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More "Nick" Quotes from Famous Books



... slight, strong creature who was not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft into the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... IV., and they have taken their share in the great events of civic and national history. They, with the Vintners, have the right to keep a "game of swans" on the Thames. The Dyers' mark was formerly four bars and one nick; now it has been simplified, and one nick denotes the ownership of the swan ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... "Nick Tubbs—the village drunkard and sign o' the times," he answered. "Does chores at the tavern all day and goes home at night filled with his earnings an' a great sense o' proprietorship. He is the top flower on ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... course of his vision-building did it cross Nicky-Nan's mind that the money was—that it could be—less than legitimately his. Luck comes late to some men; to others, never. It had come late to him, yet in the nick of time, as a godsend. His family and the Old Doctor's had intermarried, back along, quite in the old days; or so he had heard. . . . Nicky-Nan knew nothing of any law about treasure-trove. Wealth arrived ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... bring them," said Miles. "Nick Jones told me the wolves are uncommonly hungry for so early in the year, and they are in great numbers too. He ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... Already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thou! whatever title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie, Closed under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie, To scaud ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... had been issued since time immemorial by one of the down town stores, and its yearly visit made it something of an institution among the juveniles of the street. On the cover, a red-coated, rosy-cheeked Saint Nick, with a toy-filled pack, was descending a snow-capped chimney while his reindeer cavorted in the background. On the back were rows of dainty pink, blue, and green clad dolls with flaxen ringlets and staring, china eyes—trash which interested John ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... started up, he heard a rustling in the leaves on the hill behind him, in the direction opposite that in which his friends were. Like a flash he sprang away from the fire into the half-darkness which filled the valley. He was in the nick of time. A rifle cracked and a bullet threw up the ashes and sent the sparks flying where his head had ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... Nick himself when he was a comitaj had twice been caught by the Turks. Once he was shot in thirteen places at once, but was found by some Christian women and eventually recovered; the second time the Turks beat him almost to ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... air ye?" said the venerable Goober-Grabber, (the nick-name in the South for Georgians), directing his conversation to me. "Wall, I'm powerful glad to see ye, an' 'specially whar ye can't do no harm; I've wanted to see some Yankees ever sence the beginnin' of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Nick Razorblade a barber was, A strapping lad was he; And he could shave with such a grace, It was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... much as any fellow in the troop; he had gained that odd name not because he was artful and cruel; but on account of his slender legs, which long ago some smart boy had likened to those of a spider; and it only requires a hint like that to establish a nick-name. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... When every one else deserts him, she takes a cab into the city, and employs some clever friend, who has always been hopelessly in love with her—and for whom she entertains, unknown to her husband, a Platonic brotherly regard—to intervene in the nick of time, and to arrest her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... before the three had been in the Balkans. There the two lads, together with Anthony Stubbs, had gone through many dangerous adventures, finally reaching Greek soil in the nick of time, with a horde of Bulgarians just behind them. With them had been others—Ivan, a Cossack, a third British officer and a young girl. Ivan had elected to join the Anglo-French forces at Salonika; the other British officer had found his own ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes

... yur claws, Charley. May the Almighty stan' your frien' and keep you out o' Ole Nick's clutches. Don't hev' any dubiousness 'bout us. Tho' we shed kum across Satan hisself wi' all his hellniferous host, Sime Woodley 'll take care o' them sweet gurls, or go to grass trying." With this characteristic wind-up, he puts the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... remonstrated with her to the utmost, but she told him no woman with Sioux blood in her veins ever deserted a brother—or lover. And so she had returned with a packet, presumably of money, and there they found the Indian clinched with Kennedy. Kennedy was rescued in the nick of time, and pledged to silence. The Indian rode away triumphant. Nanette climbed back to her window, exhausted, apparently, by her exertions, and Field started for his quarters, only to find the entire garrison ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... Lares, Larvae, and Lemures of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... Clearly Nick was no simpleton; he was gaining time; he might not yet know which side I belonged to. I must end this matter. The night was cool. I had no blanket or overcoat. While walking I had been warm, but ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... locked to all save golden keys; who starts banks, who concocts companies, who keeps a broker, as in the eighteenth century a woman kept a monkey, and in the twelfth a knight; whose especial art is to buy in at the right moments, and to sell out in the nick of time; who is great in railways and canals, and new bathing-places, and shares in fashionable streets; who chooses her lovers, thinking of concessions, and kisses her friends for sake of the secrets they may betray from their ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... utterly base have intuition. Nothing else warned him. In the very nick of time he stepped back, and Yasmini's long dagger that shot forward like a stab of lightning only cut the cheek beneath the eye, and slit it to the corner of ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... away or depressing the cap at the point where it meets the nick in the screw head, substantially as described, so that such cut away or depressed portion, while connected with and forming part of the cap shall lie within outline the nick in the screw ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... Christine's getting a bit biggish for 'im to 'andle; I daresay this is the last season for their double act. But for four seasons she's been doing amazing fine work with old Tom. She seems to like it, and she's as daring as the very old Nick. Don't know wot fear is, I might say. She's so fairy-like and so purty that the crowds just naterally love 'er to death. She's going to be a wonnerful 'ansome woman, David, that gal is, take it from me. 'Ere ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... this a brand plucked from the burning?'—it was John Wesley's text. To the end of his days John Wesley preserved the picture of the fire at the old rectory, the fire from which he, as a child of six, was only rescued in the nick of time. And, underneath the picture, John Wesley had written with his own hand the words: 'Is not this a brand plucked ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... occupied a low-ceilinged room above a baker's shop in the village, and had strewn it about with books and photographs and nick-nacks until the drab surroundings seemed to reflect a little of her dainty personality. Thither, later in the day, she took Betty off to tea and introduced her to a tall fair girl with abundant hair and a gentle, rippling laugh that had in it the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... "How quick the lad was! His courageous leap saved him." Another says: "Bless the child! He was in awful danger, and he just barely saved himself." Another says: "That man's word just reached the boy's ear in the nick of time, and saved him." Another says: "God bless that man! He saved that child." And yet another says: "That boy was saved by blood; by the ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... as Dab stepped upon the car-platform; but Dick Lee, who had just escaped from the tremendous hug his mother had given him, and had got his breath again, came to his friend's relief in the nick of time. Dick felt, as he afterwards explained, that he "must shout, or he should go off;" and so, at the top of his shrill voice ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... snug harbor after our many voyages," he continued. "Shipmates we were, shipmates we'll be; while Nick Gunn is alive you shall never want for company. Lord! Do you remember the Dutch brig, and the fat ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... of canned fruit, care must be taken not to crack or nick either the top of the jar or its cover. The cover of any kind of jar will come off easily if a little air is admitted. Insert a knife blade between the cover and jar rubber of a glass-covered jar, but do not use a knife to loosen a metal top, as ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... been this movement and so unlooked-for, that had I not sprung backwards in the very nick of time, this narrative of mine had ne'er been written. With a jeering laugh I knocked aside his sword, but even as I disengaged, to thrust at him, he knelt up and caught my blade in his left hand, and for all that ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... her as mad as Old Nick by a little mistake of mine. While I was hitchin' up the wagon Old Bay bit a whoppin' big gap out'n my straw hat, and it was so comical-lookin' that Ma told me not to wear it. That was easy enough to say, but I didn't ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... think, always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Caprona,[1] seeing themselves among so many enemies. I drew with my whole body alongside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes from their look, which was not good. They lowered their forks, and, "Wilt thou that I touch him on the rump?" said one to the other, and they answered, "Yes, see thou nick it for him." But that demon who was holding speech with my Leader turned very quickly ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... resistance should also be made to determine if the splices are electrically perfect; an imperfect splice may cause considerable trouble. In telegraph and telephone cables the conductors should be of very soft copper, for in stripping the conductor of insulation it is very easy to nick the wire, and if of hard drawn copper open wires ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... translation from anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody would ever have translated a document into such an extremely peculiar and individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its author was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was able to dispose of ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... them wait, and before five o'clock the trumpets announced his arrival. Ivan Ogareff—the Scarred Cheek, as he was already nick-named—wearing the uniform of a Tartar officer, dismounted before the Emir's tent. He was accompanied by a party of soldiers from the camp at Zabediero, who ranged up at the sides of the square, in the middle of which a place for ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... inequality of their limbs, I have further observ'd, not to remain always the same, but to be continually chang'd by a kind of fluctuating motion, not unlike that of the waves of the Sea, so as that part of the limb, which was but even now nick'd or indented in, is now protuberant, and will presently be sinking again; neither is this all but the whole body of the Luminaries, do in the Telescope, seem to be depress'd and slatted, the upper, and more ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... held it fast, wrapped round it a great woollen shawl from his own shoulders, and in one moment put out the deadly fire which was snatching at the sweet young life. Who was this gentleman, do you think, thus arrived at the very nick of time? Why, no other than Lady Bird's own Papa, come home from China a few weeks ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... heard it, and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling out staple ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... there were three distinct aristocracies in Washington. One of these, (nick-named the Antiques,) consisted of cultivated, high-bred old families who looked back with pride upon an ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars from the birth of the republic downward. Into this select ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... voices, I tossed my bag in at the window, leapt upon the footboard and turned the handle. Although the entrance to the tunnel was perilously near now, I managed to wrench the door open and to swing myself into the carriage. Then, by means of the strap, I reclosed the door in the nick of time, and sank, panting, upon the seat. I had a vague impression that the black chauffeur, having recovered himself, had raced after me to the uttermost point of the platform, but, my end achieved, I was callously indifferent to the outrageous means thereto which I seen ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... eye, Evelyn turned to her plate filled with a subtle melancholy. When would there be another dinner like this? Not, at all events, until the war was over. Nick had spoken about this—very definitely; there would be no more entertaining. She had agreed with him, of course, not, however, escaping the conviction that her husband's viewpoint was more or less in keeping with a certain unusual sombreness which she had caught creeping into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly as this happened it had gone, and again she ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... very careful not to nick this fragile ware. As a lover of ceramic art, it would pain me ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... had solemnly vowed to slay, In sacrifice, a sheep that day, And wanted a sheep his vow to pay. Three neighboring rogues (The cunning dogs!) Finding this out, Went straight about (Moved, I ween, by the very Old Nick,) To play ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... about ten feet from the water, when the handle of the windlass got loose from our grip, and down went the bucket and Happy. A loud splash came to us, and grabbing the handle again, we worked like Trojans. A volley of curses came from that well which would have shocked Old Nick himself. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... Confusion! they have nick'd me to a hair! I've bought up sev'ral slaves, and other wares, For exportation; and to miss my time At Cyprus-fair would be a heavy loss. Then if I leave this business broken thus, All's over with ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up nick-nacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Felicite, from Madame ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... think Old Nick ought to be Viscount Van, for alliteration sake. I believe he trusts still to his own loins to perpetuate the peerage, and applies for no remainder. With this exception, I think the arrangement as far as it goes good. Indeed, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... being built to enable the gunboats to pass down the river. Colonel Molineux was relieved from command of a recruiting party which he had been in charge of, called the "Louisiana Scouts," but the Regiment nick-named them the "Jay-hawkers." The gunboats having safely passed the dam, the army commenced moving back on ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy

... Wiles gloomily, "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns up from San Francisco or ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... silence, not daring to complain to her father, who was entirely ruled by his new wife. When her daily work was done she used to sit down in the chimney-corner among the ashes; from which the two sisters gave her the nick-name of Cinderella. But Cinderella, however shabbily clad, was handsomer than they were with all ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change,—now an old man, now an old woman,—a gunner, a farmer, or the Old Nick. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... apologizing almost humbly to those whom he displaced, and courteously to all; and this, and perhaps also the fact that the mass of those present belonged to my patron's party—who in the streets had the nick-name of "The Importants"—so that they were not quick to make room for him, rendered his progress so slow that, my name being called and everybody hustling me forward, I came face to face with the Queen almost at ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... some would-be wit Dubbed the fair dame. The title may not fit With accurate completeness; It soars some shades too high, this modish mot, As 'Mrs. LYON-HUNTER' sinks too low; Both nick-names fail in neatness. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... gateway, it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... it was that Cunningham, with two detectives from Scotland Yard, had arrived in the very "nick of time." ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... upon us, just in the nick of an affair; Monsieur d'Estrees, at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, and Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being both pretenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... She knew every nick and brown spot on each piece of the set of china purchased by Kennicott's mother in 1895—discreet china with a pattern of washed-out forget-me-nots, rimmed with blurred gold: the gravy-boat, in a saucer which did not match, the solemn and evangelical ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... hopeless for the girls to try to catch the auto now. They were far behind it, but still Betty ran on. Several narrow escapes had Paul on that perilous journey, and then in the nick of time he was saved from what might have been ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... Elizabeth sat down in deep despondency to write to her mother, and then lingered awhile with the letter before her, her head in her hands, pondering with emotion what she and Philip owed to George Anderson, who had, it seemed, arrived by a night train, and walked up to the hotel, in the very nick of time. As to the accident itself, no doubt the guide, a fine swimmer and coureur de bois, would have been sufficient, unaided, to save her brother. But after all, it was Anderson's strong arms that had drawn him from the icy depths ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... cus'sion, requiring to be struck; the act of striking. per'fume, scent or odor of sweet-smelling substances. pe'ri od, portion of time; an interval. per'ished, died; were destroyed. per mis'sion, the act of allowing; consent. pic'nick ing, having an outdoor party. pier, a landing-place for vessels. pierce, force a way into or through an object. pil'lars, columns; huge masses. pin'cers, jaws; pinchers. pit'e ous, fitted to excite pity; sorrowful. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... the fates were propitious. But the foe declined to oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard marching ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... bought but one bill of the other dry goods house, and did not like their traveling man; but now he would have bought of Old Nick rather than buy of Luce. He went over to Keeler's and again introduced himself (the task was getting as disagreeable as it was monotonous), saying he wanted to buy some goods. The gentleman made an excuse to go to the desk for a moment, and Solomon knew it was to consult the ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... from his place, we might see the gap in the range through which Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick"; follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet "loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the Shearers' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... should be quite tempted to say the same as the old women. What makes this likely is, that he always had with him a great red ape called Gargousse, which was so cunning, and wicked, that one would have said he had Old Nick in him. By and by I shall speak again of Gargousse. As to Cut-'em-in-half, I am going to show him up; he had skin the color of a bootlining, hair as red as the hide of his ape, green eyes, and what makes me think with ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... a job and you don't know what it is? Well, Nort, guess I'll have to look into this," and the cowboy whom Nort addressed as "Kid"—or, to give him his full nick-name, "Yellin' Kid"—swung lightly from his saddle. "Hold up there, you pony, you!" this as the Kid's mount started to prance about wildly. "Just got this here dust-raiser, and she ain't used to my ways yet," he chuckled. "Hy' ya', Dick, and Bud! How's the boy, Nort? By golly, ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker

... her rosebud mouth and when she says: "Your majesty's slightest wish is a command to me, your servant!" and is about to surrender her loveliness to Cupid's forces and temporarily lose her heart, but her soul forever—in the very nick of time comes her guardian-angel to ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... Conqueror. These maybe fine things in their way, and, like an antique jewel, they may serve very well to wear on special occasions, or to treasure as an antiquary would do some rare coin or "auld nick-nacket." But the magnates of Glasgow have a juster and more legitimate cause for pride; their ambition is of a less ornamental, but far more useful kind. The Youngs, the Napiers, the Elders, the Campbells, and ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... needs say," interposed Ratcliffe, "that it's d—d hard, when three words of your mouth would give the girl the chance to nick Moll Blood,* that you make such scrupling about rapping** to them. D—n me, if they would take me, if I would not rap to all what d'ye callums—Hyssop's Fables, for her life—I am us'd to't, b—t me, for less matters. Why, I have smacked calf-skin*** ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Lionel, still reflective. "You know, Emily, the little twelve-horse-power car I had sent out to East Bengal was a Mercedes. If I could drive her, I can drive a bigger car. Everybody says it's easier. And young Nick has learned to be a ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... "Old Nick will have me anyhow," I thought to myself as I drove home amid the shadows. The hum of the cicadas was still, and dozens of rabbits, tempted out by the cool of the twilight, scuttled across my path and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... opportunity for having it towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried over ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... a robbery of no great importance, but Nick had taken it to oblige a personal friend, who wished to have the business managed quietly. This affair would not be worth mentioning, except that it led Nick to one of the most peculiar and interesting criminal puzzles that he had ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... beg of you for the sake of the ladies to give up this out-of-the-way place, and come close, up to the settlement. We feel that we cannot leave you out here unprotected. Think of what would have happened if we had not arrived in the nick of time." ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... and took down the half-knit stocking, but the spare needle was missing. She felt with her hand upon the chimney-piece, but could not find it. Then she mounted a chair and searched. It was nowhere to be seen. "It may have slipped into the nick at the back," she thought, and she got a skewer and poked it into the narrow groove. Out fell the needle—and something else which made a clinking sound as it fell upon the brick floor. She stooped to see what it was, and there glittering in the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... Husband, now you have nick'd the Matter. To have him peach'd is the only thing could ever ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... had traced out the road from the bay to the battery. Led by their officers the French regulars set to work with such goodwill that the road was ready next day for the siege train of twenty-two cannon, now landed in the nick of time. ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... stop to say that "The Skipper," as his father always called him, was Bob, otherwise Robert Trevor; and Dot, so nick-named for reasons plain to see, was by rights Dorothy, and they had that morning been excused from lessons, because Captain Trevor had sent a message from Portsmouth that he was going to run ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... supporting their principals on the other by their sides they had little vessels of water, and bundles of rags to answer for sponges. Another corner was occupied by the umpire, a foul-mouthed, loud-tongued Tombs shyster, named Pete Bradley. A long-bodied, short-legged hoodlum, nick-named "Heenan," armed with a club, acted as ring keeper, and "belted" back, remorselessly, any of the spectators who crowded over the line. Did he see a foot obtruding itself so much as an inch over the mark in the sand—and the pressure from the crowd ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... trim it mostly with one good long cut on one side and sometimes turn it over and make a little nick on the other, but one good long cut is usually ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... in the nick of time, father," said the lad. "In another five minutes I would have ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... you did it!" insisted Mr. Swift, "and you did it in the nick of time. Now I wouldn't for a moment think of offering you a reward for saving my son's life. But I do feel mighty friendly toward you—not that I didn't before—but I do want to help you. Alec, I will go into this business with you. We'll take a chance! I'll ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... small, came just in the nick of time, because of the Saratoga-trunk scheme not proving a success. In less than one hour after I had made the deal, the landlord asked me to pay in advance. I immediately flew into a rage and demanded him to make out my bill for what we ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below, When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... and this is more to my liking than the last. We arrived just at the nick of time; another half minute and those young ladies would have been carried off. That was a rare blow you dealt their leader. I fancy he never came up again, and that that is why we got ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... fall in love with this new "Chicken Little" of the far western prairies—the same being an affectionate nick-name given to a dear little girl and always used when she was very, very good—but when she misbehaved it was ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... her father. "And we are to be fellow-passengers, so it was very lucky that we were there in the nick of time." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... mate, "the Rock-scorpions are right. They have pounced upon the derelict like wolves. I almost wish I was there to see the effect when they realize they have been fooled, and they find that that craft is loaded with stones. It was just done in the nick of time; they might have ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... exquisitely, maddened by the defamation imposed upon his nick-name of a thief by this ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... hurt a man's dog," explained Mac Strann calmly, "you're hurting the man, ain't you? I'm going to hurt this man's dog; afterwards the dog'll bring the man to me. They ain't no doubt of that. I ain't goin' to kill the dog. I'm goin' to jest nick him so's he'll get well and then ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... of me knows," said her brother. "I lost count—and lost some of the knives, too. I've an idea Bill Beresford picked up one I dropped—the one Lance Western gave me; it's got a tortoise-shell handle, and a nick out of the big blade—and gave it to ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... I was picked up by a party who came in the nick of time. They were going by across ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... they knew before-hand what such a Doctor would prescribe, and hence it is they have nick-named some Physicians of no mean practice, by the Medicines they frequently use, which names in respect to the persons, I shall conceal; and of such Physicians, they brag they can prescribe as well as they. But if a Physician ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett

... kitchen knife. Edward calls it his "garden coat," and swears he only wears it on dirty jobs, to save his new mackintosh, but nevertheless he is sincerely attached to the rag, and once attempted to travel to London to a Royal Society beano in it, and was only frustrated in the nick of time. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various

... opportunities as accurately as their riders. The beat of their small hoofs on the smooth ground was so swift and even that it was more like a rustle than a rush. To and fro flew the ball, now almost at the blue wicket, then reached and sent back in the very nick of time by one of the red champions. Candace was so fascinated that she had no eyes for any one else till, turning her head by accident, her eye lighted upon a face in the crowd near the carriage; and with a flash of recognition she knew that it was the stranger of whom she had caught that momentary ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... were gamekeeper over to Ashbridge 'All," said Mr. Baker eagerly, "you'd a bin shot but for me. Some gents will never learn 'ow 'to 'old their guns. I knocked the barrel up just in the nick. That Mr. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... struck her horse again with the whip. At the same time by a violent wrench on the bridle rein she turned him swiftly toward the open cliff. Quick as she had been, however, Alvarado's own movement was quicker. He struck spur into his powerful barb and with a single bound was by her side, in the very nick of time. Her horse's forefeet were slipping among the loose stones on the edge. In another second they would both be over. Alvarado threw his right arm around her and with a force superhuman dragged her from the saddle, at ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... friend, don't turn me forth, Auld Clootie needs no gauger; And if on earth I had small worth, You've let in worse I'se wager!' 60 'Na, nane has knockit at the yett But found me hard as whunstane; There's chances yet your bread to get Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. Bart, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... what pleased me most, Miss Sullivan and I prepared surprises for everybody else. The mystery that surrounded the gifts was my greatest delight and amusement. My friends did all they could to excite my curiosity by hints and half-spelled sentences which they pretended to break off in the nick of time. Miss Sullivan and I kept up a game of guessing which taught me more about the use of language than any set lessons could have done. Every evening, seated round a glowing wood fire, we played our guessing ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... had gone about gawking in places he couldn't have had he been visible. Into the dressing room of the Roxie, into the bars of swank private clubs, into the offices of the F.B.I. He would have liked to have walked in on a poker game with some real high rollers playing, such as Nick the Greek, but he didn't have the time nor know-how to go about ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... motion to the remnants of whisky in his tumbler. ''Tis a question to be solved on general principles, as Colonel O'Halloran said that time he was asked what he'd do if he'd been the Book o' Wellington, and the Prussians hadn't come up in the nick o' time at Waterloo. 'Faith,' says the colonel, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... hoots if her dad was old Nick himself. I'm going to marry her—if she'll have me. Ah, the glorious creature!" He waved his long arms despairingly. "O Lord, send me a cure for freckles. Bryce, you'll speak a kind word for me, won't you—sort of boom my stock, eh? Be ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... for his sake, ne'er stint your own delight; Throw boldly, for he sits to all that write; With such he ventures on an even lay, For they bring ready money into play. Those who write not, and yet all writers nick, Are bankrupt gamesters, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... comes just in the nick of time. He is well acquainted with this part of the jungle, having lived here all his life, and he offers to guide us to a place where we can get mules to transport ourselves and our ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton

... sir—help! help!" roared Tom Fillot just in the nick of time; and, striking out fiercely with his dirk, Mark returned to his men and released poor Dance, who was one of the weakest, by giving his assailant a sharp dig ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... he bade his companions good-bye. All at once it occurred to him to try taking off his clothes. This made just the difference required, and with a tremendous effort he got out of his prison-house in the very nick of time. ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... not large preparations, however; longer to think of than to do; especially as Winthrop took upon himself the most of what was done. One or two nick-nackeries of preparation, in the shape of a new basket, a new book, and a new shawl, seemed delightful to Winnie; though she did not immediately see what she might want of the latter ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... edition of the British Novelists was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six-penny numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket; or where Parson Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesignedly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader against this impression of Joseph Andrews; for there is ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... being possessed of green teeth. The male is called nix, the female nixie, the generic term for both being nicker, from a root which perhaps means 'to wash.' There is perhaps some truth in the statement which would derive the Satanic patronymic of 'Old Nick' from these beings, as spirits extremely familiar to the Teutonic mind. On fine sunny days the nixies may be seen sitting on the banks of rivers, or on the branches of trees, combing their long golden locks. Previous to a drowning accident the nixies can be seen dancing ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... many a scrap of criticism or advice. "Higher, Wat, higher!" "Put thy body into it, Will!" "Forget not the wind, Hal!" So ran the muttered chorus, while high above it rose the sharp twanging of the strings, the hiss of the shafts, and the short "Draw your arrow! Nick your arrow! Shoot wholly together!" ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Four eyes waxed brighter, and two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... money in which the city was fined. So the people, leaving him off, applied themselves to Demades, who readily undertook the employment, and took along with him his son also into Macedonia; and some superior power, as it seems, so ordering it, he came just at that nick of time, when Antipater was already seized with his sickness, and Cassander, taking upon himself the command, had found a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... soon. That's his team tied there on the side street. If he happens to be in good humor, he'll take your things, and as like as not give you a place to camp in his woods. Hiram Bartlett's his name. And, talking of the old Nick himself, here he is. I say, Mr. Bartlett, this gentleman was wondering if you couldn't tote out some of his belongings. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... your cretonne; it is so frightfully common!" said she. "Where did you buy that abominable pink stuff? There's a chair that would be nice if the wood weren't covered with gilding. Not a picture, not a nick-nack—only your chandelier and your candelabra, which are by no means in good style! Ah well, my dear fellow; I advise you to continue laughing at ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... consolation; the law! the law! She could have no legal proof, and intuition goes for nothing in a court of justice. All the suspicion went against Guy Waring, and Guy Waring—well, Guy Waring had fled the kingdom in the very nick of time, and was skulking now, Heaven alone knew where or why, in the remotest depths of ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... could not muster sufficient support to become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time. Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the new tariff debates should be known. The failure of the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... tell you, fellows, to stumble on such a fine snug hole in the nick of time!" declared Tom Betts, as he rubbed his hands together, before giving his place in the front rank to another scout less favored, and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... gain, That Pope had hoped to find Rome here again; For Oaths and Blasphemies did ever Ear From Belzebub himself such language hear? What scorning of the saints of the most high, What injuries did daily on them lye, What false reports, what nick-names did they take Not for their own but ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... jungle. In a few seconds, he was near enough to spring, and, as yet, the poor doe browsed unconsciously. He was just setting his paws for the leap, and, in all probability, would have pounced next moment upon the back of the deer, but, just in the nick of time, Caspar chanced to sneeze. It was not done designedly, or with, any intention of warning the deer; for all three of the hunters were so absorbed in watching the manoeuvres of the panther, that they never thought ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon my humble attempt to embellish with the pencil the sweet ideas to which he ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... gotten away, not only with Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... the nick of time, he made the acquaintance of a Mr William Arbuckle, a friend of his father-in-law, and a South African sheep farmer, home for a holiday; and this man strongly urged him to emigrate to South Africa and take up sheep farming. The ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all alike! Get a man on his back and then put the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... have been observed to be traceable in the very detail of her own appearance. "Company" in short was in the air and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tables bloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter of nick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushions on sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerous photographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with small intense faces, each, that happened in every case to be turned to the door. The pair of eyes ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... The Wonderful Land of Up. A syndicate editor saw these books and asked me to start a children's department for the five hundred papers he served. That was the beginning of the 'Twins.' Nancy and Nick were born two years ago. They still visit their little friends every day in the columns of many newspapers. What a vast audience I have! A million children! No wonder one wishes to ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... to the camp Giant told how he had chanced to get into the mud. He was thankful that Shep had come along just in the nick of time, and thankful that the others had come also. Luckily he had a change of garments with him, and he lost no time, when he was rested, in putting on clean clothes and in washing out ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill

... dragged me out of that dome of dins in the nick of time, and my head was recovering rapidly. By the time we reached a door at the end of that long passage I could think clearly, and although too weak to stand upright without holding on to something, ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... an' waist, an' them red-ripe lips, that I feels no care to look 'pon any other woman. That's why I took up wi' her, an' offered her my true heart. But strike me if I'd counted 'pon her temper; an' she's got the temper of Old Nick! Why, only last evenin'—the very evenin' before I sailed, mark ye—she slapped my ear. She did, though! Says I, down under my breath, 'Right you are my lady! we'll be quits for that.' But, you see, I couldn' bear ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and a part of a battery!" was the announcement. "They are coming along as though they were followed by the Old Nick himself!" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... hero went to bed he could not sleep. His ready money was running low, and how to turn he did not know. Bitterly he upbraided himself for having trusted Nick Smithers, but this did no good. His money was gone, and it was doubtful if he would ever see a cent of ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.

... my third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Dad and Norah and I had been out riding, and we came home, past the back yard, in the nick of time. We couldn't hear what the fellow was saying to Mrs. Brown, but his attitude was enough to make us pull up, and as we did so we saw him try to shove her aside. She was plucky enough and banged the door in his face, but he got his foot in the crack, so that it couldn't shut, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... the coat and thrust his hand into the pocket. "The duplicates only arrived this afternoon. The nick of time, eh?" He spoke fast, his fingers searching busily. Occupation of any kind came as ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... That is why I thought that I might presume to come to your assistance. And, as my intervention can be of no use unless it remains secret, I did not hesitate to make my way in here ... without walking through the gate. I came in the nick of time, as you said. Your enemy was attacking you ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... of interest in the latest arrival at Hurdy-Gurdy. He was not even christened with the picturesquely descriptive nick-name which is so frequently a mining camp's word of welcome to the newcomer. In almost any other camp thereabout this circumstance would of itself have secured him some such appellation as "The White-headed Conundrum," or "No Sarvey"—an expression naively supposed to suggest to quick intelligences ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... every model you can talk scandal about," chuckled Bently, in reply to Herman's remark. "We had a devilishly pretty fuss in Nick Featherstone's studio the other day. Nick found his match in the ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... your service, sir: a close-whiskered, bristly, pot-bellied little Britisher in brass buttons an' blue. 'Glad t' know you, Cap'n Small,' says he. 'You've come in the nick o' time, sir. How near can you steam with that ol' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... handles is characteristic of {warez d00dz}, {cracker}s, {weenie}s, {spod}s, and other lower forms of network life; true hackers travel on their own reputations rather than invented legendry. Compare {nick}. 2. [Mac] A pointer to a pointer to dynamically-allocated memory; the extra level of indirection allows on-the-fly memory compaction (to cut down on fragmentation) or aging out of unused resources, with minimal impact on the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... ice, and with it the location of your father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of babiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... kilt sick rich loft link silk lank test gilt dish lock limp tuft hilt nick gust bulk pelt lint dust land gush wilt belt sack pick hack lent sent mist sink bunt lash lend rush sash hush rust luck such king dusk ring fond hulk dent sunk lack kick sank desk bank hint welt wing back wink sulk bent went lamp must rock pack hand wind lump wick duck bunk ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... is a blockhead who will spoil everything. However, as we have nobody else, we must make use of him. But where shall we find him?—Ah! here he is in the very nick of time. ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere

... traders had failed to bring enough at the last rendezvous[68] to go round. Then they were compelled to resort to the substitutes of the Indians. Among some tribes the bark of the red willow, dried and bruised, was used; others, particularly the mountain savages, smoked the genuine kin-nik-i-nick, a little evergreen vine growing on the tops of the highest elevations, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... dressing-station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... too, and I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her, because she is one of those people who just can't stand losing. When Miss Thompson reached the place where she was about to ask Anne to step up and get the prize, Miriam half rose in her seat. Mrs. Nesbit pulled her back in the nick of time. I honestly believe she would have reached the stage before Anne did, if her mother hadn't stopped her. Hippy told me they left before the benediction. I suppose Miriam was not equal ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... at a distance, the gaily patterned chintz on the couches and chairs, the water-colour sketches of Venice, and coloured terra-cotta plaques embossed on high relief with views of the Forum and St. Peter's at Rome on the walls, and numerous "nick-nacks"—an alabaster model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a wood carving of the Lion of Lucerne, and groups of bears from Berne—all of which were not only souvenirs of her wedding-journey, but witnesses to Continental travel ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... to support his assertions. "If you doubt me, only ask Sir Sydney Smith; he'll talk to you about Acre for thirty-six hours on a stretch, without taking breath; his cockswain at last got so tired of it, that he nick-named him ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... treason here?" cried Mr Underhill's voice behind, which all dreaded to hear. "What say you—'God save Queen Jane?' I say, God save Queen Mary! I serve not my Lord of Northumberland, for all the Papists nick [give me the nick-name] me his spy! I have not proclaimed King John—whereof, as all men do know, Queen Jane is but the feminine. I am a servant of the Queen's Majesty that reigneth by right, and that Queen is Mary. God defend the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... A—— was rabid against "Nat. Phil.," as she ignominiously nick-named Mrs. Marcet's work on natural philosophy, and so I brought her to the theater with me; and she stayed in my dressing-room when I was there, and in my aunt Siddons's little box when I was acting, as ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... to a conviction before he passed by me, apologizing almost humbly to those whom he displaced, and courteously to all; and this, and perhaps also the fact that the mass of those present belonged to my patron's party—who in the streets had the nick-name of "The Importants"—so that they were not quick to make room for him, rendered his progress so slow that, my name being called and everybody hustling me forward, I came face to face with the Queen almost at the moment that he did. And so I saw—though for a while I was too much excited ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... recovering from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife of Nick Crown's son,—Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been known to beat his wife,—Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick the feet of the horses ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole, and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and one day this fellow, who was exceedingly hot-tempered, attempted to strike Dave down with a heavy Indian club. It was a most foul attack and justly condemned by nearly all who saw it, and thoroughly scared over what he had attempted ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... the ways in their places, loosened the cradle, and wedged up the fore part of the vessel; then the stays were hastily removed; it was Begmand who had taken away the last from the stern amidst the fire and smoke, and so away went the ship just in the nick of time. Tom Robson ought really to have all the praise, since everything was ready to hand, and in the ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... and between two cellars, each deeper than the last. He knew instantly that he could not survive these, and, with every ounce of his strength, drove across the broken river to the head of the chute. Making it in the nick of time, he plunged in, with the water sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... surface that she was so kind. He watched her face with wonder, and a little fear, for which he was angry with himself. He noted the three grains de beaute and the smile that seemed to break high on her cheek, in a small nick, like that on the cheek of a Japanese doll. She frightened him, made him feel shy, yet made him feel at ease, too, as though her own were contagious; and his impression of her was softly permeated with the breath of violets. Jack disapproved of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... have before resorted, Paid levees[4] punctually, and courted, Our charge at home long quitting, But now we're come just in the nick, Upon a vacant[5] bishopric, This bait can't ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... A hearty shake of the hand completed his adieu, as we pushed off into the lake, and left him smoking his kin-nee-kin-nick[9] and waiting until the spirit should move him to take up his long Indian trot towards his ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... purpose to be thus merry: he will prove you his sin out of the bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "rat, black-coat" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must do it. He is one seems to dare God in all his actions, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... more "amazing horrid," above all as there are mysterious figures in and about the tower? Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps always fall, or are blown out, in the nick of time, an expedient already used by Clara Reeve in that very mild but once popular ghost story, "The Old English Baron" (1777). All authors have such favourite devices, and I wonder how many fights Mr. Stanley Weyman's heroes have fought, from the cellar to their ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... "but they say there is never a nick that there aint a jog some place; so I guess it can be made out. I asked Mis' Plumfield, but she didn't know anybody that was out of work; nor Seth Plumfield. I'll tell you who does that is, if there is anybody Mis' Douglass. She keeps hold. of one end of most everybody's affairs, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... combats in the houses and even in the cellars. "Blood," he wrote, "ran in the gutters like water on a rainy day." The French soldiers were being hard pressed and reserves came with their new regiments in the nick of time. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... added a moment later as if to free his mind from unpleasant thoughts,—"I'll be glad when we are safely up in the hills yonder. Do you know, old man, I feel as though we're getting away just in the nick of time. My back hair and the pricking of my thumbs warn me that your dearly beloved spooks are combining to put up some sort of a spooking job on us. I hope Yee Kee has a plentiful supply of joss-sticks to stand 'em off, if they get too ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... here in 1880. I figured there better land out here and I followed her in 1881. We paid our own ways. Seem like the owners ought to give the slaves something but seem like they was mad 'cause they set us free. Ma was named Viney May and pa, Nick May. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... made as to who was the smart chap in Virginia that did these things. The papers became wary and read Enterprise items twice before clipping them. Clemens turned his attention to other matters to lull suspicion. The great "Dutch Nick Massacre" did not follow until ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... mornin' I connect with the big idea. Do you ever get 'em that way? It cost me a nick under the ear, but I didn't care. While I'm usin' the alum stick I sketches out the ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... was very silent and neither Elinor nor Judith attempted to comfort her, but when they had reached the station and Mrs. Spicer had bought her ticket and Bruce had appeared in the nick of time with luggage checks and other necessities of travel, her face cleared and she turned to her old friend with more of ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... unexpectedly. The captain of her was an old man, well known upon the island, who had traded here once in two or three years for more than thirty years past. He had a remarkably large head, and therefore was commonly known by a nick-name they had given him of Cabuco de Toro, or Bull's-head. He had not been here a week, before he came to the governor, and told him, with a most melancholy countenance, that he had not slept a wink since he came into the harbour, as the governor was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... to him. When he went down to his office in the morning, all the nurses in the neighborhood were accustomed to stop in his path, that he might have some playful conversation with the little ones in their charge. He had a pleasant nick-name for them all; such as "Blue-bird," or "Yellow-bird," according to their dress. They would run up to him as he approached home, calling out, "Here's your ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... According to the tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh. This crisis in the history of Asia ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... for manifesting this skill did not fail to present itself soon—as indeed it seldom does to such a hero of romance as young Otto was. Fate seems to watch over such: events occur to them just in the nick of time; they rescue virgins just as ogres are on the point of devouring them; they manage to be present at court and interesting ceremonies, and to see the most interesting people at the most interesting moment; directly an adventure is necessary for them, that adventure ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the latter. 'Mumbo Jumbo', or the 'cercocheronychous Nick-Senior', or whatever score or score thousand invisible huge men fear and fancy engender in the brain of ignorance to be hatched by the nightmare of defenceless and self-conscious weakness—these are not the same as, but are 'toto genere' diverse from, the 'una et ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... ran in streaks down her blackened arms. The sight of his mother in trousers greatly amused Tommy, who worked like a little hero by her side, but the terrified baby howled lustily for his "mummy." The fire would have mastered her but for four excited bushmen who arrived in the nick of time. It was a mixed-up affair all round; when she went to take up the baby he screamed and struggled convulsively, thinking it was a "blackman;" and Alligator, trusting more to the child's sense than his own instinct, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... the Sauk had departed in that manner, and the Shawanoe knew where his village lay, he purposely avoided his trail, and followed a course that diverged so far to the right that he first reached the village passed by Jack in his canoe. His arrival, as sometimes happens in this life, was in the very nick of time. From the red men, who showed a friendly disposition toward him, he learned that not only had a pale face youth passed down the stream in a canoe, but a young warrior aflame with passion was close ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... ponies, and emptying, they felt sure, two saddles; but little by little the Indians were working around their position, and would have crawled upon them within an hour or two but for Jake's daring ride for help and the blessed coming of the blue-coats in the nick of time. Folsom swore he'd never ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... feign quarrelling over something or another, and be close to the spot when the ordeal was being gone through with, and touch the sward-slip so unmistakably that all men might see that it was they who knocked it down. After this comes forward he who was to go through with the ordeal, and at the nick of time when he had got under the "earth-chain," these men who had been put up to it fall on each other with weapons, meeting close to the arch of the sward-slip, and lie there fallen, and down tumbles the "earth-chain", as was likely enough. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... 1797, together with Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z. "mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with Talleyrand brought him. His ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... wise men fools sit on the bench, or we should hev none of this," continued Matthew. "I reckon some one that's here is nigh ax't oot by Auld Nick in the kirk of the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... me nick ah keeng e mah me quom ah kik e kewh me zeh ah mik e newh me squeh ahn doohm e qua me tigk ah nungk I yahdt nah maih ah owh kah yawsk ne gigk ah pa ke tahn ne peh ah pweh ke quis ne peeng ah sin ke nwazhe ne sing ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... Shih-yin, as he returned the smile. "Just a while back, my young daughter was in sobs, and I coaxed her out here to amuse her. I am just now without anything whatever to attend to, so that, dear brother Chia, you come just in the nick of time. Please walk into my mean abode, and let us endeavour, in each other's company, to while ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... "Hadrian has nick-named him 'the obscure.' The more difficult it is to understand the discourses of these gentlemen the more highly are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... boy sideways as, lithe and agile, he avoided or parried every thrust. At last his fate seemed sealed, for his arm was growing weak and his defence being beaten down, when with a quick movement and just in the nick of time Leoni made a sudden dart forward and turned ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... warm, but not in cold. My second is in deck, but not in hold. My third is in lady, but not in man. My fourth is in meal, but not in bran. My fifth is in nick, but not in batter. My sixth is in din, but not in clatter. My seventh is in fright, but not in scare. My eighth is in stallion, but not in mare. My ninth is in county, but not in State. My tenth is in manner, but not in gait. And in these ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... gasps, burning sighs, swift laborious breathing, eyes darting humid fires: all faithful tokens of the imminent approaches of the last gasp of joy. It came on at length: the baronet led the extasy, which she critically joined in, as she felt the melting symptoms from him, in the nick of which, gluing more ardently than ever his lips to hers, he shewed all the signs of that agony of bliss being strong upon him, in which he gave her the finishing titillation; inly thrilled with which, we saw plainly that she answered it down with ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... seen, Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir had married four years before her father's death; and their children, who come into the story afterwards, were three sons, Harald Ungi or Harald the Young, Magnus nick-named Mangi, and Ragnvald, and three daughters, Ingibiorg, Elin[44] and Ragnhild, all of whom, so far as the Saga relates, died childless save Ragnhild, whose son by her second husband Gunni, was ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... old enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, when ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... to admit the truth and be done with proud pretence. And indeed the pride had gone out of Rachel at sight of him; a delicious sense of safety filled her heart instead. She was as one drowning, and here was a strong swimmer come to her rescue in the nick of time. What did it matter who or what he was? She felt that he was strong to save. Yet, as the nearly drowned do struggle with their saviours, so Rachel must fence ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... the whole Corporation of London; and then taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back— doubtless more German than its master—he said, as he lifted up his carpet-bag, "I must be off—tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug; thence to Paris. How my pretty Fan will have grown! Ah, you don't know Fan—make you a nice little wife one of these days! Cheer up, man, we shall meet again. Be sure of it; and hark ye, that strange place, as you call it, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... six years old when de war commence poppin' in Charleston. Mammy and pappy say dat I was born on de Graham place, one of de nineteen plantations of my old marster, Nick Peay, in 1854. My pappy was name Bob and my mammy name Salina. They had b'longed to old Marse Tom Starke befo' old Marse Nick bought them. My brudders was name Bob and John. I had a sister name Carrie. They ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... voice boomed. "Big Olaf is the greatest traveller in the Yukon. I'd back him against Old Nick himself for snow-bucking and ice-travel. He brought in the government dispatches in 1895, and he did it after two couriers were frozen on Chilkoot and the third drowned in the open ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... an appeal to Violet at this stage would be worse than futile. Violet was too set on her mischievous course to do other than laugh and pursue it with renewed zest for her capture. Of course there remained Nick, chosen adviser and confidant; but for some reason Olga shrank from discussing Max with him. She had an uneasy dread lest Nick's intelligence should leap ahead of her and disclose to her with disconcerting suddenness ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... mean it?" said Sholto, eagerly. "Mind, if you refuse, and will not give it up after promising, I will nick that lying throat of yours with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... see he shall use thee well; Go to, peace, sirrah: here, Nick, take this letter, Carry it to him to whom ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... out of the cloud of War. The time had produced the man. The storm had burst just in the nick of time to save the drooping theatrical interests which he controlled, and the fruit which these had borne steadily for the best part of five long years had been truly phenomenal. A patriot to the backbone, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... not remember the name of Zachary Taylor, the twelfth President of the United States, but he could always readily recall his nick-name, "Rough and Ready." In this case there was no revivable connection established in his mind between the name Zachary Taylor and the idea or image of the man known as Zachary Taylor—but there was ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... knew he had found her in the nick of time. She had told him that she had no money, no room in which to sleep, no prospect of work. Everything she had except the clothes on her back had been pawned to buy food and lodgings. But she ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... met their eyes during the night of the 19th of October. Yes! they had to acknowledge it, a mystery existed! An inexplicable influence, evidently favorable to the colonists, but very irritating to their curiosity, was executed always in the nick of time on Lincoln Island. Could there be some being hidden in its profoundest recesses? It was necessary at any cost ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... more, then allowed his mouth to expand in that contortion which had won him the nick name of ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... cylinders, whizzing wheels, Rend and ravel and tear and pick; What can resist these hooks of steel, Sharp as the claws of the ancient Nick? Cast-off mantle of millionaire, Pestilent vagrant's vesture chill, Rags of miser or beggar bare, All are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was stimulated to be really vicious. "I call Heaven to witness," it said, "that my sole desire was to be genial and beneficial. But what can one do when one is taunted and provoked, abused and nick-named like this? Very well then, I'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... boatmen of Deal went by their right names; but such soubriquets as Doey, Jack Onion, Skys'lyard Dick, Mackerel, Trappy, Rodney Nick, Sugarplum, etcetera, were common enough. Perchance they are not obsolete at the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night of that,—and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had sense enough to ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... a few seconds, he was near enough to spring, and, as yet, the poor doe browsed unconsciously. He was just setting his paws for the leap, and, in all probability, would have pounced next moment upon the back of the deer, but, just in the nick of time, Caspar chanced to sneeze. It was not done designedly, or with, any intention of warning the deer; for all three of the hunters were so absorbed in watching the manoeuvres of the panther, that they never thought of such a thing. Perhaps the powerful odour of ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... any tea for us, Sally. I know you are afraid it may not hold out for your crowded universe, and we three have been here often enough to have dispelled any illusions about the quality of your cups. Two are cracked, and one has a nick exactly in the spot where we drink. I suspect Arlt of having cut his wisdom teeth ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... curious to note how he seemed to stumble into the business just in the nick of time. I say, seemed; but, in truth, he had been prepared for success in it by a long course of experience and training. He was a poor widow's son, born on the coast of Massachusetts, a few miles from Plymouth Rock; his father having died ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... the world. I'd do most anything to please you, too, for the sake of old times when we used to steal apples together; but I've promised to go with Nick Hunt tonight, and tie old Barlow's cat fast to his frontdoor knob, and that's got to be done while the old man is at meeting, you know. 'Tain't no matter, either, about my going; you just do the praying for you and me too; then it will ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... the blade of your hatchet; keep it free from the ground when chopping, to avoid striking snags, stones, or other things liable to nick or dull the edge. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... and—having first posted his letter to Sir Philip and another to his mother and sister— went out with them by train to Bellavista, where they all enjoyed vastly the little change from the monotony of life at sea, returning in the nick of time to witness a violent altercation between Butler and the boatman who brought him off from the shore. Also Harry went ashore for an hour or two at Punta Arenas, in the Straits of Magellan; and again at Valparaiso and Arica; finally arriving at Callao something ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... shows in section the joint between two Swell shutters. A small proportion of the sound waves from inside the Swell box striking the sound trap joint, as indicated by the arrow, will pass through the nick between the two shutters, but these sound waves will become greatly weakened in charging the groove A. Such of the sound waves is pass through the second nick will become attenuated in charging the chamber B. They will be further lost in the chamber C, and ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... well as the boy. Nicodemus is a long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides, as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy young Nick, and of course I shall be styled old ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... they had no stockings, where Santa Claus could put their presents when he had brought them. To all this show and preparation there was one exception: one place shrouded in total darkness—it was the shop of Nick Baba, the village shoemaker. That was for the time deserted; left to its dust, its collection of worn-out soles, its curtains of cobwebs, and its compound of bad, unwholesome odors. This darkness and neglect was about ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... a man at his first appearance in life ought more to dread than having any ridicule fixed on him. In the estimation even of the most rational men, it will not only lessen him, but ruin him with all the rest. Many a man has been undone by a ridiculous nick-name. The causes of nick-names among well-bred men, are generally the little defects in manner, air, or address. To have the appellation of ill-bred, aukward, muttering, left-legged, or any other tacked always to your name, would injure you more than you are aware of; avoid then ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... or two would have shocked nobody, still, in the matter of the suicide he had gone too far for the simple people of the place. They murmured, and for a moment the Bishop's prestige was in jeopardy; but in the nick of time his Bulls arrived, brought by his nephew, Pedro de Cardenas, who, like himself, was a Franciscan friar. This saved him, and gave the people something new to think of, though at the same time he incurred ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... replied the reporter; "besides, if by chance you had met with some deliverer there, just in the nick of time, why should he have abandoned you after having ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... Bryson's first," said Parmalee, Bryson being Sir Everard's lawyer. "We're in the very nick of time; to-morrow morning at day-dawn is ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... spread to Umbria and Etruria, and the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote: General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its absolute extinction, and some embers of it still lingered for ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... want to have you localised. Directly a person is localised it takes away their restfulness to one. One begins to see just all the places where they belong to somebody else, notice-boards struck up everywhere warning one to keep off the grass. And that's a nuisance. It raises Old Nick in one, and makes one long to commit all manner of wickedness which would never have ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... the law! the law! She could have no legal proof, and intuition goes for nothing in a court of justice. All the suspicion went against Guy Waring, and Guy Waring—well, Guy Waring had fled the kingdom in the very nick of time, and was skulking now, Heaven alone knew where or why, in the remotest depths of some far ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... judge; "it is under a tree in the orchard." After breakfast they went to the plantation, but John could not again recognize the tree. "Drat your stupid old head," cried his wife, "why didn't you put a nick on the right one at the time?" But John was not to be beaten. He resolved to dig under every tree. How the neighbours laughed! But springtime came. Out burst the trees. "Wife," says he, "our bloom is richer than I have known it this many a year; it is richer than our ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... anything but an unknown woman, who has electrified my imagination and my passions. Is there, perhaps, more safety in meeting her and laying the ghost? Imagination plays us such damnable tricks. She may have a raucous voice, or too sharp a wit; or she may love another by this. I'll ask Nick to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... times, and freighting wagons, and wagons what we all know carry mostly wiskey, and that was breaking the law, too! Them soldiers catch the man with that whiskey they sure put him up for a long time, less'n he put some silver in they hands. That's what my Uncle Nick say. That Uncle Nick a mean Negro, and he ought to ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... I needed someone like you badly and you have come just in the nick of time. I'll expect you in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... the nethermost, for if he was strong, yet was his foe stronger; the axe had flown out of his hand also, while the strange man still kept a hold of his short-sword; and presently, though he still struggled all he could, he saw the man draw back his hand to smite with the said sword; and at that nick of time the foeman's knee was on his breast, his left hand was doubled back behind him, and his right wrist was gripped hard in the stranger's left hand. Even therewith his ears, sharpened by the coming ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... soaked, slopped over the untidy thumb that carried it. But I omitted this course, as the red ants floating on the surface of the broth rendered the dish a questionable delicacy. The boarders had adjourned to the parlor, and were busy reading "Diamond Dick," "Nick Carter," and the other five and ten cent favorites. A heavy rain had set in, as I drew my chair up to the light and tried to lose myself in the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... just in the nick of time, and proud as old Lenz was of his pension and its situation, it was not the unrivalled prospect (as stated in the hotel advertisements) that stopped him. It was the sight of a most lovely girl ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... enquiries, the passage in Thackeray's lecture occurred to me where he mentions having been shown Eliza's Diary by a "Gentleman of Bath." I wished to find out who this was, when my faithful friend wrote to the novelist and sent me his reply, which began, "My dear Primrose"—his charmingly appropriate nick or pet name for Elwin, who was the very picture of the amiable vicar. It resulted in the gentleman allowing me to ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... up to him, shakin' of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase for it back ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... did you get all your wisdom from, Nick? You seem a very ordinary man to look at, and hard-working too. Why, I don't remember you so much as ever taking your boots off all these two years you've been with me. And yet you seem to know everything. Where did ...
— The First Distiller • Leo Tolstoy

... no sister. She shall be your daughter!' And while Mr. Thomasson stared aghast, Pomeroy laughed recklessly. 'She shall be your daughter, man! My guest, and run off with an Irish ensign! Oh, by Gad, we'll nick ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls As ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... was not denied exactly, but it was pointed out that an intermediary—the protector himself—had come on the scene just in the nick of time. The entire article concluded with this phrase, pregnant perhaps with ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... zone of that radius; but, on the other hand, the effort of the British counsel was to make this zone as small as possible. They had even contended for a zone of only ten miles radius. But just at the nick of time Sir Robert Morier intervened at St. Petersburg. No one but himself and the temporary authorities of the Russian Foreign Office had, or could have had, any knowledge of his manoeuver. By the means which his government gave him power to exercise, he in some way secured privately, from the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... had almost arrived for Keane's foreclosing. The family had already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame of mind. Yet perhaps he had a few slight ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... cattle of the boy ranchers were saved, and the rustlers captured. Tired horses were staked out near grass and water, and while the cavalry established their camp, Bud and his friends began to wonder how it was the troopers had arrived in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... Evelyn turned to her plate filled with a subtle melancholy. When would there be another dinner like this? Not, at all events, until the war was over. Nick had spoken about this—very definitely; there would be no more entertaining. She had agreed with him, of course, not, however, escaping the conviction that her husband's viewpoint was more or less in keeping with a certain unusual sombreness which she had caught creeping into his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... lavishly embroidered with beads, and hung with thimbles, hawks' bells, and bunches of ribbons. From each side of the saddle hangs an esquimoot, a sort of pocket, in which she bestows the residue of her trinkets and nick-nacks, which cannot be crowded on the decoration of her horse or herself. Over this she folds, with great care, a drapery of scarlet and bright-colored calicoes, and now considers the caparison of her ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... "and a famous thing it was for him too. Just see the advantages to which it has led; look at the education I have given him; he can ride to hounds better than many grooms twice his age, and bring you a second horse, in a long run, just at the nick of time when you want it, as fresh, with that featherweight on its back, as if it had only just come out of the stable; he can drive any animal that don't pull too strong for him, as well as I can myself; he can brew milk-punch better than a College ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... unofficial citizens ever prancing along the edge of the pageant, huzza-ing and hosanna-ing, mostly looking back over their shoulders and shading their eyes; maidens strewing rose-leaves; and at last the orchestra crashing to a climax in the nick of which my neighbour turned to me and, with an assumption of innocent enthusiasm, whispered, I shouldn't wonder if this were Barrett.' I suppose (Mr. Barrett at that instant amply appearing) I gave way to laughter; but ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... lying on a chair in the parlour the afternoon Mrs. Grant called. It gave her a turn," said Susan, "and I do not wonder, for manse parlours are no places for dead rats. To be sure it may have been the cat who left it, there. HE is as full of the old Nick as he can be stuffed, Mrs. Dr. dear. A manse cat should at least LOOK respectable, in my opinion, whatever he really is. But I never saw such a rakish-looking beast. And he walks along the ridgepole of the manse almost every evening at sunset, Mrs. Dr. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... ignorant of the fact that it is none of your fault that the Baltic Fleet was sent out on a wild-goose chase and failed to capture Cronstadt and annihilate the Russian ships inside that stronghold; though, I believe, you would have astonished old Nick if you had been allowed ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... though I shall never need their offices," Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... lithe little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... passions. Indifferent to all out sensual enjoyments, they indulge in the fleeting pleasure of the present moment, and are regardless of the future. There is a certain class of Mulattos, who, in a psychological point of view, are very remarkable. They are distinguished by the nick-name of Palanganas.[28] They are gifted with wonderful memory, and after the lapse of years they will repeat, word for word, speeches or sermons which they have heard only once. With this extraordinary ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... the wall and was staring at a cleft in the snow-line across the valley. The shoulder of a high peak dropped sharply to a kind of nick and rose again in a long graceful curve of snow. All below the nick was still in deep shadow, but from the configuration of the slopes I judged that a tributary glacier ran from it to the main glacier at ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... it seems that I came down just in the nick of time," replied the little fop. "The fact is, I drank too much wine last night, and it makes me thirsty to-day. I was almost choked, and the ladies had seated themselves on a rock, to enjoy a view of the boundless ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... ways between Mallorca and Minorca without touching. Hooray! who says our luck isn't stupendous? Here we are, not having made enough southing, and heading so as to fetch Gibraltar without sighting the islands at all; and then in the nick of time up comes a dea ex machina in the guise of the Eugene Perrier to shove us on the course again. In main-sheet, and then, blow me if we won't have a bottle of that vermouth by way of celebrating the event in a way at once highly ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... story conveys a sense of unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... freight tunnels, and the accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the stockyards, and his downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed it all. "You found me just in the nick of time," she said. "I'll stand by you—I'll help you till ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Uncle Jim, knocking the ashes from his pipe, moved into action. He plucked a double handful of the tall, dry grass, touched a match to it, and thrust it in the nick. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... not go at once to the house; I did not wish, then, to talk with Harriet. The things I had with myself were too important. I skulked toward my barn, compelling myself to walk slowly until I reached the corner, where I broke into an eager run as though the old Nick himself were after me. Behind the barn I dropped down on the grass, panting with laughter, and not without some of the shame a man feels at being a boy. Close along the side of the barn, as I sat there in the cool of the shade, I could see a tangled mat ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... greeted me with that detestable nick-name she has used since I wore rompers. "Aren't you trying for a record or something? This is twice you've called on ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... paternal grandfather, whom we have called Nick, was of good family, although he himself was totally different from the rest. He was weak in every way, and to be considered feeble-minded. He married into a family that was much lower socially than his own, although we have no proof that it was a defective ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... unlikeliest place that ever was," said the messenger, polishing his horse's wet neck. "And I suppose that's what the woman thought when she slipped in there. If I hadn't happened by in the nick of time I wouldn't mistrusted. She didn't see me. She was goin' up the steps, with her back to the road, and the meetin'-house sets a considerable piece from the fence. They was all singin' loud enough to drown a ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... reached me in the very nick of time, and are invaluable. I care nothing about 'outsides,' it is 'insides' I look to; give me a good 'heart,' and I don't care how ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... propitious. But the foe declined to oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... with the awkwardness of a man of the people who long remains under the yoke of respect to a great lord, though he admits no barriers after he has once jumped them, and regards the aristocrat as an equal only, "this," he said, "and you have come in the nick of time to hear it. I am no speaker of gilded phrases, and I shall say things plainly. I commanded five hundred men during the late war. Since we have taken up arms again I have raised a thousand heads as hard as mine for the service ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... nap after dinner! Dinner! His tongue sought his palate! Yes! he could eat a good dinner! That dog hadn't put him off his stroke! The best dinner he had ever eaten was the one he gave to Jack Herring, Chichester, Thornworthy, Nick Treffry and Jolyon Forsyte at Pole's. Good Lord! In 'sixty—yes—'sixty-five? Just before he fell in love with Alice Larne—ten years before he came to Liverpool. That was a dinner! Cost twenty-four pounds for the six of them—and Forsyte ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in a groggy tone and in one breath. I inserted a finger between the lips of her quim, and tried gently to put it up, but felt an impediment. She had never been opened by man. I then put my prick carefully in the nick, and gave the gentlest possible movement (as far as I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... young men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys; (Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... to repose on his bed o' down, Barbie read to him, cooked little tid-bits for him, an' he opened up his nature an' gave a new shine to his eyes; while Jabez—well, Jabez was buoyant as a balloon, an' sent here an' there for nick-hacks an' jim-cracks an' such like luxuries. He got to callin' Hawthorn "Clarence" an' "my boy," an' kindry epithets, till even a casual stranger would 'a' knowed the' was a roarin' in the ol' man's head like a chime o' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... but probably the most glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He seemed fully sensible that he had done no small ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... "In the nick of time, Ralph!" exclaimed Lord Tamerton, clasping his hand warmly. "We are trying to create a mediaeval atmosphere in keeping with our surroundings, and as host I was about to announce in the approved manner of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to extricate itself ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily—a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... then her gratitude, need hardly be described,—nor the astonishment of the husband, which by no means decreased on reflection, at the opportune re-appearance in the nick of time of the man whom three minutes before the attack he had left in the act of going in the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... "that he should march his troops at once, and the French must be amused for two months until the troops arrived; then, whether the French attacked him or not, he should attack them."[67] Keith also wrote from Vienna to Grenville on 2nd May, that the French declaration of war had come in the nick of time to furnish the Hapsburgs with the opportunity of throwing the odium of the war upon France.[68] Other proofs might be cited; and it seems certain that, if France had not thrown down the gauntlet, both the German Powers would have attacked her in the early summer of 1792. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... occurred in an aged Macacus cynomolgus, kept in confinement whose moustaches were "remarkably long and human-like." Altogether this old monkey presented a ludicrous resemblance to one of the reigning monarchs of Europe, after whom he was universally nick-named. In certain races of man the hair on the head hardly ever becomes grey; thus Mr. D. Forbes has never, as he informs me, seen an instance with the Aymaras and Quichuas of ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... its style as by the interest of the story it tells.... The human interest of the book is absorbing. The descriptions of life in India and England are delightful. ... But it is the intense humanity of the story—above all, that of its dominating character, Nick Ratcliffe, that will win for it ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... of the river to Pineville while the dam was being built to enable the gunboats to pass down the river. Colonel Molineux was relieved from command of a recruiting party which he had been in charge of, called the "Louisiana Scouts," but the Regiment nick-named them the "Jay-hawkers." The gunboats having safely passed the dam, the army commenced ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy

... life. The ship moved slowly forward as Dr. Bird climbed on board. Toward the oncoming trucks they rushed across the plain. A crash seemed imminent. In the nick of time McCready pulled back on his joystick and the plane rose gracefully into the air, clearing the leading truck by inches. The truck halted and hastily mounted a ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... scouts coming out from the Pennies or the McIntyres with information, and driving before him the ammunition train of the enemy, he came round into Breadalbane Street with twenty-five tough fighters raging and fuming for the battle and just in the nick of time. It was hard for any fighting man to have spent something like half an hour wandering round circuitous streets and holding ridiculous conflicts with unknown schools when the battle of Waterloo, with the fate of the Empire ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... as high as you can, fellow!" ordered Hal. Just in the nick of time he remembered Captain Foster's instructions, and spoke in English instead of Spanish. But his gesture was eloquent enough for no ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... would, on the whole, have helped him, was uncertain, as the tramp could probably outrun him, but just in the nick of time a team appeared, driven by a young man, perhaps twenty-five, of remarkable size. Hiram Nutt was six feet six inches in height, the tallest man in the county, and he was as athletic as he was tall. He tipped the scales ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger

... sent down Nick Ammons because his wife bought milk down the canyon. They had a sick baby, and it's not much you get in this thin stuff at the store. They put chalk in it, I think; any way, you can see ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... grown indeed, and you are welcome, lad. You are always welcome," she added after a minute, and made some inquiries of her son. "And you have come back in the very nick of time, for there is an Irish gentleman wants to marry your mother, and we do not ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... pure accident. He didn't mean it. If he hadn't died in the nick of time, that unhung murderous villain, Maurice Frere, would have come in for it. By the way," he added, with a change of tone, "do you ever hear anything ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... me owld eyes not to seen it, whin me own fingers sewed it, an' me own han's hoong it aboot the little crather's nick?" ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... enough I was sent to Tregony grammar school, my father being determined to give me a schooling befitting the position he hoped, in spite of his misfortunes, I should some day occupy. Now Nick Tresidder had been attending this same school for some months when I went. For this I was very glad, because I thought it would give me an opportunity for testing him. I had not been in the school a week, however, when my father came to fetch me ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... fringe of crowd, down c., exhibit especially all the symptoms of epilepsy, whooping-cough, and other ailments.] You love not me. [The crowd makes an ugly rush. LOR. appears likely to be dragged down and torn limb from limb, but raises one hand in nick of time, and continues:] Yet I deserve your love. [The yells are now variegated with dubious murmurs. A cobbler down c. thrusts his face feverishly in the face of another and repeats, in a hoarse interrogative whisper, 'Deserves our love?'] Not for the sundry boons I have bestow'd And benefactions ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... around came to know a kind old fellow who loved to linger, his hands resting on his staff, watching their play, listening to their laughter; whose ample pockets were storehouses of good things. Their elders, passing by, would whisper to one another how like he was in features to wicked old Nick, the miser of Zandam, and would wonder where he came from. Nor was it only the faces of the children that taught his lips to smile. It troubled him at first to find the world so full of marvellously pretty girls—of pretty ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome

... intended to hold them both firmly on the surface that she was so kind. He watched her face with wonder, and a little fear, for which he was angry with himself. He noted the three grains de beaute and the smile that seemed to break high on her cheek, in a small nick, like that on the cheek of a Japanese doll. She frightened him, made him feel shy, yet made him feel at ease, too, as though her own were contagious; and his impression of her was softly permeated with the breath of violets. Jack disapproved ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... The initials E.C. apply to my brother, Emery C. Kolb; E.L. to myself. These initials are frequently used in this text. For several years the nick-name "Ed" has been applied to me, and in my brothers' narratives I ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... undone duties, where already lie notes on a comparison of Andalusian mules with the mules of Liane de Pougy, a few scribbled memoranda for a treatise on the love habits of the mole, and a half-finished biography of the talented gentleman who signed his works, "Nick Carter," if my by this time quite roving eye had not alighted, entirely fortuitously, on one of the forgotten glories of my library, a slender volume ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... very height of the confusion one of the hunters must needs fall overboard into the midst of the boiling flurry of bloodstained foam raised by the struggles of the frantic brute, and was only dragged aboard again by Harry in the very nick of time to save him from the terrific rush of the second plesiosaurus. Then the young leader of the party, seeing that his companions were too completely unnerved to be of any use, and that the violent struggles of the wounded ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... man beamed. Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... seems thus clearly; and anecdotes change their value; and in that proportion honesty, as regards one or the other, changes the value of its chances. But what has all this to do with 'Old Nick'? Stop: let me consider. That title was placed at the head of this article, and I admit that it was placed there by myself. Else, whilst I was wandering from my text, and vainly endeavouring to recollect what it was that I had meant by this text, a random ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... the night!" said Alan. "From now on, these weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none will get out of Appin but winged fowls. We got through in the nick of time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? Na, na, when the day comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said the captain, turning to our coastguardsman, "the missin' of that steamer, at which I growled so much that day, turned out to be a great blessin' after all, although it seemed such a misfortune. For it caused me to arrive just in the nick of time to save two human lives—besides givin' the old girl here somethin' to think about and work upon for the next twelvemonth to come—whereas, if I had arrived the day before, I would have bin sleepin' in the house, and ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne

... names before which Lucifer must hide his diminished head; and from this vast repertory of all that is horrid and grotesque—more horrid on account of its grotesqueness—the feuilletonists, or short story-tellers, are not indisposed to draw. We back Danton any day against Old Nick. And how infinitely better the effect of introducing a true villain in plain clothes, relying for his power only on the known and undeniable atrocity of his character, than all the pale-faced, hollow-eyed denizens of the lower pit, concealing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... former days; pin-cushions, shell-baskets, one or two horse-shoes, and iron-heels of boots; several flat irons belonging to doll's houses, with a couple of dolls, much the worse for wear, mounting guard over them; besides a host of other nick-nacks, for which it were impossible to find names or imagine uses. Everything—from the old woman's cap to the uncarpeted floor, and the little grate in which a little fire was making feeble efforts ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... going to refuse her demand and order her out of the kitchen, but the words died on his lips when he turned and beheld the beautiful Hyacinthia, and he answered politely, 'You have just come in the nick of time, fair maiden. Bake your cake, and I myself will ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... spools, and the machines set in motion. At the required number of yards the spools stop revolving. The ordinary spool of cotton thread contains 200 yards, and when this has been wound on, the thread is cut with a knife by an attendant, who also cuts the little nick in the rim of the spool and fastens therein the end of the thread. Thread mills commonly print their own labels, and these are affixed to the spools by special machinery with remarkable rapidity. From the labeling machine the spools go to an inspector, who examines each one for imperfections, ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit like Mrs. Bullfrog's, and also a green silk calash dangling down her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn, had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats. This idea seemed the most probable, since I could nowhere perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharply about the coach, could I detect ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... bet we have! Ma an' me can stand it, but, mister, I don't want folks to laugh at my children, and there's other things I don't want to happen to 'em. Buddy's a wild hoss and he's got a streak of the Old Nick in him. And Allie ain't broke no better 'n him. I got a feelin' there may be trouble ahead, an'—sometimes I 'most wish we'd never had no ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... it come clear. Heigho,"—he added a moment later as if to free his mind from unpleasant thoughts,—"I'll be glad when we are safely up in the hills yonder. Do you know, old man, I feel as though we're getting away just in the nick of time. My back hair and the pricking of my thumbs warn me that your dearly beloved spooks are combining to put up some sort of a spooking job on us. I hope Yee Kee has a plentiful supply of joss-sticks to stand 'em off, if they get too ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... all the witches, to see whether they had the secret mark about them by which they were stamped as the devil's own. This mark was always insensible to pain. Those who had not yet been marked received the mark from the master of the ceremonies, the devil at the same time bestowing nick-names upon them. This done, they all began to sing and dance in the most furious manner until some one arrived who was anxious to be admitted into their society. They were then silent for a while until the new comer had ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... after this I was at my aunt Kate Doneghy's. Uncle James, or "Jim," we called him, her husband, was not a Christian. He shocked me one day by saying: "So those Campbellites took you to the creek, and soused you, did they 'Cal'?" (A nick name.) What a blow! My aunt seemed also shocked to have him speak thus to me. I left the room and avoided meeting him again. How he crushed me! It had the effect to make me feel ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... thus merry: he will prove you his sin out of the bible, and then ask if you will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, with whom he means to make sport, and is most jocund in the church. One that nick-names clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as "rat, black-coat" and the like; which he will be sure to keep up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must do it. He is one seems to dare God in all ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... us all in good nick," said Tresco, as he drew the cork of the bottle, and poured some of the spirit into the pannikin. "Here's luck," and he drank ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... Heaven wi' its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... "We'll keep Nick informed but he ought to remain where he is. We'll still want our men in the basic positions of power after ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... watching her, too, and I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her, because she is one of those people who just can't stand losing. When Miss Thompson reached the place where she was about to ask Anne to step up and get the prize, Miriam half rose in her seat. Mrs. Nesbit pulled her back in the nick of time. I honestly believe she would have reached the stage before Anne did, if her mother hadn't stopped her. Hippy told me they left before the benediction. I suppose Miriam was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... the enemy had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render them ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... woman, stolidly. Glancing again at Father Friday's kind face, she added, more graciously: "Wa-all, yer jest in the nick of time; the hoe-cake's nyearly done, and we war about ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless ramifications. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... worshipped him. These descendants all retain, in the names of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the recollections of the chief gods of this mythology. Mara (the nightmare) still torments the sleep of the English-speaking people; and the Evil One, Nokke (so says Laing), is the ancestor of Old Nick. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... have secured you at short notice like this," Lord Bracondale was saying. "I only found I had a free evening at breakfast, and I met Jack on my way to the polo-ground just in the nick of time." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead? She 'as ships on the foam—she 'as millions at 'ome, An' she pays us poor beggars in red. (Ow, poor beggars in red!) There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses, There's 'er mark on the medical stores— An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind That takes us to various wars. (Poor beggars!—barbarious wars!) Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor, ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... and leaned against his horse's neck and smiled at us, methought he was by far the goodliest man that ever I had looked upon. His teeth were as white as the foam on his horse's bit, and there was a deep nick at the corner of his mouth, like that at ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... the youngest brother, Henry, with quiet steps and a sober, thought-ful look. He had been taught to read and write, and for that reason he was nick-named Beau-clerc, ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin

... rattle in the inside, but there was no sound, and then I thought that the diamond might cleave to the side with damp, or perhaps be wrapped in wool. Scarcely was the locket well in my hand before I had it undone, finding a thumb-nick whereby, after a little persuasion, the back, though rusted, could be opened on a hinge. My breath came very fast, and I shook so that I had a difficulty to keep my thumbnail in the nick, yet hardly was it opened before exalted expectation ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... many hard tasks for him, I will try and do this too, though I was never set to do anything yet half so difficult." So he prepared his fire, and put his gridiron upon it, and lays the salmon fairly and softly upon the gridiron, and then he roasts it, turning it from one side to the other just in the nick of time, before the soft satin skin could be blistered. However, on turning it over the eleventh time—and twelve would have settled the business—he found he had delayed a little bit of time too long in turning it over, and there was a small, tiny blister on ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... if three of Tavannes' following had not run out on the instant and faced the mob with their pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... Philip joined them there was a fight at Brookfield, the Nipmucks and their allies being victorious. They proceeded to burn the town nearly entire, though the inhabitants who survived, after a three days' siege in a fortified house, were relieved by troops from Boston just in the nick of time. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... was a staid, wall-eyed veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and stand-up collar, over which dangled either a queue, or marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it—it would have puzzled old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-scuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat-flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the "last of the sea-monsters," but, like ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... as he gained the street; "but Old Nick is seldom so black as he's painted! He was a plaguy while, I thought, signing his name; but I wish I could sign mine to such ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... protect their lives and property from insult, many of the whigs had united in small parties, and were styled by the Skinners, in derision, the 'Cow-boys.' One of the most active and energetic of these bands, ever ready for any species of patriotic duty, was led by Nicholas Odell. Nick, as he was familiarly termed, though entirely uneducated, was one of the shrewdest men to be found; for Nature had gifted him where cultivation was wanting, and he became, in consequence, a most formidable and dangerous enemy in the service he had chosen. But fifty men composed his ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... chasing through the undergrowth as if the very Old Nick was after him, swinging his cap as he ran, and shouting out some words which he could ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... to adjust sights, as the enemy were within "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, the deadly fire of the two machine-guns began to tell their tale, and odd Turks here and there suddenly remembered "a very urgent ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... his first knowledge of the mistake they had made, and, leaping into his canoe, he drove it across the stream with resistless speed, reaching the spot in the nick of time, and barely doing that, since he was forced to raise his voice while yet on the river, in order to ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... raising her hands, "you don't mean to say you haven't taken down your stocking. What would Saint Nick say?" ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie

... thinkin'," said Miss Mehitable cheerfully; "but the queerest thing and the nicest thing happened to me this mornin'. I got some money that I didn't expect. Just in the nick o' time, you see. We can go ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... of about two or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... advantage of a nick-name. Dickson thought he was being addressed as "Dogson" after the Poet's fashion. Had he dreamed it was Leon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows, and so missed ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... damned quick! ... And, in her humiliation, is there anybody mad enough to fancy that she wouldn't snap up Plank in such a fix? ... And make it look like a jilt for Quarrier? ... But Plank must do his part on the minute; Plank must step up in the very nick of time; Plank, with his millions and his ambitions, was bound to be a winner anyway, and Sylvia might as well be his pilot and use his money. ... And Plank would be very, very grateful—very useful, a very good friend to have. ... And Leila would ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... go. Let the lawyers and the judge puzzle it out. 'Guilty or not guilty?' 'Hanged if I know, my lord. Looks like guilty, but don't see very well how I can be.' That will bother old Rae some; it would bother Old Nick himself. 'Did you forge this note?' 'My lord, my present ego recognizes no intent to forge; my alter ego in vino may have done so. Of that, however, I know nothing; it lies in that mysterious region of the subconscious.' 'Are you, then, guilty?' 'Guilt, my lord, lies in intent. Intent is the soul ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... Lord Culpeper had arrived in Virginia, succeeding Berkeley, Jeffries, and Chichely, then returned the brothers Richard and Nicholas Barry, or Dick and Nick, as they were termed among the people; and as my Lord Culpeper was not averse to increasing his revenues, there were those who whispered, though secretly and guardedly, that the two bold brothers purchased their safety ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... side by side, Close to the fireside broad and wide. "Two?" said Saint Nick, as down he came, Loaded with toys and many a game. "Ho, ho!" said he, with a laugh of fun, "I'll have no ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... heaple steeple There I met a heap o' people; Some was nick and some was nack, Some was speckled on ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... must beg of you for the sake of the ladies to give up this out-of-the-way place, and come close, up to the settlement. We feel that we cannot leave you out here unprotected. Think of what would have happened if we had not arrived in the nick of time." ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... was; well, they drew Ballytowngal, and found no fox there. It was not expected, and nothing happened there. The people did not come into old Nick Bodkin's demesne, but we had heard by the time that we were there that we should come across a lot of Landleaguers at Moytubber. There they were as thick as bees round the covert, and there was one man who had the impudence to tell Tom Daly that draw where he might, he would draw in vain for ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... spell-of-hot-weather was stimulated to be really vicious. "I call Heaven to witness," it said, "that my sole desire was to be genial and beneficial. But what can one do when one is taunted and provoked, abused and nick-named like this? Very well then, I'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... alone. The moment he comes into smart contact with his fellow-beings there is a crash, and the assembled company have a vision of broken fragments of humanity, which might have remained whole and suffered no more injury than a possible nick had the combatants been padded with adaptability. The irresistible man is the man who thinks he can get through the world without it. The irresistible man is the one who is so perfect in his own estimation that he needs no change. He is ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation I pressed forward. Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitch as I myself should have done under similar circumstances. Retiring upon an inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of the exact middle nick between dignity and service. I advance, he withdraws, and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending. These, thinks I, be royal manners. I could have taken him for the Sable King in person, stripped of his mantle. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by the name of Joe Nick, called Old Nick by a great many white people of me city. Joe was owned by Rueben Rogers, a lawyer and farmer of Howard County. The farm was situated about 2-1/2 miles on a road that is the extension of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... certain metallic gleams in it—like time-veiled copper and brass. His flawless frame was covered with tight-banded muscle. There was no appearance of fat. His skin was smooth—without wrinkles. He was young; about forty years, or less. But there was the nick of a tusk-stroke in one ear; and a small red ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... that should be decided in advance, because, surely, it presented serious dangers, was how he should justify the coming into his hands of a sum of money which, providentially and in the nick of time, relieved him from the embarrassments against ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... at eleven, somewhat after the fashion of the Hawkshaws of "yellow back" fame, who, if our memory serves us right, were so punctual that their appearance anywhere was described as being in the "nick o' time," only in this instance he was expected and did not "drop from the sky," ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... illustrations of this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon my humble attempt to embellish with the pencil ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... Grammendorf, in Pomerania, a maid saw, every time she went to milk the cows, a hateful toad hopping about in the stable. She determined to kill it, and would have seized it one day had it not, in the very nick of time, succeeded in creeping into a hole, where she could not get at it. A few days after, when she was again busy in the stable, a little Ulk, as the elves there are called, came and invited her to descend ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... friends, and as this chest must have belonged to them, it would have been worth my while to get hold of her. As, however, they have never appeared, I have been saved the trouble and expense she would have been to me, and now this store comes just in the nick of time when I want it most. The only difficulty will be to dispose of all these things without raising suspicion as to how I came by them. Still, at the worst, I can but tell the truth should questions be asked, and prove that I got them ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... Now, if Jingoss just thinks we're coming some time, and not to-morrow, he ain't going to pull up stakes in such a hell of a hurry. He'll pack what furs he's got, and he'll pick up what traps he's got out. That would take him several days, anyway. My son, we're in the nick of time!" ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... Tombs, is different. He maintains that the two cats are one and the same, and that the body of the beast is occupied by that ubiquitous spirit who is variously known as Satan, Hornie, Cloots, Mephistopheles, Pluto, and Old Nick. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... professor was seen to suddenly dart, with an activity they would hardly have expected in him, across the road. He was only in the nick of time. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner

... Evan would rather have been called Old Nick than "old man," but he nodded obedience to the manager's wishes and went about ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... mother of two boys in a twelve-month! Frederick came just in the nick of time, Sylvester Eve (December 31, 1893), to gain me a little brief renown, for royalty likes its women to be rabbits and, in the reigning houses at least, we are esteemed in proportion to ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... that the general did not at all approve of the turn affairs had taken. "I had a trap for them at the House-of-the- Eight-Half-brothers, and some hillmen in there ready to rush out and seize them as they passed. But a fool Afridi murdered one, and I only got there in the nick of time to save the other's life. I meant that Ranjoor Singh, who is a buffalo, should be troubled about his troopers and suspected on his own account, for he and I have a private quarrel. I did not mean to catch him, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... knew him, Sir Norman, as if he had been his brother. In short, there was no use driving himself insane trying to read so unreadable a riddle; and inwardly consigning the mysterious count to Old Nick, he swallowed another glass of sack, and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... in the rapidly increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals—somewhat unjustly; since the term is strictly applicable only to a very limited portion ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... from thet thar scare That cum on Spense—tho', reely, I'll allus hold it was a shine Of thet thar pooty Deely: Thar's them es holds thro' thin an' thick, 'Twas a friendly visit from Old Nick. ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... stage or in books something always happens just in the nick of time to put things right; but that ain't life, or ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... as you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... another," and he pointed first to the fat and pompous Visitor, and next to the dishevelled Prioress, adding: "And now, Sir Commissioner, for all that I have done in the cause of justice I ask pardon of you who wear the King's grace and majesty as I wore old Nick's horns and hoofs, since otherwise the Abbot and his hired butchers, who hold themselves masters of King and people, will murder me for this as they have done by better men. Therefore pardon, your Mightiness, pardon," and ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... escape his age, his civilization, and his peculiar disposition; from which it seems to follow that not even the unanimous censure of generations can utterly discredit anything. The admission comes in the nick of time: history was on the point of calling attention to the attitude of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Gothic, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... lies, and dragged in as usual the name of Sir Sydney Smith to support his assertions. "If you doubt me, only ask Sir Sydney Smith; he'll talk to you about Acre for thirty-six hours on a stretch, without taking breath; his cockswain at last got so tired of it, that he nick-named him 'Long Acre.'" * * * "Capital salmon this," said the captain; "where does Billet get it from? By the by, talking of that, did you ever hear of the pickled salmon in Scotland?" We all replied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... leader had cheering and example, what were these set against this final ordeal: a blistering thirst of three days and two nights? Happily a water-hole, not bereft of all moisture, was found in the nick of time. A few birds flew about it in the evening, but Sir George Grey's hand shook so that he could take no aim. He headed a last desperate spurt for Perth; the reaching of succour, or the arrival of death. Which ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... a promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... for the girls to try to catch the auto now. They were far behind it, but still Betty ran on. Several narrow escapes had Paul on that perilous journey, and then in the nick of time he was saved from what might have ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... as 9 a clock, with their shiny morning faces, and with their scratchels on their backs, as the Poet says, and with their lunches in 'em, as praps the Poet didn't kno of; and arterwards, the LORD MARE and his Sherryffs went to Epping Forest and dined at a Pick Nick with a lot of Werderers, whatever they may be, and some common Counselmen, but, strange to say, they didn't have no Wenson! so they made Game of one another. They didn't arsk that Mr. PERCY LINDLEY, who's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various

... going to dine before retiring," he muttered to himself. "The Old Nick take the luck! They have all the good times, while I have ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... us as are the Lares, Larvae, and Lemures of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck is unknown; urchin means properly 'a hedgehog,' being the old French ericon ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... one of my marine beauties: for they knew I had a footing in both these—shall we say circles? As to themselves they were the bohemian circle, not very wide—half a dozen of us led by a sculptor whom we called Prax for short. My own nick-name ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... this. He was not hard on the captain. Nothing was further from his thoughts. Friend! Of course he was a good friend and a faithful servant. He begged Powell to understand that if Captain Anthony chose to strike a bargain with Old Nick to-morrow, and Old Nick were good to the captain, he (Franklin) would find it in his heart to love Old Nick for the captain's sake. That was so. On the other hand, if a saint, an angel with white ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... the reporter; "besides, if by chance you had met with some deliverer there, just in the nick of time, why should he have abandoned you after having saved you from ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... he caught a glimpse of one of the desperadoes on top of the car and yelled to Ketchel and Jim who jumped just in the nick of time, and by sheer luck not uncommon in battles, escaped unhurt. As for the fireman he took a novel way of making his escape, by diving into the shelving bank of coal and letting it slide over him. In the excitement of the flurry of firing he ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... was shown the exact (?) spot where the little ark was found among the bullrushes in the River Nile. When Pharoah's daughter saw the little child she was touched and thus the destiny of a nation hung on the cry of a little child. Miriam, the sister of Moses appeared just in the nick of time and when the princess told her to call one of the Hebrew women her feet hardly touched the ground in her effort to get her mother to the spot. When the little hands were held out toward the joyous mother she was told to take the child and nurse him and thus she was paid wages for bringing ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... they rushed on, the bows were within an ace of diving into some wave, and the keel must often have shown, but by a dexterous turn of the tiller Kenneth avoided the danger just at the nick of time, and nothing worse happened than the leaping in of some spray, Scood silently sopping the gathering water with a large sponge, which he kept on wringing over ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... Gave a lustre of midday to objects below; When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name. "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!— To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash away, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... yard untidy and he desisted. The suspense was terrible. He moved outside the yard-gate and my heart sank once more as I saw that he now intended to throw us in the gutter of the roadway. But (fortune was indeed with us that day), a large man in, blue clothes and silver buttons stopped him in the nick of time. Evidently, from the way the large man lectured and waved a short thick stick, it was against the rules of the town to throw dead fish in ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... patrol briefly. He wasted no words in this emergency when seconds were things of consequence, but made prompt use of the assistance which had apparently been sent from heaven in the nick of time. "Tell them she's struck on the reef off Sister Point," ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... we've that to do at the hall to-morrow night that may make men of us for the rest of our nat'ral lives. We've pledged ourselves to Jack Palmer, and we can't be off in honor. It won't do to be snabbled in the nick of it. So let's make for the prad in the lane. Keep in the shade as much as you can. Come along, my hearty." And away the two worthies scampered down ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the river to Pineville while the dam was being built to enable the gunboats to pass down the river. Colonel Molineux was relieved from command of a recruiting party which he had been in charge of, called the "Louisiana Scouts," but the Regiment nick-named them the "Jay-hawkers." The gunboats having safely passed the dam, the army commenced moving back on ...
— History of the 159th Regiment, N.Y.S.V. • Edward Duffy

... than bad—load up, George! A new rifle's like a kid—pretty sure to fire a bit wide at first—not being used to it—we was all kids once, sir, remember! But a bit of correction here an' there'll put that right as a rule. On the other hand there's rifles as Old Nick himself nor nobody else could make shoot straight—ready, George? And it's just the same with kids! Now, if you'll stick your eyes to that glass, and watch the target, you'll see how near she'll come this time—all right, George!" As he speaks the rifle speaks also, and observing ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... what whim, Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb! Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball, Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all! In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick, But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein, As often we wish'd to have Dick back again. Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, The Terence of England, the mender of hearts; A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not what ...
— English Satires • Various

... something a little while ago, a sort of an ear-piercing shriek that startled me, and caused me to nick my chin with the razor. I shall have to put a bit of flesh-coloured plaster over it. Was that the whistle?" asked the Honourable John in the most tantalising, nonchalant way, as if he had all the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... for thousands of ducks, geese, and wild swans. We reached, before night, a native village called Harchina (har'-chin-ah) and sent at once for a celebrated Russian guide by the name of Nicolai Bragan (nick-o-lai' brag'-on) whom we hoped to induce to ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... till morning, but it suddenly appeared like the most woful waste of time. The master of this tremendous affair should be abroad and active; who knew what his keen eyes might detect, what loss his absence might occasion in this nick of time? And here he was, shut up and locked in a wine-cellar! I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation to discover the thief, if I never regained the diamond. A distant ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... comfortable mother that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... this beautiful Romance to the young gentleman in question. As I cannot find, however, that he is known among his friends by any other name than "The Tripe-skewer," which I cannot but consider as a soubriquet, or nick-name; and as I feel that it would be neither respectful nor proper to address him publicly by that title, I have been compelled to forego the pleasure. If this should meet his eye, will he pardon my humble attempt to embellish with the pencil the sweet ideas to which he gives such feeling utterance? ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... here that's wuss'n myself," returned Ann, proffering the ancient witticism with a jocose certainty of its worth. "I ain't very darin', neither. Not much like father, I ain't, nor what brother Will used to be. Either o' them'd face Old Nick an' give him ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... you and Mrs. Durham a vote of thanks for reforming the Bagley tribe. That appears to me an orthodox case of convarsion. First we gave him the terrors of the law. Tell yer what it is, we was a-smokin' in wrath around him that mornin', like Mount Sinai, and you had the sense to bring, in the nick of time, the gospel of givin' a feller a chance. It's the best gospel there ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... Aurelian is designated by a soldier under the nick-name of 'Hand-to-his-Sword.' Vopiscus also mentions this as a name by which he was known in the army. 'Nam quum essent in exercitu duo Aureliani tribuni, hic, et alius qui cum Valeriano captus est, huic signum (cognomen) exercitus ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... November 4th, 1812. He passed his boyhood on his father's farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse. He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the "mole," and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—"My son, be ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... army, like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, just above Columbia and in the fork of the two rivers, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... since you have named it, Master Yeobright, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were wondering what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade—now, that's ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... upon the besiegers, those precious friendlies would assuredly have turned tail and bolted. But the Matabele in the security of their caves made no such sign, and Baden-Powell called up the Cape Boys and the Maxims in the nick of time. In a few minutes the guns were in position on what looked like inaccessible crags, and the Cape Boys shouting and cheering were floundering through bogs, leaping over boulders, and firing with firm hand wherever firing was of use. The fight was now begun in earnest, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... to work just in the nick of time. The gathering of tramps, scratching, yawning, working out their accustomed dislocations, were getting into their places. Zavorotny, at a distance, with his keen eyes caught sight of Platonov and began to yell over ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... should not be less then twelve; you are to fasten that line to any bow neer to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lye, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except a half yard of it, or rather more, and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it, as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick, then so much of it as you intended; and chuse your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... crash of gongs and grumbling of bass-notes, the fiend in the corner rushes forth from his lair with a portentous howl. Away, neck or nothing, flies Napoleon, and Tippoo scampers after him, followed by the terrified attendants; but lo! at the precise nick of time, Queen Victoria draws a long sword from beneath her stays, while up jumps the devouring beast from the den of the prophet, and like a true British lion—as he doubtless was all the while—flies at the throat of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... she has nick'd you, Sir George, I think, Ha, ha, ha: Have you any more Hundred Pounds to throw away upon Courtship, ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... in a tight fix," answered Dick, with a shiver. "You came in the nick of time, and I owe you a good ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield

... I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make this camp ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... Why walks Nick Flimsey like a malcontent! Is it because his money all is spent? No, but because the dingthrift now is poor, And knows not where i' ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... a novice. Already the new life was beginning to modify his appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interesting nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave-clothes, and, like phantoms, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the gateway, it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave a luster of midday to objects below; When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!— To the top of the porch, to the top ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... boy whose story is told here lived in the beautiful country of "Once upon a Time." His name, as I heard it, was Tommy Trot; but I think that, maybe, this was only a nick-name. When he was about your age, he had, on Christmas Eve, the wonderful adventure of seeing Santa Claus in his own country, where he lives and makes all the beautiful things that boys and girls get at Christmas. In fact, he not only went ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page

... father. "And we are to be fellow-passengers, so it was very lucky that we were there in the nick of time." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which we have to perform. 'But for a moment,' makes all light. There was an old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody nick-named him 'Rabbi Thisalso.' The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, 'This also will pass.' He was a wise man. Let us go to his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... good riddance to you," he muttered; "and now for Matthew Brook. You'll sleep sound enough to-night, Stephen Plumpton, I'll warrant. So sound that if Old Nick himself went through your room you'd ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... life. He was sadly degenerated when I saw him for the last time, and several months after, in a mainland camp, he quarrelled with his half-brother Willie—the same Willie who many years ago in honourable encounter cut a liberal nick out of one of Tom's ears with a razor. Willie probed Tom between the ribs with a spear. While he lay helpless and suffering representatives of the police force visited the spot and the sick man was taken by steamer to a hospital, where he passed away—peradventure, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... beads by way of celebration, began a new era in Ann's life. There was no more secret animosity between her and Mrs. Dorcas. The doctor had come that night in the very nick of time. Thirsey was almost dying. Her mother was fully convinced that Ann had saved her life, and she never forgot it. She was a woman of strong feelings, who never did things by halves, and she not only treated Ann with ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of the story it tells.... The human interest of the book is absorbing. The descriptions of life in India and England are delightful. ... But it is the intense humanity of the story—above all, that of its dominating character, Nick Ratcliffe, that will win for it a swift ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d'honneur d'user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le coun! Neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon ensemble: d' hand, de fingres, de nails, d'arm, d'elbow, de nick, de sin, de ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... Ie ne voudray pronouncer ce mots deuant le Seigneurs de France, pour toute le monde, fo le Foot & le Count, neant moys, Ie recitera vn autrefoys ma lecon ensembe, d' Hand, de Fingre, de Nayles, d' Arme, d' Elbow, de Nick, de Sin, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... so, than the owl, at sight of the tempting morsel, left aside both its shyness and prudence, and sailed gently forward; then, hovering for a moment over the ground, hooked the grouse upon its claws, and was about to carry it off, when a bullet from Lucien's rifle, just in the "nick of time," put a stop to its further flight, and dropped the creature dead upon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... flew at him. Had she caught him, she would have destroyed him, such was her rage; and afterwards she would have mourned her folly and mayhap have injured herself; for she loved him greatly. But he stepped aside just in the nick of time, and she crashed into the wall behind him with such force that she was senseless for a time. I ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... to his reversed front, a mile east of Franklin. With him were Reily, whom he had picked up on the road below Franklin, Vincent who with the four guns of Cornay was still watching Grover, and Clack's Louisiana battalion, which had come in from New Iberia just in the nick of time. The plantation with the sugar-house, then belonging to McKerrall, is now known as Shaffer's. The grounds of Oak Lawn adjoin it toward the east and north, and along its western boundary stand Nerson's Woods, whence the coming ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... saved a life," declared Ulyth, then explained briefly how Dorothy had fallen on to the hearth and had been caught back from the fire in the very nick of time. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... the highwayman in the middle of the room, sipping a basin of broth. There seemed a horrible conspiracy for the destruction of a literary gentleman from London in this Northamptonshire village. Mrs. Clare, fortunately, intervened at the nick of time to keep Mr. Townsend from fainting. Patty, always neatly dressed—save and except on washing days,—approached the visitor; and her gentle looks re-assured Mr. Chauncey Hare Townsend. He wiped his hot brow with his scented handkerchief, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... he felt honoured by his connection with a person reverend enough to enter the pulpit and preach the sermon every Sunday. So many Balfours were scattered over the world, in India and the Colonies, that the old rooms at the manse were full of eastern curiosities and nick-nacks from distant lands dear to the hearts of little folks. And, while the garden was a bower of delight, the house was a veritable treasure trove to the grandchildren from far and near who played ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... like a child, as she voiced to the uttermost all she cared to demand of life. "I lika da have one milka ranch—good milka ranch. Plenty cow, plenty land, plenty grass. I lika da have near San Le-an; my sister liva dere. I sella da milk in Oakland. I maka da plentee mon. Joe an' Nick no runna da cow. Dey go-a to school. Bimeby maka da good engineer, worka da railroad. Yes, I lika ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... around the table—those who had gone abroad and those who had stayed at home—and every one partook of the warming and exhilarating beverage, while Mr. Force related what a fine sleigh ride they had had, and how Le caught his train just in the nick of time. ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... malignant marine monsters known as Nicors, from whose name has been derived the proverbial Old Nick. Many of the lesser water divinities had fish tails; the females bore the name of Undines, and the males of Stromkarls, Nixies, Necks, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... beard, stained his limbs with henna, and called himself Abdullah of Bushire, a half-Arab. In this disguise, with spear in hand and pistols in holsters, he travelled the country with a little pack of nick-knacks. In order to display his stock he boldly entered private houses, for he found that if the master wanted to eject him, the mistress would be sure ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... thus deftly turned upon him, poor Antony Double- gill, as he was nick-named, because he so often contrived to get twice the regulation allowance of "grog," retired discomfitted from ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... its own sake. He had unusual endurance, and could keep at work or play long after others were tired. He was a famous ball player, and distinguished himself at the green corn dances. There he drank without flinching such large draughts of the bitter "black drink" that he was nick-named by some ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... wolf. She ron an' smell de dead wolf. She look on us. She look on our sled dogs. She com' close. Den she run off agin. An' she mak' all de tam de leetle whine. She ain' no wolf—she dog! Bye-m-bye she ron back in igloo. Ol' Sen-nick him say dat bad medicine—but me, I ain' care 'bout de Innuit medicine, an' I fol' de dog. I start to crawl een de igloo an' dat dog she growl lak she gon eat me oop. I com' back an' mak' de snare ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... extreme freshness not inveterately prevailed there, might have been observed to be traceable in the very detail of her own appearance. "Company" in short was in the air and expectation in the picture. The flowers on the little tables bloomed with a consciousness sharply taken up by the glitter of nick-nacks and reproduced in turn in the light exuberance of cushions on sofas and the measured drop of blinds in windows. The numerous photographed friends in particular were highly prepared, with small intense faces, each, that ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... "who looks to me more like a damsel rather free of her person than a sturdy country wench. Her hands are as white as a fine lady's! By the Mass! and her hair smells of essences, I verily believe, and her hose are as find as a queen's. By the two horns of Old Nick, matters please me but ill as I find ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac

... said Percival with his inimitable sang-froid. "In the very nick of time, here she comes. Mademoiselle, I was ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... foresters, and yeomen, with staghounds in leash, and hawk on fist, all ready for the sport. Fancy all this if you can, Dick, and then conceive what a brave sight it must have been. Well, as I said, we came up in the very nick of time, for presently the royal coach stopped, and Sir Richard Hoghton, calling all his gentlemen around him, and bidding us dismount, and we followed him, and drew up, bareheaded, before the King, while Sir Richard pointed out to his Majesty the boundaries of the royal forest, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That was a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... the gap in the range through which Tom Dalyell and his troopers spurred from Currie to the fray. The air on these heights is invigorating as wine; but it is also keen as a razor. Without delaying long yon plunge down to the "Windy Door Nick"; follow the "nameless trickle that springs from the green bosom of Allermuir," past the rock and pool, where, on summer evenings, the poet "loved to sit and make bad verses"; and cross Halkerside and the Shearers' Knowe, those "adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill," sometimes floundering ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning. A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the motive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency." I am not very certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter. But, as far as I can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought to discover everything about a machine except what it is for. There has arisen in our time a most singular ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... grasped the rigging with one hand, and leaning forward as far as possible stood with the hook poised. At first it seemed as though the object would escape them, but a touch of the helm in the nick of time just enabled the mate to reach. The hook caught in the jacket, and with great care he gradually shortened it, and drew the body close to ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... we take sandwiches of chick, And go off on a merry pick-a-nick; Sometimes we in hammocks idly swing, At other times we only ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with which he cleared the way for Odo by responding ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... merrymaking. The eight muscular lads who had pulled off another victory for Old Eli were gathered in the middle of the car and surrounded by admiring friends, who cheered and sang and smashed one another's hats, and played the very Old Nick with one another. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... at the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... that it was some barbarous thing they had done, and that they had like to have paid dear for it, for the men resented it to the last degree, and gathered in such numbers about them, that, had not sixteen more of our men, in another boat, come all in the nick of time, just to rescue our first men, who were but eleven, and so fetch them off by main force, they had been all cut off, the inhabitants being no less than two or three hundred, armed with darts and lances, the usual weapons of the country, and which they are very dexterous at ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... William Cornie, Thomas Curtise, Robert Brittaine, Roger Walker, Henry Kersly, Edward Morgaine, Anthony Ebsworth, Agnes Ebsworth, Elinor Harris, Thomas Addison, William Longe, William Smith, William Pinsen, Capt. William Tucker, Capt. Nick Martean, Leftenant Ed. Barkly, Daniell Tanner, John Morris, George Thomson, Paule Thomson, William Thomson, Pasta Champin, Stephen Shere, Jeffery Hall Rich. Jones, William Hutchinson, Richard Apleton, Thomas Evans, Weston Browne, Robert Mounday, Steven Colloe, Ralph Adams, Thomas Phillips, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... in which ye can do that," said Terry, when he saw what they were trying to do, "is to climb up and take a saat behind me. Thin, if ye'll lock yer arms about me nick ye may persuade me to stip down, but ye can't do much while on ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... that the youth should ride forward with the purpose of giving him his quietus, disregarding his own safety until a bullet through the body should apprise him of his fatal oversight. It was this fear that checked Warren in the very nick of time. ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... if this isn't a pretty how-do-you-do. Mrs. Fairfax and her girl are penniless, and I came so near marrying Claire. I have found this thing out quite in the nick of time. The girl is clever enough, but it takes money, and plenty of it, to make me put my head ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... exhibits so largely the mental and moral traits of the earthly parents? These hypotheses not being very satisfactory, will it be claimed that God creates these spirits as fast as children are born to need them? and if so, who brings them down just in the nick of time? and by what process are they incarnated? But if God has, by special act, created a soul or spirit for every member of the human family since Adam, is it not a contradiction of Gen. 2:2, which declares that all ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... heaviest. Almost did he despair of his client's salvation, when he luckily saw eight little jetty black claws just hooking and clenching over the rim of the golden basin. The claws at once betrayed the craft of the cloven foot. Old Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment; ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... way, Miss Dexie, I have been wondering what your name is, ever since I came. Is it an abbreviation or a nick-name?" said Plaisted, anxious to turn the conversation. "I have never met with a young ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... Visitor, and next to the dishevelled Prioress, adding: "And now, Sir Commissioner, for all that I have done in the cause of justice I ask pardon of you who wear the King's grace and majesty as I wore old Nick's horns and hoofs, since otherwise the Abbot and his hired butchers, who hold themselves masters of King and people, will murder me for this as they have done by better men. Therefore pardon, your Mightiness, pardon," and he kneeled down ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... charges and freight. Ruin stared in the face every Texan drover whose cattle were unsold. Only a few herds were under contract for fall delivery to Indian and army contractors. We had run from the approaching storm in the nick of time, even settling with and sending my outfit home before the financial cyclone reached the prairies of Kansas. My last trade before the panic struck was an individual account, my innate weakness for an abundance of saddle horses asserting ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... into a shottle in a door like, and your hands are clasped ahint ye, and swee gangs the door, and you upset headforemost, and in below the axe, and hangie just taps you on the neck to see that it's in the richt nick, and whirr, whirr, whirr, touch the spring, and down comes the thundering edge, loaded with at least a hunder weight o' lead—your head's aff like a sybo—Tuts, that's naething—onybody might mak up their mind to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various

... that we can shed our blood too. It is in the nick of time, too, just at the crisis. I don't want to exaggerate; it is only a scratch—but it was so deliberate, and—and so dramatic. The poor devil could not have chosen a worse moment. People won't ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... eleven, somewhat after the fashion of the Hawkshaws of "yellow back" fame, who, if our memory serves us right, were so punctual that their appearance anywhere was described as being in the "nick o' time," only in this instance he was expected and did not "drop from the sky," ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... murmured like the streams of windward Hawaii! We lost our way over and over again, though the "innocent" young men had been there before; indeed, it would require some talent to master the intricacies of that devious trail, but settlers making hay always appeared in the nick of time to put us on the right track. Very fair it was, after the brown and burning plains, and the variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees were green and bright, aspens shivered in gold tremulousness, wild grape-vines trailed their lemon-colored foliage along the ground, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... truffle-hunters, and have both an interest in the business, as will be seen. The man is gray and old, with a sharp prominent nose, suggestive of his chief occupation, and with a bent back—the effect, perhaps, of stooping to pull the pig's ear in the nick of time should the beast be tempted to snap up one of the savoury cryptogams. When it is added that he wears a short blouse and a low, broad-brimmed felt hat, I have described the appearance of the truffle-hunter. Now, inasmuch as the pig is about to play the most important ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... retorted, in the mere wantonness of power. "Ye hae seen yon auld hauntet kirk, whaur witches an' warlocks Hang an' loupit, an' Auld Nick himsel' screwt his pipes an' gart them skirl, till roof an' rafters a' did dirl! ye hae keekit intil yon eerie auld ruin!—an' syne ye daunert awa', an' thocht naethin' o' 't! Be ma saul, Bobbie Birns didna' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... neck five minuts, bekaze the breath of her kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... not mention, came running up to us with his clothes torn to tatters, and his hat and gun gone. He presented a curious picture. I heard the burghers jeer and chaff him as he approached, and called out to him: "What on earth have you been up to? It looks as if you had seen old Nick with ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... trifling details, let me not fail to call attention to the grave service done by our regiment, by its arrival, at the nick of time, at Annapolis. No clearer special Providence could have happened. The country-people of the traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore and its mob were but two hours away. The Constitution had been hauled out of reach of a rush by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... the new church was consecrated. When he first came among the villagers, he played for three days and three nights almost incessantly the maddest tunes. Superstitious folks muttered one to another that it must be Old Nick himself who could draw such spirit and life from the instrument, as never to let any one have rest or quiet any more than he seemed to require it himself. During the whole of this time he scarcely ate a morsel, and only drank—but in potent draughts—during the pauses. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... a grab for the luckless Hewlet, who eluded the iron hands in the nick of time and retreated ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... danger," said Denham to me softly. "Just at the nick of time our nags 'll be telling the Doppies ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... and their chums, as well as many other cadets and boys and girls from that vicinity, had been using the hill for a couple of hours when the race between the Blue Moon and the Yellow Streak was proposed by Nick Carncross, the new friend of ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... up some small stones, which lay littered in front of the cave, and commenced a fusillade. It had such good results, that a few seconds later, the three horses were plunging off along the bottom of the gully as if Old Nick ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling a patch of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... said Sholto, eagerly. "Mind, if you refuse, and will not give it up after promising, I will nick that lying throat of yours with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... more quickly gratified. For, just in the nick of time to avoid being reported, Midshipmen Darrin, Dalzell and Farley came into sight, falling ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock

... aloud!" cried Mollie, tearing open the envelope, and unfolding several odd sheets torn out of an exercise-book and covered with large, untidy handwriting. Trix's characteristic epistles were always welcome, and this afternoon's specimen had arrived in the very nick of time to stop an embarrassing discussion, and ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... Scott, or Thomas the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to their mettle, by setting them to twine ropes out of sea-sand, and such like. I like none of your paternosters, and saying of prayers backwards, or drawing lines with chalk round ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... "you will forgive me, sir, I know; but I must beg of you for the sake of the ladies to give up this out-of-the-way place, and come close, up to the settlement. We feel that we cannot leave you out here unprotected. Think of what would have happened if we had not arrived in the nick of time." ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... recall. "So we did! Wouldn't it have been somewhere at Christmas? But it wasn't by arrangement!" he laughed, giving with his forefinger a little pleasant nick to his hostess's chin. Then as if something in the way she received this attention put him back to his question of a moment before: "Have you kept ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... become unserviceable. With the exception of the howitzers the whole of these guns were taken from forts. Carriages for them were improvised by the Ordnance department. The use by the Boers of the 37 m/m Vickers-Maxim Q.F. guns,[305] nick-named "pom-poms" by the men, was met by the despatch of forty-nine of these weapons from England. Another important change was the introduction of a longer time-fuse for use with field guns. The regulation time-fuse ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... cut the stems with their teeth. The leaves, with the help of the shifting winds, gently cover the fruit, or some portions of it, and make the best kind of protection from dry air and severe cold; and they come just in the nick of time. Dame Nature is generous. She produces an abundance; enough to seed the earth and enough to feed the squirrels, birds, and some other animals. The squirrels eat many nuts, but I have seen them carry a portion for some ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... you shall not play with us; nay, we will take care how we come into your company. Having spoken thus, they left him, scoffing and laughing among themselves, which mortified Agib so much that he wept. The schoolmaster, who was near, and heard all that passed, came just at the nick of time, and speaking to Agib, says, Agib, do not you know that the vizier Schemseddin is not your father, but your grandfather, and the father of your mother, the lady of beauty? We know not the name of your father any more ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... name of Nicholas Crimins, though by most of his customers he was irreverently called by a diminutive of that name. The principal part of his business undoubtedly came from the side of the establishment with the short name; but it was known to the stable-fraternity that on occasion "Old Nick" would make an advance to a needy borrower who was "down on his luck" of at least fifteen per cent, of almost any article's value. Saddles, bridles, watches, pistols, scarf-pins, and all the indiscriminate belongings ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... parallel to her own. But then their experiences were so much wider and more varied in that old charmed, sunny, fairy life; the knot of their difficulties was so readily cut, by a simple reference to some Fortunatus' purse, or the arrival in the very nick of time of some friendly fairy. Madelon did not draw the parallel quite far enough, or it might have occurred to her that benevolence did not become wholly extinct with the disappearance of fairies, and that ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... servants and with children, and had never failed of interest in the church—nor in him. They had always been the best of friends, he and she; did it not seem that Providence had decreed they should be more? Why had he been sent to the dam in the nick of time, when he had intended to stay at Redford until morning? Why was she sitting here now, alone with him in his study, cut off from everybody else in the world? The hand of the Lord was in it. Looks were of small account ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... they rode on, and laughed at him till they were fit to fall from their horses. When they were gone, he ran again to the lime, and came up to the battle just in the very nick of time. This day he slew the enemy's king, and then the war ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... forget me? Jacob Tripple, your hand! A kiss, Little Scout! Why, your old father's 'most young again, and his good girls shall dine like other good girls, after all! How very thoughtful of Griffin to send it in the nick of time, too. Come, sit up again before it gets cold, and I wish we had something as hot to drink Griffin's health in. Why, I believe I could sing a song again if we had something hot. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... play upon us, just in the nick of an affair; Monsieur d'Estrees, at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, and Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being both pretenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' sister, though of several parties (as it oft falls out amongst frontier neighbours), ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... waxed brighter, and two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from each silver sconce. ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction. "Orators," he says, "joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage." But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies "Scurra Consularis,"[21] ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... Em'ly Wornum, she taken on awful. I never seen her a-gwine on myse'f; not that they was any hidin' out 'mongst the Bivinses er the Sanderses—bless you, no! bekaze here's what wa'n't afeared er all the Wornums in the continental State er Georgy, not if they'd 'a mustered out under the lead er ole Nick hisse'f, which I have my doubta if he wa'n't somewheres aroun'. I never seen 'er, but I heern tell er how she was a-cuttin' up. You mayn't think it, but that 'oman taken it on herse'f to call up all the niggers on ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must beat in his veins till the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... took out the saw, poured some oil on it, and passed his nail down the bar until he found a fine nick. Clearing this out with the saw, he began to cut. The task was far easier than he had expected, for the bar had been already almost sawn through and, in five minutes, the cut was completed. A couple of ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... and the accident; and then of Jack Duane, and of his political career in the stockyards, and his downfall and subsequent failures. Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed it all. "You found me just in the nick of time," she said. "I'll stand by you—I'll help you till you can ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... you mean that Noble and Gale ad. I saw it in proof. Some of Nick Karboe's funny work, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... note from above," declared Phil, talking to himself, though Larry was listening with both ears to what he said. "The message has come, and just in the nick of time to save us from a mighty unpleasant experience. I hope it holds good news ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... cried a man who just then stepped out of the bush. "If I hadn't come just in the nick of time it would have been the worse for ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together with a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... was a translation from anything in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth. Nobody would ever have translated a document into such an extremely peculiar and individual jargon. It is most assuredly an original text, and its author was either Vespucius or the Old Nick. It was by starting from this text as primitive that Varnhagen started correctly in his interpretation of the statements in the letter, and it was for that reason that he was able to dispose of so many difficulties at one blow. When he showed that the landfall of Vespucius ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z. "mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... his last "impression" here While yet his heart was warm, Just in the "nick" closed his career, And death "locked up ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... sleepless one for Derues, whose brain was occupied by a confusion of criminal plans. The chance which had caused his acquaintance with Madame de Lamotte, and even more the accident of Brother Marchois appearing in the nick of time, to enlarge upon the praises which gave him so excellent a character, seemed like favourable omens not to be neglected. He began to imagine fresh villanies, to outline an unheard-of crime, which as yet he could not definitely ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... see that the cow had broken her leg off, and that the pail was lying in several small pieces, while the poor milkmaid had a nick in ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... morning gave Ziffak his first knowledge of the mistake they had made, and, leaping into his canoe, he drove it across the stream with resistless speed, reaching the spot in the nick of time, and barely doing that, since he was forced to raise his voice while yet on the river, in order to hold the battle ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... But when he stood and leaned against his horse's neck and smiled at us, methought he was by far the goodliest man that ever I had looked upon. His teeth were as white as the foam on his horse's bit, and there was a deep nick at the corner of his mouth, like that at the mouth ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... paper, and over the door the motto "Our country, right or wrong." This had long appeared to be an uncanny spot, owing to the wickedness of this sentiment, and I was thinking of the possibility of seeing Auld Nick guarding his property, when my attention was attracted to a tall, white figure in the bright moonlight, ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... and in the nick of time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... King Nick Got into the ring good and quick, They are never afraid, For to fight is their trade, While their wives ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... thrashing, but, bless them for it, let me go. And last year I was almost caught when I passed off French counterfeit notes for fifty roubles on Korovayev, but, thank God, Korovayev fell into the pond when he was drunk, and was drowned in the nick of time, and they didn't succeed in tracking me. Here, at Virginsky's, I proclaimed the freedom of the communistic wife. In June I was distributing manifestoes again in X district. They say they will make me do it again.... Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly gave me to understand that I must ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... have I," answered he; "the devil take my father for sending me thither! The old put wanted to make a parson of me, but d—n me, thinks I to myself, I'll nick you there, old cull; the devil a smack of your nonsense shall you ever get into me. There's Jemmy Oliver, of our regiment, he narrowly escaped being a pimp too, and that would have been a thousand pities; ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... before the Queen Elizabeth came to the rescue, and, in falling back, had been (so the Officer signaller told us) "badly cut up." Asked again who were being badly cut up, he replied, "All of us!" No doubt the Q.E. turned up in the very nick of time, at a moment when we were being forced to retire too rapidly. A certain number of stragglers were slipping quietly back towards Cape Helles along the narrow sandy strip at the foot of the high cliffs, so, as it was flat calm, I sent Aspinall off in a small ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... the next winter (for that is my time, When the days are at shortest) to get it in rhyme; Till then it was lock'd in my box at Parnassus; When that subtle companion, in hopes to surpass us, Conveys out my paper of hints by a trick (For I think in my conscience he deals with old Nick,) And from my own stock provided with topics, He gets to a window beyond both the tropics, There out of my sight, just against the north zone, Writes down my conceits, and then calls them his own; And you, like a cully, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... sight on him, and goes softly up to him, shakin' of his oats, and a-coaxin' him, and jist as he goes to put his hand upon him, away he starts all head and tail, and the rest with him: that starts another flock, and they set a third off, and at last every troop on 'em goes, as if Old Nick was arter them, till they amount to two or three hundred in a drove. Well, he chases them clear across the Tantramer marsh, seven miles good, over ditches, creeks, mire holes, and flag ponds, and then they turn and take a fair chase for it back again, seven miles more. By ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... shipping, she could gratify any reasonable ambition, and might virtually dictate her own terms. With an engine in his hands as formidable as Russia's adhesion to his commercial policy, he could act at the nick of time,—which, as he declared at this very season to Joseph, was the highest art of which man is capable,—could destroy England's commerce, and in a long peace could consolidate the empire he had already ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... hurt—which I was not—there was no time to be wasted on condolences or congratulations. The time-keeper held his watch in his hand, and our goal must be kicked at once, if it was to be kicked at all. So the fifteen paces out were measured, the "nick" for the ball was carefully made, the enemy stood along their goal-line ready to spring the moment the ball should touch the earth. Wright, cool and self-possessed, placed himself in readiness a yard or two behind the ball, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... world calls good, and would hardly persevere after what had been said to her. Lizzie was sure that, a month since, her cousin would have yielded himself to her willingly, if he could only have freed himself from Lucy Morris. But now, just in this very nick of time, which was so momentous to her, the police had succeeded in unravelling her secret, and there sat Frank, looking at her with stern, ill-natured eyes, like an ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... Raffles without a murmur, only too thankful that he had assumed the lead at last. Already the stables were lit up like a chandelier; there was a staccato rattle of horseshoes in the stable yard, and the great gates were opening as we skimmed past in the nick of time. In another minute we were skulking in the shadow of the kitchen-garden wall while the high-road rang with the dying tattoo of ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... and in the rush, a girl, just stepping from the car, caught and carried forward and jostled in such a manner that she lost her footing and fell almost beneath the wheels of the Candy Wagon, and dangerously near the hoofs of a huge draught horse, brought by its driver to a halt in the nick of time. ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... pack up in! And you should have seen her when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody— waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within a week, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... can't be back in no five minutes, nor in thirty minutes, neither. I gotta go over to Nick Swanson's. He's about ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... two inches thick and the bone and fat trimmed. Now nick and score the edge of the fat and brush with salad oil, and then broil the same ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... forward, more merry than delicate, and at length two or three of the elder women (for the girls were somewhat diffident and bashful) began to assail Raymond with various pungent witticisms. Some of the men took part and an old squaw concluded by bestowing on him a ludicrous nick name, at which a general laugh followed at his expense. Raymond grinned and giggled, and made several futile attempts at repartee. Knowing the impolicy and even danger of suffering myself to be placed in a ludicrous light among the ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... first belief in the personal existence of Saint Nick, and although Tess had some doubts as to his real identity, she would not for the world have said anything to weaken ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... a sister of Mary, after attending a Choctaw government school at Grant 1890 to 1894 and completing a course at Oak Hill, taught school until she became the wife of Nick Colbert, an elder of the Beaver Dam church, after his decease she married Bud Lewis and is now occupying ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... of an athletic club, as a dog-musher and a stampeder in the Yukon, and, moreover, who possessed such shoulders as he, had no right to avoid the honor. It was thrust upon him and upon a gigantic German, Nick Antonsen. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating manner which ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met L—— in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well, that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet. He said 'You're already dead,' ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... who had early been a Union man, but later was disposed to accept secession as an accomplished fact; then, on the Union occupancy of Northern Alabama, he boldly advocated a restoration of the State to the Union. Colonel Nick Davis, likewise an original Union man, at first opposed secession; then, after Bull run, accepted a colonelcy in an Alabama rebel regiment; then declined it, and thereafter tried to remain loyal to the Union. The conduct of such strong men as Clemens and Davis is not to be wondered at when their ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... wearily. "She came in, her arm linked with Peter's, and laughing. Said she had found him reading a 'Deadwood Dick' thriller.... One of Tracey's hobbies—" she broke off to explain, "—is collecting old-fashioned thrillers, like the Nick Carter, Diamond King Brady, Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick paper-bound books. Of course he didn't take up that hobby until a lot of other rich men had done it first. There was never anybody less original than poor Tracey.... Well, Flora gave up her place to Janet, and ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... these here women folks continually emergin' from their aliment and mixin' into other spheres? They're well enough ashore, but on soundin's and blue water they beat old Nick. And aboard a contrabandista, too! It's enough to make a Quaker kick his grandmother. Howsomdever, Morris is just soft-headed fool enough to like it, and think it all fine fun. I shouldn't wonder if he was ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... whativer made Becka ax her, for ther's hardly a woman i'th ginnel but what had leever goa a' mile another rooad nor meet her; but aw declare shoo's comin' sailin' daan like a fifty-gun ship! Talk abaght owd Nick, an' he'll show ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... the greatest thing that ever happened!" Jimmy roared, as he swung his campaign hat wildly about his head, and even started a jig, such was his exuberant condition. "The luck of the Wolf Patrol holds as good as ever! In the nick of time, the villain gets his dope and we pull off a brilliant ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... foreseen, the conflict broke out on the Upper Congo. There the slave-raiders, subsidised or led by Arabs of Zanzibar, were specially active. Working from Ujiji and other bases, they attacked some of the expeditions sent by the Congo Free State. Chief among the raiders was a half-caste Arab negro nick-named Tipu Tib ("The gatherer of wealth"), who by his energy and cunning had become practically the master of a great district between the Congo and Lake Tanganyika. At first (1887-1888) the Congo Free State adopted Stanley's ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... room left for any remembrance of the man. He was in a perfect ecstasy of rage at the insolence of the buck, and rushed upon him like a cyclone. Against that irresistible charge the buck had no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o'clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call "bari-outang." This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... the rind of a lemon being rubbed with some lumps of it to take the essence. Then peel and beat it into a paste, with the juice of a large lemon, and mix all together with four or five ounces of warmed butter. Put a crust into a shallow dish, nick the edges, and put the above into it. When sent to table, turn the pudding ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... Hawker and Mr. Pickles were flying low at the time of their accidents, and so their machines were smashed; fortunately Mr. Brock was comparatively high up in the air, and though his machine rocked about and banked in an ominous manner, yet he was able to gain control just in the nick of time. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... Company had secured a band from Waupun to make music on the boats of that line between Milwaukee and Chicago this summer. Well, there is trouble going on in consequence. Mr. Hurson, of the Goodrich line, entrusted the organization of the band to Mr. Nick Jarvis, of Waupun, a gentleman whose reputation as a scientific pounder of the bass drum has received encomiums from the crowned heads of ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... is a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog.' Letters of Boswell, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody speech that had fixed on him the nick-name of Starvation! Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 479. On p. 637 he adds:—'The happily coined word "starvation" delivered a whole continent from the Northern harpies that meant to devour it.' The speech in which Dundas introduced starvation was made in 1775. Walpole's Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... cover-point of silk, and bore him down toward the sea. But therewith had he pity of the child, and said that by him should he never be drowned; so he left him, all wrapped up as he was, on a midden before the gate of a certain abbey of monks, who at that very nick of time were singing ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... "Maxime is right. Don't you see, old fellow, that generous actions are like Couture's investments?—you should make them in the nick of time." ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... on the world's stage "just in the nick of time," and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself. He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking. Stirring times they were in which he ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint—the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the whole brood that are ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... was any hidin' out 'mongst the Bivinses er the Sanderses—bless you, no! bekaze here's what wa'n't afeared er all the Wornums in the continental State er Georgy, not if they'd 'a mustered out under the lead er ole Nick hisse'f, which I have my doubta if he wa'n't somewheres aroun'. I never seen 'er, but I heern tell er how she was a-cuttin' up. You mayn't think it, but that 'oman taken it on herse'f to call up all the niggers ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... done in the majority of cases when the wound was in the body, for the gash made by the entry of the enormously broad spears used by the Kukuanas generally rendered recovery impossible. In most instances the poor sufferers were already unconscious, and in others the fatal "nick" of the artery was inflicted so swiftly and painlessly that they did not seem to notice it. Still it was a ghastly sight, and one from which we were glad to escape; indeed, I never remember anything of the kind that affected ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... dear girl, if it had rested with me, we should both be lying in smithereens at the present moment, on the rocks below. She realised the drop just in the nick of time, and wheeled before we got ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... grimly. "Old Nick has more influence with York than I have. He crosses the street when he sees me. I like him about as much as he likes me. He's boss of his own show—his directors cut no ice. Anyway, it's none of ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... of the 'Cambridge' this large company of men, I observe God's providence at work in my own life, for doubtless I should have been included in the draft, having been in harbour three years, which is considered a long stay. My discharge was granted me in the nick of time. "He doeth all ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling

... cutlasses while engaged in repairing the rigging. Lieutenant Mason and Lord Reginald were aft, at supper. So sudden and silent had been the rising, that they had only just before reached the scene of action when the lugger ran alongside. "Thank you, Voules; you came in the nick of time," cried Lieutenant Mason, when the Frenchmen ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... years old when de war commence poppin' in Charleston. Mammy and pappy say dat I was born on de Graham place, one of de nineteen plantations of my old marster, Nick Peay, in 1854. My pappy was name Bob and my mammy name Salina. They had b'longed to old Marse Tom Starke befo' old Marse Nick bought them. My brudders was name Bob and John. I had a sister name Carrie. They was all ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... morning, but not to take part in it: he "wished to look round," he said. So the morning was spent in impressing everyone with his shiny black suit of West-of-England broadcloth and his beautiful neckcloth and bunch of seals. But in the evening he climbed the pulpit; and there Old Nick himself, that lies in wait for preachers, must have tempted the poor fellow to preach on Womanly Perfection, taking his text from ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... from the infernal regions," explained Dick, with an air of truthfulness, "and they came from there because the old Nick turned 'em out. They were upsetting things and giving the place a bad name. Mrs. Holmes says she's Aunt Rebecca's cousin, but nobody knows whether she is or not. She's come here every Summer since Aunt Rebecca died, and poor old uncle couldn't help himself. He ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... oiled and moved smoothly. He carried a gleaming axe to prove he was a woodman, but seldom had cause to use it because he lived in a magnificent tin castle in the Winkie Country of Oz and was the Emperor of all the Winkies. The Tin Woodman's name was Nick Chopper. He had a very good mind, but his heart was not of much account, so he was very careful to do nothing unkind ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... or three houses and an inn; there is likewise a species of barrack, where half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nick-named Estalagem de Ladroes, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending the money, the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance and sing, eat fricasseed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... expiatory offering for the whole country. So the people decked him with garlands like a victim and led him to the altar, where they were just about to sacrifice him when he was rescued either by his grandson Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from Colchis, or by Hercules, who brought tidings that the king's son Phrixus was yet alive. Thus Athamas was saved, but afterward he went mad, and mistaking his son Learchus for a wild beast, shot him dead. Next he attempted the life ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... of essayists, and quite equal to the higher demands of imaginative prose—witness his Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow—but his forte is in miniature, and the orthodox dimensions of three volumes post-octavo would suit him almost as ill as would the Athenian vesture of Nick Bottom the spruce proportions of royal Oberon: Haliburton is inimitable in his own line of things; his measure of wit and humour—qualities unknown, or nearly so, to Cooper—is 'pressed down, and shaken together, and running over;' but his 'mission' and Cooper's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... self-indulgent mouth,—there was the weakness, there, as usual! Evidently, the strength his mind and character gave him went in pandering to physical appetites. In confirmation of this, there were two curious marks on him,—a nick in the rim of his left ear, a souvenir of a bullet or a knife, and a scar just under the edge of his chin to the right. When he compressed his lips, this scar, not especially noticeable at other times, lifted ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... mention without a due thrill of horror: namely, that, in the empty exchequer of Dominus Hugo, there was not found one penny to distribute to the Poor that they might pray for his soul! By a kind of godsend, Fifty shillings did, in the very nick of time, fall due, or seem to fall due, from one of his Farmers (the Firmarius de Palegrava), and he paid it, and the Poor had it; though, alas, this too only seemed to fall due, and we had it to pay again afterwards. Dominus Hugo's apartments were plundered by his servants, to the last portable ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... schoolin', victuals, an' a heap o' clothes. I've knocked some horse sense into the child. There ain't no nonsense in Mandy, an' ye won't find her equal in the land for peddlin' fruit an' sech. I've kep' her rustlin' from morn till night. When a woman idles, the ole Nick gits away with her mighty quick. I've salted that down many a long year. No, sir, Mandy is mine, an' Mandy will do jest as I say. She minds me well, does Mandy. She won't marry till I give the word—an' I ain't ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... Abnegation Mings as you shall hear tell of on the Main from Panama to St. Catherine's, aye, by the horns of Nick there be none of all the coastwise Brotherhood quicker or readier when there's aught i' the wind than Abnegation, and you can lay to that, my ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... you are like to be heir of Avenel at last, Master Roland, after my lord and lady have gone to their place," said Adam; "and as I have but one boon to ask, I trust you will not nick me with nay." ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... eternally about himself and the mine, till a saint must have loathed the two of them; Thompson, the mine superintendent, silent, slow and stupid, playing ghastly solitaire games in a corner with a pack of dirty cards; and me, Nick Stretton, hunching myself irritably on a hard chair till I could decently go to bed. Even the bush was better than night after night of that,—and suddenly I felt my thoughts bursting out, even if I had sense enough to keep ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... of I was ever so glad to see a feller like wot I am you. Teacher," he cried in huge delight, "the country's saved! Providence fetched you here in the nick of time! You always was a friend to Tillie, and you kin help ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... prize could be worth so great an exertion. As they fought, the raccoons drew nearer and nearer to the porcupine, who did not offer to move. Another lurch would undoubtedly have brought them into contact with his bristling quills had they not in the nick of time discovered their danger. Instantly they separated and leaped back. The leap brought them to the slippery mud at the edge of the stream and the next moment both rolled helplessly into ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... began at six o'clock and lasted for two hilarious hours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat two whole fried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the last crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the children, and one thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a gingerbread pig which Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated with red candies ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... pedigree To the very root of the family tree Were a task as rash as ridiculous: Through antediluvian mists as thick As London fog such a line to pick Were enough, in truth, to puzzle old Nick, Not to name ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... bars. Even if the hero is merely an honest boy trying to get his living, he is not permitted to do so in a natural way, by hard work and years of patient effort, but is suddenly adopted by a millionaire whose pocket-book he has returned; or a rich uncle appears from sea just in the nick of time; or the remarkable boy earns a few dollars, speculates in pea-nuts or neckties, and grows rich so rapidly that Sinbad in the diamond valley is a pauper compared to him. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... all that's wonderful, if this isn't a pretty how-do-you-do. Mrs. Fairfax and her girl are penniless, and I came so near marrying Claire. I have found this thing out quite in the nick of time. The girl is clever enough, but it takes money, and plenty of it, to make me put my head ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... at Skinny and he was chopping away at one sapling for dear life. He had it all full of nicks and every nick had a ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... knew I'd kill the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. Bart, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... with an air of comprehension. He did not, however, comprehend. He only felt that the boy was wonderful. Imagine the boy saying that! He bent lower. "Come on up," he said. "I'll give you a hand. Stick your feet into that nick there." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... stiff—rumped, wall—eyed, old first lieutenantish—looking veteran, with his coat of a regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and standup collar, over which dangled either a queue, or a marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the end of it,—it would have puzzled Old Nick to say which. His lower spars were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white kerseymere, and long boots, the coal—skuttle tops of which served as scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat—flaps in bad weather; he was, in fact, the "last of the sea—monsters," ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... as well as the boy. Nicodemus is a long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides, as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy young Nick, and of course I shall be styled old ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... "Now, come on, Mas' Nick, honey, and go to bed. I'll pour a bucket of cistern water over you and rub you down so as you'll sleep like a bug in a rug," the staunch old comrade crooned, with a mother note in his voice, as he took father's heavy hoe and shouldered it ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... lives in our Buildings, immediately opposite our house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about nine or ten o'clock,—cold bread-and-cheese time,—just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... fellows!" I roared—"this is all very fine, and very loyal, but, damn it! don't it strike you that it's an infernally cowardly thing to pitch into an old man in this style? He may be a Fenian, and he may be Old Nick himself, but he's never done you fellows any harm. What the devil do you mean by kicking up such a row as this? You touch him, if you dare, that's all! You see my uniform, and you know what I am. I'm a Bobtail. This man is my friend. He's going out with me, and I'd like to see the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... men and horses. 'Practically all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and haversacks of our soldiers. One of them snatched a bayonet from a dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself...The feature of the action was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.' So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body. It was four hours before ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... struck the earth not far from the bank of the pond toward which Peggy was at that moment valiantly struggling, the two young aviators leaped out and set out at a run to the rescue. They reached the bank in the nick of time to pull out ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... it allus was, I guess," with a chuckle at his own wit, "but Ol' Swaller-tail sold it, long ago. Ol' Nick Cragg, his father afore him, sold a lot of it, they say, and when he died he left half his ready money an' all his land to Hezekiah—thet's Ol' Swallertail—an' the other half o' his money to ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I wish that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... vagabond returns from the mountains after the twenty years' sleep Gretchen is dead. The apex is reached when the old man, sitting dazed at a table in front of the tavern in the village of Falling Water, asks after Derrick Van Beekman and Nick Vedder and other of his cronies. At last, half twinkle of humor and half glimmer of dread, he gets himself to the point of asking after Dame Van Winkle, and is told that she has been dead these ten years. Then like a flash came that wonderful Jeffersonian change of facial expression, and as ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... air, lad. Dave wanted to look for you, an' wouldn't stay by the game nohow. Can't blame him, nuther, seein' as we came up jest in the nick o' time," added ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer

... protested the other, with pretended severity. "And I won't be called 'Hel,' just because my name's Helen. It—it sounds like the way Pete and Nick swear at each other when they've been spending their pay at Dirty O'Brien's. Besides, it doesn't alter facts at all. It won't take much more climbing to find ourselves right on the shelf, among the frying pans and other cooking ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... companion, Brown, I think, always in the evening got out his writing-materials in the same order—first the paper, then the ink, then the pen. 'I say to him,' says Keats, 'why not the pen sometimes first?' We don't like precision; look at the word 'Methodist,' which originally was a nick-name for people of strictly disciplined life. We like something a little more gay ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... with children, and had never failed of interest in the church—nor in him. They had always been the best of friends, he and she; did it not seem that Providence had decreed they should be more? Why had he been sent to the dam in the nick of time, when he had intended to stay at Redford until morning? Why was she sitting here now, alone with him in his study, cut off from everybody else in the world? The hand of the Lord was in it. Looks were of small account when one considered her rank ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... never bought but one bill of the other dry goods house, and did not like their traveling man; but now he would have bought of Old Nick rather than buy of Luce. He went over to Keeler's and again introduced himself (the task was getting as disagreeable as it was monotonous), saying he wanted to buy some goods. The gentleman made an excuse to go to the desk for a moment, and Solomon knew ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... the morning till 5:30 the next morning. With all that, I was supposed to lead my regiment across a bridge to take a position guarding a new bridge in course of construction; but the bridge, as we discovered in the nick of time, was mined; twenty minutes later it flew ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... sutural angle on the outer lip, consisting of four whorls which rapidly enlarge; the inside expanded out, disk nearly flat exhibiting one distinct whorl; the columella lip narrow, rather long, flattened; the outer lip thin, truncated; the nick of the imperfect perforation placed about one-third the length of the outer lip from the end of the columella lip: length six ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... reach Gangoil sooner than he could the mill. You are better here, and we will send for Mrs. Medlicot as soon as the men have had a rest. How was it all, Mr. Medlicot? Harry says that there was a fight, and that you came in just at the nick of time, and that but for you all the ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... it must be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent now. There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that is two thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come just in the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I should have a right to ask for interest; for, after all, business is business, but I will let you off the interest. Well, how ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... northern metropolis, and there settle for ever a case which apparently had kept the newsmongers of Edinburgh in aliment for a length of time much exceeding the normal nine days. Opportune and happily come in the very nick of time as the latter was—for the delay allowed by the court had all but expired—Mr. White saw the danger of promising anything which could be construed into a reward; but he could use other means ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... muscles for the fraction of an instant. Roaring Dick lowered his head, rammed it into Bob's chin, and at the same time reached for the young man's gullet with both hands. Bob tore his head out of reach in the nick of time. As they closed again Roaring Dick's right hand was free. Bob felt the riverman's thumb fumbling ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh. This crisis ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole situation in a ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... promoter. I promote the well-being of these good mountain folks by giving them sight and by furnishing them with nick-nacks to delight the eye. If you-all are troubled with poor sight I'll be happy to fit you with glasses warranted to make you see double. More coffee, if you please. This is the real article. I think I'll have to make ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... backward just in the nick of time. The Koeln flagship of the German commodore, was soon staggering off in a blaze, and was later sunk with her total complement of 380 officers and men. The Ariadne, steaming at high speed across the bows of the British flagship Lion, was put ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... must take care of me, but that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the sort which other people rub in, but the ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... others of his unhappy class, Poll Doolin's son, "Raymond-na-hattha," for it was he, and so had he been nick-named, in consequence of his wearing such a number of hats, had a remarkable mixture of humor, simplicity, and cunning. He entertained a great penchant, or rather a passion for cock-fighting, and on the present occasion ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... was aware that the Spartans had long been desirous of a peace, and that the Athenians had no longer the same confidence in the war. Both being alike tired, and, as it were by consent, letting fall their hands, he, therefore, in this nick of time, employed his efforts to make a friendship betwixt the two cities, and to deliver the other States of Greece from the evils and calamities they labored under, and so establish his own good name for success as a statesman for all future time. He found the men of substance, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... told him no woman with Sioux blood in her veins ever deserted a brother—or lover. And so she had returned with a packet, presumably of money, and there they found the Indian clinched with Kennedy. Kennedy was rescued in the nick of time, and pledged to silence. The Indian rode away triumphant. Nanette climbed back to her window, exhausted, apparently, by her exertions, and Field started for his quarters, only to find the entire garrison astir. The ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... in the North-west of India, had been employed in surveys beyond the frontier of Afghanistan. His attention was thus directed to the interesting country which the paper would describe. Kafiristan was a country of very peculiar interest. The name Kafiristan, or the "country of infidels," was a nick-name given by the surrounding Mahommedans, and was not that by which it was called by the natives. It had long been a reproach to English geographers that the only accounts of Kafiristan had been obtained through Orientals themselves, ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... persevere after what had been said to her. Lizzie was sure that, a month since, her cousin would have yielded himself to her willingly, if he could only have freed himself from Lucy Morris. But now, just in this very nick of time, which was so momentous to her, the police had succeeded in unravelling her secret, and there sat Frank, looking at her with stern, ill-natured eyes, like an ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... the silent, rigid immobility of the man whose money had come in the nick of time to save him from utter ruin, his voice died out in ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... of blood—be warned by the fate which thy cruelty well-nigh drew down upon thy head this day! If God in His mercy had not sent us, in the very nick of time, to save this youth out of thy murderous hands, thou wouldst have passed ere now to the scathing fires of purgatory, whence there be few to offer prayers for thy release. Be warned by this escape. Repent of thy bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Seek ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... she peered from the window of the "ark," which had been moored beneath the screening foliage of overhanging trees. It was through these waters, and through the outlet, soon afterward, that Floating Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry, aided by Deerslayer, drew the ark back into the lake in the nick of time to escape a band of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... appearance in life ought more to dread than having any ridicule fixed on him. In the estimation even of the most rational men, it will not only lessen him, but ruin him with all the rest. Many a man has been undone by a ridiculous nick-name. The causes of nick-names among well-bred men, are generally the little defects in manner, air, or address. To have the appellation of ill-bred, aukward, muttering, left-legged, or any other tacked always to your name, would injure you more than you are aware of; avoid then these little defects ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... But the heart of the Saint Ne'er once turned faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' Said St Cuthman, 'To me it is perfectly clear, If you talk of the devil, he's sure to appear!' 'With my spade and my pick I am come,' said old Nick, 'To prove you've no power o'er a demon like me. I'll show you my power— Ere the first morning hour Thro' the Downs, over Poynings, shall roll in the sea.' 'I'll give you long odds,' Cried the Saint, 'by the gods! I'll stake what you please, only say what your wish is.' Said the devil, 'By ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... especially pleased—he and Worse were acquaintances of old, up at the northern fishery; and Sivert Gesvint, as he was nick-named, was, when outside the meeting-house, a lively and enterprising man. Whilst, on the one hand, his tongue was always ready with texts and hymns, he was no less ready at a pinch to give any one a helping hand, ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... know what's going to happen to us. Even if the girls were to hunt for that beastly Sammyadd and find it, and get it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think we hadn't looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and nick them - or else the police will think WE'VE got them - or else that she's been fooling them. Oh, it's a pretty decent average ghastly mess this ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... players are sent Where all their false notes are protested, I am sure that Old Nick will play him a trick, When his bad trump and he are arrested, And down in the regions of Discord's own legions His head with two French horns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea for ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... road. She recalled the glisten of the sunlight on the river, and the crimson of the hard maples stained by the first early frost, and she knew it was not the sunshine nor the tingle in the air nor the beautiful way in which Ned and Nick flew along stride for stride over the hard white road, but something else, something quite different, which had made her glad that Sunday morning. She looked straight ahead and tried to imagine that not the wooden English groom, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... I'll be only fifteen den. Dat's long time 'go, eh? Well, for sure, I ain't so old like what I'll look. But Old Man Savarin was old already. He's old, old, old, when he's only thirty; an' mean—bapteme! If de old Nick ain' got de hottest place for ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... Kemp, it shall be done as well as if it was for my own 'usbind, an' I can't say more than thet. Mr. Footley thinks a deal of me, 'e does! Why, only the other dy as I was goin' inter 'is shop 'e says "Good mornin', Mrs. 'Odges." "Good mornin', Mr. Footley," says I. "You've jest come in the nick of time," says 'e. "This gentleman an' myself," pointin' to another gentleman as was standin' there, "we was 'avin' a bit of an argument. Now you're a very intelligent woman, Mrs. 'Odges, and a good customer too." "I can say thet for myself," ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... had such blooming bad luck as we have," Ed observed, "they're probably in jail somewhere! I don't think I ever saw anything in a worse mess! The very Old Nick seems ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... like school boys, almost all have "nick-names." Mine was called the "Dutch" from the fact of its having been raised in that section of the country between Saluda River and the Broad, known as "Dutch Fork." A century or more before, this country, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Esquire," who gave a nick-name to the next parliament, was a leatherseller of London, and was summoned by Cromwell to sit as member for the city. "I, as commander-in-chief of the armies of the Commonwealth," wrote Cromwell to him, "summon ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... meaning nothing offensive to the Romish faith, I must be allowed to say that most assuredly I can conceive nothing less qualified to excite feelings of devotion, or more certain to awaken contempt and loathing, than the images of this description, the tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... affrighting menace of the city beyond the station. Miss Thompkins had fluffy red hair, with the freckles which too often accompany red hair, and was addressed as Tommy. Miss Nickall had fluffy grey hair, with warm, loving eyes, and was addressed as Nick. The age of either might have been anything from twenty-four to forty. The one came from Wyoming, the other from Arizona; and it was instantly clear that they were close friends. They had driven up to the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... quiet smile, as he reloaded his gun; "this is not the first time that you and I have helped one another in the nick of time, Arrowhead; we shall be brothers, and good friends to boot, I hope, as long ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne

... was incumbent on Mr. Slope first to secure the bishop. He specially felt that it behoved him to do this before the visit to the archbishop was made. It was really quite providential that the dean should have fallen ill just at the very nick of time. If Dr. Proudie could be instigated to take the matter up warmly, he might manage a good deal while staying at the archbishop's palace. Feeling this very strongly, Mr. Slope determined to sound the bishop that very afternoon. He was to start on the following ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Evidently he had not had a talk all day, and felt he must expand and let himself out to somebody. I appeared in the nick of time, and came in for all his honey. He rose, went to a bookcase, ran his eye along a shelf, took down a volume, and began, in a low tone: "'Cooperation is the mighty lever upon which an effete society relies to extricate itself ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... instrumental, under God and your Highness, in the healing of the same ... My Lord, as it must needs grieve you to see these three distressed kingdoms lie like a body without a head, so it may also cheer you to consider that the Comforter hath empowered you (and in this nick of time you only) to make these dead and dry bones live. You may by this one act ennoble and eternize yourself more in the hearts and chronicles of these three kingdoms than by all your former victories and the long ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Cicero seems to have been a person worthy to be remembered; since those who succeeded him not only did not reject, but were fond of that name, though vulgarly made a matter of reproach. For the Latins call a vetch Cicer, and a nick or dent at the tip of his nose, which resembled the opening in a vetch, gave ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... agitated circle, in his praiseworthy efforts to do business. Old Crocky, too, was there, mounted on a subdued wretch of the horse-species, tenanted, according to the Pythagorean doctrine, by the evil spirit of some defunct croupier, and ready to "return on the nick" as usual. In this "mess tossed up of Hockley-Hole and White's," in addition to our foregoing ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... hear it," said Ellen, kissing her. "I don't know what makes me say it I never used to. But I've got more to tell you I've had more visitors. Who do you think came to see me? you'd never guess Nancy Vawse! Mr. Van Brunt came in the very nick of time, when I was almost worried to death with her. Only think of her coming up here unknown to every body! And she stayed an age, and how she did go on! She cracked nuts on the hearth; she got every stitch of my clothes out of my trunk, and scattered ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... down in massa's chair an' took a smoke. Bimeby Cap thought,—'Ef massa come an' ketch him!'—an' put down de pipe an' went to work, and bimeby I smelt mighty queer smell, massa, 'bout de house, made him tink Ol' Nick was come hissef for Ol' Cap, an' I come back into dis yer room an' Massa Reuben's letters from Indy was jist most done burnt up, he cotched 'em in dese yer ol' brack han's, Mass Roger, an' jist whipt 'em up in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... the men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone. "Shut up, Nick! This is ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... so high up as that?" said one of the ship-boys, gaping with wonder. "Why, your master must be Old Nick himself." ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... cut a dash over me, even if he has money," said Nat Poole, and to this Gus Plum, the bully, eagerly agreed. There was likewise another pupil, Nick Jasniff, who also hated Dave, and one day this fellow, who was exceedingly hot-tempered, attempted to strike Dave down with a heavy Indian club. It was a most foul attack and justly condemned by nearly all who saw it, and thoroughly scared over what he had attempted to do, Nick Jasniff ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... to see you! I have been dreaming about you the whole night, the whole night, and I was afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you only knew how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of time! You will be my salvation! You are the only person who can save me! There is to be a most original wedding here tomorrow," she went on, laughing, and tying her husband's cravat. "A young telegraph clerk at the station, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... 1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named "Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with which he cleared the way for Odo ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... fired it," replied Morgan, "and he done it just in the nick of time. The killing of that officer was all that ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... gift, Tittany's for twisting words to sugarsticks. But la, there, what wots your trickling whey of that coal-piffling Prince of Flies! I'm Bottom the weaver, I am. He knows not his mother's ring-finger that knows not Nick Bottom. Back, back, ye jigging dreams! 'Tis Puckling nods. Ha' done, ha' done—there's no sweet sanity in an asshead more if I quaff their elvish ... Out now ... Ha' ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... had wrenched himself loose from Zita's arms and was struggling with the ropes that still bound him even after he had managed to roll out from under the elevator in the last nick of time. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... cold-blooded and generally disliked by the men under him. The more evil-minded gossips in the bank said he was in league with "Old Nick." That, of course, was absurd, for it does not necessarily follow, because a man suggests a means looking to an end, disreputable though it be, that he has Mephistopheles for a silent partner. The conservative element among the employees would ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the luster of midday to objects below; When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick! More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... was rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... the Romans had at one time almost despaired. [Sidenote: General survey of the war.] But in council they retrieved what they had lost in the camp. A most politic concession of the franchise checked all further disaffection in the very nick of time. The revolt in Umbria and Etruria was speedily suppressed, and at the close of the second year of the war, B.C. 89, the insurrection itself was virtually at an end. For, though the Sulpician revolution at Rome prevented its absolute extinction, and some ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... of his wet feet. A smile of tender amusement visited his lips as he took hold of the door-handle. Exactly as he touched it, the key on the other side turned. The lock had been stiff, but it had shot out in the nick of time, and he found himself brought up short in his impulsive career and hurtling against a solid barrier. He knocked, but no one answered. He could have fancied he heard panting breaths on the other side of the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... all his predicaments and frailties, at his decease we resolved, in our trouble, that we would never own another dog. But this, like many another resolution of our life, has been broken; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lying sprawled on the mat. He has a jaw set with strength; an eye mild, but indicative of the fact that he does not want too many familiarities from strangers; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild duck across the meadows; knows ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... forming. It pays to do this, because the second year you will have a good yield. Remember that strawberries which flourish in certain localities may fail utterly in others. That is why you and I are experimenting with this new berry. I am going to give you five plants of Marshall, five of Nick Ohmer, and five of Brandywine. Remember, shorten back the roots three inches before you plant. I shall be around to see your strawberry bed. Remember to cultivate after every rain, and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... But Thoas has yet to be reckoned with. He is furious at the interruption of the sacrifice, and is about to execute summary vengeance upon both Iphigenia and Orestes, when Pylades returns with an army of Greek youths—whence he obtained them is not explained—and despatches the tyrant in the nick of time. The opera ends with the appearance of Pallas Athene, the patroness of Argos, who bids Orestes and his sister return to Greece, carrying with them the image of Diana, too long disgraced by the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... rewarded by clearer knowledge of God's will. If Hilkiah had not been busy in setting wrong things right, he would not have found the book in its dark hiding-place. We are told that the coincidence of the discovery at the nick of time is suspicious. So it is, if you do not believe in Providence. If you do, the coincidence is but one instance of His sending gifts of the right sort at the right moment. It is not the first time nor the last that the attempt to keep God's law has led to larger knowledge of the law. It is not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... If old Nick were to lose his tail, where should he go to supply the deficiency?—To a gin-palace, because there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various

... must pass swiftly to each in turn, keeping his different lines of advance as nearly as possible level, fly from Armenia to Media, thence swoop straight upon Iberia, and then take wing for Italy, everywhere present at the nick ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... necessary to adjust sights, as the enemy were within "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, the deadly fire of the two machine-guns began to tell their tale, and odd Turks here and there suddenly remembered "a very urgent appointment". Within an hour the top of this hill was cleared, ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... beholding it, shivered with dread, And screamed, as he turned away quick; Not an old woman saw it, but raising her head, Dropp'd a bead, made a cross on her wrinkles, and said, "God help me from ugly old Nick!" ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... acknowledged by broad minded and impartial students of history in the United States. The late Professor Moses Coit Tyler, of the University of Cornell, gave it as his opinion, "That the side of the Loyalists, as they called themselves, of the Tories, as they were scornfully nick-named by their opponents, was even in argument not a weak one, and in motive and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one." The same sentiments were even more emphatically ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... Amy Robsart, also other costumes and dominos. Emilie Melville was my customer for her concert and opera robes; so was Mme. Mulder and Mme. Elezer. I made the robes for Signora Bianchi in the opera of "Norma," for Mrs. Tom Breese and Mrs. Nick Kittle. Mrs. Tom Maguire and Mrs. Mark McDonald were regular customers for years. Mrs. Maynard, a wealthy banker's wife, who lived on Bush street, and her daughters justly appreciated my work, and I found in Mrs. Maynard a lifelong friend. I continued in this busy way, always hearing ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... her best was done when the services of two able medical men had been secured, and no one else wished to make any delicate suggestions while she was assuming the management. I had arrived therefore in the nick of time, for before the sun was very high in the heavens on the morning following my return, my father lay cold ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... fellow his fare, and parting with him with a hearty shake of the hand, I sprang up the ship's side, and—remembering Tom's parting caution just in the nick of time—presenting myself in due form upon the quarter-deck, where the first lieutenant had posted himself and from which he was directing the multitudinous operations then in progress, reported myself to that much-dreaded official as "come on ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... busied with my razor, must needs turn ever and anon for blessed sight of her where she flitted lightly to and fro, she bidding me take heed lest I cut myself. Cut myself I did forthwith, and she, beholding the blood, must come running to staunch it and it no more than a merest nick. And now, seeing her thus tender of me who had endured so many hurts and none to grieve or soothe, I came very near ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... a little while ago, a sort of an ear-piercing shriek that startled me, and caused me to nick my chin with the razor. I shall have to put a bit of flesh-coloured plaster over it. Was that the whistle?" asked the Honourable John in the most tantalising, nonchalant way, as if he had all the day ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... cook was just going to refuse her demand and order her out of the kitchen, but the words died on his lips when he turned and beheld the beautiful Hyacinthia, and he answered politely, 'You have just come in the nick of time, fair maiden. Bake your cake, and I myself will lay it ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... success in turning away his blade, but after I had guarded myself from three or four thrusts, I took to mind that offence is the best defence, and ventured a lunge, which he stopped with his dagger only in the nick of time to save his breast. His look of being almost caught gave me encouragement, making me realize I had received good enough lessons from my father and Blaise Tripault to enable me to practise with confidence. So I pushed the attack, but never ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... unity; from fields without number produce to sustain a nation on trial poured forth in abundance; enormous quantities of iron were at hand for the casting of cannon and cannon balls; and, finally, pathways of water and steel were in readiness in the nick of time to carry these resources where they would count tremendously in the four long ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... said. "We'll keep Nick informed but he ought to remain where he is. We'll still want our men in the basic positions of power ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... The reason, I fancy, is not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course, conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first requisite to a regime of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious person—he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at novelty—once assured ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... Then Nick would tell Barney of a wonderful day when he had driven to the county town in his uncle's wagon. There was a parade of militia there, and how grand the drum had sounded! And as he told it he would shoulder a smoke-blackened ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... even the poor little house at Milton, with her anxious father and her invalid mother, and all the small household cares of comparative poverty, composed her idea of home. Edith was impatient to get well, in order to fill Margaret's bed-room with all the soft comforts, and pretty nick-knacks, with which her own abounded. Mrs. Shaw and her maid found plenty of occupation in restoring Margaret's wardrobe to a state of elegant variety. Captain Lennox was easy, kind, and gentlemanly; sate with his wife in her dressing-room an hour ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... reported that during the year St. Nick, as he was commonly called, was busy manufacturing and preparing wonderful toys to be distributed throughout the country among the children who were deserving. In order to know to whom the presents were to go, he ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum

... robbery of no great importance, but Nick had taken it to oblige a personal friend, who wished to have the business managed quietly. This affair would not be worth mentioning, except that it led Nick to one of the most peculiar and interesting criminal puzzles that he had ever ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... hang by their toes from the limb of a tree twenty feet from the ground; walking a tight-rope which he stretched across deep gully, and all sorts of other dangerous enterprises of that nature. Often he was called "Monkey," and no nick-name ever given by boy playmates fitted better ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... catch his eye, Evelyn turned to her plate filled with a subtle melancholy. When would there be another dinner like this? Not, at all events, until the war was over. Nick had spoken about this—very definitely; there would be no more entertaining. She had agreed with him, of course, not, however, escaping the conviction that her husband's viewpoint was more or less in keeping with a certain unusual sombreness which she had caught ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... round? My dear girl, if it had rested with me, we should both be lying in smithereens at the present moment, on the rocks below. She realised the drop just in the nick of time, and wheeled ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... for me? Surely, boy, you either mistake, or are crazy. Yet stay! Does it come from Nick ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... The "old girl" wasn't behaving well; but in Dan's experience, so many people did not behave well; and as it happened, the thing could be put right. If it had been yesterday, how helpless he would have been in the emergency! But old Playford's death had come just in the nick of time. As for himself and his chance—his last chance—well! He looked across at that other door behind which Ted lay. Ted and he had stuck together through ill report and good, had helped each other out of many a scrape, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... meane, Pirats, whose guilty brests, with an eye in their backs, looke warily how they may goe out, ere they will aduenture to enter; and this at vnfortifyed Hailford, cannot be controlled: in which regard, it not vnproperly brooketh his more common terme of Helford, and the nick-name of Stealfoord. ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... literary men have done, namely, availing themselves of the striking local peculiarities in various parts of the country. A marked illustration of this now before the public is Edward Milton Royle's "Squawman," recently at Wallack's Theatre. The dramatist has caught his picture just in the nick of time, just before the facts of life in the Indian Territory are passing away. He has preserved the picture for us as George W. Cable, the novelist, preserved pictures of Creole life of old New Orleans, made at the last ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard

... all got together at this sale of fineries and nick- nacks. You call them goods; but if you do not take care they will prove evils to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, and perhaps they may for less than they cost; but if you have no occasion for them they must be dear to you. Remember what ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... that herb on behalf of Miss Tox, and one little silver scoopful on behalf of the teapot—a flight of fancy in which good housekeepers delight; went upstairs to set forth the bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water and arrange the plants, to dust the nick-nacks, and, according to her daily custom, to make her little drawing-room the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... realize more than sufficient to pay commission charges and freight. Ruin stared in the face every Texan drover whose cattle were unsold. Only a few herds were under contract for fall delivery to Indian and army contractors. We had run from the approaching storm in the nick of time, even settling with and sending my outfit home before the financial cyclone reached the prairies of Kansas. My last trade before the panic struck was an individual account, my innate weakness for an abundance of saddle horses asserting itself in buying ninety head and sending them ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... said he, rising, "you come in the nick of time, gentlemen. I was just beginning the soup, and you will ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... were! Ann, Juley, Hester, Susan—quite a small child; Swithin, with sky-blue eyes, pink cheeks, yellow curls, white waistcoat-large as life; and Nicholas, like Cupid with an eye on heaven. Now he came to think of it, Uncle Nick had always been rather like that—a wonderful man to the last. Yes, she must have had talent, and miniatures always had a certain back-watered cachet of their own, little subject to the currents of competition on aesthetic Change. Soames opened the drawing-room door. The room was dusted, the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the twins; but she does not belong there,—we have learned that from the doctors. They say decisively that she is curable, but that she needs very delicate treatment. My opinion is that we have a lovely bit of rescue-work sent directly into our hands in the very nick of time. All those in favour of opening the garden gates a little wider for Marm ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... welcome visitor, Miss Houghton! You have arrived, just in the nick of time! Our mutual friend here, Mr. Gaylord, has been telling me of his visit to our schools, under your guidance. While he praises the wonderful progress made by the pupils; he seems to think, that we teach too much politics and too ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... across to her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the sage brush, as the wolves took flight ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the uncle of him, Nance and he and the childer lived together in their father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I wish that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... not recognize Sam Weller, making his first appearance in "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the turning-point of the book's fortunes. ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... low-ceilinged room above a baker's shop in the village, and had strewn it about with books and photographs and nick-nacks until the drab surroundings seemed to reflect a little of her dainty personality. Thither, later in the day, she took Betty off to tea and introduced her to a tall fair girl with abundant hair and a gentle, rippling laugh ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... Day M. Manzoni introduced me to a young courtesan, who was at that time in great repute at Venice, and was nick-named Cavamacchia, because her father had been a scourer. This named vexed her a great deal, she wished to be called Preati, which was her family name, but it was all in vain, and the only concession her friends ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... poodle, but Mrs. Cope and Trevenna. Just an hour and a half to pack up in! And you should have seen her when they started. She was radiant—shaking hands with everybody— waving her handkerchief from the deck—distributing bows and smiles like an empress. If ever a woman got what she wanted just in the nick of time that woman did. She'll be Lady Trevenna within ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... in; nicarie, deuory. "Nick," female pudendum: hence nickery, copulation. Deuory may either be Fr. devoir, duty; or ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... go so high up as that?" said one of the ship-boys, gaping with wonder. "Why, your master must be Old Nick himself." ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... a waiter at a Pall Mall Club gave him the tip, and the chance came in the nick of time, for Mr. and Mrs. W. Keyse were up against it, and no gay old error. "If you was to offer to blooming-well work for people for nothing," said Mrs. Keyse, "my belief is, they wouldn't 'ave you at ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... inclosing Strelinski's certificate came in the nick of time. I had already made an application that you should be attached to me for service, on the ground that you belonged to my old regiment, and knew something of Russian; but your age and short service were against you, and I doubt whether I should have succeeded, as the post is considered ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... we felt that they were faltering and that our work was easier and our hope higher; then we cried our cries and pressed on harder, and in that very nick of time there arose close behind us the roar of the Markmen's horn and the cries of the kindreds answering ours. Then such of the Romans as were not in the very act of smiting, or thrusting, or clinging or shielding, turned and fled, and the whoop of victory rang around ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... it is so frightfully common!" said she. "Where did you buy that abominable pink stuff? There's a chair that would be nice if the wood weren't covered with gilding. Not a picture, not a nick-nack—only your chandelier and your candelabra, which are by no means in good style! Ah well, my dear fellow; I advise you to continue ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... track us over the sand-hills, and reached us, in accepted hero fashion, in the very nick of time. The maddened bull buffalo was charging on May, unchecked by a peppering fire from the guns of the officers. All hands were so absorbed by the intense excitement of the moment that the sound of approaching ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron! What plaguy mischiefs and mishaps Do dog him still with after-claps! For though dame Fortune seem to smile 5 And leer upon him for a while, She'll after shew him, in the nick Of all his glories, a dog-trick. This any man may sing or say, I' th' ditty call'd, What if a Day? 10 For HUDIBRAS, who thought h' had won The field, as certain as a gun; And having routed the whole troop, With victory was cock ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... nick of time," Dan said; but as we discussed plans Cheon hinted darkly that the Maluka was not a fit and proper person to be entrusted with the care of a woman, and suggested that he should undertake to treat the missus ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... though they are decidedly more tolerable. The daughters of Spanish Governors who carry on flirtations on the sea-shore with the captains of English men-of-war, who are carried off by pirates and rescued in the nick of time, whose papas not only consent to their marriage with the heretical object of their affections but send boxes full of gold doubloons, together with their blessing, are so much better than life that we need not quarrel when invited to meet any number ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... harpooned for a certainty!" Obviously the rest of the room thought so too, and they all waited expectantly. It was a tense moment—something had to be done and done quickly. An inspiration came to me. Just in the nick of time I seized an unembroidered bit firmly between the finger and thumb of both hands and held it a safe distance from me for the medal to be fixed; the situation was saved. A sigh of relief (or was it disappointment?) ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... bailiff's window was visible from where they sat, and a light patch had appeared at it. "He's staring! Lord, how he's staring! I say, can you see this?" Erik called out, holding up a gin-bottle. Then, as he drank: "Your health! Old Nick's health! He smells, the pig! Bah!" The others laughed, and the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... bullrushes in the River Nile. When Pharoah's daughter saw the little child she was touched and thus the destiny of a nation hung on the cry of a little child. Miriam, the sister of Moses appeared just in the nick of time and when the princess told her to call one of the Hebrew women her feet hardly touched the ground in her effort to get her mother to the spot. When the little hands were held out toward the joyous mother ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... to," he answered with a deep chuckle. "Didn't git a fair crack at him, as he was running mighty cute. Rifle held fire the nick of a second too long. I knew he was mortal hit, but he managed to reach this hole. Then the skunk jumped in a-purpose to make us all this ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... hero that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!" raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across the court with the other on his heels. Through the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... the foe declined to oblige; he lay low all day, presumably imbibing coffee. In the afternoon, heavy rains, which made piquet duty none too pleasant, came down in torrents. Tents had just been pitched at our redoubts in the nick of time. The three men killed on Tuesday were buried with military honours. The funeral was large—the Colonel, his staff, and several sections of the Town Guard marching in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... they were compelled to resort to the substitutes of the Indians. Among some tribes the bark of the red willow, dried and bruised, was used; others, particularly the mountain savages, smoked the genuine kin-nik-i-nick, a little evergreen vine growing on the tops of the highest ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,' 'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,' 'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words puck, urchin, gramary, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of puck is unknown; urchin means properly 'a hedgehog,' being the old ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... by the nick-name Silguero,[40] six blows of the best sort for the lady whom he compelled to leave her necklace in pledge with ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... There were only a few little unavoidable words afloat, by which the curious public of Ottawa could surmise why Honor Edgeworth had so coldly rejected her handsome suitor at the last moment, and why Guy Elersley had come back in the nick of time, to be reinstated in his ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... sitting on the hotel piazza the other day, watching two young Spaniards who were performing feats of horsemanship. They dropped four-bit pieces on the dusty road, and riding up to them at full speed clutched them from the ground in some mysterious way that was perfectly wonderful. Then Nick Gutierrez mounted a bucking horse, and actually rolled and lighted a cigarette while the animal bucked ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... our trying to hit that mark so far away?" grumbled Bristles; which expression of defeat was something strange to hear from his lips, because the owner of the shock of heavy hair that stood upright, and had gained him such a peculiar nick-name, was as a rule very stubborn, and ready to ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... well can be," she said, "and as jolly as jolly can be, and you have just come in the nick of time to make everything perfect. Molly, do tell Mrs. Willis ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... that," answered Wendot, faintly smiling, "for thou broughtest aid in the very nick of time. And how came it that our father and our guest were with thee? Methought it must surely be a dream ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o'clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call "bari-outang." This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped dead on ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... judgment of the Assembly, found himself in disgrace. The two Houses then proceeded to examine the Covenant for themselves. They also proposed some modifications of the document, and referred it back, with these, to the Assembly (Sept. 14). The arrival of Henderson and his two colleagues at this nick of time accelerated the conclusion. On the 15th of September, when they first appeared among the Westminster Divines, and Henderson first opened his mouth in the Assembly and expounded the whole subject of the relations ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... Hawaii! We lost our way over and over again, though the "innocent" young men had been there before; indeed, it would require some talent to master the intricacies of that devious trail, but settlers making hay always appeared in the nick of time to put us on the right track. Very fair it was, after the brown and burning plains, and the variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees were green and bright, aspens shivered in gold tremulousness, wild grape-vines trailed their lemon-colored foliage along the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... were all going to a show that evening at the Riverside Opera House. It promised to be an interesting entertainment, for the names of several popular actors appeared on the program. But what made it especially attractive to Joe and his party was the fact that Nick Altman, the famous pitcher of the "White Sox" of Chicago, was on the bill for a monologue. Although, being in the American League, Joe and Jim had never played against him, they knew him well by reputation and respected him for his ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... visitation. But here its heavy hand had been laid lightly upon town and village. It was as if a wave of poison gas of the sort the Germans brought into war had been turned aside by a friendly breeze, arising in the very nick of time. Little harm had been done along the road we traveled. But the thunder of the guns was always in our ears; we could hear the steady, throbbing rhythm of the cannon, muttering away to ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... contains the hydro-carbons "Cymol," and "Cuminol," which are redolent of lemon and caraway odours. A dose of the seeds is from fifteen to thirty grains. Cumin symbolised cupidity among the Greeks: wherefore Marcus Antoninus was so nick-named because of his avarice; and misers were jocularly ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... spinning now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... mischievously, as Dab stepped upon the platform; but Dick Lee, who had just escaped from the tremendous hug his mother had given him, came to his friend's aid in the nick of time. Dick felt that "he must shout, or he should go off," as he afterward told the boys, and so at the top of his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... make a clean breast. Thrice her courage failed her, and she left the room with her tale untold, excusing herself on various pretexts. Her aunt had seemed to be not quite so well, or had declared herself to be tired, or had been a little cross;—or else Martha had come in at the nick of time. But there was Brooke Burgess's letter unanswered,—a letter that was read night and morning, and which was never for an instant out of her mind. He had demanded a reply, and he had a right at least ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be pullin' it wid ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey

... "Why, because, Nick, this is the cottage of the very blacksmith about whom I have been speaking, and I wanted to give you a surprise by introducing him ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... creature whose mysterious habit of living upon the surface of the pond as well as underneath made the children's nick-name a necessity. And now it was attempting a raid on land as well. But land was not its natural place. Something certainly had happened, or was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... They used to wonder how I got so much for the money. But I'm always afraid o' being found out—or of losing the blessed spy-glass—or of some one pinching it. So we got to do what I always said—make some use of it. And if I go along and nick your father's dibs we'll make our fortunes ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... four years of his life. He was sadly degenerated when I saw him for the last time, and several months after, in a mainland camp, he quarrelled with his half-brother Willie—the same Willie who many years ago in honourable encounter cut a liberal nick out of one of Tom's ears with a razor. Willie probed Tom between the ribs with a spear. While he lay helpless and suffering representatives of the police force visited the spot and the sick man was taken by steamer to a hospital, where he passed away—peradventure, in antagonism to his ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... — N. punctuality, promptness, immediateness. V. be prompt, be on time, be in time; arrive on time; be in the nick of time. Adj. timely, seasonable, in time, punctual, prompt. Adv. on time, punctually, at the deadline, precisely, exactly; right on time, to the minute; in time; in good time, in military time, in pudding time|, in due time; time enough; with no time to spare, by a hair's breadth. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the aggregate amount of which they have despoiled you—it is the knowledge that every other person in Paris is seeking and planning to nick you for some sum, great or small; it is the realization that, by reason of your ignorance of the language and the customs of the land, you are at their mercy, and they have no mercy—that, as Walter Pater so succinctly phrases it, that is what gets ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when— 170 In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts—you're ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off To some safe bench behind, not letting go The palm of her, the little lily thing That spoke the good word for me in the nick, Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say. And so all's saved for me, and for the church A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence! Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! 390 ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... across after those black devils. Old Carre said they would take a bite at you as they passed. We landed on the other side, and scrambled up a deuce of a cliff, and got to the tunnel there just in the nick of time. Young Carre here was fighting a dozen of them ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too wide a berth, I should as surely be carried past it, in which case I felt pretty certain that my last chance would be gone. I made a desperate effort at the very nick of time, and happily succeeded in laying hold of a rope, which was hanging in the water, by means of which I was swung round to the stern of the raft, upon which, in a small timber-hut, I could see ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various

... nine. Nine Christmas presents ranged in order straight; Bob took the steam engine, then there were eight. Eight Christmas presents—and one came from Devon; Robbie took the jackknife, then there were seven. Seven Christmas presents direct from St. Nick's; Bobby took the candy box, then there were six. Six Christmas presents, one of them alive; Rob took the puppy dog, then there were five. Five Christmas presents yet on the floor; Bobbin took the soldier ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... collecting of the fruit is dangerous due to the number of poisonous snakes which inhabit the places. One day, when we were running our montaria to a landing- place, we saw a large serpent on the trees overhead as we were about to brush past; the boat was stopped just in the nick of time, and Mr. Leavens brought the reptile down with a charge ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Andrews took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters—six of us at a time. And Jane Andrews nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Andrews hadn't caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she'd fallen in and prob'ly been drowned. I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Marilla, ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... "Let's nick the sword," said Ting-a-ling, "and then it will be a saw." And so, with a sharp little flint, they nicked the edge of it, and the edge of the green fairy's knife (for he had no sword), and as they commenced to saw away as hard as they could at the ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton

... into all this with the red coat of a soldier and the keen, ambitious heart of a Jew, at the very nick of time. He saw at once the enormous possibilities hidden in the near future for a man who took this country at its proper value, handling what he secured with coolness and foresight. He know that he only possessed one thing to risk, namely, his life; and true to his racial ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... was a nick name given to the western peasantry of Scotland, from then using the words frequently in driving strings of horses. Hence, as connected with Calvinistical principles in religion, and republican doctrines in policy, it was given as a term of reproach to the opposition ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... the plans for the house which Edmund was to build, on a farm, which had come into the market at the very nick of time, just on the other side of the hill, and in Fern Torr parish. Marian and Gerald were taken the first day to look and advise whether the new house should be on the old site, or under the shelter of a great old slate quarry, crested with a wood, a beautiful ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Mac. But, say, that isn't the worst. The Old Nick himself is shot up, and hitting the high spots with fever. We're afraid ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... with the old man although he felt honoured by his connection with a person reverend enough to enter the pulpit and preach the sermon every Sunday. So many Balfours were scattered over the world, in India and the Colonies, that the old rooms at the manse were full of eastern curiosities and nick-nacks from distant lands dear to the hearts of little folks. And, while the garden was a bower of delight, the house was a veritable treasure trove to the grandchildren from far and near ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... rejoiced. "Call Satan in!" he ordered. "I know that rogue perfectly well, and he has come in the very nick of time. A scamp like that will be ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... saluted him amiably, still without rising. "You've come in the nick of time. I have just been chatting with Miss ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "you have come in the nick of time. There is madame overwhelming me with questions respecting the count; she insists upon it that I can tell her his birth, education, and parentage, where he came from, and whither he is going. Being no disciple of Cagliostro, I was wholly unable to do this; so, by way of getting ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... 1st July, after a heavy night's rain, a voice from the high wet grass, about a hundred yards distant, cried out to the sentries in Arabic, "Don't fire! I am a messenger from Rionga to Malegge!" (my former nick-name). ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... Earl wore it all the time. Guess he kept up his reputation as a fighter that way. Be pretty hard to nick anyone with a sword if he had one of these running. And almost any clumsy leatherhead could slash the other guy up if he didn't have to worry ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... she said, after a moment of concentrated gazing, "it's still there—and it looks like Old Nick—oh, Amory, what'll we do! It's just the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... classic Pattycake had been much in favour. Chellalu's Attai (the word here and hereafter signifies Mrs. Walker, "Mother's elder sister") had taught it to her; and whenever and wherever Chellalu saw her Attai, she immediately began to perform "Prick it and nick it" with great enthusiasm. But after she could walk, Chellalu would have nothing more to do with such childish things. "Show us Edward Rajah!" the older children would say; and instead of standing up with ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... treated as a Russian spy. On this occasion a large Japanese fishing fleet was entirely destroyed. I was, of course, soaked to the skin and got badly bruised, and was once all but washed overboard, one of the Fijians catching hold of me in the nick of time. We cast anchor for the night, though we had only a few miles yet to go, but this short distance took us eight or nine hours next day, as this channel is nearly always calm. We had light variable breezes, and tacked repeatedly, but gained ground slowly. These waters seemed full of large ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... went over heaple steeple There I met a heap o' people; Some was nick and some was nack, Some ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the lustre of midday to objects below— When what to my wondering eyes should appear But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various

... years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper. She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named "Jew" Westbrook, because of his appearance. She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg's relentless portrait. ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... boy," returned Mr. Mole. "Isaac Mole himself, turned up in the very nick of time. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... it?" said Sholto, eagerly. "Mind, if you refuse, and will not give it up after promising, I will nick that lying throat of yours with ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... ha, she has nick'd you, Sir George, I think, Ha, ha, ha: Have you any more Hundred Pounds to throw away upon ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... a Bible in that house ten months ago. But it came at the very nick of time. William's wife were in great trouble, and she'd tried a great many sticks to lean upon, but they'd all snapped like glass when she leaned her weight on 'em—she found nothing as'd ease the burden of an aching heart. It were just at the right time, then, as the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Jinny'd want any of us to suffer for her pleasure, Ju dear," she said gently. "I'm sure Mrs. Hudson has a good front room that we can get. I heard that Miss Snow had left and her room wasn't to be filled till next week; so we are just in the nick of time, you see." ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... until the end of the week that Dick Rover came into contact with Tad Sobber, a stocky youth, with a shock of black hair and eyes which were cold and penetrating. Sobber was with a chum named Nick Pell, and both eyed Dick in a calculating ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... although the women, who had done all the work, must be content with remnants and bones already picked over by the host. But this disposition to share everything was not without its other aspect; we also were expected to share everything with them. We were asked to bestow any little trinket or nick-nack exposed to view. Any extra nut on the machine, a handkerchief, a packet of tea, or a lump of sugar, excited their cupidity at once. The latter was considered a bonbon by the women and younger portion of the spectators. The attractive ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... there has no hurt befallen me!" she cried in broken gasps. "But I know not what fearful thing was like to have happened had it not been for the help of this gallant gentleman, who came in the very nick of time to drive off my assailants and bring me safe home. And oh, my father, such a wonderful thing! I can scarce believe it myself! This gentleman is no stranger; leastways he may not so be treated, for he is our very own flesh and blood—my cousin, thy nephew. He is Cuthbert Trevlyn, son to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... another, and be close to the spot when the ordeal was being gone through with, and touch the sward-slip so unmistakably that all men might see that it was they who knocked it down. After this comes forward he who was to go through with the ordeal, and at the nick of time when he had got under the "earth-chain," these men who had been put up to it fall on each other with weapons, meeting close to the arch of the sward-slip, and lie there fallen, and down tumbles the "earth-chain", as was likely enough. Then men ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... my fey," said the music-loving bishop, "here comes a harper in the nick of time, and now I care not how long they tarry. Ho! honest friend, are you come to play at ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... hard-hearted nymphs, nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless ramifications. Beauty, eluding unwelcome embraces, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... conjurer, one time, to have his fortune told; which was, that he would marry the ugliest maid in the parish. Whereby it preyed on his mind till he hanged hisself. Whereby along comes the woman in the nick o' time, cuts him down, an' marries him out o' pity while he's too weak to resist. That's your Future; and, as I say, I keeps en at ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... attention, with a view to reproving Bridget when she came back to the fold. He burnt his fingers trying to straighten the stovepipe, smelt of the dish-cloths to see if they were greasy, rattled the pans and bethought himself of the eggs just in the nick of time. In some haste and embarrassment he removed the skillet from the fire just as Annie came out of the pantry with the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon

... the occasional advantage of a nick-name. Dickson thought he was being addressed as "Dogson" after the Poet's fashion. Had he dreamed it was Leon he would not have replied, but fluttered off into the shadows, and so missed a ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... shocked Budge Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... How much did we have when we were married? Why, little girl, you just got through saying that the happiest days we ever spent were up there in the woods when money was so scarce that we knew the date on every dollar we owned—and every scratch and nick on them—and the dimes ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... dames who travel with their trinkets and fal-lals. At the sight of my barkers her ladyship screamed and fainted. This made things as easy as an old glove. Click! and the necklace was in my pocket and I was galloping back to Hounslow as if Old Nick himself ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... struck up the desperado's arm just in the nick of time, thus preventing a terrible crime. But the end was not yet. There were five more bullets in the cylinder of the weapon, as the lad knew ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He seemed ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... apostles, especially St. Paul, who did not allow it to trouble them whether the highest or the lowest priest had said it, or had done it in God's Name or in his own. They looked on the works and words, and held them up to God's Commandment, no matter whether big John or little Nick said it, or whether they had done it in God's Name or in man's. And for this they had to die, and of such dying there would be much more to say in our time, for things are much worse now. But Christ and St. Peter and Paul must cover all ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... I cannot describe The delight I am in with this Perceval tribe. Such capering!—Such vaporing!—Such rigor!—Such vigor! North, South, East, and West, they have cut such a figure, That soon they will bring the whole world round our ears, And leave us no friends—but Old Nick and Algiers. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al









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