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More "Hissing" Quotes from Famous Books



... with practiseing to swime: A trout now here you would not thinke how soone Taken and drest for th'Emperour o'the Moone, The fixed Starres, though to our eyes were missing Wee knew yet were by their continuall hissing. Weomen were mermaides sailing with the wind, The greatest miracle was fish behind: But men were all kept chast against their wish, And could comitt but ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... blue around them; the sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer wonders of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... the captain entered a room on the upper deck where was installed the wireless telegraph outfit. The hissing as of frying oil that the apparatus was sending out attracted him. The operator, a young Englishman, took off his nickel band with two earphones. Greatly bored by his isolation, he was trying to distract himself by conversing with the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the Cathedral, high above the heads of the people, there flashed a white dove! It sped along a wire to the great black car, and the instant it touched it there was a terrific bang, then another, and another, as hissing rockets tore their way into the sky. The whole car seemed to blow up in a joyful burst ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... to continue her supper-getting. In a remote part of the house bacon could be heard hissing over the fire. Robert and Corinne sat upright on black chairs, but their guardian put Carrie on ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... real child. Think how the actors crouched protectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye saw the child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied the vision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the other play where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns it with such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could write the fairy plays and the symbolic plays, all American, if Jeff liked, and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... night came on I went into I cave, where I thought I might repose in safety. I secured the entrance, which was low and narrow, with a great stone, to preserve me from the serpents; but not so far as to exclude the light. I supped on part of my provisions, but the serpents, which began hissing round me, put me into such extreme fear that I did not sleep. When day appeared the serpents retired, and I came out of the cave trembling. I can justly say that I walked upon diamonds without feeling any inclination to touch them. At last I sat down, and notwithstanding ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... full consciousness, with the din of some appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the panic-land which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence, except for the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window. But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again and once again it shrilled ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... movement, just as the French began to run out on their bowsprit, and, by the time six or eight were on the heel of the jib-boom, they were met by the hissing hot stream, which took them en echelon, as it might be, fairly raking the whole line. The effect was instantaneous. Physical nature cannot stand excessive heat, unless particularly well supplied with skin; and the three leading Frenchmen, finding retreat impossible, dropped ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... belonging to them to come and give them news,—restrained by force of habit from what would have been at another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter exceptionality of this time,—while down among the hissing engines and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the spectacle,—while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington Street, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... like a piece of thin lead. They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, rapidly ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... from steel the outer bulwark; Rises from the earth to heaven, Back again to earth returning; Double spears are used for railings, On each spear are serpents winding, On each rail are stinging adders; Lizards too adorn the bulwarks, Play their long tails in the sunlight, Hissing lizards, venomed serpents, Jump and writhe upon the rampart, Turn their horrid heads to meet thee; On the greensward lie the monsters, On the ground the things of evil, With their pliant tongues of venom, Hissing, striking, crawling, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... bed and Boris went out. She heard the two young men talking outside; at first they seemed to be playing cards, then they whispered eagerly in the Polish language, rapidly and with many hissing sounds. Billy closed her eyes and lay there motionless, wishing to sleep, but it seemed to her as if something stood beside her, something threatening that was trying to steal up on her, and it seemed as if she must wake, as if she must ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... followed I don't know, as I was unfamiliar with the surroundings — but there was a good deal of it. I heard a click — had no idea what it was — and then the same movement back again to the lamp. Of course, he now fell over the stool he had upset before. Meanwhile there was a hissing sound, and a stifling smell of paraffin. I was thinking of making my escape through the door, when suddenly, just as I suppose it happened on the first day of Creation, in an instant there was light. But it was a light that ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror, as they flew toward the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissed and glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, and glancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulating by me, bright-eyed, and hissing, all made innocuous by fear—even the terrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge of the circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted at the gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again into the crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... reader of the "Femmes Savantes," which, strange to say, she had never read, and that she could not sustain so close a comparison with Moli6re. This opinion, in which Dr. Burney concurred, was sent to Frances in what she called "a hissing, groaning, catcalling epistle." But she had too much sense not to know that it was better to be hissed and catcalled by her Daddy than by a whole sea of heads in the pit of Drury-lane theatre ; and she had too good ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... is all alone; she is exposed to the power of I know not what enemy. Can it be Mercanson? He may have spoken of my conversation with him, and, seeing that I was jealous of Dalens, may have guessed the rest. Assuredly he is the snake who has been hissing about my well-beloved flower. I must punish him, and I must repair the wrong I have done Brigitte. Fool that I am! I think of leaving her, when I ought to consecrate my life to her, to the expiation of my sins, to rendering her happy after ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... coals that bake And scorch his fevered skin; A fire no hissing hail may slake Consumes his heart within. Still must he hasten on to rake The furnace ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... dark-visaged and apparently unemotional civilians threw off their armour of unconcern, and hurled epithets and shook clenched fists and defiance at their military fellow-countrymen. Then they all rushed out of the building in a body, hissing and spluttering like a badly constructed fuse in a powder trail. It was like the explosion of a small magazine. I had no idea what had happened, but took in the full significance of the scene I had witnessed when told that the notes which had acted ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... fermenting, and its heat hissing at the [25] "still, small voice" of Truth; but it can neither silence nor disarm God's voice. Spiritual wickedness is stand- ing in high places; but, blind to its own fate, it will ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... notify us by firing a revolver when they located one. We did not have long to wait before we heard the signal agreed upon, and, picking up the heavy camera, we plunged across the sands to where the sailors were awaiting us in the edge of the bush. While the bluejackets cut off the retreat of the hissing, snapping monster, Hawkinson set up his camera and, when all was ready, some one touched off a flare, illuminating the beach and jungle as though the search-light of a warship had been turned upon them. In this manner we obtained a series of motion-pictures which are, I believe, from the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... picked up a small stone and tossed it into the lake. No sooner had it disappeared beneath its dark surface than another column of water shot upward with a sort of hissing that was terrific, and in a moment the whole body was once more undergoing a series of ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... letter, I found sad news of poor Mr. Engelman. Time and change had failed to improve his spirits. He complained of a feeling of fullness and oppression in his head, and of hissing noises in his ears, which were an almost constant annoyance to him. On two occasions he had been cupped, and had derived no more than a temporary benefit from the employment of that remedy. His doctor recommended strict attention to diet, and regular exercise. He submitted willingly to the severest ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... you, or have had any one dream of the wretchedness locked in its chambers; but a week ago I was overwhelmed with humiliation, and now I am not ashamed to tell you. Now that Dr. Grey knows it, I would not care if the whole world were hissing and jeering at my heels, and shouting my shame with a thousand trumpets. I tried to keep it from him, and failing, the world is welcome to roll it as a sweet morsel under its busy, stinging, slanderous tongue. Miss Jane, I have intended to be sincere in every respect, but it ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... your service—a laborious and thankless calling it ever was to me—but now, dearest, as I drive the hissing goose across the smoking seam, I shall think of my own angel and my ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... there to find work; but when he reached a certain point whence the approach from the gate was visible, he started, stopped and stared. He rubbed his eyes. No; he was not asleep and dreaming by the cottage fire; the wind was about him, and the firs were howling and hissing; there was the cloudy mountain, with the Glashburn, fifty times its usual size, darting like brown lightning from it; but where was the iron gate with its two stone pillars, crested with wolf's-heads? where was the bridge? where was the wall, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... made against the wickedness, prejudice, and bigotry of mankind, as the main bravery of her life, and that if there has been heroism in any part of it, it was then displayed. "If as a woman," she says, "to take the platform amidst hissing, and scorn, and newspaper vituperations, to maintain the right of woman to the legitimate use of all the talents God invests her with; to maintain the rights of the slave in the very ears of the masters; ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... judgement upon the deeds of a sachem who hath sat in council with thy father's father? Look to thyself Black Snake, the hissing spirits in the boiling waters below are calling for thee. ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah

... the stove where the boiling milk was pouring over the sides of the pot in a hissing, bubbling stream. He clutched at the "billy," scalding his fingers badly, jerked it off the stove, upset the contents on the floor and flung the pot itself across the room, where it fell with a clatter upon a pile of dirty tin plates and pannikins. He swore ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... and on, detailing the wretched circumstances under which she had recently been widowed, and her miserable prospects in a strange town whither she was going. Adela made an effort to speak in words of comfort, but her own voice sounded hopeless in her ears. In the station was a constant roaring and hissing, bell-ringing and the shriek of whistles, the heavy trundling of barrows, the slamming of carriage-doors; everywhere a smell of smoke. It impressed her as though all the 'world had become homeless, ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... shewing the least dislike of the business. In the evening, as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did, all that he had in his ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders; which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat! This done, and finished my proclamation, I returned to the Naseby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, and shewed me a private letter of the King's to him, and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... word More bitter, and your own, the bitterest Stung me to sullen anger, and I said: "My son shall be no coward of his line Because his mother choose"; you turned your head And your eyes grew implacable in mine. And like a trodden snake you turned to meet The foe with sudden hissing ... then you smiled, And broke our life in pieces at my feet, "Your child?" ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... out his special affinities in this way, there is an end of his genius as a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing tumult—as he pours his sharp thought on the world's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corrosion of the old monumental tablets covered with lies! No more taking up of dull earths, and turning them, first into clear solutions, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a huge trunk began to move as though of its own accord. Hissing and crashing like some gray serpent, it glided down the hill-side, till it approached a group of figures and horses congregated at the head of the valley, near an engine puffing smoke. Then something invisible happened, and presently a trolley piled high ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the gunners again fled back to the squares. Once more the cavalry surrounded our footmen, like "heavy surf breaking on a coast beset with isolated rocks, against which the mountainous wave dashes with furious uproar, breaks, divides, and runs hissing and boiling far beyond." Yet, as before, it failed to break those stubborn blocks, and a perplexing pause occurred, varied by partial and spasmodic rushes. "Will those English never show us their backs"—exclaimed the Emperor, as he strained ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... miles away. The chief and his first assistant engineer watched the main engines in their twin compartments, while the subordinate aids and machinists attended to the dynamos, motors, and auxiliary cylinders that worked the turrets, pumps, and ammunition-hoists. All boilers were hot and hissing steam; all fire-pumps were working; all fire-hose connected and spouting streams of water. Perspiring men with strained faces deluged one ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the Evil One guide it, and give voice to blasphemies ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... water of the fountain was agitated, and foaming and hissing in a surprising manner; it seemed as if there were something within possessing life and will, that was struggling to free itself from confinement. But Undine only the more earnestly urged the accomplishment of her commands. This earnestness was scarcely required. ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... nothing! Remember, dear Sidonie, thy promise of self-control! Stand boldly still, St. Pierre; both father and son, stand." The speaker was unheard. Hissing, clanging, thundering, and shaking the earth, the engine and train loomed up to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... sent some small animal or an arrow into them. Among the Yahgans the 'Yuccamoosh' (doctors) or magicians proceed to pretend to extract these objects by a form of squeezing and hugging the patient, in the meantime blowing, hissing, etc., to force the object or evil out. I have never known of their doing this, however, to a person suffering ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Racine, whose pieces give me an idea of that bird. The colouring of the swan is pure; his attitudes are graceful; he never displeases you when sailing on his proper element. His feet may be ugly, his notes hissing, not musical, his walk not natural; he can soar, but it is with difficulty:—still, the impression the swan leaves is that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... the little room which was their home. At the door he paused and listened; then he opened it, and the floods of the white night poured in upon him as he stood with his eyes turned to where the cold, pale flashes of the aurora were playing over the pole. There came to him the hissing, saddening song of the northern lights—a song of vast, unending loneliness, which they two had come to know as the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... the cloak about her, as she spoke. They were equidistant from the two vessels, neither of which was to be seen, the rain fell fast into the hissing brine, their fate still uncertain. There was something strangely captivating and reassuring in this young girl's equanimity, and he did not cease speculating thereon till they had again reached the Osprey, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... theatre. This the common people took as an indignity done to them, and, therefore, when Otho appeared in the theatre they hissed him; the knights, on the contrary, received him with loud clapping. The people repeated and increased their hissing; the knights continued their clapping. Upon this, turning upon one another, they broke out into insulting words, so that the theatre was in great disorder. Cicero, being informed of it, came himself to the theatre, and summoning the people into ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... his soul though his body is forfeit to the devil. He tells them that at the stroke of twelve the demon will come to fetch him. He begs them to go quietly to bed, and not to be alarmed if they hear a great uproar. At midnight a mighty wind sweeps over the house, and a terrible hissing is heard as of innumerable serpents. Faust's cries for help gradually die away. They rush into the supper room and find him torn to pieces—eyes, brains, and teeth scattered in all directions. 'After this,' says our chronicler, 'it was so uncanny ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... "Relapse;" and the audience, supposing it was a new piece, on finding themselves deceived, expressed a considerable degree of disapprobation. I was terrified beyond imagination when Mrs. Yates, no longer able to bear the hissing of the audience, quitted the scene, and left me alone to encounter the critic tempest. I stood for some moments as though I had been petrified. Mr. Sheridan, from the side wing, desired me not to quit the boards; the late Duke of Cumberland,[26] from the stage-box, bade me take courage: "It is ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... morning some unusual charm about it, which I cannot even guess at. Mr. Vanderclump looked upon the bright and blazing fire; his eye rested, with a calm and musing satisfaction, on the light volumes of steam rising from the spout of the tea-kettle, as it stood, rather murmuring drowsily, than hissing, upon the hob. There was, he might have felt, a sympathy between them. They were both placidly puffing out the warm and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... hissing electric surf, running toward Jill. A hungry worm of light reared up, searching for Dio's gun. Gray's hand swept it down, to be instantly buried in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's hatchet face snarled at ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... The ocean, lashed to fury by the gale of yesterday, came booming and hissing upon the beach in great breakers white with foam; each billow as it dashed upon the jagged and broken rocks bore in its terrible embrace still more human victims, or some portion of the two unlucky ships that were fast breaking up. One wedged in between two rocks with just sufficient ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul

... cried Aggie, in a loud hissing whisper, which seemed to pierce the marrow of Cosmo's bones, "I rede ye say nae thing aboot that i' this chaumer. Bide till we're oot o' 't: I hae near dune. Syne we'll steek the door, an' lat the fire work. It'll hae eneuch adu afore it mak the place warm; the cauld intil this room's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... pretty bay window, which opened to the floor, but two fine cows, one fine horse, a great rooster, and twenty hens; turkeys, geese, and ducks; all lowing and neighing, and crowing, and cackling, and gobbling, and hissing, and quacking, enough to take your head off; but Mark and his mother and the fairy seemed to like it, for they clapped their hands and laughed ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... of sufficient importance to be able to put a stop to bad or idle talk. Indeed, any attempt on your part to do so would make things worse. Acting as as I bid you to do you will remain unharmed amid the hissing of serpents and, like the strawberry, will not assimilate their poison even though ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid, cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day over, the ship's officers had ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... big floes with comparative ease and sometimes a small floe would bar our passage with such obstinacy that one would almost believe it possessed of an evil spirit; sometimes we passed through acres of sludgy sodden ice which hissed as it swept along the side, and sometimes the hissing ceased seemingly without rhyme or reason, and we found our screw churning the sea without ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... down in the little officers' cabin. After dark the sea grew more rough, and splashing over the deck drove even the most ill to find shelter. Whatmough staggered to the companion, tripped over something, and fell the length of the stair accompanied by a hard object which hit him and made hissing sounds like a bicycle pump. He was too seasick to investigate, but next morning found the ship's tortoise lying on its back and feebly waving its ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... terror. The sea reached for it; the greater waves boiled over and sucked it bare. It was wet, slimy, overhanging death. Beyond the brink was a swirl of broken water—a spent breaker, crashing in, streaked with irresistible current and flecked with hissing fragments. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... great juicy peach with a bruise on its side, and a crack through which its delicious essence was escaping. Pale creamy was the downy skin, with a bloom of softest crimson on the side beyond the bruise and crack, and making a soft hissing noise as I drew in my breath—a noise that I meant to express, "Oh, what a pity!"—I stooped down and reached over to pick up the damaged fruit, and to lay it upon one of the open shelves where I had seen ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... wonder that she felt sure she had not come back to earth? This is what she saw. In the grate there was a glowing, blazing fire; on the hob was a little brass kettle hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a thick, warm crimson rug; before the fire a folding-chair, unfolded, and with cushions on it; by the chair a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... remote enough not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In those little temporary parlours three tables were spread with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at the savour. JAMES WHITE, as head waiter, had charge of the first table; and myself, with our trusty companion BIGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, who should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... tomorrow and I will show you what it's like." The audience laughed, but next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. "You fools!" he cried, "see what you have been hissing," and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... when he perceived that here also the windows were covered with a fence of dry reeds and faggots, through which the hissing flames were already beginning to wriggle like fiery serpents—clouds of smoke were already coming through ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... flaming branch fell hissing into a little pool at the bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... almost in solid phalanx appealing to the South, and the South has responded—to come to their help.... Some of my friends from the South and elsewhere have said that this is not a sectional issue. I say it is a sectional issue. (Long prolonged hissing.) ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Doppel-brau for Herr Weber or, dexterously carved fowl for the aborigines' table, Frau Knapf was making the wheels go round. I discovered that it was she who bakes the melting, golden German Pfannkuchen on Sunday mornings; she it is who fries the crisp and hissing Wienerschnitzel; she it is who prepares the plump ducklings, and the thick gravies, and the steaming lentil soup and the rosy sausages nestling coyly in their bed of sauerkraut. All the week Frau Knapf bakes and broils and stews, her rosy cheeks taking on a twinkling crimson from the fire over ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... foremost man upon the earth until he had humbled in the dust the pride and arrogance of Babylon. But, with the fall of the Great City, the whole fabric of Semetic greatness was shattered. Babylon became "an astonishment and a hissing"—all her prestige vanished—and Persia stepped manifestly into the place, which Assyria had occupied for so many centuries, of absolute and unrivalled mistress ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... torpor, and he staggered to his feet. Meanwhile the ostrich and the young lady had come to the ground, and were rolling about together in a confused heap, over which the elegant neck and open hissing mouth wavered to and fro like a cobra about to strike. With a rush John seized the neck in both his hands, and, putting out all his strength (for he was a strong man), he twisted it till it broke with a snap, and after a few wild and convulsive ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... objects, but he shortly found, on following up the machine, that the cries for assistance proceeded from the worthy pastor of the parish, who, going towards the town on business, was met on this lonely road by the hissing and fiery little monster, which he subsequently declared he had taken to be the Evil One in propria persona. No further steps, however, were taken by Murdoch to embody his idea of a locomotive carriage in a more ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... and held it cautiously up for the sunlight to shine through the bars, and there saw to their disgust that they had captured only the old gray Cat. As soon as the lid was raised she bounded away, spitting and hissing, no doubt to hurry home to tell the Kittens that it was all right, although she ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... There was a sharp hissing. Something struck the rock above the Hunter as he was stooping over Venning, and fell down into the fire. It was a barbed arrow. He fired again, scattered the fire with a kick, and crouched over the boy. Several ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... be stealing. He can't mean it. Stephen can't be a thief." Half-formed, incoherent sentences like these floated in her mind, seemed to be floating in the air, pronounced by hissing voices. ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... off forming the tail between the white lustrous threads and films of which faint, grayish pencilings appear, while the outer, finer sprays of water-dust, whirling in sunny eddies, are pearly gray throughout. At the bottom of the fall there is but little distinction of form visible. It is mostly a hissing, clashing, seething, upwhirling mass of scud and spray, through which the light sifts in gray and purple tones while at times when the sun strikes at the required angle, the whole wild and apparently lawless, stormy, striving ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... had sat bolt upright, her little dumpling hands folded one within the other, the long transparent nails making deep indentures in the soft flesh, and her gray eyes emitting green gleams of scorn. The answer her husband sought came at length, and was characteristic of the woman. Hissing out the words from between her teeth, she replied, "When I take 'Lena Rivers into my family for my husband and son to make love to, alternately, I shall be ready for the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... thunder running along these iron rails; it grows louder; an object is seen afar off; it approaches rapidly, and comes down upon you like fate, swift and inevitable. In a moment, it dashes along in front of the station-house, and comes to a pause, the locomotive hissing and fuming in its eagerness to go on. How much life has come at once into this lonely place! Four or five long cars, each, perhaps, with fifty people in it, reading newspapers, reading pamphlet novels, chattering, sleeping; all this vision of passing life! ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... taken away from their owners without even Juarez script in payment. The question of arms proved more troublesome, but the answer at last was even more satisfactory. For the besieged at Queretero, Driscoll's troop later became some unfamiliar dragon hissing an incessant flame of poisonous breath. This was due to a strange and mystical weapon which not only carried a ball farther than any rifle known before, but sixteen of them, one after the other. The strange and mystical weapon multiplied a lone man into a very genii of death, until the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at grinning ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame flung itself in the bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring face was buried ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Instantly a storm of hissing and hooting rose from the club, such as had rarely been heard in the walls of Templeton. None are so indignant at cowards as those who are not quite sure of their own heroism, and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... mortars, procured from the arsenal. Munitions of war they had in abundance—enough to last them, at the present rate of firing, for nearly three years. Long we gazed, fascinated at the scene before us. A dead silence had reigned for some time, when we were awakened from our dreams by the whiz and hissing of a shell fired by the enemy. It fell close below the tower and burst without doing any harm; but some jets of smoke appeared on the bastions of the city, and shells and round-shot fired at the ridge along the crest of which a ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. Not such his evening, who with shining face Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed And bored with elbow-points through ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... lifting the wooden decoys and winding their anchor cords around their placid necks. Lastly we gathered in the live ducks. They came, towed at the end of their tethers, with manifest reluctance; hanging back at their strings, flapping their wings, and hissing at us indignantly. I do not think they were frightened, for once we had our hands on them, they resumed their dignified calm. Only they enjoyed the fun outside; and they did not fancy the bags inside; a choice eminently creditable to ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... Westport and I were determined to lose no part of the scene, and we went down with Lord Altamont to the house. It was about the middle of the day, and a great mob filled the whole space about the two houses. As Lord Altamont's coach drew up to the steps of that splendid edifice, we heard a prodigious hissing and hooting; and I was really agitated to think that Lord Altamont, whom I loved and respected, would probably have to make his way through a tempest of public wrath—a situation more terrific to him than to others, from his embarrassed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... that I lay in the room immediately above the archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other faint sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing of the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... near the creamery. He gave her the fodder and—Heavens! was he suffering from delusions? Surely his ears were not deceiving him—from the creamery funnel there arose a dense volume of smoke mingled with the sharp hissing of steam and the rattling of cans, all as if the creamery were working, and it were broad daylight. His heifer became startled and bellowed frantically. O'Dwyer, himself a man of nerves, yet possessing all the superstitions of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... draws down the ears Into the head, as doth the slug his horns. His tongue continuous before and apt For utt'rance, severs; and the other's fork Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid. The soul, transform'd into the brute, glides off, Hissing along the vale, and after him The other talking sputters; but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!" So saw I fluctuate in successive change Th' unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... into the solitudes. When they had ridden a couple of miles, the valley narrowed again, the timber line crept in closer at every yard, the mountains drew in abruptly and rose more precipitously in sheer, frowning, dominant majesty, the river shot hissing down its rocky course, a wild thing plunging madly toward freedom and an ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... sight of that fleeing red maddened the bull. His feet stretched to a gallop, his broad horns lowered until his muzzle touched the grass, his tail sprang out to the level of his curly back. With the picket-rope hissing across his flanks, and with no eye for his mistress, he bore ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... beautiful greensward, but with scarcely a single tree. The waves are leaping in whiteness against the cliffs, and thousands of sea-birds are floating in long lines on the billows, or skimming past you singly, and diving into the clear hissing waters as they near your vessel. One of the very first objects which arrests your senses is the Coryvreckan, or great whirlpool of the Hebrides, an awful feature in all the poetry and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... daughter lets her in and goes about her work, setting the table or looking on the shelf, when the old witch suddenly stoops down and blows the ashes on the hearth; whereupon the pot makes a hissing sound as though boiling over, and the old witch catches hold of Monday and runs ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... him coming. His finger pressed down. But at that instant the Earth girl struck out with all the power of her slender arm. It was not much of a blow, but it managed to jar the weapon aside. The blue flame leaped hissing through the air. ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner

... as to the head of the shaft. But from thence to the spring and back again he made the best of his unaided way, staggering among the stones, and wading in low growth of the calcanthus, where the rattlesnakes lay hissing at his passage. Yet I liked to draw water. It was pleasant to dip the gray metal pail into the clean, colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with the water ripping at the edge, and a broken sunbeam quivering in ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sustained Mrs. Vimpany's courage. She played her assumed character against the contemptuous incredulity of Iris, as she had sometimes played her theatrical characters against the hissing and ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... from exhaustion, and his face glimmered like a pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to death; this Christopher saw ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... the three besieged men were suffering from intense thirst. The little adobe was like an oven. The sun burned down pitilessly, distorting the air with waves of heat, and drawing mocking mirages in the sky. Bullets still hummed and buzzed about them. Every hissing slug seemed to whistle the mournful tune of "Death—death—death!" Late in the afternoon, the elder Robbins could endure the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... silent. Rain; quivering streaks of lightning; hissing in the pine-trees. The wind howls. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... a priest by a peculiar kind of hissing sound, made by the tongue against the teeth, while they are kept closed, and the lips open. The nun within, who delays to open the door, until informed what kind of an applicant is there, immediately recognizes the signal, and replies with two inarticulate sounds, such ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets, too, although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told also—although I resent it—that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at midnight after society has ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... swell I was myself; which shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was a long, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... according as ye have not kept my ways,' but have lifted up the face against my law.[9] (Mal. 2:9; Jer. 25:9, 18) 3. Such shall also be contemned and had in derision of the men of this world. They shall be a hissing, a bye-word, a taunt, and a reproach among all people. 'For them that honour me,' saith God, 'I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. (1 Sam. 2:30) I remember that Philpot used to tell the Papists that they danced with their buttocks ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some creature of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... was going it made a little crackling, hissing noise, but nothing to cause annoyance. And its convenience on a cruise of this sort outweighed ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... a firm earth, it was a loose sand and gravel mixture twenty feet above the river. Here for half a mile the entire bank was moving, slowly at the top, gathering speed at the bottom. While close to this I heard a peculiar hissing as of carbonated water all about me. At first I thought there were mineral springs underneath, but found the noise was caused by breaking air bubbles carried under the stream with the sands. All this day such phenomena continued, sliding sand-banks and tumbling jungles. In ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... did not take so well as the former efforts of the laird's wit. The lady drew up, and the Provost said, half aside, 'The sooth bourd is nae bourd; you will find the horse-shoe hissing ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... the forbidden fruit, and gives part to Adam. They propose, according to the stage directions, to make themselves, subligacula a folis quibus tegamus pudenda, cover their nakedness with leaves and converse with God. God's curse. The Serpent exits, hissing. They are driven from Paradise by four angels, and the Cherubim with a flaming sword. Adam appears digging the ground, and Eve spinning. Their children, Cain and Abel, enter, the former kills his brother. Adam's lamentation. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... dawn all the camp was astir. Hugh looked from under his mosquito-net, and saw old Considine over the fire, earnestly frying a large hunk of buffalo meat. He was without a trouble in the world as he turned the hissing steak in the pan. Two black gins in brief garments—a loin cloth and a villainously dirty pyjama-jacket each—were sitting near him, languidly killing the mosquitoes which settled on their bare legs. These were Maggie and Lucy, but they had degenerated with their ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... waters of the Nile; and that the Serpent, or good genius, was the first cause of all these things. Since, moreover, sacrifices had to be made to the gods in order to obtain benefits, the flow of milk, wine, or water, as well as the hissing of the serpent, when the sacrificial flame was lighted, appeared to demonstrate clearly the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various

... shot out, palm up, his cousins noticed, and the rope went twisting and turning through the air, lengthening out like a long, thin snake, and almost hissing like one. Instinctively, as though roping a steer, Bud prepared himself for ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... Mrs. Henry Dodge, winding a needleful of No. 20 thread off the spool, with the hissing sound familiar to the ears of the seamstress, and breaking it off with a snap, "I think it's the very best thing that could have been done. The minute I saw that girl's face last sewing-circle, I knew she'd make out to save that boy. Mark my words, he'll ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... nearly every night for a fortnight, was distressed because he had to retire from his squadron for awhile until his leg healed. In five days at the most he would go back again to hell—hating the horror of it all, fearing those screeching shells and hissing bullets, yet preferring to die for France rather than remain alive and inactive when his comrades ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... Hissing, Lonnie cut the stereo switch. He'd seen enough. Darting across the den, he opened his communico. "Get me Sykes in our Mars unit," he ordered the operator. "Make sure what I say is scrambled. While you're waiting, get through to Denisen at Gov-Forn, then Raikes at ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro

... any one who had not by now realized that the ship was in danger, all doubt on this point was to be set at rest in a dramatic manner. Suddenly a rush of light from the forward deck, a hissing roar that made us all turn from watching the boats, and a rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us. Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... his task. And for seven days and seven nights the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin

... make your honorable entrance." They drew in their breath with a hissing sound. In Japan this is a polite thing to do. The teacher bowed to the children. Then each child ran to his little cushion on the floor and sat down on it. Taro and Take did not know where to go, because they had not been ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... before he wanted somethin' o' me, and did he come to fetch it himself like a man? Not he. He sent the son to rob the father." Then, leaning forward in his chair and glaring at the girl, "Ay, and mair than that! The night the lad set on me he cam'"—with hissing emphasis—"straight from Kenmuir!" He paused and stared at her intently, and she was still dumb before him. "Gin I'd ben killed, Wullie'd ha' bin disqualified from competin' for the Cup. With Adam M'Adam's Red Wull oot o' the way—noo ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... caught eight or ten fish as they came across, passing through a great shoal of herrings. In half an hour the kettle was boiling over the fire, the fish were hissing and crackling in the frying-pan over it, and a strip of deer's flesh, with the ramrod run through it, was frizzling. It was pronounced excellent. There was a slight aromatic bitterness that gave a zest and flavour to it, and the flesh inside was by no means ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... the earth beneath our feet—a shuddering movement that was transferred to one's own frame; and then I began to understand the meaning of the cry we had heard respecting the sea, for from where I supposed it to be, now came a singular hissing, rushing noise, gradually increasing to a roar, as of mighty waves, and mingled with that roar there was the creaking and grinding together of shipping and the hoarse shouting of ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... violence; but the madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos. On the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... to God. It would kill me to see him brought before a hissing crowd to be tried for his life. Oh, Mr. Castrani, I ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead. Where we heard them hoot palaverous Drivel learned beneath unsavorous Moulds, and saw a glutton's head Grin to a hissing bat, That scraped ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice

... threw Smith upon the edge of the crevice, face downward, so that he could look below. With his staring, bloodshot eyes he saw them all—dozens of them—a hundred or more! Crawling on the shelves and in the bottom, writhing, wriggling, hissing, coiled to strike! Every marking, every shading, every size—Smith saw them all with his bulging, fascinated eyes. The Indians stoned them until a forked tongue darted from every mouth and every wicked eye ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... their lurking places; and yells and shouts of the most terrific and threatening character once more rent the air, and echoed through the woods. Their cries of anticipated triumph were, however, but of short duration. Presently, a hissing noise was heard in the air; and close to the bomb-proof, and at the very skirt of the forest, they beheld a huge globe of iron fall perpendicularly to the earth, to the outer part of which was attached what they supposed to ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... central cavern, the receptacle for the stream of burning lava. It was entirely enclosed by rocks, and if ever a few icicles were formed there by the action of the cold, they were very soon melted by the fiery shower. Hissing and spluttering as the hot lava came in contact with it, the water was in a continual state of ebullition, and the fish that abounded in its depths defied the angler's craft; they were, as Ben Zoof remarked, "too much ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... of his victim's struggles, the trader's half insane rage cooled from its mad heat without losing any of its virulence. One of the Navahos had dismounted and run forward to stone the rattlesnake. Slade uttered a guttural hissing command. Instead of crushing the snake, the Indian teased it with the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... subject was cut short by a crash from the engine-room of the yacht, followed by a hissing noise as of escaping steam, and the propeller, which was being driven at many thousands of revolutions per minute, began suddenly ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... saloon on to the afterdeck. The place was crowded, and the confusion was indescribable. Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death beneath them,—combined to sweep away all human feelings save the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... height, states that Scaliger had observed women who were virgins emit urine in a high jet against a wall, but that married women could seldom do this. Bouaciolus also stated that the urine of virgins is emitted in a small stream to a distance with an acute hissing sound. (Parthenologia, p. 281.) A folk-lore belief in the reality of this influence is evidenced by the Picardy conte referred to already (ante, p. 53), "La Princesse qui pisse au dessus les Meules." There is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of crowding passengers getting on and off, tearful good-byes and joyful greetings, banging trunks, rattling trucks, hissing steam, the doctor watched. Then he saw him, his handsome head towering above the pushing, jostling crowd. The Doctor could not get to him, and with difficulty restrained a shout. But Dan with his back to them ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... Being close to the water, he could not see the rapids themselves but only the first great, green curve, and below it the white tops of a multitude of waves. Then the middle span swept back overhead, he heard the river, split by the sharp piers, hissing along their rough sides and the canoe sailed like a leaf into the first smooth dip. Came the vision of a distant shore sliding by, and the lower reach with a ferry steamer halfway across, and Belding felt the canoe lift and quiver, while a green wave flung its ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... ax, but Thurston, who was stout of arm and keen of eye, had managed to earn his bread with it one winter in an Ontario logging camp. When he swung aloft the heavy wedge of steel, it reflected the blast lamp's radiance, making red flashes as it circled round his head. It came down hissing close past his knee. Mattawa Tom's blade crossed it when it rose, and the first white chip leapt up. More chips followed in quick succession until they whirled in one continuous shower, and the razor-edged steel losing definite form became a confused circling brightness, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... sudden loud hissing sound from the motor. At the same instant the propeller ceased to revolve and the monoplane dashed downward ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... of insects seek shelter under leaves and trunks of trees. The wild Mammalia are tamed, and suspend their work of war and carnage; the cold-blooded Amphibia alone rejoice in the overwhelming deluge, and millions of snakes and frogs, which swarm in the flooded meadows, raise a chorus of hissing and croaking. Streams of muddy water flow through the narrow paths of the forests into the river, or pour into the cracks and chasms of the soil. The temperature continues to descend, and the clouds gradually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various

... know of a single friend who could help her. All the knowledge that she had imbibed taught her that there was no God either to hear prayer, or succour the wronged. Her name would become a laughing-stock and a hissing, to be put on a par with Clodia's or that of any other frivolous woman, unless she not merely gave up the man she loved, but also threw herself into the arms of the man she utterly hated. The craving for any respite was intense. She was young; ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... badly led (it often is); the singers may flat—or be out of voice; the performance may go all at sixes and sevens—there is never a murmur of dissent. Faults that would set an entire audience at Naples or Milan hissing are ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... the enemy from behind a wall. Of the Cubapinos he could see nothing but the smoke of their guns and muskets here and there. Shells were falling in another part of the field, but nowhere near him. Bullets were flying thick through the air, and he heard them hissing constantly. As he looked he saw one of the Gatling crew fall over, doubled up in a heap. Sam moved along in the wood nearer to this gun, so that he might ask where he could find the brigade commander. As he approached he ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen-table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... moment's time, St. Gabriel was wrapt in a lurid sheet of devouring flames. We could hear the cracking of planks tortured by the blaze; the crash of falling roofs, while the flames shot up to an immense height with the hissing and soughing of a hurricane. Ah! Petiots, it was a fair image of pandemonium. The people seemed an army of fiends, spreading ruin and desolation in their path. The work-oxen were killed, and a few among us, with the hope of a speedy return to Acadia, threw our silverware into the wells. Oh, the ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies

... its antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs; the man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body. At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this was the transformation which, during the reign of George the First, befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... chair and sat down, pressing his lean hands to his aching temples and rocking himself to and fro, his breath hissing through his convulsively closed teeth. Still the fearful memory remained, and it grew into a prophetic vision of the future, reflecting what had been upon the distant scenery of what was yet to be. With that one deadly stroke of ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... tendency are obviously to annoy him, to make him feel, while at home, that he is a stranger and a pilgrim—nay more,—to make him "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;"—to make him "a hissing and a by-word," "a fugitive and a vagabond" throughout the American Union;—a system that is so irreconcilably opposed to the purpose of God in making "of one blood all nations for to dwell on all the face of the earth," that when the dying slaveholder, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... the very ice glared with the leaping flames. At last, pulling and pushing, they brought the little engine up the slope, and then with a great shout dragged it into the outskirts of the yard. They pumped furiously, and a small jet of water was played upon the nearest pile of boards. A hissing cloud of steam almost hid the volunteer firemen, but the flames leaped and tossed against the sky, and the sparks were sucked up into the cold air, and whirled in sheets across ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in which he had been engaged, he laid down in the hinder part of the ship and fell asleep. While he was lying there a sudden storm burst upon the sea. The wind howled in its fury. The angry waves rose in their might and dashed against the vessel in hissing foam. The ship was full of water, and in danger of sinking. The terrified disciples came to their sleeping Master with the earnest cry:—"Lord save us: we perish." He heard their cry. He rose at once. Quietly he took his stand by the side of the storm-tossed vessel. He rebuked ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... yellowish mountain-goats spring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as though they found the midday heat pleasant and exhilarating. From time to time the girl seizes the herdsman's crook that lies beside her, and calls the goats with a hissing cry that is audible at a considerable distance. A young kid comes dancing up to her. Few beasts can give expression to their feelings of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... true. I stepped across, doctor, and got your boy to weigh me out a pound of salts, and have been mixing it with their swill. Ill bet a saddle of venison against a gray squirrel that they are better in a week. And now, Mrs. Hollister, Im ready for a hissing mug of flip. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Minos rous'd from torpid rest, Like thousand adders, rushing out, Entwin'd my shuddering limbs about.— Oh, strangers, hear!—the truth I tell— That fearful sight I saw was Hell. And, oh I with what unmeasur'd wo Did bitterness upon me flow, When thund'ring through the hissing air, I heard the sentence of Despair— 'Now never hope from Hell to flee; Yourself is all the Hell ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... Panda," went on Zikali in an intense and hissing voice. "Many, many years ago, before Senzangacona, your grandfather, saw the light—who knows how long before—a man was born of high blood in the Dwandwe tribe, which man was a dwarf. Chaka the Black One conquered the Dwandwe, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... instinctively drawing his sword as he did so. For a moment he stood, paralyzed with horror. A gigantic snake had wound its coils round Ned's body. Its head towered above his, while its eyes flashed menacingly, and its tongue vibrated with a hissing sound as it gazed at Tom. Its tail was wound round the trunk of the tree. Ned was powerless, for his arms were pinioned to his side by the coils of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... on the porch, Mr. Stamps appeared at the doorway, and, after his usual precautionary glance about him, made his way to the stove. His manner was at once propitiatory and friendly. He drew up a chair and put his wet feet on the stove, where they kept up a comfortable hissing ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... character and consideration to the lowest in the European family of nations? And as to the United States of America, has not the boasted liberty of our Republican countrymen, who colonized America, become a by-word, a hissing, and a scorn, amongst the nations of the earth? Have not these slave-holding Americans committed acts, nationally, within the last few years, which the most absolute Governments of Europe would blush to be guilty of? And what is one of their last acts, on a smaller ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... butter; a man of continuall dissolution, and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this Bath (when I was more then halfe stew'd in grease (like a Dutch-dish) to be throwne into the Thames, and coold, glowing-hot, in that serge like a Horse-shoo; thinke of that; hissing hot: thinke of that (Master Broome.) Ford. In good sadnesse Sir, I am sorry, that for my sake you haue sufferd all this. My suite then is desperate: You'll vndertake her no more? Fal. Master Broome: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... the approach from the gate was visible, he started, stopped and stared. He rubbed his eyes. No; he was not asleep and dreaming by the cottage fire; the wind was about him, and the firs were howling and hissing; there was the cloudy mountain, with the Glashburn, fifty times its usual size, darting like brown lightning from it; but where was the iron gate with its two stone pillars, crested with wolf's-heads? where was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... coolies had gone, Captain Kneebone's heels were busy, staving open boxes right and left. A bottle rolled out, and smashed in a hissing froth ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... bowl of spiced wine, with roasted apples hissing on its surface, was borne into the hall by four men, followed by an empty bowl of the same dimensions, with all the materials of arrack punch, for the divine's especial brewage. He accinged himself to ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... of hands, and the cheering, the bustling and the pelting, the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles and the soft hits ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... movement would be possible. It was an eerie situation. The night was filled with multifarious noise—peculiar 'poops,' the distant crash of bombs, and all the mingled echoes of a battlefield. At one time German howitzers, firing at longest range, chimed a faint chorus high above our heads; anon a hissing swoop would plant a shell close to our whereabouts. Lights rose and sank, flickering. Red and green rockets, as if to ornament the tragedy of war, were dancing in the sky. Occasionally a gust of foul wind, striking the face, ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... Hunt himself. I do not observe Lamb's name appended to any of the articles in the first volume; but the second comprises the Essays on Hogarth and on Burial Societies, together with a paper on the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres, under the signature of "Semel Damnatus." There is a good deal of humor in this paper (which has not been republished, I believe). It professes to come from one of a club of condemned ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... and cough, and perhaps slight hoarseness. They go to bed and fall asleep as usual, but the cough, which does not wake them, becomes suddenly noisy, ringing, croupy, and the breathing is speedily attended with a long-drawn sound, half-hissing, half-ringing, and the child soon wakes alarmed, and fighting for breath, the skin bathed in perspiration, the face flushed and anxious. The cough, the difficult breathing, and the struggle for air ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... comforted to find the waiter did not think he would be thrown into prisons and dungeons; so he dined, and dressed, and went to the theatre to console himself, where however he MADE HIMSELF HEARD so effectually—first applauding, then hissing, and even speaking his opinions to the people round him—that a set of young college students combined together to get rid of him, and, I am sorry to add, they made use of a little kicking as the surest plan; and so, before half the play was over, Mr. Franz found ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... a few straining strokes, the boat returned to a straight path before the roller and the next moment had rushed up on the sand, propelled by the last force of the breaker which went seething and hissing ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... a little later, he had a chance to use the periscope. For one thing the short winter day was fading and the light was already poor; for another any attempt to keep the periscope above the parapet for more than a few seconds brought a series of bullets hissing and zipping over, and periscope glasses in those days were too precious to risk for ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... very awkward parcels he strode off to his train. The platform was crowded, the train was in. Doors banged open and shut. There came such a loud hissing from the engine that people looked dazed as they scurried to and fro. William made straight for a first-class smoker, stowed away his suit-case and parcels, and taking a huge wad of papers out of his inner pocket, he flung down in the corner ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... once more been thrilled with anxiety and compassion for the poor, sorely afflicted bands who had followed his summons. During the night preceding, he had climbed one of the lower peaks of Baal-zephon and, amid the raging of the tempest and the roar of the hissing surges, sought the Lord his God, and felt his presence near him. He, too, had not wearied of pleading the need of his people and adjuring him to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at the wheel, unlatching ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a frightful flash, and a hissing, and ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. Not such his evening, who with shining face Sweats in the crowded theatre, and squeezed And bored with elbow-points ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... found the mixture entirely without colour and also without precipitate. I was enabled to conclude that the air in this bottle had likewise diminished, from the fact that air rushed into the bottle with a hissing sound after I had made a small hole ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... put upon it, the deep rumble in its throat swelling into loud crescendos. Of a sudden it bounded through the gateway and stood a moment, baring great fangs. The animal threatened with long hisses. Vergilius held its eye, his lance raised. The hissing ceased, the growl diminished, the stealthy paws moved slowly. Soon it rolled upon its side, purring, and seemed to caress the floor with head and paws—a trick to divert the gaze of Vergilius. The Satanic eyes were ever on its foe. As the beast lay there, twisting ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... and oil-can, gave one look up the road and went on with his labors. In a few moments the jangling beat of many bells throbbed on the frosty air. As if answering a challenge, the locomotive's escape valve shot up its hissing volume ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... any of the ministers, there was no demonstration of good will beyond the usual civility of lifting the hats as she passed. Indeed, Horace Wilson told me that, when he was crossing the park at the time of her driving through it, there was some—though not much—decided hissing. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... about the wall of rock that flanked the channel, a wind of noise struck us. It was like the hissing of innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous thunder. A hundred yards before us was Eagle Rapids—a forbidding patch of writhing, whitening water, pricked with the upward thrust ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents. That's his hump. There, there, give it to him! whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from astern, while forward ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... vain; In crowd at once, where none the pass defend, The harmless freedom and the private friend. The guardians yield, by force superior plied— To Interest, Prudence; and to Flattery, Pride. 340 Here Beauty falls betray'd, despised, distress'd, And hissing Infamy proclaims ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... o'clock to the meeting. A great number present, with a tribune full of Reformers, who showed their sense of propriety by hissing, hooting, and making all sorts of noises; and these unwashed artificers are from henceforth to select our legislators. There was some speaking, but not good. I said something, for ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... frantic yells cast from time to time into the flames furs and weapons, and that choicest of their treasures the costly wampum. Nay it was even whispered in the early time, that little children gaily adorned with wampum were led into the midst and thrust into the fiery embrace of the hissing god.[21] The practice of the Iroquois was less fearful, among whom a string of white wampum was hung around the neck of a white dog suspended to a pole and offered as a sacrifice to the mighty Haweuneyn. The ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward

... undergoing the destinies of war. The shells were falling along rue Mazel and on the citadel. A group of old houses by the Meuse had burnt to rafters of flickering flame, and as I passed them, one collapsed into the flooded river in a cloud of hissing steam. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... mostly broken, but some large cakes making our strong-timber'd steamboat hum and quiver as she strikes them. In the clear moonlight they spread, strange, unearthly, silvery, faintly glistening, as far as I can see. Bumping, trembling, sometimes hissing like a thousand snakes, the tide-procession, as we wend with or through it, affording a grand undertone, in keeping with the scene. Overhead, the splendor indescribable; yet something haughty, almost supercilious, in the night. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal. It was too dark to see the water below, but he heard the hard rain hissing on ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... waved like semaphores. The train ought to have been gliding away, but something delayed it, and it was held as if spellbound under the high, dim semicircle of black glass, amid the noises of steam, the hissing of electric globes, the horrible rattle of luggage trucks, the patter of feet, and the vast, murmuring gloom. Christine saw Edgar leaning from a window and gazing anxiously about. The little handkerchiefs were still courageously waving, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... Sepia's face. Seeing her now retiring with the bottle in her hand, he sprang after her, and, thanks to the fact that she had locked the door, was in time to snatch it from her. She turned like a wild beast, and a terrible oath came hissing as from a feline throat. When, however, she saw, not Mary, but the unknown figure of a powerful man, she turned again to the door and fled. Joseph shut and locked it, and went back to the closet. Mary drew near ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... talking with the cannoneer, when presently he desired us to look to ourselves, for he perceived by his perspective glass there was a piece charged in the castle against his work, and ready to be discharged. I ran for haste under an old ash-tree, and immediately the cannon-bullet came hissing quite over us. 'No danger now,' saith the gunner, 'but begone, for there are five more charging,' which was true; for two hours after those cannons were discharged, and unluckily killed our cannoneer and matross. I came the next morning ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... the pseudo-formulas of astronomers, gravitation as a fixed quantity is essential. Accept that gravitation is a variable force, and astronomers deflate, with a perceptible hissing sound, into the punctured condition of economists, biologists, meteorologists, and all the others of the humbler divinities, who can admittedly offer ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... of all the masters of men put together, and still goes on increasing. It is a notable fact that although churches and creeds are losing their hold upon the modern mind, the name of Jesus is held in greater regard than ever. We have heard of a meeting of workmen cheering Jesus and hissing the churches. In our day most people are agreed that in Jesus we have the most perfect life ever exhibited to humanity. It is not only Christians who take this view; everyone, or nearly everyone, does so. Some years ago a book was published which bore on the title-page the ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... arrival, we were called upon by the Arabs, a strange mixture. One, the Haji Mukhtar, was a Maghrebi from Fez: an expatriation of forty years had changed his hissing Arabic as little as his "rocky face." This worthy had a coffee-garden assigned to him, as commander of the Amir's body-guard: he introduced himself to us, however, as a merchant, which led us to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several times, increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked briskly; but the brooding waitress continued to brood. A faint snap of the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert hissing whisper of avail, and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show signs of strain when ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... of one of his eyes. The next instant saw the Professor flung back at length against the bars of the cage; and in his face he felt Finn's breath, and heard and saw the flashing, clashing gleam of Finn's white fangs. Sam thrust the white-hot bar in, stabbing Finn's neck with its hissing end. The Professor seized the bar and beat Finn off with it; not for protection now, but in sheer, savage anger. Then he withdrew from the cage, and seizing a long pole beat Finn crushingly with that, through the bars, till his arms ached. Meantime, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... of our laughter alarmed Bruin, and revealed us to his sight, and, rising immediately on his hind-legs, he commenced moving towards the Norwegians, and hissing like a hot coal ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... the banks of the river, and were trekking up them towards the spot where it issued from the side of the mountain. Everywhere was spoor, but we saw no people, although here and there the vultures were hissing and quarrelling over the bones of a ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... man said never a word, but with indrawn breath hissing through his clenched teeth clutched her, and down they went together in the passage, the piper undermost. He had her by the throat, it is true, but she had her fingers in his eyes, and, kneeling on his chest, kept him down with a vigor of hostile ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... The wild Mammalia are tamed, and suspend their work of war and carnage; the cold-blooded Amphibia alone rejoice in the overwhelming deluge, and millions of snakes and frogs, which swarm in the flooded meadows, raise a chorus of hissing and croaking. Streams of muddy water flow through the narrow paths of the forests into the river, or pour into the cracks and chasms of the soil. The temperature continues to descend, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various

... farther on, opened into a small patch of low grass. Just as I was getting through the brake to this spot I stopped short with a chill. In the ferns near me shrilled a hissing whistle, a weird, creepy whistle that made me cold—a fierce, menacing sound, all edge, and so thin that it slivered every nerve in me. And then, without a stir in the brake, up out of the low grass in front of me rose a ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... eldest daughter pretends to look on the shelf for something, the witch puts her dirty shoe on the range, catches hold of Monday (the youngest child) and runs off with him. The child who is the pot now makes a hissing noise and pretends to boil over. ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... dogs were hunting rabbits or woodchucks. On approaching, I saw no sign of such disturbances, and presently a Partridge came running at me through the trees, with ruff and tail expanded, bill wide open, and hissing like a Goose,—then turned suddenly, and with ruff and tail furled, but with no pretence of lameness, scudded off through the woods in a circle,—then at me again fiercely, approaching within two yards, and spreading ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... he had moved rather near, when suddenly a partially concealed mouth opened, showing the unmistakable tongue and fangs of a serpent. It emitted a hissing sound, and the small ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... royal grove. Slowly and cautiously did they proceed towards the bower, where, as Mezrimbi had truly said, Acota was waiting for his beloved princess. Fortunately, as they approached, a disturbed snake, hissing in his anger, caused an exclamation from the old brahmin, which aroused Acota from his delicious reverie. Through the foliage he perceived and recognised Mezrimbi, his father, and the mutes. Convinced that they meditated mischief towards himself, he secreted himself ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... moment obscured the moonrays from the top-light; the gas-jet choked with air, spluttered, burning with a tiny, blue, hissing flame; then the white path lay across the floor again, and the yellow flare of gas spurted up into its pitiful fulness—and in Smarlinghue's stead stood another man. Gone were the stooping shoulders, gone the hollow cheeks, the thin, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants that broke above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing, which I imputed to the letter S, that occurs so frequently in the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... attempt the conquest of Medusa, a terrible monster who had laid waste the country. She was once a beautiful maiden whose hair was her chief glory, but as she dared to vie in beauty with Minerva, the goddess deprived her of her charms and changed her beautiful ringlets into hissing serpents. She became a cruel monster of so frightful an aspect that no living thing could behold her without being turned into stone. All around the cavern where she dwelt might be seen the stony figures of men and animals which had chanced ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... not satisfy her, and the committee needed no urging to grant her another. At the second meeting, the hall was literally packed, and hundreds went away unable to obtain seats. When she arose to speak, there was some hissing from the doorways, but the most profound silence reigned through the crowd within. Angelina first stood in front of the Speaker's desk, then she was requested to occupy the Secretary's desk on one side, and soon after, that she might be seen as well as heard, she was invited to stand ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... had in abundance—enough to last them, at the present rate of firing, for nearly three years. Long we gazed, fascinated at the scene before us. A dead silence had reigned for some time, when we were awakened from our dreams by the whiz and hissing of a shell fired by the enemy. It fell close below the tower and burst without doing any harm; but some jets of smoke appeared on the bastions of the city, and shells and round-shot fired at the ridge along the crest of which a small ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... lead. They are collected in grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott, which, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipped in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... shudder and tremble under his feet. He looked out of the side porthole on the starboard bow, and saw his own fleet dropping away into the distance and the darkness of the November night. The water ahead curled up into two huge swathes, which broke into foam and spray, which lashed hissing along ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... Mr. Count, the mate, fairly chuckled again at the thought of how the little Britisher had wiped the eyes of these veteran fishermen. The captive was cut open, and two recent flying-fish found in his maw, which were utilized for new bait, with the result that there was a cheerful noise of hissing and spluttering in the galley soon after, and a mess ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... he read, or seemed to read, these words, with scarce an accent to mar their impetuous flow, Dr. Englehart drew in his breath with the hissing sound of passion, and folded his arms tightly across his padded breast, as if they enfolded the bride he was suing ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... grey dawn was stealing slowly up into the riven sky, lighting up the clouds which were flying eastward on the shoulder of a boisterous wind. The heavy grey sea, heaving, surging, and hissing, threw itself upwards into broken spray, which flew to leeward at a sharp angle, blown from the summit of the wave like froth from an over-filled tankard. After a night of squally restlessness, accompanied by a driving ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... and rumbled onward. The hissing of steam was audible. The vehicle swung around a pinnacle of stone, ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... crepuscular light, bulks of things—big, black, formless—were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... exhibited the simplicity of character so remarkable in the domestic species; but that where they had been often fired at they were exceedingly wild, alarmed their companions on the approach of danger by a hissing noise, and scaled the rocks with a speed and agility that baffled pursuit." The mountain men of early days tell precisely the same thing of the sheep. Fifty or sixty years ago they were regarded as the gentlest and most unsuspicious animal of all the prairie, excepting, of course, the buffalo. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... are!" came in a hissing whisper from the darkness near by, and then the invisible whisperer moved away, making a weird sound as he slid his hand along a wall, till it died away in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;(50) Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound. Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread, And gloomy darkness roll'd about his head. The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow, And hissing fly the feather'd fates below. On mules and dogs the infection first began;(51) And last, the vengeful arrows fix'd in man. For nine long nights, through all the dusky air, The pyres, thick-flaming, shot a dismal glare. But ere the tenth revolving day was run, Inspired ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... when by the chimney-corner in a comfortable easy-chair, veiled in wreaths of tobacco-smoke, you yield to the luxury of repose, and listen idly to the duet between the chirping of a cricket on the hearth and the hissing of ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... "to tell me whether the father of your child is white or black." I hesitated. "Answer me this instant!" he exclaimed. I did answer. He sprang upon me like a wolf, and grabbed my arm as if he would have broken it. "Do you love him?" said he, in a hissing tone. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... directly overhead with a mighty sound that shook the earth and sent Scamp bounding out of his path in terror. Then down came the rain. It was as though a million buckets had been emptied upon him; it fell in livid, hissing sheets and walls, taking strange shapes, like pillars and columns that came from a dim nowhere and rushed past him into the gray void behind. He was drenched ere he could have turned in his saddle; his eyes were filled with rain, it ran dripping from his soaking hat brim and coursed down his ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... rolled down a few steps, and, bursting, tore up the whole stair, leaving only a deep gulf between us and the portal. The women fled back through the apartment. I now regarded all as lost; and expecting the roof to come down every moment on my head, and hearing nothing round me but the bursting and hissing of those horrible instruments of havoc, I hurried through the chambers, in the hope of finding some casement from which I might reach the ground. They were all lofty and difficult of access, but I at length ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... mouth the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night, when I was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key should be placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a loud whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing of the snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the place whence the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged with all his force a blow on my unfortunate head. When he had fetched ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... branch fell hissing into a little pool at the bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... and the two dear, anxious faces looking up at him with glistening eyes. He stood a full minute without speaking—and you know how long a minute's silence seems on the stage; then he took three steps forward, sank upon a low chair beside the table, and exclaimed in a hissing voice: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... on. The flame rose and fell, reflecting itself in her agonised eyes; the hissing sound of her terrible maledictions, and no words of mine can convey how terrible they were, ran round the walls and died away in little echoes, and the fierce light and deep gloom alternated themselves on the white and dreadful form stretched ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... the midday halt, a hissing passed through the air, which made Mrs. Weldon very uneasy, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... was no light jest of the weather bureau. His first January no'theaster taught him that. Lying in his bed at one o'clock in the morning, feeling that bed tremble beneath him as the wind gripped the sturdy gables of the old house, while the snow beat in hissing tumult against the panes, and the great breakers raved and roared at the foot of the bluff—this was an experience for Galusha. The gray dawn of the morning brought another, for, although it was no longer snowing, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... to know anything of the work. It is moreover characteristic of the people of Copenhagen, that when a new piece is announced, they do not say, "I am glad of it," but, "It will probably be good for nothing; it will be hissed off the stage." That hissing-off plays a great part, and is an amusement which fills the house; but it is not the bad actor who is hissed, no, the author and the composer only are the criminals; for them the scaffold is erected. Five minutes ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... who had three daughters and one son-in-law. One day, as the mother was cooking some meat, she threw a clot of blood into the pot containing the meat. The pot began to boil, and then there issued from it a peculiar hissing noise. The old woman looked into the pot, and was surprised to see that the blood-clot had become transformed into a little boy. Quickly he grew, and, in a few moments, he sprang from the pot, a full-grown young man." Kutoyis, as the youth was named, became an ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... visible on a hill by the springs of Amymone, where its lair was found. Here Iolaus left the horses stand. Hercules leaped from the chariot and sought with burning arrows to drive the many-headed serpent from its hiding place. It came forth hissing, its nine heads raised and swaying like the branches of a ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... words drifted gently away, and in their wake followed an awkward silence. The logs were hissing in the fire. I could hear the clock in the hall outside, and the beating of the vines against the window panes. It was no sound, certainly, that made me whirl around to look behind me,—some instinct—that was all. There was Brutus, not two feet from my back, with my father's cloak over ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... three blue furrows on Gregory's shoulders. Ivan took another spring, and with the same skill as before he again enveloped the culprit's body with the hissing thong, ever taking care that the tip of it should not touch him. Gregory uttered another shriek, and Ivan counted "Two." The blood now began to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... fiercely and restlessly anxious, at moments grew dull as if with exhaustion. On the day before, while circling at her viewless height above a lake far inland, she had marked a huge lake-trout, basking near the surface of the water. Dropping upon it with half-closed, hissing wings, she had fixed her talons in its back. But the fish had proved too powerful for her. Again and again it had dragged her under water, and she had been almost drowned before she could unloose the terrible grip of her claws. ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... broke great seas, the waves hissing and foaming as though angry at being cheated of their prey. The storm-swept waters seemed to seize on the rope, as though to pull it beneath the billows. The anchor that held the rope which passed over the "shears" seemed to be pulling ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton

... betrays the "Cockney" as a faulty knowledge of sporting terms. The young lady at the left has just returned from the hunting field hand-in-hand with the dashing "lead," who happens to be an eligible billionaire. Her hostess, the mother of the sub-deb at the right, has greeted her by hissing, "S—o—o! I see you've had a good day's hunting!" The use of this unsportsmanlike expression—in stead of the correct "Hope you had a good run," or "Where did you find?"—at once discloses the hostess's mean origin and the young lady ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... stirre out of the chamber; and the host of the house ran out of doores, thinking the house would fall. The students lay neere unto the hall wherein Doctor Faustus lay, and they heard a mighty noyse and hissing, as if the hall had beene full of snakes and adders. With that, the hall-doore flew open, wherein Doctor Faustus was, that he began to cry for helpe, saying, Murther, murther! but it came forth with halfe a voyce, hollowly: shortly after, they ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... least dislike of the business. In the evening as I was going on board the Vice-Admiral, the General began to fire his guns, which he did all that he had in the ship, and so did all the rest of the Commanders, which was very gallant, and to hear the bullets go hissing over our heads as we were in the boat. This done and finished my Proclamation, I returned to the Nazeby, where my Lord was much pleased to hear how all the fleet took it in a transport of joy, showed me a private letter of the King's to him, and another from the Duke ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... down in utter prostration, and his friends heard no other sound from him than the hissing of his breath between ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... as if about to kiss the very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them. Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into the water of the brooks or ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... more pretentious affair, the refreshments are served in the dining-room instead of in the drawing-room or outdoors as is sometimes done at simpler teas. The hissing urn always holds the place of honor (except on very warm days when iced tea or iced coffee may be served). Trays of thinly sliced bread are on the table, and dainty sandwiches in large variety. ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... strength of desperation, by that means seized hold upon the lowest rung. With my friend's arm round me I realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed. My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us. Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam which I had ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... was due at the tank at 11.15 P. M. At eleven, Tom and I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the other. As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and the steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over. I would have worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been out of that affair right then. Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me that they felt the same way the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... aching pain in her body lulling the aching pain of her mind. Gradually the white disc of the moon expanded before her and blotted out all active consciousness. Slowly the fierce serpents withdrew their hissing heads again. Slowly the ideal she had fought for lifted itself again within her. She began to feel more like her old self, only strangely exhausted and sorrowful. She was old, so old; weary, so weary. Hours went by. She passed ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... whenever their heads became visible. Clemenceau, the embodiment of the dauntless spirit of France, stood forth the very soul of patriotic ardor and indomitable courage. But the serpents were there, crawling hidden in the grass, ever hissing, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... opened fire—not upon the foe, among whose close masses they would have wrought execution as terrible as it would have been unnecessary—but away over their heads. The Masai stayed for only one volley. When the guns thundered, the rockets, hissing and crackling, swept over their heads, and, above all, the strange creatures with four feet and two heads rushed upon them, they turned in an instant and fled away howling. Our artillery sent another volley after them, to increase their panic, if possible; while ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... down. These locks looked like horns, and added to the combative expression of his countenance. He was fiery in his nature, excessively spirited, and ejaculated, rather than spoke to an audience; his speeches consisting of a series of short, hissing, spluttering sentences, by no means devoid of talent of a certain kind. Add to all this, that the gentleman was an Irish Attorney, and an Orangeman, and the reader may easily suppose that ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... lost her aunt, and is all alone; she is exposed to the power of, I know not what enemy. Can it be Mercanson? He may have spoken of my conversation with him, and seeing that I was jealous of Dalens, may have guessed the rest. Assuredly, he is the snake who has been hissing about my well-beloved flower. I must punish him, and I must repair the wrong I have done Brigitte. Fool that I am! I think of leaving her when I ought to consecrate my life to her, to the expiation of my sins, to rendering her ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... seemed to explode directly ahead. A blinding flare swept the ground, a hissing crackle was drowned in an overwhelming roar of thunder. Bob dodged, and his horse whirled. When he had mastered both his animal and himself he spurred back. California John had reined in his mount. Not twenty feet ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... Dodge, winding a needleful of No. 20 thread off the spool, with the hissing sound familiar to the ears of the seamstress, and breaking it off with a snap, "I think it's the very best thing that could have been done. The minute I saw that girl's face last sewing-circle, I knew she'd make out to save that boy. Mark my words, he'll outlive us all yet! I ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... bark, and instantly the seeming log shoved out four feet, and exhibited to our astonished eyes a hideous crocodile fully twelve feet long, and evidently of prodigious strength. Still more terrific did he look when he began to turn round in a circle, hissing and clanking his bony jaws, with his ugly green eye intently fixed on us. I felt a strong inclination to run away, for it seemed to me that he might make a rush and snap one of us up in a moment; but as Nowell and the natives stood ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... were first employed on their shores, they were filled with astonishment. When the heated iron was hammered on the anvil, and the sparks flew among them, they fancied it was spitting at them, and were frightened, as they also were with the hissing occasioned by immersing it in water; yet they were delighted to see the facility with which a bar of iron was thus converted into hatchets, adzes, fish-spears, fish-hooks, and other things. Pomare, entering one ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... to confound a plain man with dark words, till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what I have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and so they burn the wick at t'other end too. They bleed the bled. Now at fever's heels comes ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... from two to six feet, beautifully variegated with different colours, but the most remarkable circumstance attending him is a natural noise that he produces with every motion of his tail, and which, too, occasions his name. I soon destroyed my hissing foe, and, taking courage for the first time to kindle a fire, I roasted him upon the embers, and made the most delicious meal I ever remember ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... all day is about to leave us, a lonely watcher was standing by the angry swelling river in the most desolate part of the pass, at a place where a vast confusion of formless rocks crosses the stream, torturing it into a hundred boiling pools and hissing cascades. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... fire. The lurid glare from the white fires that curled and writhed under the crown-sheet flung wide upon flying right-of-way and the woods on either side, and played with the swirling ribbon of steam that was hissing back from the dome. Bathed in the blinding light, the fireman stood for a space, swinging his scoop with pendulum precision from fire-box to coal-tank and back again; then the ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... "You long for me to be gone," the audience applauded vociferously. To protect Sophie, Marie Antoinette sat in a box on several nights and stemmed the storm of disapproval, but in the end even the presence of the queen herself was insufficient to quell the hissing. One sad story completes the picture. In 1785, when her financial troubles were beginning, her two sons, who bore her no love, called for money. She had none to give them. "There are two horses left in the stable," she said. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... passed during the forenoon, over three or four swampy places, covered with reeds, rushes, and rank grass, which were inhabited by myriads of frogs of prodigious size. On crossing the streams, they were invariably saluted by a loud and unaccountable hissing, as if from a multitude of serpents. They could not account for this extraordinary noise in any other way, than by supposing it to have proceeded from some species of insects, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... the country that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening—how can such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets on voting days and mix ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... aside, Mary descended to the kitchen, where she found the table arranged with more than usual care. An old red waiter, which was only used on special occasions, was placed near Miss Grundy, and on it stood the phenomenon of a hissing coffee-pot: and what was stranger, still, in the place of the tin basin from which Mary had recently been accustomed to eat her bread and milk, there was now a cup and saucer, which surely must have been intended for her. Her wonder was at its height when Miss ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... culinary art in previous campaigns, and we had all the pots, kettles, and pans provided for such occasions. A fire was made in the woods, near the centre of the island, where it was hoped the smoke would not betray us, and potatoes and ham were soon hissing in the pans. About twenty of the students were employed in this work,—peeling potatoes, and preparing the pork and bacon,—while only four of the most experienced were intrusted with the care of the ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... bosom old, Again she felt that bosom cold, And drew in her breath with a hissing sound: Whereat the Knight turned wildly round, 460 And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid With eyes ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... grey. His physical attraction, in short, remained unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the pleasantly hissing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... ten paces before he heard the puffing of the express. Then he ran for the curve, but it was too late. In a horrible minute the engine of the express had telescoped the standing train, and the shrieks of the mangled passengers mingled with the hissing escape of steam. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... upright, her little dumpling hands folded one within the other, the long transparent nails making deep indentures in the soft flesh, and her gray eyes emitting green gleams of scorn. The answer her husband sought came at length, and was characteristic of the woman. Hissing out the words from between her teeth, she replied, "When I take 'Lena Rivers into my family for my husband and son to make love to, alternately, I shall be ready for the lunatic asylum ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... chance than in consequence of any intelligent treatment, and this confirms their false belief that they are healed by means of these ceremonies, not considering that, for two who are thus cured, ten others die on account of the noise, great hubbub and hissing, which are rather calculated to kill than cure a sick person. But that they expect to recover their health by this noise, and we on the contrary by silence and rest, shows how the devil does everything ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... been open with him from the first? His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to the quick. But he was not looking at her. His stare was directed to Heemskirk, who, with his back to him and with his hands still up to his face, was hissing curses through his teeth, and (she saw him in profile) glaring at her balefully with one black, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... soul. He feels as if he lived at the Land's-End, or had emigrated to the back woods of America. All the world goes at a gallop, and he creeps. Finally, he is removed to Hanwell, and endeavours to persuade Dr Conolly that he is one of Stephenson's engines, and goes hissing and spurting in fierce imitation of Rapid or Infernal. And all this is the natural consequence of having settled in an ancient city inaccessible to rails. A list could easily be made out that would astonish any one who had not reflected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... annoy us. Anyway, we expected to reach camp just after noon, so a little delay about dinner didn't seem so bad. We had entered the desert by noon; the warm, red sands fell away from the wheels with soft, hissing sounds. Occasionally a little horned toad sped panting along before us, suddenly darting aside to watch with bright, cunning eyes as we passed. Some one had placed a buffalo's skull beside a big bunch of sage and on the sage a splendid pair of elk's antlers. We saw many ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... me mad If hissing steam was all I heard; But there's a boy who calls me dad Who daily keeps my courage spurred; And there's a little girl who waits Each night for all that I may bring, And I'm the guardian of their fates, Which makes this job ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... and round and dim-low globes of flame. And, scarce-perceived, the clouds' tall banners streamed. Out of the petty wars, the daily shame, Beauty strove suddenly, and rose, and flowered.... I gripped my coat and plunged where awnings lowered. Made one with hissing blackness, caught, embraced, By splendor and by striving and swift haste — Spring coming in with thunderings and strife — I stamped the ground in ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... an uproar. Members leaped from their seats and jammed the aisles, shouting, cheering, hissing, catcalling. The clerk was powerless ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... with a noise like that of fifty pieces of artillery, and blazing fragments of the doomed vessel were seen careering through the air in every direction. It lasted but an instant; the red glow that had lit up the sea for miles around vanished; the burning fragments fell hissing into the water; and, with the exception of a vibration in the air, all was calm as before. The felucca had disappeared; Groslow and his men ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... the mass of clouds which had been collecting to the eastward, and gradually approaching, now came driving up bodily across the sky at a rapid rate—the dark waters below it, hitherto so smooth and calm, presented a sheet of snow-white foam, hissing and bubbling as if it were turned up and impelled onward by some gigantic besom. Ada, as she gazed with feelings of mingled terror and admiration, saw it in one long line near the brig—it reached her side—the white foam flew ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... All about her she heard the busy noises of the country morning; soft voices, men's calls, the stamping of farm horses, the clatter of the household ware, the splash of cleansing water poured, the hissing kettle; but she saw no one. It seemed to her that eyes were upon her and that pauses in the cheery bustle followed her as she walked, but whenever she stopped and tried to meet these eyes there was no one. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... young gentleman," said the latter, coming close up to Reginald's side and hissing the words very disagreeably in his ear, "when I ask a question in this shop I expect to get an answer; mind that. And what's more, I'll have one, or you leave this place in five minutes. Come, now, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... captain poured out the liquor, a fall of several tons of water on the deck shook the entire ship, and one of the passengers in the hurricane-house, opening a door to ascertain the cause, the sound of the hissing waters and of the roaring winds came fresher and more distinct into the cabin. Mr. Truck cast an eye at the tell-tale over his head to ascertain the course of the ship, and paused just an instant, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... the five ends of quick match which were his especial care. It was swiftly done, the lighting of the whole occupying less than half a minute; yet before the last five were ignited the still air was heavily charged with the fumes of gunpowder and there was a sound of hissing and sizzling suggestive of a whole army of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... din Sweeps down its fathomless whirlpools through the gloom, When God with tumult of a mighty storm Hath palled the sky in cloud from verge to verge, When thunders crash all round, when thick and fast Gleam lightnings from the huddling clouds, when fields Are flooded as the hissing rain descends, And all the air is filled with awful roar Of torrents pouring down the hill-ravines; So Memnon toward the shores of Hellespont Before him hurled the Argives, following hard Behind them, slaughtering ever. Many a man Fell in the dust, and left his life in blood 'Neath Aethiop ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... halfway across and congratulating himself upon the ease of the achievement of this portion of his task when there arose from the depths directly in his path a hideous reptile, which, with wide-distended jaws, bore down upon him, hissing shrilly. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... his unwelcome friend in this highly unprincipled manner, and strolled on to the pier full of expectation. Steamers ply pretty frequently on this particular lake, so he had not to wait very long. The little Cygnet soon came hissing up, and the moment the gangway was placed Don stepped on board, with tail ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... a kind of a lamp out on the floor beyond, and it burned with a sputtering and a hissing and a roaring, and it threw a big bluish kind of a flame straight out, like water out ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... a hissing sound, and a thud followed in lightning-like succession. Topanashka bends over, and at the same time tumbles forward on his face. There he lies, the left cheek and shoulder on the ground. The left arm, with which he has sought to support the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... thought, at first, that our messenger must have been drowned even in crossing the inner bar, for we well-nigh lost sight of him in the hissing yeast of waves in which he and his catamaran appeared only at intervals, tossing about like a cork. But by far the most difficult part of his task remained after he had reached the comparatively smooth space ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... of thunder, the hissing of the descending rain, the wind which blew in angry gusts, prevented all conversation until nearly an hour had elapsed, when the strife began to diminish. It was a sad and mournful sight to gaze upon the remains of departed ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... waist, for the north wind's grip And keener sting of the constable's whip, The blood that followed each hissing blow Froze as it ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... success; and of two discharged by him, the first spear is fastened in the earth, the second in the middle of his back. There is no delay; while he rages, while he is wheeling his body round, and pouring forth foam, hissing with the fresh blood, the giver of the wound comes up, and provokes his adversary to fury, and buries his shining hunting spear in his opposite shoulder. His companions attest their delight in an encouraging shout, and in their right hands endeavour to grasp the conquering right ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... wisp of straw and began rubbing down the old mare, and hissing over his work as if he wished to consider the conversation as ended. And Sylvia, who had strung herself up in a momentary fervour of gratitude to make the generous offer, was not sorry to have it refused, and went back planning what kindness she could ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Imperial!—Get out of my sunshine, Moses, you d—d little Israelite!—Consols! Consols! &c.' ... The noise of the screech-owl, the howling of the wolf, the barking of the mastiff, the grunting of the hog, the braying of the ass, the nocturnal wooing of the cat, the hissing of the snake, the croaking of toads, frogs, and grasshoppers—all these in unison could not be more hideous than the noise which these beings make in the Stock Exchange. And as several of them get into ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... crew, Contending warm with amicable skill; While they of Durius raced along the beach And scattered mud and jeers on all behind. The strength of Baetis too removed the helm And stripped the corslet off, and staunched the foot Against the mossy maple, while they tore Their quivering lances from the hissing wound. Others push forth the prows of their compeers, And the wave, parted by the pouncing beak, Swells up the sides, and closes far astern: The silent oars now dip their level wings, And weary with strong ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... not ready to start yet; he was enamoured of the unaccustomed comforts of a dry sleeping-place and a fire blown about by no wind and into which fell no hissing raindrops. Not for two days more would he consent to set out on the return journey, and if he could have persuaded me our stay at Riolama ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... mount by due degrees Into brown uplands, stretching high away To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray. Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay, Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar, And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar." ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... upset, and what followed I don't know, as I was unfamiliar with the surroundings — but there was a good deal of it. I heard a click — had no idea what it was — and then the same movement back again to the lamp. Of course, he now fell over the stool he had upset before. Meanwhile there was a hissing sound, and a stifling smell of paraffin. I was thinking of making my escape through the door, when suddenly, just as I suppose it happened on the first day of Creation, in an instant there was light. But it was a light that defies description; ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... frequented that spot. Seated about a hundred yards from the foot of the rock, I eagerly awaited its appearance as it came to visit its nest with food for its young. I was warned of its approach by the loud hissing of the eaglets, which crawled to the extremity of the cavity to seize the prey—a fine fish. Presently the female, always the larger among rapacious birds, arrived, bearing also a fish. With more ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... and frequently two or three being joined together, such words we found difficult to pronounce. I observed that they could pronounce most of our words with great ease. They express their admiration by hissing like ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... continued O'Hearn, "was a shot fired from a window or door in the second story of the storehouse just back of the dock where the Spanish gunboats were lying. A shell then went hissing over our heads. Then the firing began from the gunboat at the wharf, and from the shore. The effect of shell and heavy shot the first time a man is under fire is ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves, and move as if to ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... night of which the snake had told her, the princess got four large bowls of milk and sugar, and put one in each corner of the room, and stood in the doorway waiting. At midnight there was a great hissing and rustling from the direction of the river, and presently the ground appeared to be alive with horrible writhing forms of snakes, whose eyes glittered and forked tongues quivered as they moved on in the direction of the princess's house. Foremost among them was a huge, repulsive scaly ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... through the hall, wherein the barons were seated according to their degrees. She had, they say, four reasons for remembering the impudent, huge, squinting, yellow-haired young fellow whom she had encountered at the pool of Haranton. She blushed, and spoke with her father in the whistling and hissing language which the Apsarasas use among themselves: and her ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... honest toilers? Where The gravid mistress of their care? A busy scene, indeed, he sees, But not a sign or sound of bees. Worms of the riper grave unhid By any kindly coffin lid, Obscene and shameless to the light, Seethe in insatiate appetite, Through putrid offal, while above The hissing blow-fly seeks his love, Whose offspring, supping where they supt, Consume corruption ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... They lean heavily on sticks, their bodies are twisted and maimed, but their faces are shining with pride and joy. The French General draws his sword and addresses them. One catches words like 'honneur' and 'patrie.' They lean forward on their crutches, hanging on every syllable which comes hissing and rasping from under that heavy white moustache. Then the medals are pinned on. One poor lad is terribly wounded and needs two sticks. A little girl runs out with some flowers. He leans forward and tries to kiss her, but the crutches slip ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... command for a clear track as far as the wires would work, and within fifteen minutes the great engine with its single coach dashed across the bridge and plunged down the grade toward Sing Sing, roaring, hissing, screaming its warnings above the splash and howl of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... bar was lifted from the anvil and plunged, hissing, into the bucket beside the forge; above the bucket a cloud of steam rose and showed clearly against the brilliant square of the door, and the peculiar scent which came from the iron went sharply to the nostrils of Jasper. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... boys. There was the hollow sound of a pail banged against something hard, and mingled with cries, shouts, laughter, and ejaculations of pain I felt myself fall upon the path, to be kicked and trampled on by someone contending, for there were slaps, and thuds, and blows, the panting and hissing of breath; and then the clanging of bells near and bells far, buzzing in ears, the rush and scuffling of feet, with shouts of derision, defiance, and laughter, and then, last of all, a curious cloud of mist seemed to close me in like the fog ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... delicately white napery and curtains. The saloon on the ground-floor opened sweetly into a little garden, with its fountain, its bit of rock-work, and its gods and nymphs of stone. The apartment had a peculiarly comfortable air at breakfast-time. The hissing urn, flanked by the tea-caddy; the rich brown coffee, the delicious butter, and the not less delicious bread, the produce of the plains around, not unnaturally white, as with us, but golden, like the wheat when it waves in the autumnal sun; and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... his awful hand, Wept o'er poor Niniveh, and her dull band, 'Till Fools like Weeds rose up, and choak'd the Land. Long, long he slumber'd e'er th' avenging hour; For dubious Mercy half o'er-rul'd his pow'r: 'Till the wing'd bolt, red-hissing from above Pierc'd Millions thro'——For such the Wrath of Jove. Hell, Chaos, Darkness, tremble at the sound, And prostrate Fools bestrow the vast Profound: No Charon wafts 'em from the farther Shore, Silent they sleep, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... Long before they gained the ridge the storm was upon them—first a few heavy drops, then a downpour which made the earth smoke again. In two minutes the scouts were wet to the skin, and the storm lasted twenty. Then it raced past them, hissing and roaring, and left them tramping down the farther side of the ridge, their boots full of water, and not a dry thread about them save for the blankets stowed in the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... kitchen frying doughnuts for breakfast. She was a comfortable figure as she stood over the brimming "spider" with her three-pronged fork poised in the air. She turned the yellow rings in the hissing fat until they were nut-brown, then dropped them for a moment into a bowl of powdered sugar, from which they issued the most delicious conspirators against the human stomach that can be found in the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... did succeed in catching one in his claws the others would throw caution to the winds and all be down upon him at once. He sat there, straight and stiff, for a while, snapping his terrible beak and hissing at them like an angry cat. Till at last, realizing that there was no more chance of a peaceful sleep for him there, he spread his huge, downy wings and sailed off smoothly to seek some more secluded neighborhood. The whole flock pursued him, with their tormenting and abuse, for perhaps ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... solitary horseman had also come into the picture and was riding slowly across. The desire of murder rose in my heart. Now for a bag! Bang! I jumped at least a foot, disarranging the telescope, but there was plenty of time to reset it while the shell was hissing and roaring its way through nearly five miles of air. I found the kraal again and the group still there, but all motionless and alert, like startled rabbits. Then they began to bob into the earth, one after the other. Suddenly, in ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... than three feet. Mary gave all of us the same hallucination. Her first try was a pretty sad kind of a snake, but it was bigger than the nine-by-twelve rug it squirmed on, and was making right for Elmer's legs, hissing ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett

... had gone away, and Captain MacWhirr could feel against his ear the pulsation of the engines, like the beat of the ship's heart. Mr. Rout's voice down there shouted something distantly. The ship pitched headlong, the pulsation leaped with a hissing tumult, and stopped dead. Captain MacWhirr's face was impassive, and his eyes were fixed aimlessly on the crouching shape of the second mate. Again Mr. Rout's voice cried out in the depths, and the pulsating beats ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... suppressed laughter, hands are clasped in warm affection, young kind voices ring one above the other; while a little farther, at the end of the snug room, other hands, young too, fly with unskilled fingers over the keys of the old piano, and the Lanner waltz cannot drown the hissing ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... having a light in his hand that looked like a lantern—went and unlocked Jess's stable, and patted her pretty head. At first she started, but soon she grew quiet and pleased, and let him do what he chose with her. He began rubbing her down, making the same funny hissing with his mouth that Bill did, and all grooms do—I never could find out why. But Jess evidently liked it, and ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... condensed mist. The shuddering of the ship with her motors going dead slow. The tinkling, muted notes of the piano inside the saloon. The washing and hissing of the waves overside. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... raising himself on his stirrups, made at Codadad with his dreadful cimeter. The blow was so violent, that it would have put an end to the young prince, had not he avoided it by a sudden spring. The cimeter made a horrible hissing in the air: but, before the black could have time to make a second blow, Codadad struck him on his right arm with such force that he cut it off. The dreadful cimeter fell with the hand that held it, and the black, yielding under ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... midst of their lightsomeness, Triffitt, who faced a mirror, started, dropped his cigarette, upset his liqueur glass and turned pale. For an instant he clutched the tablecloth, staring straight in front of him; then with a great effort he controlled his emotion and with a cautious hissing of his breath, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... foresails before the watch went below. The wind was on the quarter, strong and steady. Almost immediately the good steamer felt the canvas, leaning gently over to leeward, adding another mile to her great speed. The sea was black, and the air seemed to be full of the sounds of waves breaking and hissing. Ahead the mast-head and the side-lights shone down on the face of the waters and lighted up an occasional white-capped wave. In the air, brisk and masterful, there was a sense of purpose and tension which sailors understand, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... type of man hitherto known to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus and Galileo, he was immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver of perpetual motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence of banishment in the wrong case, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot









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