"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course you don't!" She laid her fingers on his sleeve again, which was what Andy wanted—what he had intended to bait her into doing; thereby proving that, in some respects at least, he amply justified Hiss Hallman in her snap judgment ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... with wonder and admiration at the sight of the Blanchita, and went off to her in their sampans. They were permitted to go on board; but when Felipe fed the fire in the furnace, and the steam began to hiss, some of them were frightened, and ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... passed: the word was God's; this was the true self-sacrifice. . . . But might it not injure her—scandal would hiss about her name. Would not God choose His own way to save her? And he might pray. . . . Two days passed thus. But he must go to counsel and to comfort her—was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over the terrace; ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... With a sharp hiss the compressed gas rushed from the containing cylinder into the deflated balloon. The silken sides puffed out, losing their wrinkles. The balloon gradually ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... hoist the sail and have out the oars. While this was doing the creature appeared again with a glowing mass of fused metal (massam igneam de scoria) in pincers, which he hurled at them. Where it struck the water about a furlong from them, it made the sea boil and hiss. They had only escaped about a mile when they saw beings swarming out upon the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges and set them blazing, until the whole island seemed one mass ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... caterpillar for her every four or five minutes, and sometimes take her place on the nest. I often took the husk down from its nail to show the brave little bird sitting on her eggs. If touched she would hiss and set up her feathers, but did not leave her nest. When the young birds were hatched, the parents were incessantly at work from early morning till late at night bringing small caterpillars about every two minutes to supply the wants of the tiny brood. One can judge of the usefulness of these birds ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... abutted on, to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat diversified with hiss and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively,* that 'there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties.' ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... spoke she took off the top of the stove and put the pot on the fire, much to its delight, for it began to hiss like the rocket sent off from the market-place the day before in honor of the election of a new mayor. Then Nelle wetted her finger and snuffed the candles, and the flame which had been flickering unsteadily at the end of the black wick burned brightly again and lit ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night, the east wind carrieth him away, and he departeth, and as a storm hurleth him out of his place; for God shall cast upon him, and not spare; he would fain flee out of his hand. Men shall clap their hands at him, and shall hiss him out of his place" (Job 27:20-23). And what shall this man do? Can he overstand the charge, the accusation, the sentence, and condemnation? No, he has none to plead his cause. I remember that somewhere I have read, as I think, concerning ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... foundation or capable of collapse! To hint at this, even as a remote possibility, was little short of blasphemous. Their amiable nephew, meanwhile, had regarded them as a flock of silly fat geese eminently fitted for plucking. He let them complacently hiss and cackle, congratulate themselves upon their worldly wisdom and conspicuous modernity, while, all the time, silently, diligently, relentlessly plucking. Now, awakening suddenly to the fact of their nudity, they were in a terrible taking; scandalised, flustered, very sore, poor ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... shoot, shoot, And when the bullets hiss, Don't let the tears fill up your eyes, For weeping ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... slaves upon him; and they seized him familiarly, and placed him in position, and made ready his clothing for the reception of fifty other thwacks with a thong, each several thwack coming down on him with a hiss, as it were a serpent, and with a smack, as it were the mouth of satisfaction; and the people assembled extolled the Chief Vizier, saying, 'Well and valiantly done, O stay of the State! and such-like to the accursed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had not heard the rushing tumult of the creek close under them, and over the edge of a rock Papayuchisew and he went together, the chill water of the rain-swollen stream muffling a final snarl and a final hiss of ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... roar of waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... old hag began to get angry and show a glimpse of her diabolic nature (like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom), at this pusillanimous behavior of the thing which she had taken the trouble to ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gray snake. But the witch did not look round. It grew out of the tub, waving itself backwards and forwards with a slow horizontal motion, till it reached the princess, when it laid its head upon her shoulder, and gave a low hiss in her ear. She started—but with joy; and seeing the head resting on her shoulder, drew it towards her and kissed it. Then she drew it all out of the tub, and wound it round her body. It was one of those dreadful creatures ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... falls, And horrid sympathy; for what he sees He feels himself, now changing; down his arms, Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast; And the dire hiss renews, and the dire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom! The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air, Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter. And the young steed recoils upon his haunches, The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard. O surer than suspicion's hundred eyes Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart, By mere oppugnancy of their own goodness, Reveals the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... overhead the sails are booming like artillery, as the spilling lines strain to get the grip. 'Now then, starboard watch, up with your sail and give the larboard watch a dressing down!' Yo—ho! Yo—hay! Yo—ho—oh! Up she goes! A hiss, a crash, a deafening thud, and a gigantic wave curls overhead and batters down the toiling men, who hang on for their lives and struggle for a foothold. 'Up with you!' yells the mate, directly the tangled coil of yellow-clad humanity emerges like a half-drowned rat, 'Up ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... Norman looked at her, thinking she had lost her wits. Still she ground it down with a fiercer and stronger force every second; and with her eyes still fixed upon it, and blazing with reddish black flame, she said, in a sort of fiery hiss: ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... wended my steps into the secluded Brandenburg valley, and found the eagles thriving and much grown. Being curious to see if their confinement had subdued their wild and ferocious spirit, I removed one of the laths and entered the barn. An angry hiss, similar to that of a snake, warned me of danger, but too late to save my hands some severe scratches. With one bound and a flap of their gigantic wings they were on me, and had it not been for Tomerl, who was standing just behind me armed with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... passenger in the curious pea-jacket to be standing near the woman spoken of, and engaged in shielding a lighted match with his sleeve. Presently, he extended his hand and cautiously applied the particle of flame to the tuft of hair under the woman's armpit. There followed a faint hiss, and a noxious smell of burning hair was wafted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... to run back to the head of his company he thought he heard a sound like a hiss. In his opinion it came from some one in the group of carpenters, but he ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... the open sandy hills there were a good many thick burly blow snakes, the kind that puff themselves up and hiss. Our Yankee declared that their breath was very poisonous and that we must not go near them. A handsome ringed species common in damp, shady places was, he told us, the most wonderful of all the snakes, for if chopped into pieces, however small, the fragments ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... he better gib hiss'ef up an' take his lammin.' But jes' den he 'membered de way Mars Marrabo looked at 'im an' w'at he said 'bout Sad'day night; an' den he 'lowed dat ef Mars Marrabo ketch 'im now, he'd wear 'im ter a frazzle an' chaw up de frazzle, so de wouldn' be nuffin' lef' un ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... waters where, had it not been for his lifebelt and the plank, he must have been beaten down and have perished. As it was, now he was driven into the depths, and now he emerged upon their surface to hear their seething hiss around him, and above it all a continuous boom as of great guns—the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... base of the auld kirk tower Is the broad-leaved dock and the bright brae flower; And the adders hiss o'er the lime-bound stones, And playfully writhe round mouldering bones: The bat clingeth close to the binewood's root, Where its gnarled boughs up the belfry shoot, As, hiding the handworks of ruthless time, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... winds creep with a snakish hiss Among the dwarfish bushes, And with deep sighing sadly kiss The wild brook's border rushes; The woods are dark, save here and there The glow-worm shineth faintly, And o'er the hills one lonely star That trembles ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... pussy-cats heard this, And they began to hiss, And stretch their claws, And raise their paws; "Me-ow," they said, "me-ow, me-o You'll burn to ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... unsophisticated mind to try this thing; to put this grain of a pure, potent salt, right into the seethe and glitter of little Boston, and find out what it would decompose or precipitate. For was not she a mother, testing the world's chalice for her children? What did she care for the hiss and the bubble, if ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... fire. Fortunately, there was no wind—not a breath—and the smoke rose vertically upward, leaving them a breathing space within. There they stood, guns in hand. Around them the fires blazed and crackled; but above the snapping of the knots, and the hiss of the spurting piping tree gas, could be heard the wild cry of the cougar! It now became evident on what side the animal was; for, as the young hunters peered through the smoke and blaze, they could distinguish the yellow cat-like body, moving to and fro under the hanging meat. The ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... old Temeraire Tugged to her last berth. Why the sun and the air In that soul-stirring canvas, seem fired with the glory Of such a brave ship, with so splendid a story! Well, look on that picture, my lads, and on this! And—no, do not crack out a curse like a hiss, But with stout CONAN DOYLE—he has passion and grip!— Demand that they give us ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... Frank and Andy were beside Bob in his boat. Dense smoke was pouring from the Gull, and Frank, dipping up a pailful of water, dashed it into the cockpit. There was a hiss, showing that fire ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... and night from the Brooklyn Bridge: The bees and fireflies flit and twinkle in their vast hives; curved clouds like the breath of gods hover between the towers and the moon. One hears the hiss of lightnings, the deep thunder of human things, and a fevered breathing as of some attendant and invincible Powers. The glow of burning millions melts outward into dim and fairy outlines until afar the liquid music born of rushing crowds drips like ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... from his seat, he shook a finger in Bryant's face, exclaiming, "You'll get what's coming to you! Like your damned dog!" His face was entirely viperish. His finger came within an inch of the engineer's nose. His words carried a furious hiss. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... do not know that it would be safe for the gods to pardon." So the poet sends Macbeth out into the black night and the blinding storm to be thrown to the ground by forces that twist off trees and hiss among the wounded boughs and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... thee. The roaring artillery's clouds thicken round me, The hiss and the glare of the loud bolts confound me. Ruler of battles, I call on thee O Father, lead ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the difference of style. All three types of colonial woodsmen cut the tree almost breast high, but the Australian seemed to be the only one that took advantage of that understroke, with a hiss through the clenched teeth, which looks so formidable when you watch our timber-getters. It was a Canadian team which started. They cut coolly, and the one whom I watched struck one by his splendid condition. A wiry man, not thick-set, but well built and athletic, who never turned a ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... for consultation in the face of this peril. Like lightning the two darted down upon the enemy, buffeting its head with swift wing-strokes. The first assault all but swept it from the tree, and it shrank back upon itself with flattened head and angry hiss. Then it struck fiercely, again and again, at its bewildering assailants. But swift as were its movements, those of the king-birds were swifter, and its fangs never hit upon so much as one harassing feather. Suddenly, in its fury, it struck out too far, weakening for a moment its ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... smile of practiced art, More false than treason's kiss; But penetrate that dual heart, And hear the serpent's hiss. ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... darkened. In vain Kali threw whole armfuls into it. On the surface the wet boughs smoked only, and below, the burning wood began to hiss and the flame, however much it was ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Margaret could not have settled with herself whether there was most pain or pleasure in the prospect of this evening. Five minutes before, she had believed that she should spend it at the Greys'—should hear the monotonous hiss of the urn, which seemed to take up its song, every time she went, where it had left off last—should see Mrs Grey's winks from behind it—should have the same sort of cake, cut by Sophia into pieces ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... gal afore, Jeremy?" asked Job, shouting to make himself heard above the hiss and thunder of the water under the forefoot. "She's the old gun we had aboard the Queen. Stede Bonnet never had a piece like this. Cast in Bristol, she was, in '94. There's the letters that tells it." And he patted the bright ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... wave (which made every heart beat), all ears heard the long-drawn following "Ah!"—not fear only, not expectation made real, but rather awe, expectation shown just. It began low and hollow, ran up to a hiss: then the silence was such that the cracking of a man's ankle-bone by the door sounded like a carter's whip to him upon the bishop's throne. In that deathly state the whole body of people remained breathless, waiting what ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... "You are courageous indeed, Hiss Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like her alphabet I believe she holds stock in Raffini; anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her. You would ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... Queen and all the court came out and watched while the big heap was set on fire. The people came out to watch too in their thousands, and a very fine sight it was to see the enormous flames shooting up into the air and to hear the crackle and hiss of the burning wood that sounded like the discharge ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... been more than three miles distant, when the space cleared was as wide as Mr. Hardy deemed necessary for safety. A regular noise, something between a hiss and a roar, was plainly audible; and when the wind lifted the smoke the flames could be seen running along in an unbroken wall of fire. Birds flew past overhead with terrified cries, and a close, hot smell of burning was very ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... dwell herein, for beholding my heart's desire On my foe;" and I knelt, and fain had brightened the hearth with fire; But the brands they would hiss and die, as with curses a strangled man, And the hearth was cold from the day that the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... 'Waggons!' Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades Of sense and song above your graves may hiss— The 'little boatman' and his 'Peter Bell' Can sneer at him who ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... objects men pursue,' The Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who. 'A modest Monologue you here survey,' Hiss'd from the theatre the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and along the banks of the Moselle. Until within late years, the people were wont to assemble yearly upon a mountain, to set fire to a huge wooden wheel, twined with straw, which, all ablaze, was then sent rolling down the hill, to plunge with a hiss into the water. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... accentuated by Liberal cheers. And then, when the Tories still seemed determined to obstruct, came a division, then the closure, and at one o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone was able to leave the House. Thus was he compelled to waste time and strength, that Mr. Chamberlain might nightly hiss his hate, and Mr. Jimmy Lowther might gulp ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... fortress rode the three, And entered, and were lost behind the walls. 'So,' thought Geraint, 'I have tracked him to his earth.' And down the long street riding wearily, Found every hostel full, and everywhere Was hammer laid to hoof, and the hot hiss And bustling whistle of the youth who scoured His master's armour; and of such a one He asked, 'What means the tumult in the town?' Who told him, scouring still, 'The sparrow-hawk!' Then riding close behind an ancient churl, Who, smitten by the dusty sloping beam, Went sweating underneath a sack ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... that nobody ever suspected of being a saint; one may be, with a bad reputation; but he goes up the ladder and is lost in the smoke and flame; and a moment after he emerges, and the great circles of flame hiss around him; in a moment more he has reached the window; in another moment, with the woman and child in his arms, he reaches the ground and gives his fainting burden to the bystanders and the people all stand hushed for a moment, as they always do at such times, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... stirs not; ha, in such a dismal cell Can gentle sleep with his soft blessings dwell? Must I feel tortures in a human breast, While beasts and monsters can enjoy their rest? What quiet they possess in sleep's calm bliss! The lions cease to roar, the snakes to hiss, While I am kept awake, Only to entertain my miseries. Or if a slumber steal upon my eyes, Some horrid dream my labouring soul benumbs And brings fate to me sooner than it comes. Fears most oppress when sleep has seized upon The ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation; and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart. There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it, and their lips ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... fight And storm their cities in the dead of night." An old man said, "I read my books all day, But death has taken all my books away." And one, "The popes and prophets did not well To cheat poor dead men with false hopes of hell. Better the whips of fire that hiss and rend Than painless void proceeding to no end." I smiled to hear them restless, I who sought Peace. For I had not loved, I had not fought, And books are vanities, and manly strength A gathered flower. God grant us peace at length! I heard no more, ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... in prison. He drove away from the jail in a cab with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old symbol—a yellow chrysanthemum—a hiss went up that was like a geyser of contempt and ridicule. Grimshaw's pallid face flushed. But he lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as the cab ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... a dead calm for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the back ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... intentions; he to assail, I to defend her. The attack was so sudden, that Puss had not time to use her weapons to any purpose; she just managed to give one spirited claw at his nose with a loud hiss, and then sprang faster and higher than I had ever seen her spring before, and gained the top of the paling just in time to escape his seizure. If she had not been able to jump, she would have been ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... tug, which had been hovering about for some time, came screaming alongside. There was a hiss from its wave-splashed deck, and a rocket with a blue light flashed up into the sky. A man who had formed one of the long line of passengers, leaning over the rail, watching the tug since it had come into sight, now turned away ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Prussia—and, to the strains of martial music, moving down the Champ Elysees to the Place de la Concorde, was distributed thence over certain sections of the city agreed upon beforehand. Nothing that could be called a disturbance took place during the march; and though there was a hiss now and then and murmurings of discontent, yet the most noteworthy mutterings were directed against the defunct Empire. Indeed, I found everywhere that the national misfortunes were laid at Napoleon's door—he, by this time, having ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... a hiss. A flicker of flame flashed over the charging soldier. An odor of charred human ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped out of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San Carlo to do—what? Why simply to make fun of an old woman—to deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose beauty is faded now, and whose voice has lost its former richness. Everybody spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would be crammed because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she could not sing ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... at the wall when it first struck—the rush along ever growing higher—the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet above you—and the "noise of many waters," the roar, the hiss, the "shrieking" among the shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet. I watched if it threw the big stones at the wall; but it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hubbub! scent the fumes! Are those real men or ghosts? The stillness spreads of Death abroad—down come the temple posts, Their molten bronze is coursing fast and joins with silver waves To leap with hiss of thousand snakes where ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... from our ruined marts, We heard th' undying serpent hiss, And in the desert of our hearts The fatal spell ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... tribute, not only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds,-above all religions, after all, is that divine thing,—Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the wide, wild sea, or 'mid the rocks and breakers of some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these frightful doctrines have been used to degrade ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... all that is unreal or needlessly perplexing, and make it speak plainly and humanly to people who have their duty to do and their battle to fight?" It makes intelligent, sympathetic, and helpful living take the place of the tooth and the claw, the growl and the deadly hiss of the jungle—all right in their places, but with no place ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... intervals against the casement of the inn: every thing seemed to indicate a tempestuous evening. But the storm which threatened to rage without was unnoticed.—Though the drops fell heavily; though gleams of lightning flashed by, followed by the report of distant thunder, and the winds began to hiss and whistle among the trees of the neighbouring cemetery, yet all these external signs of elementary tumult were as nothing to the deep, solemn footsteps of the Red Man. There seemed to be no end to his walking. An hour had he paced up and down the chamber without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... Will said again. He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars. Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly. "But it is worth while all the same—even though one may be turned back from Paradise. Remember—always remember—that it's ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... situation in in a flash. To lie there was almost certain death; to stand up was worse; to go back was as bad as going forward. What happened afterwards I don't know. I could hear the bullets whizzing by my head with an ugly hiss. The next moment, with a jump and a spring, I landed head first in the trench on the opposite side. For the moment I did not know whether I was hit or not. I unstrapped my camera, to see if it had caught any bullets, but, thank Heaven, they had cleared ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... people, coercing a reluctant government to draw the sword and stake the national existence on the integrity of the Republic, are now anything but the fragments of a nation before the world, the scorn and hiss of every petty tyrant. It is because the people of the United States, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicated this generation to the sword, and pouring out the blood of their children as of no account, and vowing before ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... a committee of select friends, Mr. Huntingdon sat, confident of success; and when the hiss of rockets ceased, he came forward, and addressed the assembly in an hour's speech. As a warm and rather prominent politician, he was habituated to the task, and bursts of applause from his own party frequently attested the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fraught with so much danger, it were best that none but the ruder sex should confer together, and they departed; Mistress Longman enjoining upon her husband to remain and deport himself like a man of spirit, and Mistress Allgood whispering with a sharp hiss into her goodman's alarmed ear, he nodding the ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... work. Hear how the rain pours, and murder—such a flash! Why, in Jamaica, we don't startle greatly at lightning, but absolutely I heard it hiss—there, again"—the noise of the thunder stopped further colloquy, and the wind now burst down the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... to hear her talk, but that way, he knew, lay disaster to the little supper in swift-returning memory. If she began to talk, the forbidden topic, now dormant, would uncoil its hideous length and hiss. He must hold her attention ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... falling and flames were licking each other across the roadways. It was even difficult for our ambulances to get so far, because we had to pass over a bridge to which the enemy's guns were paying great attention. Several of their thunderbolts fell with a hiss into the water of the canal where some Belgian soldiers were building a bridge of boats. It was just an odd chance that our ambulance could get across without being touched, but we took the chance ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... "S-s-sh!" came a warning hiss. "Be mighty careful now of your conversation and your footsteps. Keep as quiet as possible and follow me closely. We are ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... beam of light flashed from the cabins across the way. Legrand gave vent to a hiss of warning and moved off. I could see his shadow for a moment, and then it was swallowed in the blackness. He was waiting and watching outside the cabin. The light streamed out in a fan towards us, and revealed, in the opening of a door, a man's form, and even as it did, Legrand struck. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... lips into the dark water and there came a faint sound like the hiss of a serpent in the stillness. He laughed as he heard it, and pursued his way ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... chamber, the door was closed tightly and then Tom Swift turned the valve that admitted the sea water. With a hiss the Atlantic began rushing in, and in a short time the outer door would ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... alarming. He prowled continually among the camps, sullen and quarrelsome, vaguely miserable, and blaming his misery upon all the world. He took to spending much time, with small profit to himself, among the chained gangs of slaves, where were cruel sounds and crueller sights. At the hiss and cut of the lash on bared backs and thighs he thrilled with savage exultation; he took morbid delight in the sight of pain inflicted; and this he could not at all understand. At this season his tales were all of war and blood ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... holding his breath. Arnold took one step back and charged the door. It went crashing in, and almost at once there was a loud report. The closet—it was little more—was filled with smoke, and Arnold heard distinctly the hiss of a bullet buried in the woodwork over his shoulder. He caught the revolver from the shaking fingers of the man who was crouching upon the ground, and slipped it into his pocket. With his other hand, he held ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... even fails may claim Indulgence for his cheerful aim; We should applaud, not hiss him; This is a pardon which we grant, (The Latin gives the rhime I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... of beetles and scorpions. I have a distinct recollection of one huge-jointed centipede making a vicious grab at my leg; he failed to make his teeth meet in anything tangible, and emitting a venomous hiss disappeared in a ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... on, hand in hand, without a thought of where they were going. Twice Mooka fell and lay still, but was dragged to her feet and hurried onward again. The little hunter's own strength was almost gone, when a low moan rose steadily above the howl and hiss of the gale. It was the spruce woods, bending their tops to the blast and groaning at the strain. With a wild whoop Noel plunged forward, and the next instant they were safe within the woods. All around them the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... upon the platform, among hurrying crowds, in black fumes that poisoned the palate with sulphur. This way and that sped the demon engines, whirling lighted waggons full of people. Shrill whistles, the hiss and roar of steam, the bang, clap, bang of carriage-doors, the clatter of feet on wood and stone—all echoed and reverberated from a huge cloudy vault above them. High and low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the eye: theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... bean tree blossoms, renewing the promise of plenty. While here, the "Calloo-calloo," is remarkably shy, very rarely venturing out of the seclusion of the thickest jungle, and warning off intruders with a curious note of alarm, half purr, half hiss. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... ladies recovered their presence of mind. They started. Hiss O'Halloran saw my eyes fixed on her, flushed up a little, and looked away. As for Marion, she too saw my look, but, instead of turning her eyes away, she fixed them on me for an instant with a strange and most intense ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... was mightily pleased with it all along till towards the end he comes to discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man of his parts could ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I gat my gear upon me, and I went again upon my journey. And the Gorge did continue very light and cheerful, with the shining of the fires; and oft there did be a little steam that did hiss from this part or that of the bottom of the Gorge and did blow very quaint and noisy in the quiet of that place. And oft there did be hot pools, and everywhere the great boulders in the bottom way, and to the right and to the left ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Hamilton to a height of popularity from which it would be an historic triumph to drag him down. He was, indeed, almost at the zenith of a reputation which few men have achieved. From end to end of the Union his name was on every lip, sometimes coupled with a hiss, but oftener with every expression of honour and admiration that the language could furnish. Even in the South he had his followers, and in the North and East it was hardly worth a man's nose to abuse him. He was a magician, who could make the fortunes of any man quick enough to seize his ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... weaves Rainbows of the forest leaves. Gentians fringed, like eyes of blue, Glimmer out of sleety dew. Meadow green I sadly miss: Winds through withered sedges hiss. Oh, 't is snowing, swing me fast, While December ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... fled his heart on the wings of the storm—fled to the cold wife he distrusted: and the pledge that should assure him of life, seemed as a love-token insulting his fall:—Amidst all the roar of roused passions, loudest of all was the hiss of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... loose?" he ejaculated. He knew every sound of the foothill country, but this was strange to him. A kind of snort, a sort of hiss; mechanical in its regularity, startling in its strangeness, it came across the valley with the unbroken rhythm of ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... add the indigo and the rest of the water. The heat of the water should be not less than 160 deg.F. as it will cool while the lime is being prepared. Slake the lime in a separate vessel by pouring about 5 oz. of water over it. When it begins to hiss and break, add more water little by little. When all the lumps have cracked up stir till a thick even cream is made. Add this to the other ingredients in the stock vat. Stir well. The stock vat should have a temperature of 120-140 deg.F. It should ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... it is true, but not unmodulated or without considerable variety in it; a long sibilation would be followed by distinctly-heard ticking sounds, as of a husky-ticking clock, and after ten or twenty or thirty ticks another hiss, like a long expiring sigh, sometimes with a tremble in it as of a dry leaf swiftly vibrating in the wind. No sooner would one cease than another would begin; and so it would go on, demand and response, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... outbreak, fighting men, shots, the clash of steel—again a tolling bell and a requiem for the dead. A horse galloping in the night. Mountain winds crooning mournfully, rising to the scream of tempest and the crash of thunder. Dreary uplands, the hiss of rain, the sough of drifting snow, the patient plod of a mule along a perilous trail. And then the jungle: its discordant uproar, its hammering of frogs, its hoots and howls, the dismal swash of flood waters. A monotonous ebb ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... so fiercely at the Dons; and they peered down into the dark empty hold where the treasure-chests had lain, and up at the three masts and the rigging that had borne so long the swift wings of the Pelican. And they heard the hiss and rattle of the ropes as Hubert ordered a man to run up a flag to show them how it was done; and they smelled the strange tarry briny smell ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... knocking little pieces of earth and stone into your face. Extraordinary, how maddening is the sting of these harmless little pebbles and bits of dirt! The bullets ricochet away with a peculiar singing hiss, or crack overhead when they go too high. The shells which burst on the other side of the parapet shake the ground with a dull thud and crash. There are two minutes to wait before going over. Then is the time when a man feels a sinking sensation in his stomach; when his hands ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and emphatically, "that it is my honest opinion that women should do as their mothers before them did, stay home, work, and raise their families and keep out of politics. Stop! Stop! Let me say what I have to say! I can't make myself heard if you hiss and yell!" ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... hell To souls cast forth who hear all hell-fire hiss All round them, and who feel the red worm's kiss Shoot mortal poison through the heart that rests Immortal: serpents suckled at her breasts, Fire feeding on her limbs, less pain should be Than sense of pride laid waste and love laid low, If she be ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sledge, with a terrific pull, he drew one of the harpoons out of the ice and with his knife speedily cut it loose from the lashings. Ootah, stunned for a moment, turned upon him. Maisanguaq desperately raised the weapon. Ootah heard it hiss through the air. He reeled backward—the harpoon grazed his arm and ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre |
