stalwart Border chieftain born out of time. But as another writer says, instead of harrying cattle and cracking crowns, this Border chief was appointed to be the song-singer and pleasant tale-teller to Britain and to Europe. "It was the time for such a new literature; and this Walter Scott was the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... familiarly slapped, mistaking him for a friend: 'I beg your pardon, I thought I knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... oftentimes witnessed such struggles before, knew better than to utter another word; the child stood perfectly still. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the cracking of the seeds with which Miss Pollina, the old grey parrot in the cage by the window, amused herself unceasingly from morn until night. Even Miss Pollina seemed to be aware that perfect quietness was necessary for the present, and she had hushed her ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... shoved those same legs; they were hoisted laboriously on to their horses; the postmaster shouted, "Now then, in with your spurs, and let them go!" and off we went full tear, bells jingling and whips cracking, to the admiration of the women and children of the village gathered round to see the show. Once we were off, things calmed down; but the postboys had no control whatever over their horses, who knew the road, and did the stage, from force of habit, at their own pace. If we came across ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sat on the hollowed steps of the houses, and basked in the autumn sun. At one side was a barrowman with a load of walnuts, and beside the barrow a bedraggled woman with a black fringe and a chequered shawl thrown over her head. She was cracking walnuts and picking them out of the shells, throwing out a remark occasionally to a rough man in a rabbit-skin cap, with straps under the knees of his corduroy trousers, who stood puffing a black clay pipe with his back against the wall. What the cause of the quarrel ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carolina, in 1886, the injury caused by it being largely due to the fact that it passed through a populous city. As it occurred after many of the people had retired, the confusion and terror due to it were greatly augmented, people fleeing in panic fear from the tumbling and cracking houses to seek refuge in the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... close to the curb, waiting for a chance drunken fare. The outmoded cabs were worn and dirty—the cracked patent leather wrinkled like an old man's face, the cushions faded to a brownish lavender; the very horses were ancient and weary, and so were the white-haired men who sat aloft, cracking their whips with a grotesque affectation of gallantry. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted for a yard or two by the blaze ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... are numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask falls, and the pupil is permitted to see that all is one stuff, cooked and painted under many counterfeit appearances. Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... horrors of my misfortune, without being able to find any remedy; in vain did I rack my brain; it supplied me with no expedient. I feared nothing so much as daybreak; however, it did come, and the cruel Brinon along with it. He was booted up to the middle, and cracking a cursed whip, which he held in his hand, 'Up, Monsieur le Chevalier,' cried he, opening the curtains; 'the horses are at the door, and you are still asleep. We ought by this time to have ridden two stages; give me money to pay the reckoning.' 'Brinon,' said I, in a dejected tone, 'draw the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... admirable provocative of thirst. He was much disposed to believe Mutimer guilty, but understood that it was none of his business to openly take part with either side. He stood well on the limits of the throng; it was not impossible that the debate might end in the cracking of crowns, in which case Mr. Dabbs, as a respectable licensed victualler whose weekly profits had long since made him smile at the follies of his youth, would certainly incur no needless risk to ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... to it with a thrill in her veins and a joy in her heart. She was tired out and cold; this humble log hut meant shelter from the storm and warmth and food. Bill hung the meat; then with his knife cut off thick steaks for their supper. In a few moments their fire was cracking. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... his old bundle over one shoulder, and the torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, he's but a demi-semi in the Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his employment, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... tongues fiercely. Others raced round the scene of slaughter with their heads full four feet high, or gathered about the dead and dying, and lashed the air with their sharp tails, producing sounds like the cracking of whips. The few copper-heads and rattlesnakes present coiled themselves up with their heads in the centre in readiness to strike their poison into whatever object came ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... all, and the little crowd cheered lustily against the whine of the blizzard as, with cracking whip and hoarse shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Cracking the nut of romance and exaggeration, we come to the kernel of the story—that Avary did fall in with an Indian vessel laden with great treasure (and possibly with the Mogul's daughter), which he captured, and thereby ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... and not to be questioned, and that he desired at once to consult the spirits. Upon this I sat down at a table, and, after a brief silence, demanded in a solemn voice if there were present any spirits. By industriously cracking my big-toe joint, I was enabled to represent at once the presence of a numerous assembly of these worthies. Then I inquired if any one of them had been present when the robbery was effected. A prompt double-knock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the village twinkling like so many golden candles. But the berlin, which had drawn them so stoutly over these rugged mountain-roads, failed them at the last. One of the hind wheels jolted violently upon a great stone, there was a sudden cracking of wood, and the carriage lurched over, throwing its occupants one against ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... made a hard rap at his head— The lad being easily heated, 'So ye chates me bekase I'm in grief! O! is that, by the Holy, the rason? Soon I'll give you to know you d—d thief! That you're cracking your jokes out of sason, And scuttle your nob with ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... And must I ravel out My weav'd-up follies? Gentle Northumberland, If thy offences were upon record, Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst, There shouldst thou find one heinous article, Containing the deposing of a king And cracking the strong warrant of an oath, Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven. Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Showing an outward ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... roast the fat deer which the foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning, wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation: young Gamwell ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat, under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the sun fell ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... liquor. All tramped, kicked, plunged, shouldered, and jostled, doing as little service with as much tumult as could well be imagined. At length, while the dinner was, after various efforts, in the act of being arranged upon the board, "the clamour much of men and dogs," the cracking of whips, calculated for the intimidation of the latter, voices loud and high, steps which, impressed by the heavy-heeled boots of the period, clattered like those of the statue in the Festin de pierre, announced the arrival of those for whose benefit the preparations were made. The hubbub among ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... silence for a minute or two afterwards—no sound to be heard but the cracking of Toby's whip and the ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... guide, who was lying where he had fallen. I don't think he was mortally wounded, for he was quite thirty yards off when I fired. However, I made certain of him by cracking his skull with a long-handled club he carried. Then I loaded the Sharp's rifle, slung it over my shoulder by its sling; and started back for the village at a run, holding ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm. Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not daring to think of the sound of his wife's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... time, too; Spring already Now gave signal of his coming— Buds were sprouting on the fig-trees; Shots were cracking, for with guns and Nets they were the quails pursuing, Who towards home their flight were taking; And the minstrel was in peril Then of seeing feathered colleagues Set upon the table roasted. This dread o'er him, pen and inkstand Flew against the wall together. Ready now and newly soled were My ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o'clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt sure ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... those who studied such matters what he was. After one glance at Richard he never looked at him again, but stared straight before him, and talked in muttered tones unceasingly, and with lips as motionless as those of a ventriloquist. He was doing fourteen years for cracking a public-house, and had cracked a good many private ones, concerning the details of which enterprises he was very eloquent. When he had concluded his autobiography he began to evince some interest in the circumstances of his companion. Richard, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace, and compared all this luxury ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... guarded, is unlike any other. The seedlings differ in traits of vigor, hardiness, susceptibility to disease, time of beginning to bear, productiveness, and longevity, and the nuts vary in size, form, thickness of shell, ease of cracking, and in kernel characteristics. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... went round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. Some of the blocks stood erect and towered like icebergs, and these, glittering in the lights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed solemnly forward, cracking, crushing, and cutting everything in their way. When the great mass neared the planing mill on the east shore the girls covered their eyes, expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we shouldn't," agreed Jack. "He's a good friend of mine and three heads might be better than two in cracking this hard nut I'm up against. But he looks as if he might be bringing us news. Ten to one he's going to say the way is cleared for us to take that long trip with him to Berlin and back in his ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... they set off at full speed and neither stop nor slacken their pace until they reach the next post-house. Within the distance of half a mile from it, the postilion gives warning of his approach by a repeated and great cracking of his whip, so that by the time of arrival another cart is got ready to receive the traveller' (p. 93). (This is still the system in practice in some parts of Russia, and the author travelled in this fashion, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... young fellow of twenty-two, a sailor from boyhood, who three years before, on a public highway, had been picked up penniless and hungry by Tom Grogan, after the keeper of a sailors' boarding-house had robbed him of his year's savings. The change from cracking ice from a ship's deck with a marlinespike, to currying and feeding something alive and warm and comfortable, was so delightful to the Swede that he had given up the sea for a while. He had felt that he could ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... owe gratitude any where I have my debt with you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns, and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead and wounded on the polished floor ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the sombre firs, as if they had been roused by the wind from a deep magic trance, groaned hoarsely in a responsive chorus. The bare black walls of the castle towered above the snow-covered ground; we drew up at the gates, which were fast locked. But no shouting or cracking of whips, no knocking or hammering, was of any avail; the whole castle seemed to be dead; not a single light was visible at any of the windows. The old gentleman shouted in his strong stentorian voice, "Francis, Francis, where the deuce are you? In the devil's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... shout that reached Dick's sleeping ears. He sprang to his feet and found that the gorgeous sun was flooding the prairie with light. Already the high, brilliant skies of the Great West were arching over him. Men were cooking breakfast. Teamsters were cracking their whips and the whole camp was alive with a gay and cheerful spirit. Everybody seemed to know now that they were going for the gold, and, like Dick, they had found it in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... finding the land we were in search of. At noon we were in the latitude of 50 deg. 56' S., longitude 56 deg. 48' E., and presently after we saw two islands of ice. One of these we passed very near, and found that it was breaking or falling to pieces, by the cracking noise it made; which was equal to the report of a four-pounder. There was a good deal of loose ice about it; and had the weather been favourable, I should have brought-to, and taken some up. After passing this, we saw no more, till we returned again ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... almost midnight, but it seemed like a week to the boys, when the cracking of twigs and the crunch of feet warned of the approach of men. It proved to be the party, for they heard a low growling imprecation from Green as he stumbled over some object. Garry nudged Fernald, and immediately felt two sharp taps on his shoulder. At once he imitated the plaintive ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a plunge into ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hungry tongues of flame licking the stone walls. At first no impression was made, but suddenly there was a cracking of glass and an entrance was affected. The interior furnishings of the fourth floor were the first to go. Then as though by magic, smoke issued from the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, which was often, the hoarse roncione shook the very tressels of our bed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies in Michigan, Bed Bugs ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... to America with Sir John Hawkins, to subdue the Spanish colonies with the heaviest fleet he ever commanded. Though wrangles between the commanders made this expedition a comparative failure, still wherever the head of a don was seen, a cracking blow was struck at it. War was a crueller business then than it is to-day, in spite of our high explosives, our armored ships, our mighty guns, and our nimble tactics, and things were done that no captain would dare in these times; at least, no captain with ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... not let him alone. She chatters unceasingly and gushingly. At an early period of the repast the string of her amber-bead necklace suddenly gives way with a snap. The beads trickle slowly down, one by one; half a dozen of them drop with a cracking noise, like little marbles, upon the polished floor, where there is a general scramble of waiters and gentlemen under the table together after them; two fall into her own soup, three more on to Denis Wilde's table-napkin; as fast as the truants are picked up others ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... their work of disintegration to provide substance for the slender red stem of dogwood, which is growing out of the soil they have made. The fallen leaves of the surrounding trees follow the pioneer work of the mosses. The rain and the cracking frosts are other agencies. By and by the organic will triumph over the inorganic, the cell over the crystal, the plant over the rock, and where now the fossils lie ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... one slipped, and the other struck under the shoulder. From the lower rib to the back there ran a white mark. The white mark turned black, and blood came out. At the pain of it the stricken bull grunted and struck up. His horn struck under the body, and with the cracking of his joints he heaved the other over. Haw! He rolled him right over and sprang at him. Wow!! He struck and stood back. The other was on his feet swiftly. With the swiftness of a little cat he gained his feet. So ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... stooped to pick up the piece of paper. There came a queer, cracking, snapping sound, almost audible, I have a strange recollection of Harry standing up by the side of the desk—a flitting vision. An intuition of some terrible force. It was out of nothing—nowhere—approaching. I turned about. And I saw it— the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... Choflo returned. "Look! See how the sand in the islands and on the riverbank is cracking! Tumwah is angry. Soon his fiery breath will sweep the green earth, parching the vegetation, searing our flesh and leaving death and destruction in its wake. Long days of suffering ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o'clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from Simiti. Reed and Harris were bustling about, assembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men's backs. Dona Maria's eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. Jose wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... difficult to describe as the noise of the bullet. It's a far quicker noise than an express train. It sounds like a taxi going at about a hundred miles an hour and then bursting; a bullet sounds like someone cracking a very loud whip just in your ear, and a bit noisier than that when it is close to you. A machine gun—there is one going now—sounds like a very noisy motor bike, exactly like one, shells and bullets both whistle as well as they are going on. Well, I must get on, I brought ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... some of them on horseback and others on foot, did not speak. The only sounds that rose from the densely packed flocks were the clatter of their hard feet on the earth, the cracking of their ankle bones, and an occasional bawl of protest. But even this last was rare, for the sheep, worn with fast traveling and ignorant of the meaning of the strange things that were happening to them, were half-frightened; and only contented ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... me L20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... He had been too terrified to notice the direction in which he had drifted—even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge of a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewildered state, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow tree near him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, which ran away. But the same association of ideas in his torpid and confused brain impelled him to search for the squirrel's ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... intent face as, husbanding my strength for a few seconds, I passed tossed about on the confused welter close by the quartz shelf. Then, as the circling waters hurried me a second time round and outward toward the further shore, I made what I knew must be the last effort, made it with cracking sinews and bursting lungs, and drew clear by a foot or two of the eddy's circumference. A few more strokes and an easy paddling carried me down-stream, and a wild cry of triumph, which more resembled a hoarse cackle than a shout, went up when ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Something was evidently cautiously approaching us, but whether panther, stag, or bear we could not tell—probably the last. We gave a glance at our rifles, cocked them, and pressed a few paces forward amongst the canes; when suddenly a bound and a cracking noise, which grew rapidly more distant, warned us that the animal had taken the alarm. One of our companions, who had as yet never seen a bear-hunt, ran forward as fast as the palmettos would allow him, and was soon out of sight. Unfortunately we had no dogs, and after half an hour's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... of the score card will record the rating of the judges on the cracking qualities and other characteristics of the nuts themselves. Any form accepted and approved by the NNGA will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... after age. But this is the zone of illimitable sun-force, which destroys as swiftly as it generates, and generates again as swiftly as it destroys. Here, when the forest giant falls, as some tell me that they have heard him fall, on silent nights, when the cracking of the roots below and the lianes aloft rattles like musketry through the woods, till the great trunk comes down, with a boom as of a heavy gun, re-echoing on from mountain-side ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... growth and curtailing inflation. However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 'Bah!' murmured Slimak, cracking his whip at them, 'if I listened to you idlers, you and I would both starve under the fence. The beggars are playing ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... minute a silence as of death reigned in the mine; then there was a sharp cracking explosion, followed—or rather, prolonged—by another like thunder, and, while a flash of fire seemed to surround them, filling the air, firing their clothes, and scorching their limbs, the whole mine shook with a deep continuous ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... was advancing rapidly; they could now hear the cracking of the whip with which the servant urged on the tow-horse. And now it stopped, at an easy landing-place, barely fifty paces from the terrace. Madame de Lamotte landed with her son and the stranger, and her husband descended from the terrace to meet her. Long before he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the name of the Sirkar, go forward!" shouted the Policeman; but there was an ugly cracking and splintering of shutters, and the crowd halted, with oaths and growlings, before the house whence the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... but the Colonel himself along with his adjutant. It can be readily imagined what scrambling and endeavor there was on the part of the sorrowing ones to return undetected to the Colonel's headquarters his stolen property and belongings. For days thereafter, the garrison resounded to the cracking of the Colonel's knout, and this time the wailing and shedding of tears was undoubtedly more real than any that had been shed previously to that time. These various unfortunate affairs, while harmful enough in themselves, did far greater harm than such ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... "And," said Tomlinson, cracking his filberts,—Tomlinson was fond of filberts,—"were I to choose a home, it is in such a home as this that ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... connections"—alluded to himself and his sister as being of the "true breed"—and with a certain vigor of epithet, picked up in the familiarity of the camp during the days when she was known as "Old Ma'am Atherly" or "Aunt Sally," declared that they were "no corn-cracking Hoosiers," "hayseed pikes," nor "northern Yankee scum," and that she should yet live to see them "holding their own lands again and the lands of their forefathers." Quieted at last by opiates, she fell into a more lucid but scarcely less distressing attitude. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... game of playing at horses is admirably calculated to increase health and vigour and needs no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon drawn in to repress the curvetting of the gaitered steed? There is nothing in reality more undignified about that than in hitting a little ball about over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice trundled hoops round and round after breakfast in ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that Buster ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... and in determination to drive them back, each man personally seems to be the same. Consequently the "carnage" is being appalling, and we have been practically in it, as far as horrors go. Guns were cracking and splitting all night, lighting up the sky in flashes, and fires were burning on both sides. The Clearing Hospital close by, which was receiving the wounded from the field and sending them on to us, was packed and overflowing with badly ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and crawled ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly profane,' rejoined his father, turning his face lazily towards him, and cracking another nut, 'that I positively must interrupt you here. It is quite impossible we can continue to go on, upon such terms as these. If you will do me the favour to ring the bell, the servant will show you to the door. Return to this roof no more, I beg you. Go, sir, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... up to this time, and she had been listing over to the east, or away from the wind and the sea, but now all over and within the ship were heard loud noises of cracking beams and the sharp harsh snap of timbers breaking. The crew of the wreck, in dread of instant death, now again burned blue lights. Just before the lifeboat approached, as if in a death-throe, the ship reeled inwards, and her tottering ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... shook himself fully awake, and sent the long lash cracking over the thin, sweat-drenched backs of the ox-team. They laboured with desperation at the yoke, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ominous cracking sound; Agony uttered another shriek and turned away; the next instant the shrill cries of the bird ceased; the man in the chair gave vent to a long drawn "Ah-h!" Agony looked up to see the exhausted bird fluttering to the ground beside her, a length of string still hanging to its foot, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... broke off short, and with good reason. A strange creaking and cracking sound had reached his ears, followed by a bump and a jar which nearly pitched him headlong. Sam was ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... finished there was a silence. Miss West was busy serving coffee from a copper percolator. Mr. Pike, profoundly occupied with cracking walnuts, could not quite hide the wicked, little, half-humorous, half-revengeful gleam in his eyes. But Captain West looked straight at me, but from oh! such a distance—millions and millions of miles away. His clear blue eyes were ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the mother, sitting suddenly up. A direful cracking resounded under the bed-clothes as she did so, but in the excitement of the moment its possible evil portent ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Evening: which created us a fresh disturbance, thinking them to be People that were coming to chace us. But at length we heard Elephants behind us, between us and the Voice, which we knew by the noise of cracking the Boughs and small Trees, which they break down and eat. These Elephants were a very good Guard behind us, and were methought like the Darkness that came between Israel and the Egyptians. For ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... right. And how can you say that my nose went in the air? I'm sure Mr. Taynton will agree with me that that is really libellous. And as for your being afraid to tell me you had bought a motor-car yourself, why, that is sillier than cracking ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the worthy priest—was swept away like a fragile bridge by the torrent of wild eloquence and ungovernable enthusiasm which Patience had accumulated in his desert. The vicar had to give way and fall back terrified upon himself. There he discovered that the shrine of his own science was everywhere cracking and crumbling to ruin. The new sun which was rising on the political horizon and making havoc in so many minds, melted his own like a light snow under the first breath of spring. The sublime enthusiasm of Patience; the strange poetic life of the man which ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... that night. They traveled slowly and cautiously, and with each day Peter came to understand more clearly there was some reason why they must be constantly on their guard. His master, he noticed, was thrillingly attentive whenever a sound came to their ears—perhaps the cracking of a twig, a mysterious movement of brush, or the tread of a cloven hoof. And instinctively he came to know they were evading Man. He remembered vividly their escape from Cassidy and their quiet hiding for many days in the mass of sun-baked ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the roof, nor at the window. Kunda thought, "He has not risen yet, it is not time; I will sit down." She sat waiting amid the darkness under the trees; a fruit or a twig might be heard, in the silence, loosening itself with a slight cracking sound and falling to the earth. The birds in the boughs shook their wings overhead, and occasionally the sound of the watchmen knocking at the doors and giving their warning cry was to be heard. At length the cool wind blew, forerunner ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... East Side loafers standing on the wharf cap-log were nearly swept away by the end of our bowsprit, we came on so fast. Four or five of us leaped ashore, and with lines out and made fast in no time, we had her docked without so much as cracking a single shingle of the house across ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... face to his breast and repeated, "Don't, don't, don't," feebly for a few times, without seeming to realize what he was saying. From some outpost of his being reinforcements came. For he rose suddenly, and shaking his haggard fist at the youth, exclaimed in a high, furious, cracking voice as he panted and shook his great hairy head: "No—by God, no, by God, no! You damned young cut-throat—you can break my bank, but you can't bulldoze me. No, by God—no!" He started to leave the room. Barclay caught the old man and swung him into a chair. The flint that Barclay's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Some men are of an assurance, of a sang froid! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their perplexity. They'll brazen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression as false as the medium that conveys it? Were ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... tents are put up in a line, and at once begins the work of gathering brush and sticks (or buffalo-chips), with which to cook a savory supper of bacon, potatoes, and hot coffee. This is the time for cracking jokes, telling stories of pioneer life,—and the colored boys are full of fun. We had one from the South named Tom Williams, belonging to Colonel Mason, of the 5th Cavalry. After enjoying our evening meal and getting ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... is a mud hearth, a wall of clay plastered over the stones of the fireplace. This will prevent the fire from cracking and chipping the stones, but clay is not absolutely necessary in this fireplace. When, however, you build the walls of your fireplace of logs and your chimney of sticks the clay is necessary to prevent the fire from ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot of the hill. Flocks of nimble, noisy boys turned somersaults and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... only would!' cried the Princess, and at the same moment she heard a crick-cracking in all her bones. She grew tall and straight and pretty, with eyes like shining stars, and a skin ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... we ate our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued by ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... radiating tail. From every side-road came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them—cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in lofty timber, and, as I paused, I heard the mighty cracking of fire coming through the wood. At the same instant the blinding smoke burst into a million tongues of flackering flame, and I saw the fire—not where I had ever seen it before—not creeping along among the scrub—but up aloft, a hundred and fifty feet overhead. It had caught the dry bituminous ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of Culloden he was a frequent guest,—"a house, or castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... pavement, and the clatter of their wheels drew many inmates of the houses they passed to the windows, and a little crowd collected around them as they stood waiting for admission before the great entrance door of the Armes de France; the driver, meanwhile, cracking his whip till it sounded like a volley of musketry, to which the horses responded by shaking their heads, and making all the little bells about them jingle sharply and merrily. There was a wonderful difference between this and their arrival at the last inn they had stopped ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... driver came to the door to say the coach was waiting, for on the Plains stages stop not for accidents or dead men. I bade my friend good-night, hoping he would not again be interrupted on his journey by the redskins, and, the driver cracking his whip, the four fresh bays bounded forward at a gallop, and soon carried the coach out of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the chatter of these mild people, me that's heard grand stories in the forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a sailing man? A sailor ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... been long in slumber, when a slight noise, perhaps the cracking of a stick, drove sleep from my anxious brain, and I sat up with surprise, staring at a long figure in black that stood peering at me. The black gown, the beads and the broad-brimmed hat told me it was ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... symptoms of fracture of the cranium are: Loss of appetite and failure of digestion, insomnia, difficulty in micturition, constipation, a febrile dyscrasia, difficulty in cracking nuts or crusts of bread with the jaws, or severe pain when a string is attached to the teeth and pulled sharply. If the meninges are injured we have further: headache, a slow and irregular but increasing ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... him, fell flat on his breast and went scooting over the ice for about ten or fifteen yards before he could stop himself. What would have happened after that no one can tell, for just then the attention of the whole party was diverted by a shout in the distance, accompanied by the cracking of a whip and the usual sounds that announced ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman without means of livelihood, breaks away from her moorings—well, it is as if a child were to fall into the midst of some gigantic machinery that is going at full speed. Let her try the feat, and the cracking of her bones by the big wheels will attest its hopelessness. And yet I long to try!" Hadria added beneath ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... given to be afraid,' said Bagwax. 'The ocean, if I know myself, would have no terrors for me;—not if I was doing my duty. But I should hear the ship's sides cracking with every blast if that secret were lodged ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... front seat of a landau under the peering eyes of his lady, safe in his disguise, if not self-betrayed, pouring out his young soul in passionate praise and prayer; around them the laughter and the cries, the cracking of whips, the roll of wheels, the presence of countless thousands, and yet these two young hearts alone under the pale winter sky. The rest of the Continent has outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleasant to see this gay relic of simpler times, when youth was young. No one here is too "swell" ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond badly scorching the door, and cracking a few of the stones by reason of the intense heat that was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... doing her utmost to keep ahead, but the Wolf, being the fastest ship of the two, gained rapidly on her. The men stood at their guns, waiting eagerly for the moment that the order to fire should be given, laughing, however, and cracking their usual jokes. The officers went their rounds, to see that all necessary preparations ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston |
