"Clapper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she knew what she would do, and after the old mother was asleep, she rose softly and slipped out the door without awakening even old Jack, and went to the barn, where she got the sheep-bell that old Beelzebub used to wear and with the clapper caught in one hand, to keep the bell from tinkling, she went swiftly down the road toward Hurricane Gap. Several times she had to dart into the bushes while men on horseback rode by her, and once ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... open your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... she set up, the true mulish yell—knowing all the time that she had nothing to fear from her rider, knowing that he would not strike her between the ears. 'Come here, you scoundrel, and we will make a bell-clapper of your head, and of your bowels a string to hang it by'—that was the cry of the Barcelonese, presently echoed in every town and village throughout Spain—and that cry was raised immediately after he had remitted the mulct which he had imposed on Barcelona for unprovoked ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... who had doubtless been eavesdropping, suddenly appeared and interrupted the conversation with, "Ma, now don't you git started 'bout dem old times. You knows your mind ain't no good no more. Tomorrow your tongue will be runnin' lak a bell clapper a-talkin' to yourself." "Shut your big mouth, Henrietta." Frances answered. "I been sick, and I knows it, but dere ain't nothin' wrong wid my mind and you knows it. What I knows I'se gwine to tell de lady, and what I don't know I sho' ain't gwine tell no lie about. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... his pipe with the other, bowed to the assembled multitude, and deposited himself in the seat of honour. As there was no hammer in the room, the inventive genius of the learned chairman, suggested the substitution of his bell, and having agitated its clapper three times, and shouted "Orger" with stentorian emphasis, he proceeded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... she has but ane, The cat has twa the very colour; Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper tongue wad deave a miller: A whiskin beard about her mou', Her nose and chin they threaten ither; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rattle on, perhaps he did not even listen to him. He paid as little attention to the tongue of the Leather-bell as he did to the clapper of the bell that hung in the church tower, perhaps less. For, indeed, in the solemn sonorous ding-dong, ding-dong of the church bell, those who have ears to hear, and still preserve memories of the past, may recognise the voices of the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... save his neck as you or me either. Awnly Jonathan's bin here and tawld up summat that makes un want to be off to wance, for he says, what us all knaws, without he's minded to it you can't slip a knot round Jonathan's clapper; and 'tain't that Jerrem's afeared o' his tongue, awnly for the keepin' up o' pace and quietness he fancies 'twould be better for un to make hisself scarce ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... without one particle of literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my next neighbor said to me, "that man will be our valedictorian.'' This disgusted me. If that was the style of classical scholarship at Yale, I knew that there was nothing in it for me. It turned out as my friend said. That glib reciter did become the valedictorian ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... defy belief and alienate the sympathies. The scene of the IN PACE, for example, in spite of its strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper. And again the following two sentences, out of an otherwise admirable chapter, surely surpass what it has ever entered into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180): "Il souffrait tant que ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... followed by the bellman who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance. At the proper stations, Duncan blew a rousing pibroch, after which the bellman, who, for the dignity of his calling, insisted on a prelude of three strokes of his clapper, proclaimed aloud that Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, desired the presence of each and every of his tenants in the royal burgh of Portlossie, Newton and Seaton, in the town hall of the same, at seven of the clock upon the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... bellringers, and lived at the top of a tower a hundred feet high, which vibrated with every stroke of the great bell hanging midway between his airy perch and the ground. He was sixty years of age, and had white hair, but he was as strong as younger men, and could swing the clapper against the side of the great bell with a boom that could be heard across rivers, and far into the peaceful country, on quiet nights. His eyes were so sharp, that, without the aid of a glass, he ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... about the borders of the island was alive with clapper rails. Before I rose in the morning I heard them crying in full chorus; and now and then during the day something would happen, and all at once they would break out with one sharp volley, and then instantly all would be silent again. Theirs is an apt name,—Rallus crepitans. Once ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... never tolled but upon the death of some of the Royal Family, of the Bishop of London, or of the Dean of St. Paul's, and then the clapper is moved and not the bell. In the stillness of night, the indication of the hour by the deeply sonorous tone of this bell may be heard, not merely over the immense Metropolis, but in distant parts of the country. The fact ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... January, '39, Jake Hinkle came down to the "Court House," hitched his horse to the Court Square fence, and made a straight bend for Sanders' "Grocery," and began to "wood up." Old Jake's tongue was a perfect bell-clapper, and when well oiled with corn juice, could rip into the high and low Dutch like a nor'easter into a field of broom corn. Jake talked and talked, and drank and talked, and about midnight, the cocks crowing, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper. For what his heart thinks ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ordered him off to clear the woods near Lake Stymphalis of some horrible birds, with brazen beaks and claws, and ready-made arrows for feathers, which ate human flesh. To get them to rise out of the forest was his first difficulty, but Pallas lent him a brazen clapper, which made them take to their wings; then he shot them with his poisoned arrows, killed many, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... saw a negro boy climb a ladder leaning against the side of the church and creep along the edge of the roof to the open cupola and grasp the clapper of the cast-iron bell. Then it began to toll. The boy was an unpractised hand, and the strokes were irregular, sometimes too slow and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... thing I entreat in return for the many I intend to do for you: do not expose me to Argueello's persecution, for I would rather lose your friendship than have to endure hers. Good God, friend! her tongue goes like the clapper of a mill; you can smell her breath a league off; all her front teeth are false, and it is my private opinion that she does not wear her own hair, but a wig. To crown all, since she began to make overtures to me, she has taken to painting white, till ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... long branches, and fancied they were now in the depth of the green wood. The confectioner of the town came out, and set up his booth there; and soon after came another confectioner, who hung a bell over his stand, as a sign or ornament, but it had no clapper, and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain. When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, and that it was quite a different sort of thing to a pic-nic or tea-party. There were three persons who asserted they had penetrated to the end of ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... even to toll it requires the united strength of three men pulling with separate ropes the vast clapper; above this are 40 ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... wrinkled from too much sitting on the small of his back. His shirts, collars, and neckties were clean and always "dressy." Nellie saw to that. Besides he always had gone in for gay colours when it came to ties and socks. His watch-fob was a thing of weight and pre-eminence. It was of the bell-clapper type. In the summer time he wore suspenders with his belt, and in the winter time he wore a belt with his suspenders. Of late he affected patent-leather shoes with red or green tops; he walked as if he despised the size ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... bawled. "I'll teach ye a lesson! Didn't I tell ye ter keep yer clapper still about ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... is collateral evidence that some similar system of marking time had been resorted to from early eras. But the whole story is vague. It seems, however, that the method of counting the hours was influenced by the manner of striking them. Whether bronze bell or wooden clapper was used, three preliminary strokes were given by way of warning, and it therefore became inexpedient to designate any of the hours "one," "two," or "three." Accordingly the initial number was four, and the day being divided into six hours, instead of twelve, the highest ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the entrance there was another bell. A long red streamer hung from its clapper, and under it was a great box with bars over the top. On the box there ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the mill, too, standing fast by the bridge, the manorial appendage of the town, which I loved in my boyhood for its gaunt and crazy aspect and dim interior, whence the clapper kept time mysteriously to the drone of the mill-sluice? I think it is gone. Surely that confounded thing can't be my ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... devastation which the first brings about. The vibrations due to any one shock take place with great rapidity. They may, indeed, be compared to those movements which we perceive in the margin of a large bell when it has received a heavy blow from the clapper. The reader has perhaps seen that for a moment the rim of the bell vibrates with such rapidity that it has a misty look—that is, the motions elude the sight. It is easy to see that a shaking of this kind is particularly calculated to disrupt any bodies which stand free in the air and are supported ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... sombre bell metal was slick as if oiled and absorbed light without refracting it. Bending backward, he looked into the upper abyss and perceived new batteries of bells overhead. These bore the raised effigy of a bishop, and a place in each, worn by the striking of the clapper, shone golden. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... me now as if I could see myself in a mirror of anguish, altogether changed, as if my head were a complete void at times and became something sonorous, and then was struck violent, prolonged blows from a heavy clapper, as if it had been a bell, which fills it with tumultuous deafening vibrations, from a kind of loud tocsin and from monotonous peals, that were succeeded by the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of half-past five. At that season of the year, the sun sets a few minutes past six. Of course there remained but little more than half an hour, in which to execute the sentence of the law. Cuffe had never quitted the deck, and he actually started when he heard the first sound of the clapper. Winchester turned toward him, with an inquiring look; for everything had been previously arranged between them; he received merely a significant gesture in return. This, however, was sufficient. Certain orders were privately issued. Then there appeared a stir among the foretop-men and on the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... partially discharged in the unopened bud, is prevented from falling out by a coat of hairs on the upper part of the style. By the time all the pollen has been removed by visitors, however, and the stamens which matured early have withered, the pistil has grown longer, until it looks like the clapper in a bell; the stigma at its top has separated into three horizontal lobes which, being sticky on the under side, a pollen-laden insect on entering the bell must certainly brush against them and render them fertile. But bumblebees, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... down, dear man, sit ye down! Shut yer clapper, Nora! Sure it's mesilf that knows a paythriot whin I sees 'im. Tear-an-ages! Give me yer hand, me boy. Sit ye down an' tell us about it. We're all the same kind here. Niver fear for the woman, she's the worst o' the lot. Tell us, dear man. Be the ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... surroundings? But would it? Ah, Philip felt a twinge then. "Touche!" chortled some unseen imp who plied a venomous rapier. Thank goodness, a sailor was standing by the ship's bell, with his hand on a bit of cord tied to the clapper. It would soon be seven o'clock. Even the companionship of the uncouth skipper was preferable to this ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... sarcasm, though the precise meaning seems uncertain, unless it bears some relation to mare's nest. Mares wicker, so do goats; giggling is wickering. The first work a boy does is to go out with a clapper, or his own strong voice, to scare birds from the corn all day; this we call bird-keeping, but the lads themselves, with an appreciation of the other side of the case, call it bird-starving. Forage is often used in ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into the steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus engaged, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... not hasty. As I said before, the doors rattled till you would have thought the knocking was reiterated in every room of the Palace. The bell rung out for company, though we could not find that any one tolled the clapper, and the guards let off their firelocks, merely because they knew not what better to do. So, Master Bibbet being, as I said, unsusceptible of his duty, I went down with my poor rapier to the door, and demanded who was there; and I was answered in a voice, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... clanged loudly; and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... unmistakable: the big bell was going as he had never heard it before—not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and were beating it against the side—Dang, dang, dang, dang—stroke following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when faintly, but plainly heard on the still ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... though the girls did keep calling her up at frequent intervals to see if she had any news for them yet. She became so tired of hearing the telephone bell ring at last that she stuffed a handkerchief between the bell and the clapper and sat down to read a novel and while away the time as best she could till her father ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... evident to sense in the string of a violin or harpsichord, for we may perceive by the eye, or feel by the hand, the trembling of the strings, when by striking they are made to sound. If a bell be struck by a clapper on the inside, the bell is made to vibrate. The base, of the bell, is a circle, but it has been found that by striking any part of this circle on the inside, that part flies out, so that the diameter which passes through this part of the base will be longer than the other diameter. ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, 'Now, isn't it ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came in the great hall there stood many flagons ready charged; the general called for wine to drink the King's health; they brought him a formal bell of silver gilt, that might hold about two quarts or more; he took it empty, pulled out the clapper, and gave it me who (sic) he intended to drink to, then had the bell filled, drunk it off to his Majesty's health; then asked me for the clapper, put it in, turned down the bell, and rung it out to shew he had played fair and left nothing ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... house in your absence. I should place my bomb and run a fuse from the bomb to one of the holes in this telephone box. I should tie the clapper of the bell down in the box with a bit of weak thread, a bit of ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... Wright, originally the worker, Anglo-Sax. wyrht-a. Camp is sometimes for Kemp, but is also from the Picard form of Fr, champ, i.e. Field. Of similar formation to Webb, etc., is Clapp, from an Anglo-Sax. nickname, the clapper— ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... the other. "Your tongue goes like the clapper of a mill-wheel. Sit down here, friend, and partake of this herring. Understand first, however, that there are ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... keepit me in a sleep a' this while as deep as death? An' here do I find him abscondit like a speeder i' the mids o' my leddy's wab, an' me dreamin' a' the night that I had the Deil i' my house, an' that he was clapper-clawin me ayont the loom. Have at you, ye brunstane thief!" and, in spite of the good woman's struggles, he lent ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... clapper on his giant side Shall ring no peal for blushing bride, For birth, or death, or new-year tide, Or festival begun! A nation's joy alone shall be The signal for his revelry; And for a nation's woes alone His melancholy ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... curse of Saint Augustine, Saint Benedict, Saint Cuthbert and Saint Dominic light upon him for a lewd fellow, a clapper-claw, a thieving dog who hath no regard for Holy Church—forsooth a most vicious rogue, monstrum nulla virtute redemptum ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the door. He looked at it for several seconds. Then he stood on a chair and twisted away the bell's wiring. Using his pocket knife as a screwdriver, he released the bell from the door lintel. Then he cleaned and polished it. This done, he removed the clapper, wrapped the bell up in a piece of newspaper, and made his unhesitating way back to the cellar beneath the Chinese laundry. He was very much awake as he went slowly down the narrow steps. He wanted nothing to escape ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... remedy for bruises;"—"perhaps," says Dr. Prior, "as a joke on the Latin name Bursa pastoris, or 'Purse,' because to the poor man this is always his best remedy." And in some parts of England the Shepherd's Purse is known as Clapper Pouch, in allusion to the licensed begging of lepers at our crossways in olden times with a bell and a clapper. They would call the attention of passers-by with the bell, or with the clapper, and would receive their alms in a cup, or a basin, at the end of a long pole. The clapper ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... with Chinese characters consisting of extracts from the sacred writings, and the Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who is an expert in the Chinese language, says that there is "not one imperfect character among them.'' The bell when struck by the big wooden clapper emits a deep musical note that can be heard for miles. Such a magnificent bell vividly illustrates the stage of civilization reached by the Chinese while Europe was comparatively barbarous, for the bell was cast as far back as 1406 in the reign of Yung-loh, and the present temple buildings were ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... with a blue perriwig, bestriding a large goose, and brandishing a golden egg, whilst your worship was clapping your hands in all the raptures of applause. "Perdition seize this fellow," cried your worship, pointing to me, "his tongue chatters like a cherry-clapper, and lies like the prospectus of a new magazine! All you, my pimps, parasites, and pensioners—my leading mistresses and led captain—my mummers and melo-dramatists, who conspire to drill holes in the breeches-pockets of John Bull, that his coin may not corrode for want of circulation; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... but she has ten times the spirit and go that Rose had, and a far better figure. Now you know, Anne, I always take the ground that us women ought to stand by each other. We've got enough to endure at the hands of the men, the Lord knows, so I hold we hadn't ought to clapper-claw one another, and it isn't often you'll find me running down another woman. But I never had much use for Rose Elliott. She was spoiled to begin with, believe ME, and she was nothing but a lazy, selfish, whining creature. Frank was no hand to work, so they were poor ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
