"Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... replied. "I'm taking Miss Spangles up on the hill to get her warm—'tis a nipping and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... the wheels, and but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery the glare of the lamps and the capers of the mountebanks were, and how satisfied ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the bank below the parapet of the old fort, hidden from observation. He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping her throat, conscious of his warmth and power, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... lip curled like an opening rose-bud; she gave a nipping laugh, and I just heard "old fogy" break through it so saucily that ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... quiverings, appeals to heaven, upturned eyes, sudden blushings and clutchings at her hair. In fact, no ingredient of temptation was lacking in the dish, and at the bottom of all these words there was a nipping desire which embellished even its blemishes. The good knight fell at the lady's feet, and weeping took them and kissed them, and you may be sure the good woman was quite delighted to let him kiss them, and even without looking too carefully ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... delicate attention. Keep them talking for a few minutes while I pay a visit to the kitchen," cried Nan, deftly nipping up the roll of umbrellas, and disappearing from the hall, to return with the meekest of meek faces, and bid a fond adieu to the parents for whose confusion she had ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fore-paws, with sundry bites in the air, at once announced that he had met with greater resistance than he had anticipated. In a minute, all the bears were on their hind-legs, beating the air with their fore-paws, and nipping right and left with their jaws, in vigorous combat with their almost invisible foes. Instinct supplied the place of science, and spite of the hides and the long hair that covered them, the bees found the means of darting their stings into unprotected places, until the quadrupeds ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... dashed up to the first goal of their early ambition. But now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. They can be kind to you, but you nevermore can be kind to them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossoming, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... presently he will be busily directing his attentions in another quarter, until the day may come, after he is successful and triumphant, well pleased with himself and his choice, when he will heartily thank Dora there for having administered to him the cold bath of a rejection, so nipping his first raw aspirations ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... the northwestern part of London, their names as well as their history would be, to Protestants at least, entirely unknown. They have, however, the evil reputation of commonly bringing with them a nipping frost, and are abhorred in Burgundy as the great enemies of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... added pathos; and the tears came into her eyes as she noted that under the ragged coat was only a flimsy cotton shirt, so bereft of buttons that the whole chest was exposed to the cold which but a little while before the girl, clad in furs and sheltered by the carriage, had yet found so nipping. She raised her free hand and laid it gently on the exposed breast, and slightly shivered as she felt how little warmth ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... believe it? When the shooting began, the infernal idiot must rush round to our assistance, so, of course, Mortimer and Co., nipping out by the secret door, got clear away down the drive. But that is not the worst. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... young clambring hops. Now digs then sowes his herbs, his flowers & roots And carefully manures his trees of fruits. The Pleiades their influence now give, And all that seemed as dead afresh doth live. The croaking frogs, whom nipping winter kil'd Like birds now chirp, and hop about the field, The Nightingale, the black-bird and the Thrush Now tune their layes, on ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... that haue knowledge in Iewels buy any, if they buy them deere, it is their own faults and not the brokers: yet it is good to haue knowledge in Iewels, by reason that it may somewhat ease the price. [Sidenote: Bargaines made with the nipping of fingers vnder a cloth.] There is also a very good order which they haue in buying of Iewels, which is this; There are many Marchants that stand by at the making of the bargaine, and because they shall not vnderstand howe the Iewels be solde, the Broker and the Marchants ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... the merry Indian-summer husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared fields;—golden corn, golden pumpkins, gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad change, indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens, and squirrels and mice that ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks realized that only his four-legged friend stood ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... in the open air; the stir of the camp in preparation for a flitting; canvas sinking to the ground, bales and boxes heaped together, mule-bells tinkling through the grove, horses refreshed by their long rest whinnying and nipping at each other in play—all these are charming variations and accompaniments to the old tune ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Mr. Douglas. It was situated in a wild sequestered nook, formed by a little bay at the farther end of the lake. On three sides it was surrounded by wooded hills that offered a complete shelter from every nipping blast. To the south the lawn, sprinkled with trees and shrubs, sloped gradually ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... seen whether my poems would succeed. But, with those exceptions, the dean had it all his own way; and he could not be expected to forego his own literary labours for my sake; so, through all that glaring summer, and sad foggy autumn, and nipping winter, I had to get my bread as I best could—by my pen. Mackaye grumbled at my writing so much, and so fast, and sneered about the furor scribendi. But it was hardly fair upon me. "My mouth craved it of me," as Solomon says. I had really no other means of livelihood. Even ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... mortified pride, and dread of exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her), sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her, and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ships were lying was not one floe, but formed by the close junction of two, so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had supposed for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case of ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of "nipping" us between the floes which formed it. I therefore determined on immediately removing the ships in-shore, and went in a boat to look out for a place for that purpose, there being no alternative between this and our returning some distance to the eastward, into the larger space of clear water ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... altogether abstained from taking any part in any of the proceedings of this meeting. He being a mushroom reformer, raised his head for a short season, and was cut off and disappeared from the political world almost as quick as a mushroom disappears after a nipping frost. The effect produced by this meeting did indeed rouse him again for a moment; but it was only that he might fall still lower, and be totally buried in the lap of corruption, mingling with its basest tools and dependants. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... consequently, the first dispossessed; and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... you, but there is none warm.' The clothing was to guard against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and its failure to answer its purpose points to a real sorrow and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the poor old school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years! ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... dory dancing on the waves like mad, is no easy task. The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory rheumatism. But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or in a nipping winter's wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman's lot ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the Anywhere Man, gazing upon the pasture, where the fleecy ewes were nipping grass between the rocks and the eager lambs nuzzled ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Tegeloo!" cried Hope, stroking the parrot, who grunted with satisfaction, and informed her many times that he was still, "Poor Texas, pretty Texas!" nipping her finger gently as he sidled and snuggled, while Andy leaped to Faith's lap, and was so determined to stay that he had to be removed by force, soft-hearted Faith looking back at the crying baby with the expression of a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and said to ourselves,—at ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... monastery of Innisfallen, and he now felt in every sight and sound the dreariness of winter; the hard ground was covered with withered leaves; icicles depended from leafless branches; he heard the sweet low note of the robin, who familiarly approached him; and he felt his fingers numbed by the nipping frost. Father Cuddy found it rather difficult to account for such sudden transformations, and to convince himself it was not the illusion of a dream, he was about to arise, when, lo! he discovered that both his knees were buried at least ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... Abraham Dixon. The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather nipping. To ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, for keeping ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... scent of roses—a time when the young can sit out-of-doors in the moonlight, and the middle-aged may venture forth without risk of catching cold. But even on such a night in Thorhaven there is a nipping freshness at sunset which keeps the mind alert instead of lulling the senses—giving an exquisite clearness to the thoughts of lovers: at any rate, to the thoughts ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... paused, removed his hat, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Although it was nipping cold, he seemed to be burning with the heat of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... were about three thousand of them—began without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked top. If one clambered up on that tomb ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lay to with backed forestaysail, tumbling wildly on a dim, grey sea. Half a mile away the ice ran back into a dingy haze, and there was a low, grey sky to weather. Now and then a fine sprinkle of snow slid across the water before a nipping breeze. As Wyllard glanced to windward Dampier strode up ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of November I had an opportunity of observing the method pursued when culling the tea, which is performed by black slaves, chiefly women and children. They carefully selected the tenderest and pale-green leaves, nipping off with their nails the young leaf bud, just below where the first or second leaf was unfolded. One whole field had already undergone this operation; nothing but tea shrubs stripped of their foliage remained. The inspector ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Nan, pale and pinched, and looking plain in the nipping morning air, though wrapped in a fur coat. (One of the points about Nan was that, though she sometimes looked plain, she never looked dowdy; there was always a distinction, a chic, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... brought the chill whisperings of an early winter through the Northland. Farther south autumn was dying, or dead. The last of the red ash berries hung shriveled and frost-bitten on naked twigs, freezing nights were nipping the face of the earth, the voices of the wilderness were filled with a new note and the winds held warning for every man and beast between Hudson's Bay and the Great Slave and from the Height of Land to the Arctic Sea. Seven years before there had come such a winter, and the land had not ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the final thinning when all danger from bugs and other vermin is past. The dwarfs may be planted four feet apart; but the running sorts should not be less than six or eight. The custom of cutting or nipping off the leading shoot of the running varieties is now practised to some extent, with the impression that it both facilitates the formation of fruitful laterals and the early maturing of the fruit. Whether the amount of product is increased ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... near by the coyotes kept up ventriloquistic clamor, and from far off the bawling of great bulls and the bleating of the calves brought news of a huge herd of cattle, but these sounds only made his solitary vigil the more impressive. The sleepy chirp of the crickets and the sound of his horse nipping the grass, calmly careless of the wolves, were the only aids to sleep; all else had the effect to keep his tense nerves vibrating. As the cold intensified, the crickets ceased to cry, and the pony, having filled his stomach, turned tail to the wind and humped his back in drowse. At last, no friendly ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... getting us into a trench out of view of certain stakes and pickets that were obviously used by Mere Popeau as a drying-ground. To divert attention he gave a vivid demonstration of bombing along a C.T. with clods of earth, with myself as bayonet-man nipping round traverses and mortally puncturing sand-bags with a walking-stick. It must have been a pretty nervy business for the Major, for any minute we might have come across a notice-board about the hours of working parties knocking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... yourself and family, who, I trust, have all safely weathered the rough winter lately past, as well as the east winds, which are still nipping our spring in Yorkshire,—I am, my ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... we been trained in this that we are all a good deal more concerned about the things we ought not to do than about the things we ought to do. We spend our days nipping off the buds of evil inclinations, pulling up the weeds of evil habits, wondering how it happens they multiply so fast, forgetting altogether the wiser plan we would adopt with weeds ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... shone brightly upon the hills and plains of Monmouth. Over the meadows lay the snow, and on the streams a thick coating of ice; but the pines were green in the woodlands, and the air—though sharp and nipping—still breathed of spring and hope. The land was fair to see in its winter garb. Man alone was the discordant ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... suspicious look, and being roused by even the slightest whisper. During the voyage it ate corn and fruit, and when these became scarce, took to cockroaches; of which it cleared the vessel. It would dispatch twenty large, besides smaller ones, three or four times in each day, nipping off the head of the former, and rejecting the viscera, legs, and hard wing cases. Besides these, it fed on milk, sugar, raisins, and bread-crumbs. It afterwards made friends with a cat, and slept and eat with this animal, but it never ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Miss May. I declare, if you don't hop about through the snow like a robin; there—she's gone. Now, I should like to know what business old Stillinghast's niece has to be doing such work as this,—the nipping old miser; and I'd like to know what she ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the sun frizzled you alive; here, where it couldn't rain without at once being a flood; where the very winds blew contrarily, hot from the north and bitter-chill from the south; where, no matter how great the heat by day, the night would as likely as not be nipping cold: here he was doomed to end his life, and to end it, for all the yellow sunshine, more hopelessly knotted and gnarled with rheumatism than if, dawn after dawn, he had gone out in a cutting north-easter, or groped his way ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... that pleasant but Puritanical State. Certainly, in a moral point of view, it is better to be in a Puritanical State than in a State of Punch; but Massachusetts, it is said, is very sly about the liquor business, and takes her "nips," regularly, behind the door. This may account, probably, for the "nipping air" by which so many of her denizens are characterized. The Bostonian further states of the inhabitants of the "Hub," that "liquor finds little favor in their eyes." Now, we are acquainted with three thousand four hundred ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... the promise of the year, Serene thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone I ncognit ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... new milk, the pleasant sound of animals stepping about in the stable, the old mare reaching her long head over the stanchion to welcome me, and nipping at my fingers when ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and nipping winds of winter. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... went out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not,' wrinkling her forehead; 'but then, you see, Witch Etta consults me: she makes a point of finding out all my little plans and nipping them in the bud. She says she really cannot allow me to go so often to the White Cottage; Mr. Cunliffe and Mr. Tudor are always there, and it is not proper. She is always hinting that I want to meet Mr. Tudor, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a pleasant thing Nipping daisies in the spring; But what chilly nights I pass On the cold and dewy grass, Or pick my scanty dinner where All the ground is ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... fight, do you?" he cried: "you shall have it then," and, grinning with delight, he sprang upon the other's back, nipping him with his knees, and beginning to slap and ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... some cold, sufficing for different purposes: the cold are the softer, and the easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw—thread. Other machines are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of rivet-holes all along the edges of huge iron plates. These animated creatures of the mill, performing their tasks like child's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... blustering storms and drifting snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the heaviest furbelows that ever maiden wore," I thought as I watched them strain at the cases, both hauling and pulling, with many men to the ends to get them through the hatch, then ease them to the deck, with regard to the nipping of fingers. I noted, too, an order given somewhat privately by Captain Tabor to put out the pipes, and noted that not one man ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... wanted to know whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... MacVeigh, without lifting his head. "If you're ready, Pelly, open the door." He rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. He did not seem like the old MacVeigh; but the dogs were nipping and whining, and there was no time for ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... and clear, but the frost mingled the freshness with an "eager and nipping air," and Walter unconsciously quickened his step as he paced to and fro the straight walk that bisected the garden, with his eyes on the ground, and his hat ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they had had their tea and Huldah was ready to start, it was already growing light out of doors. The night had been cold, and there was a thin layer of ice on the puddles in the road, and a nipping little wind made Huldah glad to wrap her old shawl snugly about her,—the shawl which Mrs. Perry had lent her, to save the new cloak. Dick bounded along delightedly; it was not often now that he had a walk at that hour of the morning, and he rejoiced in every inch of it; though ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and they saw that she had slipped off her garment of skins, and stood before them, a gaunt white figure armed with a gleaming knife. Next she put the knife to her mouth, and, nipping it between her teeth, slid into the water silently as a diving bird. A minute passed, not more, and they saw that something was climbing up ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... and rammed into her with all the strength I was capable of; my God, how she heaved to meet my attack! Her vagina seemed as stiff as my pintle, closing upon it with an extraordinary grasp, such as few women are capable of, nipping and squeezing the head of my affair each time it reached to the bottom of ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... night is keen! How the nipping wind does drive Through yon tree-tops, bare and lean, Till their shadow seems alive,— Patters through the bars, and falls, Shivering, on the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... horse backed in wrong, and she got the harness all twisty-ways, and everything went bewitched. And wasn't she provoked, though? Served her right, I say. A little woman beside her was the first to jump into her buggy, and drive off with a strong inhalation of breath, and that nipping together of the lips that says: "A-a-ah! I tell ye!" The little girl that we picked out was hopping around like a scared cockroach, and her pa seemed to be saying: "Now, keep cool! Keep cool! Don't get flustered," but when another woman drove off, I know she almost cried, she felt ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... woods. To Stumpy and Ebenezer, who nosed affectionately at his legs, he paid no attention beyond a careless touch of caress. Even to Ananias-and-Sapphira, who had hurriedly clambered from MacPhairrson's shoulder to his and begun softly nipping at his ear with her dreaded beak, he gave no heed whatever. He knew that the evil-tempered bird loved him as she loved his master and would be scrupulously careful not to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... are coming through the ground, and support them with sticks immediately the growth begins to run. Scarlet Runners may be kept dwarf by pinching off the tops when the plants are about 1 ft. high, and nipping off the subsequent shoots ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... and it is all well enough, in its way—if you don't happen to get dismasted. But I find the morning air rather nipping, so I will get my bath and go below again. Will you kindly allow one of your men to play upon me with the head-pump, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... another nip, and another great Miaw! The Landcrabs went on nipping, until they had nipped a big round hole in the side of the Cat. By this time the Cat was lying down, in great pain; and as the hole was very big, out walked the Landcrabs, and scuttled away. Then out walked the King, carrying his bride; and out walked the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... beckoned to my sisters to follow her. They whispered to their husbands, who, however, only nodded and laughed. My uncle's object was rather to guide than to suppress the hilarity, and when he observed anything like a dispute arising, he put in a word or two nipping it in the bud in a calm, determined way, to soothe irritated feelings. In a short time Dan Bourke came in, and, putting his hands on the back of my father's chair, said, "By your leave, gentlemen, I'm come to wheel the master away;" ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost—a nipping-frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age. I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of that colossal cataclysm; I shall take all those for granted at present: ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... it would be a nice place to sit down and begin fishing. Class ladies [Translator's Note: I.e., School chaperons, whose duty it is to sit in the classroom while the girls are receiving instruction from a master.] wander about on the banks, nipping at the green grass. The shepherd's horn can be heard now and then. White gulls, looking like the younger Drishka, hover ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... made into icicles on the way but I do not seem to have any thoughts in the winter time. The barn chamber is full of thoughts in warm weather. The sky gives them to me, and the trees and flowers, and the birds, and the river; but now it is always gray and nipping, the branches are bare and ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the tin pans on the pack-horse clattered, and we got higher all the time, and rode through waterfalls and along the edge of death. By noon I did not much care if the horses fell over or not. The skin was off me in a number of places, and my horse did not like me, and showed it by nipping back at my ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... been from a well-to-do patient who fostered a half-fancied illness, he might have been more put out than he certainly was when, upon turning into the street, he felt the keen east wind nipping his ears; but it was from a poor house lying in the midst of a very labyrinth of squalid back streets and foul courts, and yet but a mere stone's-throw from ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... nipping and an eager air into which they stepped from the great door. The storm had ceased, but the snow lay much deeper, and all the world seemed folded in a lucent death, of which the white mounds were the graves. All the morning it had been snowing busily, for no footsteps were between the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the camp for weeks. The meals were good, the men respected her, and she went her way to and from her shack at the canyon as regularly as the world went around. The autumn slipped by, and the nipping frosts of early winter and the depths of early snows were already daily occurrences. The big group of solid log shacks that formed the construction camp were all made weather-tight against the long mountain winter. Trails were beginning ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... his wife, and Sister Susan and her daughter, and three of my wife's kin had come in from the country, all to make a merry Christmas with us. I felt sorry, but it was quite impossible, so I wished Mr. Bluff a "Merry Christmas," and hurried homeward through the cold and nipping air. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... breath of air blew from the south, nipping the exposed portions of their bodies and driving the frost, in needles of fire, through fur and flesh to the bones. So, when the fire had grown lusty and thawed a damp circle in the snow about it, Sitka Charley forced his reluctant comrades to lend a hand in pitching a fly. It was a ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... business is a good deal like bear hunting. You get on a fresh track, either in politics or bear hunting, and follow the game with dogs, or politicians, as the case may be. The trail keeps getting fresher and by and by the game is in sight, and the dogs are nipping its hind legs, if it is a bear, or chewing big words if it is an opposing candidate, and nipping him in exposed places. You ride like mad, your clothes or your reputation torn by briars if it is a bear, or by opposition newspapers if it is a political campaign, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... bull, grazing in a meadow, and, watching his herd, like the faithful guardian he was. Robert called to him cheerfully. The big fellow looked up, shook his horns, not in hostile fashion but in the manner of comrade saluting comrade, and then went back, with a whole and confident heart, to his task of nipping the grass. Robert was pleased. It was certain that the bull no longer regarded him with either fear or apprehension, and he ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Dennison, our first camp of instruction. Through most of the year there was no ground for complaint. In winter, and especially on winter nights, it would be impossible to keep up anything like a steady temperature, and the thin shell of the building would soon chill through in a nipping and frosty air. We had to meet this difficulty in all winter quarters for troops, and there seemed to be no way to remove it. If one could be heavily clad, it was generally more healthful to endure a steady low temperature, than to meet the alternations of heat and cold which came ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... went through the fleshy part of his arm, and sped twenty feet beyond, nipping several branches and twigs before its force was spent. No doubt the American race as a rule is hardy and stoical, but the stricken Pawnee acted like a schoolboy. Dropping his gun, he clasped his hand over the wound, and emitted a yell which surpassed everything in that line that ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... a cheerless prospect he saw through the haze of rain. Back into the distance ran a stretch of slate-gray water, flecked and seamed by the white tops of little splashing waves, for a nipping wind blew down the lake. On either side rose low hills, dotted here and there with somber and curiously rigid trees. They were not large, and though from a distance they looked much the same, Nasmyth recognized some as spruce ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... nipping the tips of the grass that grew at her feet. Beyond the animal—a little to her right, and perhaps fifty feet from her—were other ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sunshine had gone and it was getting cold; the shadows in the dale had faded from blue to dusky gray and the frost was keen. All was very quiet, but now and then distant voices and the musical rattle of chains came down through the nipping air. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... staunch the deadly flow by nipping the vein between my thumb and forefinger, whilst Voigtman hastily tried to tie it. Thinking it was tied, I released it, and alas! the flow at once started again; once more I seized the vein, and once again ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the great toe, as if it had been suddenly seized with a pair of red-hot pincers. Whew! There they are at it! nipping and tearing the flesh, and then rubbing the lacerated joint with aquafortis, or a solution of blue vitriol. And now, the pain shoots along the nerves on that side, till my head bumps and bumps as if a legion of imps were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... barber. "You WILL get it, though, if you don't sit stiller," he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the part of his patient to think ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... atrophies and no longer puts the ligamentum mucosum on the stretch; and the infra-patellar pad of fat, not undergoing the normal compression during extension, is readily nipped between the femur and tibia. Each nipping implies a fresh sprain, with return of the effusion, and so a vicious circle is set up which terminates in what has been called a villous arthritis, with fringes and loose bodies; in time, the articular cartilage at the line of the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... not heard?" As they huddled in the shelter of the monument she brooded over the plain below wherein the canal, livid, yet unfrozen still, half girdled the town in a serpentine fold. Each chimney curled a light spiral into the nipping air. "Under every one a wagging tongue," she said. "It's known ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... car-driver decidedly, with the air of a man nipping a fraud in the bud. "It's one fifty four. Didn't know but what Ike Flanders would be coming over, an' trying to bum his way with me as usual. Well, climb aboard, an' we'll ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... presented a dreary appearance, sunk in snow, the dogs shivering between the wheels, and but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through, the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... down, rending the mist asunder, as a man rends carded wool. And behind the wind slid Chieftain, who know the value of a hidden descent. He shot through the rent, racing down with the sun's rays to earth, and surprised a cock-grouse at his breakfast, nipping off the tender heather-shoots daintily one by one. So swiftly did Chieftain fall that the grouse never knew what had killed him; he was dead—in a flash. The great eagle swept on with the grouse in his claws, and, without ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... away! If he would do such things as these for an acquaintance, at best a "pal," what would he not do for a woman beloved? I should have liked to duck that creature under the pump in the court, on just such a nipping ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... light snows but nipping airs, were the winters of this country of the cave men, and there were articles of food essential to variety which were, necessarily, stored before the cold season came. There were roots which were edible and which could be ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... with his whip and turned them toward the barn, leaving the patroon and his companion alone on the broad portico. Sweeping from a distant grove of slender poplars and snowy birch a breeze bore down upon them, suddenly bleak and frosty, and she shivered in the nipping air. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with little nipping scissors in a garden of alternatives. "Or by shipping HER off. Will you help me to save her?" she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true," she continued, "that she has any aversion ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... morning when all was gray and the big, dark pines were shadowy specters, Slone was awakened by the cold. His hands were so numb that he had difficulty starting a fire. He stood over the blaze, warming them. The air was nipping, clear and thin, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... Unmindful of the nipping air, the ladies flew to the windows and raised them, while the gentlemen, in a body, rushed out upon the porch, many to the lawn—the scene ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... boy came in from a concert, and was passing the open door of his step-mother's room when she called him. He found her standing by one of the big windows, a very girlish figure in her trim walking-suit and long furs. The face she turned to him, under her wide hat, was rosy from contact with the nipping spring air. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... glances out of the window, watching the play of sunshine on the water, and longing to be out in the fresh air—for such a day as this was too good to be wasted indoors. Tomorrow belike the sun would not shine, and the wind would be cold and nipping. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Everybody has exchanged his or her summer clothing for warmer vestments. The ladies appear no more in light muslin dresses, and without any head covering. The gentlemen have eschewed their suits of white drill and Panama hats, and have assumed heavy over-coats and flannel under-clothing. It is a 'nipping and an eager air,' closely resembling winter, and reminding everybody of the fact, that in one short hour we have tripped lightly from the perpetual summer of the tropics into the coldest season of the north. Some sea water which had been hauled up in a bucket half an hour ago was perfectly ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the very thought of danger. Even if the enemy were expecting us, he urged, a man could clear that space in quicker time than a bullet would take to travel from the opposite side of the pass, and it was just as likely as not that by nipping across quickly we might fail to draw Are at all. This had an air of reason about it, but I was not nearly so curious to see the fortifications as I had been. I represented that the two journals for which I was ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... very prettily branched or creased, which was easily discoverable by the Microscope. This drop, after I had thus ground it, without at all impairing the remnant that was not ground away, I caused to fly immediately all into sand upon the nipping off the very tip of its ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in relation to the ship, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be at the ship's radio, but actually weaving back and forth across the rocket's course, just nipping it at ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... pasture, trotted straight up to the right horse, coaxed and coquetted with him for a minute, and then trotted back. Snowfoot followed, leering and nipping, and trying to ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... brightest skies a forecast of the tempest. To such a one, there can be no new dawn of the heart; no sun can gild its cold and cheerless horizon; no breeze can revive pulses that have long since ceased to throb with any chance emotion. I am too old to feel freshness in this nipping air. It chills me more than the damps of night, to which I am accustomed. Night—midnight! is my season of delight. Nature is instinct then with secrets dark and dread. There is a language which he who sleepeth not, but will ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wet seas had quenched that holocaust, That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost Had withered up those lilies white and red Which, while the boy would through the forest range, Answered each other in ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... paramount to everything else. And yet the pet game of the day never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight,—the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for salmon,—when the summer comes round I do really believe that they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I'm sure they never catch any. So they ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... vivid scarlet-tipped fins and tail, a perfectly defined circle of the same colour round the eyes, and protruding teeth of a dull red. These we especially detested for their villainous habit of calmly swimming up to a pendant line, and nipping it in twain, apparently out of sheer humour. Well have the Samoans named the ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Douglas rode around the corner of the stable. Rosa shied and snorted and reared, and Belle used the rein-ends for a whiplash until Rosa decided that she would better submit to authority and keep her hide whole. She stood fairly quiet after that, with little nipping dance-steps in one spot, while Belle fastened buckles and snaps and trace chains. Subrosa, having had his tantrum, contented himself with sundry head-shakings and snorts. When the team was "hooked ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... whether of the tub-carriers or the troopers' horses it was not for me to guess. The mare knew, however, for as the slope grew easier, she whinnied and slackened her pace to give them time to come up. This also gave me a chance to shift my seat a bit, for the edges of the kegs were nipping my calves cruelly. The beach below us was like the wicked place in a priest's sermon—black as pitch and full of cursing—and by this time all alive with lanterns; but they showed us nothing. There was no more ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... time and a few knock-out cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss was cute and spry enough to keep out of his reach, though, and he made such a nuisance of ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... we are born in a state of warfare with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink. But you, oh you, by nature formed of gentler kind, can you endure the biting storm? shall you be turned to the nipping blast, and not a door be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... air to-night to make the two fat cows move faster into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came across the field clapping his hands to make the blood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, the stars winking and blinking, and the wind nipping and whistling around the grocery, Sanders notified Jake and others that he was going to shut up the concern, and the crowd must be "putting out." Jake made a break for his nag, but she was gone. "Why," says Jake, "she's broke der pridle and gone home, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... downstairs, his casual glance through the window caught a desolate picture of blackened dahlia stalks and shrivelled blooms. The gayety and color of the garden were gone, and in their place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung the sash up and leaned out. The nipping autumn air was good to breathe. He looked about him, surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... before him to herald Fulkerson's cheery person. "Well, I suppose you've got the glorious success of 'Every Other Week' down pretty cold in your talk by this time. I should have been up sooner to join you, but I was nipping a man for the last page of the cover. I guess we'll have to let the Muse have that for an advertisement instead of a poem the next time, March. Well, the old gentleman given you boys your scolding?" The person ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... perhaps there's none: Suppose there is no secret after all, But only just my fun. To-day's a nipping day, a biting day; 10 In which one wants a shawl, A veil, a cloak, and other wraps: I cannot ope to every one who taps, And let the draughts come whistling through my hall; Come bounding and surrounding me, Come buffeting, astounding me, Nipping and clipping ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... world round Such another hodypeak wretch to be found, And Ragan my man, is not that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward? In play or in pastime so jocund, so merry? In work or in labour so dead or so weary? O, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... them are keyes To vnlocke Chastitie vnto Desire; Come in Ofelia, such men often proue, "Great in their wordes, but little in their loue. Ofel. I will my lord. exeunt. Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus. Ham. The ayre bites shrewd; it is an eager and An nipping winde, what houre i'st? Hor. I think it lacks of twelue, Sound Trumpets. Mar. No, t'is strucke. Hor. Indeed I heard it not, what doth this mean my lord? [C3] Ham. O the king doth wake to night, & takes his rowse, Keepe wassel, and ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... and mysterious threat, Thorny slammed the doctor's gate in the faces of the mercenary youths, nipping their hopes in the bud, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip concerning ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Southern Cross began to lift to the long heave of the ever restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus he had not noticed a change coming over Harry and Billy. Suddenly a groan fell on his ear. Startled, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... hillside and the pines, with lower branches bent, rose in somber spires against the dazzling background. The river had shrunk and the dark water rolled in angry turmoil between ice-glazed rocks. Streaks of gray haze rose a foot or two into the nipping air, and the clash of shovels had a new, harsh ring. It was nearly dinner time, and Festing noted that his men had not done much since breakfast as he walked down the beaten hollow in the middle of the track. One could not tell how long ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... market, alone disturbed the quiet of the adjoining streets. In a dark angle might be seen the houseless wanderer, or the abandoned profligate, 341gathered up like a lump of rags in a corner, and shivering with the nipping air. The gloom which surrounded us had, for a moment, chilled the wild exuberance of my companions' mirth; and it is more than probable we should have suspended our visit to the Finish, at least for that night, had not the jocund note of some uproarious Bacchanalian assailed our ears with the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... divided against itself and yet stood. Metaphysics, commerce, social aspirations—all lived together in harmony. Mr. Ansell had done much, but one was tempted to believe in a more capricious power—the power that abstains from "nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read! If business worried him, if ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster |
