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More "Nick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ransome of a penny the pair; and shaving off men's beards, whiskers and all, stoop and roop, for a three-ha'pence. Speak of barbers! it's all ye ken about it. Commend me to a safe employment, and a profitable. They may give others a nick, and draw blood, but catch them hurting themselves. They are not exposed to colds and rheumatics, from east winds and rainy weather; for they sit, in white aprons, plaiting hair into wigs for auld folks that have ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... the captain, "I guess we came just in the nick of time. You were about at the last ditch, but from all the signs you must have put up a ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... one, but he managed that it should overlap our world and silently grasp all that was in it. Beverly had persistently tried to be friendly for a time, for that was Beverly's way. Failing to do it, he had nick-named the boy ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... 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
... sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow 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 Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of time by Jasper. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... she don't go well in gear. The difficulty with those critters is to git them to start: arter that there is no trouble with them, if you don't check 'em too short. If you do they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the natur' of the crittur; she'll never go kind in harness for him. When I see a child," said the Clockmaker, "I always feel safe with these women-folk; for I have always ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... opportunity of looking about and getting disburthened of some of the Paris mud, quite certain if it be wet weather that you will soon get more. Fruit in all its variety, books, prints, blacking, and nick-knacks of every description offer themselves to your notice. But let us direct our attention to a more interesting object; the fine bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV: one could almost think the good and merry monarch was going to utter some of his witty sallies. Now let us turn round ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... 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
... and with some help from Midas manufactured the most scrumptious cosy-corner out of old packing-cases and cushions covered with rose- coloured brocade. We put a deep frill of the same material, mounted on a thin brass rail, on the wall above the mantelpiece, and arranged Lorna's best ornaments and nick-nacks against this becoming background. It did not seem quite appropriate to the garden idea to hang pictures on the walls, which is just as well, as she hasn't got any, but I bought her a tall green pedestal and flower-pot and a big branching palm as my contribution to the room, and ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... new land cleared in this way. They first 'dead' a piece of ground in the woods adjoining the plantation: by 'deading' is meant killing the trees, by cutting a nick all round each, quite through the bark. Out of this ground each colored person has a piece as large as he can tend after his other work is done; the women have pieces in like manner. The slave works ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... his path, but one by one he overcame them all. He advertised, he traveled, he sent out agents, he procured the insertion of articles in newspapers, he exhibited the machines at fairs in town or country. Several times he was on the point of failure, but in the nick of time something always happened to save him, and year after year he advanced toward ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... last 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, ...
— 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
... a dollar Nick Bolt didn't make any such claim to the reporter. He ain't the kind ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... chairs full of them, thirty or forty private chairs, and including the official and non-official chairs, and carriages containing inmates of the household, there must have been over a hundred and ten; so that with the various kinds of paraphernalia, articles of decoration and hundreds of nick-nacks, which preceded, the vast expanse of the cortege covered a continuous line extending over three ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Whitehall. Harrington went to Cromwell's daughter, Lady Claypole, played with her three-year-old child while waiting for her, and said to her, when she came and found him with her little girl upon his lap, "Madam, you have come in the nick of time, for I was just about to steal this pretty lady." "Why should you?" "Why shouldn't I, unless you cause your father to restore a child of mine that lie has stolen?" It was only, he said, a ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... peasant and another soldier, a father of a large family, nick-named "uncle," threw up their arms and fell ...
— The Shield • Various
... your representative?" he demanded abruptly. "And, how did it come that he arrived just in the nick of time?" ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... 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 ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... 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
... be, Nick," returned Edmond with a smile. "I don't know how I could have gone through this year and a ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... 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 ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... reach down to Lady Boyd's corrupt heart; had there been, she would have first cleansed her own heart with it, and would then have shown her son how to cleanse his. But, as Rutherford says, she also had come now to that 'nick' in religion to cut off a right hand and a right foot so as to keep Christ and the life everlasting, and so had her eldest son, Lord Boyd. As Bishop Martensen also says, 'Many a time we cannot avoid feeling a deep sorrow for ourselves ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... nick of time, a troop of United States cavalry came dashing up to capture the renegade Indians, who surrendered; Blake also getting pictures of the dash of ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... 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
... me in the nick of time," was his verdict. "I trust to be able to effect a complete cure. A winter in the south would work wonders, and, if my treatment is thoroughly carried out, she should return to Haversleigh in the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... her!' an' I thought o' speakin' of it, about now, when I run in to borrer some saleratus, an' he hollered into the bedroom: 'Lyddy Ann, you got another headache? If I had such a head as that, I'd cut it off!' An' all the time 'Mandy did act like the very Old Nick, jest as any old maid would that hadn't set her mind on menfolks till she was thirty-five. She bought a red-plaid bow an' pinned it on in front, an' one day I ketched her at the lookin'-glass pullin' out ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... a postboy named Nick Muggins, who is employed by the noble suitor to intercept letters, and the aid of Crop, who acts as a sort of go-between, are put in requisition for this purpose; but the villany of the latter is finely defeated in his mistaking a silly, forward girl, Miss Glossop, for Penelope, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... "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
... friend at the same time that he is working very hard, and studying to improve himself in branches of knowledge in which he feels himself deficient. He is practising very temperate habits: for half a year past he has taken to drinking water only, avoiding all sweets, and eating no "nick-nacks." He has "sowens and milk,' (oatmeal flummery) every night for his supper. His friend having asked his opinion of politics, he says he really knows nothing about them; he had been so completely engrossed by his own business that he has not had time ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Dutchman—"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast"—she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore. It is the seventh year, and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger home with him, and if his daughter Senta ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that ends 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
... you 'eard o' 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, An' 'ere's to the stores ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... to rest, assuring us that she had told God everything, and that He would send us plenty in the morning. Next day, with the carrier from Lockerbie came a present from her father, who, knowing nothing of her circumstances or of this special trial, had been moved of God to send at that particular nick of time a love-offering to his daughter, such as they still send to each other in those kindly Scottish shires—a bag of new potatoes, a stone of the first ground meal or flour, or the earliest homemade cheese of the season—which ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... professor of gymnastics. He has seen years of army service, and is thoroughly imbued with the military spirit. The boys are more afraid of him than of the president and entire board of trustees,—as afraid as they would be of old Nick, himself, in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Jason Newcome, or, as he pronounced the latter appellation himself, Noo-come. As he affected a pedantic way of pronouncing the last syllable long, or as it was spelt, he rather called himself Noo-comb, instead of Newcome, as is the English mode, whence he soon got the nick-name of Jason Old Comb among the boys; the lank, orderly arrangement of his jet-black, and somewhat greasy-looking locks, contributing their share towards procuring for him the sobriquet, as I believe the French call it. As ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 this with their holy names, ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... 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 ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... attempt by putting on our "civies" first and then drawing our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended, dropping each piece back into the pit as we ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... which he immediately fastened on the John Canoe, wrenched his cat from him, and employed it so scientifically on him and his followers, giving them passing taps on the shins now and then with the handle, by way of spice to the dose, that the whole crew pulled foot as if Old Nick had held ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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, was sufficiently ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... this point, Alfred, after divesting himself of some of his clothing, plunged in and pulled it to the shore. The pallid face of the man clinging to the log showed that he was nearly exhausted, and that he had been rescued in the nick of time. When Alfred reached shoal water he slipped his arm around the man, who was unable to stand, and carried ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... boys' aeroplanes 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 ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... know what you're 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 ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... floor an' begins to claw on his duds, allowin', bein' he's only half awake that a-way, that it's a passel of them murderin' Clay Whigs who's come to crawl his hump for shore. But she's a false alarm. It's only a Dom'nick rooster who's been perched all night on my grandfather's wrist where his arm sticks outen bed, an' who's done crowed a whole lot, as is his habit when he glints the comin' day. It's them sort o' things that sends a shudder through you, an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I 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
... Mac. But, say, that isn't the worst. The Old Nick himself is shot up, and hitting the high spots with fever. We're ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... fellow," cried Will, with a laugh, slapping the native on the shoulder; "you have just come in the nick of time to take care of us all, for, besides having utterly lost ourselves, we are quite ignorant of forest ways in this region—no better than children, ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... it as the thought came; but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly, and tried to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... mountaineers of King Nick Got into the ring good and quick, They are never afraid, For to fight is their trade, While their wives have the living ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... isn't he? His father has a small station away among the hills, and Poss and Binjie help him on it. Those are only nick-names, of course. Poss's name is Arthur, and Binjie's is George, I think. They're nice young fellows, but very bushified; they have lived here all their lives. Their father—well, he isn't very steady; and they like to get over here when they can, and each tries to come without ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... 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 ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... had done the short third hole at Mt. Agel in three. (His first had cleverly dislodged the ball from the piled-up tee; his second, a sudden nick, had set it rolling down the hill to the green; and the third, an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... passed unnoticed by the faro players; not a man within sound of the shot, for that matter, inquired what the trouble was about; and even Nick, picking up his tray filled with glasses and a bottle, walked straightway into the dance-hall looking as if the matter were not worth ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... once again over the partition, and guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair had become a sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost: and at the nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the smooth wall. So interested were the count and Spero in the picture that they did not hear the stealthy steps behind them. Maldar was the man, and he had stretched forth his hands toward the boy. The count perceived him in the nick of time, and clutching him by the throat, threw him headlong down into the courtyard. The next minute the bold climber had jumped over the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... furnishes him with 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 their cloven feet in polished-leather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... "Aye; Old Nick himself would not be a bad acquaintance now—his smell of brimstone and sulphur might warm us up ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... than 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 when I ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shavin' next 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
... May! Now isn't that good luck, my turnin' up just in the nick o' time to see you home? Here, catch hold of my arm. The wind's fit to tear the lamp-posts ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... deceives mankind so much in the breed of racers. If we ask the jockey the cause of this difference in the performance of these brothers, he (willing to account some how for it) readily answers, that the blood did not nick; but will a wise and reasoning man, who seriously endeavours to account for this difference, be content with such a vague, unmeaning answer, when, by applying his attention to matters of fact, and his observation ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... Book II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar through Macaulay's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... his careless answer. "As I was about to say, our discovery that you are not a lady out of a story-book, but a human being and a very sweet one—it came just in the nick of time. We're leaving ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... 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 Lefrancois, from the landlady ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... strained to the breaking point, and his messenger was sent to tell the prophet that the king would not 'wait for the Lord any longer.' That was the moment chosen to speak the promise. It came, as God's helps, both of promise and act, so often come, at the very nick of time, when faith is ready to fail and human aid is vain. Before we had learned our hopeless state, they would come too soon for our good; after faith had wholly parted from its moorings, they would come ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had been five minutes later, we should have lost him," said George, as Frank and his cousin came up to where the brothers were sitting. "We reached the ridge just in the 'nick of time,' The fox was just passing, and Harry brought him down by a chance shot. Here, Frank," he continued, "you take the fox; we ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... I can say is, the company recovered the safe in the nick of time, from whom I don't pretend to say. We've got it, and that's enough." There was a grin of cunning defiance on his face. He had entered a covert where further ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... the nick of time. It was a "crowning mercy" indeed, the beginning of the end, and when (a few days later), over a repaired bridge, came a troop-train, gingerly advancing, the battalion of British troops that it disgorged ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 over ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... fifteen years of age before I stole any money, or got into any trouble; but I used to 'nick' little things, such as fruit, &c., when I was a kid. My father kept a small shop, but I was bound an apprentice to a very peculiar branch of the Sheffield trade; and before I had finished my apprenticeship I committed my first crime. I was playing at bagatelle one night, and lost all ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... one war-whoop, and made a show of descending 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 ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest,—that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favourite of the Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the Nations; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighbourhood of the steeple under which that ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... have seen, Desaix joined the army the 11th of June, at Stradella. The First Consul received him with twofold joy. In the first place, he regained a man without ambition, an intelligent officer and a devoted friend. In the second place, Desaix arrived just in the nick of time to take charge of the division lately under Boudet, who had been killed. Through a false report, received through General Gardannes, the First Consul was led to believe that the enemy refused to give battle and was retiring to Genoa. He sent ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 away. The reason ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... 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. pit'falls, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... back just in the nick of time," said Titania admiringly. "You see I was all alone most of the afternoon. Weintraub left the suitcase about two o'clock. Metzger came for it about six. I refused to let him have it. He was very persistent, and I had to threaten to ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... 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 friendly interference is not quite unknown even in these more prosaic days. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... dearly bought. 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 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a joke," 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 utensils. I'm—I'm tired of it—I—really ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... emerged like a commanding destiny. Old Indian chief Ochagach drew maps on birch bark of a trail to the Western Sea. La Verendrye took canoe for Quebec, and, with heart beating to the passion of a secret ambition, laid the drawings before Governor Beauharnois. He came just in the nick of time. English traders were pressing westward. New France lent ready ear for schemes of wider empire. The court could grant no money for discoveries, but it gave La Verendrye permission for a voyage and monopoly in furs over the lands he might ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... seasonably; you are come in the Nick of Time; I was just now wishing for you; I am extreme glad of ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... have been another affair. As it is, it won't pay. Besides, 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 ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... respect in the highest this wonderful charge upon his awakened sense of honor. He found something new and assuring in checking the passion that filled him like a flood at its height. Yes, she should be his wife; no other living man should have her. Fate had rescued him in the nick of time from the temptation to wed for ulterior motives. Another month in Atlanta and he would have lost his chance at ideal happiness. Yes, this was different! Irene Mitchell, spoiled pet of society that she was, could never love him as this strong child of Nature would, and without love ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Dames, the battle of. Valence de, the English cognomen of the Lusignan family. Valence, Aymar de, his contest with Bruce; his pursuit of him; defeated by Bruce at Loudon Hill; Gaveston's nick-name for him; unites with other nobles against Gaveston; his character; his conduct at the death of Gaveston; sent by Edward II. to Scotland against Bruce. Valence, William de, half-brother to Henry III., opposition between him and the Barons. Varangian guard, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... no use wasting men in attacking the great pile of buildings with the force at our disposal. We had men in plenty, but for breeching we needed the cannon left behind by these swift forces, which, marching day and night, had arrived in the very nick of time before the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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 ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... with a glance of ineffable disdain) the Ghost of Gimlet is laid, never to rise again' — Insensible of this check, she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, to wake the maids of a morning. Do you know where I ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... fairly adequate the current praises of him emanating from those wealthy enthusiasts who were reckoned the best judges of such matters. By the reports I heard they said that Palus never cut a throat, he merely nicked it, but the tiny nick invariably and accurately severed the carotid artery, jugular vein ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... scared at him, mum; that's only old Jock; he's as ugly as old Nick himself, but he knows better than to be very ugly to me. I can throw him in the gutter as easy as I could them young ones, and he knows it. That's Dirk's father, that is! Ain't ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... ready-witted Rankine, The wale o' cocks for fun an' drinkin! There's mony godly folks are thinkin, Your dreams and tricks Will send you, Korah-like, a-sinkin Straught to auld Nick's. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 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 for Tony ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... way here," said Ben. "He told me I'd come just in the nick of time. I didn't know what he meant, but ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... 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 ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... disappeared beneath the 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 ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... full ones, have been defeated, in all ages, by inferior numbers. The Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this celestial cordial, and now ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cloying or from becoming the enemy of our souls. But the thought will wondrously 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 school and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... 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; for d—n me if he is not one of the prettiest ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... England. For a while this ridiculous story was believed; and the Brethren's creditors, in a state of panic, pressed hard for their money. The little Church of the Brethren was now on the brink of ruin. At one moment Zinzendorf himself expected to be thrown into prison, and was only saved in the nick of time by the arrival of money from Germany. But the English Brethren now showed their manhood. The very men whom Zinzendorf was supposed to have robbed now rose in his defence. Instead of thanking Whitefield for defending them in their supposed distresses, they formed a committee, drew up a statement,129 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... from the tree and dashed across the open, reaching the scene of the struggle just in the nick of time to strike up Diggle's weapon ere it sheathed itself in the Gujarati's side. Diggle turned with a startled oath, and seeing who his assailant was, he left his companion to take care of himself, and faced Desmond, a smile of anticipated ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... first along he seemed very fond of her, seemed to doat on her, and loaded her with dresses, and trinkets, and sweetmeats, and nick-nacks of all sorts, and never came home without bringing of her something. And she never got anything very nice but what she would call me up and give me some; for she made quite a companion of me, my lady. But after a few weeks, Mr. John Scott was ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... just landed, seeing an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be pullin' ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... or some tuppenny kernel? No, not for JEAMES, if he is quite aweer of it! It's just infernal, The Vulgar Mix that calls itself Society. All shoddy slyness, And moneybags; a "blend" as might kontamernate a Ryal 'Igness, Or infry-dig a Hemperor. It won't nick JEAMES though, not percisely; Better to flop in solitude than to demean one's self unwisely. Won't ketch me selling myself off. I must confess my 'art it 'arrers To see the Strorberry-Leaves go cheap—like strorberries ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... colored man 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 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... accompanying the President 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 ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... rent for the village hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out, or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant himself upon the ruins ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Clam Gallas had the misfortune to lose his artillery reserve, and sent everywhere to ask if anyone had seen it. The Prince of Hesse, acting without orders, or against orders, separated his division from Schwarzenberg's and brought it up at the nick of time to save the Austrians, when they were threatened with actual destruction, at two ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 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
... 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
... in the brandy-casks; drank every thing they could find; and paid no sort of regard to the clamorous outcries of the passengers for help! help! except that here and there a voice replied—Help? There is no help: Old Nick will swallow us all; so let us ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Nicholas Young, the servant of Mr. Perry, surgeon's mate. The boy's name is omitted from the early muster sheets of the ship, but appears on 18th April 1769, entered as A.B. in the place of Peter Flower, drowned. Cook named the point seen, the south-west point of Poverty Bay, Young Nick's Head. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... courteously military—that of an established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city creditor's busy stroke of the type-stamp ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knee and 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 ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... "Uncle Nick" Wilson was always begging him to tell about pioneer days in the Northwest. When "Uncle Nick" was eight years old, the Wilson family crossed the plains by ox team. When he was only twelve, he slipped away from ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... 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 ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... 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 ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... 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 adventures of the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 us, and the earth shook, ...
— 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
... with his cheque from a cut-out shed, gloriously drunk and happy, in love with all the world, and ready to subscribe towards any creed and shout for all hands—including Old Nick if he happened to come along. There's the shearer, half-drunk and inclined to be nasty, who has got the wrong end of all things with a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation Army ring. Then he glares ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead. "You have come just in the nick of time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has written a 'hugeous' novel, and she is going to read ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the light, And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance, Nae light cotillion new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. As winnock-bunker, in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge; He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— Coffins stood round like ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... 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 ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... was unquestionably noble, which permitted him to 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 ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... he most certainly would have been drowned, had it not been for Lilian Rosenberg, who, being quite by chance, in front of the house, perceived he was drunk, the moment he came on the stage. She flew to the wings, and, just in the nick of time, got two of the supers to haul him out of the tank. Of course, it was announced—with a pretty apology—by Mr. Hamar, that Mr. Curtis had been taken ill. Kelson immediately came on with his animals, and the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... them—the scouts. But for Stannard the hostiles would have 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 ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the race was rocked— All the ships of all the world to her harbor flocked. Rosy with the sea-wind, solid, stubborn, sweet, Played the children by canals, up and down the street. Neltje, Piet and Hendrik, Dirck and Myntje too,— Little Nick of ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... thus unmolested by the native tribes, but our safety consisted chiefly in the rapidity of our movements, and their terror of strangers wholly unknown, perhaps unheard of, arriving on the backs of huge animals, or centaurs whose tramp they had only heard at nightfall. Like Burns's "Auld Nick," ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... per 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. pit'falls, pits slightly covered for ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... 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
... 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 was a ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... 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
... narve of Old Nick, as we all knows," cried a miner, and this intended compliment was acquiesced in ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... be done out of this piece of indulgence, which now seemed desirable beyond words, although I crawled back into my blanket, and found for a while oblivion in sleep. I was no sooner up in the morning than I planned a new banquet. But in the nick of time, Mr. G., who had gone a march farther, returned with his escort of policemen, moonshees, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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
... the breath out of him for the moment. The poacher leapt up, and aimed a terrific kick at his fallen opponent. The man would have received a severe injury had not the scouts swept into action at the very nick of time. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... British heads. In the meantime, other engineers 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
... you know," said Mason, "it looks as if you had been quarrelling. I guess I came just in the nick of time." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... at Stradella. The First Consul received him with twofold joy. In the first place, he regained a man without ambition, an intelligent officer and a devoted friend. In the second place, Desaix arrived just in the nick of time to take charge of the division lately under Boudet, who had been killed. Through a false report, received through General Gardannes, the First Consul was led to believe that the enemy refused to give battle and was retiring to Genoa. He sent Desaix and his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... and all such nick-nacks, boy, to a good plateful of clam-soup? Well made, as you say—made as a cook of Jennings used to make it, thirty years since. Did I ever mention that fellow's soup ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 money, the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... dexterity, flung himself between them, just in the nick of time to avert from Mole ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... '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
... 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 ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... beach of Manatomana! And he sneered at my failing for religion, and at my going to prayer- meeting, and, most of all, at my sugar-planting. He challenged me to fight, and I kept off of him. He threatened me, and I learned in the nick of time of his plan to have me knocked on the head. You see, he wanted the Princess just as much as I did, and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... tell you he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... belfries of the town. About the stable all else was silent but the stamping of stalled horses and the rattle of halters. Otto dismounted; and as he did so a memory came back to him: a whisper of dishonest grooms and stolen corn, once heard, long forgotten, and now recurring in the nick of opportunity. He crossed the bridge, and, going up to a window, knocked six or seven heavy blows in a particular cadence, and, as he did so, smiled. Presently a wicket was opened in the gate, and a man's head ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had a small desert of Numbers to have pick'd and Criticiz'd upon, had he not been interrupted just upon his Delivery; nay, after the Preliminary Sigh had made Way for his Utterance. But so was his Fortune, Don Mario was coming towards the Door at that very nick of Time, where he met with a Priest just out of Breath, who told him that Lorenzo was just breathing his last, and desired to know if he would come and take his final Leave before they were to administer the Extream Unction. Don Mario, who had been at some Difference with ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... engaged to this woman—this Mrs. Truslove—who has a nice little income. He hears that her income is to be halved; and we know that if an allowance begins by being halved, as likely as not it will be stopped altogether before long. He saw that clearly enough. Then in the very nick of time this cheque comes along. He sends it to the bank with this letter of instructions, and murders Lord Loudwater so that he cannot disavow them. What more of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... reached me to-night, just in the nick of tune, and I enclose a letter which I was just about to send to the Editor of the London 'Standard.' Please send it to that or any other paper you like, barring the 'Times,' 'Saturday Review,' or 'Pall Mall Gazette.' I wrote another letter to the 'Times,' by which ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... what way yuh go thar," replied Jim, "but I guesses as Nick he likes the three mile carry best. Start ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... that my master was cute with the cards, and that few was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, there it was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... on his rigid shoulder. "Quit it, Mig. We would do a lot for the outfit; that's the God's truth. And I played the game right up to the hilt, I admit. But nobody's killed. I told Happy to play dead. By gracious, I caught him just in the nick uh time; he'd been setting up, in another minute." To prove it, he bent and twitched the handkerchief from the face of Happy Jack, and Happy opened his eyes and made shift ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Good-fellow, true man and honest man, do acknowledge to have received of Nick and Froth, the cheating tapster, the sum of twenty pounds, which money I have bestowed (to the tapster's content) among the poor of the parish, out of whose pockets this aforesaid tapster had picked the aforesaid sum, not after the manner of foisting, but after his excellent skill of ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... 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 ye, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... cause—perhaps fracture or thinness—bulged outwardly. It will be perceptible at once that for direct pressure against a part of the ribs, situated near the upper block, that the little joist will slip unless a nick is made for its reception in the large support or beam. This is so evident that a reminder ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... said she, "and just in the nick of time. He was on the inside in the campaign of '96, and I remember one night he came to dinner at our house and told us that the Republican party had raised ten or fifteen million dollars to buy the election. 'That's the end of silver,' he ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... consequence of his pridefulness towards me; for, observing me standing in serenity at the window, he came, and in a vehement manner cried to me for the love of heaven to come to his assistance, and pacify the people. It would not have been proper in me to have refused; so out I went in the very nick of time: for when I got to the door, there was the soldiers in battle array, coming marching with fife and drum up the gait with Major Blaze at their head, red and furious in the face, and bent on some bloody business. The first thing I did was to run to the major, just as he ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Sept. 25.—Edmond Montgomery died on Nick Jordan's place, near the county line of Schley, aged 102 years. He was an African chief of the Askari tribe, and was taken to Virginia from Africa in 1807, when he was a young man. He had a large family in Virginia, and when he died he left his third wife and 25 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... 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
... from Batson Reeves. But we seem to have 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 ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... 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 was the object ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... the 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
... legion from the puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching within a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shut, 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 The street's hushed, and I know ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... his own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... in her line," says Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but philanthropic manufacturers, (p. 111) liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards or ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... farther, and proceeded to make camp by the roadside, not far from a couple of yurts. A light shone out, and there was the sound of angry voices and wrangling, but I could not find out what was the matter. Nicolai's German always gave out, as the Indian babu said his presence of mind did, "in the nick of time." Finally, the Russians sulkily turned their horses loose and set up the little shelter tent where the three men were to sleep. Apparently there was no fuel to be had, and we all went ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... "them hain't no natural, ordinary 'eathen, indeed not, sir. They are the very h'old Nick 'isself, sir." ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... like 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 my ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Te Whangoa and Kirsty Lammergaw are present but Lily Chen and Likofo Komom'baratse and Jean LeBrun are not; we have Cray Patterson who is one of my special enemies but not Blazer Weigh or the Astral Cad; the rest are P. Zapotec, Nick Howard, Aro Mestah, Dillie Dixie, Pavel Christianovitch, Lennie DiMaggio and ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... taking out the young lady to whom he was engaged, to such entertainments. Ultimately, of course, he was found out, and, when starving on the road, determined to commit suicide. The Salvationists found him in the nick of time, and now he is foreman ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... 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 a regal dignity and crowning her ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... Myles would observe on these occasions—Ah! ah!"—I told you they'd soon find the fair lady was shaded by her fine laces. I daresay now she's on the look-out for a good match, poor thing! Not that Helen is handsome—don't look in the glass, Helen, child! My grandmother always said that Old Nick stood behind every young lady's shoulder when she looked in the glass, with a rouge-pot all ready to make her look handsomer in her own eyes than she really was; which shows how wicked it is to look much in a ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... stock-in-trade—swains languishing for 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. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile burden of sentiment—so much, and no more. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... to tell which are the dairy-maids and which are the kindly animals with the crumpled horns which furnish the lacteal supply which is so particularly sought after. Of course every body wants as much cream as possible, and all have faith that, at the nick of time, it will be given to them to milk instead of the other thing. There is a pleasant amusement known among juveniles as "SIMON says up," etc. This is the very milk in the stock-market cocoanut. When some great member of the big Clique family ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... gave me a 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 ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 compelled ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... 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
... upon him; some distant kinswoman, whose very name was unknown to Tchertop-hanov, left him in her will a sum immense in his eyes—no less than two thousand roubles! And he received this sum in the very nick, as they say, of time; the day before the Jew was to come. Tchertop-hanov almost went out of his mind with joy, but he never even thought of vodka; from the very day Malek-Adel came into his hands he ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the gaugers 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 you ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... 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 sent out his elves into the homes to take an inventory of the lives of die children. ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... 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 ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... much 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 ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... 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, more ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... circumstances Evan would rather have been called Old Nick than "old man," but he nodded obedience to the manager's wishes and went ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Hess smiled 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 ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... forth in my defence, in the person of Haxell, the taciturn carpenter. This individual seldom spoke to any one unless previously addressed; so his voluntary testimony on my behalf was all the more striking and effective, especially as it was given in the very nick of time. ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dissipate all the 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 terminus before going to a fancy-dress ball to be given ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... failed to 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 ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... puppy, ha! ha! ha!—Well, but Mrs. Malaprop, as the girl seems so infatuated by this fellow, suppose you were to wink at her corresponding with him for a little time—let her even plot an elopement with him—then do you connive at her escape—while I, just in the nick, will have the fellow laid by the heels, and fairly contrive to carry her off in ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... 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
... opportunity, not to lift it out in the ordinary way, but to clap the net upon it as it struggled on the shallow, and pin it most cleverly to the shingle, hauling it out without accident. It was only done in the nick of time; two yards farther down would have been ruin. Everybody said it was a perfectly shaped specimen of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... him!" murmured Tom, when he could get back his breath. "Now who in the name of Old Nick can ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... had risen instinctively, and stood looking with crimson cheeks and quicker-coming breath at this young man who came upon her in the nick of time. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... this place 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... pride in the past; Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... homeliness that jarred upon her. The teapot was real silver, but it was of old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles as they may be, repelled her. It was a bitter cup ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Debray, "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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... any kind of action for your money. Geysers, hell-spouts, fuming fissures, cunning little craterlets with half-portions of molten lava ready to serve hot; more gases than you could create in all the world's chemical laboratories: in fact, everything to make the place a paradise for Old Nick—and Dr. Schermerhorn. He brought along in his precious chest, besides the radium, some sort of raw material: also, as near as I could make out, a sort of cage or guardianship scheme for his concentrated essence of cussedness, when he should get it ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... must needs find fault, to shew his wit: Then, 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, for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... 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
... 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!" ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and yet it was soon known through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which purchase—so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the facts—would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. The duke ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... says: "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 sacrifice of that ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... gammon about their going to France. He hasn't money for travelling. She spent all hers in nick-nacks—to propitiate people, the sneak! They're ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... musically its waters 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 ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... 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 this time, I presume, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... ous sheaf stew'ing a miss' pre'vi ous guile, yeo'man as sess' im'pi ous chyle chlo'ral ab'scess a'que ous rend know'ing sick'le par'ti cle wrench go'ing nick'el crit'ic al dearth con dole' tal'ents dil'i gent worth con trol' bal'ance el'e gant mirth en roll' si'lence fal'li ble earth dis pel' com peer' prel'a cy spurt fore tell' ad here' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Claude was excusing himself further, begging to be allowed to run away so as not to keep Billy Cheever waiting, Rosie Fay was noticing with relief that her mother was asleep at last. Thor's sedative had taken effect in what the girl considered the nick of time. Having smoothed the pillow, adjusted the patchwork quilt, and placed the small kerosene hand-lamp on a chair at the foot of the bed, so as to shade it from the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... 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 learn at last that he, Mortimer, had ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... now clear of armed insurrectionists. You need not to be reminded that it is the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal State government. Not a moment should be lost. You and the co-operating friends there can better judge of the ways and means than can be judged by any here. I only offer a few suggestions. The reinauguration must ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... you, Nick," said the fellow who had foretold the speedy apprehension of the letter-writer, as already related. "Cursed fool to come to London so soon. Knew you would be nabbed. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil—a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume—fell so much in love with him that she betrayed ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... in the lowered voice, an unspoken appeal to her 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 ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... making their way through the "desolate and voiceless solitudes"; mere wastes of cliffs, crags, caverns, and steep hillsides covered with pine, laurel, and underbrush. Twice they were literally starving and were saved in the nick of time by the killing, on the first occasion, of a big bull elk, on the next, of a small spike buck. At last, sun-scorched and rain-beaten, foot-sore and leg-weary, their thighs torn to pieces by ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a classical subject, when talking to the distinguished Mr. Derringham, and she must be warned and primed up before dinner. Arabella had herself averted a catastrophe and dexterously turned the conversation in the nick of time. Mrs. Cricklander had a peculiarly unclassical brain, and found learning statistics about ancient philosophies and the names of mythological personages the most difficult of all. Fortunately ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... it 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 thought came over me (immoral, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... did seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and fall in love with her, worse luck," and Lucile vindictively kicked a stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself. "And then to think he should like Jim, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... had satisfied himself that the pistols were properly loaded and primed, had resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. "Ask that fellow who is enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Sally. "If she is ill she would rather see the old Nick himself than Miss Stetson. I'll run and ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... run both 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 ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... felt that, among the countless evidences of the ordering of Providence by which the war for the preservation of the Union was signalized, not the least striking was the raising up of this remarkable man, to accomplish alone, and in the very nick of time, a work which at once became of such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... name I had better 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
... not live in the basin of the Delaware at the most remote times of which we have any knowledge, we meet with traces of his occupation in the same latitude at more recent periods. At Long-Nick-Branch is a shell-mound that extends for half a mile, and in California there is a yet larger kitchen-midding. It measures a mile in length by half a mile in width, and, as in similar accumulations, excavations have yielded thousands of stone ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... the fuel he brought, And said he feared nought Of the Devil being brewed in his copper: He'd as quickly believe Nick would sit in his sieve, Or dance 'mong the wheat in ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... is no doubt whatever that this time he would have slain me—for the pistol was pointed so truly that I actually looked for a moment right into the barrel of it—had it not been for the Diane's helmsman, who unceremoniously seized me by the arm in the very nick of time and quickly pulled me aside. As it was, the bullet whistled close past my ear. This dastardly act so exasperated our people that forthwith, without waiting for orders, they poured the whole of our port broadside ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... imp of evil brook to lie hidden in the Holy Hole behind the very altar?" said Mrs. Woodford. "But I hear Nick bringing in supper, and I must leave you for the present. God in His mercy bless you, His poor child, and lead you in ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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)
... courage and his quality of leadership. He was an excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was the more remarkable because, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... you nick, nick, nick! With your fingers click, click, click! Right foot first, Left foot then, Round about ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... uplifts her, graciously kissing 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
... 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 ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... and common almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which immediately brings up ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... the gold 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 kindness, but she seemed to smother ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... 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 ability in ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... first hours. He 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 ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... conduit (he does not say which) palisaded with chimney-sweepers' brooms and surrounded by sweeps, probably waiting to be hired, so that "a countryman, seeing so many black attendants waiting at a stone hovel, took it to be one of Old Nick's tenements." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 this with their holy names, so that no more ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... 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 scarcely be ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... refused to do, and they would doubtless have killed him, but for two men who dragged him from their clutches in the nick of time. These two men were the one-armed Joe and Edward Chester, just returned from the West Indies, whom the former had met by accident that day. They took the locksmith to his home, while the raging crowd brought furniture from neighboring houses and built a bonfire ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... Then he put on long hair and a venerable 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 to oppose ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Heaven wi' its jasper halls Is now the on'y town I care to be in.. Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls As we ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be pullin' ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... 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 right, as ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Sganarelle 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
... step of the palace with all of them around her, Dorothy told the whole wonderful story of the Scarecrow's family tree. When her breath gave out, the Scarecrow took up the tale himself, and as they all realized how nearly they had lost their jolly comrade, many of the party shed real tears. Indeed, Nick Chopper hugged the Scarecrow till there was not a whole straw ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... with refinement and good taste. And it is worthy of remark that the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and the Romans liked ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... "I'll no' hae my dog scaret wi' bogles, and running down Auld Nick as if he were a hare. The ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... 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
... "Tramp—tramp—tramp!" in the corridor, the heavy tread of many feet sounded, coming nearer. Instinctively realizing that the pachydermic parade was headed for his room, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., rushed to the closet, murmuring, "Safety first!" as usual, and stowed away his banjo. He was just in the nick of time, for a second later there crowded into his room Captain Butch, Pudge, Beef, Hefty, Biff, Monty, Roddy, Bunch, Tug, Buster, Coach Corridas, and Thor, the latter duo bringing up ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... much in her line," says Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but philanthropic manufacturers, (p. 111) liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to distribute rewards ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... 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 daughter of our host, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would think that such a rough hewn and slovenly mortal ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... my tracks and addressing a small brown-leafed beech. "What! little Hyla, are you still out? You! with a snow-storm brewing and St. Nick due here to-morrow night?" And then from within the bush, or on it, or under it, or over it, came an answer, Peep, peep, peep! small and shrill, dropping into the silence of the woods and stirring it as three small ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Gimlet is laid, never to rise again' — Insensible of this check, she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, to wake the maids ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... "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, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... main, 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, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... manner, might be said to be a typical United States Army officer. His figure would probably fall short of the standard, but he was no less strong and healthy than his brother knights of the sword. His strength was more to be compared to that patient animal after which he was nick-named, the mighty carabao, but he lacked the grace of form and dignity of bearing that the average wearer of shoulder-straps in Uncle Sam's army ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... of H.M.S. Suffolk, and our naval detachments at Ufa. The Czechs (our Allies), who had the same orders as myself, on learning that the Tsarists were also in the conspiracy, frustrated this scheme by instantly moving forward a company for the protection of the bridge, which arrived just in the nick of time. Had we acted strictly to orders, Heaven only knows what the result would have been. British and Czech both had to act on our own judgment, and while, technically, we disobeyed orders, we fulfilled the policy of each country ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the short third hole at Mt. Agel in three. (His first had cleverly dislodged the ball from the piled-up tee; his second, a sudden nick, had set it rolling down the hill to the green; and the third, an accidental ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... of this among other incidents. He was, like Peter Maughan, an old schoolfellow of mine with the Christian Brothers in Liverpool. He was one of the men picked out by Colonel Kelly to be on guard when the "old man"—one of Stephens' pet nick-names—came over the prison wall. Ryan was a fine type of an Irishman, morally, intellectually and physically. As Stephens slipped down from the wall, holding on to the rope, he came with such force on my friend's shoulders as almost to bear him to the ground. In my ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... stupid," said the wife angrily. "You ought to have cut a nick in the right one while you 10 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... straight and clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew it up and down one of the brown barrels of his gun, as carefully as ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... 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, is never too hotly pressed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... broke 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 ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... 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 ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 accompany us ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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
... Count Metternich, behind the next tree, fired and killed the brute, so I was none the worse save for a good fright. It was high time to kill him, for he began charging at the beaters, and threatened to make it lively for us; and if Count Metternich had not, in the nick of time, sent a bullet into him, I doubt whether I should be writing this little account ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... upon her. The teapot was real silver, but it was of old-fashioned shape. Solid as the furniture was, and still after so many years of service worth money, yet it was chipped by kicks from iron-shod boots, which had also worn the dingy carpet bare. There was an absence of the nick-nacks that strew the rooms of people in 'Society.' There was not even a bell-handle to pull; if you wanted the maid of all work, you must open the door and call to her. These little things, trifles as they may be, repelled her. It was a bitter ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... know him first. Me, 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 dat ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... one 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 some far ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... could be no mistake, "Faix, mister, and is yer name Charley?" It was then that he rose in bed and uttered the exclamation which I set down in the first line of this story. Charley Vanderhuyn could not tell whether he meant Charles Dickens or Nick. Perhaps you can. Indeed, it doesn't seem to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... believe, about the three little boys I call "my babies." They are yet in dresses, and as cunning as can be, very regular in attendance. Harry, Eddie, and—well I must tell you about the other name. Down here, many nick-names are used, such as son, bubba, or boysa for the boys, and sister or missy for the little girls. When this little fellow was asked his name, he very bashfully said, "Son." "But you have some other name?" If he knew any other, he was afraid to speak, so I ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... near to the outskirts of his village, and coming unexpectedly on his satellite, who was in the act of dragging home a seal which he had just killed, "I meet you in the nick of time— but that is no wonder, for did not my torngak tell me he would cause you to meet me near the village? I want your ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... house-keeper. She was, when not doing the queen, cordial, cheerful in manner, loving to have children about her, to spoil them with cakes and see them romp and dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five minutes before ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... House that it occurred, and for an hour it had seemed that he could not place his money on a card without making the card a winner. In the lull at the end of a deal, while the game-keeper was shuffling the deck, Nick Inwood the owner of the game, remarked, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... came floundering once again over the partition, and guarding my loins, I leapt into the next compartment, seeing the affair had become a sauve qui peut, and devil take the hindmost: and at the nick of time, when she was about to descend like a wolf on a fold, I most fortunately perceived a bell-handle provided for such pressing emergencies and rung it with such unparalleled energy, that the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... 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 horse's feet ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... mats; and others of the twisted fibres of cocoa-nuts. These are not only durable but beautiful; being generally composed of different colours, and studded with beads made of shells or bones. They have many little nick-nacks amongst them; which shews that they neither want taste to design, nor skill to execute, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... 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
... third season here," I said, "and I never even heard about any old creek bed. I never heard about Nick's Valley either." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... 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 ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... me 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 Nick, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... other side, and there was the office of the Democratic 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
... exclaimed Barney. "It's yersilf thot knows a hape more thin Oi thought yez did. Ye show yer good judgmint in surrunderin' to th' girruls, fer wan av thim alone wud capture yez av she set out to, an' ould Nick take th' ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... cutting the glass tubing into lengths convenient to handle. It should be a three-cornered file, of medium fineness, and is used simply to nick the glass at the place it is desired to cut it. The two thumbs are then placed beneath the tube, one on each side of the nick, and the tube bent, as if it were plastic, at the same time pulling the hands apart. The tube will break off squarely at the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... came very seasonably; you are come in the Nick of Time; I was just now wishing for you; I am extreme glad of ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... fruit 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 in ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... to the nearer gate, for both were shut, and we got through and swung it home behind us in the nick of time. Even I could mount before they could reopen the gate, which Raffles held against them for half an instant with unnecessary gallantry. But he would see me in front of him, and so it fell to ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... at the nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank of ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... I don't ye go fo' to set up yo'sef agin de ghoses, kase dey's powerful pernickety when dey's crassed," said the old woman, whom Mark, with his love for nick-names, ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one'll believe yuh. No one! An' if yuh don't want somethin' turrible to happen, yuh'll say nothin', but yuh'll behave yerself like a decent married woman an' go to church an' say yer prayers against trouble. That woman with the cards says whatever th' old Nick puts into ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... was he appeared to such purpose, and in the very nick of time, that afternoon when lady Cairnedge had come with her servants to carry John away; for of course I knew now that our champion must have been uncle Edmund. He answered he had that very morning made up his mind ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... not a joke," 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 ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... sooner appeared in the judgment-chamber of Justice Gobble, than Captain Crowe, seizing him by the hand, exclaimed, "Body o' me! Doctor, thou'rt come up in the nick of time to lend us a hand in putting about.—We're a little in the stays here—but howsomever we've got a good pilot, who knows the coast; and can weather the point, as the saying is. As for the enemy's vessel, she has had a shot or two already athwart ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... "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 grape-vine, they heard the Kyrofatalapynx ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... graciousness, 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 ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... lively conversation went 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 Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 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
... 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 suggestion ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 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 face ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... ready on my arrival," said Sir 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 ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 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 and improving ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... she said, "and you come just in the nick o' time. They got all my money. It's in their clothes," and then a look of terror overspread her face. For the moment she had forgotten what she had heard about this man—that he was an escaped convict—a convicted murderer. Was she any better ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a colored man 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 Main Street, the leading street of Ellicott City. They ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... 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 ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... looked about the room; then, after glancing ruefully at the bright little weapon, halfway up the blade of a rich deep blue, in which was figured a pattern in gold, he yielded to necessity, and began to chop at the top bar of the grate, so as to nick the edges of his weapon ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 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 Lefrancois, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... 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 heavy and slow over the city the tolling of the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... right, dad, and I'm not hurt," said the girl reassuringly, as her father ran towards her with a look of anguish on his face. "You just came in the nick of time; they were going to ambush you. Don't let the horses go too near the corral, as they will be stampeded again. A dead ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... he wanted to marry you, did he, Aunt Clarissa, swear he would win you by hook or by crook, and vow that Old Nick himself would not prevent him from making you his own?" inquired Myra, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... groves wherein these feathered songsters "sport, live, and have their being." Whilst millions of men are sunk in the arms of "the drowsy god." What is the angler about, has he slept soundly, and then awoke in the very nick of time? Or have his slumbers been somewhat broken and disturbed by dreams of crafty old Trout? No matter, he is astir, he has pocketed his tackle, and not neglected something for the inner man; ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... however, passed unnoticed by the faro players; not a man within sound of the shot, for that matter, inquired what the trouble was about; and even Nick, picking up his tray filled with glasses and a bottle, walked straightway into the dance-hall looking as if the matter were not worth a ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... scrupulously swept and dusted; furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... heerd that my master was cute with the cards, and that few was equal to him in any game with pasteboard or ivory; but, be my conscience, he met his match now, for if it was ould Nick was playin' he couldn't do the thrick nater nor the baron. He made every thing come up just like magic: if he wanted a seven of diamonds, or an ace of spades, or the knave of clubs, there ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Pittsburg in a cab and while leaning on his shoulder his diamond scarfpin got caught in her teeth. She being a bashful young thing—then. Well, when she takes her head off his shoulder the pin naturally comes along, too, and then she got afraid that he would think she was trying to nick it so she stuck the pin in her hat band, intending to restore it on the way home. But in the next cafe they stopped in she picked a fight and left him in a huff. Would you believe it, that guy had the nerve to come around the next day and declare that ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... me now, and I know it, and dad knows it," Nick assured him. "I'm going home! You'd better be glad you are not mixed up in this thing," he said, turning to the third boy. "You are safe awhile yet, you ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... lies poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly through life he trotted, Along the path that faith allotted, Till time, his aged ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... 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 now ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... one of the institutions of the Quarter, one of the notabilities. It was a matter of pride (I can't think why) to be on terms of hail-fellowship with him, on terms to thee-and-thou him, and call him by his nick-name, Bibi, Bibi Ragout: a sobriquet that he had come by long before my time, and whose origin I never heard explained. It seemed sufficiently disrespectful, but he accepted it cheerfully, and would often, indeed, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... time; I had saved him. After all, nothing else mattered during that supreme moment of thankfulness. A few seconds longer beneath that smothering mass and he would have been dead. By what a strange sequence of events had I come to his side just in the nick of time! ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... saint answered, "you very well know The young man's no more his than your own to bestow. Touch one button of his if you dare, Nick—-no! no! Cut your stick, sir—come, mizzle! be off with you! go!"— The Devil grew hot— "If I do I'll be shot! An you come to that, Cuthbert, I'll tell you what's what; He has asked us to dine here, and go we will not! Why, you Skinflint,—at least You may leave us the feast! Here we've ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... His seven months' work, it seemed, had come to nought. The navigation was already open from the sea to Antwerp, the Lowenstyn was in the rebels' hands. But Alexander was not prone to premature despair. "I arrived," said he to Philip in a letter written on the same evening, "at the very nick of time." A less hopeful person might have thought that he had arrived several hours too late. Having brought with him every man that could be spared from Beveren and from the bridge, he now ordered Camillo del Monte to transport some additional pieces of artillery from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... yet seen, barbarously and implacably hostile, and shamelessly dishonest. On the morning of July 11th, two of the men were engaged at the river, and five of the bullock-drivers were collecting their cattle. One of the natives, nick-named King Peter by the men, tried to snatch a kettle from the hand of the man who was carrying it, and on this action being resented, he struck the man with a nulla-nulla, stretching him senseless. His companion shot King Peter in the groin, and his majesty tumbled ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... root of the evil. And then the new cook had proved to be a violent, intermittent drunkard. She had chased the other maid out of the house, and then, while Mrs. Watson rushed for the police, she had drunk herself into the stupor in which she had been found. But now, in the nick of time, the station cab came up with the luggage, and so the still placidly slumbering culprit was carried out to it, and sent off in the charge of the policeman. Such was the first entry of Mr. and Mrs. Crosse into ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... therefore, for a few more yards, I felt a little cavity in the rough-hewn wall of rock that appeared deeper than the others; there I compressed myself, feeling flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned. It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical horror; it passed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid smell of mineral oils ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... universal welcome on the part of my companions; and without dropping a hint to the other party, it was at once resolved that the design should be carried into execution. It was carried into execution. An 'up-river' boat chanced to pass in the nick of time. A messenger was forthwith, despatched to Covington, and before twelve o'clock upon the following day another boat on her down trip brought the howitzer, and we had it secretly landed and conveyed to a place in the woods previously agreed upon. My friend, Captain C—, had sent a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... side of a brig, that stands over a brook, I was sent betimes to school; I went wi' the stream, as I studied my book, An' was thought to be no small fool. I never yet bought a pig in a poke, For, to give awd Nick his due, Tho' oft I've dealt wi' Yorkshire folk, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... is his own father; and the old woman is his grandmother. The robber chief's father was known as "Nick, the Highwayman," a terrible person whose name made everybody's heart beat fast fifty ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... chief 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
... person. Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him, if I can hit the nick of time." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... are always masterly. Nothing could be truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas, or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and everybody's way till he finds his natural vocation as an aid to a dealer in horses, is a capital sketch. The hypochondriac Squire Plumworthy is very good, also, in his way, though he verges once or twice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... nice bright little business in Bridge Street? Carr's. Old Jonas Carr's. He is retiring, you know—or perhaps you don't know—it's been kept secret for business purposes. I am glad to have got hold of it in the nick of time, and I am putting your ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... Miss Priscilla, without seeming to glance up from her sewing, "Sergeant,—your hat!" Hereupon, the Sergeant gave a sudden, sideways jerk of the head, and, in the very nick of time, saved the article in question from tumbling off, and very dexterously brought it to the top of his close-cropped head, whence it immediately began, slowly, and by scarcely perceptible degrees to slide down to ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 feet higher up he found the other incision, and completed it as quietly as before. ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... had heard at night, and of the things I had done with Sam. I would hear the mountain engine come panting impatiently up the grade. As it reached the top I would rise from my bed and soar off into space, in one swift rushing flight through the darkness I would be there in the nick of time, I would swing on to a freight car in the way Sam had shown me, climb to the top and crouching there I would watch the dark roadway open ahead through the silent forest. Lower would sink the voice of ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... nocked and loosed another arrow, which would have smitten Walter in the face, but that he lowered his head in the very nick of time; then with a great shout he rushed up the bent, and was on the Dwarf before he could get his sword out, and leaping aloft dealt the creature a stroke amidmost of the crown; and so mightily be smote, ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Liner," told of the loss of the splendid ship "Tropic Queen," on a volcanic island after she had become disabled and had drifted helplessly for days. By wireless Jack managed to secure aid from U. S. vessels, and it came in the nick of time, for the island was destroyed by an eruption just after the last of the rescued passengers had been taken off. Wireless, too, secured, as described in that book, the capture of a criminal ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... world there is none thou mayst count upon * To befriend thy case in the nick of need: So live for thyself nursing hope of none * Such counsel I give thee: enow, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... always has a good deal of respect for the fighting strain, no matter if it be in a man, or a beast, or a bird. Old Nick himself must be a grand, two-handed man, and as such we must give him credit. And 'twas the same way with this felly Hume. He had real fighting blood, so he had; and sorra the man ever undertook to impose on him ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... a new fellow," answered Kenrick, Henderson, and all who knew him, as fast as they could, in reply to the general queries. They were proud to know him just then, and this little triumph occurred in the nick of time to raise poor ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Nick Razorblade a barber was, A strapping lad was he; And he could shave with such a grace, It was a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in the church over the way," answered Roderick; "and some how or other I have mist this hour every evening since we have been here. Today it comes just in the nick: I can cover my dress with your cloak, hiding my mask and turban under it; and so, when the music is over, I may go straight ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... his remarks on politikle Economy, says: "Vengents, like a 2 tined pitchfork in the hands of Old Nick, will bust up any party which goes back onto its trusted leaders. 'Vengents is mine,' says the disappinted offis seeker, and on Election day he peddles split tickets ontil ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... is always the nick of time chosen by the force, that is to say, when everything is done except the handcuffs, a policeman with a great deal of authority in his appearance came up, and plunged his hands under his heavy coat-tails, as though he were about to deliver them of the bower ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... 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 ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... 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
... automobiles. You won't ketch me with an automobile—no, nor a motor-boat, neither; nor any other of them durn things that's goin' to set me livin' like as if I was shot out of the cannon's mouth. What's the good of bein' whizzed through life as if the old Nick himself was at your heels—workin' faster, eatin' faster, dyin' faster? I see nothin' to it—nothin' ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... water, his great wings flapping, rose Plunger. Peter looked eagerly to see if he had caught a fish, but there was nothing in Plunger's great, curved claws. Either that fish had been too deep or had seen Plunger and darted away just in the nick of time. Peter had a splendid view of Plunger. He was just a little bigger than Redtail the Hawk. Above he was dark brown, his head and neck marked with white. His tail was grayish, crossed by several narrow dark bands and tipped with white. His under parts were white ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... out on the floor an' begins to claw on his duds, allowin', bein' he's only half awake that a-way, that it's a passel of them murderin' Clay Whigs who's come to crawl his hump for shore. But she's a false alarm. It's only a Dom'nick rooster who's been perched all night on my grandfather's wrist where his arm sticks outen bed, an' who's done crowed a whole lot, as is his habit when he glints the comin' day. It's them sort o' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... but he 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... you please tell us how you happened to find us out and come to our rescue just in the nick of time? I should also very much like to know how you managed to tumble down that precipice unharmed, as well as how you produced those flashes of light that scared the savages so badly—me ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... tript it, skipt it, Leapt it, stept it, whiskt it, Friskt it, whirld it, twirl'd it, Swimming, springing, starting: So quick, the tune to nick, With a heave and a toss: And a jerk at parting, With a heave, and a toss, and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... the lines of Irving's legend. When the 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 ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the first time in January, 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, stood in the relation of a ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... 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 me ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... came in the nick of time. All the pent-up spleen and hatred of Peigan Charley had culminated in an irresistible desire. He had seized a rifle from one of the camp Indians standing by, and had flung himself on the banked up defences. Even as his boss shouted, his eye was running ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... me to-night, just in the nick of tune, and I enclose a letter which I was just about to send to the Editor of the London 'Standard.' Please send it to that or any other paper you like, barring the 'Times,' 'Saturday Review,' or 'Pall Mall Gazette.' I wrote another letter to the 'Times,' ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... had come up in the very nick of time. Pursuing his march by the forest path, Taylor had heard the sounds of battle pass beyond his flank, and the cheers of the Federals proved that Winder was hard pressed. Rapidly deploying on his advanced guard, which, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... prickers, 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, and told him he would ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Neevie-neevie-nick-nack."—A lottery game, and confined to boys, is of simple movement, but convenient in this—that only two players are required. They stand facing each other, the leader whirling his two closed fists, one containing a prize, the other empty, while he cajoles ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... 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, ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... fail to a certainty," said the smith, who, as the reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... He is a sweet creature," said Paccard. "Did you see how he kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to old Nick; for, after all, we got him into ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... cardboard square in the nick B, attach the rubber bands and pull the trigger. The top rubber band will fly ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... it some time. Hank, you're on board just in the nick of time. I found out what the trouble was with the carriage of the gun and repaired it while you were amusing yourselves out there. Get in lively, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had swallowed it I realized I had been too hasty. It was mescal—an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... admonish'd, She ventur'd forward on the light, And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance, Nae light cotillion new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. As winnock-bunker, in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A touzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge; He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— Coffins stood round like open presses, That shaw'd the dead ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... for I did not know how steep was the descent. I said to myself, "Paul, you must not upset; bend your body on the opposite side when the sleigh makes the curve, and be quick when the time arrives. Do this in the nick of time." ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... was 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 death, heard the sound of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... would you tell us a thing that's puzzled me, and I daresay more than me?" ventured a young assistant manager, voicing the thoughts of others present. "How the deuce did those wild elephants happen to turn up just in the nick of time ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... will appear so great, as to show the inconsistency of placing power where there can be no certainty of the judgment to use it. Wretched as the state of representation is in England, it is manhood compared with what is called the house of Lords; and so little is this nick-named house regarded, that the people scarcely enquire at any time what it is doing. It appears also to be most under influence, and the furthest removed from the general interest of the nation. In the debate on engaging in the Russian and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... almost any terms, to be fairly free from your eternal croakings—never at rest, never satisfied, unless at some new deviltry and ill deed. If I did give you the first lessons in your education, Guy, you have long since gone beyond your master; and I'm something disposed to think that Old Nick himself must have taken up your tuition, where, from want of corresponding capacity, I was compelled to leave ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Tennessee, who, under their Generals, Coffee and Carroll, were pushing their toilsome and weary way toward the city. Every effort was made to hurry their march through the almost impassable roads, and at last, in the very nick of time, on the 23d of December, the day of which the British troops reached the river bank, the vanguard of the Tennesseeans marched into New Orleans. Gaunt of form and grim of face; with their powder-horns slung over their buckskin shirts; carrying their long rifles on their shoulders and their ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hid in the thickness of the chimney; but if he did, what happened? Why, I had my counter-spy, an honest little Irish boy, in the creditor's shop, that I had secured with a little douceur of usquebaugh; and he outwitted, as was natural, the English lying valet, and gave us notice, just in the nick, and I got ready for their reception; and, Miss Nugent, I only wish you'd seen the excellent sport we had, letting them follow the scent they got; and when they were sure of their game, what did they find?—Ha! ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... hostiles would have 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 in a ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... forgotten that your Grandfather, being a Wollen Draper, first hung out the Sign of the Sheep, and his name was James Thomson, but by reason of his great custom, they called him, by the nick name, of James in the Sheep; which remains still as a name to the generation. And in like manner your wives Grandfather, a well customed Shopkeeper in silk-stufs, whose name was William Jackson, hung out the sign of ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... was courteously military—that of an established superior indifferent to the deferential attitude he must needs enact. His curt nick of the head, for a response to the visitor's formal salutation, signified the requisite acknowledgment, like a city creditor's busy stroke of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... brother and his love affairs are not more credible, 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 of them. The sea ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... my wife. I trust her good sense utterly. Still it is possible for even the wisest of women to lose her judgment at times. But as for my trusty steward Thomas Salthouse, the steadiest man I have ever had in my employ, if even old Nick himself has managed to bewitch him, he must be a cleverer devil ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... 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 ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... 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 of ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... taste. And it is worthy of remark that the men who are ahead of the thought and feeling of the present day are crying out for more simplicity in our homes and furniture, as well as for more refinement and real architectural merit. No useless luxuries and nick-nacks, but plenty of public baths, and mosaic pavements laboriously put together by hard hand labour,—these are the points that Ruskin and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... only this morning," his good Samaritan replied. "In the nick of time, it seems, to be of assistance. And you?" he added, with a slight bow. "You are ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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
... was 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 my father came to fetch me away. The reason was ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... by means of a miniature snaffle, instead of a button. The snaffle passed across his chest, from whence the coatee, flowing easily back, displayed the broad ridge and furrow of a white cord waistcoat, with a low step collar, the vest reaching low down his figure, with large flap pockets and a nick out in front, like a coachman's. Instead of buttons, the waistcoat was secured with foxes' tusks and catgut loops, while a heavy curb chain, passing from one pocket to the other, raised the impression that there was a watch in one and a bunch of seals in the other. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... 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, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the coal, 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 ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers of this school of exaggerated romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed heroines, haunted castles, trapdoors, bandits, abductions, rescues in the nick of time, and a general medley of overwrought joys and horrors,[219] were immensely popular, not only with the crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned literary genius, like ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and finds, to his grief and astonishment, that he has but eleven cents in his pocket. Of course, he has coppered and won. But why—tell me why, could he not have given me the sentiment, which I had a right to expect from him? He bears the stamp of a bad Kopper; a regular old Nick, and has done that unbecoming thing so often that it is becoming monotonous And General X——— and Mr. K——— are types of a large class who come before me to take acknowledgments and the like, for whom I have no liking; who may as well acknowledge now, severally each for himself, (the aforesaid ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... 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 friendly interference is not quite unknown even in these more prosaic days. The Fortunatus' ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... her, it was as if a fire ran through all his body and changed it into the essence of her: neither was there any naysay in her eyes, nor any defence against him in the yielding body of her. But even in that nick of time he drew back a little, and turned his head, as a man listening, toward the door, and said: "Hist! hist! Dost thou hear, maiden?" She turned deadly pale: "O what is it? What is it? Yea, I hear; it is horses drawing nigh, and the sound of hounds baying. But may it ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... Nixa of the Germans is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time! Own up that you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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
... as 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 ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar through Macaulay's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... with many a rough jest and 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 ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... poor Nick, an honest creature, Of faithful, gentle, courteous nature; A parlor pet unspoiled by favor, A pattern of good dog behavior, Without a wish, without a dream, Beyond his home and friends at Cheam. Contentedly through life he trotted, Along the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... through it," he said, "she has got a capital constitution; but I'll tell you what it is—if she had lain another five minutes in that draught there would have been an end of her. You came in the nick of time. And now if I were you I should go to bed. You can do no good here, and you look ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... timidity or lack of opportunity a good half of possible love cases never get so far, and at least another quarter do there cease and determine. A very adroit person, to be sure, manages to prepare the way and out with his declaration in the nick of time. And then there is a fine solid sort of man, who goes on from snub to snub; and if he has to declare forty times, will continue imperturbably declaring, amid the astonished consideration of men and angels, until he has a favourable answer. I daresay, if one were a ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of evil brook to lie hidden in the Holy Hole behind the very altar?" said Mrs. Woodford. "But I hear Nick bringing in supper, and I must leave you for the present. God in His mercy bless you, His poor child, and lead ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had nearly got to loggerheads one night for no reason apparently, save that each had a high reputation for courage, and neither could find a worthier antagonist. In the nick of time Rablay appeared; he seemed to understand the situation at a glance, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... Beethoven came 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 first saw ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... the touch-line. The question then was "Could Acton stop the flying International, who spun along like Bassett himself?" And he did, generally; or, if he could not, he forced him to part with the ball, and either Baines, our half, lying back, nipped in and secured, or Bourne cleared in the nick of time. Nine times out of ten, when Acton challenged Aspinall, the International would part with the ball to his inside partner; but twice he feinted, and before either of the school backs could recover, the ball was ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... like a bird set free from a cage when Aunt Hetty appeared, and she came in the very nick of time, too, for that same day up rolled the stage, and out popped my great-aunt Jessamine (grandmamma's sister) from Philadelphia. The two old ladies had so much to tell one another that they had no need of me. So I went to the Downings', ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... 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, and, not without emotion, introduced ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... squeeze o' 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 spur to his horse, and closes ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... 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 God's work of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... efforts after reformation are usually 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sight land was a boy named Nicholas Young, hence the point was called "Young Nick's Head," which may be seen on our maps to-day, covering Poverty Bay. The natives here were unfriendly, and Cook was obliged to use firearms to prevent an attack. The Maoris had never seen a great ship before, and at first thought it was a very large bird, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... hidden by the bushes, they hid the men also from him, and when he was come to the last bush, some fifty paces from them, and peered out from it, in that very nick of time the two knights were breathing them somewhat, and Ralph saw that one of them, the furthest from him, was a very big man with a blue surcoat whereon was beaten a great golden sun, and the other, whose back was towards Ralph, was clad in black over his ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... 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 stick, and stride about in the Conscripts' Hollow, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... in in the nick of time for them—in very truth. If we hadn't, their exchange would have gone down soon and they know it. I shall never forget the afternoon I spent with Mr. Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law on that subject. They saw blue ruin without our financial ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... might be in some kind 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 line of your extraction from ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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 the place an' give 'em ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... toon 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
... body, the London Missionary Society. The teacher tells me, too, that the poor girl has fallen in love with a Christian chief, who lives on an island some fifty miles or so to the south of this one, and that she is meditating a desperate attempt at escape. So, you see, we have come in the nick of time. I fancy that this chief is the fellow whom you heard of, Ralph, at the Island of Emo. Besides all this, the heathen savages are at war among themselves, and there's to be a battle fought the day after to-morrow, in which the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... 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
... then that the arrears of rent for the village hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr. Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out, or tenant out, or do something else with his farm, march into town, plant himself upon the ruins of Jacob Spouter, and ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • 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 ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... lake to Nick's Cove (I knew all about that, because it was where the campers were and besides I knew about it anyway). If you will look on the map you'll see it and you'll notice how there are mountains there—kind of two sets of mountains with a space between. I made that map so you could see just ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... her tears were flowing freely; for to her, being a woman, this portrait 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. Ladies, forgive the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... you have been deliciously refreshed; and now that is done you will go home and the poor thirsty soul will once more become the great architect. But before that happens, pray inform us what god it was that brought you hither from Pelusium in the very nick of time when the fire broke out, and how matters look now in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... farthing, or all of a sudden rich with heavy sums, that were spent in a few days. He borrowed from everybody, and never paid them back; he lived like a real Indian, and was as cowardly as a half-drowned chicken. His light-coloured hair, sallow complexion, and beardless face, gave him the nick-name among the Indians of Onela-Dogou, Tagalese words, that signify ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... explained to Sir Richard how Number 666 had come up in the nick of time to receive the flying child upon ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... seeing that the enemy were beginning to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand! Stand!" The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count Hannibal was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds were still desperate—for he brought but six—the enemy were still three to one. But the thunder of his hoofs ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... of this ballad show an unusually small number of variations. The name, though occurring in the several forms of Lambert Linkin, Lamerlinkin, Rankin, Belinkin, Lankyn, Lonkin, Balcanqual, most often appears as Lamkin or Lammikin or Lambkin, being perhaps a nick-name given to the mason for the meekness with which he had borne his injuries. This would explain the resentful tone of his inquiries on entering the house. Nourice, nurse. Limmer, wretch. Shot-window, projecting window. Gaire, edge of frock. Ilka, each. Bore, crevice. Greeting, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... down it fell, down, down! As in its descent it passed the bridge on which we stood, the shadows of our two figures rushed up the opposite wall, like a pair of demons scared out of their abode by the hissing flame; and Nick, the guide, as he leaned over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the cross-gun of young Paul. He had seen everything in the story and had taken aim at the said Indian just in the nick of time. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... The last piece I saw in Belfast was a fearful foolish piece, with a lot of love and villainy in it. The girl was near drowned in real water, and then the villain tied her on to a circular saw, and if it hadn't been for the hero coming in the nick of time, she'd have been cut in two. No man would treat a woman that way, tying her on to a saw! I'm afeard some of these pieces nowadays are terribly foolish, John, so I never want ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... that horse?" called Nick Hammond as he approached his father and Dr. Morris, as they were talking ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... maybe you'll not want 'em. Our garden ain't much this year. Pa has had to work out all the time. The kids and me put in some seed—all we had—with a hoe. We ain't got no horse; our team died last winter. We didn't have much feed and it was shore a hard winter. We hated to see old Nick and Fanny die. They were just like ones of the family. We drove 'em clean from Missouri, too. But they died, and what hurt me most was, pa 'lowed it would be a turrible waste not to skin 'em. I begged him not to. Land ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... granted to them by Edward 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 by ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... the coach at third, and Clink dropped and grabbed the sack just in the nick of time. Then Tom went for the batter. One strike was called, and then two balls, and then another ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... "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 ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... just as well if the rattlesnake coiled in his path at that moment had ended his existence, but the snake was indeed an honorable highwayman, and sounded a gentlemanly warning in the nick of time. Collins would have killed it for its pains, but killing had upset his nerves that day. So he left the reptile to try its fangs on a better man. Besides, he reflected that he could not consistently advocate capital punishment, and he sincerely hoped ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... brought an exclamation of anger to his lips, for in the act of cutting the rope that held the somewhat restive pony was Len Molick. Dave had caught him in the nick of time. ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him, if I can hit the nick of time." ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... had a routh o' auld nick-nackets, Rusty airn caps, and jinglin-jackets, Would held the Loudons three in tackets, A towmond gude; And parritch-pats, and auld sayt-backets, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Thorgrim was the foremost, although the others were older. When he was twenty-five years old his hair was grey, whence they nick-named him Greyhead. His mother Thordis married again, taking as her second husband Audun Skokull. They had a son named Asgeir of Asgeirsa. Thorgrim Greyhead and his brothers had a large property, which they managed together ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... lack 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... to Mr. 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
... might as well carry dishes from here, so's to be sure an' hev what we want to use. At Mis' Doctor Helman's su'prise we run 'way short o' spoons, an' Elder Woodruff finally went out in the hall an' drank his broth, an' hid his bowl in the entry. Mis' Helman found it, an' knew it by the nick. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... "Nick, I'd go with you in a minute, you know I would, if we had a warrant for 'em, or if I had any reason to think that the Mexican is the man you want. You don't think so yourself. They might have blowed my brains out ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... 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 ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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 ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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
... weapons of their opponents, a fresh statement of belief, a new enthusiasm, a reformed ethical standard. The Council of Trent, the Jesuits, the other new orders, were only symptoms of a still more widely prevalent Catholic revival that came, in France, just in the nick of time to deprive the Protestants of many of their ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... observed, that sometimes God, as it were in revenge for injury done him, doth snatch away souls in the very nick of their backsliding, as he served Lot's wife, when he turned her into a pillar of salt, even while she was looking over her shoulder to Sodom (Gen 19:26). An example that every backslider should ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... humming noises and jingling like the rattling of chains an' things," said the driver, "that they got most scared to death and ran back home like the old Nick was after them. Ever since then folks has said the ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... 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
... inspired me, my happiness had been already wholly overthrown. There was an end to my good fortune, my joy. I should have been a prey to eternal grief; in short, had I not gone to this place in the very nick of time, Anselmo would have got possession of the captive, and I should have been deprived of her. He was carrying her home, but I parried the thrust, warded off the blow, and so worked upon Trufaldin's fears as to make him ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... say nothing of prayer rugs by the dozen which beat any I've seen in the bazaars of Cairo. For we haven't hired from Cook, but from an Egyptian millionaire of Alexandria called Mahmoud Baroudi, whom we met coming out, and who happened to want a tenant for his boat just in the nick of time. It isn't my money he needs, though I'm paying him what I should pay Cook for a first-rate boat, but he doesn't like leaving his crew and servants with nothing to do. He says they get into mischief. He was looking ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and fall in love with her, worse luck," and Lucile vindictively kicked a stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself. "And then to think he should like ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... merits are 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
... 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 it was ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone asked me how come we're friends, I couldn't exactly say. We're just together most of ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... twelve, you are to fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt; and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a 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 than so much of it as you intend. And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... 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 invest ten thousand dollars, and I'm ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... at the hour, but were unsuccessful. Hancock's assault upon Hill was completely successful, although Longstreet arrived in the nick of time to save Hill. But Hancock's attack was with his right wing under Birney, and Longstreet struck the left of Birney's command. Where were the two divisions of Gibbon, posted for the very purpose of looking ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... the thought came; but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly, and tried to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... by the round-up bosses. I've one boss an' Don Carlos has one. They decide everything, an' they hev to be obyed. There's Nick Steele, my boss. Watch him! He's ridin' a bay in among the cattle there. He orders the calves an' steers to be cut out. Then the cowboys do the cuttin' out an' the brandin'. We try to divide up the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... newspaper, and no news At all for his money he had. Lying varlet, thought he, thus to take in old Nick! But it's some satisfaction, my lad To know thou art paid beforehand for the trick, For the sixpence I gave thee ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Telephone wires now entered the building through broken window panes, and within maps had been tacked to plaster walls and the furniture submitted to the hard usage demanded by war. An old man conspicuous by his civilian clothes wandered about the yard here and there, picking up some stray implement or nick-nack, hanging it up on a wall ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... "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
... you ain't his friend, Nick. But you want to be fair to him even if he did oppose your election." Mackenzie laid an appealing hand on the knee of the man seated ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... "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 ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... as often in real life, at least one cannot count upon it with the certainty of the theater. But when Miss Primrose Cash knocked upon the door of the Phipps' sitting room and delivered her call to the seance, she was as opportune and nick-of-timey as was ever a dramatic Governor's messenger. Certainly that summons of hers was to Galusha Bangs a reprieve which saved him from ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... frank, blue eyes, a large nose, a strong forehead and chin, a grossly 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 up into his face, became of a sickly, bluish white, and transformed ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend: and the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in their character have, however, grown obsolete. Damons are rather hard to find, in these days of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and they cost ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... 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' th' world to ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... help it, he will not in any similar case leave so much as a wooden spoon to be carried off to the Fatherland, and added as yet another trophy to the hundred thousand French clocks and the million French nick-nacks which are still preserved there as mementoes of the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... from the pantry where the business of serving was carried on by the khansaman assisted by a group of white-robed domestics. Agitated whispers from behind the screen were infallible indications of mistakes retrieved in the nick of time; otherwise, the occasional blow of the ice hammer, or the rolling of the ice machine on the outer door-mat were the only sounds audible ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din, Does Dr. Martext's duty; And Mullion, with that monstrous chin, Is married to a beauty; And Darrel studies, week by week, His Mant and not his Manton; And Ball, who was but poor at Greek, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... effervescence. I had no intention of leaving this place 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... together with the fashion of his short, square-cut beard and of his garments, proclaimed him of Jewish or Egyptian blood, while the gold collar about his neck and the gold graven ring upon his hand showed that his rank was high. Indeed this wanderer was none other than the prince Aziel, nick-named the Ever-living, because of a curious mole upon his shoulder bearing a resemblance to the crux ansata, the symbol of life eternal among the Egyptians. By blood he was a grandson of Solomon, the mighty king ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... my way. Every soul—men, women, and children—were looking at those girls, who whirled, and moved, and tangled themselves up in some sort of a wild, wicked dance, that must have been the work of Old Nick himself, for nothing less could have made me look on. My whole heart rose right up against those beautiful creatures, but somehow they seemed to hold me to my seat. Really, sisters, you have no idea how very enticing a woman can be who puffs a lot of gauze around her waist, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... 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 camp ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... "What on earth for? Has he sandbagged somebody for reading Nick Carter and Bertha M. Clay? That's about the only crime he'd ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... boy," said he. "An' she dade. An' Marse Alec rough an' hard es though he been bo'n in de woods. Honey, ol' Breed'll tek care ob you. I'll git you one o' dem night rails Marse Nick has, and some ob ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not, scold Rugge into letting her alone. Scold somebody; nothing like it, to keep other folks quiet, and one's self busy. Adieu! and pray, no more matrimonial solicitations: they frighten me! Gad," added Losely, as he banged the door, "such overtures would frighten Old Nick himself!" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The Weasel, Tim Murphy, and Nick Stoner was a-smellin' after moccasin-prints on the Mayfield trail. About sunup they made smoke-signals at me that they was movin' Kingsboro ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 entitled "Popular ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... mentioned in the fourth Page, and which I ought to have taken in its Place. I beg leave to inform him, that by K. John is meant the late Q. ——, with whom the D— of M—— was many Years in such great Favour, that he was nick named K. John; it was in that Part of the Q—'s Reign, that Sir John Pudding, by whom is meant **** you know who, came in Favour; it is true, the Name is odd, and seems to carry an Air of Ridicule with it, but the Character given him by this allegorical ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... patron, fell into decay and disorder; and the bonny yew-trees that were cut into the shape of peacocks, soon grew out of all shape, and are now doleful monuments of the major's tack, and that of Lady Skimmilk, as Miss Girzie Gilchrist, his sister, was nick-named by every ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... 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 ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... Suffolk, and our naval detachments at Ufa. The Czechs (our Allies), who had the same orders as myself, on learning that the Tsarists were also in the conspiracy, frustrated this scheme by instantly moving forward a company for the protection of the bridge, which arrived just in the nick of time. Had we acted strictly to orders, Heaven only knows what the result would have been. British and Czech both had to act on our own judgment, and while, technically, we disobeyed orders, we fulfilled the policy of each country and protected ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... 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
... 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
... beach he dumped me, wi'oot my dunnage, and wi'oot a cent o' the siller was due me. Och, he is a bad mon, yon Carew, wi' many a mon's blood on his hands! He has sold his soul to the deil, and Old Nick saves his own. He is a wild mon wi' women, and he is mad aboot the sweet lassie aft. Didna' he try to make off wi' her in Dutch Harbor, three years ago? And didna' the old mon stop him wi' a bullet through the shoulder? And now he tries again ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Amy. Somehow I felt sure that in the nick of time her lady friend would step out from somewhere and say that the letters ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... demanded Spider, who liked to sleep about as 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
... foreclosing this Rosscullen mortgage and turning poor Nick Lestrange out of house and home has rather taken me aback; for I liked the old rascal when I was a boy and had the run of his park to play in. I was brought up on ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Just in this nick the cook knock'd thrice, And all the waiters in a trice His summons did obey; Each serving man, with dish in hand, March'd boldly up, like our ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... to the established laws of war; for instead of boxing fairly, he would kick, pull hair, bite, and scratch most unmercifully, and never fail to take every advantage of his antagonist after he had brought him to the ground. For these reasons he was soon dignified with the nick name of Dick Bear, even by the vulgar boys in the streets; and most of them afterwards took care never to engage with him unless when there were several other boys present to see fair play. One would ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... have you. 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
... I think you're stupid," said the wife angrily. "You ought to have cut a nick in the right one while you ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... 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 ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... edge of the stream to see what 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 ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... 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
... a means of 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] the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a good deal of respect for the fighting strain, no matter if it be in a man, or a beast, or a bird. Old Nick himself must be a grand, two-handed man, and as such we must give him credit. And 'twas the same way with this felly Hume. He had real fighting blood, so he had; and sorra the man ever undertook to impose on ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... woman," Frederick went on, "the blessedly impetuous young woman, blurted out in the nick of time that I am Rose's husband, you behaved exactly as a man would have behaved ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... too hasty. It was mescal—an explosive in liquid form that is brewed or stilled or steeped, or something, from the juices of a certain variety of cactus, according to a favorite family prescription used by Old Nick several centuries ago when he was residing in this section. For its size and complexion I know of nothing that is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with mescal, unless it is the bald-faced hornet of the Sunny South. It goes down easily ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bogardi. "And you did the right thing in the nick of time, my boy. Only for your trapeze bar she'd have been out among the crowd," and he looked at the men, women and children, who ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... spent by the Regents on these branches was therefore far from wasted. Rather it was one of the series of fortunate measures, somewhat blindly entered upon, which served the University well; but it is equally true that the abandonment of the policy came only in the nick of time, for the Regents were already in serious ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... "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 return to Philadelphia ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... came every midnight to a front window, and shook his fist, and howled at those who passed by. Everybody was frightened—King Louis, good simple soul! as well as the rest. Then the bold monks appearing at the nick of time, intimated that if the King would give them the palace, they would do up the ghost in short order. He did it, and was very thankful to them besides. They moved in, and sure enough, the ghost appeared no more. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... to think. She never even sent for the maid to see to her personal appearance. The horror of her own helplessness drove her on. Here was the man, whose timely betrayal of Carmina had stopped her on her way to Ovid, in the nick of time! Here was the self-devoted ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ah tick ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... naw Owd Nick, he wur th' orderer on't, to be shure——. Weh mitch powlering I geet eawt o' th' poo, 'lieve[57] meh, as to list, I could na tell whether i'r in a sleawm or wak'n, till eh groapt ot meh een; I crope under a wough and stode like o' gawmbling,[58] ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... snow 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, dash ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... the turf, was, that he did not mind "the dot and carry on" part of the business; meaning thereby, that he did not attend to the necessary calculations. For a short time after giving this piece of friendly caution, he had been nick-named, "Dot and carry on"; but that was too long to last, and he had now for some years been known to every sporting man in ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the "old nick" was to pay, "Truth indeed is stranger than fiction," His prayers were so tedious and long, People slept, till the benediction. And then came another, on trial, Who actually preached in his gloves, His manner so awkward and queer, That we settled him ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw, German guns were heard by the citizens of the town and Warsaw was in deadly peril, but Siberian troops arrived in the nick of time and Hindenburg was obliged to retire. (Vol. II, 462-466.) Still his main purpose was achieved. Russian armies in Galicia had been weakened to save Warsaw and were compelled to retire behind the San and the Vistula. (Vol. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... which you say: "Miscinius Rufus,[582] whom you recommend to me, I will make king of Gaul, or, if you choose, put him under the care of Lepta. Send me some one else to promote." I and Balbus both lifted our hands in surprise: it came so exactly in the nick of time, that it appeared to be less the result of mere chance than something providential. I therefore send you Trebatius, and on two grounds, first that it was my spontaneous idea to send him, and secondly because you have invited me to do so. I would beg you, dear Caesar, to receive him ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... took down her cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five minutes before Jacob reached it, for his ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 you can ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... 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 Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted, and called them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... more, then allowed his mouth to expand in that contortion which had won him the nick ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... which she should have spoken, but she did not. She, who had prided herself that she would make a race of it—she, who had always been able to slip out of a predicament in the nick of time—stood mutely by and let Transley and her father interpret her silence as consent. She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the matter quite out of her hands. And yet she could not bring herself to feel resentment ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... much, and when we unmasked it was fun to see them stare at me. I heard one of the young men tell another that he knew I'd been an actress, in fact, he thought he remembered seeing me at one of the minor theaters. Meg will relish that joke. Mr. Bhaer was Nick Bottom, and Tina was Titania, a perfect little fairy in his arms. To see them dance was 'quite a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 sweet ideas to which he gives such feeling utterance? ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... taking hold of the Yorkshireman's. "No, no, not trousers." "Then really, my lady, I don't know any other name." "Oh, yes, Colonel, you know the things I intend. Vot is it you call Davil in Angleterre?" "Oh, we have lots of names for him—Old Nick, for instance."—"Old Nick breeches," said the Countess thoughtfully; "no, dat sall not be it—vot else?" "Old Harry?" replied Mr. Jorrocks.—"Old Harry breeches," repeated the Countess in the hopes of catching ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... therefore if you wish to patronise them you may take that opportunity of looking about and getting disburthened of some of the Paris mud, quite certain if it be wet weather that you will soon get more. Fruit in all its variety, books, prints, blacking, and nick-knacks of every description offer themselves to your notice. But let us direct our attention to a more interesting object; the fine bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV: one could almost think the good and merry monarch was going ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... said Debray, "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 ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... fallen in love with a Christian chief, who lives on an island some fifty miles or so to the south of this one, and that she is meditating a desperate attempt at escape. So, you see, we have come in the nick of time. I fancy that this chief is the fellow whom you heard of, Ralph, at the Island of Emo. Besides all this, the heathen savages are at war among themselves, and there's to be a battle fought the day after to-morrow, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... in order to reach the ranche before the cattle-thieves could receive notice of their approach; and that at the end of two hours they galloped into the valley and saw Fletcher's stronghold in plain view before them. A single glance at it showed them that they had arrived just in the nick of time. The courtyard was lighted up with lanterns, excited men were moving to and fro, loud voices were heard shouting out words of command, and the whole interior of the building presented a scene of the wildest commotion. Some watchful ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... its 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
... myself," agreed Douglas. "But he didn't hold a grudge against me. He's not that kind. And I think he was so lonely he'd have been glad to feed the Old Nick himself." ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... can? Why, most assuredly, if I am any sort of teacher. Otherwise I ought to be dealing with inanimate things and leave the school work to those who can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... 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 money, the fruits of their ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Senator Jerry Clemens, 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 ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... welcome on the part of my companions; and without dropping a hint to the other party, it was at once resolved that the design should be carried into execution. It was carried into execution. An 'up-river' boat chanced to pass in the nick of time. A messenger was forthwith, despatched to Covington, and before twelve o'clock upon the following day another boat on her down trip brought the howitzer, and we had it secretly landed and conveyed to a place in the woods previously ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... said, "It's a pity she don't go well in gear. The difficulty with those critters is to git them to start: arter that there is no trouble with them, if you don't check 'em too short. If you do they'll stop again, run back and kick like mad, and then Old Nick himself wouldn't start 'em. Pugwash, I guess, don't understand the natur' of the crittur; she'll never go kind in harness for him. When I see a child," said the Clockmaker, "I always feel safe with these women-folk; for I have always found ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... if Old Nick should ring his supper-bell, The French would lick their lips, and flock ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... he said they were; which means they were sailors belonging to the English warship. Of course the boat's crew that was waiting. But what brought them up; and how came they to arrive there and then, just in the nick of time to spoil our plans? That's a mystery ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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' th' world ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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
... guns, determined that the Austrians should pay a staggering price for every yard of ground they gained. They fought as must have fought their ancestors of the Roman legions. And, thanks to their tenacity and pluck, they held their opponents on the five-yard line. Then, just in the nick of time, the whistle blew. The game was over. The Austrians had to hurry home. They had staked everything on a sudden and overwhelming onslaught by which they hoped to smash the Italian defense and demoralize the Italian armies in time to permit at least ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes he would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon his arm or back. He was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective thrust. Then he changed his tactics, and fighting warily and with extreme dexterity, ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 bubble can swallow: Now who but Delany ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... be 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... governments in the customary form. The President was earnest, not to say pertinacious, in urging forward these movements. On September 11, 1863, immediately after the battle of Chattanooga, he wrote to Andrew Johnson that it was "the nick of time for reinaugurating a loyal state government" in Tennessee; and he suggested that, as touching this same question of "time when," it was worth while to "remember that it cannot be known who is next to occupy the position I now hold, nor what he will ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... lowered his voice to a mysterious whisper. "Well, I'll tell you. Only you mus'n't ever say anything 'bout it out loud. Nick and Yavapai is cattle thieves. They been a-brandin' our calves, an' Phil, he's goin' to catch 'em at it some day, an' then they'll wish they hadn't. Phil, he's ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... St. Nicholas, who also extended his patronage to robbers and mariners. Thieves are dubbed by Shakespeare as St. Nicholas's clerks[51], and Rowley calls highwaymen by the same title. Possibly this may be accounted for by the association of the light-fingered fraternity with Nicholas, or Old Nick, a cant name for the devil, or because The Golden Legend tells of the conversion of some thieves through the saint's agency. At any rate, the good Bishop of Myra was the patron saint of scholars, and therefore was naturally selected ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Aubrey's—with their pipes in their hands, and who took off their hats, and bowed very low. Mr. Aubrey went up and entered into conversation with them for some minutes. Their families and farms, he found, were well and thriving. There was quite a little crowd of women about the shop of Nick Steele, the butcher, who, with an extra hand to help him, was giving out the second ox which had been sent from the Hall, to the persons whose names had been given in to him from Mrs. Aubrey. Farther on, some were cleaning their little windows, others ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... grass and fell. The 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 face ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... 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
... tutor on the back; 'they know me here, and that I have 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 her! Come on!' ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... I'd kill the deal. He knew better'n to try to nick me for three hundred bucks on his danged, worthless note. Bart, why'd ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... know about that saving process, mother. I've pretty often declared in my own mind that Dorette and you came along just in the nick of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not very heavy. One gulden-schein—about ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the bailiffs were after him. The circumstances, as you may read for yourself, were all in her favor, and were so well managed by her that the lawyers themselves acknowledged she might have succeeded, if the supposed drowned man had not turned up alive and well in the nick of time to confront her. The scene took place at the lawyer's office, and came out in the evidence at the police court. The woman was handsome, and the sailor was a good-natured man. He wanted, at first, if the lawyers would have allowed him, to let ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... laugh at you, you have the feeling they may be laughing inside. Her present thoughts were so delectable and engrossing that Missy did not always hear when she was spoken to. Toward the end of the meal, just as she caught herself in the nick of time about to pour vinegar instead of cream ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... stands is trodden into mire by the feet of reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watch-words and the party nick-names, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command—vile men, whose hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside—incompetent men, whose fitness is not ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... was 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, or to "carry on" recklessly if it was a question of sailing ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... 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 ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... 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 inside ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... fat oath you've bolted in your time. Now on the nick of your conscience, Val darling, how many Bibles did you wear out, by a long and honest course of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Polotsk by Saint-Cyr, the Emperor sent him the baton o Imperial Marshalf. Instead of using the occasion to visit his troops, the new Marshal retired into even deeper seclusion, if that were possible. No one could approach the head of the army, which earned him the nick-name amongst the soldiers of the "Owl". More than this, although the huge monastery had more than a hundred rooms which would have been most useful for the wounded, he lived there alone, and considered it a great concession that he allowed senior officers who were wounded to be received ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... children about her, to spoil them with cakes and see them romp and dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or Laura of a poet. She was active, mentally and bodily, never giving up her multifarious reading, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... enjoyment to the young...My wife has ailed a good deal nearly all the time; so that I loathe the place, with all its beauty. I was glad to hear what you thought of F. Muller, and I agree wholly with you. Your letter came at the nick of time, for I was writing on the very day to Muller, and I passed on your approbation of Chaps. X. and XI. Some time I should like to borrow the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute," so as to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... he said, "and just in the nick of time. The soldier was clumsy. He intended it for our comrades, but he didn't give it enough time. It would have exploded prematurely. Now it won't explode ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... said the dwarf, whose breath was coming in great sobs, "then make a little nick in the ice with the blade of the spear, and when next I pull, try to set some of your ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... random, killing friend as well as foe. Unlike them, however, the Highlanders stood their ground like men, and, fighting bravely, cheered each other with their slogan, or wild battle-cry. On this day, as on that, the Virginians came up in the very nick of time to rescue the helpless regulars from utter destruction. On this, as on Braddock's day, the Indians, seeing the hopeless confusion into which the English had fallen, rushed out from their ambush with yells of triumph, and ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... then, as to his decoration: headstall, breast-bands, saddle and crupper are 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
... 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 ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... assuring us that she had told God everything, and that He would send us plenty in the morning. Next day, with the carrier from Lockerbie came a present from her father, who, knowing nothing of her circumstances or of this special trial, had been moved of God to send at that particular nick of time a love-offering to his daughter, such as they still send to each other in those kindly Scottish shires—a bag of new potatoes, a stone of the first ground meal or flour, or the earliest homemade cheese of the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... to come, for, without exaggeration, I have seen so many duck on the Fergus and the lower Shannon that I hesitate to speak of figures and incur the fate of Messer Marco Polo, who, when he spoke of the vast population of China, was nick-named by his incredulous countrymen "Marco Millione." But when I say that I have seen scores of flights a quarter of a mile long, that I have seen reaches of water so full of ducks and other water fowl that they looked like floating ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... 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 than you do; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... Now I can see them, too! He is the friend of my boyhood. He got into trouble at school; but I was blamed and punished. He was nick-named Caesar, I don't ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Fandor, that there was no reason for refusing, that I could see, especially as he made the offer very nicely, and that it came in the nick of time, at the very moment when—I have to admit it—I would ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... up, he's towed her down, He's gien her a richt down fa', Till every rib i' the auld wife's side, Played nick nack on the wa', wa'; Played nick nack ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... careful not to nick this fragile ware. As a lover of ceramic art, it would pain me to ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Cheapside conduit (he does not say which) palisaded with chimney-sweepers' brooms and surrounded by sweeps, probably waiting to be hired, so that "a countryman, seeing so many black attendants waiting at a stone hovel, took it to be one of Old Nick's tenements." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... pews in the Wittsjoe church, and they cut their way through only after a desperate fight on the frozen lake. The ice broke under the king's horse and he was going down when two of his men caught him in the nick of time. He got away with the loss of his sword, his pistols, and his gloves. "I will remember you with a crust that shall do for your bairns too," he promised one of his rescuers, a stout peasant lad, and he kept his word. Thomas Larsson's descendants a generation ago still tilled the farm ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... 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 God's work of creation, so far ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... 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
... scared And empty faces of the crowd,— I wisht you could 'a' been allowed To jest look on and see it all,— And heerd the girls and women bawl And wring their hands; and heerd old Jeff A-cussin' as he swung hisse'f Upon his hoss, who champed his bit As though old Nick had holt of it: And cheek by jowl the two old wrecks Rode off as though they'd break ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... these here young ones," said Sam. "This one would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick of time." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... have come in the nick of time," he observed drily. "Why is no one detailed to look after you? Where is that tiger's ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... in 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wholly ignorant of military matters and utterly incapable of handling such a situation, he leaped on his horse and, spurring his way across the frozen ground to the sound of the firing, confronted the huddled and beaten division just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, General Lew Wallace—afterwards famous as the author "Ben Hur"—had arrived and thrown forward a brigade to cover the confused retreat, so that for the moment the Confederate advance ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... a pretty close call," answered Phil. "My friend here jumped overboard just in the nick of time." ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... incidents. He was, like Peter Maughan, an old schoolfellow of mine with the Christian Brothers in Liverpool. He was one of the men picked out by Colonel Kelly to be on guard when the "old man"—one of Stephens' pet nick-names—came over the prison wall. Ryan was a fine type of an Irishman, morally, intellectually and physically. As Stephens slipped down from the wall, holding on to the rope, he came with such force on my friend's shoulders as almost to bear him to the ground. In my "Irish in Britain" I ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... "Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the living God in the soul." Its disciples, says Mr. Channing, "were pleasantly nick-named the 'Like-minded,' on the ground that no two were of the same opinion." Of this company, he says, "Margaret was a member by the grace of nature.... Men, her superiors in years, in fame and social position, treated ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... on the south side of the tree left a clean nick across and two inches deep in the middle. The chopper then stepped forward one pace and on the north-northwesterly side, eighteen inches lower down than the first cut, after reversing his hands—which is what few can do—he rapidly chopped a butt-kerf. Not a stroke was hasty; not a blow went ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sich like unless we've a mind. Aw'm capt 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 ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... live joyously, like birds, in union and communion with God. I am sure, he concludes, that barbarous people that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and the Angels, in the simplicity of their wealth, than do many among us who partake of what we nick-name civility and mode.[36] The entire work of redemption is, thus, to restore man to himself, to bring him once more to the Tree of Life, to enable him to discover the glory all about him, to reveal to him the real values of things, and to bring to birth within him an immortal love. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone. "Shut up, Nick! This is ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... never to rise again' — Insensible of this check, she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, to wake the maids of a morning. Do you know where ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Major, would you tell us a thing that's puzzled me, and I daresay more than me?" ventured a young assistant manager, voicing the thoughts of others present. "How the deuce did those wild elephants happen to turn up just in the nick of time for you?" ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... 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 ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... with a mighty sigh of relief that I presently resigned the wheel to Saunders and went forward to greet and welcome the rescued men; for, by the skin of our teeth we had saved them all in the very nick of time, and that, too, without parting so much as a ropeyarn. Furthermore, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune—good for us, although bad for them— we had, in the most unexpected manner, secured the services of enough hands to enable us ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... down at my gate, I did 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 ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... delicate interplay of masculine logic and feminine intuition, what are these compared to blood, thunder, plots, counter-plots, earthquakes and, from the final chaos, the salvage of the "sweetest woman on earth" effected in the nick of time by a herculean and always imperturbable hero? Mr. FRANK SAVILE is not out to analyse souls. The opening chapter of The Red Wall (NELSON) plunges us into a fray, irrelevant to the narrative save in so far as it introduces Dick Blake and Eileen O'Creagh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... if the devil spoke it," said the knight; "and I thank Heaven I can follow good counsel, though old Nick gives it. And so, friend, touching these same Commissioners, bear them this message; that Sir Henry Lee is keeper of Woodstock Park, with right of waif and stray, vert and venison, as complete as any of them have to their estate—that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... how it was he appeared to such purpose, and in the very nick of time, that afternoon when lady Cairnedge had come with her servants to carry John away; for of course I knew now that our champion must have been uncle Edmund. He answered he had that very morning ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... early spring, while Miss Cuyler was still in Rivington Street, that young Van Bibber invited his friend Travers to dine with him, and go on later to the People's Theatre, on the Bowery, where Irving Willis, the Boy Actor, was playing "Nick of the Woods." Travers despatched a hasty and joyous note in reply to this to the effect that he would be on hand. He then went off with a man to try a horse at a riding academy, and easily and promptly forgot all about it. He did remember, as he was dressing ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... kidding, now, George. You know I said I'd stick by you to the bitter end; and nobody ever knew Nick Longfellow to ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... act of resumption; and more especially for the ghostly counsel he gave me before the emperor, to have hanged myself in silence to have saved his reverence. The best on't is, I am beforehand with him for selling one of his slaves twice over; and if he had not come just in the nick, I might have pocketed up the other; for what should a poor man do that gets his living by hard labour, but pray for bad times when he may get it easily? O for some incomparable tumult! Then should I naturally wish that the beaten party ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... slay us in passing. The other two joined me, and we stood on the ant-hill three abreast. They charged us—seven or eight of them. Three bit the dust, but the rest came on, and if it had not been for two swift shots from Fred's rifle in the very nick of time we should have ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Mr. Nick?" the carrier hinted at last, lingering to observe me. "Well, there's a deal may happen in two or three years. You can't look to find things just the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... custom, is, in all probability preserved at the present time. A footnote in W. McDowall's valuable "History of Dumfries," says: "The Dumfries hangman's ladle is still to be seen we believe among other 'auld nick-nackets' at Abbotsford." It was for many years lost sight of, till in 1818, Mr. Joseph Train, the zealous antiquary, hunted it out, and, all rusty as it was, sent it as a present to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... drove the queerest bird here—a fellow as good-looking as you, who had me follow the taxi occupied by a hunchback with a face like Old Nick." The man hesitated and went on haltingly: "It might sound goofy, mister, but there was something funny about my fare. He jumped out, asked me the charge, and, in the moment I glanced at my taxi-meter, he disappeared. Yes, sir. Vanished, owing me four ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... 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
... in the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick, triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... Coir, Dubchonall, Ailill of the rough face. The sons of Amhalghaidh were disputing about the sovereignty: twenty-four tribes (i.e., old tribes) that were in the country; and they objected that they would not admit any man asking over them with an additional [nick] name. Aengus then imposed additional names upon his brothers. This Aengus was the proudest of Amhalghaidh's sons. Laeghaire, son of Niall, son of Eochaidh, King of Tara, and his brother Eoghan, son of Niall, decided the dispute. The sons of Amhalghaidh went to Tara in twelve chariots, sicut in libris ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... us see what kind of a nick you have got!" said Webster, examining the arm with some skill once acquired in a doctor's shop to which run-over and fainted people were sometimes brought for sudden assistance. "No, the bones are not broken—all right! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... But in the nick of time the Liberal Administration fell, and Lord Salisbury's Cabinet reversed their decision. It is interesting, in reading the Blue Books on Indian questions, to watch the emotions of party principles, stirring beneath the uniform ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... 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
... out 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
... I'll clothes and boots, and presently I will return and trample on you." He stepped forward energetically; he saw that one of his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. "All right," he said. "That"s another nick in the score. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... one battle both slain near Amphipolis, Nicias 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
... the battle of life. On Mr. Verdant Green it had such an overwhelming effect that when his scout, Filcher, entered the room he found his master looking very red about the eyes, and furiously wiping the large spectacles from which his nick-name, "Gig-lamps," was derived. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and another soldier, a father of a large family, nick-named "uncle," threw up their arms and fell heavily upon the ...
— The Shield • Various
... their breaking their word, because you have heard it said that no faith need be kept with traitors? Dismiss that fear! Policy alone would constrain them to keep their word, even though it should merely have been pledged to old Nick. Who hereafter would believe them? How could they trade with it a second time? I would take my oath upon it that they mean it sincerely. They know that I am the man who has goaded you on and incited you; they believe you innocent. They look upon your crimes as so many juvenile ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Dame de Nantes; for so, as we afterwards ascertained, was our antagonist called. Neither party aimed at any great advantage by manoeuvring; but we came up alongside of "The Lady," as our men subsequently nick-named the Frenchman, the two vessels delivering their broadsides nearly at the same instant. I was stationed on the forecastle, in charge of the head-sheets, with orders to attend generally to the braces and the rigging, using a musket ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... in the arms uv owld Nick! For he's gone from the land uv the quick: But he's still makin' luv To the leddies above, An' be jabbers! he'll tache 'em the thrick, Avick, Niver fear but he'll tache 'em ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... their melody, nature's own, the woods and groves wherein these feathered songsters "sport, live, and have their being." Whilst millions of men are sunk in the arms of "the drowsy god." What is the angler about, has he slept soundly, and then awoke in the very nick of time? Or have his slumbers been somewhat broken and disturbed by dreams of crafty old Trout? No matter, he is astir, he has pocketed his tackle, and not neglected something for the inner man; rod and net in hand, he is off and away frequently before, but seldom later, than the ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... battle of Waterloo, which he would never have won if there hadn't been a great many Englishmen at his back, not to speak of Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr. Tulliver had heard from a person of particular knowledge in that matter, had come up in the very nick of time; though here there was a slight dissidence, Mr. Deane remarking that he was not disposed to give much credit to the Prussians,—the build of their vessels, together with the unsatisfactory character of transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 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, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... 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 adventures of the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... them automobiles. You won't ketch me with an automobile—no, nor a motor-boat, neither; nor any other of them durn things that's goin' to set me livin' like as if I was shot out of the cannon's mouth. What's the good of bein' whizzed through life as if the old Nick himself was at your heels—workin' faster, eatin' faster, dyin' faster? I see ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... drawn this sword—you may draw it and feel, For this is the blade that I bore that day— There's a notch even now on the long grey steel, A nick that has never been rasp'd away. I bow'd my head and I buried my spurs, One bound brought the gliding green beneath; I could tell by her back-flung, flatten'd ears, She had fairly taken the bit in her teeth— (What, Jack, have you drain'd your namesake dry, Left nothing ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... 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 ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... of dismay as she sees his face wrung by despair. Eileen turns her head away with a little cry, as if she would hide her face in the bedclothes. A sudden fierce resolution lights up Murray's countenance—hoarsely.) You're just in the nick of time, Miss Gilpin! Eileen! Listen! You'll believe Miss Gilpin, won't you? She knows all about it. (Eileen turns her eyes questioningly ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... tearing the flesh of his thigh. Sheer surprise relaxed his 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 ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... 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 of a race-track population were to be found in his "store." And ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... on. That fellow Nick Ward, is a noted blackleg and ruffian: had his nose broken in a fight and is sensitive on the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... 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 he kneeled ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... foolish 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 was ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... 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 had had and receipt it in full, ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillion brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. A winnock-bunker in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge; He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.— Coffins stood round, like ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... head was that of a 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 ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... smart game, or a paying one—something as knocks 'em, dear boy, No matter, mate, whether it's mustard, or rhymes, or a sixpenny toy; They'll be arter you, nick over nozzle, the smuggers of notions and nips, For the mugs is as 'ungry for wrinkles as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... 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
... come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... came to a meadow in which was a flock of fine fat geese, on which he smiled and said, "I come in the nick of time, you are sitting together quite beautifully, so that I can eat you up one after the other." The geese cackled with terror, sprang up, and began to wail and beg piteously for their lives. But the fox would listen ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick, triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If you ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... the poor sedan, the batter'd Frame-work, nobody there nor here could ever Lift it, painfully neck to nick adjusting.' ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... 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
... 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
... that Young Nick hasn't enough petrol to get on as far as—anywhere. That will give us more minutes. Brown Buddha, as your adored one calls him, has crawled humbly but swiftly off to obtain a new supply. Sir Lionel, already in a vile temper for reasons which I may have time to explain, is bursting with rage ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... or did not live in the basin of the Delaware at the most remote times of which we have any knowledge, we meet with traces of his occupation in the same latitude at more recent periods. At Long-Nick-Branch is a shell-mound that extends for half a mile, and in California there is a yet larger kitchen-midding. It measures a mile in length by half a mile in width, and, as in similar accumulations, excavations ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... 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 ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Where'd you get that horse?" called Nick Hammond as he approached his father and Dr. Morris, as they were talking at the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... apprentices winked and whispered, and lolled out their tongues at him as he passed. "Oh, but that must be as good as a May-Fair day,—sober Nick Alwyn's maiden flight of the shaft! Hollo, puissant archer, take care of the goslings yonder! Look this way when thou pull'st, and then woe to the other side!" Venting these and many similar specimens of the humour of Cockaigne, the apprentices, however, followed their quondam ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... jester, indeed, he seemed more ridiculous that came to a feast of his own accord than he that was invited; but to well-bred and civil friends it is more obliging for men of the same temper to come at the nick of time with other friends, when uninvited and unexpected; at once pleasing both to those that invite and those that entertain. But chiefly you must avoid going to rulers, rich or great men, lest you incur the deserved censure of being impudent, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and Salmon of Dublin, had been treated there. This was a hit at me; but there are certain situations in which people can't dictate their own terms: and, 'faith, I was so pressed now for money, that I could have signed a bond with Old Nick himself, if he had come provided with a good ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Edwin, 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
... had said. "For fifteen years you have lived the life of a recluse—a useless recluse, mind you. And why? Because of pride,—sheer pride. Those who had known you in the strength of your manhood, those who had known you as Nick the dare-devil, should never see the broken cripple. Pride forbade it. You preferred to run to cover, to lie hidden there like a wounded beast, rather than face, like a man, the odds that were ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... shining passes belief. And that row of glass windows tipped toward the sky Are rubies and carbuncles when the day is dry. Oh, my! Oh, my! They have coppered up the bottom, And the copper nails Stand about and sparkle in big wooden pails. Bang! Clash! Bang! "And he swigg'd, and Nick swigg'd, And Ben swigg'd, and Dick swigg'd, And I swigg'd, and all of us swigg'd it, And swore there was nothing like grog." It seems they sing, Even though coppering is not an easy thing. What a splendid specimen ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... arrival," said Sir 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 ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... since me tenth birthdye, but Hi knows a hangel w'en Hi sees one, an' lawst night Hi missed a 'ole bar on the snare fer lookin' up at 'er just once. Hi never see a brunette look so habsolutely hinnocent. Th' Ol' Nick's peekin' out o' brunettes' faces, somew'eres, mostly. Don't know w'at she myde me think of—m'ybe wreaths o' roses red an' pink, an' m'ybe crowns o' di'mun's—but Hi missed a 'ole bar on th' snare ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... sword again, Ken saw the glitter in his savage eyes, and thought it was all over when, in the very nick of time, a revolver spat and turned the fierce ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... 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, An' 'ere's to the ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... corner, as the shades grew thicker, 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 each silver sconce. The scene was ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... 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
... many a fat oath you've bolted in your time. Now on the nick of your conscience, Val darling, how many Bibles did you wear out, by a long and honest course of hard swearing?—eh—ha! ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... exclaimed, turning in my tracks and addressing a small brown-leafed beech. "What! little Hyla, are you still out? You! with a snow-storm brewing and St. Nick due here to-morrow night?" And then from within the bush, or on it, or under it, or over it, came an answer, Peep, peep, peep! small and shrill, dropping into the silence of the woods and stirring ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Warren attacked Ewell at the hour, but were unsuccessful. Hancock's assault upon Hill was completely successful, although Longstreet arrived in the nick of time to save Hill. But Hancock's attack was with his right wing under Birney, and Longstreet struck the left of Birney's command. Where were the two divisions of Gibbon, posted for the very purpose of looking out ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... very near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... not say he was but little hurt? Had the blow struck him fairly in the back, as it was meant to do, doubtless it would have put an end to him; but Poole was to the rescue, poor lad! He threw himself on the mulatto in the nick o' time. The knife had barely grazed Mr. Rivers on the shoulder; but young Tomas never let go his hold of it. He and the faithful lad rolled together on the ground—and Poole never rose again. His body was ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... that 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 circle ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... and stood looking with crimson cheeks and quicker-coming breath at this young man who came upon her in the nick of time. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... come out of their caves, given one war-whoop, and made a show of descending 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, and B.-P., on ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt; and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a 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 than so much of it as you intend. And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... 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 ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... 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 ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... clean, and tolerably sharp. Ercole looked at it critically, drew the edge over his coarse thumb-nail to find if there were any nick in the steel, and then scratched the same thumb-nail with it, as one erases ink with a knife, to see how sharp it was. The point was like a needle, but he considered that the edge was dull, and he drew it up and down one of the brown barrels of ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... Ay, Husband, now you have nick'd the Matter. To have him peach'd is the only thing could ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... educators, a long talk with the young Maharaja of Kasimbazar, a financial appeal to my father, and lo! the shaky foundations of Ranchi began to be righted. Many donations including one huge check arrived in the nick of time from my ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that the waters in the immediate vicinity of Chance Along were neither the most dangerous on the coast, nor the most convenient for the salving of wreckage and fast-drowning cargoes. So he established stations at Squid Beach to the northward, and at Nolan's Cove to the southward, and ordered Nick Leary and Foxey Jack Quinn to take up their abode in the new huts; Nick at Squid Beach, and Foxey Jack at the Cove, had to keep a sharp look-out for ships during bad weather and at night. Should either of them remark any signs of a vessel ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... ones, have been defeated, in all ages, by inferior numbers. The Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone. Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat. For note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this celestial cordial, and now behold ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... upon the sackbut; guards in full armour; a pell-mell of 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 this didn't matter; the applause would have drowned ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... out of society, what need have I for an assumed name? As for my Christian name, it's so detestably ugly that I hate the sight and sound of it. Here, they know me as The Lodger. Will you have that? or will you have an appropriate nick-name? I come of a mixed breed; and I'm likely, after what has happened to me, to turn out a worthless fellow. Call me The Cur. Oh, you needn't start! that's as accurate a description of me as any ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... 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 devil ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... 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 may not have been intended to drown any noise in the cupboard; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... some kind unseen hand was stretching forth in the hour of my need, somebody's deft fingers snatched the tangled web that had gone so far astray in the weaving, and in the nick of time made a hazardous effort to smoothen the silken threads for the busy loom that waits not for the slow or ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Church offices were sold and bought for 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 ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... venerable 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 to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... curious need to wreck his own life in order that he might parent Brian with success, he must not make a mess of it. Once, accidentally, John said, he had almost shipwrecked Brian's life and Brian had stepped out—just in the nick of time. He must not do that again. Brian had suffered enough from ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... on 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
... accurate, and as spirited as it is true. The constable, Sellick, is an original character, and as minor figures where will we find anything better than Miss Wansey, and Mr. P. Pipkin, Esq. The picture of Mr. Dink's school, too, is capital, and where else in fiction is there a better nick-name than that the boys gave to poor little Stephen Treadwell, "Step Hen," as he himself pronounced his name in an unfortunate moment when he saw it in print for the first time in ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... many modern critics and painters almost dislike Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had to teach and, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... first, diving at the word into a dirty and narrow lane. There was no pursuit. Mr. Mac-Morlan and the soldiers had appeared in the nick of time. The smugglers had enough to do to provide for their ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... deprive her of a customer, or suggest what became of the self-consuming tea and sugar, and other general trifles. That would have been agreeable. The bashful, winning, glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when fiery-face was gone, peeped into the books and nick-nacks that were lying about, and had a particular interest in some delicate paper-matches on the chimney-piece; wondering who could have made them. That would have been worth seeing. The faltering hand with which she tied those flowers together; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... out 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
... and obeyed, and the two went off to the Library, where they found Mrs. Delville and the man who went by the nick-name of The Dancing Master. By that time Mrs. Mallowe ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... to a certainty," said the smith, who, as the reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race. "I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... said Mason, "it looks as if you had been quarrelling. I guess I came just in the nick of time." ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... for a second, made a snatch at his collar; and, clutching hold of it, in the very nick of time, saved him by a miracle—had he been carried overboard, no earthly power ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... think you're stupid," said the wife angrily. "You ought to have cut a nick in the right one ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... cried, "I'll no' hae my dog scaret wi' bogles, and running down Auld Nick as if he were a hare. The ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... '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 ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... usual by putting the captive Lydian prince on a pyre, threatening to burn him if he will not reveal the place of the Princess's flight, and actually having the torch applied. Of course Cyrus turns up at the nick of time, has the fire put out, rates the King of Assyria soundly for his violence, and apologises handsomely to Croesus. The notion of an apology for nearly roasting a man may appear to have its ludicrous side, but the way ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... was thinking of giving the 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 of necessity ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not going West with Bantry, but there's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on 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
... installed as general reader for a neighborhood of several thousand men, everything of this kind was immediately brought to me, to be read aloud for the benefit of everybody. All the older prisoners knew me by the nick-name of "Illinoy" —a designation arising from my wearing on my cap, when I entered prison, a neat little white metal badge of "ILLS." When any reading matter was brought into our neighborhood, there would ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the way I'm going to do it. I'll take care of Gipsy, you'll see—make it easy for her, but nick in Leonora for more than ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... for Stannard the hostiles would have 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 in ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... 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
... exclaimed at 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 - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... have been nick-named, as Chicago, the Windy City; Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, etc. The hostess requests her guests to wear something suggestive of the nickname of the city represented. Each guest writes on a piece ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... 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 ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Old Nick, who taught the village school, Wedded a maid of homespun habit; He was stubborn as a mule, She ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... me," said she rousing herself, "you're going to hurt me,—don't sir, it hurts," all 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 ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... old. They were full of nicks as well as wood-knots, and the appearance of some of the former gave Code an idea. He went carefully over the boards, sticking his thumb-nail into them and lifting or pressing down as the shape of the nick warranted. For they resembled very much the depressions cut in sliding covers on starch-boxes whereby such covers can be ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... went over heaple steeple There I met a heap o' people; Some was nick and some was nack, Some was ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... 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 this with their holy names, so that no more infamous cover ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... And, in the nick of time, a troop of United States cavalry came dashing up to capture the renegade Indians, who surrendered; Blake also getting pictures of the dash ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... will 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 run ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... the enemy of our souls. But the thought will wondrously 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 school and learn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... 'tracted Cap's 'tention, an' so he jist set 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
... 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 me more ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... page, About twelve years of age, For so little a boy was remarkably sage; And, just in the nick, to their joy and amazement, Popp'd the gas-lighter's ladder close under the casement. But all would not do,—Though St. Megrin got through The window,—below stood De Guise and his crew. And though never man was more brave ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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 are above groun' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... school, I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble for a place in the pit of the great university theater; but his purse was ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... is this?" demanded one of the elder gentlemen. "Have you a private battery concealed about your person with invisible wires distributed throughout the city, that you seem to arrive at any and every spot just on the nick ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... yell followed, and a young chief rushed towards the strait, with frantic cries, as if bent on leaping across the chasm. He was followed by a hundred warriors. Mark now made the signal to Juno. Not a moment was lost by the undaunted girl, who touched off her gun in the very nick of time. Down came the grape, hissing along the Reef; and, rebounding from its surface, away it leaped across the strait, flying through the thickest of the assailants. A dozen more suffered by that discharge. Waally now saw that a crisis ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... seeing an electric-motor car running for the first time, exclaimed: "Well, well, Ould Nick must be pullin' ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... some of his time with the little chap after that. He would bring books and read to him in his mother tongue, or tell him wonderful stories. The poor little chap was so happy to see him and always used to kiss 'Uncle Nick,' as Karl taught the boy to call him. And when the little fellow died, Karl wept just as though the lad had been his own kin, and insisted upon following ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... they have various sorts of baskets; some are made of the same materials as their mats; and others of the twisted fibres of cocoa-nuts. These are not only durable but beautiful; being generally composed of different colours, and studded with beads made of shells or bones. They have many little nick-nacks amongst them; which shews that they neither want taste to design, nor skill to execute, whatever they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... I'm shavin' next 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 ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a prophecy of victory. Bradley ran up his Napoleons on the right in the nick of time, and, although only one of them could be brought to bear, it was enough; the grape raked the Confederate left, broke it, and the battle was over. In five minutes more their whole array was scattered, and the entire ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... me down as a bull might a wolf, but I was much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes he would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword upon his arm or back. He was soon streaming blood from a half dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an effective thrust. Then he changed his tactics, and fighting warily and with extreme dexterity, he tried to do by science what he was unable to do by brute ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 the same time forcing his own horse violently backward with ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 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 look ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... tacked to plaster walls and the furniture submitted to the hard usage demanded by war. An old man conspicuous by his civilian clothes wandered about the yard here and there, picking up some stray implement or nick-nack, hanging it up on a wall or ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... bulwarks, with many a rough jest and 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!" from ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 compelled us ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... it?" said Sholto, eagerly. "Mind, if you refuse, and will not give it up after promising, I will nick that lying throat of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... garment in which the pattern reversed itself in back and front. Such a state of mind was inconceivable to the patient toiler, who rounded every corner with her scissors as carefully as if an untoward nick meant destruction, and pinned and repinned half-a-dozen times over before she could satisfy herself of the absence of crinkles. Peggy was ready to be "tried on" before Eunice had half finished the first process, and though she went obediently at the first ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... room, "he'll never learn anything so long as he lives. I declare he has tired me all out, and I used to teach school in Trivoli township, too. Taught one whole winter in district number three when Nick Worthington was county superintendent, and had my salary—look here, Mary, what do you find in that English grammar to giggle about? You go to bed, too, and listen to me—if Rollo can't read that whole book clear through without making ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... 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 ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... 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 ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... child's faith saved him." Another says: "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 sacrifice of that ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... be H.M. sloop Porcupine. She hove to when she neared us, and sent a boat on board. She had heard the report of our guns, and hastened to the scene of action, just in the very nick of time to save us. The lieutenant complimented the captain and crew on their gallant defence, and hastened on board the sloop again, to make his report. The boat soon returned, with a gang of hands to assist in repairing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • 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
... soldiers:[Footnote: See Jean-Christophe—I, "Revolt."] she wrote to tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... himself with knives and saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens about—disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big station motor—pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me. But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... life to him—parted company wid her on the spot; said he would take part wid the masther and the other two, and tould her to her teeth that he did not care a damn about the property, and that she might leave it as a legacy to ould Nick, who, he said, desarved it better at her hands than ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... From Book II of the "History of Rome." Translated by D. Spillan and Cyrus Edmonds. "Cocles" was a nick-name meaning the "one-eyed." With this story every school-boy has been made familiar through ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... us. This, however, 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 ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... none too gently. A poor devil in a waiter's costume stretched out his arms to me, yelling in a foreign dialect: "You take de food from my babies!" The next moment the club of a policeman came down on his head, crack. I heard Mary scream behind me, and I turned, just in the nick of time. Carpenter was leaping ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... he 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 after ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... then the "old nick" was to pay, "Truth indeed is stranger than fiction," His prayers were so tedious and long, People slept, till the benediction. And then came another, on trial, Who actually preached in his gloves, His manner so awkward and queer, That we settled ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... them," said she, "and just in the nick of time. He was on the inside in the campaign of '96, and I remember one night he came to dinner at our house and told us that the Republican party had raised ten or fifteen million dollars to buy the election. 'That's ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... 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 behind was so great ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... conclave? And it is no use going on at me about that bucket of water I tilted over down the ladder on to Nick Jones; it stood so handy, and wanted such a little push, that I just could not help doing it," the boy answered in a sullen tone. He had been in mischief on board the steamer, escaping with a warning from the captain and a lecture from ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... t' three hundred and fifty rupees? Thot's what I can scarcelins tell yo', but we melted it—we melted it. It was share an' share alike, for Mulvaney said: 'If Learoyd got hold of Mrs. DeSussa first, sure 'twas I that renumbered the Sargint's dog just in the nick av time, an' Orth'ris was the artist av janius that made a work av art out av that ugly piece av ill-nature. Yet, by way av a thank-offerin' that I was not led into felony by that wicked ould woman, ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... you," said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He didn't know ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the time of William the 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 ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... only in the nick of time, for a second later and the big mammal of the ocean would have struck the ship and split it ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... water-fowl, a 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 ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
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