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More "Hitting" Quotes from Famous Books



... sank to the floor with a groan, his pistol clattering harmlessly on the rough planks. In a flash Eddie retrieved it, dropping behind the prostrate form of the stricken gangster. Gus had fired and missed. Now he dared not shoot for fear of hitting his chief. Eddie's gun spat fire and the big German clapped his hands over his heart, his good eye widening in surprise. Then he reeled and pitched forward on his face. A feminine cry sounded from the adjoining room and Eddie's heart skipped ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... the way to the Pennsylvania Station at Euclid Avenue to meet her husband, who was coming from New York. The street at Payne Avenue and East 30th St. had just been flushed; and, when Mrs. Sheldon endeavored to turn out toward the car tracks to avoid hitting Goldrick's wagon, which was just turning into Payne Avenue, the car skidded ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... self, of angry or mastering aspect," and to blows and restraint by submissive behavior. When weak from wounds, sickness, or fatigue, the tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can outyell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive at a status of mastery or submission ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... not able to repair even in that rough weather. The fact is, most of the shot had touched the waves, and had flown off from their varying surfaces at every angle that offered. One of the secrets that Sir Gervaise had taught his captains was to avoid hitting the surface of the sea, if possible, unless that surface was reasonably smooth, and the object intended to be injured was near at hand. Then the French admiral received the first fire—always the most ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... face under the straw flat grew more and more sulky and distressed, her forehead wrinkled, and her mouth pouted. She forgot to swing her muslin delaine skirts gracefully, and flounced along hitting ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... aspect; but it is manifest even in small things, and every reader has a daily opportunity of observing it. For instance, if two little dogs are playing together—and what a genial and charming sight it is—and a child of three or four years joins them, it is almost inevitable for it to begin hitting them with a whip or stick, and thereby show itself, even at that age, l'animal mechant par excellence. The love of teasing and playing tricks, which is common enough, may be traced to the same source. For instance, if a man has expressed his annoyance ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... vehicle. However we reassured him, and all walked up the hill together, the donkey pulling the sled, which was tied to him with a very primitive arrangement of ropes, the sled constantly swinging round and hitting him on the legs, which he naturally ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... stiff-legged. Marianne sympathetically felt that impact jar home in her brain but the rider kept his seat. Worse was coming. For sixty seconds the horse was in an ecstasy of furious and educated bucking, flinging itself into odd positions and hitting the earth. Each whip-snap of that stinging struggling body jarred the rider shrewdly. Yet he clung in his place until the fight ended with startling suddenness. The grey dropped out of the air in a last effort and ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... first time, Willard's team had been, until to-day, composed entirely of students. On the other hand, Mansfield had been playing with Durham all spring, and to his excellent fielding and hitting was largely due the fact that she had won the second ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... study spools and left him in the office, sir," said Tom. "Then we went for a swim in the pool and had a bite to eat before hitting the sack. That's all." ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... middle of a canoe, fore and aft as the seamen call it, or from stem to stern; then plying about the river they make a great noise, beating the shores with their paddles, and then the pilchards, to fly from the other fish, leap into the canoe, where hitting against the partition they fall in, and by this means they often take vast numbers[15]. Several sorts of fish pass along the coast in vast shoals, whereof immense quantities are taken; and these will keep a long time after being roasted or dried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... duel is ended by a party being hit, it is the duty of the second to the party so hit, to announce the fact to the second of the party hitting, who will forthwith tender any assistance he can command to the disabled principal. If the party challenging, hit the challengee, it is his duty to say he is satisfied, and will leave the ground. If the challenger be hit, upon the challengee being informed of ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson

... fat in its body. From its greater fierceness and wariness, it holds its place in a district much longer than its more timid and better-conditioned neighbor. Mr. Oswell was once stalking two of these beasts, and, as they came slowly to him, he, knowing that there is but little chance of hitting the small brain of this animal by a shot in the head, lay expecting one of them to give his shoulder till he was within a few yards. The hunter then thought that by making a rush to his side he might succeed in escaping, but the rhinoceros, too quick for that, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... everybody a recital which, well managed, would cover Porthos with ridicule. As to the astute Aramis, he did not entertain much dread of him; and supposing he should be able to get so far, he determined to dispatch him in good style or at least, by hitting him in the face, as Caesar recommended his soldiers do to those of Pompey, to damage forever the beauty of which ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... downward. With one hand he succeeded in loosening the noose from about his neck, while with the other he struck out, hitting an emissary a fearful swinging blow that sent the fellow staggering backward, to fall against the lever ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... thought he, "that I can blind the brute? Ha! By thunder, I have it!" exclaimed he, hitting upon an idea that seemed to ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... the critic. "I may or may not be your 'dear Lawrence,' but I know you like—like a book," he added, hitting by accident on a very excusable simile. "You are an old dog that is not likely to learn new tricks. I shall send this MSS. back to Miss Fern, myself, enclosing a letter warning her to have nothing ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... die' and its 'turning up ace' as two events, the former is called 'the event' and the latter 'the way of its happening.' And these expressions may easily be extended to cover relations of distinct events; as when two men shoot at a mark and we desire to represent the probability of both hitting the bull's eye together, each shot may count as an event (denominator) and the coincidence of 'bull's-eyes' as the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... by darkness, the French believe this is more than compensated for by the fact that, being comparatively safe from attack by enemy aircraft or from the fire of anti-aircraft guns, the raiders can fly at a much lower altitude and consequently have a much better chance of hitting their targets. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... in his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... Kuzaks diving with a vigor, as if from a rocket airlock, hitting the dirt with a thud, scrambling up, opening and spreading the great bundle, attaching the air hose. Little Lester hopping in to help fit wire rigging, most of it still imaginary. A friendly dog coming over to sniff, with a look of mild wonder in ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... barrel at a spot he judged was midway between a pair of eyes that glowed, and wondering where his foresight might be. It struck him all at once that it was quite impossible to see the foresight—that he must actually touch what he would hit if he would be at all sure of hitting it. He remembered, too, in that instant—as a born soldier does remember things—that in the dark an attacking enemy is probably more frightened than his foe. His father had told it him when he was a little lad afraid of bogies; ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... to the end of the stope, flattened them and himself on the ground. A long wait, while the rumbling came closer, still closer; then, in the distance, a light appeared, shining from a side of the tunnel. A clanging noise, followed by clattering sounds, as though of steel rails hitting against each other. Finally the tramming once more,—and the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... the hall and found a tall, dark fellow bowling pebbles aimlessly about the quadrangle. I bowled a pebble, and hitting him on the back, had to apologize. It is rather odd, now I come to think about it, that the first words I ever said to Jack Ward were in the nature of an apology. We strolled out of the quadrangle into ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... great advantage that a row of fine cities lies at their mercy, while the Italians can do nothing without injuring their own kith and kin across the border. This dropping of explosives on the chance of hitting one soldier among fifty victims seems to me the most monstrous development of the whole war, and the one which should be most sternly repressed in future international legislation—if such a thing as international law still exists. The Italian headquarter town, which I will call Nemini, was ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, until presently, through the sheer labour of hitting, he, too, grew weary. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... 'im, boys——", and at once they were upon him. Hogg's face rose before Brandon's, extended, magnified in all its details. Brandon hit out and then was conscious of blows upon his face, of some one kicking him in the back, of himself hitting wildly, of the fire leaping mountains-high behind him, of a woman's cry, of something trickling down into his eye, of sudden contact with warm, naked, sweating flesh, of a small pinched face, the eyes almost closed, rising before him and falling again, of a shout, then sudden ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... say he ain't good enough for her. Maybe he is. But I 'ain't been realizing that she has growed up. When I found she was being courted it was like hitting a rock in a fairway. You are young, and you are around consid'able and know the actions of ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... idols, when it came about, took place very easily; they were no longer needed. The Arabs had come to believe in a god who dwelt in heaven and was the creator of the world, who ordained man's life with an irreversible decree, by whom the bitter and the sweet, both the hitting of the mark and the missing it, were alike fixed. The moral character of Allah was not markedly in advance of that of his people. What a man gains by robbery he calls the gift of Allah, while what is gained by industry is called by another name. Yet Allah is also felt by some ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... overt marks of favouritism; but he could not help showing the lad occasionally that he regarded him with especial interest as the son of a friend. Besides this claim upon his regard, there was something about the young man himself that pleased Mr Gibson. He was rash and impulsive, apt to speak, hitting the nail on the head sometimes with unconscious cleverness, at other times making gross and startling blunders. Mr. Gibson used to tell him that his motto would always be 'kill or cure,' and to this Mr. Coxe once made answer that he thought ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... fellow had foolishly put up his hands. A few blows passed and then—Jerry told what happened rather apologetically—"It was a pity, Roger. It wasn't altogether his fault, but he is a bounder. My fist struck his face, seemed to smear it, literally, all into a blot of red. It wasn't like hitting a man in the ring, it was like—like poking a bag full of dirty linen. The whole fabric seemed to give way. He toppled back, turned a complete somersault ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... It's chiefly myself I'm hitting at. But at least we journalists don't take ourselves solemnly; we know our stuff is babble to fill a moment. Novelists and poets don't always know that; they're apt to think it matters. And, of course, so far as any of ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... but a dyspeptic Old Age—that surely is fate hitting us below the belt! For with advancing years the love of adventure leaves us; the "Love of a Lifetime" becomes to us of more real consequence than our pet armchair—but the love of a good dinner, that, at least, can make the everyday of an octogenarian well worth living. Young people little ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... sure," admitted Donald. "I just caught a glimpse as the torch fell among them, but it was so quickly extinguished by the wriggling mass I only shot once for fear of hitting you." ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... and my mode of life were in some degree changed. It is indescribable how providently Bendel continued to conceal my defect. He was everywhere before me and with me; foreseeing everything, hitting on contrivances, and, where unforeseen danger threatened, covering me quickly with his shadow, since he was taller and bulkier than I. Thus I ventured myself again among men, and began to play a part in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... forts, mines, torpedoes, submarines, and torpedo boats and destroyers. All of these together are efficient for defensive purposes, but they in no way supply the place of a thoroughly efficient navy capable of acting on the offensive; for parrying never yet won a fight. It can only be won by hard hitting, and an aggressive sea-going navy alone can do this hard hitting of the offensive type. But the forts and the like are necessary so that the Navy may be footloose. In time of war there is sure to be demand, under pressure, of fright, for the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... lovingly." These are the iconoclasms of the Goth and Vandal at their first advent to Rome. They remained to alter their mood, and extol what they had before assaulted; and so did my father, as we shall see presently. But at first he was sick and cold and uncomfortable; and he consoled himself by hitting out at everything, in the secret privacy of his diary, since opened to the world. With warmer weather came equanimity and kinder judgments; but there is a refreshing touch of truth and justice even ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... burned, not with shame and remorse, but with rage and all that sort of thing. He dropped off to sleep full of half-formed plans for asserting himself. He was awakened from a dream in which he was batting against Firby-Smith's bowling, and hitting it into space every time, by a slight sound. He opened his eyes, and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light of the window. He ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... playing rackets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and of the passing observer. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... jars in China," he said, measuring the advantages. "Moreover, there is no perspective. You don't have to walk two miles to see a friend. No. He is always there near you, so that you can't move a chair without hitting your ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... hunting in the central forest, at the foot of the hill which formed the principal ridge of Phina Island. Since the morning they had seen nothing pass but two or three antelopes through the high underwood, but at too great a distance for them to fire with any chance of hitting them. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... same windmill motion of the arms. But Liza could not stand against the other woman's weight; the blows came down heavy and rapid all over her face and head. She put up her hands to cover her face and turned her head away, while Mrs. Blakeston kept on hitting mercilessly. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... spectator must needs admit there was something else in Lady Dunstable's talk than mere intelligence or mere mannishness. There was undoubtedly something of "the good fellow," and, through all her hard hitting, a curious absence—in conversation—of the personal egotism she was quite ready to show in all the trifles of life. On the present occasion her main object clearly was to bring out Arthur Meadows—the new captive of her bow and spear; to find out what was in him; to see if he was worthy ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... right. I ain't hitting at you. I'm talking business, that's all. Now, if Vogel's right, this cribbing ought to have been here fourteen ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... field, and if it was impossible for him to demonstrate that he was right, it was equally impossible for anybody else to prove that he was wrong. So he stood his ground and by dint of continually hitting the same nail on the same head he had so greatly flourished that he was mentioned respectfully as far as the Lombard tongue was known, and at thirty-four had passed from the honourable but unpaid condition of Privat-dozent to that ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... lightly on one or two little points before plunging in medias res. In spite of what I have said about hard hitting, please remember that I have recommended my pupil only to suffer it gladly for his own sake. It will improve his temper and his play. On the other hand, hard, indiscriminate hitting is to be discountenanced for many reasons, and principally because, as a rule, a hard hit means a slow one. Always ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... happy, have forced love to set my thoughts on fire with fancy. Love, Rosalynde? becometh it women in distress to think of love? Tush, desire hath no respect of persons: Cupid is blind and shooteth at random, as soon hitting a rag as a robe, and piercing as soon the bosom of a captive as the breast of a libertine. Thou speakest it, poor Rosalynde, by experience; for being every way distressed, surcharged with cares, and overgrown with sorrows, yet amidst the heap of all these mishaps, love hath lodged ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... flowers"). John Cotton compared the singers improvising the fleurettes of this kind to revelers, who, having at length reached home, cannot tell by what route they got there. Jean de Muris reproved them in turn, saying: "You throw tones by chance, like boys throwing stones, scarcely one in a hundred hitting the mark, and instead of giving pleasure you cause anger and ill-humor." Machaut was born in Rethel, a province in Champagne, in 1284. He was still living in 1369. He was a poet and musician who occupied important positions in the service of several princes, and wrote a mass for the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... moved to the attack. The plan of this was good, for, with his attention fixed on three objects, the dinosaur seemed confused, and though Bearwarden and Ayrault had good angles from which to shoot, there was no possibility of their hitting each other. They therefore advanced steadily with their rifles half up. Though their own danger increased with each step, in the event of their missing, the chance of their shooting wild decreased, the idea being to reach the brain through the eye. Cortlandt's ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... hither and yon, in the grip of forces she could no more resist than can the floating leaf resist the waters of a cataract. And Cloud's brain was as addled as an egg by the vicious concussions which were hitting him from so many different directions and so nearly all at once. Nevertheless, with his one arm and his one leg and the few cells of his brain that were still at work, the physicist was still in ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose. 'Ohe. Mahbub Ali!' He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... that our four ships were to take their turns in succession, to endeavour to force this proud Portuguese either to bend or break. Our ship, the Charles, played her part first;[225] and ere she had been half an hour engaged with her adversary, a shot from the carack hitting one of our iron guns on the half-deck, flew all in pieces, dangerously wounding our new general, and three other mariners who stood beside him. Captain Pepwell's left eye was beaten out, and he received two other wounds in his head, and a third in his leg, a ragged piece of the broken ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... desert; hot, dry, sunny summers (June to August) and mild, rainy winters (December to February) along coast; cold weather with snow or sleet periodically hitting Damascus ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to his camp and lay awake a long time, not thinking about the Injun Jim mine, if you please, but wondering what he had done to make the Little Woman give him hell about his biscuits. Good Lord! Did she still blame him for hitting her with that double-jack?—when he knew and she knew that she had made him do it!—and if she didn't like his sour-dough biscuits, why in thunder had she kept telling him ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... it can't be allowed to go on. It's compromising; it don't lead to anything; and you're not the kind of man (you must feel it yourself) that I can allow my female relatives to have anything to do with. I hate saying this, St. Ives; it looks like hitting a man when he's down, you know; and I told the Major I very much disliked it from the first. However, it had to be said; and now it has been, and, between gentlemen, it shouldn't be necessary to ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the half-crazed Cummings was snapping the hammer on empty chambers. He had emptied his revolver without hitting anything more than wood ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... had been soaked in salt water, into his flesh. The maidens struck him with willows which left red welts on his white shoulders. The braves buried the blades of their tomahawks in the post as near as possible to his head without actually hitting him. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... in the world that can do more than thirty under water!" Hemmy Bowman added. "We're hitting a ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... it, Father—the hand and this scar on my face. I'd been hitting it up pretty lively and didn't realize where I was walking. The track wasn't wide enough for me and the train. One of us had to get off, and as the engine was the stronger of the two—well, you see the ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... flash of artillery blazed out from among the mangroves on either hand, and a perfect hailstorm of grape and langridge struck us, riddling our bulwarks, and tearing the foot of the mainsail and foresail to shreds, but, luckily, not hitting a soul of us; though how Courtenay and I escaped—it not being etiquette for either of us to seek the shelter of the bulwarks—heaven only knows; but we did. The guns were pointed so as to sweep the ship from stem to taffrail at about the level of the top of the bulwarks; and, had the men ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... snipe disappeared in the gloom of their shade. I saw R. on my right out in the full blaze of the sun get one of the three, then wisp after wisp got up and we began to bag them and to fear our cartridges would run out. But imagine the difficulty of hitting even those slow waterfowl with an eagle or vulture or a group of them, huge fellows, looking at you from fifteen to twenty yards off from the top of a low palm, or a kingfisher of vivid cerulean quivering in front of your nose, so fixed in its poise and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... man who aimed at so many nails, Sir George had a good average of hitting. But while he was talking so much, and in Europe so long, the biggest-business administration of which he was the chief went along on its own more or less mechanical momentum. By 1917 Canada had a total export trade of more than half a billion; with a possible yearly ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... which was another feather in the cap of the good little rifle. The skull of the rhinoceros is very curiously shaped; I had fired for the temple, and had struck the exact point at which I had aimed, but, instead of hitting the brain, the bullet had smashed the joint of the jaw, in which it stuck fast. I never have been able to understand why that powerful rifle was thus baffled, unless there had been some error in the charge of powder. This rhinoceros ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... get it. I'm not crazy about those broadside battles myself. You'd think they'd have found something better than these thirty caliber popguns by now, but the odds say we've got to throw as many different chunks of iron as we can, to have a chance of hitting anything, and even then it's twenty to one against us. You wouldn't have one chance in a thousand of scoring a hit with a bomb at that distance, even if they didn't spot it and take off. What you'd need ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande

... the "fighting spirit." This difference between French and British commanders had as much to do with the ultimate triumph of England on the sea as anything else. It retrieved many a blunder in strategy and tactics by sheer hard hitting. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... said the overwrought skipper, hitting the table heavily with his fist, "the old anchor's there for him ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... use to offer him any prize; he's had everything already. I found he was hitting too rapid a pace in the bigger schools, so I sent him down here. Thought he might do better in a quiet place. But his reports didn't show it, and the talk I've just had with the principal has pretty near discouraged me. I've bucked up against a good many ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... the low-arched window to make sure, and read: 'Francois Rabelais, maitre en toutes sciences et bonnes lettres.' Enough! She started up, hitting her head hard as she did so, and was not aware of it till she was in the cab and on her way to the shop of the famous Bos in the Rue ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... when there was mischief going, I was the ring-leader of the band. Father racked his head for days together to find a punishment that I should remember; but it was all no good: he wore out three or four birch-rods on my back; his hands pained him merely from hitting my hard head; and bread and water was a welcome change to me from the everyday monotony of potatoes and bread-and-butter. After a sound drubbing followed by half a day's fasting, I felt more like laughing than like crying; and, in half a while, all was forgotten and my wickedness began afresh ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... and music-halls. A tame kangaroo would have its forefeet fitted with boxing-gloves. Then when lightly punched by its trainer, it would, quite naturally, imitate the movements of the boxer, fending off blows and hitting out with its forelegs. One boxing kangaroo I had a bout with was quite a clever pugilist. It was very difficult to hit the animal, and its return blows were hard and ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... when Lily let him into her little parlor, all clean and vulgar and warm, and fragrant with blossoming bulbs, and gave him a greeting that was almost childlike in its laughing pleasure, his sense of physical well-being was a sort of hitting back ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... besieged were of most determined purpose, if some of the soldiers had not discharged their muskets, and a ball striking Sir Thomas in the shoulder wounded him sorely. A second fire sent a rain of balls through the open doorway, some of them hitting my Lord of Rookwood and the two Wrights, Christopher and John,—stretching them ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... wouldn't get in a thousand years, and I'd nearly got the life out of him. I'd stood for all his dirt weeks on end. He made his set at me because I'm green and college-bred. But he called me a 'son-of-a-bitch!' Think of it! Oh, I can't rest with that hitting my brain. It's no use. I'll have to break him. God, I'll break him yet. And I'll see you aren't around when I ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... were pressing so hard on the barrier, that we could not draw a bowstring. Besides, how might we shoot him without hitting thee, belike?" ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... but did not last long. He received a blow on the chin with the butt of a rifle, reeled, but continued to defend himself, hitting and biting his adversaries. At last, they succeeded in throwing him and, to stifle his ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... finger, is bound with thread to prevent splitting, and notched at the end for the string. At the point is a head of bone, or stone with a quill barb; iron arrow-blades obtained from the Bantu are also found. The arrow is usually 2 to 3 ft. long. The distance at which the Bushman can be sure of hitting is not great, about twenty paces. The arrows are always coated with a gummy poisonous compound which kills even the largest animal in a few hours. The preparation is something of a mystery, but its main ingredients appear to be the milky juice ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... back, by a big negro, and there has never been a burglary in Delaware since. We thought we would play a joke on pa, so the manager told pa that constables were looking for him to arrest him for cruelty to animals, for kicking a camel in the stomach, and hitting the camel with an iron bar, and that if pa didn't want to be publicly horsewhipped on the bare back he better skip out for Washington, D.C., where we would show in a couple of days, and wait ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... yea, and of peace also, so as to know when to hold fast and when to let go, when to press hard on the foe and when to cast the golden bridge before them. Of such wisdom have I nought, and know little but of hard hitting and how to keep the face to the foe in the stour. Moreover, though in a way I wish him goodhap, yet is is such goodhap as one wishes a man who needs be a foe. For I must tell thee that I am of the Barons' company and against Sir Godrick. Yet ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... There were the cluttered streets of several cities and villages. There was a prodigious number of telegraph poles going in the opposite direction, hell-bent as fast as we, which poles considerately went at half speed through towns, for fear of hitting children. The United States was once an immense country, and extended quite to the sunset. For convenience we have reduced its size, and made it but a map of its former self. Any section of this map can be unrolled and inspected in a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... places to hit canvassers, the pit of the stomach—it sets a strong spring in motion, and he fetches his right hand round with a swipe that'll knock them into the middle of next week. It's an awful hit. Griffo couldn't dodge it, and Slavin couldn't stand up against it. No fear of any man hitting him twice. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... a sergeant of one of the companies of the same regiment moved a few yards forward, trying to get a pot-shot at some Spanish sharpshooters who were snugly perched in the spreading tops of some royal palm trees, and were hitting some of our men. He sighted one and had his rifle to his shoulder, taking a fine bead, when all at once the rifle fell to the ground and his hands dropped helplessly by his side. He coolly faced about and walked toward the rear, his arms dangling like pendulums, ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... aflame now, and his grey eyes glittered with a Berserk joy as he made at Ezra. All the cautions of his father and the exhortations of his mother were cast to the winds as he saw his enemy standing before him. To do him justice, Ezra was nothing loth, but sprang forward to meet him, hitting with both hands. They were well matched, for both were trained boxers and exceptionally powerful men. Ezra was perhaps the stronger, but Tom was in better condition. There was a short eager rally—blow and guard ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you pretend to be?' said Mr Pancks. 'What's your moral game? What do you go in for? Benevolence, an't it? You benevolent!' Here Mr Pancks, apparently without the intention of hitting him, but merely to relieve his mind and expend his superfluous power in wholesome exercise, aimed a blow at the bumpy head, which the bumpy head ducked to avoid. This singular performance was repeated, to the ever-increasing ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... spread out like a squirrel, first on my head, then on my back, then on my tummy, clutching at everything that I passed, slapping the ground with my outstretched paws, and squealing for help. Bump! bang! slap! bump! I went, hitting trees and thumping all the wind out of me against the earth, and at last—souse ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... the man; "but I saw something move, and let go on the chance of hitting him, but ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... at the clock. It was a quarter after four, and except for the occasional crunch of one ice-cake hitting another in the yard, everything was quiet. And then I heard the stealthy sound of oars in ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... wealthy couple of good people, acting as saviours to the poor, dark-eyed, dying young thing. And that attitude of Leonora's towards Mrs Maidan no doubt partly accounted for the smack in the face. She was hitting a naughty child who had been stealing chocolates at an inopportune moment. It was certainly an inopportune moment. For, with the opening of that blackmailing letter from that injured brother officer, all the old terrors had redescended upon Leonora. Her road had again ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... was shot dead at nine thirty this morning, and the bullet which killed him came from the neighborhood of the rock above our heads. One shot was fired. It was so certain, so true of aim, that the murderer made sure of hitting him—at a fairly long range, too. How many men were there in Roxton and Easton this morning—was there even one woman?—capable of sighting a rifle with such calm confidence of success? Mind you, Fenley had to be killed dead. No bungling. A severe wound from which he might recover ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... little details such as naming the particular world they are from. It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying Longfellow lives in the United States—as if he lived all over the United States, and as if the country was so small you couldn't throw a brick there without hitting him. Between you and me, it does gravel me, the cool way people from those monster worlds outside our system snub our little world, and even our system. Of course we think a good deal of Jupiter, because our world is only a potato ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... from the rear and ordered them back in line. What use was military rank with an invisible foe? As well shoot air as an unseen Indian! Again the Virginians broke rank, and the regulars, huddled together like cattle in the shambles, fired blindly and succeeded only in hitting their own provincial troops. Braddock stormed and swore and rode like a fury incarnate, roaring orders which no one could hear, much less obey. Five horses were shot under him and the dauntless commander had mounted a fresh one when the big guns ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... simple. These tanks are shocktroops. Theyll cut their way into the middle of the stuff. This will give us entranceways and a central operating point, besides hitting the grass where its strength is greatest. From there—" he paused impressively—"from there we'll throw everything in the book at it and a few that arent. All the stuff they used before we came. Only we'll use it efficiently. And everything else. Even hush-hush stuff. Just got the release from Washington. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... To speak for an hour and fifteen minutes to people who never clap is like hitting one's head against a wall." At which one ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... lucky fellow,' he said at last, hitting the mark as usual. The words chilled Greif, and his expression changed. All at once, in that crowded place of meeting, amidst the satisfaction of victory and the excitement of other struggles, the memory of his home in the dark forest rose before him like a gloomy ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... who were with him got away, after hitting my brother with a footstool and hurting him quite badly. Here he is. Can I get a doctor ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield

... possible collision, Mr. Broderick took me out early the following morning to try my skill in the use of a pistol. I tried a navy revolver and succeeded in hitting a knot on a tree, at a distance of thirty yards, three times out of five. Broderick declared himself satisfied, and I then urged upon him the necessity of bringing the matter to a speedy issue. In all this he concurred, and before ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... had commented on "that wonderfully penetrating and plastic faculty, which is capable of representing every species of character, not as our ordinary poets do, by a high shoulder, a wry mouth, or gigantic stature, but by hitting off, with a delicate hand, the distinguishing feature, and that in such a manner as makes it easily known from all others whatsoever, however similar to a superficial eye." (Quoted in Drake's "Memorials of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... motion in the land, and the fact that an uneven keel made Jonah claw around more than usual, made the whale land-sick. A whale can throw a stream from its snout for about five rods, but when it strikes land that way under heavy ballast it chucks all its load, water and solids, like a torpedo hitting a ship. I have experimented with small whales—say from ten to twenty feet over all, and never knew one to miss when he bumped land. The whale was prepared especially to do that—to release Jonah, and does it with wonderful ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... and the little Hunne in the mean time pursued their occupation without interruption. As an extra proof of his skill, Julius practised with the shells at hitting different objects in the room, to his little brother's delight ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri

... Tom. "Dad converted! d'ye hear that?" said he, hitting his brother to attract attention. "I must go down to the hotel an' tell Jane; she'll steal me a glass of beer for it. Converted! I'll be ashamed to look the boys in ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... Hitting a ship in space at ultralight velocities was something else again. Young Kraybo could play baseball blindfolded, but he wasn't yet capable of making the master guesses that would protect ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett

... my hands on the skunk who threw that stone," declared one, "I'd show him a thing or two. The idea of hitting such a girl as that, an' her watching ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... the Local Press Notices up to New York to see what she could get on them, and found 10,000 other incipient Modjedskas hitting the worn Trail that led from one Agency ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... in the boy's hands, but to fire was impossible, for fear of hitting the black; while, when Norman rode close up, threw himself off his horse, and advanced to get a close shot, the kangaroo made vicious kicks at him, which fortunately missed, or, struck as he would have been by the animal's terrible hind-claw, Norman Bedford's career would, in all probability, ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... he had witnessed and joined in with fair success. He had thought Londoners poor effeminate creatures, but he found that these youths preparing for the trained bands understood all sorts of martial exercises far better than any of his forest acquaintance, save perhaps the hitting of a mark. He was half wild with a boy's enthusiasm for Kit Smallbones and Edmund Burgess, and when, after eating the supper that had been reserved for the late comers, he and his brother repaired to their own chamber, his tongue ran on in description of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... waits for eternity to disclose its significance. Better a half-finished temple than a finished pigstye or huckster's shop. Better a life, the beginning of much and the completion of nothing, than a life directed to and hitting an earthly aim. 'He that soweth to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting,' and his harvest and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... being confined to a handful of scholars and merchants, extends down to and is largely made up of that terrible modern production, "the man in the street." It is quite ridiculous to pretend that because an Erasmus or a Casaubon could carry on literary controversies, with amazing fluency and hard-hitting, in Ciceronian Latin, therefore "the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus" can give up the time necessary to obtaining a control of Latin sufficient for the conduct of his affairs, or for hobnobbing with ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... again his voice has that minor strain of suppressed excitement, "we're hitting it just right. There'll be rain, or a flurry of snow, maybe, and the paddle feet will be down in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... the boat shot down the stream like an arrow. I saw in a moment that there was no hope of paddling her across, and that all I could do was just to keep her head straight. But I hadn't the chance of doing even that very long, for just then a big tree came driving along, and hitting my boat full on the quarter, smashed her like an egg-shell. I had just time to clutch the projecting roots, and whisk myself up on to them, and then tree and I went away down stream together, at I don't know how many ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the pure and candid Bribri, hitting in a moment on the ingenious device; so true it is, that at the bottom of all hearts—even the most amiable—there is some small spark of mischief ready to explode when we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... The two could hardly see to make their way along, carrying it to the foot of the hill, and they stumbled several times. But at last it was in position, and then Ned departed to call Tom, and have him try the difficult test—that of hitting an ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... followed by other nations. Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers in 1816, and reduced most of it to ashes. In 1827 the dey opened war with France by hitting the French consul with his fan. Charles X. retorted upon the fan with thirty thousand troops and a fleet. The fort of Algiers was exploded by the last survivor of its garrison, a negro of the deserts, who rushed down with a torch into the powder-cellar. Algeria collapsed. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... your mind the idea that we are not to see all hands some time," Jake replied quite sharply. "I'm willing to admit that they may not strike here, for I might as well own up to the truth, and say the chances are against two boats coming so far and hitting the same spot on the coast. That doesn't prove, however, that there ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... singularly happy in hitting on the signature of Papyrius Cursor, to his ingenious and diverting cross-readings of the newspapers; it being a real name of an ancient Roman, and clearly expressive of the thing done in this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... the rounder vowels, lest the voice become too much confined or thinned. The speaker, like the singer, must find out how, by a certain adjustment all along the line from the breathing center to the point of issue of the breath at the front of the mouth, he can easily maintain a constant hitting place, to serve as the hammer head; one singing place for carrying the voice steadily through a sustained passage; one place where, as it were, the tone is held in check so it will not break through itself and go to pieces,—a "placing of the voice," which is to be preserved in every sort of change ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... enough to be aware of his childishness, his simplicity, his naivete, and his essential goodness. "He's an awfully decent sort, really," he used to say in a kind of apologetic defence. The very fact of Semyonov's strength made his brutality seem now the more revolting. "Like hitting a fellow ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... fervid hectic eloquence that now seems so unnatural! One guesses there may be a place in the Pantheons or in Valhalla of the heroes for this poor not untawdry not unheroic Seneca. One sees in him a kind of Hamlet, hitting in timorous indecision on the likely possibility of converting his Claudius by a string of moral axioms and eloquence to a condition that should satisfy the Ghost and undo the something rotten in the state.... Yet the Gods must have been grateful ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... midway between two street lights Honey Tone stopped. He stopped abruptly, like a golf ball hitting the north side of Gibraltar. He bounced back, absorbing his momentum in a twisting motion which left him squarely facing the oncoming pack. Now it was, ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... ill success of his blow the Crim Tartar monarch was justly irritated. "If," says he to Giglio, "you ride a fairy horse, and wear fairy armor, what on earth is the use of my hitting you? I may as well give myself up a prisoner at once. Your Majesty won't, I suppose, be so mean as to strike a poor ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... deux!' was Darya Mihailovna's comment. 'You are a terrible man at hitting people off. One can hide nothing ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... cried Prudence, hitting him a box upon the ear, "and I warrant it will be as red as thine," and with that she bounded like ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... swiftly as to be bewildering. He was too astounded to be frightened. As he hung head downward he saw the legs of a horse and a dim trail. A stirrup swung to and fro, hitting him in the face. He began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable, with a rush of blood to his head, and cramps in his arms and legs. This kept on and grew worse for what seemed a long time. Then the horse was stopped and a rude hand tumbled him to the ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... Bert several times, and Bert hit back, once hitting Danny in the eye. Bert's lip was cut, and when the fight was over both boys did not look very nice. But everyone said Bert had ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... done. Presently she saw two men walking slowly toward her from the direction of Westminster. One was tall and slight, handsome and distinguished in appearance; in the other she recognized the rugged awkward man whom she had met at Lady Evenswood's. He was talking hard, hitting his fist into the palm of his other hand sometimes. The handsome man listened with deference, but frowned and seemed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... prosecuted on the water; a target is strongly fastened to a trunk or mast fixed in the middle of the river, and a youngster standing upright in the stern of a boat, made to move as fast as the oars and current can carry it, is to strike the target with his lance; and if, in hitting it, he breaks his lance and keeps his place in the boat, he gains his point and triumphs; but if it happens the lance is not shivered by the force of the blow, he is, of course, tumbled into the water, and away goes ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... threatened to throw it at me. I dare not, of course, evince any fear; and I went, therefore, quite composedly into the river. The stone came flying, although I observed, by the way in which it was thrown, that he was more desirous of frightening than hitting me; it was not thrown with force, and fell several feet away. After throwing a second and third, he went away; perhaps because he saw that I did not ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... neighbours know of this pride; and if they can but lay a finger on his evident defects they will glut their inborn hatred of the Church by hitting the Catholics on the sensitive nerve, by galling them by caricature and derision of the gauche manners ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... was being presented to me for the first time; my predecessors had provided no physiological or anatomical data to guide me; great therefore was my joy when, after a little fumbling, I succeeded in hitting upon their characteristic feature. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... out for his bad pun," said Henderson, hitting him with a pellet of bread, for which offence he immediately received "fifty lines" from the master at the other end of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... break down in tears and Isaac with premature economic instinct, feeling it wicked to waste a cry, would proceed to justify it by hitting her. Thereupon little Sarah would hit him back ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... turning the buoy the boys came to grief. Or, rather, Purt Sweet came to grief. He managed to catch a most famous crab, and went over on his back, hitting his head a resounding crack upon the handle of Lance's oar, and waving his long legs ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... returned tingling in his fingers, and pain was beginning to burn in his shoulder. Bryce waited a few more seconds, feeling the control returning to his fingers, not changing the glazed off focus of his eyes. How many duels had Beldman won like this? The impact of one of those heavy slugs hitting bone was a dazing blow, enough to stun some men, and he ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... and Tom became too tired to row, and they lay down in the bottom of the wet boat, and tried to keep warm by lying close to each other. Joe took the oars, and tried to row without hitting the shore; but he had hardly dipped his oars when the bow grated on the pebbles. He promptly gave up the attempt, and making the boat fast to a tree, joined Tom and Harry, and ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... feat proves the marksman's skill; first, if successful, by showing the strength and steadiness of his nerves; secondly, by the confidence which the other reposes in it, thus declared by stronger testimony than any oath. In any case the feat of holding the mark is at least equal to that of hitting it. There are many hunters willing to risk taking the shot, but few who care to hold ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... has cut in on one of those animated Automobile Conversations, while the salaried Maniac from France is hitting up 42 miles an Hour, will tell you that the hind end of a Motor Vehicle is no good Trysting ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... he spoke, 'stray into the court. They examine the door-posts of number one, seeking the name they want. Not finding it at number one, they come to number two. On the hat of wanderer number two, the shorter one, I drop this pellet. Hitting him on the hat, I smoke serenely, and become absorbed in contemplation ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... day we walked out to the edge of the wood we were in and stood there sizing up the near-by village. It was about seven o'clock and wanted about an hour to darkness and our usual time for hitting the trail. Without any warning, a burly farmer confronted us. He was as badly startled as we were. Our remnants of painted uniforms and our ragged, soaked and generally filthy condition no doubt added to our terrible appearance. We had long ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... ortolans. The box arrived while I was at the schools; it had cost forty francs for carriage. The porter, a German shoemaker living in a loft, had paid the money and kept the box. I walked up and down the Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine without hitting on any scheme which would release my trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I could pay as soon as I should have sold the linen. My stupidity proved to me that surgery was my only vocation. My good ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac

... very pictures of politeness shrouded in sheepskin. But remembering that even amongst the most civilized nations of the world, rats are considered as quite beyond the pale of courtesy, and that the most good-natured Musjik in this city would have thought nothing of hitting one of us over with his shoe, we thought it better to retreat while our skins were whole, and regain our comfortable quarters ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... everybody thought it was going far outside the ground. But soon they saw that all the giant's strength had been wasted in hitting the ball so high, and that there was a chance that it would fall within the ropes. The batsmen had run three runs and it was still in the air. Then it was seen that an English fielder was standing on the very edge of the field ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... catching up with his pals at the third line trench. When he got to the sixth line, a shell exploded in front of him, hitting him in the thigh and dislocating his hip bone, besides giving him a painful flesh wound. He was knocked unconscious and thrown into a shell hole. The hole was almost filled with water, but the horseshoe luck of the Grant family was with ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... another with the same windmill motion of the arms. But Liza could not stand against the other woman's weight; the blows came down heavy and rapid all over her face and head. She put up her hands to cover her face and turned her head away, while Mrs. Blakeston kept on hitting mercilessly. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... but a day or two after the tableaux, when something happened to disturb her plans. Mr. Randolph was out riding with her, one fine October morning, when his horse became unruly in consequence of a stone hitting him; a chance stone thrown from a careless hand. The animal was restive, took the stone very much in dudgeon, ran, and carrying his rider under a tree, Mr. Randolph's forehead was struck by a low-lying limb, and he was thrown ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... way, Corrigan hanging to him, raining blows upon him, and he laughed aloud as, his vision clearing a little, he saw Corrigan's mouth, weak, open, drooling blood, and remembered that when Braman had tripped him Corrigan had hardly been in shape to do much effective hitting. He tottered away from Corrigan, taunting him, though afterwards he could not remember what his words were. Also, he heard Corrigan cursing him, though he could never remember his words, either. He tried to swing his left arm as Corrigan ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... balls of bone fastened to leather thongs, which are knotted together. Some feathers are often fixed to the knot in order to increase the resistance of the air to this part of the sling. When the sling is thrown the bone balls are thereby scattered in all directions, and the probability of hitting becomes greater. Every man and boy in summer carries with him such a sling, often bound round his head, and is immediately prepared to cast it at flocks of birds flying past. Common slings are also used, consisting of two thongs and a piece of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... her American friends, Miss Catherine Sedgwick, Daniel Webster, and Dr. Chancing. Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver bells; and when she told a comic story, hitting off some one of her acquaintances, she joined in with the laugh at the end with great heartiness and naivete. When listening to anything that interested her, she had a way of coming into the narrative with "Dear me, dear me, dear me," three ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... what you are hitting at," Bob observed; "the old Indian must have had money, as all his kind have, what with the tips given by tourists day after day. He could have come to Grand View on the train. Frank, once more I knuckle down to your superior wisdom. That's what Havasupai ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... almost the first time, Willard's team had been, until to-day, composed entirely of students. On the other hand, Mansfield had been playing with Durham all spring, and to his excellent fielding and hitting was largely due the fact that she had won the second of the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Minna," cries Stella, Hitting her hoop smartly with her stick. "Stella, Stella, we are winning," calls Minna, As her hoop curves round a bed of clove-pinks. A humming-bird whizzes past Stella's ear, And two or three yellow-and-black butterflies Flutter, startled, out of a ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... brought against the curled darlings of society by these hard-working, hard-hitting sisters of theirs was not the least ironic thing in ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... the seventh when Herzog hit the ball for a base and stole second. There were three chances to get him home, but Meyers, who had been hitting Collins hard, failed to make a single and Fletcher and Mathewson ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster

... these signs, however, lessened as I neared the front, and there the contrast was complete—perfect order, men and horses—full of confidence, and it was not unusual for general hilarity, laughing, and cheering. Although cannon might be firing, the musketry clattering, and the enemy's shot hitting close, there reigned a general feeling of strength and security that bore a marked contrast to the bloody signs that had drifted rapidly to the rear; therefore, for comfort and safety, I surely would rather be at the front than the rear line of battle. So also ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... for she is cunning enough to hide it by day.[771] So with witches, it is not only useless but even dangerous to shoot at one of them when she has turned herself into a hare; if you do, the gun may burst in your hand or the shot come back and kill you. The only way to make quite sure of hitting a witch-animal is to put a silver sixpence or a silver button in your gun.[772] For example, it happened one evening that a native of the island of Tiree was going home with a new gun, when he saw a black ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... back to the river. "But I don't see why it is necessary to blow up even any rebels on the present occasion. If that naval officer has forty men, as you think he has, a shot from that long gun would make terrible havoc among them if you succeeded in hitting her. You might kill ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... he could not delay. Seizing the barrel next to him, he rolled it without difficulty to the brow of the declivity, and set it off with a powerful shove of his foot. It was the half- empty cask, and away it went, the liquor it contained washing about as it rolled over and over, until hitting a rock about half-way down the declivity, the hoops gave way, when the staves went over the little precipice, and the water of the stream was tumbling through all that remained of the cask, at the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... sitting on a corner of the ponderous desk in a lounging attitude, gazing meditatively at his boots, and hitting one of them now and then with a cane he carried, in ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... half-breed, LeBlanc. With a cry of rage he fired his rifle into the midst of the men, fortunately hitting no one, and then turning, ran fleet as a deer back across the border. One of the deputies raised his rifle to shoot, but ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... the men were miners, and others were rough characters—that is rough in the sense that they lived in the open and were ready for whatever came along. Some of them began firing their "guns," as they called their revolvers, but there was no chance of hitting the fleeing man, as he was now out of sight beyond a turn in the trail. Realizing this the men fired in the air, hoping, perhaps, that the sound of the shots would intimidate the fellow, ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... along, driving in a compact line I presently observed the jungle move about 30 yards before me, and I immediately fired into the spot, not in the expectation of hitting an unseen animal, but I concluded that the shot would assist in driving it from the covert. This was successful, as shortly afterwards we heard the shouts of the mahouts on the scouting elephants, who reported that the tiger ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... an extra gill of marmalade to the men to-night, and conclude our day of hard travel with a 'Descharge of the Bow piece,' just because it's the Fourth of June. We're hitting things off in great style now, and I'm beginning to have more ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... buildings as targets, and fired at them, every time they got a chance, just for amusement and practice. The white cylinder of the lighthouse made a particularly good mark, and the eleven shot-holes in the half of it that remained standing showed that Admiral Sampson's gunners found no difficulty in hitting a target ten feet by thirty at a distance of more than a mile. The captain of the Spanish cruiser Vizcaya told Lieutenant Van Duzer of the battle-ship Iowa that, at the height of the naval engagement off the mouth of the harbor ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... the events of the day returned to the cup. It interested him to find that the fragments on the floor were as logical a result of the movements of the day as they would have been of getting the small hand axe out of the woodshed, aiming a blow at the cup, and hitting the cup. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... injured reputation, went out with Sir Kit as his second, and carried his message next day to the last of his adversaries: I never saw him in such fine spirits as that day he went out—sure enough he was within ames-ace of getting quit handsomely of all his enemies; but unluckily, after hitting the tooth-pick out of his adversary's finger and thumb, he received a ball in a vital part, and was brought home, in little better than an hour after the affair, speechless on a hand-barrow, to my lady. We got ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... guarded by a burly warder whom the youth could not hope to overcome by strength, so he resolved upon a strategy. With a low breathed injunction to Francis he bent over, and ran at full tilt into the man as he came toward them, hitting him, as he had foreseen, directly in the stomach and upsetting him. With a roar and a shout the guard sprang to his feet just as they darted past him. The drawbridge leading across the moat was closed, but, nothing daunted, the two leaped ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... the one who is going to get bumped, I'm afraid. That Fao Talaho is a hard-hitting, ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... Century, as Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace called the nineteenth, has made us perhaps over-confident and forgetful of the ruins of great cities and confident prides of the past that litter the world, and here I will write about the other alternative, of the progressive process "hitting something," ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... being kept in hobbles; whereas this one would not or he would have been kept till last on account of his better condition. Providentially Maitland made his way to camp late this afternoon. Had we been obliged to go on again a stage without luckily hitting upon this place I think he would have gone frantic as he appeared in a sad state of mind on his arrival; I hope it will be a caution to him in future to ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... circus-proprietors. The "boxing kangaroo" was at one time quite a common feature at circuses and music-halls. A tame kangaroo would have its forefeet fitted with boxing-gloves. Then when lightly punched by its trainer, it would, quite naturally, imitate the movements of the boxer, fending off blows and hitting out with its forelegs. One boxing kangaroo I had a bout with was quite a clever pugilist. It was very difficult to hit the animal, and its return blows were ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... on the instant, throwing down their bundles, fired at us with revolvers, hitting John Hart in ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne

... counsel (who was a very stout man), in which words ran high on both sides, called him out. The other, however, objected. "You are so little," said he, "that I might fire at you a dozen times without hitting, whereas, the chance is that you may shoot me at the first fire."—"To convince you," cried Curran, "I don't wish to take any advantage, you shall chalk my size upon your body, and all hits out of the ring shall ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... breath, too. Quickly he planed for the surface, feeling the fury on the end of his line. He broke water, gulped air, then dove again. He pulled in the line until he saw the fish struggling. He had nearly missed. The harpoon had taken the barracuda near the tail, fortunately hitting the spine. Rick pulled him in, hand over hand, then gripped his spear by the extreme end. He had no desire to close with those slashing, dangerous jaws. Holding fast to the spear he shot to the surface again. Scotty was waiting, knife in hand. As ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... the eye, eh?" he approved. "Anyhow, you have a good lead if your friend in black cottons to you." Again he winked. "You're not a bad-looking young feller." He leaned over the side steps, and gazed ahead. "Sidney in sight. Be there directly. We're hitting twenty miles and better through the greatest country on ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... very little—he remembered, though she had not attended many dances. He recalled suddenly that a Christmas tree or a Fourth of July picnic had usually been the occasions when Mary Hope, with her skirts just hitting her shoe tops in front and sagging in an ungainly fashion behind, had teetered solemnly through a "square" dance with him. Mother Douglas herself had always sat very straight and prim on a bench, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes blinking disapprovingly at the ungodly ones who let ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... and didn't know what he was doing. "What is the nature of the charge," asked Judge Brown. "Stealing money from Sterrit's till," replied the clerk. "Are you sure you were tipsy when you took this money?"—"Yes, your honour; when I went out of doors the ground kept coming up and hitting me on the head."—"That will do. Did you get all your liquor at Sterrit's?"—"Every drop, sir." Turning to the prosecuting attorney the judge said, "You will do me the favour of entering a nolle prosequi; that ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... founding a newspaper, the Risorgimento, in which he continued to write for several years. In the Chamber of Deputies he soon made his power felt—power is the word, for he was no orator in the ordinary sense; his speeches read well, as hard hitting and logical expositions, but they were not well delivered. Cavour never spoke Italian with true grace and ease though he selected it for his speeches, and not French, which was also allowed and which he spoke admirably. His presence, too, did not lend itself to oratory; short and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... downstairs, making the tour of the clubhouse and returning to the smoking-room. The president then delivers an address, and each member is called upon to say something, either by way of a quotation or an original sentiment, in praise of the virtues of nicotine. This ceremony—facetiously known as "hitting the pipe"—being thus concluded, the membership pipes are carefully cleaned out and replaced ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the streets of the town, whilst the crier called out some taunting thing in every street, and pointed at him with his stick. The boys threw stones at him, and even persons of more mature age derided him in every possible manner. If he showed himself in pain from any of the stones hitting him, and crouched up, or if he evaded any of the stones by the bars of his prison, every one burst out into an immoderate fit of laughter. Tired of their ill treatment, he cowered on the ground, turning his face downwards, and putting his hands over his head, to guard it against the blows of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... ten. This must not be a repetition of any bird previously named in the game. Should the player who is hit by the ball fail to meet the requirements, he changes places with the thrower. Should he succeed, the thrower repeats the game by hitting ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... planted himself in front of his portrait, struck the classical pose of the golfer, and, poising his arms and hitting at an imaginary ball, pronounced judgment on the work of ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... why you were bumped—because you were good! There came a man into the woods with an ax, and he looked for the best trees there to bump. He bumped you—hit you with the ax! How it hurt you! And how unjust it was! He kept on hitting you. "The operation was just terrible." Finally you fell, crushed, ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... was hitting," said he. "Gr-r-r-up," said he suddenly, and he stabbed a piece of butter, squashed it to death on a slice of bread, and tore it ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... have tried this feat to amuse ourselves or our friends, and seldom more than six arrows are needed to strike such a lath or stick at this distance. Hitting objects tossed in the air is not so difficult either. A small tin can or box thrown fifteen or twenty feet upward at a distance of ten or fifteen yards can be hit nearly every time, especially if the archer waits until it just reaches the apex of its ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... right, Mrs. Falkner," he answered. "But then I have a special faculty for hitting it off with unpopular persons—possibly a kind of fellow-feeling. Besides, accepting ready-made judgments concerning other people does not commend itself to my mind on any score of logic or sound sense. It is just a trifle less insane than taking ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... to Rome. They remained to alter their mood, and extol what they had before assaulted; and so did my father, as we shall see presently. But at first he was sick and cold and uncomfortable; and he consoled himself by hitting out at everything, in the secret privacy of his diary, since opened to the world. With warmer weather came equanimity and kinder judgments; but there is a refreshing touch of truth and justice even in these mutterings ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... was a gigantic stairway, leading at a steep angle directly down into the earth. It was high enough for a man to stand upright in without hitting his head against the roof, and it was provided with steps. They were cut or dug out of the rock, earth, or coal down through which the road passed, and were very broad and very high. The front edge of each was ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... nearly every case the papers published inside Burgher territory are edited by renegade Britons, and it is these renegades, not the fighting Boers, who defame our nation, and take every possible opportunity of hitting below the belt. ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... who like hard hitting, vigorous English levelled at the cant of Grundyism, this book will come as ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... nails into a fence has for the immediate task of his eyes and hands the hitting of a certain nail on the head. Meanwhile, the rest of the boy's body and soul may be full of rebellion and longing to be done with the fence on any terms and away at the fishing. Or instead of that the whole boy may be full of pride ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... he yelled as I stretched out my hand to pick up the moccasin. And his horse was almost upon me and covering me with dirt as he pivoted and slid into the bushes, his hindquarters hitting me and hurling me over, half a dozen feet beyond the little moccasin. I landed on my head and shoulders with the crack of a rifle echoing ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... in first, and Charlie himself went to the bat. The pitcher was Godfrey. He was really a fair pitcher, and considered himself very superior. Charlie finally succeeded in hitting the ball, but rather feebly, and narrowly escaped losing his first base. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... explained, also, that he was the boss pistol-shot of the West; that it was he who taught the celebrated Doctor Carver how to shoot. Then suddenly pointing to a weather-vane on the freight depot, he pulled out a Colt revolver and fired through the window, hitting the vane. The shot awakened all the people, and they rushed in to see who was killed. It was only after I told him I was tired and would see him in the morning that he left. Both Fox and I were so nervous we ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... we were glad to hear the thud of their hoofs, for we knew that that must stop the cannon for a minute and give us a chance of hitting back. And we hit back pretty hard too that time, for we were cold and vicious and savage, and I for one felt that I cared no more for the horsemen than if they had been so many sheep on Corriemuir. One gets past being afraid or thinking of one's own skin after a while, and you just ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... back that was left out of me, and of its own strength got developed into another and a finer woman. She became captain of my Freshman soul, at the same time she captured the captaincy of the boat crew, on which I pulled stroke, and I'm still hitting the water when she gives the word, though it now looks as if we are both adrift on the high and uncharted seas—or sitting on the lid of a tinder-box, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... this came a flurry of snow, followed by a heavy wind which tore through the trees of the forest with a mighty roar, hurling more than one trunk to the ground. Broken branches fell in all directions, one hitting Henry on the head and scaring his steed so that the animal ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer

... broken loose, tracked us home, and was now under the bed waiting to devour us. There was nothing to hinder it but a mosquito-curtain! How I accomplished it, paralysed as I was with terror, I know not, but I took a flying leap and landed on G., hitting her nose with my head and clutching wildly at her brawny arms, much developed with ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... After he had arrived at the court, the king said to him: "Now that you have killed the two magicians, you shall marry my daughter." But the cobbler had got so used to drawing the thread that he did so in his sleep, and kept hitting his wife, so that she could not rest. Then the king gave him a great deal of money and ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... of want of sympathy, he will be taxed with timorousness and hedging, at best he will be blamed for wire-drawn and hair-splitting argument. The preambles of exposition, the conclusions of summing up, will often be considered tedious or impertinent. The opposite plan of selecting a nail and hitting that on the head till you have driven it home was, in fact, as much Mr Arnold's as it was Macaulay's. The hammer-play of the first was far more graceful and far less monotonous: yet it was hammer-play all the same. But we must return ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... shattered the silence as if a band of wild Indians were hitting the trail, the three ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... between an expressed desire for an act and the accomplishment of the deed itself—an inability to stand through years of defeat for the future success of an ideal. A keener and equally sympathetic critic dubbed him the "sportsman" in politics—honest, hard-hitting, but playing the issue which had an immediate ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... and ran aft a few steps. I followed him, and, together, we stared upwards to see what had gone. Indistinctly, I made out that the weather sheet of the fore t'gallant had carried away, and the clew of the sail was whirling and banging about in the air, and, every few moments, hitting the steel yard a blow, like the thump ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson

... who aimed at so many nails, Sir George had a good average of hitting. But while he was talking so much, and in Europe so long, the biggest-business administration of which he was the chief went along on its own more or less mechanical momentum. By 1917 Canada had a total export trade of more than half a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... explained it by saying that you likely had taken another stream. Chris an' I was for turnin' back an' huntin' you, but the chief reasoned us out of it, by saying that you might have taken any one of a dozen forks and that there would be mighty little chance of our hitting on the right one, while we would be almost sure to run right into the convicts' hands again. But what influenced us most, was his explainin' that all streams thereabout ran into, or from, the Everglades, an' that all we had to do was to get here first and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... crack, crack and whir of a machine-gun rang out. A fight was going on up there; our anti-aircraft guns ceased, being afraid of hitting our own men, but the Bosche still ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... growled the critic. "I may or may not be your 'dear Lawrence,' but I know you like—like a book," he added, hitting by accident on a very excusable simile. "You are an old dog that is not likely to learn new tricks. I shall send this MSS. back to Miss Fern, myself, enclosing a letter warning her to have nothing to ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... was not in sight but Skag knew the direction. He ran almost upon them. Nels stood, but crouched toward the ground. A shape rose against him—above his shoulders on the other side. Skag slipped around to reach it without hitting the dog. In the same instant Nels took a blow from the jungle beast's head. The two swerved over toward one side. Skag set his gun-muzzle against the hyena's neck—he could see that much—and blew it away from him. (There wouldn't ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... about two miles away. The long stream of light from the electric lamps could be seen, almost hitting the sky, as the auto began to climb a steep hill. Evidently it had just turned into this highway from another thoroughfare leading ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis

... its embrace, sheds its sepals, expands into an immaculate golden-centred blossom that, poppy-like, offers but a glimpse of its fleeting loveliness ere it drops its snow-white petals and is gone. But were the flowers less ephemeral, were we always certain of hitting upon the very time its colonies are starring the woodland, would it have so great a charm? Here to-day, if there comes a sudden burst of warm sunshine; gone to-morrow, if the spring winds, rushing through the nearly leafless woods, are too rude to the fragile petals—no ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... female guaranteed to turn the scale at twenty- two stone, and the skeletons of the mysterious phantoscope, and the bloody contests of champions naked to the waist (with the chance of picking up a red tooth as a relic). You could try your strength by hitting an image of a fellow-creature in the stomach, and test your aim by knocking off the heads of other images with a wooden ball. You could also shoot with rifles at various targets. All the streets were lined with stalls loaded with food in heaps, chiefly dried fish, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... be careful, or we shall be hitting against one another, sir! Let me see: there's one step down, and then you're in a place like a dairy, with two sets of stone shelves,—one just above the floor, to keep it out of the damp; the other just about as high as a man's breast,—and there's kegs of powder piled-up on them all. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... back, the kitten began again hitting at it, solemnly the professor counted to twenty, and whisked the spool ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... Mr. Kendal offering his escort up the hill, she rose up again, and would have perpetrated a denunciation by letter, had not Albinia seriously argued with her, and finding ridicule, expediency, and Christian forgiveness all fail of hitting the mark, said, 'I don't know with what face you could attack Louisa, when you helped her to persecute poor Genevieve because you thought she had an instrument ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... forest, but firing at two or three hundred acres of wood on the chance of reaching some guns heavily protected by earth and timbering was about like tossing a pea from the top of the Washington Monument on the chance of hitting a four-leafed ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Herries's room two young gentlewomen, who I so little thought were sent thither on purpose for me, that When I was told they were the charming Miss Berrys, I would not even go to the side of the chamber where they sat. But, as Fortune never throws any thing at one's head without hitting one, I soon found that the charming Berrys were precisely ce qu'il me fallait; and that though young enough to be my great-grand-daughters, lovely enough to turn the heads of all our youths, and sensible enough, if said youths have any brains, to set ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... scientific library, nor indulge in furious feats of water-colour painting. The Plymouth-Brother theology which alone was open to me produced, at length, and particularly on hot afternoons, a faint physical nausea, a kind of secret headache. But, hitting one day upon the doleful book of verses, and observing its religious character, I asked 'May I read that?' and after a brief, astonished glance at the contents, received 'Oh ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... strip of ground we called our garden we would play a cricket of our own, encompassed about by many novel rules, rendered necessary by the locality. For instance, all hitting to leg was forbidden, as tending to endanger neighbouring windows, while hitting to off was likewise not to be encouraged, as causing a temporary adjournment of the game, while batter and bowler went ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... Just at daybreak, as I lay rolled in my blanket, something awoke me. Lifting up my head, there was a porcupine with his forepaws on my hips. He was apparently as much surprised as I was; and to my inquiry as to what he at that moment might be looking for, he did not pause to reply, but hitting me a slap with his tail which left three or four quills in my blanket, he scampered off down the hill ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... unusual number of the former. Thinking over the scene that met our eyes from the deck of the Carpathia after we boarded her,—the great number of icebergs wherever the eye could reach,—the chances of not hitting one in the darkness of the night seemed small. Indeed, the more one thinks about the Carpathia coming at full speed through all those icebergs in the darkness, the more inexplicable does it seem. True, the captain had an extra lookout watch and ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... off, schizo. My hitting the road has nothing to do with those split-heads. Nothing, you understand? There's nothing foggy or dreamy about me. I wouldn't be here with you guys if I hadn't been so interested in a wasp catching a caterpillar that I never saw the Bohas sneaking ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... stone at you and hit the mule, if you must know," she said. "The mule passed it on, hitting you with his foot. That mule must have played tag when he was a child. I'm sorry, Wash—but if you had been attending to your business you ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... returned a little back, and took occasion to pass above the aforesaid hospital to try what intelligence they could come by in those parts. In which resolution riding on, and by chance in a pastoral lodge or shepherd's cottage near to Coudray hitting upon the five pilgrims, they carried them way-bound and manacled, as if they had been spies, for all the exclamations, adjurations, and requests that they could make. Being come down from thence towards Seville, they were heard by Gargantua, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... said, and as he turned toward the children, he saw Jack throwing a stone. The stone flew past him, hitting his sister in the face. Fanny screamed, and the ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton

... The fight is always hot, keen, bitter. Quietly as the lawyer may handle himself, underneath his calm exterior he is ready to fight, bite, scratch, shoot, kill, slash, but always he must do so under the rules of the game, never hitting below the belt. What the battle is about is the issue, the result is called the verdict, or the decision, and the formal statement of the court as to the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... drawing his revolver from beneath his hunting- jacket, he pointed it at Abner. "Two can play at that game, Abner Holden. This revolver is fully loaded. It gives me six chances of hitting you. You have but one chance with your pistol. The moment your finger touches the trigger, your doom is sealed. I never miss ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... to Knox. T. R. said, "Not to make a public statement soon would be to violate my cardinal principle—never hit if you can help it, but when you have to, hit hard. NEVER hit soft. You'll never get any thanks for hitting soft." McHarg called with three men from St. Louis. T. R. said exactly the same thing as usual—he would never accept the nomination if it came as the result of an intrigue, only if it came as the result of a genuine and widespread popular demand. The thing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... Republic. Under it are the words, "Let us not find ourselves again..." and then, in gigantic lettering under the right-hand section of the picture, "... in the HEAVEN OF THE WHITES." This heaven is shown by an epauletted officer hitting a soldier in the face, as was done in the Tsar's army and in at least one army of the counter revolutionaries, and workmen tied to stakes, as was done by the Whites in certain towns in the south. Then another wagon illustrating ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... join in the fight, as we—eight of us—were not allowed to leave our positions. Now and again a bullet fell in our neighbourhood, and the Free State Artillery, who were on the mountains to the right, fired some bombs at the enemy, nearly hitting us in the dark. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... not less. Nothing is easier than to drop a detonating bomb, with good intentions, over the side of an aeroplane; the difficulty of hitting the mark lay in determining the flight of the bomb and in devising an efficient dropping gear. To drop a weight from a rapidly moving aeroplane so that it shall hit a particular spot on the surface of the earth is not an easy affair; the pace and direction of the machine, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... various prefaces of Dr. Johnson contain, on Rowe's part, an apology for him as a writer with obvious and admitted shortcomings (very ridiculously ascribed by Rowe to his working by "a mere light of nature"), and, on Johnson's, a good deal of downright hard-hitting criticism. You should also look up the history of the Ireland forgeries, unless, as is very probable, Tolstoy has anticipated you in this. Among nineteenth-century poets Byron and William Morris saw clearly ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... imploring, threatening, even cutting at them with their sabres, but it was no use; if they were to be killed, it must be in their own way, and they preferred being cut down by their officers to encountering the deadly precision of rifles, in the hands of men who, being sure of hitting a squirrel at a hundred yards, were not likely to miss a Durango dragoon at any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... the Indians fell from their saddles, and others, though wounded, managed to retain their seats. Bullets flew about Rosemary and Floyd, fortunately not hitting them, but coming too ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... slide down, but the moment we swore at him he came back and took his seat with folded arms alongside of us. Barrett gave the order to fire, and the bullets shrieked aver our heads, fortunately not hitting anybody. We responded with yells of derision, and the worst abuse we ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... reins, ran straight out of the shafts. The gig promptly fell forward, precipitating both girls, amid a shower of parcels, into the road, where they sat for a moment or two almost dazed with the shock, watching the retreating heels of Dandy as he fled in terror of the dangling straps that were hitting him ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... worth of his weight. He is never without verses and musk confects, and sighs to the hazard of his buttons. His eyes are all white, either to wear the livery of his mistress' complexion or to keep Cupid from hitting the black. He fights with passion, and loseth much of his blood by his weapon; dreams, thence his paleness. His arms are carelessly used, as if their best use was nothing but embracements. He is untrussed, unbuttoned, and ungartered, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... fell on them all, blind and terrible, like that leading to the slaughter of the seals. They fought indiscriminately, hitting at each other with fists and knives. It was difficult to tell who was against whom. The sound of heavy breathing, dull blows, the tear of cloth; and grunts of punishment received; the swirl of the sand, the ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... for your impudence!" said Micky, drawing off, and hitting Tom a staggering blow on the ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... given a cast with my eye into half a dozen shops, as I came along, in search of a face not likely to be disordered by such an interruption: till at last, this, hitting my fancy, I ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... And the 'basers' themselves seem to follow their own whims, beginning when they please and leaving off when they please, striking an octave above or below (in case they have pitched the tune too low or too high), or hitting some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... almost fiendish, baleful glare. An instant later the door which had so unexpectedly opened banged shut, we heard a key turn in the lock—and the man dropped to the floor before even Kennedy's automatic could test its ability to penetrate wood on a chance at hitting something the other ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... soon a desperate fight was raging. In point of numbers the "skies" were vastly superior, and many of them were grown men; but the knowledge of boxing which almost every Westminster boy in those days possessed, and the activity and quickness of hitting of the boys, went ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... the place where the stone lies is difficult to be distinguished. The antagonist, with a stick, then strikes the part of the cloth where he imagines the stone to be; and as the chances are, upon the whole, considerably against his hitting it, odds, of all degrees, varying with the opinion of the skill of the parties, are laid on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... the Indians well knew that their arrows would glance harmlessly off the scaly back of the saurian, or that they were more likely rather to wound brave Tim himself. Still Tim held on in a way a practised fox-hunter could alone have done, hitting now on the monster's jaws, now behind him, and now on its side. It was a question who would first get tired, the Irishman or ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... bearing already mentioned as the direction given for Mr. Kennedy's guidance having been TRUE and not magnetic. Pursuing that bearing BY COMPASS, Mr. Kennedy had ridden almost parallel to the Mooni, sixty-three miles, without hitting them, or finding water. The heat was intense, one of the horses died, and the men were very ill; when they at length reached these ponds. In returning, he had travelled by the stations, and borrowed the horse brought back, from the station nearest to us, occupied by Messrs. Hook. From ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... little taken by the convent, and might have become a nun if you hadn't fallen in love. You might have shut yourself up there and lived in grey habit and penances!' That day I wore a grey silk dress, and I remember lifting the skirt up as we passed the door and hitting the kerbstone with it. 'Shut up in that prison-house! Did I ever seriously think of such a thing?' These were my words, but God, in his great goodness and wisdom, resolved to bring me back. A great deal is required to save our souls, so deeply are we ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... sneak got the first of a series of surprises. The lid of the box held down a large rubber frog, and this bounced out of the box, hitting him full in the face. He staggered back and fell over on ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... the deepest and most costly portion of his drain. At x, he might have bored to the centre of the earth without ever realizing the water in this gravel. His whole success, therefore, depended upon his sagacity in hitting the point Z. Another simple and very common case, first successfully treated by Elkington, is illustrated ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking like one contented to have ascertained ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... Indians, after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as possible to the mark without hitting it. A French petty officer then thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner's body, pretended to fire it at him, and at last struck him in the face with the butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him. The French and Indians being forced after a time to fall back, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... those days there was but little of; it was a case rather of hard, heavy hitting, than of what we ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... New Orleans, said, in indignant horror, to his companion, John Hanks: "If I ever get a chance to hit that thing [meaning slavery] I'll hit it hard." Exactly thirty years later, Abraham Lincoln, as President, was hitting that thing—slavery—so hard that it perished. Roosevelt's experience as Assemblyman, as Civil Service Commissioner, as Police Commissioner, as Governor, and as President, had confirmed his belief that the decisions of the courts often stood ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... Ojibway. Th' rest are Wood Crees. And I miss my guess if he ain't a bad customer. He watched us mighty close, and his eyes are bad. He's sharp. He's one of that wondering kind. He's wondering now who we are, and where we're going, and why we're hitting so long a trail. And what's more, he belongs to this Jingoss's people in a roundabout sort of way. He's worse than fifty Crees. Maybe he knows all about Jingoss, and if he does, he'll get suspicious the minute we ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... on, and it became as the disputants conversed across the echoes of the Terror, rather a dialogue between the past and the future, than a discussion between human voices. Burke answered Dr. Price, and to Burke in turn replied Tom Paine with the brilliant, confident, hard-hitting logic of a pamphlet (The Rights of Man) which for all the efforts of Pitt to suppress it, is still read and circulated to-day. Two notable answers were ephemeral, one from Mary Wollstonecraft, and another (Vindiciae Gallicae) ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... Tom, rubbing his hands. "Mas'r Harry's got it, Mas'r Landell, sir. He's a wunner at hitting out things, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... letter. Not heeding, as I suppose, how he went, in turning the corner of the stairs, which are narrow and winding, his foot slipped and he fell; but almost instantly rising, I plainly perceived the end of a pistol, which started from his pocket by hitting against the stairs. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... drink did it, Father—the hand and this scar on my face. I'd been hitting it up pretty lively and didn't realize where I was walking. The track wasn't wide enough for me and the train. One of us had to get off, and as the engine was the stronger of the two—well, you see ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... the Connie couldn't know the Federation men were in a boat, dodging. The cruiser would make about two more runs, just enough to allow for hitting every bit of the asteroid. Then it would assume that anything on it was finished and ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... were skinned and bleeding, as evidence of some exchange; but, he averred, you might as well be punching a sack of coal as that man's face. In another minute they both slipped and rolled over and over in the road, hitting and kicking as they sprawled: then a crowd of people ran forward and pulled them asunder. When they were separated he saw the big man lift his fist, and the person who was holding him ducked suddenly and ran for his life: the other folk got out of the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... purred. 'If I have bothered your chauffeur or delayed you in the least, I am very sorry. I trust you may get started soon and meet with no more serious accident to-day than this little breakdown.' I swear there was something in his manner so offensive that I felt like hitting him, and yet he was the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... Did he care for her, or did he not? What could be the object of that extraordinary step? Rachel was as far from hitting upon a feasible solution of these mysteries as she was from penetrating the deeper one of his own past life. Sometimes she put the like questions to herself; but they were more easily answered. She had been in desperate straits, in reckless despair; even if ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... that was their rush together upon me, and my hitting out two or three times—getting in one smasher on the mate's jaw that was a comfort to me—and then something hard cracking me on the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what happened until I found myself coming up to ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... Dick, she'll be stuck so hard and fast in that same mud that she'll have something else to think about than chasing us. Ah!" as the boat luffed round a small mangrove-covered island, and the galley was shut out from view, "there goes their last chance of hitting us with their footy ordnance—with a ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... indignantly. "I'd be where Marcia thought she found me, if it hadn't been for you. Listen, Stretton! I got fussy after you left for Billy Jones's that afternoon; I'd been hitting it up the day before, and you know how that leaves me! I didn't see why in blazes I hadn't gone with you to Billy's instead of sitting around the house, and a couple of hours after you left I started out to get a horse and follow you. But it's a lie that I heard wolves, or thought of them: ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... or two was heard, but they were probably shot rather to obey the Lady, than with any purpose of hitting the mark; and Randal immediately entering, said that Master George had been taken up by a boat from the castle, which ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... he was to modern inventions and modern bursts of speed, paid no attention and moved in front of it. The motorman threw off his current, tried to reverse, and rang his gong furiously, but saw that he could not stop in time to avoid hitting the Doctor. I had bounded into the street, and when the car was only half a dozen feet off I was fortunately able to draw the old chap back and hold him clear of the Juggernaut that had so nearly ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... loved herself, and would not make it more odious by any marked advocacy of it. It was a new trial to her, but she did not murmur. One who in early youth has rebelled against the very laws by which he has his existence, and has become reconciled, does not go through life hitting his head against every projection which society thrusts in his way. She did what she could. She cleared herself, as far as possible, from all participation in the sin, gladly avowed her views when called upon, and never hesitated to show, by suitable words and acts, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... wholly destitute of education and genius indent to the press, and thus turn book-makers, adding to the sin of criticism the sin of ignorance also; whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad workmen in the trade." Indeed there was a good deal of random hitting in the Enquiry, which was sure to provoke resentment. Why, for example, should he have gone out of his way to insult the highly respectable class of people who excel in mathematical studies? "This seems a science," he observes, "to which the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... that Persons the most accomplished in Ridicule are those who are very shrewd at hitting a Blot, without exerting any thing masterly in themselves. As there are many eminent Criticks who never writ a good Line, there are many admirable Buffoons that animadvert upon every single Defect in another, without ever discovering the least Beauty of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... very grave, very gentle. "Has it occurred to you that we are hitting it off rather ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and training, even from infancy, necessary to form an archer capable of drawing an arrow a cloth-yard long, {23} will ever secure the preference to the latter weapon, which, though as commonly used, perhaps less certain of hitting the mark, is however capable of doing much execution at double the distance to which the bow will ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts

... service of praise which preceded the election induce a milder spirit. When the precentor led off, "Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let the Heathen Rage and Cry!" each man's look told that he knew well whom the psalmist was hitting at; and when the minister invoked the "blind, stubborn, and stony-hearted" to "depart from the midst," one-half of his hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told that all were bracing for battle ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... Fenley was shot dead at nine thirty this morning, and the bullet which killed him came from the neighborhood of the rock above our heads. One shot was fired. It was so certain, so true of aim, that the murderer made sure of hitting him—at a fairly long range, too. How many men were there in Roxton and Easton this morning—was there even one woman?—capable of sighting a rifle with such calm confidence of success? Mind you, Fenley ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy









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