"Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Anywhere Man, gazing upon the pasture, where the fleecy ewes were nipping grass between the rocks and the ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... voice of the world heard in prison, the note of a cock crowing in the mid-seas—in short, I cannot tell you what it was like, you will have to fancy for yourself—but I could have wept to hear it. Once we were belated: the cattle could hardly crawl, the day was at hand, it was a nipping, rigorous morning, King was lashing his horses, I was giving an arm to the old Colonel, and the Major was coughing in our rear. I must suppose that King was a thought careless, being nearly in desperation about his team, and, in spite of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near her, nipping the tips of the grass that grew at her feet. Beyond the animal—a little to her right, and perhaps fifty feet from her—were other horses, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... myself, so jumping up, I took one leg under each arm and rammed into her with all the strength I was capable of; my God, how she heaved to meet my attack! Her vagina seemed as stiff as my pintle, closing upon it with an extraordinary grasp, such as few women are capable of, nipping and squeezing the head of my affair each time it reached to ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... morn, but the grim and deliberate landlady detained us an hour in preparing our coffee. I was in the yard about five minutes, wearing only my cloth overcoat and no gloves, and found the air truly sharp and nipping, but not painfully severe. Presently, Braisted came running in with the thermometer, exclaiming, with a yell of triumph, "Thirty, by Jupiter!" (30 deg. of Reaumur, equal to 35-1/2 deg. below zero of Fahrenheit.) We were delighted with this sign of our approach ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the lassitude of an antiquated age. Henry IV. was still disputing his throne with the League and Spain. Several times, amidst his embarrassments and his wars, the king had manifested his desire to see Montaigne; but the latter was ill, and felt "death nipping him continually in the throat or the reins." And he died, in fact, at his own house, on the 13th of September, 1592, without having had the good fortune to see Henry IV. in peaceable possession of the kingdom which was destined to receive from him, together with ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rain without at once being a flood; where the very winds blew contrarily, hot from the north and bitter-chill from the south; where, no matter how great the heat by day, the night would as likely as not be nipping cold: here he was doomed to end his life, and to end it, for all the yellow sunshine, more hopelessly knotted and gnarled with rheumatism than if, dawn after dawn, he had gone out in a cutting north-easter, or groped his way through the grey fog-mists ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... I sought more proof; but they, imagining I knew more than I did, were swift to act. Before I could find steps for a divorce She stole a march upon me, and herself Took the initiative, and played the victim, Nipping me as a culprit in ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... again he contemplated the sun through the veil of bushes and reeds. It was great and red, but it had a chilly effect, and he knew the day was quite cold. The willows began to shake and quiver and the wind that stirred them was nipping. He did not care. Cold stimulated him, and, making ready for new endeavors, he dipped for his breakfast into ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... close. Into the house yard he rushed with uplifted wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A half hour later the two were nipping the grass together in the pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the story of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... nipping curiosity to learn how Judge Pike had "taken" the strange performance of his daughter, and the eager were much disappointed when it was truthfully reported that he had done and said very little. He had merely discharged both Sam Warden and Sam's wife from his service, the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... of the mulch with coarse stuff in the fall, so as to lengthen the season of root activity; and to draw the mulch aside about St. Patrick's Day, that the sun's rays may warm the earth as early as possible. Moderate pruning, nipping back of exuberant branches, and two sprayings of the foliage with Bordeaux mixture, to keep fungus enemies in check, comprise all the care required by the growing tree. This treatment will condense the ordinary growth of five years into three, and the tree will be all the better ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... nipping air, the ladies flew to the windows and raised them, while the gentlemen, in a body, rushed out upon the porch, many to the lawn—the scene ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... their favourite songs, Logan Water, the Flowers of the Forest, and the Broom of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe—what I kent to be true for all that—that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;—the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;—and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along amid the clean straw in their ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... him? Then he would buy a bigger car and a faster car, and he would bore farther and farther into yonder. In his past were tucked away months on end of tramping across deserts and up mountain defiles with a packed burro nipping patiently along in front of him and this same, seductive dream beckoning him over the next horizon. Burros had been slow. While he hurtled down the road from Pinnacle to Lund, Casey pictured himself plodding through sand and sage and over malapai ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... rigging, for without my bag I would have been worse off than on deck, and at such a move he would have jumped on me. But in the morning he had his first convulsion, and it left him a wreck. While he lay gasping and choking on the deck, with equally afflicted rats crawling over him and nipping where they felt flesh, I managed to get a bite from the steward's storeroom, and it roused me up and strengthened me. I came out, resolved to bind him down, but I was too late. He was on his feet, the paroxysm gone, crazy as ever, and, though weak, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... to sit down and begin fishing. Class ladies [Translator's Note: I.e., School chaperons, whose duty it is to sit in the classroom while the girls are receiving instruction from a master.] wander about on the banks, nipping at the green grass. The shepherd's horn can be heard now and then. White gulls, looking like the younger Drishka, hover ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... a southern State and held it in New Orleans, March 15-25, in Athenaeum Hall.[23] The Woman's Journal said: "To the northern delegates there was something almost magical in the sudden change from snowdrifts and nipping winds to balmy air and a temperature like June. The delicious climate of Louisiana in spring has not been exaggerated and it seems wonderful to find roses in bloom in March, the wistaria vines in a cloud of purple blossom and the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... with little nipping scissors in a garden of alternatives. "Or by shipping HER off. Will you help me to save her?" she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true," she continued, "that she has ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... take all his time now." He rubbed his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned to go Watts said: "My Heavens, how time does fly! It just seems like yesterday that all you boys were raking over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in and nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and I'd have to douse you with water to get rid of you. I got a quirt hanging up in the shop now that Johnnie Barclay dropped one day when I got after him with a pan of water. It's a six-sided ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... had quenched that holocaust, That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost Had withered up those lilies white and red Which, while the boy would through the forest range, Answered each other in a ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... narrow trail. The shooting had ceased. Evidently the men were riding. Stepping round the shoulder of the next bend, he peered up toward the rim of the range. A tiny figure appeared riding down the first long grade, and then another figure. Turning, he saw his own horse quietly nipping at the grass in the crevices of the rocks ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... building, I learned when I bought the place, had been used as a schoolhouse for several years prior to the breaking out of the war, since which time it had remained unoccupied, save when some stray cow or vagrant hog had sought shelter within its walls from the chill rains and nipping winds of winter. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... took his afternoon walks in the city, he was very glad to wear a light overcoat, and to button it, too. But, although the air was getting a little nipping in New York, he knew that it must still be balmy and enjoyable in Virginia. He had never been down there at this season, but he had heard about the Virginia autumns, and, besides he had seen a lady who had had a letter from Roberta March. In this letter Miss March had written that as her father ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the cocktails, taken before meals as appetisers. A cocktail is a horrid concoction of whisky, bitters, sugar and water, which are all mixed together with a "swidel" stick, which stick is always on the wander and for which a search has to be made. Nipping is too much in vogue in this country, but we are told that a lot of support is wanted, the air is so rarefied and the water has so much alkali in it, and therefore not supposed to be healthy, but it is most beautifully clear ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... northern piazza does not repel—nipping cold and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller, bolting by the snow, in finest flour—for then, once more, with frosted beard, I pace the sleety deck, weathering ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a well-to-do patient who fostered a half-fancied illness, he might have been more put out than he certainly was when, upon turning into the street, he felt the keen east wind nipping his ears; but it was from a poor house lying in the midst of a very labyrinth of squalid back streets and foul courts, and yet but a mere stone's-throw ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... about further lingering. "Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and traveling companion, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off, or is it the nipping air?" ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Aristotle, and show him his doom foreordained in the book of poetic Revelations. "The poet should speak as little as possible in his own person," we read, "for it is not this that makes him an imitator." [Footnote: Poetics, 1460 a.] One cannot too much admire Aristotle's canniness in thus nipping the poet's egotism in the bud, for he must have seen clearly that if the poet began to talk in his own person, he would soon lead the conversation around to himself, and that, once launched on that inexhaustible subject, he would never be ready to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen miles' walk, led her support herself while she waited by resting her hand on her hip, and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray, each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir of her nerves. A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate; too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight,—the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for salmon,—when the summer comes round I do really believe that they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I'm sure they never catch any. So they go back to their ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... is terrible on women. And now, Dick, my lad, we'll get our supper. This nipping air makes me hungry, and the Northern troops do not suffer for ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... unduly bemoans and magnifies a mistake, which, whatever its baleful intent, has suffered in my rude inhospitable hands an 'untimely nipping in the bud,' and most ingloriously failed of consummation. After to-day the luckless incident of our acquaintance must vanish like some farthing rushlight set upon a breezy down to mark a hidden quicksand; ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... was so absurd, so kindly. The house was divided against itself and yet stood. Metaphysics, commerce, social aspirations—all lived together in harmony. Mr. Ansell had done much, but one was tempted to believe in a more capricious power—the power that abstains from "nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read! If business worried him, if Stephen was noisy or Ansell perverse, there still ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... their hungry cries. Gale dropped to sleep, and slept soundly during the first half of the night; and after that he seemed always to be partially awake, aware of increasing cold and damp. The dark mantle turned gray, and then daylight came quickly. The morning was clear and nipping cold. He threw off the wet blanket and got up cramped and half frozen. A little brisk action was all that was necessary to warm his blood and loosen his muscles, and then he was fresh, tingling, eager. The sun rose in a golden ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... suits, he had brought a large number of Japanese fireboxes. The punks in these were lighted, and when all were very hot they were wrapped in flannels and distributed about their persons inside their sealskins. With this arrangement, Jack Frost's chances of nipping their persons were ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... time and a few knock-out cuffs from bear's paw to teach a dog that there's two ends to a bear and only one of them safe to tackle, but that little ornery kiyi knew it from the start. If there's anything a bear can't stand, it's a dog nipping his heels, and when the cur began snapping at his hind legs and yelping, he lost interest in Brackett and attended to the disturbance in the rear. The little cuss was cute and spry enough to keep ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... traverse it in quest of the jerboa and other quadrupeds. Our friends cooked all they had in hot sand, and devoured them entire, fur, skin, entrails and all, only breaking away the under jaw and nipping off ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that nodding, bowing, bobbing ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... saw the hunter's face close to his again, felt the whole weight of the man crushing him, felt the bite of teeth through cloth and flesh, nipping down on his shoulder as the man lay on him, striving to hold him down until he regained the strength that the blow in the groin ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates ("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... came the days of battle between winter and spring. On these excursions, though spring was to the forward during the daylight, winter would reassert itself at night, and not unfrequently at other moments. Tepid airs and nipping breezes met on the confines of sunshine and shade; trembling raindrops that were still akin to frost crystals dashed themselves from the bushes as he pursued his way from town to castle; the birds were like an orchestra waiting for the signal to strike up, and colour began ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with pain, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... upon the hillside was the little pasture in which the old mare was grazing, moving slowly about and nipping at the short grass as if that which lay directly under her nose could not be nearly as choice as that which she could obtain ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... covered the hillside and the pines, with lower branches bent, rose in somber spires against the dazzling background. The river had shrunk and the dark water rolled in angry turmoil between ice-glazed rocks. Streaks of gray haze rose a foot or two into the nipping air, and the clash of shovels had a new, harsh ring. It was nearly dinner time, and Festing noted that his men had not done much since breakfast as he walked down the beaten hollow in the middle of the track. One could not tell how long the ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... itself the dog ran, after a couple of goats that had strayed out into the level. These he drove back in a panic of haste, dodging this way and that, nipping, yelping now and then, until they had joined the others. Then he went on to the further fringes of the hand, which evened like the edge of a pie crust under the practised fingers ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... During the voyage it ate corn and fruit, and when these became scarce, took to cockroaches; of which it cleared the vessel. It would dispatch twenty large, besides smaller ones, three or four times in each day, nipping off the head of the former, and rejecting the viscera, legs, and hard wing cases. Besides these, it fed on milk, sugar, raisins, and bread-crumbs. It afterwards made friends with a cat, and slept and eat with this animal, but it never entirely lost ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... sunshine, the golden shower of Danae; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight. The maid is the rosy-fingered Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs out the clothes (the clouds) across the sky; the particular blackbird who so tragically ends the tale, by 'nipping off her nose,' is the hour of sunrise. The time-honoured rhyme really wants, as Mr. Tylor remarks, only one thing to prove it a sun-myth, and that one thing is some other proof than a ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... low vale, the promise of the year, Serene thou openest to the nipping gale, Unnoticed and alone I ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... The snow was two feet deep, in the streets, and the air was nipping chill. The streets were deserted, as evening settled down and Charley neared home. Now when he passed an open stairway, leading up into a building, he saw a huddled figure just inside ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one of the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio announcing that the ghost ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Africans of our own growth—these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... them together was not a wise plan. Of course, Helen must not marry Emanuel Prockter. The notion of such a union was ludicrous. (In spite of all the worry she was heaping upon him, he did not see any urgent reason why she should marry anybody.) But the proper method of nipping the orange-blossom in the bud was certainly to have a plain chat with Helen, one of those plain chats which can only occur, successfully, between plain, common-sense persons. He was convinced that, notwithstanding Mrs. Prockter's ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... interrupted with sighs torn from the heart, ornamented with quiverings, appeals to heaven, upturned eyes, sudden blushings and clutchings at her hair. In fact, no ingredient of temptation was lacking in the dish, and at the bottom of all these words there was a nipping desire which embellished even its blemishes. The good knight fell at the lady's feet, and weeping took them and kissed them, and you may be sure the good woman was quite delighted to let him kiss them, and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... "You've been nipping too much for the last five years, Dick." (She had quite schooled her tongue to the new name.) "Your 'shakiness' is the result of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of her, the biggest fool dug out, up the same cañon. The rocks on the sides was pecked smooth as a beaver-skin, ribbed with the grain, and the ground was covered with bits of cedar, like a cavayard of mules had been nipping and scattering them about. Overhead it was roofed, leastwise it was dark in here, and only a little light come through the holes in the rock. I thought I knew where we was, and eeched awfully to talk, but I sot still and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... hoped to be," he said, as we strolled up and down under the trees in the Elisengarten. "But the fact is, TOBY, dear boy, I could not stand the weather. I am of a sensitive nature, and it cut me to the heart to see cold winds nipping the fruit and trees, the flood of rain beating down the corn, the oats, and the mangel-wurzel. People make a mistake about me. They regard me as an ambitious politician, caring for nothing but the House of Commons and the world of politics. At heart I am an agriculturist. Give me three acres ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... However, when a hunter comes suddenly upon a Harpeth jaguar he is glad to use his best repeater and he is careful how he shoots, though if he is very skillful he may tease the lion aloft with a few nipping shots. I felt suddenly very strong for the fight that I knew was on, though the lion didn't possess that knowledge as yet. Deliberately I fired a preliminary bullet that seemed to graze father, though it left the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... foul-nor warm weather after cold-nor a sweet and beautiful spring after a heavy, and nipping, and terrible winter, so comfortable, sweet, desirable, and welcome to the poor birds and beasts of the field, as this day will be to the church of God. Darkness! it was the plague of Egypt: it is an empty, forlorn, desolate, solitary, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... capable of sending him away! If he would do such things as these for an acquaintance, at best a "pal," what would he not do for a woman beloved? I should have liked to duck that creature under the pump in the court, on just such a nipping night ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... any, if they buy them deere, it is their own faults and not the brokers: yet it is good to haue knowledge in Iewels, by reason that it may somewhat ease the price. [Sidenote: Bargaines made with the nipping of fingers vnder a cloth.] There is also a very good order which they haue in buying of Iewels, which is this; There are many Marchants that stand by at the making of the bargaine, and because they shall not vnderstand howe the Iewels ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... three or four feet of chain, a precaution which is absolutely necessary; for a voracious shark will sometimes gobble the bait so deep into his stomach, that he would snap through the rope as easily as if he were nipping the head off ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... drop whence it flew very prettily branched or creased, which was easily discoverable by the Microscope. This drop, after I had thus ground it, without at all impairing the remnant that was not ground away, I caused to fly immediately all into sand upon the nipping off the very tip ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... whole country round was a repellent desert of lifeless, disgusting gardens and hay-fields, without a single tenement or smoke-stack in sight. How she did hate it all! There was only one sweet-smelling shrub in the whole horrible place, and that was in a neglected corner. She did enjoy nipping that and rolling in the leaves; it was a bright spot in the grounds; but the only one, for she had not found a rotten fish-head nor seen a genuine garbage-can since she came, and altogether it was the most ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... July days had left a deep impression in the party's consciousness. The mass of workingmen and soldiers had recovered from the July debacle much more rapidly than had many of the leading comrades who feared the nipping of the Revolution in the bud by a new premature onslaught of the masses. In our group of the Democratic Conference, I mustered 50 votes in favor of my proposal against 70 who declared for participating in the Democratic Council. However, the experience of this participation soon strengthened ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... but there is none warm.' The clothing was to guard against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and its failure to answer its purpose points to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and the boys were very much interested in hearing them tell through an interpreter how they, with their rude weapons, aided by their clever dogs, had been able to kill these fierce animals. All were very much delighted when told by these friendly Esquimaux how that with two well-trained dogs nipping at the hind legs of a great bear they could keep him turning round and round from one to the other and thus get him so wild and excited that in his efforts to catch hold of the nimble animals, which were able to keep out of his grasp, he did not notice the arrival of the hunters, who were ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the coal-dealer's wife once more: again resorting to the same excellent prescription for nipping a sigh in the bud. 'Ah! when they've seen as much trouble as I and my old man here have, they'll be as comfortable under it ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the nipping air and soon began to walk briskly. And then as he crossed Park Avenue and entered her street he saw two men coming down her steps. They were Mr. Dinwiddie, and the extremely good-looking young man whom Osborne had brought to the box on Monday ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sunshine had gone and it was getting cold; the shadows in the dale had faded from blue to dusky gray and the frost was keen. All was very quiet, but now and then distant voices and the musical rattle of chains came down through the nipping air. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... could hear the steady pounding of the mare's hoofs, though she did not dare to glance over her shoulder. Her thoughts worked busily, trying to figure out a way to climb over or under the fence, and she had a lively fear of those terrible teeth nipping her as she tried to climb. As the fence seemed to her strained vision to rise suddenly from the ground and come to meet her, a way to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... pleasant thing Nipping daisies in the spring; But what chilly nights I pass On the cold and dewy grass, Or pick my scanty dinner where All the ground is ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... fever when we get near those grass skirts. Grass widows is what the profession calls the Hawaiian ladies. Hope the temperature isn't going up again. We love the old-fashioned Christmas and all that sort of thing. Nipping air makes cheeks pink; we love to see them nestled in fur coats on Chestnut Street. This is the time of year to do unexpected kindnesses. We know one man who stands in line for hours in front of movie theatres just in order to shout Merry Christmas through the little hole in the glass. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... should be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, he ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grew nipping cold. The clouds shed off their fleeces; a snow-hillock, each canoe; our ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Maryland hills, and fix thy reign, And frame a fairer Athens than of yore In these blest bounds of Baltimore, — Here, where the climates meet That each may make the other's lack complete, — Where Florida's soft Favonian airs beguile The nipping North, — where nature's powers smile, — Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands Spread wide with invitation to all lands, — Where now the eager people yearn to find The organizing hand that fast ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... smell of the new milk, the pleasant sound of animals stepping about in the stable, the old mare reaching her long head over the stanchion to welcome me, and nipping at my fingers when I ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the implacable banker. "To do so would be to stultify my whole position. I cordially and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all my influence against it. No, my good sir, I not only don't subscribe myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good many subscriptions in ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... bear from behind, nipping it slightly. The huge beast stopped and whirled in clumsy astonishment. For a moment it looked almost curiously at the white-fanged fury leaping away. Then turning lumbered on again toward the mound. The monster had lived so long on Kon ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... MacVeigh, without lifting his head. "If you're ready, Pelly, open the door." He rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. He did not seem like the old MacVeigh; but the dogs were nipping and whining, and there was no time ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... like an opening rose-bud; she gave a nipping laugh, and I just heard "old fogy" break through it so ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the horses with his whip and turned them toward the barn, leaving the patroon and his companion alone on the broad portico. Sweeping from a distant grove of slender poplars and snowy birch a breeze bore down upon them, suddenly bleak and frosty, and she shivered in the nipping air. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea, Poured out knee ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... ensuing market, alone disturbed the quiet of the adjoining streets. In a dark angle might be seen the houseless wanderer, or the abandoned profligate, 341gathered up like a lump of rags in a corner, and shivering with the nipping air. The gloom which surrounded us had, for a moment, chilled the wild exuberance of my companions' mirth; and it is more than probable we should have suspended our visit to the Finish, at least for that night, had not the jocund note of some ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... into the stable, with smoking breath, to bring out a crow of defiance from the chickens huddling together on the roost; it spread, too, a white rime over the windows, shining red in the sinking sun. When the sun was down, the nipping northeaster grew sharper, swept about the little valley, rattled the bare-limbed trees, blew boards off the corn-crib that Doctor Blecker had built only last week, tweaked his nose and made his eyes water as he came across the field ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... mysterious threat, Thorny slammed the doctor's gate in the faces of the mercenary youths, nipping their hopes in the bud, and teaching them ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... calling "Mamma, mamma!" and soon she came bounding into the drawing-room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as red as fire and her eyes wet with happy tears; and there confronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, and now, with one hand nipping the back of the chair convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... from the merry Indian-summer husking, when the big yellow pumpkins covered the cleared fields;—golden corn, golden pumpkins, gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad change, indeed, but we occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry prairie chickens, and squirrels and ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... underneath, his left shoulder, and trying to peep over or past it, he beheld a small portion of a most woe-begone little face, heavily swathed against the nipping March wind. Through the beclouding veil he could dimly make out that the eyes were swollen, the cheeks were mottled; even the nose—with regret I state it—was red and puffy. An unsightly, melancholy little spectacle to which the Tyro's young ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and alarm this sudden change; but she was an invalid—and the poor suffering one strove to hide her sickness of the heart, and mother though she was, Mrs. Layton discovered not the canker-worm which was nipping her bud of promise, but would whisper, "You confine yourself too much to my room, my child, and must go out into the bright sunshine, so that the smile may come back to your lip, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... my voice should bring No sound save a discord rude. (Sings.) Where the storm in its wrath hath lighted, The pine lies low in the dust; And the corn is withered and blighted, Where the fields are red with the rust; Falls the black frost, nipping and killing, Where its petals the violet rears, And the wind, though tempered, is chilling To the lamb despoiled ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... dog proceeded to "go for" the caller. Had the latter run away, the brute would have been at his heels, nipping and biting at each step. But Mike had no thought of retreating. He was filled with anger at his inhospitable reception and gave his whole attention to the animal, which with a muttered growl charged ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... The town with nipping blasts How wildly blown; Around my hapless head Loose tiles are thrown, Slates, chimney-pots, and lead Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... shovel. The wood-pile was a great mound of snow. He cleaned a wide space and a path to the side of the cabin. Working in snow was not unpleasant for him. He liked the cleanness, the whiteness, the absolute purity of new-fallen snow. The air was crisp and nipping, the frost crackled under his feet, the smoke from his pipe seemed no thicker than the steam from his breath, the ax rang on the hard aspens. Wade swung this implement like a born woodsman. The chips flew and the dead wood smelled sweet. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might mistake them for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning have been written upon them. If you find them, it is your fortune; if you taste them, it is your fate. For as you browse your way through the forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young wintergreen, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what you have done, but the enchantment of the treeland will enter your heart and the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... by custom, sympathy, or what I fondly call parental love, would direct me to study her present happiness, and leave her to the care of those whom she thinks her dearest friends; but they are friends only in the sunshine of fortune; in the cold nipping frost of disappointment, sickness, or connubial strife, they will forsake the house of care, although the very house which ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... jealousy, mortified pride, and dread of exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her), sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her, and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... windbreaks, so we at once began the work and are giving two days a week to the digging and transporting and the other four to watering. That is, Bart and Larry are doing this; I am looking on, making suggestions as to which side of a tree should be in front, nipping off broken twigs, and doing other equally ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... mid-career of that third day of the geological drama, came a frost—a nipping-frost; and slowly but surely the whole arctic and antarctic worlds were chilled and cramped, degree after degree, by the gradual on-coming of the Great Ice Age. I am not going to deal here with either the causes or the extent of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... to hold them in the road, but they refused to quiet down, kicking, rearing, and plunging in spite of their load; and once as they jerked me forward, I noticed there was a dog or two under the wagon, nipping at their heels. There was a six-shooter lying on the seat beside me, and reaching forward I fired it downward over the end gate of the wagon. By the merest accident I hit a dog, who raised a cry, and the ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... snows but nipping airs, were the winters of this country of the cave men, and there were articles of food essential to variety which were, necessarily, stored before the cold season came. There were roots which were edible and which could ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Greyne (pronounced Green) wrinkled her forehead—that noble, that startling forehead which had been written about in the newspapers of two hemispheres—laid down her American Squeezer pen, and sighed. It was an autumn day, nipping and melancholy, full of the rustle of dying leaves and the faint sound of muffin bells, and Belgrave Square looked sad even to the great female novelist who had written her way into a mansion there. Fog hung ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... different purposes: the cold are the softer, and the easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw—thread. Other machines are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of rivet-holes all along the edges of huge iron plates. These animated creatures of the mill, performing their tasks like child's play, are efforts of intellectual genius as truly as are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... place if she might see Abraham Dixon. The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather nipping. To ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... West Virginia, which are trained not merely to nip a bear, but to grip him by the hock as he runs and either throw him or twirl him round. A grisly could not disregard a wary and powerful hound capable of performing this trick, even though he paid small heed to mere barking and occasional nipping. Nor do I doubt that it would be possible to get together a pack of many large, fierce dogs, trained to dash straight at the head and hold on like a vise, which could fairly master a grisly and, though unable, of course, to kill him, would worry him breathless and hold him down so ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers and let her ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... king, indeed, said he believed Hobbes intended him no hurt; and Hobbes said of the king, "that his majesty understood his writings better than his accusers." However, happy was Hobbes to escape from France, where the officers were in pursuit of him, amid snowy roads and nipping blasts. The lines in his metrical life open a dismal winter scene for an old ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... barber. "You WILL get it, though, if you don't sit stiller," he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the part of his patient to think ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... in the great toe, as if it had been suddenly seized with a pair of red-hot pincers. Whew! There they are at it! nipping and tearing the flesh, and then rubbing the lacerated joint with aquafortis, or a solution of blue vitriol. And now, the pain shoots along the nerves on that side, till my head bumps and bumps as if a legion of imps were playing at leap-frog ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... Night, stars and snow! The air bites shrewdly, nipping, eager, As in old Denmark long ago. A long, long watch through storm and leaguer That dim, departing Sentinel Has held. He hails the Young Guard's entry— "Who goes there?" "Friend!" "Pass, friend!" "All's well!" Tired ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... two through the thick of surging and plunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as his rider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that time on. He would follow hard at her heels, edging her constantly toward the flank of the herd, at times nipping her hide as a reminder of his own superiority. In spite of herself the cow would gradually turn out toward the edge, and at last would be swept clear of the crush, the calf following close behind her. There was a whirl of ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... in the cold, nipping air and the wild life. There were discomforts, it is true, but he did not think of them. He looked only at the comforts and the joys. He knew that his muscles were growing and hardening, that eye, ear, all the five senses, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... spread-head to the smallest button-face—all knew the pleasure of the uncertain winds; all knew the game of holding flying things just a moment longer, by fascinating them, by drowsing them into sleepiness, by nipping their probosces, or by puffing perfume into their nostrils while they caught their feet with the pressure of a hundred ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... all eyes in the daytime, you know, and to-day there have been men at work on the railings ever since breakfast, so there is no danger at all that anything of that sort can have happened. But I wonder where the young rascal can be? I seem to remember having seen him nipping round somewhere this morning. Let me see; what could I have been doing?" and the purser screwed up his face until there was nothing of ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... the middle of February being from 15 deg. to 18 deg. below the average. From the 24th February to the 6th March the weather was more moderate; but on that day the cold again set in, and the weather continued to the 26th June to be cold, nipping, and miserable beyond record. In January, on several days, the mercury was as low as 13 deg.. In February it was, on many days, as low as from 3 deg. to 10 deg.. The coldest day in London was the 18th, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... demand at remunerative prices that year, and I remember the day we hauled the last load to the elevators. Winter had set in early, and wrapped in long skin coats we tramped beside the wagons across the waste of crackling sod, while the steam from the horses rose like smoke into the nipping air. We started long before the wondrous green and crimson dawn, for it was nearly a twelve hours' journey to the railway town. We reached it finally, after a tiresome ride; and then for two hours we ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... "A nipping frost was in the air, On flowers and grass it fell; And the leaves were still on the eastern hill As if touched by a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... be understood as one part of this to twelve parts of water. In many cases, however, much greater weakness than this is necessary, owing to the tenderness of the parts treated. As a general rule, the dilute acid should only cause a gentle nipping sensation and heat in the sore. If it is painful, no good is done. Frequent gentle applications are always much better ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... to her? Will you make her a home?" asked Carabine. "A girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage! It would be a monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides —she is in debt.—How much do you owe?" asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise's arm. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac |
