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More "Cracked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself, "won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a powerful: blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and—" ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... elevated lever, while those opposite grasped the corresponding depressed handle, and, gripping the deck with their naked toes, bent their backs and bore upward until every muscle in their straining bodies cracked again; and "clank-clank" spoke the pawl again, and yet again "clank". Then, after another long, heaving and straining pause, "clank" again, a shorter pause and again "clank—clank—clank"; and then, as the men struggled and fought desperately with the ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... from Kobe on the west to Shizuoka on the east, in which ordinary buildings were destroyed, walls fractured, embankments and roads damaged, and bridges broken down. The third or "severely shaken" district contains 20,183 square miles; and in this some walls were cracked, pendulum clocks stopped, and furniture, crockery, etc., overthrown. Tokio and Yokohama lie just within this area. In the fourth region the shock was "weak," the motion being distinctly felt, but not causing people to run out-of-doors; and in the fifth it was "slight," or just sufficient ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the slush and get these eggs out unbroken, and we were all covered with beastly black mud, and naturally I was cross. So far as I knew they were the only eggs that have ever been got out not even cracked. I went afterwards to see the ones they have at the Natural History Museum in London; all of them were cracked and just stuck together like a mosaic, and bits missing. Mine were perfect, and I meant to blow them when I got back. Naturally ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... jaunting-car trundling over the rough cobblestone street, or bumping in and out of dangerous holes. Whips cracked, and the loud voices of jarveys shouted blatant humour and Irish fun at horse and passenger. Here and there, also, some stately coach, bedizened with arms of the quality, made its way through the chief streets, or across ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unmade, and opposite to it, a three-legged stool, a chair, and an antique carved oak table, a donation perhaps from some squire in the neighbourhood; on this last were scattered fragments of writing paper, a cracked cup half full of ink, a pen, and a broken ramrod. As I mechanically took up the latter, the woman said, in a charming patois, which I shall translate, since I cannot do justice to the original: "The ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forest. The dogs had crept in close to the blazing logs and lay as still as though life no longer animated their tawny bodies. From far away there came the lonely howl of a wolf; a great white man-owl fluttered close to the camp and chortled his crazy, half-human "hello, hello, hello;" the trees cracked with the tightening frost, but neither wolf howl nor frost nor the ghostly visitant's insane voice aroused those ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... sang it," I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... He had lived the cold, solitary life of a selfish scientist, and he would die in cold solitude. Was he indeed going to die thus? Would he never taste the happiness enjoyed by even the common porters, by the carters who cracked their whips, passing by under his windows? But he must hasten, if he would; soon, no doubt, it would be too late. All his unemployed youth, all his pent-up desires, surged tumultuously through his veins. He swore that he would yet love, that he would live a new life, that he would drain the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... door entered a small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures. Some black and gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer stood on the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... plantation in the neighborhood of Natchez. Its thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of cotton, corn and incidental crops were tilled by a plow gang of thirty and a hoe gang of thirty-seven, furnished by a total of 135 slaves on the place. A driver cracked a whip among the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shoulders of one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. "There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... basking in the cinders; Three little cats were playing in the windows; Three little mice hopped out of a hole, And a piece of cheese they stole; The three little cats jumped down in a trice, And cracked the bones of the three ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... dark, but I have found it," and coming down the ladder backwards, she placed the cracked and dust-begrimed teapot on the table. "Oh, how brown and faded the papers are! Nance, what is this? I do believe ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... drove Dante into a hell of exile, made Shakespeare write the sonnet, 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes', gave Milton five pounds for 'Paradise Lost', kept Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on Glueck, Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, and Wagner, and committed so many other impious follies and stupidities that a thousand letters like this could not suffice even to ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... mighter took an' cracked 'im in the street, When she was wiv 'im there lars' Fridee night. But don't I keep me temper when we met? An' don't I raise me lid an' act perlite? I only jerks me elbow in 'is ribs, To give the gentle ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... heard of his having anything but what was there. So we went to his cabin, and there we found five or six penny prints against the wall, two pair of old canvas trousers, and an old hat, six cups and saucers, cracked and mended; and this was all his property, altogether not worth (with the three shillings) more than seven or eight at the outside, if so much. You may guess the disappointment of his nephews and nieces, who ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... your knees wiggle something awful," Billy complained a minute later. "Don't you think they're cracked, maybe?" ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... Naturally of a noble, generous disposition, he had gained the respect of all who knew him. Pleasant and gentlemanly in his manners, he was no less firm in his duties on shipboard, and his stern word of command was received by his men with the same hearty "aye, aye," as when he cracked a joke with them over the club-room fire. Harry had kept his promise in regard to his wish to go with his father; and when he looked into his mother's face, and saw how mournful was her smile, he felt that it would indeed be cruel to think of leaving her. But when he heard the sailors ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... no urging. With fierce words she hurried on the dogs, her whip sounding like a revolver as it snapped and cracked. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... the eighteenth century juvenile life, much as they do to-day. These were to be found in "A Bag of Nuts ready Cracked," and "The Big and Little Puzzling Caps." "Food for the Mind" was the solemn title of another riddle-book, whose conundrums are very serious matters. Riddle XIV of the "Puzzling Cap" is typical ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... saw her in another aspect. She wore a large foul apron of sacking, which made her elegant body quite shapeless, and she was kneeling on the red-and-black tiled floor of the kitchen, with her enormous cracked boots sticking out behind her. At one side of her was a pail full of steaming brown water, and in her red coarse little hands, which did not seem to belong to those gracile arms, she held a dripping clout. In front of her, on a half-dried space of clean, shining floor, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... sweetly and tunefully, the furious blast of the old cracked dinner-horn fell on the anxious ears in that canyon. It seemed clearer and more musical than a chime of ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dealer in brittle wares. Whether he broke any of the valuable articles in his warehouse in consequence has not been ascertained, but it appears for a time to have broken a friendship between the parties concerned: such breaches, however, are perhaps easier healed than broken or cracked crockery. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Out of it, like sea-stripped wrecks, dead sticks of rose-bushes poked up, and ragged things that had gone to seed. The turf was parched away, like the grass of the surrounding paddocks; the mounds were cracked; the head-stones—several of them ornate and costly—stained with the drip from the trees and birds, and some distinctly ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... alone I stretch out my hands. Would I might once more inhale the fresh, bitter fragrance of the wormwood, the sweet scent of the mown buckwheat in the fields of my native place! Would I might once more hear far away the modest tinkle of the cracked bell of our parish church; once more lie in the cool shade under the oak sapling on the slope of the familiar ravine; once more watch the moving track of the wind, flitting, a dark wave over the golden grass of our meadow!... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... with banjos concealed and let them sing good old plantation songs for an hour or two, not forgetting "Den, oh, dat watermelon." Grape juice is a good drink to serve this party. Have the tumblers half filled with finely cracked ice. ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... the editor?" asked Howard, pointing to a grimed oil-painting, the only relief to the stretch of cracked and streaked white wall except a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... room in a flat which boasted of "five and bath." There was a bedroom of equally diminutive proportions and a parlor with wall paper so loud that it talked. There was scarcely enough room to swing a cat around. The thin walls were cracked, the rooms were carpetless. Yet it showed the care of a good housekeeper. Floors and windows were clean, the cover on the table spotless. The furnishings were as meagre as they were ingenious. With their slender purse they had been able to purchase only ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... St. Nazaire, more or less under the eyes of an American sentry who stood nearby. One group of four Germans were engaged in carrying what appeared to be a large wooden packing case. Casually, and as if by accident, the case was dropped to the ground and cracked. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... hidden behind his screen, explained all this to Barrent. Several hours had passed since the end of the Trial by Ordeal. Barrent had been taken to the infirmary, where his injuries were patched up. They were minor, for the most part; two cracked ribs, a deep gouge in his left shoulder, and ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... cherries, and a peck of black hearts. Stone the morellas and crack the stones. Put all the cherries and the cracked stones into a demi-john, with three pounds of loaf-sugar slightly pounded or beaten. Pour in two gallons of double-rectified whiskey. Cork the demi-john, and in six months the cherry-bounce will be fit to pour off and bottle for use; but the ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... he asked. "Can you eat something? I can only give you army food; but that will fill up the hollows. Now let me look at the damage. Faith, I compliment you on having a thick skull. A thinner one would have cracked like an egg-shell. Don't try to talk till ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... coast-surveyors had come to him for their names, and he told them of one which they had not detected. He said that they were not so high as formerly. There was an earthquake about four years before he was born, which cracked the pans of the ponds, which were of iron, and caused them to settle. I did not remember to have read of this. Innumerable gulls used to resort to them; but the large gulls were now very scarce, for, as he said, the English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... them," and laughing loudly they passed through the shop, and it was Frank that stared most at the young lady. They read Punch aloud to each other; they cracked jokes with the hairdressers; they snorted and laughed through the soap and jets of hot and cold water. Frank allowed scent and ivories to be pressed upon him by the young lady at the counter; Willy declined to be ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... master, that it seemed as if every bone in my body was broken and every sinew cracked. But a man may undergo a deal of suffering and yet live. So let us quit us like men and be strong. For truly, though we be in the hands of these devils at present, God is near us, and will maybe be nearer ere the day ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... unbearable when the rifle cracked with a noise no louder than a Chinese cracker, and a faint puff of smoke curled upward from the muzzle of the weapon. At the same moment the Ghoojur at the front, on his black horse, flung up his arms and ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... trance of astonishment, tossed back his horns, and bounded across the platform. In a dozen springs he had readied the selvedge of the snow, and plunged into its yielding bank; but, at the same instant, several rifles cracked, and the white wreath was crimsoned behind him. He still kept on, however, leaning and breaking through ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... enough for me," says he, with a laugh. And at the sound of that laugh, which rang false, like a cracked bell, my lord looked at him again across the table, and I saw his old lips draw ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and she raised the chopper over her shoulder with both hands and let it whiz down with all her might. The ice at the edge splintered, It cracked and broke; the sound was heard far out on the lake, a growling, a grumbling, a ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... Boris. Parbleu! Now we have them. I see it all now. Boris, another cracked brain! And he is engaged. If he plays the part of the Revolutionaries, the affair would work out ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gillyflowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the little woman ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... down the canon in wild, fierce gusts; the dead, frost-hardened, brittle branches of the sturdy old pines rattled and cracked and broke as it swept by laden with glittering crystals, stolen from the range above, where it circled madly around the snowy peaks, and whirled away great winding-sheets of snow—fine, sleety snow, that filled the atmosphere with sharp prickly needles, that made their way inside ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... discouraging breakfast. No fire could be got to burn and no tea had been made. There was nothing to eat except a few very hard ration biscuits and some eggs boiled hard the night before, and now frozen through and through. One cracked the shell and found icicles beneath, and miserably held fragments of egg in one's mouth until ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... smartly to the station, and quickly put on helmet, belt, and axe. Already the engine was out, and the horses were being harnessed. In two minutes the men were assembled and accoutred; in three they were in their places—the whip cracked, and ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... the arroyo appeared a red glow. A moment later a wave of lava, white-hot, red, iridescent, cooling to a black crust cracked in incandescence, rolled majestically out over the grassy plain. Each instant it grew in volume, until the ravine must have ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... rose a little at that; the indefiniteness of the animal's fate had alarmed some of them, and pocket money was scanty. They even cracked a feeble joke or two, in a half-hearted way, but the steady splash and spatter of the rain chilled the fun all out of it, and wet as they were, they huddled together among a lot of straw and blankets until they were quite comfortably warm. ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... been working all winter, but not quite so busily as now; for since yesterday they have cracked that big rock in two, and dug the great cave under the hill, and now they are gathered in council on the mountain-side that overlooks a dashing little stream. As we followed this stream from the seashore, we happen to know that it is no other than Nannie's Run. And ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... came gently to earth, and the boys jumped out. As they did so, there came the faint sound of a command and a rifle cracked. ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... little chamber is crammed in all nooks, With worthless old knicknacks and silly old books, And foolish old odds and foolish old ends, Cracked bargains from brokers, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and entreated; in vain her friends pointed out to her the madness of such a course. Madness? Mad—possessed—perhaps she was. A demoniac frenzy had seized upon her. As she lay upon her sofa, gasping, she devoured blue- books, dictated letters, and, in the intervals of her palpitations, cracked her febrile jokes. For months at a stretch she never left her bed. For years she was in daily expectation of death. But she would not rest. At this rate, the doctors assured her, even if she did not die, she would, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... believe what a goose he is! Then his voice sounds like a cracked bell; it's the most disagreeable voice you ever heard in your life. And one has always to be on one's guard lest he should make one do something that is—is—that isn't quite the thing for a gentleman. You understand;—what the messenger ought ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... close upon the midnight strangler, stooping low. As the terrible pressure on forehead and neck cracked his spine like a breaking icicle, Mackenzie believed he shouted, putting into his voice all that he felt of desperate need of help. And he saw young Reid strike, and felt the breaking wrench of the cruel hands relax, and fell down upon the ground like a dead man and knew ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... was now hurled at the latter. He, without more ado, knocked down the speaker at a blow, capsized the table, which put out the lights, and, in the next instant, darted out of the window, while a bullet, fired from a pistol, cracked the pane of glass over his head. He had leaped into the small court-yard, with a wooden paling round it. The winners dashed toward the door, but found that the "green one" ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... York or wild goats,—the nearest he came to it being wild oats. Instead he began the dreary evening by opening a cupboard on his library wall and disclosing three long bottles, from which he partially filled a shining silver receptacle containing cracked ice. This he shook with astonishing skill and vigor, meantime uttering loud outcries of "Miranda! Fetch up the mint!" Then a buxom colored lady in calico—with a grin like that which made Aunt Sallie famous—having appeared, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the royal line to a man of meaner rank. Not content with reproaching his obscure birth, she also taunted his unsightly countenance. Halfdan rejoined that she brought against him two faults: one that his blood was not illustrious enough; another, that he was blemished with a cracked lip whose scar had never healed. Therefore he would not come back to ask for her before he had wiped away both marks of shame by ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... amused and sometimes saddened by what they saw. There was a big San Francisco policeman, who said he had cracked heads so long that he thought he knew how to crack some golden nuggets; a correspondent of a prominent New York newspaper, whose situation was enviable, since his salary and expenses were guaranteed, and he was free to gather gold when the opportunity offered; a voluble ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... man all the way down the fire-escape, clinging and straining against the rotting, rusting bars, which bent and cracked beneath my weight and seemed about to break and drag down the entire structure from ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... a long shell to its mouth. It seemed that in old days it might have been a fountain. At the end of the plot the blind side of a house offered a high wall which had once been painted in fresco. Though much of the coloured plaster had cracked and peeled away, and all that remained was stained and faded, still some traces of the original design might yet be detected: festive wreaths, the colonnades and perspective of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... at an early hour in the shape of a patriotic drummer, having an instrument, to judge by its sound, coeval with the first fight for that freedom it was beaten to celebrate. If anything could have kept me awake, this cracked drum would; and, in truth, I had my fears, when, on entering my room, I heard my hero ruffing it away immediately in front of the window; but they were groundless apprehensions, though his efforts were varied ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... calling out "Bang" at the pitch of her voice. She was, she explained, nothing less imposing than the castle of Edinburgh itself, cannonading the ranks of the Pretender. While far away, upon wooden chargers, Balmawhapple's cavalry curvetted on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and cracked vain pistols at the frowning fortress. There was, in fact, all through the afternoon, a great deal of imagination loose in our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... his punt. All that is purchasable in the capitals of the world is not to be weighed in comparison with the simple enjoyment that may be crowded into one hour of sunshine. What can place or power do here? "Who could be before me, though the palace of Caesar cracked and split with emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of Rhodes, watched the sun as he swung his golden censer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... come with John, to whom she was always kind, though she thought him "cracked," and after a little desultory hovering about the shells, for which she did not really care, except when they were made up with glass beads, she was apt to sit down on the after-deck, with John beside ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—a region of savannahs and forests, sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the sceptre of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... so important that the reader must excuse repetition. There came an inevitable severance, an inevitable period of strife. The magic mirror of the soul, reflecting nature as heretofore in calm and simple grace, was suddenly cracked across. The new self-conscious man (not all at once but gradually) became alienated from his tribe. He lapsed into strife with his fellows. Ambition, vanity, greed, the love of domination, the desire for ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... propylaea or vestibule is nearly destroyed, and buried in ruins; but the columns, still extant, are exceedingly beautiful: and the stone, which formed the architrave of the door, is of an enormous size, but it is cracked in the centre. Hence we proceeded to the Erechtheon, whose southern portico is still supported by five caryatides, the sixth having been thrown down. [Sidenote: INSOLENCE OF THE TURKS.] The neighbouring temple, which was reserved as a harem for the women, whilst ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... fruits. A similar disease produces gum arabic, gum tragacanth, and probably many resins and gum resins. It shows itself openly in the exudation of thick and sticky or hard and dry lumps of gum, which cling on branches of any of these trees where they have been cracked or wounded through the bark. Dr. Beijerinck was induced to make experimental inoculations of the gum disease by suspicions that, like some others observed in plants, it was due to bacteria. He ascertained that it is in a high degree contagious, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... were hard at work all the time. They cleared out the inside of their hovel, which had a floor of what was called lime ash, trodden hard, and not much cracked. Probably other hermits in earlier times had made the place habitable before the expelled monk whom the Kentons' great-grandfather recollected; for the cell, though rude, was wonderfully strong, and the stone walls were very stout and thick, after the fashion of ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... decision known. When the time was up, two travelling-carriages were seen waiting at the door. Count von Rosenau pushed his son before him into the first; the marchese assisted the half-fainting Bianca into the second; the vetturini cracked their whips, and presently both vehicles were rolling away, the one toward the north, the other toward the south. I suppose the young people had been promising to remain faithful to each other until some happier future time should permit of their union, for at the last moment Albrecht thrust ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... an old cracked voice. "It is Tambudza—she whose hut you would not take, and thus drive an old woman out ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Courtrey, flushed and unsmiling, sent his coldly narrowed eyes over the crowded room, man by man. Laughter came, a trifle cracked and forced, cards slapped on the tables, chairs creaked as the players drew up again, the dancers swung into step as the fiddle took up ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... whether or not he had any idea of the early days of that great highway; I suspect that he could tell only of its present motoring possibilities. But his wheels were passing over the marks left more than half a century ago by the cracked felloes of the emigrant wagons going west in search of homes. If we seek history, let us ponder that chance pause of the eastbound family, traveling by motor for pleasure, here by the side of the graves of the travelers of another day, itself so briefly ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... important route has passed away. No sooner had he left Afghanistan than he was attached to the frontier party then working in the Kohat district; there he was Major Holdich's right-hand man. If there was a specially hard frontier nut to be cracked, McNair's powers of assimilating himself to Pathan manners, and of winning the confidence of all classes of natives, which had already carried him through many a perilous undertaking, were most fully utilised for the purpose of cracking it. From Kohat to Dera Ismail he was incessantly engaged in ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... dull; but the other looks on to St. James's Park, where I go to walk with Aunt Barbara. We went to the Abbey last Sunday; it reminded me of the churches abroad, and the singing was so beautiful. In Cornwall there was only a fiddle and a cracked flute, and everybody sang out of tune; I did not like going to church there at all. Please write to me soon, Monsieur Horace, and tell me where you are, and what you are doing; I fancy it all to myself—the big forests, and the rivers, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... direction, she suddenly stood, and began to kick violently, with her head stretched low between her forelegs. And Tresler felt himself sliding, saddle and all, over her withers! Suddenly the blanket strap failed him. It cracked and gave, and he shot from the saddle like a ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... The last four-and-twenty hours had produced a frightful alteration. The eyes, though deeply sunk and heavy, shone with a lustre frightful to behold. The lips were parched, and cracked in many places; the hard, dry skin glowed with a burning heat; and there was an almost unearthly air of wild anxiety in the man's face, indicating even more strongly the ravages of the disease. The ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Eaves dropping, Red noses; Pools, splashes, Spouts, spirts; Swollen sashes. Gutters, squirts; Limp curls, Splashed hose; Pretty girls, Damp shows; Piled grates, Cold shivers; Aching pates, Sluggish livers; Morn cruel, Eve a biter; Hot gruel, Sweet nitre; Voice a creaky Cracked cadenza, Face "peaky," INFLUENZA!!! Gloom growing, Glum, glummer Noses (and nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... from the wall of rocks; a carriage with four horses rolled up to the hotel. Armed servants sat on the seat at the back of the carriage; a pale thin gentleman, wrapped in a large bright-coloured dressing-gown, stretched himself within it. The postilion dismounted and cracked his long whip several times, whilst fresh horses were put to. The stranger wished to proceed, but as he desired to have an escort over the mountains where Fra Diavolo and Cesari had bold descendants, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... his attention to his work. "Take a strain!" he cried. "Heave!" The wooden building creaked and cracked; down came a chimney, rattling upon the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... out, 'I should like to write a book of Fables, showing how donkeys get into grinding harness, and dogs lose their bones, and fools have their sconces cracked, and all run jabbering of the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And what are they? nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some debt for indulgence. There's a subject:—let some one write, Fables ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those who wish to show their views often to friends; the owner is a little apt to get tired of the unvarying round in which they present themselves. Perhaps we relish them more for having a little trouble in placing them, as we do nuts that we crack better than those we buy cracked. In optical effect, there is not much difference between them and the best ordinary instruments. We employ one stereoscope with adjusting glasses for the hand, and another common one upon a broad rosewood stand. The stand may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... sons and daughters came an added intelligence, brought from experience and shifting surroundings. The kitchen-middens give graphic details. The bottom layer, as has been said, is but of shells. Above it, in another layer, counting thousands of years in growth, appear the cracked bones of then existing animals and appear also traces of charred wood, showing that primitive man had learned what fire was. And later come the rudely carved bones of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros and the Irish elk; then come rude flint instruments, and later the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... noisy and violent manner, into several courts and blind alleys, they caught up all the lighter articles of rubbish that lay about, hurled them against the frail and cracked windows—some of which they broke, and others of which they could not break by reason of their having been broken already. They did what was next best, however,—drove in the old hats and coats and other garments, with which the square ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the incorrigible Middlemore, as he cracked a hickory nut, "and the balls reserved for us this season will also carry with them the coup ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a single word, but waited, all attention, for what was to follow these well ordered tears and this show of grief. When the diplomatic thunderstorm had passed over, she withdrew her haughty head from her mantle and, ringing her hands until the joints cracked, "What is the meaning of such audacity?" she demanded; "where did you learn such tricks? They are worthy of putting to shame the assurance of all the robbers of the past! I pity you, so help me the God of Truth, I do; for no one can look with impunity upon that which it is unlawful ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... on the afternoon of the 14th, Baron von K—— took a party of his marines on top of the Tartar Wall, pointed out to them a party of Boxer recruits openly drilling below on the sandy stretch, and gave orders to fire without a moment's hesitation. So the German rifles cracked off, and the sands were spotted with about twenty dead and dying. This action of the German Minister's at once created an immense controversy. The timid Ministers unhesitatingly condemned the action; all ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... persons, with a chaise top to be thrown back in fine weather and a glass front to be let down by night or in case of rain. I chose my seat here, as affording the best possible view of the country. At 8 P. M. precisely, the driver cracked his whip, and four good horses started our lumbering vehicle at a lively pace on the road to Turin, some two hundred miles away ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... to make it lie down and "act dacint," but the image that looked back at her from the cracked glass was not encouraging, even after making allowance for the crack, but she comforted herself by saying, "Sure it's Danny she wants to see, and she won't be lookin' much at ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... in writing this letter is largely to tone down and keep in check any popular movement in my behalf until the weather in more settled. A season-cracked boom ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... afterwards as might be in those Diligence days, Mr Meagles rang the cracked bell at the cracked gate, and it jarred open, and the peasant-woman stood in the dark doorway, saying, 'Ice-say! Seer! Who?' In acknowledgment of whose address, Mr Meagles murmured to himself that there was some sense about these Calais people, who really did know something ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... crouching in the position from which he had catapulted the red-haired man, cast upwards a single glance at the other brother, and then he sprang in. The poker hissed through the air with the vigour of a strong man's arms behind it and it would have cracked the head of Mac Strann like an empty egg-shell if it had hit its mark. But it was heaved too high, and Mac Strann went in like a football player rushing the line, almost doubled up against the floor as he ran. His shoulders ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... he had been stung. He laughed in a high, cracked voice, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "How? Perhaps it is just as well that Blake has gone to his account. Perhaps..." He checked on the word, and started to his feet; Diana screamed in sheer aifright. Behind her the windows had been thrust open so violently that one of the panes was shivered. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... audience, a man began to hum the tune that went with the words, and the heart of Luck Lindsay gave an exultant bound. He had used lines from "The Old Chisholm Trail" and other old-time range songs for his sub-titles, to keep the range atmosphere complete, and that cracked voice humming unconsciously told how it appealed to these men of ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... that glass windows had been destroyed, tracery demolished, carved finials and capitals reduced to powder, and even the massive piers by the north transept, where the furnace of flame reached its maximum intensity, became so calcined and cracked that they were left ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... the cracked concrete walk, passed the big plate-glass windows of Murphy's General Store which were a kind of fetish in Glen Oaks. But Doctor Spechaug wasn't concerned with the cultural significance of the windows. He was concerned with ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... a bullyragging of me,' he observed to a lamp-post, 'and she's "very much obliged"! And I'm blowed if I know what for, either way! Cracked, poor young things, cracked, the pair on 'em—and no wonder, with such a calamity so recent. Ah, well, I do 'ope as this is the end on it. I 'ope I shan't be the means of bringing no more trouble into that little ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... gay whistle in the garden gave place to a cracked shout. "Hullo, Chris! Aren't you going to get up to-day? Do you ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... her flesh impressed me, whether I put my finger between the cheeks of her arse or between her thighs, I could with difficulty get it away; she could have cracked a nut between either. The next wonder was the hair of her cunt, which was long but curly; I now see that she could not have pissed without wetting it, which accounted for her always what we youths used to call mopping it, after she had piddled. The cunt looked twice ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... weeks. When the chicken was big enough he wanted to come out and so he went pick, peck, pick, peck, until he made a little hole in the shell. Then he stuck his bill through the hole and wiggled it until the shell cracked and he could get his head through. Then he wiggled it a little more and the shell broke and he could get his foot out. And then the shell ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... despair of the darkest kind were succeeded by frenzied delight, and no bound was put to the public satisfaction. Strangers stopped each other in the streets, and conversed together like old friends. The bells, that had grown hoarse with tolling funerals, were now cracked with joyous peals. The general joy extended even to the sick, and many, buoyed up by hope, recovered, when in the former season of despondency they would inevitably have perished. All fear of the plague seemed ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mind when I awakened on the following day was indescribable; I found it difficult to doubt that Nayland Smith would meet me on the way to the bath-room as usual, with the cracked briar fuming between his teeth. I felt myself almost compelled to pass around to his stateroom in order to convince myself that he was not really there. The catastrophe was still unreal to me, and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the colored maid who came in daily to perform such chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and a bowl of cracked ice and set them on ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... incurious and indifferent, wasting nor glance nor nasal rub upon their defunct comrade. We men feign better. And then we drew him to the edge of the track, a rigid, lumbering mass; and the garrulous inhabitant discussed the value of the carcase, and the driver cracked his whip, and the living horses stirred their haunches, and in a moment we were spanking along, leaving our fellow-creature to darkness and solitude. Only the flash-light from France glimmered upon the poor dead beast, coming all the way to cheer him; only the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Instead, he threw up his hands and pitched forward, just as a revolver cracked sharply in the silent night. With an oath the man who held Frank threw him aside, at the same moment shooting in the direction of the flash of Greene's pistol. But the Englishman's revolver spoke at the same moment, and he too fell. Frank's ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... laying on the bank of the river, I presume there came five hundred of these Indians within fifty yards of our camp. Most of them laid down under the trees. One of our men shot a bird that was in a tree close by, and I never heard such shouting or saw such running as these Indians did when the gun cracked. This convinced me that we were the first white men they had ever seen, and this the first time they had heard the report of a gun. This incident occurred in forty-eight, which was fifty-eight years ago. I have seen more or less of these Indians from that time until now, and these ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... every one of which bore the stamp of the broker's shop—things which had been graceful and pretty in their day, but from which the ormolu-moulding had been knocked off here, and the inlaid-wood chipped away there, and the tortoiseshell cracked in another place, until they seemed the very emblems of decay. It was as if they had been set up as perpetual monitors—monuments of man's fragility. "This is what life comes to," they said in their silent fashion. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... lumber, and it was evidently designed to be lit at night by a single gas jet, inclosed within a wire netting. This apartment contained merely a single rude chair, of the kitchen variety, and an exceedingly small mirror cracked across one corner and badly fly-specked. Numerous rusty spikes, intended to hold articles of discarded clothing, decorated both side walls and the back of the door. It was dismally bare, and above all, it was abominably dirty, the dust lying thick ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the scene of action, where the blind fiddler was received with joyful shouts. They had plenty of meat and drink, and plied the fiddler and his man with more than was agreeable to them. Never was a more joyful wedding seen. They sung, they danced, told their stories, cracked jokes, &c., in a vein of humor more entertaining to the two guests than they probably could have found in any other meeting on a like occasion. When they were about to depart, they pulled out the leather pouches, and rewarded the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... started out of town in all directions, but I cut out alone. Then I happened to see this fellow and just for company I brought him along." He put up his hand and, looking at Tom, tapped his forehead. "Cracked," he declared, "he always was. A fellow I knew saw him once in that woods," he said pointing. "Somebody had shot a squirrel and he took on about it as though he had lost a child. I said then he was crazy, and he has sure proved I ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... same, and I won't tell your father you're paying court to his queen," replied Serejka, passing his tongue over his dry and cracked lips. ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... upset the Anschutz. [1] The bearing cone of the stabilizing gyro has cracked, and the master compass began to wander off in circles. I was just resting for an hour or two, wedged up on a wet settee with coats equally wet, when her heavy pitching changed to a wallowing roll, and I heard the pilot, who was on ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... would fling their hats or caps for me to fetch, and I would put them into their hands with marks of great delight. They used to give me as much to eat as they could; and they were fond of seeing, when they gave me nuts or almonds, how I cracked them like a monkey, let fall the shells, and ate the kernels. One student, to make proof of my ability, brought me a great quantity of salad in a basket, and I ate it like a human being. It was the winter season, when manchets and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to himself and blinking his eyes. Suddenly he stopped and exclaimed: "I'll just tell you as a warning that if it wasn't you, and because I don't want to have this day spoiled, I'd have cracked your skull for you; for no one else would have played me that trick. Do you understand?" And he stood still again and pushed his heavy ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... one man alone, was responsible for what might have been the most awful catastrophe of civilized times. And it was that man who sat in my study and watched me now, with ghastly face and passionately inquiring eyes. When he spoke, his voice sounded thin and cracked. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thoughtfully, as he cracked his finger-joints and puffed on his cigar. "You've done well, Tuff, excellent. Ah, Tuff, there's going to be a meeting in the Cooper Union to-morrow night. The people that are getting it up—er, well, I'm afraid they're ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... the direction of upper windows, where dishevelled heads were appearing, and little groups on doorsteps and porches waved handkerchiefs, and "Good-by" sounded on one side of the street and then on the other, like an echo gone distraught, the foremost driver cracked his whip and ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... moment he rose above his ordinary level. He lost all thought of self. Let Aphrodite take him if she would, but Matilda must be saved. "Go away!" he repeated; and his voice was cracked and harsh, under the strain of doing such violence to his feelings. "Can't you see you're—you're not wanted? Oh, do go away—while ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... mechanics know that by drilling a hole at the inner end of a crack in cast metal its extension can be prevented. But to find out the exact point where the crack ends, the Revue Industrielle recommends moistening the cracked surface with petroleum, then, after wiping it, to immediately rub it with chalk. The oil that has penetrated into the crack will, by exudation, indicate the exact course and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... weapons there was a complete silence. Suddenly Truesdale reversed his position. Jane did the same, bringing a sudden and unaccustomed weight upon her other foot. Her knee cracked loudly. Everybody heard ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... bragged about his chances and his hopes, and the fine company he kept, and the charms of the reigning toasts and popular actresses, and the number of bottles that he and my lord and some other pretty fellows had cracked overnight at the "Devil", or the "Garter"! Cannot one fancy Joseph Addison's calm smile and cold grey eyes following Dick for an instant, as he struts down the Mall, to dine with the Guard at St. James's, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the street was furnished in the poor bare style which the exterior of the dwelling would have led one to expect. A very hideous screen of coloured paper hid the fireplace, and in front of the small oblong mirror—cracked across one corner—which stood above the mantelpiece were divers ornaments such as one meets with in poor lodging-houses; certain pictures about the walls ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... sake of Christ, water!' he moaned and I saw that his lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between them, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the dweller in the National Capital endure in reaching these days! Think of the agonies of the heated term, the ragings of the dog-star, the purgatory of heat and dust, of baking, blistering pavements, of cracked and powdered fields, of dead, stifling night air, from which every tonic and antiseptic quality seems eliminated, leaving a residuum of sultry malaria and all-diffusing privy and sewer gases, that lasts from the first of July to near the middle of September! But when October is reached, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... two wafers, and the paper cracked across as he opened it. It began "Dear Mr. Gold," and was signed "R." It ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... It was the speech of the old Negro track-walker, taking two days to get to his dying daughter because he could not afford the railroad ticket that would have brought him to her in two hours. Donny recognized the high, cracked, pathetic tones which had ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... north-west, light, with snow. Quite a lot of havoc has been caused during this blow, and the ship has made much northing. In the morning the crack south of the ship opened to about three feet. At 2 p.m. felt heavy shock and the ship heeled to port about 70. Found ice had cracked from port gangway to north-west, and parted from ship from gangway along to stern. Crack extended from stern to south-east. 7.35 p.m.—Ice cracked from port fore chains, in line parallel to previous crack. The ice broke again between the cracks and drifted to north-west for about ten yards. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required animal; even a German—a "Dutchman'" came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh, sand-cracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of $100. Two livery stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... me, old popgun. I know you; you are always after the women, and you would be dancing attendance on the Normandy girls, who are splendid creatures, and getting your ribs cracked by their lovers and fathers, and the Duke would have to get you out of the scrape. Why, can't I see by the way you look at me that the young man is not dead in you—as Fenelon put it.—No, this stewardship is not the thing for you. A man cannot be off with his ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... cracked again, nearer home this time; and Norah crammed the blue silk sock hastily into a little work-bag, and raced away over the lawn, her slim black legs making great time across the buffalo grass. Beside her ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... when Marian rose after an hour of sleeplessness and thought, and refreshed herself with the contents of the cracked water-jug upon the rickety little wash-stand. The old man was still asleep when she went back to his room; but his breathing was more troubled than it had been the night before, and the widow, who was experienced in sickness and death, told ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to him they were symbols of the freedom of the world. He had watched them until they were gone up-stream, but it was a long time before the chanting of their voices had died away. And then he had risen from beside his tiny fire, and had stretched himself until his muscles cracked. It was good to feel the blood running red and strong in one's veins at the age of thirty-seven. For Carrigan felt the thrill of these days when strong men were coming out of the north—days when the glory of June hung over the land, when out of the deep wilderness threaded by the Three Rivers ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... clothing, to which we responded by promises of additions in both kinds; and I was extricating myself as well as I could from my petitioners, with the assurance that I would come by-and-bye and visit them again, when I felt my dress suddenly feebly jerked, and a shrill cracked voice on the other side of me exclaimed, 'Missus, no go yet—no go away yet; you no see me, missus, when you come by-and-bye; but,' added the voice in a sort of wail, which seemed to me as if the thought ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... and he won fairly, for indeed it took four of the knaves at the handle to tug it out, and then indeed it needed all their strength. No armour ever forged could have withstood such a blow; it-would have cracked both the casque and the skull inside like egg-shells. It seemed to me that a thousand such men, with as many archers, could march through France from end to end, if they kept well together, and were well supplied with meat and drink by the way—they would need ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... His entwined fingers cracked as he tore his hands apart, flung out his arms, and leaned his forehead on them in a passion of fury. The other two looked at his shaking back—the attenuated Mr. Jones with mingled scorn and a sort of fear, Ricardo with the expression of a cat which sees a piece of fish in the pantry out ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... cracking, it had frequently to be renewed. The best lac was chosen and applied to the wire i, so as to be in good contact with it everywhere, and in perfect continuity throughout its own mass. It was not smaller than is given by scale in the drawing, for when less it frequently cracked within a few hours after it was cold. I think that very slow cooling or annealing improved its quality in this respect. The collar g was made as thin as could be, that the lac might be as wide there as possible. In order that at every re-attachment ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... noticed, was uneasy, watching her father anxiously after the dinner was over, until Sutphen proposed to have some music and begged the captain to sing. Then she was quite happy, sat closer to him, taking his hand, and as his cracked voice piped manfully out some ancient drinking-song she nodded complacently and beat the time softly with his hand upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with fear and made sure that the snake would devour him. But the snake said "Do not fear: I was shut up in the nether world, and you by your kindness have rescued me, I wish to show gratitude to you and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... the time, shedding, however, over the putrid pool the sheen of his wit, manners, and genius. Charles was so delighted with him, that he is said to have asked him whether he had not obtained a patent from Nature to be Apollo's viceroy. He cracked jests, issued lampoons, wrote poems and plays, and, despite some great blunders, was universally admired and loved. When his comedy of 'Bellamira' was acted, the roof fell in, and a few, including the author, were slightly injured. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... could not understand what he meant. But, when they had stretched themselves as far as they could, they cracked in ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... tactics.[35] The result showed their folly. The frontiersmen on the right and left scattered out still farther, so that their line could not be outflanked; and waiting coolly till the Otari were close up, the whites fired into them. The long rifles cracked like four-horse whips; they were held in skilful hands, many of the assailants fell, and the rush was checked at once. A short fight at close quarters ensued here and there along the line, Dragging Canoe was struck down and severely wounded, and then the Indians fled in the utmost confusion, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had cracked nuts and eaten apples, till even Jack was satisfied; and as the fire burned down, and Charlie lay asleep in his mother's lap, the father said, "How many things we have to be thankful for this year! Let us each tell of something, and then together we will offer ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which showed me pretty clearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no change—if there dawns no prospect of peace—if the Orders in Council are ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... went up to Roger's room to dry their faces the girls prepared nut boats to set sail upon the same ocean that had floated the apples. They had cracked English walnuts carefully so that the two halves fell apart neatly, and in place of the meats they had packed a candle end ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... reached home, he hung up the fiddle in his cottage, but that same night it cracked right through with a loud moan, and fell in shivers on the floor. Gilbert tried to mend it, but he never could manage to restore it to its right shape again. It was like a puzzle that baffles a child's attempts ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... through a crack in the door at the foot of the stairs, perhaps, but that would seem mean, somehow. It would be a pity, too, not to use the gallery; galleries are uncommon, you see, and you can get cracked doors anywhere. And, you know, he was obliged to look at her when she couldn't see him, because their fathers were on different sides in the war, ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... But it can't be! It isn't possib—" His voice cracked, split on the word, and the rest came in an agonized squeak, "A man can't ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... was singing, the chaplain deaconing out the hymn in their favorite way. This ended, he announced his text,—"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his trouble." Instantly, to my great amazement, the cracked voice of the chorister was uplifted, intoning the text, as if it were the first verse of another hymn. So calmly was it done, so imperturbable were all the black countenances, that I half began to conjecture that the chaplain himself intended it for a hymn, though I could imagine no prospective ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... orange-peel. Delight 1st, delicious dessert of farina smothered in custard and dear to the heart of Dr. V——. Blunder 9th. No hot milk for the coffee, delay in scalding it, and at last serving it in a huge cracked pitcher. Blunder 10th. Bananas, grapes, apples, and oranges forgotten at the right moment and passed after the coffee and of course declined. But hearing that Miss H. V. was fond of bananas, I seized the fruit-basket and poured its contents into one napkin, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Madame Perrodon. She kneeled beside her for a moment and whispered, as Madame supposed, a little benediction in her ear; then hastily kissing her she stepped into her carriage, the door was closed, the footmen in stately liveries jumped up behind, the outriders spurred on, the postilions cracked their whips, the horses plunged and broke suddenly into a furious canter that threatened soon again to become a gallop, and the carriage whirled away, followed at the same rapid pace by the two ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... his easy way, he looked to the east to judge of the light. Sunrise was nearly an hour away; he could afford to obey the summons of the cracked bell, filling the place with its wrangling, with the creaking of its wheel. He hobbled his beast in the little plaza, and followed some straying ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... me," replied Nicholas, "he was half-cracked about her. She refused him five times. James, he's nervous about it, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... boy,—but keep away from the Fontego,—keep away from the Fontego." Antonio stared into the old woman's pale yellow face, the deep wrinkles in which twitched convulsively in a strange awe-inspiring way. And when she clapped her lean bony hands together so that the joints cracked, and continued her disagreeable laugh, and went on repeating in a hoarse voice, "Keep away from the Fontego," Antonio cried, "Can you not have done with that mad ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... up?" Johnny swung his gun, a heavy, forty-four caliber Colt, of the type beloved of the West. Its barrel came down fairly on the top of Cliff's leathern helmet and all but cracked his skull. Cliff shut up suddenly and completely, sliding ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... "an outing in the woods isn't all it's cracked up to be, I admit. One might just as well accept a situation as servant in a very untidy household. It would be about the same thing. But my! we've had ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... upon the window sill and swept the room with his painted grin. In his hands he held a great bunch of variegated circus bills. Tossing a half-dozen of these at the feet of the all-absorbed spectators, he cried in high cracked falsetto: ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... of surprise and alarm, and as the light of the lanterns revealed the group of dark figures at the head of the trench, the men started to leap back into the dugout. But a rifle cracked and one of them fell. The other, however, got inside and slammed and ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... one man among you who isn't a coward and a sneak, and— and a howling kid!" retorted Wally. "Gee up!" Whereat the whips cracked and the happy ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... is fortunate that we stayed, for I don't know what had become of us! Yesterday, with violent rains, there came flouncing down from the mountains such a flood that it floated the whole city. The jewellers on the Old Bridge removed their commodities, and in two hours after the bridge was cracked. The torrent broke down the quays and drowned several coach-horses, which are kept here in stables under ground. We were moated into our house all day, which is near the Arno, and had the miserable spectacles of the ruins that were washed along with the hurricane. There was a cart with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... dichroic, generally appearing dark green by daylight and raspberry-red by candle-light, or by daylight transmitted through the stone. As red and green are the military colours of Russia, the mineral became highly popular as a gem-stone. The dark green crystals are usually cloudy and cracked, and grouped in triplets presenting a pseudo-hexagonal form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka in the southern ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Those which Muller saw, many of them being very fresh, were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet above the ground, and had a circumference, on the average, of two or three feet. Some were packed many inches thick with 'Pandanus' leaves; others were remarkable only for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common centre, formed a regular platform. "The rude 'hut'," says Sir James Brooke, "which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover of any sort. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... we are." He threw open a door which revealed a bald-headed clerk seated at a desk in a little bare room. "Billy, here's a gent that cracked it the first whack and started his gun from ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... floor, above an entresol, and looked into the back street. I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hair-breadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House of Murder. If any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning by time—five hours reckoning by suspense—to open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently—in doing it with all the dexterity ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... captain said to the horses, as he cracked his whip, while our men quietly smoked their pipes. I was half suffocated in my box, which only admitted the air through some holes in front, while at the same time I was nearly frozen, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... mermaids associated with him had been consistent in catching; and his trident had been so deeply affected as to drop its prongs. Altogether, this heavy work of heavy art, smoked dry, hugely scabbed, cracked, and crumbling, was a dismal sight to the distracted eye of George Amberson Minafer, and its present condition of craziness may have added a mite to his own. His own was sufficient, with no additions, however, as he stood looking at the Johnsons' house and those houses on both sides ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... does not the dweller in the National Capital endure in reaching these days! Think of the agonies of the heated term, the ragings of the dog-star, the purgatory of heat and dust, of baking, blistering pavements, of cracked and powdered fields, of dead, stifling night air, from which every tonic and antiseptic quality seems eliminated, leaving a residuum of sultry malaria and all-diffusing privy and sewer gases, that lasts from the first of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... means idle ones, for numerous are the jobs to be done—washing and mending clothes, patching up boots and hats, hair cutting, diary writing, plotting our course, arranging photograph plates (the majority of which were, alas! spoilt by the heat), mending a camera cracked by the sun, making hobble-straps, mending and stuffing saddles, rearranging packs cleaning firearms, and other like occupations. The heat was extreme; too great for my little thermometer which registered up to 140 (degrees) F., and intensified by hot winds ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... red hand, and grasped Stangrave's till the joints cracked: his face grew as red as a turkey-cock's; his eyes filled ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... hardly deny that the mansion fits well into its setting and that, architects tell us, is a prime consideration. The flagstones for the floor of the portico he imported from Whitehaven, England, and these still remain in place, though many are cracked ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... knots of men, some of whom stared at her father, though as she passed their hats came off. Miss Schuyler, on her part, noticed that most of the stores were shut, and felt that she had left New York a long way behind as she glanced at the bare wooden houses cracked by frost and sun, rickety plank walks, whirling wisps of dust, and groups of men, splendid in their lean, muscular symmetry and picturesque apparel. There was a boldness in their carriage, and a grace that approached the statuesque in every poise. Still, she started when they ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... discovered; a library containing the fine works of Mazois, of Raoul Rochette, of Gell, of Zahn, of Overbeck, of Breton, etc., on Pompeii, enables the student to consult them in Pompeii itself; workshops lately opened are continually busy in restoring cracked walls, marbles, and bronzes, and one may there surprise the artist Bramante, the most ingenious hand at repairing antiquities in the world, as likewise my friend, Padiglione, who, with admirable patience and minute fidelity, is cutting a small model in cork of the ruins that have been cleared, ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... me that the horse chosen for me was the most vicious of the lot. Everything being in readiness, the "45" cracked and we all sprang forward together, each of us making ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... The rifle cracked again, and a bullet plucked into the sod twenty feet beyond the circle of men and horses. But no one looked up or gave any other sign of realization that they were still the target; they were staring, with that frowning painfully intent look men have at such moments, at a purplish ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... out. The first signal rocket showed the village crowded with Indians, over whose heads the cracked rocket slowly whizzed. The light of the next rocket did not disclose a single person, and it was apparent that the place was deserted. The third rocket happened to strike one of the roofs, and exploding there, ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... for merry-makings. Cristobal, eager to see what the Yule-log might have in store for him, rushed out of the church with careless speed, stumbling over a boy who stood in his way,—the haughty, insolent Jasper. Jasper's beautiful Christmas-candle was cracked in ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... gaily, and cracked the long whip he carried. The Canadians understood and cracked their own whips, and away went the whole party, over the fields of ice and snow, in ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... He shook his head, with rather a grim smile. "Told you once I worked in a pottery. Supposing the clay of a piece wasn't mixed right, it wasn't the dish's fault if it cracked in the firing. Just the same, it ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... the whole, and delicate woman and well-born lady though she was, made each of those hard-working sisters feel that it was only her weakness, and not her station, that prevented her doing all that they did. "Eleven o' the clock," said John Alden, as the Mayflower's cracked bell told six hoarse strokes. "They said they'd bring our dinner ashore for us," and he ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... whatever it had been, for it bore evidence of long sea immersion, and the band had been broken and cracked by the manner in which the negro fisherman had ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... inflation. Georgia had suffered from a chronic failure to collect tax revenues; however, the new government is making progress and has reformed the tax code, improved tax administration, increased tax enforcement, and cracked down on corruption. In addition, the reinvigorated privatization process has met with success, supplementing government expenditures on infrastructure, defense, and poverty reduction. Despite customs and financial (tax) enforcement improvements, smuggling ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the Dummy, after all, who settled that for him. He came with his afternoon offering of cracked ice just then and stood inside the screen, staring. Perhaps he had known all along how it would end, that this, his saint, would go—and not alone—to join the vanishing circle that had ringed ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very pleasant when I met him," he remarked. "He cracked jokes. And he laughed at ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... a game where Ethel Brown can do herself justice," cried James, but no one seemed to have any inspiration, so they all went to the fire, where they cracked ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... mellow tones of its Sabbath bell, echoing through the valley, summoned the pious congregation to their austere devotions. Before the worn threshold of the great double-leaved door, in the broadside of the building, lies a platform, which was once a solid shelf of red sandstone, but now is cracked in twain, and hollowed by the footsteps of six generations. In the very spot where it now lies it has lain ever since the first framed meeting-house was built in Belfield, in the reign of good King William III. There, gathered in a little knot, on Sundays and public days, the forefathers of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... slowly on. The few spectators teased the ant-eater in one corner, or the first violin in another. One or two young farmers' boys were a little uproarious with egg-pop, and danced awkward breakdowns at the end of the tent. Then a cracked bell sounded and the curtain rose, showing hardly more of the stage than was ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... forward rapidly. Their rifles cracked, quickly cutting a path through the patrol, and before Urrea could get up his main force they were gone through the forest and ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with broken dishes, earless jugs, cracked plates, and bottomless saucepans," continued Mrs. Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... from below. "Go," he cried to Nan. "There'll be shooting here that I can't stop!" He slapped Sassoon's pony viciously with his hand, yelled loud in answer to Lefever, and before the startled girl could collect herself, de Spain, crouching in his saddle, as a fusillade cracked from Lefever's and Scott's revolvers, urged Sassoon's horse around Nan's, kicked it violently, spurred past her himself, and was away. White with consternation and anger, she steadied herself and looked after the fleeing pair. Then whirling in her saddle, she ran her pony back ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... gambling-house. Cheyenne stepped back, drew down the curtain, and turned on the light. The bare board floor was littered with cigarette stubs. A pair of saddle-bags hung on the iron bedstead. Other furniture was a chair, a scratched and battered washstand, a cracked mirror. Standing by the washstand Cheyenne took his gun from its holster, half-cocked it, and punched out the loaded cartridges. He pulled the pin, pushed the cylinder out with his thumb, and examined it against the light. ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... stole unlawful pennies to pay for admission to the charmed circle of equestrian delights, and in youthful purity of soul, and general dirtiness of face and hands, listened to the ingenious witticisms of the clown, while we cracked the peaceful peanut, and shared the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... ledge round a horn of rock I beheld what made me perfectly sick and dizzy to look at—the terminal Peak itself—a smooth, cracked face or wall of pink granite, as nearly perpendicular as anything could well be up which it was possible to climb, well deserving the name of ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... its head off and stick it in a vawse o water to look at. [The grasshopper chirps: Keegan turns his head and addresses it in the vernacular]. Be aisy, me son: she won't spoil the swing-swong in your little three. [To Nora, resuming his urbane style] You see I'm quite cracked; but never mind: I'm harmless. Now ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... us together, we sprang upon the snow with a shout, and slid down splendidly, turning now and then a somersault, and shooting out like cannon-balls almost to the middle of the frozen lake; I upon my back, and Cotter feet first, in a swimming position. The ice cracked in all directions. It was only a thin, transparent film, through which we could see deep into the lake. Untying ourselves, we hurried ashore in different directions, lest our combined weight should be too great a strain upon ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... cheered. The horses and burros in the corrals began to snort and tramp and race in fright. At the base of the long slope of the foothill Link cut the speed more than half. Yet the car roared up, rolling the dust, flying capes and veils and ulsters, and crashed and cracked to a halt in the yard before ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... long before Albert fell asleep; for the cold kept up a continual fusillade, as of musketry, during the entire night. The woodwork of the walls snapped and cracked with loud reports; and a little after midnight a servant came in and stuffed the stove full of birch-wood, until it roared like an angry lion. This roar finally lulled Albert to sleep, in spite of the startling ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... shoulder, while he, thinking to cheer me up, cracked his foolish jokes, I passed through two narrow passages, and going down three steps I found myself in a well-lighted hall, at the end of which, on the left-hand side, was a door leading into another passage two feet broad by about twelve long, and in the corner was my new cell. It ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which burns under it. The pot is suspended by a line of sinew at each end to the framework over the fire, and thus becomes so black on every side that the original colour of the stone is in no part discernible. Many of them were cracked quite across in several places, and mended by sewing with sinew or rivets of copper, iron, or lead, so as, with the assistance of a lashing and a due proportion of dirt, to render them ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... my adieus, the postillion cracked his whip, and we started. "There is no danger of bad weather for a month," said the driver, "and when we get up farther you will see what will pay you for the trouble of coming:" a speech that promised well for the day, I argued; and a certain share ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... story was correct, had been Hovig's personal stateroom. As Dasinger approached that point, it was like climbing into silent thunder. The door was locked, and though the walls beside it were warped and cracked, the cracks were too narrow to permit entry. Dasinger dug out a tool which had once been the prized property of one of Orado's more eminent safecrackers, and went to work on the lock. A minute or two later he forced the door partly back in its tilted ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... plethora and the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor left,—the emperor,—whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave, each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked his jokes, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... sewed up, our boots stuffed with wet cotton, our tooth-brushes dusted with quinine and our cafe noir sweetened with salt. These practical jokes are all taken in good part and made to contribute to the jollity of the season. At the breakfast-table lumps of cracked marble serve admirably for loaf-sugar, except that the hottest coffee will not dissolve them, and boiled eggs tempt the appetite only to disappoint with their sawdust filling. Then all assemble on the piazza to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... N. thud, thump, dead sound; nonresonance^; muffled drums, cracked bell; damper; silencer. V. sound dead; stop the sound, damp the sound, deaden the sound, deaden the reverberations, dampen the reverberations. Adj. nonresonant^, dead; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the rest of these desolate isles, all of dark whinstone, cracked in every direction, and worn with the action of winds, waves, and tempests since the world began. Over the greater part of it was not a blade of grass, nor a grain of earth; it was bare and iron-like stone, crusted, round all the coast ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... had been built to keep it up. It leaned against them like a weary old thing that wanted to go to sleep. It had a short square tower, like so many of the churches in England; and although there was but one old cracked bell in it, although there was no organ to give out its glorious sounds, although there was neither chanting nor responses, I assure my English readers that the awe and reverence which fell upon me as I crossed its worn threshold were nowise inferior, as far as ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... to herself, "and wild roses are crowdin' up to her door, and the meadow larks are sittin' round all over blinkin' at the sun, and she has her man with her, and she ain't tired with the work, and her hands ain't cracked and sore, and she hasn't been there long enough to dislike the twins the way she will when she knows them better, and there's no mosquitoes, and she hasn't been left to stay alone, and still she cries! God help us! What will she do in the long drizzle in the fall, when the wheat's ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... tragedy. Then he inscribed our names, ages, descriptions, and the like in a great book, when we followed him up three flights to a low room under the eaves, having but one small window, and bare of furniture save two narrow cots for beds, a broken chair, and a cracked mirror. He explained that cash boarders got better, and added that we might be happy we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the singing of an old man who had brought his fiddle to the field in order to be ready to play at the squire's "harvest-home." He was a thin, crooked, old man, very spare and ruddy. "Eighty-three years old, young sir," he said to Julius; and then, in a trembling, cracked voice, he ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Bells of Berlin, are they cracked through and through (Oh, dingle dong dangle ding dongle ding dee,) Or deaf to the discord like Germany, too? For whether their changes be many or few, The worst of them is that they never ring true, (Oh, dangle ding ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... something about it that rather attracted him. He strode along on the dry boughs. "Crack!" went one; "crack-crack!" went another; and Kellyan arose on the platform and strained his eyes in the gloom till a dark form moved into the opening by the bones of the sheep. The hunter's rifle cracked, the Bear snorted, wheeled into the bushes, and, crashing away, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... birthday, you mean? No, I don't think I ever did. Aunt Myra doesn't believe in cake. She says she liked it when she was young; but since she was converted to cracked wheat and oatmeal at the age of thirty-three, she has hardly ever touched it. We never had any at North ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... hain't jest ter say busted, but 'pears like hit's right smart cracked. I reckon, though," he added in half-disgust, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... with a brick front, green shutters on weak hinges, and a dress-maker's sign in the window above the shop. On each side of its modest three stories stood higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone, cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now a cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced itself, above the knotty wistaria that ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shakspeare's house,—though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A new window has been opened through the wall, towards the road; but on the opposite side is the little original window, of only four small ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it. Some of Mrs. Otis's crocks froze on the hearth that night. No such cold had been known in Vermont for years. The frost on the window-panes thickened—the light of the full moon could not penetrate them; all over the house were heard sounds like those on a straining ship at sea. The old timbers cracked now and then with a report like a pistol. "It's a dreadful night," said Mrs. Otis, and as she spoke the returning wind struck the house, and she gasped as if it had in ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... coolly to where he could look over the heap of the collapsed wall. He saw a bundle of torn clothing that had been a man. It was flung against a cracked and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... does not cover the whole of its foundation, and therefore thrusts less heavily and settles less. Hence, the pier b e in settling cracks and parts from the wall e o. This may be seen in most buildings which are cracked round the piers. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... found on the upper part of New York Island, near High Bridge, in a natural depression where the water stands most of the year, except in July, August, and September, when it becomes an area of drying, cracked mud two hundred feet across. As the mud dries these plants develop in great profusion, giving an appearance to the surface as if covered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... passed over his head as a dozen rifles cracked. This time he was surely killed! He was in some other world! Which was it, the good or the bad? The good, for he had a glimpse of blue sky. No, that could not be, for he had been alive when he leaped for the crater, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... may leave, the profession, I suppose he'll take to writing. He's always told me that when he could afford to, he'd like to cut the traces and wollop the race with his pen. Many doctors would like to do that. A gag and a chain and ball are not what they're cracked up to be. The pen is mightier than the pill, sometimes, but it often eliminates the butter from ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the metal of the gate. Its insulation was one of these space-age wonders, a form of clear plastic that would remain ductile under zero temperature and pressure. Only it didn't. It had shrunk and cracked, and there was a simple short against the metal of the gate. There were so many forms of circuit-breakers and self-protectors in the machine that the whole gate had been switched off as long as the short was in existence. No wonder telemetry hadn't ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... just hated school," grinned Lizzie. "It ain't so nice as it's cracked up to be. Just sit and study all day long. Why, they were always keeping me after school for talking or laughing. I was glad enough when I got through. You may thank your stars you didn't ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... now going through a period of misrepresentation. Every absurd meaning that can be given to any combination of words will be given to every plank of the platform. In the heat of partisan hatred every plank will look warped and cracked. A great effort is being made to show that the Republican party is in favor of intemperance,—that the great object now is to lessen the price of all intoxicants and increase the cost of all the necessaries ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Duchesse's ball. I will get an invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... defence of his client, in this desperate strait maintained that there might exist several copies of the books found in his possession, and that it was out of the question to condemn, on his own sham avowal, a man who appeared to be half cracked. The counsel for the prosecution said that that plea could not be urged in the case of the book printed by Lambert Palmart, as but one copy of that was in existence. But the prisoner's counsel retorted by putting in evidence attested affirmation that a second ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... up, with the reins in his hand, and called out to the horses to start on. He talked to his horses in French, and they seemed to understand him very well. The great thing, though, was cracking his whip. You can scarcely conceive how fast and loud he cracked his whip, first on one side and then on the other, till the whole court rang again. The horses sprang forward and trotted off at great speed out of the place, and wheeled round the corner to the quay; and while they were going, the conductor came climbing up the side of the coach ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... her, there—and a bit of ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years. When Sissy got into the school here," he pursued, "he was as pleased as Punch. I suppose he had this move in his mind—he was always half cracked—and then considered her provided for. If you should have happened to have looked in to-night to tell him that you were going to do her any little service," added Mr. Childers, "it would ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on: 'Now it so happened that the house opposite to the one taken by the mechanician was peculiar. It was a tall narrow building, wholly unornamented, the walls covered with a layer of white plaster cracked and soiled by time. I seem to see that house now! Six stone steps led up to the door, with a rusty iron railing on each side, and under these steps were others which went down to a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... large paper bags which he had pushed over near the dasher. Patricia began to bring out the cushions, and the boy tossed them in upon the straw which lay upon the floor of the pung. Then Patricia and Arabella climbed in, the boy cracked his whip, the horse sprang forward with a surprising jolt, then settled down to a ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... jewels, in Grace Abounding (No. 232)-"It was glorious to me to see His [Christ's] exaltation. Now I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green in me, were yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence-halfpennies, (Irish sixpences, which, in the dearth of silver coin in England, were made current at fourpence-halfpenny-ED), that rich men carry in their purses, when their GOLD is in their trunks at home. Oh! I saw that my gold was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... On she came. I felt sure that our last moments had arrived. There was no use shouting. The other men looked up. Terror kept them dumb. Had we indeed strained our voices till they cracked, no one would have heard us on board the ship. The dark pyramid of canvas seemed to reach up to the very clouds as she flew along, careering before ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... more day and then it will be time to eat. I didn't take but one bowl of hasty pudding this morning, so I shall have plenty of room when the nice things come," confided Seth to Sol, as he cracked a large hazel-nut as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... which I have described, placed many trophies, such as cracked mirrors, fans, rumpled plumes, pearls, broken quivers, precious stones and jewels scattered about, bits of broken chains, the whole to signify the abandoning of all worldly pomp, since, now that her husband was dead, her mourning for him was never to cease, and without the ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... were upon them as he spoke. Revolvers cracked. Jack Harkness, blonde, curly haired, and of magnificent physique, let his firearm drop as he clapped his hand to a suddenly ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... bucket containing chicken food was conveniently at hand, so she could scatter it on the ground to call her chickens away from depredations on the flowers. A little mouse made frequent excursions into the bucket and helped himself to the cracked grains in the chicken food. "Don't mind him," she admonished, "he jes' plays 'round my cheer all day, and don't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... were not so fortunate, however, with the loftier spars; for scarcely was the vessel beneath the arch, when she lifted on a swell, and her main-top-gallant-mast snapped off in the cap. The ice groaned and cracked over our heads, and large fragments fell both ahead and astern of us, several of them even tumbling upon our decks. One large piece came down within an inch of the extremity of Dr. Reasono's tail, just escaping the dire ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... impression abroad that the King is cracked, and I dare say there is some truth in it. He gets so very choleric, and is so indecent in his wrath. Besides his squabble with old Lord de Saumarez, he broke out the other day at the Exhibition ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... voice. It was the speech of the old Negro track-walker, taking two days to get to his dying daughter because he could not afford the railroad ticket that would have brought him to her in two hours. Donny recognized the high, cracked, pathetic tones which had addressed him at ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... slab on which Akbar sat to administer justice was pointed out. When one of the Jat chiefs seated himself upon it, the story goes, it cracked, and blood flowed from the fracture. Lord Ellenborough tried the experiment, and the stone broke into two pieces. The Mosque of Pearls is a small building of white marble on a rose-colored platform. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... windows on the facade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The traceries were at first, however, restored ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... man standing beside me seized my arm and pointed. I could just see through the trees, which were lower than elsewhere in the front of the wood, a Turk moving stealthily; so I waved my hat. At the same time a rifle underneath me cracked. A second or two later the spy pitched forward on his face and lay still. At the same instant my eyes sought the beech-tree, and I saw the close-lying figure raise itself and slide forward to a joint of the branch. Then the Gospodar, as he rose, hurled himself ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... of red and a spurt of blue came from the mouth of the gun even as the sharp report cracked the echoes in the gully. Instantly following the shot, a wild howling as of fifty beasts fighting, made Polly shoot again. Snarls and yelps followed, until Polly heard the clamor grow fainter until ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... doubted but that one man, and one man alone, was responsible for what might have been the most awful catastrophe of civilized times. And it was that man who sat in my study and watched me now, with ghastly face and passionately inquiring eyes. When he spoke, his voice sounded thin and cracked. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... having been so, and is capable of giving the ideas of power, and the consequent pleasures, in their full degree. For observe, that a thing is not properly said to have been the result of a great power, on which only some part of that power has been expended. A nut may be cracked by a steam-engine, but it has not, in being so, been the subject of the power of the engine. And thus it is falsely said of great men, that they waste their lofty powers on unworthy objects: the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... The three muskets cracked. A great ta-yar-r-r and screeching followed the reports; under cover of which and the smoke we legged it for the boat, and, tumbling in, were shoved hastily off by Weymouth. Before we had got twenty yards, however, the savages were on the bank, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... her, Mr Sharnall made the most of his defective organ and inadequate choir. He was a man if much taste and resource, and, as the echoes of the singing rolled round the vaulted roofs, a generous critic thought little of cracked voices and leaky bellows and rattling trackers, but took away with him an harmonious memory of sunlight and coloured glass and eighteenth-century music; and perhaps of some clear treble voice, for Mr Sharnall was famed ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... engines. What was it—what was it? She must at least find out. Everybody was going mad in the staterooms, the stewards were rushing about, trying to quiet people, their own voices shaking and breaking into cracked notes. If the worst had happened, everyone would be fighting for life in a few minutes. Out on deck she must get and find out for ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... put them into the fire to roast, stirring them round and round with a stick. In spite of my repugnance, so excessive was my hunger that as soon as we thought the eggs were done, and Natty had pulled them out, I cracked one. The yolk alone had set, but that looked tolerably tempting; and on putting it to my mouth I could scarcely distinguish it, except by a peculiar flavour, from the yolk of a bird's egg. A couple, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... But here, above all, I was pleased to see the person who had his blood taken out. He speaks well, and did this day give the Society a relation thereof in Latin, saying that he finds himself much better since, and as a new man, but he is cracked a little in his head, though he speaks very reasonably, and very well. He had but 20s. for his suffering it, and is to have the same again tried upon him: the first sound man that ever had it tried on him in England, and but one that we hear of in France, which was a ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... tenderness came into his somewhat mercenary look. He devoted himself more to his nephew; he took him aside, and, with some ceremony, gave him money. He offered us cigars. We took one each. His round French face became all wrinkles, like a cracked plate. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... They could see that the wreck was a small vessel on her beam-ends. Being to leeward, they could hear despairing cries distinctly, and four or five human beings were seen clinging to the side. The lifeboat-men strained till their sinews well-nigh cracked; it seemed doubtful whether they had advanced or not, when suddenly an unusually large wave fell in thunder on the Break; it rushed over the shallows with a foaming head, caught the boat on its crest and carried it far ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfect nest of small servants' rooms, with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane-bottomed chairs, chests of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The rooms had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs, small windows, and badly plastered walls—a depressing and dismal region which they ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... black eyes strayed as if by accident to Claire's face, "our heroic friend seems to have cracked under the strain, eh? Cut and ran, like a rabbit. Frankly, my dear Milo, you'd do better to put your reliance on me. A man who will run away,—with a woman looking on, too—and leaving you both in the lurch, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... drop of blood to him, And he loved that comedy part. We played one night to a right good house, Eight dollars and a half; But to my ill-luck in my lines I stuck And I queered the comedian's laugh. He fell down dead of a broken heart— The coroner, old and sage, Said his brain was cracked with a bad attackt Of the centre of the stage. I played that part all by myself For a week in Kankakee; O'er rails and rocks with this property-box I've walked to where I be. I never say an actor's good, I always damn a play; I always croak, and a single joke I have, which is to say: That I am ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a word. He had learned the taciturnity of the woods, and leveling his rifle, took sure aim. There was no buck fever about him now, and, when his rifle cracked, the deer bounded into the air and dropped down dead. Ross, all business, began to cut up and clean the game, and with Henry's aid, he did it so skillfully and rapidly that they returned to the camp, loaded with the juicy deer meat, by the time the fire ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... vender who roomed next to him at the Reno House was employed at a stall here. Vandover knew him a little, and it was not hard for him to get a thin slice of cocoanut out from the inside rind of one of those that were lying cracked open ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... fairly stung to madness and foaming at the mouth with fury; "curse you, fiend that you are!" And as he hurled forth words of rage and defiance he tugged and strained with such superhuman strength upon his bonds that the stout rope fairly cracked whilst it cut into the flesh of his wrists down to the bone. But the lashing was too strong to yield to even his frenzied efforts, apart from the fact that, with his arms lashed behind him, he had no opportunity to exert his strength effectively, and at length, completely exhausted, he was fain to ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... that most likely, if Mr. Selincourt is such a rich man, he will be sure to have a steamer run up through the Strait two or three times during the summer with provisions, and so it will be bad for Father and the store," he said, carefully setting the cracked cup for Miles, although by rights it was his own turn ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... better. Her head ached less; she sat up on her pillows and drank a cup of tea. Mary was smoothing her mother's hair with soft pats of the brush, when suddenly the church bells began to ring. She had never heard such sounds before. The bell at Valley Hill was cracked, and went tang—tang—tang, as if the meeting-house were an old cow walking slowly about. These bells had a dozen different voices,—some deep and solemn, others bright and clear, but all beautiful; and across their pealing a soft, delicious chime from the tower of the Episcopal ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... room utterly miserable. Nobody took the slightest notice of him, only one person asked his name, and that was a small person of one term's standing who wanted to show that he was a power in the land. At last, however, the old cracked bell rang out for supper, and very thankfully he took his place among the new boys at the bottom of the day-room table. Evening prayers in the School House had once been rather a festive occasion, and a hymn chosen by the head of the House was sung every night. It had been ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... been left in a somewhat dilapidated and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in the part which Maurice now occupied. They had piled their packing-boxes in the cellar, with broken chairs, broken china, and other household wrecks. A cracked mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the contents of which were airing themselves through wide rips and rents. A lame clothes-horse was saddled with an old rug fringed with a ragged border, out of which all the colors had been completely ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a little cracked sometimes," coughed Val; and, in truth, he now and then did think so. "I hope ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... saw Rheims Cathedral was in a spring twilight, when the great west window glowed, and the only lights within were those of candles which some penitent English had lit in Joan's honour on those same candlesticks.] The high altar was covered with floor-carpets; the pavement tiles were cracked and jarred out by the rubbish that had fallen from above, the floor was gritty with dust of glass and powdered stone, little twists of leading from the windows, and iron fragments. Two great doors had been blown inwards by the blast of a shell in the Archbishop's garden, till they had bent ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... store-house, some stayed for a long time behind the barn, screaming like foxes, others answered from afar like cats; one stood behind the smoke-house, barking like a cross old dog whose upper notes were cracked; and at last all joined in a general chase. The girls came sauntering along in large groups, having a few boys, mostly small ones, with them, who had gathered about them on the road in order to appear like young men. When such a bevy of girls ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of mine collected a quantity of hazelnuts, while yet the green husks enclosed the nuts, and placed them near the house to dry. At once they were discovered by a blue jay, which picked out a nut at a time, flew away, held the nut between its toes, cracked it from the small end, and ate the contents. In this operation a number of nuts slipped away and were lost. But it seems that all were not eaten, for the next season half a dozen or more hazel shoots came up, and to-day a new patch of hazel bushes is growing in the yard. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... Napoleon I. Bones should never be thrown away, but cracked and placed in stock pot, covered with water and let simmer. This makes "stock" which is the foundation of ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... appetite I should have had for my breakfast, at that moment awaiting me, if I had had to reflect over it that the great bell of the great basilica of St. Francis of Asisi had that very morning been cracked into pieces by my fore finger! What visions of horrified crowds of Asisinati, of black storms of newspaper items, of censuring gossip the world over, would have come between me and that purple pigeon smothered in rice which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... coming from the south-west, as it had done the first time, but with threefold violence. We sat on the veranda, ready to jump off at any moment, in case the house should be blown away. The view was wiped out by the mist; dull crashes resounded in the forest, branches cracked and flew whirling through the air, all isolated trees were broken off short, and the lianas tangled and torn. The blasts grew ever more violent and frequent, and if the house had not been protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... never-to-be violated, Secrets of Poverty! Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your make-shift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... high-sheriff, Anton Petersdorf was protonotarius to the criminal court, and Johann Caude, the notarius, conducted the protocollum. Besides, when I look back and think of her shrieks, and how the dry withered limbs writhed and cracked upon the wheel, till the black blood poured forth from her nails and teeth, my head swims and the sight leaves my eyes—therefore, away with it! This only will I notice, that her advocate, Doctor Elias Pauli, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... They have been at war with the Genoese for upwards of twenty years, and have never yet taken their fortified towns. They might have battered down their walls, and reduced them to powder in twenty years. They might have pulled the walls in pieces, and cracked the stones with their teeth in twenty years.' It was in vain to argue with him upon the want of artillery: he was not to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the ancient old sailormen give a hail in their cracked old voices. And the brothers heard them, and came on board to greet Ivan and his bride. And when they saw that she was a Tzar's daughter, and that the very decks were heaped with precious stones, because there was no room below, they said one thing to ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... at their journey's end distant thunder rolled behind heavy and opaque clouds. Ethelberta bade adieu to her attentive satellite, called to Cornelia, and entered a cab; but before they reached the inn the thunder had increased. Then a cloud cracked into flame behind the iron spire of the cathedral, showing in relief its black ribs and stanchions, as if they were the bars of a blazing ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... outlined with thick burns which stood up from the black flesh. Mick went over to his swag for his whip. It was long and supple, made of plaited kangaroo-hide, and ended in a well-rounded lash. He drew it once or twice through his fingers and then cracked it in the air. The sound was like the sudden banging together of two flat wooden boards. Mick stood back from the prostrate native and measured the distance ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... my charade. My first is the same as my second, my third may be cracked, my whole ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... possession as a record of the visit she was making; henceforth she would have a specimen of the Sevres china, "which is only made for kings!" I would not undeceive her by telling her that the products of the manufactory are sold all over the world, and that her saucer, before it was cracked, was the same as those that are bought at the shops for sixpence! Why should I destroy the illusions of her humble existence? Are we to break down the hedge-flowers that perfume our paths? Things are oftenest nothing in themselves; the thoughts we attach to them alone give ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... received with joyful shouts. They had plenty of meat and drink, and plied the fiddler and his man with more than was agreeable to them. Never was a more joyful wedding seen. They sung, they danced, told their stories, cracked jokes, &c., in a vein of humor more entertaining to the two guests than they probably could have found in any other meeting on a like occasion. When they were about to depart, they pulled out the leather pouches, and rewarded ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... know that she knew it now, and I just believe, I do, That her poor little heart was broken, and so her head broke too. Oh, my baby! my little baby! I wish my head had been hit! For I've hit it over and over, and it hasn't cracked ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... she had washed up and was ready, she felt in her pocket and found the three nuts which the old toad had given her. She cracked one and was going to eat the kernel, when behold! there was a beautiful royal dress inside it! When the bride heard of this, she came and begged for the dress, and wanted to buy it, saying that it was not a dress for a serving-maid. Then she ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... thought had occurred to me at that time of beginning it at the end, and reading it backwards; surely, in that manner, the book might have been got through. It was of a winning exterior, and tolerable thickness. Never did an unsound nut look more tempting to be cracked, than this volume to be opened and read. It had for its title the imposing sentence of, "A Naval and Military Tour up and down the Rio de la Plate, by ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... end curled up, was brought to him by a hungry-looking squaw. Four dogs were attached to it with miniature harness made to fit them. When all was ready the hunter flung himself flat on his face at full length on the sledge, cracked his whip, and away went the dogs at full speed. Herr Winklemann was armed only with bow and arrows, such weapons being most suitable for ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... It cracked distinctly against his head and the weight of it fairly drove him into the floor. He fell with a limp thud on the boards. Silent, reeling and blind, staggered to and fro in the centre of the room. Morgan and Lee Haines reached ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... keep almost any length of time in lime-water properly prepared. One pint of coarse salt, and one pint of unslacked lime, to a pailful of water. If there be too much lime, it will eat the shells from the eggs; and if there be a single egg cracked, it will spoil the whole. They should be covered with lime-water, and kept in a cold place. The yolk becomes slightly red; but I have seen eggs, thus kept, perfectly sweet and fresh at the end of three years. The cheapest time to lay down ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... tradition which looks like the story of Solomon and the harlots, there is not a name like Tom Earthquake or Sam Shake-the-ground in the whole country. They have a tradition which may refer to the building of the Tower of Babel, but it ends in the bold builders getting their crowns cracked by the fall of the scaffolding; and that they came out of a cave called "Loey" (Noe?) in company with the beasts, and all point to it in one direction, viz., the N.N.E. Loey, too, is an exception ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... 104, and the doctor spoke gravely about heart strain. It seems inconceivable that human creatures, living a few yards away, are actually going to parties, and attending theatres, trying on new clothes, and worrying about cracked cups. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... melted and froze; and April came, and wherever the Poor Boy went with his love there was a sound of water falling, running, and roaring. The ice in lakes and streams wore thin along the shores, broke, lost its grip, tinkled in the brooks, clashed and cracked in the river. In the lakes the margin of water between the ice islands and the shore grew wider and wider. In open spaces, faced south, the snow melted and thinned until black soil showed in patches. Rain came, more and more frequently, until no ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... Lane?" with consternation. He stood looking after her as she drove away, saying to himself that the old man had undoubtedly been mad, and that this poor young thing was evidently cracked too. He thought it would be best to write to Sir Thomas, who was not Sir Tom to Mr. Chervil; but if it was going to happen that the poor young lady should show what he had no doubt was the hereditary weakness, Mr. Chervil could not restrain a devout wish that it might ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... chances of escaping candle-snuff accumulations with melancholic prostration are much better. Nevertheless take care. The pitcher is a very valuable piece of crockery, and I don't want to live to see it cracked by going to the well ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the manner of its protrusion. If pale, moist, and coated white, it indicates a mild, febrile condition of the system. If coated in the center, and the sides look raw, it indicates gastric irritation. If red and raw, or dry and cracked, it is a sign of inflammation of the mucous membrane of the stomach. If the inflammation is in the large intestine, the tip of the tongue presents a deep red color, while the middle is loaded with a dark brown coating. When the tongue is elongated and pointed, quickly ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... when cracked by a tumble, Must be laid, till repaired, on the shelf, While the heart, although shattered and humble, Will be mended ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... fighter in a field was there never y-found. To me no man is maked,[226] For Manhood Mighty that is my name. Many a lord have I do lame:[227] Wonder wide walketh my fame, And many a king's crown have I cracked. I am worthy and wight, witty and wise: I am royal arrayed to reven under the ris,[228] I am proudly apparelled in purpur and bis, As gold I glister in gear: I am stiff, strong, stalwart, and stout, I am the royallest readily that renneth in this rout, There is no knight ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... would have been well-nigh intolerable to her. She could not have endured being stared at and pointed out in the streets of her own little town. But now Fame had come to her with broken wings and a cracked trumpet, and she shuddered at the sound of her own name harshly proclaimed ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... turn round again and face his horse, that was all. He thought they wanted him to drive faster; and there followed a terrifying ten minutes during which, as he supposed, he was gratifying them. He was proud of his horse, and it could go very fast. He rose in his seat, the whip cracked, the horse rushed forward, the rocks leaped towards them, the little fly swayed, the suit-cases heaved, Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins clung. In this way they continued, swaying, heaving, clattering, clinging, till at a point near Castagneto there was a rise in the ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was a gate, equally high, but with a handle to shut, ledges running across, and two or three cracked places that afforded hold for the hand. You and I, Louisa, have often discoursed on the excellence of active courage, and the much greater efforts of which both sexes are capable than either of them imagine. I climbed the gate with great ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the master?" shouted Poll, in a reedy-weedy tone, like a cracked clarionet, as soon as the lads came in sight. "Stealing the grapes. Stealing the grapes," she shouted again. "Rogues, rogues, rogues! Two in the morning, hi! hi!" And then she gave a shrill whistle, and burst out into a loud hearty laugh, that made Fred stare, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... alcohol. Russell and Hastings[210] found a lactose-splitting yeast in a severe outbreak of gassy cheese in a Swiss factory. In this case the gas did not develop until the cheese were a few weeks old. In severe cases the cheese actually cracked ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... interview, despite the tempest that raged above and around them. The great branches of the elms groaned and cracked under fury of the wind, the thunder pealed overhead and then died away with slow majesty out towards the sea. From afar could be heard the angry billows dashing ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... pick some more seeds for me, and I'll—just look at it." She touched the stained old book with shrinking fingertips; the moldering leather cover and the odor of soiled and thumb-marked leaves offended her. The first page was folded over, and when she spread it out, the yellowing paper cracked along its ancient creases; it was a map, with the signs of the Zodiac; in the middle was a ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... entrance into my cave, I was terribly frighted with a most dreadful, surprising thing indeed; for all on a sudden I found the earth come crumbling down from the roof of my cave, and from the edge of the hill over my head, and two of the posts I had set up in the cave cracked in a frightful manner. I was heartily scared; but thought nothing of what was really the cause, only thinking that the top of my cave was fallen in, as some of it had done before: and for fear I should be buried in it I ran forward ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... are dressed in white or light colours; the mothers and grandmothers (the whole family turns out) in black with flowers in their bonnets. There is usually a fiddler walking ahead making most remarkable sounds on his old cracked instrument, and the younger members of the party take an occasional gallop along the road. They are generally very gay; there is much laughing, and from time to time a burst of song. It is always a mystery to me how the bride keeps her dress and petticoat so clean, but she does, with that extraordinary ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Neel dived headlong towards the cracked and filthy pavement. The darkness meant that the police were moving slowly towards him from both ends of the alley, trapping him in between. There was nothing doubtful about the fate of an armed Earthman caught here. He didn't care. ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... fields, marshes, and ploughed fields again, with a rare group of furiously swaying pine trees or of silver birches bent double before the wind. "What a part of the world to come and live in! That old uncle of yours was as cracked as he could be to think you'd ever stay here for good. And imagine spending even a single shilling buying land here. I wouldn't take a barrowful ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... respects, it was once better off than now; since now it is less than second, showing signs of decay everywhere, but nowhere so much as in the dwelling itself, and the enclosures around. Its walls are weather-washed, here and there cracked and crumbling; the doors have had no paint for years, and opening or shutting, creak upon hinges thickly-coated with rust. Its corrals contain no cattle, nor are any to be seen upon the pastures outside. In ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
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