"Cranny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they rummaged among the mouldering mass, setting them coughing and sneezing. Now and then a great gray rat would shoot out beneath their very feet, and disappear, like a sudden shadow, into some hole or cranny in the wall. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the old Doctor, and gave him some few hints, on which he acted at once, and had the satisfaction of seeing his patient out of danger before he left in the morning. It is proper to say, that, during the following days, the most thorough search was made in every nook and cranny of those parts of the house which Elsie chiefly haunted, but nothing was found which might be accused of having been the intentional cause of the probably accidental sudden illness of the governess. From this time forward her father ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gas resembling carbon monoxide," he went on. "It seeps into every cranny of the dirigible, killing everything. The crews got no warning; they didn't know what was happening; couldn't see him! Well, I managed to wound him on the ZX-1. He beat it. I'm following him. If he lasts out, he'll go to where he came from, and we'll find out who's in back of all this. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... with the rapidity and self-confidence of a gray squirrel running up the trunk of a hickory tree, squirrel-like, taking advantage of every crack, cranny and projection that could be grasped by ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... 'Behold in me a priestess of the goddess Diana, skilled in the mysteries of her faith, touching the fringe of knowledge as it emanates from my divine mistress, carrying with me a belief hoary with the ages. But a short time since it permeated every cranny of my being, leaving no room for doubt until I heard from Chios thou hadst won him to thy faith. Knowing Chios well, and observing his peace, the things thou hast told him now rise for hearing in my soul. Judah, if thou hast ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... opening east and south, with their maid near at hand, the gloomy chill of the silent household had already penetrated the lonely girl's heart. No single sign of the warmer amenities. Only books, books, dusty books, by the thousand, piled helter-skelter in every available nook and cranny. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... experience of his own day. "A poet never dreams," said his philosophical Don Juan, "we prose folk always do"; and the epigram brilliantly announced the character of Browning's poetic world,—the world of prose illuminated through and through in every cranny and crevice by the keenest and most adventurous of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... left of her handiwork outside Hampton Court. She left no dainty little book-covers, bags, or boxes, as her ideas were fixed on larger pieces of embroidery. Had she lived in the Berlin-wool picture days, she would have filled every nook and cranny with these atrocities, as many humbler devotees to the needle have done to our own knowledge. Needlework can become a passion, and certainly Queen Mary must have ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... endless treasure chambers to be gone through, and the hosts of gnomes to be kept to their tasks. Some built strong barriers to hold back the fiery rivers in the earth's heart, and some had scalding vapours to change dull stones to precious metal, or were hard at work filling every cranny of the rocks with diamonds and rubies; for Ruebezahl loved all pretty things. Sometimes the fancy would take him to leave those gloomy regions, and come out upon the green earth for a while, and bask in the sunshine and hear the birds sing. And as gnomes ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... too soon. The frightened cortege had not left the palace far behind it before the maddened citizens burst open its doors, searched every nook and cranny of the building for the queen and her body-guard, and, finding they had fled, wreaked their wrath on all that was left, plundering the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... arranged that an elephant should await our arrival at Chitorgarh to take us up to the ancient city, but a careful search into every nook and cranny failed to reveal the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... those below its velvet richness. Spring was in the air—a stimulation as of etherialized champagne. The spirit of adventure, the spirit of renaissance, the spirit of creation was abroad once more. Not a cranny in even this sprawling section of denaturalized earth but thrilled for the time being with budding hopes, sap-swollen courage, and bright, colorful dreams. Walking beneath the spitting glare of the arc-lights, ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... ourselves to the old man who was the sole tenant of that lonely and squalid house. A ducat opened his door as wide as it would go, and gave us free access to every cranny of his dwelling. Food he procured us—rough black bread, some pieces of roasted goat, and some goat's milk—and on this we regaled ourselves as though it had been a ducal banquet, for hunger had set us in the mood to account anything delicious. And when we had eaten we fell to talking, the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... bending ferns, mock the frantic struggles of lost flowers and twigs, tantalizing them with hope of a rest that never comes, leap headlong, swirling and singing with a thousand silver tongues, down cranny and ravine in all the wild winsomeness of unchecked youth;—a land flowing with maple-molasses and sugar, and cider applesauce, and cheese new and old, and baked beans, and three sermons on Sundays, besides Sabbath ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the steamer "Palmyra." Lady Burton then walked round and round to every room, recalling all her life in that happy home and all the painful events that had so recently taken place. She gazed pensively and sadly at the beautiful views from the windows and went "into every nook and cranny of the garden." The very walls ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... traverse, for he was making the best of his course by cross-ways to an adjacent roadside inn, where some non-resident electors were expected to arrive that night by a coach from Dublin; for the county town had every nook and cranny occupied, and this inn was the nearest point where they could get ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... not be satisfied with seeing the nuns together, or witnessing their earliest chapel-service; he must enter every room, survey every cranny, and leave no possibility of deception, no corner for concealment. And posting some of his servants—whose excessive watchfulness might prove a little inconvenient—at the two principal entrances, with his remaining attendants he proceeded orderly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... much or too little valour. His heart laid on, as if it try'd To force a passage through his side, Impatient (as he vow'd) to wait 'em, But in a fury to fly at 'em; 1070 And therefore beat, and laid about, To find a cranny to creep out. But she, who saw in what a taking The Knight was by his furious quaking, Undaunted cry'd, Courage, Sir Knight; 1075 Know, I'm resolv'd to break no rite Of hospitality t' a stranger; But, to secure you out of danger, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... shall strike him upon the head," Mr. Twemlow replied, with his heavy stick ready. "It will be better for you to hear me out. Otherwise I shall procure a search-warrant, and myself examine your ruins, of which I know every crick and cranny. And your aunt Maria shall come with me, who knows every stone even better than you do. That would be a very different thing from an overhauling by Captain Stubbard. I think we should find a good many barrels and bales that ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... feeling that something is missing, a great trouble seizes me, a fear as if I had forgotten something of great importance, not done a thing I ought to have done; and I find out that the thought of Aniela has percolated through every nook and cranny of the mind, and taken possession of it. It knocks there night and day like the death-tick in the desk of Mickiewicz's poem. When I try to lessen or to ridicule the impression, my scepticism and irony fail me, or rather help me only for a moment; then I go back to the enchanted ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... putty. When a fleeing belligerent escaped into a crevice between the bricks, we promptly walled him in with a daub of the chewed bread. We toiled on until the light grew dim and until every hole, nook, and cranny was closed. I shudder to think of the tragedies of starvation and cannibalism that must have ensued ...
— The Road • Jack London
... As he did so his ringers encountered a small, hard object which he drew forth and looked at curiously. It was the dried hip of a wild rose, that had been transferred from pocket to pocket since the day it dared to bloom before its time, in a cranny of the stone wall that circled the garden at Thornwood. The touch of it brought back an old barrel hammock under the lilacs, and the glowing eyes of a girl, lifted to his with a look ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of comradeship and hearty co-operation breathes from every nook and cranny of the Cincinnati schools. Principals and teachers alike sense the fact. Alike they aim toward ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... it: 'It is neither good for the land nor for the dunghill.' You cannot put it upon the soil; there is no fertilising virtue in it. You cannot even fling it into the rubbish-heap; it will do mischief there. Pitch it out into the road; it will stop a cranny somewhere between the stones when once it is well trodden down by men's heels. That is all it is fit for. God has no use for it, man has no use for it. If it has failed in doing the only thing it was created for, it has failed altogether. Like a knife that will not cut, or a lamp that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fell for several days almost without intermission. Then a fierce wind took it in hand, kneading it, packing it, and stuffing it into every crack and cranny of the landscape until hollows were filled, ridges were nicely rounded, and rocks had disappeared. In the meantime, strong white bridges had been thrown across lake and stream, and the great Labrador highway for winter travel was formally opened ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... against great Caesar—and lost. There was France, scene of the bloodiest revolution that has ever dyed red the pages of history—a revolution that proved supreme the tremendous, onrushing power of the masses. And there was Rome itself, where every inch of soil, where every nook and cranny of the famous catacombs marked some great historic drama played in the days when "to be a Roman were better than ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... channels, worn by his grief, through which her comforts, that, like waters, press on all sides, and enter at every cranny and fissure in the house of life, might gently flow into him with their sympathetic soothing. Often he would creep away to the nest which Hugh had built and then forsaken; and seated there in the solitude ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... this time she was so tired that any cranny would have been welcome. She was even wearier than she had been when she occupied the outdoor apartment under the park bench where she spent her second night in New York. She called that an "aparkment" and liked the pun so well that she longed to tell ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... slily seize and 265 Let blood from her weasand,— Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, With my snaky tail, and my ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... answered the Doctor. "They are small brownish birds with cocked up tails, not at all shy about showing themselves off, when they choose, but they must have some hiding-place to duck into the moment anything frightens them, and some odd, out-of-the-way nook or cranny for their big rubbishy nests. Some prefer to hide in marshes among the thickest reeds, some live in dry brush heaps, and some, like the Rock Wren, choose piles of stones. Their wings are not very strong, and they seldom venture far from their favorite retreats, except when ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... tongue of the old gate bell Doth summon the growling grooms from cell, Through cranny and crook They peer and they look, With guns to send the intruders to heaven.[11] But when passwords pass That might "serve a mass,"[12] Then bars are drawn and chains let fall, And ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... game time every possible nook and cranny of Elliott field was jammed with heart-palpitating humanity. The great stadium was packed, aisles and all, with the greatest crowd its historic confines had ever held. And thousands more stormed the ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... never in themselves worth putting down," I said. "All that is worth remembering will find for itself some convenient cranny to go to sleep in till it is wanted, without being made a poor ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... crammed my life full. I didn't know there was a cranny left anywhere. At first, you know, I stuffed in everything I could lay my hands on—there was such a big void to fill. And after all I haven't filled it. I felt that the moment I saw you. (A ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... began to quiver. It was evident that the man was badly, terribly afraid—and as they watched him in amazed wonder his eyes began to search the shore and the cliffs as if he were some hunted animal seeking any hole or cranny in which to hide. A sudden swelling of the light wind brought the steady throb of the oncoming engines to his ears and he turned on Vickers with a look that ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... frequently captured the boats that carried them, and very often the letter-bags were dropped overboard. Still another circumstance deprived the world of many of his writings. When revolutionists took possession of the Lafayette home in Chaviniac, they sought in every nook and cranny to find evidence that they would have been glad to use against these representatives of the nobility. Madame de Lafayette had carefully stuffed all the letters she could find into the maw of the immense ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... you are quite alone in your ravishing monastery, working and never going out? That is what it means TO HAVE ALREADY gone out too much. Monsieur craves Syrias, deserts, dead seas, dangers and fatigues! But nevertheless he can make Bovarys in which every little cranny of life is studied and painted with mastery. What an odd person who can also compose the fight between the Sphinx and the Chimaera! You are a being quite apart, very mysterious, gentle as a lamb ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... four decision in Harris v. United States[55] the Court sustained, as an incident to a lawful arrest, a five hour search by four federal officers of every nook and cranny of a four-room apartment. It also upheld the seizure of papers unrelated to the crime for which the arrest was made, namely, Selective Service Registration cards which were discovered in a sealed envelope in the bottom of a bureau ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... tree. The tough moss upon the stone was fully four inches long, and covered the slab completely. In vain we stamped around looking for a possible hiding place. The massive block didn't offer a cranny that a lizard could hide in, and with an unsolved mystery upon our hands we ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the girl had searched the boudoir from end to end. Her sharp eyes had not missed a cranny big enough to hide a pin, to say nothing of a rope of pearls or a large envelope with five red seals. Both the pearls and the envelope must have been stolen. Were there two thieves, or ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and dry, converging high up in the gloom; for there was just the peat fire and a cruisie alight. Once, as though disturbed in its sleep, I heard a rock-pigeon "rookatihoo coo-a" away above me in some cranny that must open on the hill face. The smoke curled up in a rude dry-stone chimney for about five or six feet against the rock, and the bulk of it still ascended in a column, although the chimney stopped, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... examining every cranny and crevice inward, fully expecting to find some low arch leading into another or a series of caverns; but they found nothing more, and did not spend much time in examining the place, for the great attraction was the mouth, through which, as if ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... part of the dissolved Cistercian priory on whose confiscated lands Castle Luton had arisen, a rich medley of flowers was in full and perfect bloom. Irises in every ravishing shade of purple, lilac, and gold, carpets of daffodils and narcissus, covered the ground, and ran into each corner and cranny of the old wall. Yellow banksia and white clematis climbed the crumbling shafts, or made new tracery for the empty windows, and where the ruin ended, yew hedges, adorned at top with a whole procession of birds and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... throbbings we could hear; of the heavy rumbling and the flash and glow that came from the different works. Some were so lit up that it seemed as if the windows were fiery eyes staring out of the darkness, and more than once we stopped to gaze in at some cranny where furnaces were kept going night and day and the work never seemed ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... became weighty, oppressive. Laurence, in spite of himself, felt it steal upon his nerves, and began to whistle a lively tune—as he walked slowly around, examining the cliffs, and every crack and cranny, with critical eye. The echoing notes reverberated weirdly among the brooding rocks. Suddenly his foot struck something—something hard. He looked down, and could not repress a start. There at his feet, grinning ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... from being attracted by the adorable naivete of these details, the grace of the vegetations which draped the roof and the dilapidated wooden frames of the windows, the wealth of the clambering plants escaping from every cranny, and the clasping tendrils of the grape-vine which looked into every window as if to bring smiling ideas to those within, he congratulated himself heartily on being a bishop in perspective instead of a ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... a rocker, tossing them upon the heap on one of the beds. "I knew you were coming, and I've been working right smart to get ready for you. I've had full swing here so long I've filled every nook and cranny of the place, and now"—with a shrug and a deprecatory smile—"I shall have to learn to be very orderly to keep from encroaching upon your territory. But there's lots of time. The things can wait while we get acquainted a little. Jennie, you'll have to take ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... prayers to be bewitchments, but they want them on their side. They have never wanted mine. That I have known—KNOWN. She believes that her Deity is in Apple Blossom Court—in the dire holes its people live in, on the broken stairway, in every nook and awful cranny of it—a great Glory we will not see—only waiting to be called and to answer. Do I believe it—do you—do any of those anointed of us who preach each day so glibly 'God is EVERYWHERE'? Who is the one who believes? ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Morton said nothing, but he would let no one put a foot before him. He still pressed forward among the rocks, and at last came to a spot from whence he might have sprung at one leap into the ocean. It was a broken cranny on the sea-shore into which the sea beat, and surrounded on every side but the one by huge broken fragments of stone, which at first sight seemed as though they would have admitted of a path down among them to the water's edge; but ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... running parallel to, and about fifteen yards away from, the wire. It is subdivided to form a dressing-room and a place for the shower baths, every exit being strongly barred, and a sentry stationed at the door. After a minute inspection of every nook and cranny, I found that it was just possible, by standing upright, to squeeze into an alcove, about eleven inches deep and a foot wide, in an angle formed by a wall and the brickwork of a chimney which projected ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... low, that the rushing of the waters ran through their melody, like a hollow accompaniment. The natural taste and true ear of David governed and modified the sounds to suit the confined cavern, every crevice and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flexible voices. The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed his chin in his hand, with an expression ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... any of the free creatures that lived in the hills. And, keenly alive to the life that throbbed and surged about her, her woman's heart and soul responded to the spirit of the season. The droning of the bees in the blossoms that grew in a cranny of the rock; the tinkle, tinkle of the sheep bells, as the flock moved slowly in their feeding; and the soft breathing of Mother Earth was in her ears; while the gentle breeze that stirred her hair came heavy with the smell of growing things. Lying so, she looked ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... found that neither Timar nor Almira was there. Timar had gone to the attic to sleep, where he soon made himself a couch of fragrant hay, while Almira had crept into some cranny in ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... ingenuity had conspired to trap him. He was caught either way. What was he to do? The question kept pounding at his brain, growing more sinister with each repetition. What was he to do? Defy the police—and be branded as a stool-pigeon, a snitch, an informer in every nook and cranny of the underworld! He could not do that. Everything, all that meant anything in life to him now would be swept from his reach at even the first breath of suspicion. Nor was it an idle threat that his ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... interspace^; separation &c 44; break, gap, opening; hole &c 260; chasm, hiatus, caesura; interruption, interregnum; interstice, lacuna, cleft, mesh, crevice, chink, rime, creek, cranny, crack, chap, slit, fissure, scissure^, rift, flaw, breach, rent, gash, cut, leak, dike, ha-ha. gorge, defile, ravine, canon, crevasse, abyss, abysm; gulf; inlet, frith^, strait, gully; pass; furrow &c 259; abra^; barranca^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... time, such a push backwards, which, meeting a firm, though gentle forward movement on my part, joined with the natural relaxation following her discharge, drove me up to the hilt in the very tightest little cunt it has ever been my good fortune to sheath myself in. I seemed to fill every cranny, and to have stretched every part to its utmost distention. My aunt with her great cunt had a power of pressure that seemed almost to nip off your prick, Miss Frankland, too, was great in that way. But this was more like a very well made first-rate kid glove, two sizes too small ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... knowing also the man he had become, she would in secret sometimes liken him to one of those rare unions of delicacy and hardihood which in the world of wild flowers Nature refuses to bring forth except from the cranny of a cold rock. Its home is the battle-field of black roaring tempests; the red lightnings play among its roots ; all night seamless snow-drifts are woven around its heart; no bee ever rises to it from the valley below where the green spring is kneeling; no morning bird ever soars past it with ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... chance to be revenged for all the trouble she had given the Union fleet; and he took up a good position, and pounded away with his heavy guns at the iron monster. The heavy shots crashed through the iron plating and came plunging in the portholes, seeking every nook and cranny about the vessel. It was too much for men to stand, and the crew of the "Manassas" fled to the woods; while their vessel was soon set on fire with red-hot shots, and blew up with a tremendous ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... these people who knew nothing of writing marvelled very much. Great were my labours, yet in them I found more happiness than I had known since that fatal day when I, the rich London merchant, Hubert of Hastings, had stood before the altar of St. Margaret's church with Blanche Aleys. Indeed, every cranny of my time and mind being thus filled with things finished or attempted, I forgot my great loneliness as an alien in a strange land, and once more became as I had been when ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... but drip! drip! drip! I wish it had not dripp'd upon my torch. Faith 'twas a moving letter—very moving! His life in danger—no place safe but this. 5 'Twas his turn now to talk of gratitude! And yet—but no! there can't be such a villain. It cannot be! Thanks to that little cranny Which lets the moonlight in! I'll go and sit by it. To peep at a tree, or see a he-goat's beard, 10 Or hear a cow or two breathe loud in their sleep, 'Twere better than this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... back hair dowdily, partook recklessly of poetry and pickles, read inordinately in bed,—leaning all night on her elbow,—and was threatened with spinal curvature and spiritualism. Adelaide set invisible little traps in every nook and cranny, every cupboard and drawer, from basement to attic, and with a cheerful, innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cartwheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eyes, when without in the gathering darkness Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice, Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Prince Peerless became a poor little black Cricket, whose only idea would have been to find himself a cosy cranny behind some blazing hearth, if he had not luckily remembered the Fairy Douceline's injunction to seek the ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... to stop writing about Cohasset. There are so many bits of history tucked into every ledge and cranny of her shore. The green in front of the old white meeting-house—one of the prettiest and most perfect meeting-houses on the South Shore—has been pressed by the feet of men assembling for six wars. It makes Cohasset seem venerable, indeed, when one thinks of the march ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY. 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos[270]; and Bouhours[271], ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the rule, as a physician shifts the prescription of a consumptive, and returns him to the tremendous Reality. Again he spreads his hands and cries the sacred formula, the eternal forces advance, he stands fast and is flung bleeding to the wall, or he flees. Afraid, hidden in some cranny of the rocks, nursing his hurt, the child begins to see the truth. This passing from the world as it should be to the world as it is nearly kills him. It is like the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would take ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... her strange potent eyes fell on my face. They were like a burning searchlight which showed up every cranny and crack of the soul. I felt it was going to be horribly difficult to act a part under that compelling gaze. She could not mesmerize me, but she could strip me of my fancy dress and set me ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... with the futile restlessness of a cat animal in a zoo, his feet clumping on the flagged flooring, and the watchful turnkey standing by, Uncle Tobe, having flattened his lean form in a niche behind the outer lattice, with an appraising eye would consider the shifting figure through a convenient cranny of the wattled metal strips. He took care to keep himself well back out of view, but since he stood in shadow while the one he marked so keenly moved in a flood of daylight filtering down through a skylight in the ceiling of the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... soil, which, at its base, sloped abruptly inwards like an arch. This buttress jutted out at the lower corner of a little horse-shoe bay; and hereabouts, during summer, a shoal of minnows had often played, following each other in and out of every nook and cranny beneath the bank, or floating up and flashing in sun-flecked ripples faintly stirred by a breeze that wandered ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... of congealed air are sometimes carried aloft, other whiles grovel in different shapes, and enter into any cranny or clift of the earth where air enters, to their ordinary dwellings; the earth being full of cavities and cells, and there being no place, no creature, but is supposed to have other animals (greater or lesser) living in or upon it ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... steps, the furious bellow, and the shout, "Run! run for your lives!" Run! why on earth must they? What had happened? and especially what would become of him left alone there, with this unseen enemy perhaps coming at him next. He hunted in vain in every direction for some cranny to peep through; and if it had been possible, would have squeezed his head up the chimney. He shouted for help, but nobody heard him; they were all too frightened for that. He could hear them crunching along the road, presently; another cry, ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... fallen debris at the base, and a few steps cut out from one projecting rock to another, up to a narrow shelf, whence the cascade was to be looked down on. The more adventurous spirits went on to a rock overhanging the fall, and with a curious chink or cranny, forming a window with a seat, and called King O'Toole's chair. Each girl perched herself there, and was complimented on her strong head and active limbs, and all their powers were needed in the long breathless pull up craggy stepping-stones, then over ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... practically boundless. We have a poem on the attitude of two people with nothing to do and no book to read, waiting in the parlour of an hotel for the rain to stop, a recollection after more than forty years. That the poet once dropped a pencil into the cranny of an old church where he was sketching inspires an elaborate lyric. The disappearance of a rotted summer-house, the look of a row of silver drops of fog condensed on the bar of a gate, the effect of candlelight years and years ago on a woman's neck and hair, the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... far from enthusiastic. Even when his groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet or necklace or breast guard—nor ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... chance crept through a narrow cranny into a chest of grain; and, having feasted itself, in vain attempted to come out again, with its body now stuffed full. To which a weasel at a distance cries, "If you would escape thence, repair lean to ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... was run over and under the mattress and along every crack and cranny of the brass bed. This done and this dust also carefully stowed away, we departed, very much to the mystification of Marie and, I could not help feeling, of other eyes that peered in through keyholes ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... kingdom of TIME. Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world, and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... what was wanted. He found waiting for him an unkempt individual of appearance so disreputable, that he at once made up his mind that here at last was the thief for whom they had waited so long in vain. The man's wild, roving eye, that seemed to search out every corner and cranny in the place and rest nowhere for longer than a second at a time, added to Delore's suspicions. The unsavoury visitor was evidently spying out the land, and Adolph felt certain he would do no business with him at that particular hour, whatever might ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... after,' with all the sweetest by-plays of humanity, with every reconciling softness of charity—such, in turns, and in quickest intermingled tissue of the ethereal woof, have been the many illustrations which this large-minded, large-hearted Scotchman, in whose character there is neither corner nor cranny, has poured in the very prodigality of his affectionate abundance around and over the name and the fame of Robert Burns. It became him—and he knew it—that on this great and consummating occasion, so full of reconcilement betwixt human frailty and human worth, his address, on which so much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... his side. After a few seconds the vizier made signs to the pacha to look in. The pacha was obliged to strain his fat body to its utmost altitude, standing on the tips of his toes to enable his eyes to reach the cranny. The interior of the hovel was without furniture, a chest in the centre of the mud floor appeared to serve as table and repository of every thing in it, for the walls were bare. At the fireplace, in which were a few embers, crouched an old woman, a personification of age, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... suspension: that it to say, one should keep either both footholds and one handhold, or both handholds and one foothold. Failing that, one is taking long chances. With this firmly in mind, I spidered out across the wall, testing every projection and cranny before I trusted any weight to it. One apparently solid projection as big as my head came away at the first touch, and went bouncing off into space. Finally I stood, or rather sprawled, almost within ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... narrow, shutterless casement (athwart which, instead of a curtain, a checked apron had been loosely hung, and now waved fitfully to and fro in the gusts of wind that made easy ingress through many a chink and cranny), were a looking-glass, sundry appliances of the toilet, a box of coarse rouge, a few ornaments of more show than value, and a watch, the regular and calm click of which produced that indescribably painful feeling which, we fear, many of our readers who ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you, probably, but he cannot forget; we must leave that to women. And here we were, searching every nook and corner of the house, and every hole and cranny, for that dress-suit, which you'd poked away in tissue-paper and Chuddah, while you were enjoying yourself at ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... From every cranny and slit of the waggons came a blaze of fire, every shot of which told among the close-packed mob. Two or three score rolled over like rabbits and the rest reeled for a moment, and then, with their chiefs at their head, came on ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cranny of light she had herself dressed by her sulky, sleepy women, and went abroad. There were very few to see her, none to dare her any harm, so well as she was known. Two eunuchs at a wicked door spat as she passed; she saw the feet of ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... seemed making for the farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and, like a gallant seagod, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock. ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... cobweb to stop the blood where she cut me in our fight the other day, an' it came tumblin' out of a cranny in the wall." ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... child," he went on, in a tone of serious remonstrance. "It isn't safe to have one of them fellows running about loose. I heard of one up in the West Parish last summer, who was staying with Lars Norby. He was running about with a bag and a hammer, and poking his nose into every nook and cranny of the rocks. And all the while he stayed there, the devil ran riot on the farm. Three cows slinked, the bay mare followed suit, and the chickens took the cramps, and died as fast as they were hatched. There was no luck in anything. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "I wanted to ask what you meant by stating that it was your habit always to be abroad in the hours immaculate? I happened by the merest chance to be abroad in them myself this morning. I examined every nook and cranny of them, I turned them inside out; but not one jot or tittle of you ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... she was, he knew he was safely shut away in her thoughts, and the knowledge made every other fact dwindle away to a shadow. He and she loved each other, and their love arched over them open and ample as the day: in all its sunlit spaces there was no cranny for a fear to lurk. In a few minutes he would be in her presence and would read his reassurance in her eyes. And presently, before dinner, she would contrive that they should have an hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by the hearth and watch her quiet movements, and ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... will get it: his abuse of confidence will stick by him all his days. Not that he has done his benefactor—in intention, again—any harm. The patience with which E. M. put the blunders into intelligible form, and the perseverance with which he tried to find a cranny-hole for common reasoning to get in at, are more than respectable: they are admirable. It is, we can assure E. M., a good thing that the nature of the circle-squarer should be so completely exposed as in this volume. The benefit which he intended Mr. James ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... go on, "you drive me crazy. You expect a man to be all broken up about the sunset, and not to care a dime for a place where fortunes are fought for and made and lost all day; or for a career that consists in studying up life till you have it at your finger-ends, spying out every cranny where you can get your hand in and a dollar out, and standing there in the midst—one foot on bankruptcy, the other on a borrowed dollar, and the whole thing spinning round you like a mill—raking in the stamps; in spite ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must have found me out; that fe-fa-fum of a keeper would have smelt the blood of a cuckold-maker: They say, he was peeping and butting about in every cranny. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Petersburg a biting wind blew that Thanksgiving day. It came through every cranny of our hut; it bellied the canvas on one side and tightened it on the other; it pressed flat down the smoke from a hundred thousand mud chimneys, and swept away so quickly the little coals which fell on the canvas that they had not time ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... every nook and cranny of the large single room and were about to give up in despair when Tommy happened to observe an ivory button set into the wall at the only point in the room where there were no machines or benches at hand. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... it met a cross street, and the street lamp flung out an ominous challenge, and, dim though it was, seemed to glare with the brightness of daylight, she faltered for a moment and drew back. She knew where Shluker's place was, because she knew, as few knew it, every nook and cranny in the East Side, and it was a long way to that old junk shop, almost over to the East River, and—and there would be lights like this one here that barred her exit from the lane, thousands of them, lights all the way, and—and out there they were ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you with pain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothic gets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees with either man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and the architects agree even less than ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... mercy of the waves. She sailed no longer—she merely floated. Every moment she seemed about to turn over on her back, like a dead fish. The good condition and perfectly water-tight state of the hull alone saved her from this disaster. Below the water-line not a plank had started. There was not a cranny, chink, nor crack; and she had not made a single drop of water in the hold. This was lucky, as the pump, being ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... was grateful, the distant murmur of the excited settlement came only as the soothing sound of wind among the leaves. The pure air of the pines that filled every cranny of the quiet school-room, and seemed to disperse all taint of human tenancy, made the far-off celebrations as unreal as a dream. The only reality ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... a truth well known to most, That whatsoever thing is lost. We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right. The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... he should be released; but the old man only shook his head; and at last bade David be silent with great anger. They rowed slowly out, and David could see the great rocks, that had now been his home so long, rising, still and peaceful, in the morning light. Every rock and cranny was known to him. There was the place where, when he first came, he was used to fish. There was the cliff-top where he had made his fire; he could even see his little window in the front of the rocks, and he thought with grief that it would ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... plain between the foot of the hill and the river permitted. When the slopes gave a southern exposure they were covered with grape-vines, planted with the utmost precision and regularity. Every corner and cranny among the rocks was utilized. The original planting must have been difficult, for the soil was covered with slabs of shale. The cultivator should develop excellent lungs in scaling those hillsides. The leaves had fallen and the bare vines ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Mallalieu, under pretence of thoroughly seeing into everything, walked about all over the place. He did not find the stick, and he was quite sure that nobody else had found it. Finally he went away, convinced that it lay in some nook or cranny of the shelving slope on to which he had kicked it in his sudden passion of rage. There, in all probability, it would remain for ever, for it would never occur to the police that whoever wielded whatever weapon ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... and ends in a drawer. Now little miss, being installed as housekeeper to papa, and for the first time in her life being queen—at least so she fancied—of all she surveyed, went to work searching every cranny, and prying into every drawer, and woe betide anything which did not come up to my idea of neat housekeeping. When I chanced across the drawer of scraps I at once condemned them to the flames. Such a place of disorder could not be tolerated in my dominions. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... after the amalgamation of law and equity, was for some time in the habit of going to sit with the new judges in order to familiarize himself with the reformed practice, whereupon some one asked Lord Westbury, "Why does 'Cranny' go to sit with the judges?" to which Westbury answered, "Doubtless from a childish fear of being alone in ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... eyes to the jagged mountain crests, and their dark sides all laced with silver streams. Out of every crack and cranny there aloft, the rain is bringing down dirt, and stones too, which have been split off by the winter's frosts, deepening every little hollow, and sharpening every peak, and making the hills more jagged and steep year ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... at her from a corner fast by in a way that might have startled her had she not been familiar with such modes of beckoning. But when she obeyed his summons, what she saw did astound her outright, for Joe was stooping low over a leathern pouch which he had drawn from a wall-cranny, and which seemed to contain marvellous depths of silver money, with here and there a golden gleam among it, as he warily stirred it up, circling a hurried forefinger. She had only the briefest glimpse ere he shoved back ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... sleep was denied. The owl hooted at her window; the bat flapped his leathern wings; the taper burned red and heavily, and its rays were tinged as though with blood; the fire flung out its tiny coffin; the wind sobbed aloud at every cranny, and wailed piteously ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... exquisite grace on tremulous, hair-like stems that are fitted to withstand the fiercest mountain blasts, however frail they appear. How dainty, slender, tempting these little flowers are! One gladly risks a watery grave or broken bones to bring down a bunch from its aerial cranny. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... rock, here and there crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage. Yet the river foams in torrents at our side. Whence can it issue? What pass or cranny in that precipice is cloven for its escape? These questions grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of limestone rocks which leads to the cliff-barrier, and find ourselves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... came a hoarse cry from Hallblithe's dry throat and it was as if his cry had been answered by another like to his; and the seekers turned and beheld him pointing to the cliff-side, and lo! half-way up the pale sun- litten crag stood two ravens in a cranny of the stone, flapping their wings and croaking, with thrusting forth and twisting of their heads; and presently they came floating on the thin pure air high up over the heads of the wayfarers, croaking for the pleasure of the meeting, as ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... South American station and the Pacific were spoken of. At length Captain Hemming announced that he had received orders to proceed to Jamaica, and that the Tudor was to accompany the Plantagenet. More stores and provisions were received on board, till every locker and cranny in the two ships was filled, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... writing-table in his quiet study, when the doors were opened unceremoniously and some officials entered with a warrant to search his house. Carpets were taken up, walls were tapped, furniture was overturned and examined, books were removed from their shelves and every cranny inspected with the greatest thoroughness, but the pile of letters lying open on his writing-table, over which they had found him bending when they entered the room, was passed over without so ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... of lizards of which I do not know the name, but they were only small fellows, and may be what are called "efts." They would sun themselves on the warm rocks, and on being disturbed dart into some cranny till danger was past. They ran up and down rocks which were nearly perpendicular, and were very amusing in ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... was too late to seek another hiding-place. The seamen at their landing observed my canoe, and rummaging it all over, easily conjectured that the owner could not be far off. Four of them, well armed, searched every cranny and lurking-hole, till at last they found me flat on my face behind the stone. They gazed awhile in admiration at my strange uncouth dress; my coat made of skins, my wooden-soled shoes, and my furred stockings; whence, however, they concluded, I was not a native of the place, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... distance was blotted out. Thin rain fell chillingly and persistently, drip, dripping with monotonous plash from the old inn's thatched eaves; a light wind sobbed fitfully around the building, moaning at every chink and cranny of the ill-fitting window-frames. "A dismal night for any who must travel," thought the stableman of the inn, as he looked east and then west along the darkening road. No moving thing broke the monotony of the depressing outlook, and the groom turned ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... more. The world passeth away, and the lust thereof (1 John 2:17). Though most men content themselves with these, yet it is not in these to satisfy them, and had they but one glimpse of the world to come, one cranny of light to discern the riches of Christ, and the least taste of the pleasures that are at the right hand of God (Psa 16:11), they would be as little satisfied without a share in them, as they are now with what of worldly things they enjoy; much less can they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a hovel of logs, like the other, but of still better construction, having the uncommon convenience of a chimney, built of sticks and mud, through whose low wide top ascended volumes of smoke, made ruddy by the glare of the flames below. A cranny here also afforded the means of spying into the doings within; and Nathan, who approached it with the precision of one not unfamiliar with the premises, was not tardy to avail himself of its advantages. Bare naked walls of logs, the interstices ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down and have "some victual"; he himself was ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... well he might be, at the confidence bestowed on him by his father, took the bag with him under his smock when he went out with the cows, and bestowed it in a cranny not far from that in which that more ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have not flattered myself, in writing of a man whose uneventful career has repeatedly been explored in every nook and cranny, with any hope of adding materially to the tale of mere fact. One who gleans after Minor and Weltrich and Wychgram will find little but chaff, and I have tried to avoid the garnering of chaff. One of my chief perplexities, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... laden with a teapot and tempting dishes stood on a table near the door. "Do you not yet realize, Minna, that this is my life work?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the models, brass, wood, and wax, which filled every cranny of the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... a single any," remarked Allee, poking into every nook and cranny in hope of finding their treat. "I guess she licked ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and lobster fisher, and knew every hole and cranny, along several miles of rocky shore, in which the creatures were accustomed to shelter, with not a few of their own peculiarities of character. Contrary to the view taken by some of our naturalists, such as Agassiz, who hold that the crab—a genus comparatively recent in its appearance ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... earned everybody's gratitude by his unflagging energy in preparing meals that to us at least were savoury and satisfying. Frankly, we needed all the comfort that the hot food could give us. The icy fingers of the gale searched every cranny of our beach and pushed relentlessly through our worn garments and tattered tents. The snow, drifting from the glacier and falling from the skies, swathed us and our gear and set traps for our stumbling feet. The rising sea beat against the rocks and shingle and tossed fragments ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... conflict with the storm. At times the elastic hickory framework of its domed leather roof swayed and bent like the ribs of an umbrella; at times it seemed as if it would be lifted bodily off; at times the whole interior of the vehicle was filled with a thin smoke by drifts through every cranny. But presently, to Masterton's great relief, the interminable level seemed to end, and between the whitened blasts he could see that the road was descending. Again the horses were urged forward, and at last he could feel that the vehicle began to add the momentum of its descent ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... tell thee a better way. If she departs not with the company to-morrow, I will search the castle and find her; for I know every cranny. I will bring about a meeting, so thou mayest beau her privately and win her love before Cedric knows aught; 'twill be a grand joke to play upon him, and 'twill pay him back for trying to hide from us the gem of his castle." They looked into each other's eyes but ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... it is XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a cautious glance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously knelt down beside the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny. There he encountered merely the tiny, pale-green, faintly conspicuous eyes of a large spider, confronting his own. It was for the moment an alarming, and yet a faintly fascinating experience. The little almost colourless ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... paper at Cherbourg and posted there. Dean was to catch a night train to Cherbourg, take steamer ticket there for Quebec, and proceed to Montreal. There were a host of directions as to his conduct while in Canada, and as Larssen poured out a stream of detailed orders, searching into every cranny and crevice of the situation, the young clerk felt once more the glamour of ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... herself alone in a dark hall not knowing which way to turn. She stood still a moment, her heart beating violently. It was not a pleasant situation. The other girls knew the building perfectly—every nook and cranny—just where to go. She felt against the wall and a knob met her fingers. A second later she was in a room lit by a dim moon. Feeling her way along the wall to the window she threw up the blind. In the nearest corner ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... this temple, and your worship had commenced so strong a flirtation with the Lambeth sybil, that all the world looked upon wedlock as inevitable. As I stood in the porch, I overheard your amatory sighs and groans which sounded in my ears like Boreas wooing Vulcan through a cranny in a chimney-corner. On approaching your pew, how was I struck with the change in your physiognomy! Your face heretofore as red and round as the full moon, had, by the joint influence of that planet and the aforesaid Joanna, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright: and ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... woke up and looked out of his hole, there was as usual no supper for him, and the cellar was close shut. He peered about, to try and find some cranny under the door to creep out at, but there was none. And he felt so hungry that he could almost have eaten the cat, who kept walking to and fro in a melancholy manner—only she was alive, and he couldn't well eat her alive:— besides he knew she was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... occupy an elevated position, for only from such a position is it possible to take an extensive view of affairs—to see everything. This is out of the question for him who from below merely gets a glimpse of the great world through a miserable cranny. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... resounding throughout Rome; and we admired the gleaming swords of the officers and the sharp, punctual drill and marching of the red-legged rank and file. We haunted the lovely Villa Borghese, the Pincian Hill, the Villa Pamphili Doria; we knew every nook and cranny of the Palace of the Csesars, the Baths of Caracalla, the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Egerian Grove; we were familiar with every gate that entered Rome; we drank at every fountain; we lingered through the galleries of the Vatican and of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... spoke Covan to the cows. And they bowed their heads and lay down in the place where they stood. Then came the black raven of Corri- nan-creag, whose eyes never closed, and whose wings never tired; and he fluttered before the face of Covan and told him that he knew of a cranny in the rock where there was food in plenty, and soft ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Corals which form the Reef are not the only beings that find their home there: many other animals—Shells, Worms, Crabs, Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins—establish themselves upon it, work their way into its interstices, and seek a shelter in every little hole and cranny made by the irregularities of its surface. In the Zoological Museum at Cambridge there are some large fragments of Coral Reef which give one a good idea of the populous aspect that such a Reef would present, could we see it as it actually exists beneath the water. Some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... lesser wars, a general economic depression and a hurricane of revolutions scourged the planet. Meanwhile, the revolution in science and technology and its products penetrated almost every crack and cranny ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... statesman rule, A soldier discipline, a poet verse, And each mechanic his distinctive trade; Yet bring him to his motley, and how wide He shoots from reason! We can understand All business but our own, and thrust advice In every gaping cranny of the world; While habit shapes us to our own dull work, And reason nods above his proper task. Just so philosophy would rectify All things abroad, and be a jade at home. Pepe, what think you of the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... Vikingsson and the King his master were not daunted. Hither had they come after the pirate, and here it was that he had last been heard of; and they searched along the shore and in the caves, and peered into every hole and cranny, until their eyes grew strained and heavy, but no viking Sote was ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... healthful young trees, fulfilling that innate idea in apparent gladness, and with obvious general advantage, since they were growing into sound, valuable trees, straight of trunk, nobly developed. I felt like the poor sapling in the cranny, that had just the same natural impetus of healthy growth as all the others, but was forced to become twisted, and crooked, and stunted and wretched. I think most women have to grow in a cranny. It is generally known as their Sphere." Algitha gave an approving chuckle. "I noticed," Hadria added, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... how long I had been a prisoner when one day I fancied that I heard something near me, which breathed loudly. Turning to the place from which the sound came I dimly saw a shadowy form which fled at my movement, squeezing itself through a cranny in the wall. I pursued it as fast as I could, and found myself in a narrow crack among the rocks, along which I was just able to force my way. I followed it for what seemed to me many miles, and at last saw before me a glimmer of light which grew clearer every ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... this barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... not come at all, but, if he did—if he did—she must know how to read and write. Maybe, when she had learned a little more, she might even go to school for a term or two. She had not confided her secret. The widow would not have understood. The book and slate came out of their dusty cranny in the logs beside the fireplace only when the widow had withdrawn to her bed, and the freckled boy was dreaming of being old enough to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... themselves on that day more than these two, who prowled about and visited every nook and cranny of the old place—studies, passages, class-rooms, Fourth Junior ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Each hole and cupboard they explore, Each creek and cranny of his chamber, Run hurry-scurry round the floor, And o'er the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... to his feet. "How escaped they? There appears to be but one entrance to this vault. I will search each nook and cranny." ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sell and trample them all, I will, some day," he says, and dances a banshee dance with shuffling feet and flinging arms. The spiders—who are all misers—glare down on him with a poison joy, and hasten to spin a web over the cranny where the can of treasure is buried. "No thief will suspect what is hidden there now," says Tim; and opens another deposit in another cranny, where a spider with golden spots mounts guard. But the mice having set their nests in order only look on at all this, so as not to take their part in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lurked a grease-bespattered lantern and a box of matches. David had borrowed the lantern that afternoon from a Clough End friend under the most solemn vows of secrecy, and he drew it out now with a deliberate and special relish. When he had driven a peg into a cranny of the rock, trimmed half a dip carefully, lighted it, put it into the lantern, and hung the lantern on the peg, he fell back on his heels to study the effect, with a beaming countenance, filled all through with the essentially ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conceive it possible that any earthly sounds could be so discordant, so repulsive to every feeling of a human soul, as the tones of the voice that grated on my ear at that moment. They were the sounds of the pit, wheezed through a grated cranny, or seemed ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... irresistible as that which dragged to Antwerp and the Hanse ports, to India and America, the seekers for gold and for soil. To Italy they flocked and through Italy they rambled, prying greedily into each cranny and mound of the half-broken civilization, upturning with avid curiosity all the rubbish and filth; seeking with aching eyes and itching fingers for the precious fragments of intellectual splendour; lingering with fascinated glance ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Sarameyas, under which he appears in the Vedic songs, as the son of Sarama, the Dawn. Even his character as the master thief and patron saint of the light-fingered gentry, drawn from the way the winds and breezes penetrate every crack and cranny of the house, is absolutely repeated in the Mexican hero-god Quetzalcoatl, who was also the patron of thieves. I might carry the comparison yet further, for as Sarameyas is derived from the root sar, to creep, whence serpo, serpent, the creeper, so the name Quetzalcoatl ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... work as an Inspector of Jesuit institutions across the length and breadth of Canada could not lessen the flame of the good father's enthusiasm; his smile was as indefatigable as his critical eyes. The one looked sharply into every corner of a room and every nook and hidden cranny of thoughts and deeds; the other veiled the criticism and soothed the wounds ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... We neither of us spoke, and we walked rapidly and in a few minutes overtook the others and came up to the house together, and into the big living-room, where fresh logs piled in the great chimney-place were blazing and crackling, and lighting every cranny of the long room. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... but looks like one? Why not bee-orchises for wartwort, and gentians for chickweed? I have no fault to find with the foxgloves under the apple-tree or with the ivy-leaved toad-flax that hangs with its elfin flowers from every cranny in the wall. But I protest against the dandelions and the superfluity of groundsel. I undertake that, if rest-harrow and scabious and corn-cockle invade the garden, I shall never use a hoe on them. More than this, if only the right weeds settled ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... They let him alone. But they privily examined his bunk. It was lined with hardtack; the mattress was stuffed with hardtack; every nook and cranny was filled with hardtack. Yet he was sane. He was taking precautions against another possible famine—that was all. He would recover from it, the scientific men said; and he did, ere the Bedford's anchor rumbled down in ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... And the thunder mutters and forests sob, And the fox-fire glows like the lamp of a Lob; And under the willows, that gloom and glance, The will-o'-the-wisps hold a devils' dance; They say that that crime is re-acted again, And each cranny and chink of the mill doth wink With the light o' hell or the lightning's blink, And a woman's shrieks come wild through the rain: When the howl of the hound comes over the hill, That murder returns to ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... up thar', Caesar?" Pettigrass unfolded his long legs and stood up on the flat stone to attain an eye-level with the interior of the little cavern. Tom crushed Nan into the farthest cranny, and flattened himself lizard-like against the nearer side wall. The horse-trader looked long and hard, and they could hear him still talking to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... same, your Excellency," he acquiesced. "At least, that is the report. It is commonly stated hereabouts that the god-trust has its headquarters here. As for myself, I have explored its every nook and cranny, but I never saw any gods on it. It's my private opinion that they've moved away; though there be those who claim that it is still occupied by the former rulers of destiny living incog. like other well-born rogues who desire ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... needle which from time to time he dips in the saucer of opium-juice and holds in the flame until the juice frizzles into a tiny pellet fit for insertion in the bowl of the pipe. The room is heavy with vapour that clutches at the throat, for every cranny and interstice is covered with fragments of old sacking defying the passage of the night air. As you turn towards the door, a fat Mughal rises slowly from the ground and makes obeisance, saying that he is the proprietor. "Your club ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... diversions of eating and sleeping. The ocean grew monotonous, the vessel monotonous, the passengers monotonous, everything monotonous except that idea, and that grew and spread till its fibres filled every nook and cranny of the inventive brain that had taken it in to bed ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... last day of winter and the first of spring every chink and cranny had been ransacked except within the precincts of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had set in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed about the atmosphere by a real hurricane which fought against the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... required you before kicking off the final slippers to shut the windows against what were believed to be the dank humors of the night. Nor was this enough. You slept, of course, in a four-post bed; and the curtains had to be pulled together beyond the peradventure of a cranny. Then as a last prophylaxis you put on a night-cap. Mr. Pickwick's was tied under the chin like a sunbonnet and the cords dangled against his chest, but this was a matter of taste. It was behind such triple rampart ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... cold swell, as from the returning tide of some dead sea, so long ebbed that men had ploughed and sown and built within its bed, stole in, swift and black, filling every cranny of the old man's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... no sound of a scuffle were heard. Robertson returned to say that he had investigated every nook and cranny that a man might have hidden in, and found no trace of any one having entered ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield |
