"Crank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speeding down the street from the same direction as the taxi had taken. It swung close to the curb, and was pulled up barely a yard short of the waiting cab, whose engine the driver was starting with the crank. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Meanwhile the Mississippi had passed, unseen and unseeing, in the smoke, and had herself grounded a little farther up near the head of the spit. She was observed to be on fire as the Monongahela again drew near the bend, and at the same moment the latter vessel's engines ceased to move, a crank-pin being heated. Thus unmanageable she drifted down within thirty yards of the batteries, and had to anchor below. Her loss was 6 killed and 21 wounded; the Kineo, though repeatedly ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... this time, and saw a strange sight. Alongside his boat was a cabin motor craft, and on the rear deck he could see gathered a number of men, women and girls. What took Joe's attention next was a queer oblong box, with a crank at one side, and a tube projecting from it, mounted on a tripod. Then, as his eyes became more accustomed to the light, Joe saw bending over him in ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... climbing over them and easing her at the bowline. Then, as we seized the next instant of the rhythm, and hauled her alongside, Peterson made a leap and went aboard her, and Williams scrambled back, once more, across the two huddled forms. I saw him wrench at the engine crank, and heard the spitting chug of the little motor. They fell off in the seaway, Peterson holding her with an oar as he could till the screws caught. Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of the beam of our search-light, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... of having such a good home. Ginger said if we could do all that, and keep Jonesy and his brother from growing up to be tramps like the man we bought the bear from, it would be serving our country just as much as if we went to war and fought for it. Ginger is a crank about being a patriot. You ought to hear her talk about it. And Aunt Allison said that 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' and that to build such a place as our 'Fairchance' would be a deed worthy ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... indicated by Miss Belcher was a formidable-looking engine with an iron arm or rod terminating in a spoon-shaped socket, and worked by a contrivance of crank and chain. You placed your cricket-ball in the socket, and then, having wound up the crank and drawn a pin which released the machinery, had just time to run back and defend your wicket as the iron rod revolved and discharged the ball with a jerk. The rod itself worked on a slide, and could be shortened ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... be "all Cossack or all republican." Part of it has come true already. Meanwhile it looks as though the United States, having exhausted the reasonable possibilities of democracy, is beginning to turn crank. Look at woman suffrage by Federal edict; look at prohibition by act of Congress and constitutional amendment; tobacco next to walk on the plank; and then!—Lord, how glad I feel that I am nearly a hundred years old and shall ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... machinery that turns the lenses? That 's the main thing. The bearings must be kept well oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. The clock-face will tell you when it is running right. If anything gets hitched up here's the crank to keep it going until you can straighten the machine again. It's easy enough to turn it. But you must never let it stop between dark and daylight. The regular turn once a minute—that's the mark of this light. If it shines steady it might as well be out. Yes, better! ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... there never will be. But I'm no crank. I like a good dinner and a seat at the play and an artistic domestic hearth as well as the next man. If I were to marry, of course I should retain the tutorship which I accepted temporarily as a means of training my own perceptions, though I should try to preserve ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... nearly so large before the eyes of the people as these composers do: the names of Salieri, Marschner, Meyerbeer, Spontini, Spohr and Weber would be much more familiar than his; even in Vienna he was regarded mainly as a deaf, surly old crank who had the support of highly placed personages. So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great hour ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... noise again, and again the human note was heard, and was followed by a groan. The time seemed infinite, though it was only to be reckoned by moments, or pulse-beats—the time during which the torturing crank revolved, and was answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... hydrant, with a half-spiral crank of a handle on its top and the curved end of a lead pipe always aleak thrust through its rotten side, with its little statues of ice all winter and its spattering slop all summer. Besides all this there were some broken flower-pots in a heap ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... penitentiary at Christianshafen. The gates are never open, and there is no lodge-keeper. The forest adjoins the garden, and the garden runs down to the water's edge. The original owner of the estate was a crank who lived in a hut, which was so overgrown with moss and creepers that I did not pull it down. Never in my life has anything given me such delight as the anticipation of this hermit-like existence. At the same time, I have engaged a first-rate cook, called ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... no driver, no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the patio of the tribunal was a picturesque well curb of uncut stones. It had a rustic crank of bamboo; its water was slimy and putrid. All sorts of refuse had been thrown around ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... insignificant mistake, seemingly, may prove to be of the most vital importance. Dick went to the telephone. It was one of the old-fashioned sort, still in almost universal use in the rural parts of England, that require the use of a bell to call the central office. Dick turned the crank, then took down the receiver. At once he heard a confused ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... ARE RUNG. The old-fashioned telephones, still often used in the country, have little cranks that you turn to ring for central. The crank turns a coil of wire between the poles of the magnet and generates the electricity for ringing the bell. These little dynamos, like those in automobiles, are ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... will you?" said Mat quietly to some of his neighbors. "I want to stop those flying women and the man in the crank ship from coming down ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... popular education, into a local antiquarian society; but simply let it serve incidentally as a picker-up of unconsidered trifles. A wide-awake, scholarly librarian will like his town, and delight in at least some study of its antecedents. And such a librarian need not be a crank, but must needs be an enterprising, wide-awake, appreciative student, who can scent the tastes and ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... and try surfacing them off with a file. When you place the two filed surfaces together after the first trial both will be convex, because the hands, in filing, unless you exert the utmost vigilance, will assume a crank-like movement. The filing test is so to file the two blocks that they will fit tightly together without rolling on each other. Before shaping and planing machines were invented, machinists were compelled to plane down and accurately finish off ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will in all things obey the commands of the great tawney prince, and keep his council, and not divulge the secrets of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the front railing of the car. Another deluge of missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard. Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... walked slowly down the Station Road, swinging the silver-knobbed cane the office clerks had given him when he left the City. Leisurely, without a touch of fear, he passed the Water Works, where the huge iron crank of the shaft rose and fell with ominous thunder against the sky. It had once been part of that awful hidden Engine which moved the world. To go near it was instant death, and he always crossed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... hundred years in the world without giving birth to that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Wilkes, who was promised a subscription of one thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that he might be directed to some one able and willing to assist him. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... my snappy friend had had time enough to transact all the affairs of the Nation I made another attempt but I listened once more, rather than butt in again, listened and heard, 'Just the sweetest shade of green, you know—' Trials of Job, I was getting out of patience, to put it mildly. I gave the crank a vicious turn but the same party was still talking, she said sweetly, 'I guess someone wants the line.' I assured her I did, it was a case of life and death. 'Someone dead, oh dear, is it any ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... wit chip flock crank theft whit shut trick shock sling whet shed shelf trunk trust whig shop swift plank sting whip shad frock swing fresh whiff chub strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... do not know what his age was but he clearly looked older than his years. Some days in the course of our lessons he would suddenly be at a loss for some word and look vacant and ashamed. His people at home counted him a crank. He had become possessed of a theory. He believed that in each age some one dominant idea is manifested in every human society in all parts of the world; and though it may take different shapes under different degrees of civilisation, it is at bottom one and the same; ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... me about your cold-blooded savages! Does anything equal a crank with a camera, bent on snapping off everything that happens?" muttered Jerry, shaking his head in real or ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... ordered Mr. Pertell, and Ruth and Alice started the "business," or acting, called for. Russ was grinding away at the crank of the camera. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... apprentice he had studied the steam engine, and had resolved that he would improve it by doing away with the crank. To his mind this was a source of great loss of power, and he believed that, if he could transform the rectilinear motion of the piston rod directly into rotary motion without the intervention of the crank, he would effect a ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... the rudder is communicated to the steam cut-off by means of the shaft, C, crank, J, rod, K, crank, I, and the hollow valve spindle. When the tiller is amidships the valve handle, H, is at right angles to the cylinder, and parallel to the tiller. By moving the lever, H, to right or left, steam is admitted to one end or the other ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... to be frozen into the tin can, put the beater in this, and put on the cover. Place in the tub, being careful to have the point on the bottom fit into the socket in the tub. Put on the cross-piece, and turn the crank to see if everything is in the right place. Next comes the packing. Ice should be broken in large pieces, and put in a canvas bag, and pounded fine with a mallet. Put a thick layer of it in the tub (about five inches deep), and then a thin layer of salt. Continue this until the tub is full, ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... 4, 1807, a crowd of curious people might have been seen along the wharves of the Hudson River. They had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a "crank" who proposed to take a party of people up the Hudson River to Albany in what he called a steam vessel named the Clermont. Did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... away by our young friend's suspicions," said he to his old friend. "Scarborough is a fine fellow. But he lacks your experience and my knowledge of practical business. And he has been made something of a crank by combating the opposition his extreme views ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... girls who were in it. In this way they passed one night, almost in despair of seeing the morrow. But day came, and they repaired the ship by binding other sails that were carried for that purpose. After this storm the ship was very crank, and even in fair weather its sides were under water, although it had a high freeboard. Consequently, it shipped so much water that the waves washed over the decks with great noise and uproar, and entered the berths where the better-class ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... I never saw him so completely cowed. It knocked all the eloquence out of him for once. The man is a crank and an agitator. I have kept my eye on him for some time. He is a fairly good workman in his line, though, and just now can't do much harm, as times are easy and these new improvements of yours keep the people busy with other interests. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... with, I sailed in the Cadogan, Captain John Hall, in company with the Francis, Captain Newsham; and as the latter ship sailed much better than the Cadogan, she left us immediately after getting out to sea. Finding his ship very tender, or crank, Captain Hill put in at Batavia, to get her into better trim. We continued here about ten days; but I can say little about that place, being all the time unable to stand on my legs, and was only twice out in a coach to take the air, two or three miles out of the city, in which little excursion ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... he handed her an envelope. "And this keep," he added, giving her one addressed to his father. "Don't let him have it till it's all over. You know." Then he took up a pen and a sheet of paper, and got as far, with a shaking hand, as 'Dear Crank—' but there he broke down, and laid his head ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day or two it will percolate through to the varlet's intelligence that you are a desperate dog in urgent need of something, and he will bestir himself, and mayhap in a further two or three days' time he will wind a crank, pull some strings, and announce that you are "on," and you will find yourself in animated conversation with an inspector of cemeteries, a jam expert at the Base, or the Dalai Lama. If you want to give back-chat to the Staff you had best take it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... excepte they be broughte up in it." The advantage of this weapon over the steel crossbow (used by the Genoese) lay in the fact that it could be discharged much more rapidly, the latter being a cumbrous affair, which had to be wound up with a crank for each shot. Hence the English long bow was to that age what the revolver is to ours. It sent an arrow with such force that only the best armor could withstand it. The French peasantry at that period had ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... talking. Still I must say it's a pity that folks who have got religion don't take more comfort out of it. Now there's mother; she's a pillar in the church, and a good woman, I believe, but she's dreadful crank sometimes, and worries about things as she hadn't ought to. Now it seems to me, if I had all they say a Christian has, and expects to have, I'd let the rest go. They don't half of them live as if they took more comfort than I do, and there are spells when ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... that portion thereof which represents her as a lovely and interesting woman. The truth is that she is fearfully homely, both in face and figure, while her eccentricities are such that in America, for instance, she would be described as a "crank." Thus she distinguishes herself through her inordinate fondness for cats, goats and rabbits; escorted by whole herds of which she is wont to wander through the gloomy streets of Breslau. Her costumes are invariably as queer as the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... at a wedding, or the birth of a son; the lutis are to the Persians what Italian organ-grinders are among ourselves; I fancy people give them money chiefly to get rid of their noise and annoyance, as we do to save ourselves from the soul-harrowing tones of a wheezy crank organ beneath the window. Among the novel conveyances observed in the courtyard of the caravanserai is the takhtrowan, a large sedan chair provided with shafts at either end, and carried between two mules or horses; another is the before-mentioned ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... we had to leave. A prisoner stepped forward to crank my car, and all of them, the dauntless Frenchman in the center, lined up and gave us the military salute. Before reentering the woods I looked back and saw the blue-coated figure offering a light to the green ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... was a Hand at the reel That nobody saw,— Old Hickory there at every keel, In every timber, from stem to stern,— A something in every crank and wheel, That made 'em answer their turn; And everywhere, On earth and water, in fire and air, As it were to see it all well done, The Wraith of the murdered Law,— Old John ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... that the long-haired Cavaliers used to regard the short hair of the Puritans as the "limit" in bad taste, but the man who today dares to walk down the Strand with hair streaming down his back is looked at as a curiosity and a crank, and we all join in that delightful addition to the Litany which Moody invented: "From long-haired men and short-haired women, Good Lord, deliver us." But who shall say that our children will ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... made another effort to obtain the help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph. Morse had come to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury. The Bill passed the House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... let me tell you I'm about ready to pull up stakes and go out West, where there's patriotism and decency still, and where they'd hang one of these foreign anarchists to the nearest lamp-post, yes, sir, and this fellow Frazer, too, if he encouraged them in their crank notions. Got no right in the country, anyway. Better deport 'em if they ain't satisfied with the way we run things. I won't stand for preaching anarchism, and never knew any decent place that would, never since I was a baby in Canada. Yes, sir, I mean it; I'm an old man, but I'd ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... sea-worthiness. Williams overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast, strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron, not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor, Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew. "It was great fun," says Trelawny, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the yellowish individual, turning the crank, "look, Nor Juan, how with merely my own strength I can raise and lower the great stone. It's so well arranged that at will I can regulate the rise or fall inch by inch, so that a man in the trench can easily ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the man of the Ford if his engine had suffered. No, he thought it was all right; he would crank up and see. Good! She started off with a clutter, and he asked me if I wanted to ride. I had not far to go, but gladly accepted, for I was rather struck with this young fellow's grip on himself. It took self-control to avoid making the air blue with ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... run the gauntlet of pseudo-designers, crank inventors, press "experts," and politicians; of manufacturers keen on cheap work and large profits; of poor pilots who had funked it, and good pilots who had expected too much of it. Thousands of pounds had been wasted on it, many had gone bankrupt ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... about three feet from each other. The head was at the same height as the feet, and the body, held up on a trestle, described a half-curve, as though lying over a wheel. To increase the stretch of the limbs, the man gave two turns to a crank, which pushed the feet, at first about twelve inches from the rings, to a distance of six inches. And here we may leave our narrative to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... biographies such as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew nothing ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... stones pounded up to make a sea beach. On the north side only was there barrenness— for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man; and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one for the towns and cities and the bright things of life—what ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... a crank in the old fellow,' exclaimed Joseph. 'Is he really such a fool as to think Jane won't use the money for herself? And what about Kirkwood? I tell you what it is; he's a deep fellow, is Kirkwood. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... which the power was applied; but as another arrangement is just possible, this could not be called anything more than a highly probable correlation. If now he went a step further, and asked how the reciprocal movement was given to the lever, he would perhaps conclude that it was given by a crank. But if he knew anything of mechanics, he would know that it might possibly be given by an eccentric. Or again, he would know that the effect could be achieved by a cam. That is to say, he would see that there was no necessary ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... as I had recovered breath, I attempted to climb in over the side; but to my chagrin, the crank little craft sunk under my weight, and turned bottom upwards, as if it had been a washing tub, plunging me under water by the sudden capsize. I rose to the surface, and once more laying my hands upon the boat, climbed ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... To crank the motor (for the self-starter had not yet arrived) was a task of magnitude, but he accomplished it and pulled himself into the seat. For a moment he lay upon the steering wheel, panting, fighting back his weakness; then he thrust forward his control lever and the car ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... to crank again. Then he drove away, down into the deep valley and up the hill beyond and away; but Florian Hausbaum stood like Siegfried after ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Jersey. When eighty-eight years old he was as active as a man of half his years. I came upon him one wintry day, when he was of that age, and found him in the barn, shoveling corn into a hopper, of which a sturdy Irishman was turning the crank. The old admiral kept his hired man busy and enjoyed his own work. He was of small figure, always wore an old-fashioned blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, took snuff, and would laugh and shake until his weatherbeaten face was purple over some of his reminiscences ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Miss Merton," whispered Muriel, comfortingly. "She is the worst crank I ever saw. No one likes her. I don't believe even Miss Archer does. She's been here for ages, so the Board of Education thinks that Sanford High can't ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... you was tolerable busy, he up an' says he was hungry an' he ain't a-goin' to eat any more bread made in a wash-basin! Says he'll starve first. Says Nels hed the gang over to big bunk an' feasted them on bread you taught him how to make in some new-fangled bucket-machine with a crank. Jim says thet bread beat any cake he ever eat, an' he wants you to show him how to make some. Now, Miss Majesty, as superintendent of this ranch I ought to know what's goin' on. Mebbe Jim is jest a-joshin' me. Mebbe he's gone clean dotty. Mebbe I ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Place a crank (E), 5 inches long, on the outer end of the mandrel, as in Fig. 3. Then mount one block on the end of the bench and the other block 3 inches away. Affix them to the bench by nails or screws, preferably ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... sat in front of her tiny house, the late morning sun warm about her; one hand supported a book, slanted carefully to avoid the light, the other held the crank of a barrel-churn. As she read, she turned steadily, the monotonous chug! chug! of the tumbling cream ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... our after bulk-head, and got two of the boats under the half-deck; I also placed my twelve-oared cutter under the boom; so that we had nothing upon the skids but the jolly-boat; and the alteration which this made in the vessel is inconceivable: For the weight of the boats upon, the skids made her crank, and in a great sea they were also in danger of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dun'no'! She's an awful crank. She just loves them Injuns, they say. But I, fer one, draw the line at holdin' 'em in my lap. I don't b'lieve in mixin' folks up that way. Preach to 'em if you like, but let 'em keep their distance, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... road, you and a woman, sitting here in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I got to the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... "any presentiment, any extravagance as most in nature," is not commonly called a Transcendentalist, but is known colloquially as a "crank." The person who does not thank, by word or look, the friend or stranger who has pulled him out of the fire or water, is fortunate if he gets off with no harder name than that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... other, Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, 40 In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;) Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain 45 On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, And there seemed to be fire in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that mental freedom could be made a cloak for the basest mental slavery, and that the most hide-bound dogmatist on earth is the modern crank who boasts his freedom from all dogmas. He found the Liberal to be the most illiberal and narrow man he ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the other beam and threw her over, so that she shipped a bucket or two of water. Had the water got into the belly of the sail, the weight would have dragged her down; but Rob instantly got rid of this danger by springing to the halyards, and, the moment the crank craft strove to right herself, bringing sail and yard rattling down into the boat. By this time, so fierce was the squall, a pretty heavy sea had sprung up, and altogether things looked very ugly. When they allowed the jib to fill, even that was enough ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... and forth along the bank trying to think of some way to cross the river. He found a high flagpole with a rope going over to the other side. The rope went through a loop at the top of the pole and then down the pole and around a large crank. A sign ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... before yesterday apresurar, to hasten, to urge (a.) apresurarse, to hasten (n.) apresurarse con sus ordenes, to rush one's orders arbol de eje, axle shaft camara de comercio, chamber of commerce cigueena, arbol de cigueena, cigueenal, crank-shaft compania de ferrocarril, railway company con manchas, (designs)—spot con puntitas, con bolitas, (designs) spot contestar, to answer, to reply cuadritos, (designs) checks cuenta simulada, pro forma account culpa, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... off each stay That binds him to his couch of clay, And let him struggle into day; Let chain and pulley run, With yielding crank and steady rope, Until he rise from rim to cope, In rounded beauty, ribb'd in strength, Without a flaw in all his length: Hurra! the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of activity which will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting your wife to work the crank of a machine, there are a thousand ways of tiring her out under ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... midnight always in one's heart, And twilight in one's cell, We turn the crank, or tear the rope, Each in his separate Hell, And the silence is more awful far Than the sound ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... have you with me in Santa Barbara," she said. "But Roberto is what the Americanos call 'crank.' No is use asking him. Santa Barbara no is like in the old time, but is nice sleep place, where no have the neuralgia, and nothing to bother. Then always I have the few old families that are left, and we are so friends,—see each other every day, and eat the Spanish dishes. I no know ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying to me to ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... our left fielder, the biggest little crank on earth and the best base runner in the Knox County League, if I do say so! We need more ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... bone of my leg," said he, taking his knee between his hands and lifting it round. "I got it broke in the Bay, but the surgeon has fished it and spliced it, though it's a bit crank yet. Why, bless her kindly heart, if I haven't turned her from pink to white. You can see for yourself ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "we are ready for a nice long talk, that is, if you feel equal to the task of talking. What I have to say will not take long. It is about a little interview between Mr. Allison and—Judge Thorn's daughter, and if I had been less of a 'crank,' I suppose you would have had ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... elements foolishly. Not that the section-boss esteemed his aged guest. On the contrary, Dallas' evident interest in the stranger had stirred the unnatural jealousy in her father's wizen brain. Already, he hated David Bond, and had set him down for a crank. But Dallas needed a lesson. It was all very well for her to do the outside duties as if she were a man; that did not privilege her to ride roughshod over his opinions, or to rule affairs in general with ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... seen how we have thrown the crank into production. But some activities are permitted to continue. Bakers are working under our orders. The kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." He held up a small sheet which said in large letters: ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... "when he goes to the palace with that box and asks for a permit, they'll think he is either a dynamiter or a crank, and before they are through with him his interest in photography will have sustained ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... what you call a kinder crank," answered Mother Mayberry as she paused at the foot of the steps. "A married woman have got to be the hub of a family-wheel, but a old maid can be the outside crank that turns the whole contraption backwards if she has a mind to. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a flare of light upon the screen, as the operator fussed with the lamp for better lumination. He slowly began to turn the crank, and the criminologist watched the screen with no little excitement. The picture thrown up resembled nothing so much as three endless snakes twisting in the same general rhythm from top to bottom of the frame. The twenty-five duplicates were ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... letter from Scudder. I knew something of the man, and he did several jobs for me. He was half crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest. The trouble about him was his partiality for playing a lone hand. That made him pretty well useless in any Secret Service—a pity, for he had uncommon gifts. I think he was the bravest man in the world, for he was always ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... in a certain manner. Then it would roll over, open its mouth, and run out its tongue. There was another that I cannot describe, for I never saw anything that looked like it. It was some kind of a machine, and the turning of a crank made it draw together in such a way, that if a person were once within its embrace, the pressure would soon arrest the vital current, and stop the breath of life. Around the walls of the room were chains, rings and hooks, almost innumerable; ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... phrase of his religion he 'turned the wheel of the law.' One of his titles is Chakravartin, which means 'the turner of a wheel.' The doctrines of the Buddha are written out on a wheel, which is set in motion with a crank, though it is sometimes operated by horse-power; and such machines are sometimes seen in front of religious houses in Thibet, and the monks have ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... can't say THAT! He's regularly cut up, you know! And changed; you'd hardly know him. More like a gloomy crank than the easy fool he used to be," he went on, with brotherly directness. "It wouldn't be a bad thing, you know, if you could manage to see him, Miss Trotter! In fact, as he's off his feed, and has some trouble with his arm again, owing to all this, I reckon, I've been thinking ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... her father, and if any of us poor mortals want a glimpse of her between seasons, we must come where she is. She's a dear, and you must know her, even if you do hold yourself superior to us women. She's almost as much a crank on athletics as you are; you ought to see her on the links, once! That's why I can't understand her running away off here every summer. And, by the way, Ellie, what are you doing ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... lower end of the radius frequently occurs from the recoil of the crank, "by back firing," in starting the engine of a motor-car. The injury may be produced either by direct violence, the handle as it recoils striking the forearm, or by indirect violence, from forcible hyper-extension of the hand while grasping the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... collars, it keeps—keeps it forever. Never wears out. Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. In times of great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards. That makes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... into a duty. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that I soon wearied and came ashore again, and that it gives me more pleasure to recall the man himself and his simple, happy conversation, so full of gusto and sympathy, than anything possibly connected with his crank, insecure embarkation. In order to avoid seeing him, for I was not a little ashamed of myself for having failed to enjoy his treat sufficiently, I determined to continue up the river, and, at all prices, to find some other way back into the town in time for dinner. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sed, "Now hold on, gosh durn ye, what hav ye got to sell anyhow?" Wall, he told me he had some lightnin' rods, and he brought out a little masheen and told me to take hold of the handles and he'd show me what a powerful thing 'lectricity wuz. Wall, I took hold of them handles and he turned on a crank, and that durned masheen jist made me dance all over the porch, and it wouldn't let go. Gee whiz, I felt as though I'd fell in a yeller jacket's nest, and about four thousand of 'em wuz a stingin' me all to onct. Wall, I told him I guessed he could put up a lightning rod or two, seein' as how ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions, it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his ideas strictly to himself and not leave any more memopads scribbled over with clef signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's goodwill—the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... know. I suppose I'm a crank. They speak another language—those people. I don't understand them. I find that no exertion of the legs brings my mind and theirs any closer together. They bore me stiff and I bore ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... moment it was first proposed. Every dictator protested bitterly. Even politicians out of office found it a subject for rabble-rousing harangues. The nationalistic political parties, the peddlers of hate, the entrepreneurs of discord—every crank in the world had something to say against the Platform from the first. When they did not roundly denounce it as impious, they raved that it was a scheme by which the United States would put itself in position to rule all the Earth. As a matter of fact, the United ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the water of salvation to their lips, and the effect has always been the same. There has been something wrong with the valves; the pump has not worked properly; there has been something wrong with the crank; the pipe has not gone down to the water; and there has been nothing but a great jingling of empty buckets, and aching and wearied elbows, and what the woman said to Christ has been true all round, 'Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' Ay! thank God, it is deep; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Greenwich boat, but exerting in their revolutions what seemed to be an almost irresistible power. There was no noise, no vibration, nor the slightest sign of heating. The tremendous frame of ironwork sprang at once into life and motion, with as much ease as if every rod and crank had been worked for the ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... atmosphere of the place until the Second called me, for there was something to do. There was always something to do in that terrible old ship. I went down, and together we wrestled with the dynamo-engine, a cheap contraption with a closed crank chamber full of muddy oil which was supposed to splash into all the bearings, and didn't. We needed a washer, a special sort of thing. The old one was worn out. We needed screws, too, to fasten it with, small brass screws with flat heads that sank in out of sight. When I asked where ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... people made fun of him. They thought he was a crank, if not downright crazy and said that his father was very foolish indeed to encourage him in wasting so much time and money in a way that every person with common sense could see ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... so glad our boys won. There goes the Caledonia chief. I'll bet he feels like thirty cents, Spanish. Ya-a-a-ah! Ya-a-a-ah! Where's Caledonia now? They can't beat that, the other fellows can't, and it's our trophy for keeps.... Oh, some crank in the next row. "Wouldn't I please sit down and not obstruct the view." Guess he comes from Caledonia. Looks like it. You stand up, too, why don't you? Those planks are terribly hard.... I didn't notice. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... broke off, and turned her head ungraciously toward the sounder, which seemed to be repeating something over and over with a good deal of insistence. "That's Shoshone calling," she said, frowning attentively. "They've got an old crank up there in the office—I'd know his touch among a million—and when he calls he means business. I'll have to speak up, I suppose." She sighed, tucked a chocolate into her cheek, and went scowling to the table. "Can't the idiot see I'm out?" she complained whimsically. "What's ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... middle of a network of bogs, but we came upon an outpost of Welsh Fusiliers and spent the night with them. We had smashed the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched the car up temporarily and pushed off at early dawn. Our route wound through groves of palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of some holy man, occasional ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... rings and collars, But never really love his lips, invariably his dollars; We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses, If we could trace thy fraud, O SAN, in half-a-dozen guesses. It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer, For if the crank be competent, my ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... that old Boxall was trying to frighten them; but I cannot say that I was comfortable, as we had already discovered that the brig, to say the best of her, was excessively crank. The two lieutenants and the master had served chiefly on board line-of-battle ships and frigates before they got their promotion, and were inclined to sneer at the commander's caution, and I know ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... Harrison, it is true, favored an eccentric drive for feed pumps, but they mounted the eccentric on the crankpin of the rear driving wheel and thus produced in effect a half-stroke pump. This was not an unusual arrangement, though a small crank was usually employed in place of the eccentric. The full-stroke crosshead pump with which the Jenny Lind (fig. 22) is equipped, was of course the most common style of feed pump used in this country ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had exhausted itself in that direction; ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... floats in a layer on the surface of the water, and at every revolution is splashed all over the working parts, including the interior of the cylinder, which it reaches through holes in the piston. The oil is maintained exactly at one level by a very ingenious arrangement. The bottom of the crank chamber communicates through a hole, C, with an outer box, which receives the water deposited by the exhaust steam. The level of this water is exactly determined by an overflow hole, B, which allows all excess above that level to pass into an elbow of the exhaust pipe, out of which it is licked ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... no very happy experience of the post you now hold, and I can well understand that his life during his tenure of it cannot have been a pleasant one. Every crank with an infallible recipe for catching sunbeams in cucumber-frames and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... boy his own, was proud of his cleverness, would have him go to college, and left him all he had. There was no talk of Martin being anything but a Joliffe till Oxford puffed him up, and then he got this crank, and spent the rest of his life trying to find out who his father was. It was a forty-years' wandering in the wilderness; he found this clue and that, and thought at last he had climbed Pisgah and could see the promised land. But he had to be content ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure them off with equal solemnity, telling you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... when she was in a crank, as he called her moods, and he brought her salts, and undid her cloak and bonnet, and kissed her once or twice, while his father, who was hot because she was hot, said it was like an August day all over the house, and opened a window, but shut it almost immediately, for a cloud of snow ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... phenomena I have witnessed, none has appeared to me more curious than a susceptibility of certain minds to become imbued with a violent antipathy to the theory of gravitation. The anti-gravitation crank, as he is commonly called, is a regular part of the astronomer's experience. He is, however, only one of a large and varied class who occupy themselves with what an architect might consider the drawing up of plans and specifications for a universe. This ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Helena now, his face was serious. He cranked the engine—no result. He tried it again with equal futility—then, going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all right. He tried the crank again—the engine, like some cold, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... experience in taking motion-pictures," I protested. "The only time I ever touched a motion-picture camera was when I turned the crank of Donald Thompson's for a few minutes during the entry of the Germans into Antwerp ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the performers," said one boy to another "Wonder what that feller with the big hat does?" observed a second. "Turns the crank, guess," was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... cut each other out in business, just like the rest of the world. As the first flush of joy died away, men pointed out each other's motes, and sarcasm pushed charity from her throne; and, worse than all, there now appeared that demon of discord, theological dispute. The chief leader was a religious crank, named Krger. He was, of course, no descendant of the Brethren's Church. He had quarrelled with a Lutheran minister at Ebersdorf, had been promptly excluded from the Holy Communion, and now came whimpering to Herrnhut, and lifted up his voice against the Lutheran Church. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... spurted?] through the joints in a wall of thick planks and ran into the excavation, where a few men, sunk nearly to the knees in mud, were working. A forge stood on the top of the bank and the smith leaned on the crank of the blower. He was a short, strongly-built man, ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus—a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable had happened. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... it no longer. He was fuming at the great window overlooking the street, and now burst impetuously into speech. "No power on earth, you absurd lunatic? do you mean that because this State has a crank like you temporarily at the top there's nothing beyond or behind it to save us from pillage and murder and anarchy? Listen to that, you foreign-born fraud!" and far up the street the morning air was ringing with ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... completion of the Automatic Company's 7 ohm wire between New York and Washington, it happened that Prof. Moses G. Farmer was in the Washington office when the first message was about to be sent, and upon being requested, he turned the "crank" and transmitted the message to New York, at the rate of 217 words ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... "stillwaters" where the biggest fish were wont to lie during the hot weather. Uncle Andy had a prejudice against those good people who were always sternly consistent, and he was determined that he would never allow himself to become a crank; so he went on enthusiastically killing fish with the same zest that he had once brought to the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... crank that grinds the screw, and is itself ground by the piston—not to mention the cylinder and boiler—works in a dark place deep down in the engine-room, like a giant hand constantly engaged on deeds of ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... own charity, Bransome, instead of taxing me? That's the crank who wanted to run your lake down, isn't he? I guess I'll never see either him or ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... accuracy (precision), for whatever the thing in essence, the reaction thereof upon the multitude is made more forcible and more lucid to the mind by the term applied to it at large. For instance a crank is not a person of ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... townsman's literary works would be published in a sumptuous twenty-volume edition, and that critics in his own country and in Europe would rank him with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Yet that is precisely what has happened. Our literature has no more curious story than the evolution of this local crank into his rightful place of mastership. In his lifetime he printed only two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers"—which was even more completely neglected by the public than Emerson's "Nature"—and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... prodigious heart glow of the hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines—whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining rods—the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... willow wands. Every moment it appeared that they must go. Lord Claymore stood watching them, and now and then taking a glance at his enemies, and though cool and collected, seeming positively to revel in the excitement of the scene. The wind was abeam; and the frigate, which proved herself but a crank ship, heeled over till her hammock-nettings dipped in the seething, foaming waters, which bubbled and hissed up through ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... figure as mad as myself, but didactic and gibbering in his madness. Then the boat-hook he wielded with a circular sweep began to take grotesque shapes in my heated fancy; now it was the antenna of a groping insect, now the crank of a cripple's selfpropelled perambulator, now the alpenstock of a lunatic mountaineer, who sits in his chair and climbs and climbs to some phantom 'watershed'. At the back of such mind as was left me lodged two insistent thoughts: 'we ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... for the propagation of rotative oscillations is shown to the left of Fig. 3, and consists of a cylinder, A, mounted on a tubular spindle, and which is set into circular oscillations around its axis by the little vibrating membrane, C, which is attached to the axis of the cylinder by a little crank and connecting rod shown in detail in Fig. 4. This membrane is set into vibration by a rapidly pulsating column of air contained in a flexible tube M, by which apparatus is connected to the pulsation pump which was employed by Professor Bjerknes in his earlier experiments. In Fig. 5, a somewhat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Breton. "He's probably some crank or faddist who's got some theory that he wants ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... The brass mechanism at the end of the next table is the perfected air-pump of Robert Boyle, Newton's contemporary, one of the founders of the Royal Society and one of the most acute scientific minds of any time. And here between these two mementos is a higher apparatus, with crank and wheel and a large glass bulb that make it conspicuous. This is the electrical machine of Joseph Priestley. There are other mementos of Newton—a stone graven with a sun-dial, which he carved ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... impatient. He really fancied that Forbes was trifling with him. Indeed, a queer doubt of the man's complete sanity now peeped up in him. Forbes was regarded as a crank by a large section of the public on account of his peace propaganda; if that opinion were justified why should he not be eccentric ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... A sand crank is a fissure in the horn of the wall of the foot. These fissures are quite narrow, and, as a general rule, they follow the direction of the horny fibers. They may occur on any part of the wall, but ordinarily are only ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... hate England and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools. The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds approve their action but do not follow it because they dislike ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... piece of heavy iron rod which we procured from the blacksmith at Lumberville. Under Bill's direction the blacksmith hammered a U-shaped bend at the center of the shaft, so as to form a crank, and then he flattened the rod near the ends (see Fig. 284). When the shaft was set in its place these flat spots lay just outside of the bearing boards, and then, to keep the shaft from sliding back and forth in its bearings, we fastened on ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... as if turned by one crank, and sitting there they looked out into the moonlight where the shining figure flashed to and fro, now so near they could see the smiling face under the crown, now so far away that it glittered ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... resolution was passed: "Resolved that the introduction of spinning-jennies, as is practiced in England, into private families is strongly recommended, since one person can manage by hand the operation of a crank that turns ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... sweet old pelican! Because you are to turn the crank! But it's all for love of Anna. Ah, there's no inspiration ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Alcohol is alcohol, I don't care whether it's in a saloon or a church or pickling snakes in a museum. I tell you, Tommy's case has made a prohibition crank of me. Talk about it's being a man's lack of will and moral strength—bah! I never knew a man who had more will power than he, or who was more on the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... at the place where Kingfisher got his salmon yesterday, while Rodman took the upper end of the pool, which was three or four hundred yards in length. I had fished for trout in a bark canoe, and knew how crank a vessel it is; so I did not attempt to stand up and cast, but seated myself upon the middle cross-bar with my face turned down stream, and began to imitate the casting of Kingfisher as well as I could. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... foolish Armand's eye—do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But—you are making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... called to him. He was a genial soul, not in the least like the evil-tempered crank who had held the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... an outlet is opened for the air to escape by a tube into branches communicating with each of these four cylinders. This works the tiny pistons, much the same as gas in a gasoline-motor, and they turn the little crank-shaft to which they are connected, and the crank-shaft in turn revolves the propeller ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser |
