"Rasping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rasping fun! Mighty hull, monster gun, all are mine ere all's done; and the millions madly spent On a lollopping wolloping kettle, with ten thousand tons of metal sink as the Titans settle, turtle-turned, or wrenched and rent, To my rocks and my ooze. I seem little like to lose by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... once, young man," said the adjutant, laying a mighty hand on the junior's square shoulder. "Stand not upon the order of your going, but git! Never you mind about the colonel. He won't be here until after he's been there, and he's in for a rasping over this morning's inspection. Just look at the report. Sergeant-major, send me Colonel Colt's report!" he called aloud, tossing his head back as he spoke, "Come in, Parson; come out of the wet." And, eager enough to read a famous inspector's ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... therefore, the people prepared themselves for more, and the precentor, with the brazen but tuneful voice, sang the first line of the psalm which the young preacher gave out—"I to the hills will lift mine eyes"—with rasping energy. At the second line the congregation joined in, and sang praise with reverent good-will, so that, when a chapter of the Word had been read and another psalm sung, they were brought to a state of hopeful expectancy. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... sharpest—is the following: It seemed I was lying on the ground. I was somewhat older than during the nest days, but still helpless. I rolled about in the dry leaves, playing with them and making crooning, rasping noises in my throat. The sun shone warmly and I was happy, and comfortable. I was in a little open space. Around me, on all sides, were bushes and fern-like growths, and overhead and all about were the trunks ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... been perched on one of the cherry-trees in the garden. He rose with a shaking of branches and a flapping of broad black wings. He crossed the lake, croaking as he flew with a note more harsh, rasping and cynical than the consequential caw of English rooks. His was a malevolent presence "from the night's Plutonian shore," the symbol of something unclean and sinister lurking behind this dainty beauty and ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the panhandler's thoughts than flight. His rags fluttered freely in the evening air and his sole-less shoes flopped up and down upon his feet, rasping his bare toes, as he approached ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... your singing birds Do you leave the bones—and words, The proud music in the throat?... Not a note, not a note? Doubtless they were not so pleasant As the brains of a young pheasant, Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty Never was to utter beauty. But they sang, but they fluted And your rasping lies confuted, And your ugliness laid bare With a lyric in the air. So you bought them on a string, Dangling balls that used to sing, And you gave them to the cook With a ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... long while in the casino, twiddling spoons in coffee-glasses while a wax-pink fat man played billiards in front of us, being ponderously beaten by a lean brownish swallow-tail with yellow face and walrus whiskers that emitted a rasping Bueno after every play. There was talk of Paris and possible new volumes of verse, homage to Walt Whitman, Maragall, questioning about Emily Dickinson. About us was a smell of old horsehair sofas, a buzz of the poignant musty ennui of old towns left centuries ago high and dry on the beach ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... command harshly repeated. He saw the look of irritation on Silsbee's dusty, bearded face, that followed his hurried glance into the empty wagon. He heard the query, "What's gone o' them limbs now?" handed from wagon to wagon. He heard a few oaths; Mrs. Silsbee's high rasping voice, abuse of himself, the hurried and discontented detachment of a search party, Silsbee and one of the hired men, and vociferation and blame. Blame always for himself, the elder, who might have "known better!" A little fear, perhaps, but he could not fancy either pity or commiseration. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... fire, thank him for his kindness, and inform him that we don't want any more of it" Everybody nodded. "I don't know whether his money is what they call tainted or not, but there's one thing sure, it ain't done us any good." He passed his hand over his unshaven jaw with a rasping wipe and smiled grimly as he concluded, "I'm no hand to stir up lawbreakin' and disorder, but I want to say right here that I'll never inform against any Hillsboro man who keeps the next automobile out of town, if he has to take a ax ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... Virginia, came to whisper to her in a rasping aside. She "had St. Joseph" for Easter, she said, would Virginia help her "fix him"? Virginia nodded, she loved to assist those devout young women who decorated, with exquisite flowers and hundreds of candles, the various ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... and Miss Ramsay's airs of patronage "got" on me. I proceeded politely to convey to her the impression that she did not attract me, that I did not think her worth while—this, not through artful design of interesting by piquing, but simply in the hope of rasping upon her as she was rasping upon me. When I saw that I had gained my point, I ignored her. I tried to talk with Ed, then with his mother, but neither would interfere between me and Carlotta. I had to talk to her until she voluntarily lapsed into offended silence. Then Ed, to save ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... part of him is the tongue. It is not for tasting, but for rasping. It is like a long, narrow ribbon, on which are hundreds of tiny points, all sloping backwards. They are arranged three in a row. The Periwinkle rasps the seaweed with his tongue, and so scrapes off his dinner. Of ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... silence fell. The curious activity of desert-life, interrupted for the time by the presence of the fugitives, resumed its tenor and droned on about them. The rasping grasshopper, the darting lizard, the scorpion creeping among the rocks, a high-flying bird, a small, skulking, wild beast put sound and movement in the desolation of the region. The horizon was marked by ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and looked about him. He placed his hand to his ear and gazed intently out into the darkness. What was that? He shut his eyes that he might hear the better. He could not be mistaken, he had heard a dry twig snap—one, two, three little dry, rasping sounds. Perhaps it was just a rabbit or a squirrel. Again he raised himself cautiously on his shoulder and peered out into the shadows. There! another snap, this time nearer and more distinct. The night breeze gently fanned the ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... a moment, a dark, magnified shape; and then, moving across the portico to the farthest window, closed the shutters. The hinges gave out a rasping grind, as if they had not been turned for months, and there was a faint rattle of falling particles of rusted iron. The man forced shut a second set of shutters with a sudden violence and went slowly back into the house. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... all because of the look on the face of the girl at the edge of the crowd. He sat in the shadow of the big box and fought his fight. The coffee and the excitement no longer kept him up; he was faint, and his breath came short. Above him he heard Ricks's rasping voice still talking to the few customers who were left. He knew, without glancing up, just how Ricks looked when he said the words; he knew how his teeth pushed his lips back, and how his restless little eyes watched everything at once. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... long stride, a short one, a long one, and toe and pigskin came together. Pearse was down and Smith was shouldering valiantly at a big guard. Two blue-clad arms swept upward almost into the path of the rising ball; there was a confused sound of crashing bodies and rasping canvas, and then a Robinson man bounded against Neil and sent ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... will!" shouted the elephant. And with that, in his strong trunk, he lifted Flop up on his broad back. Still the skillery- scalery alligator came on, and he cried in his rasping voice: ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... malediction of an evil spirit. Without uttering the words of any language — Poe's "Nevermore" was, of course, a poetic license — people of all nationalities appear to understand that some dire calamity, some wicked portent, is being announced every time the unbirdlike creature utters its rasping call. The superstitious folk crow with an "I told you so," as they solemnly wag their heads when they hear, of some death in the village after "the bird of ill-omen" has made an unwelcome visit to the neighborhood—it receives the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to the girl, and his voice grew harsh, almost rasping in its intensity. "I can beat the game. And I will beat it—now! Just to show you and your kind what a man can do—a man, I mean," he added, "'whose sole recommendation seems to be that he ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... might have put rebuke, indirectly, into those words. But old Etienne, rasping his hard palms nervously, was merely vowing himself to sacrifice because there was no one else left to do so. Farr understood and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... marked "private" opened and a tall man with grey hair emerged, with a crooked figure dragging on his arm. Field looked over the paper for a moment, and then ducked down again as he saw Carl Sartoris. Evidently the cripple had lost no time. He was saying something now in a low and rasping voice to the lawyer. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... upon the prophet Daniel had been painfully exercising the minds of the editor and readers of the Church Times; and it was then that the curate's friend, without moving a muscle of his face, suddenly leaned forward and said, in a rasping voice: ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the knowledge of the enemy's approach, and he raised the gun and covered the door in readiness. A flash clipped the dark for an instant. Then a hand groped along the wall seeking the switch. Archie could hear its soft rasping over the wall. As the switch snapped the room flooded with light. The bewildering glare leaping out of the darkness held the man in the doorway and he raised his arm and passed his hand over his eyes to shield them from ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... with the shock, the like of which he had never known before, McTeague turned from Trina, gazing bewilderedly about the room. The struggle was bitter; his teeth ground themselves together with a little rasping sound; the blood sang in his ears; his face flushed scarlet; his hands twisted themselves together like the knotting of cables. The fury in him was as the fury of a young bull in the heat of high summer. But for all that he shook his huge head from ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... in the air above her head awakened Varta. One of the small, jewel bright flying lizard creatures of the deep jungle poised and dipped to investigate more closely the worlds of Asti. But at Varta's upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the mass of vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around them the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... so in Russia, the first Socialist State, as yet unindustrial, able to draw on the industrial experience of the whole world, were it not that one discovers with a certain misgiving in the Bolshevik leaders the rasping arid temperament of those to whom the industrial machine is an end in itself, and, in addition, reflects that these industrially minded men have as yet no practical experience, nor do there exist men of goodwill to help ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... considered slight when they are anonymous. This anecdote, however, in the original Florentine diction, although it betrays a partiality for Lionardo, bears the aspect of truth to fact. Moreover, even Michelangelo's admirers are bound to acknowledge that he had a rasping tongue, and was not incapable of showing his bad temper by rudeness. From the period of his boyhood, when Torrigiano smashed his nose, down to the last years of his life in Rome, when he abused his nephew Lionardo and hurt the feelings of his best ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... sees this, away there by the tiller, and it displeases him. "You would do better," he growls in a voice like the rasping of a file, "instead of plucking the saint's flowers for that child, to burn a holy willow-wand at the lamp, for if the Lord drives us on to these stone monsters, even His own Son ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... sounded an echo of it, as it were—a shrill, nervous little whinny; the boys whirled round to see whence it came. The persistent rasping noise of the sorghum mill and the bubbling of the caldron had prevented them from hearing an approach. There, quite close at hand, peering through the rails of the fence, was a little girl of seven ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of the fact that he had asked a question and presumably desired a reply, the sound of Archie's voice seemed to be more than the young man could endure. It deprived him of the last vestige of restraint. With a rasping snarl he brought his left fist round in a sweeping semicircle in the direction of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... in vain long sought! Now, careless, let us stray, or stop To see the partridge from the covey drop, Or, while the evening air's like yellow wine, From the pure stream take out The playful trout, That jerks with rasping check the struggled line; Or to the Farm, where, high on trampled stacks, The labourers stir themselves amain To feed with hasty sheaves of grain The deaf'ning engine's boisterous maw, And snatch again, From to-and-fro tormenting racks, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... speed. His daring, his utter mastery, stirred a kind of admiration in Pauline and the death she saw looming stirred anew her courage. She wrenched her arm free from his grip. She stood up and swung her weight against the man, rasping for the wheel. The car swerved toward the cliff, but he jerked it back, striking at her brutally with his free hand. She fell in the seat, but returned, desperate, to the encounter. She caught the wheel. She tried to command it, but his strength ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... there was a faint rasping sound, then a sharp crack, and the rustle of two half-nutshells through the leaves. One of them struck the side of the hazel-stump and bounded off like an elastic ball. Before the dormouse had collected his ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... heart, and prevent its free transmission to the lungs. We could hear a churning sound occasioned by the blood and air being whipped together in the heart, and on applying the hand to the chest could feel a strange thrilling or rasping sensation. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... went on cautiously, their blades rasping against each other, and neither man gaining any advantage, although once or twice Vane found his antagonist's weapon perilously near his body. Then all at once Dorrimore changed his methods. He began fencing in earnest, and so rapid was the play of his ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... The rasping tone in which Lablache spoke conveyed to the other his unalterable conviction. The prairie man, however, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... members of this genus have a habit of fluttering out over the water, and then gliding back to their perch on the grass, on set wings, meanwhile uttering a strange rasping song. The nesting habits and eggs of all the subspecies are precisely like those of this variety, and they all occasionally arch their nests over, leaving ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... second day her burro gave a rasping bray, and a hee-haw answered from the bush. It was Miguel's burro. He had come at last! Leaping to her feet, in her impatience, she ran to meet him, and found him lying on the earth, staring silently at the sky. All that day she sat beside him, caressing his hand, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Puck struck In, 'the maid spoke out of kindness. I know that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that's a pity. There's honesty enough in you, Nick, without rasping and hawking.' ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... end of a moment, or of an aeon of time, that there fell athwart their beating hearts a dull, rasping sound, that of the two great inner bolts of the huge oak door being pushed ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was ghastly with weariness and dirt and fury; and as he recognised the head of his family, he drew in a long rasping breath, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... largely relative—like everything else in the world, don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitterness that was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... deferred to my obligation, and I followed the valet into a large darkened chamber. It was some moments before my eyes could discover that the Earl was abed. Indeed, a rasping voice from beneath the canopies called to me before I knew that anybody was in the chamber but ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Mrs. Wren, the housekeeper, opening the windows in the upper rooms of the mansion to let in the night air, which was stirring over the valley with a delicious mountain chill on its wings. All around in the trees and shrubbery the katydids were rasping away in immelodious statement and denial of the ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... unpainted cross, which he held high so that all men might see it. He seemed to be in the last extremity of fright, with a face the color of clay and his limbs all ashake as one who hath an ague. Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's heels, there walked a very stern, black-bearded man with a hard eye and a set mouth. He bore over his shoulder a great knotted stick with three jagged nails stuck in the head of it, and from time to time he whirled it up in the air with a quivering arm, as though he could scarce ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is perfectly uniform and consistent. There are three creatures, the squirrel, the field-mouse, and the bird called the nut-hatch (sitta Europaea), which live much on hazelnut; and yet they open them each in a different way. The first, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife; the second nibbles a hole with his teeth, so regular as if drilled with a wimble, and yet so small that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... wife had laughed at his singing; and for twenty years the fibre ached. Nothing, again, was more notable than the formal chivalry of this unmannered man to the person on earth with whom he was the most familiar. He was conscious of his own innate and often rasping vivacity and roughness and he was never forgetful of his first visit to the Austins and the vow he had registered on his return. There was thus an artificial element in his punctilio that at times might almost raise a smile. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who regard a correct intonation as a thing of primal importance, it could not have been pleasing. Wieniawski belongs to that school of which Ole Bull is a prominent member, whose first article of belief is that genuine passion and fervour is signified by rasping the strings." ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Nor knows that wretched men must toil for bread; The tragedy of life he has not read, Or deems it but the comedy of fear: He never lifts his eyes above the ground To gaze upon the glittering world of stars; The poet's richest music only mars The rasping of the locust's strident sound. And yet I've never seen a wilder light Glow in the beauteous eyes of dawning love, Than flashes from this strange man's soul at sight Of some rare flower he finds in mountain cove: Mere ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was almost on ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Henrietta's. 'Oh, Henrietta, I hope not. No, no, I'm not going to believe that, 'and, temporarily united, the third person left behind though following closely, they returned to the lighted house. As they stood in the hall they could hear the rasping sound of ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... So much hot liquid inside generally sets them into a perspiration. Nothing but loaf sugar is used, and there is a very common practice of holding a lump in one hand and following a sip of the unsweetened tea with a nibble at the sugar. When several persons are engaged in this rasping process a curious sound ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... big enough to shy a bit of turf at him across a dyke, and there isn't a spot on's body that I haven't hit, nor one on mine that he hasn't mauled. I've sat on his head, and he's had his knee in my stomach till I squealed, and we never could meet without back-talking and rasping 'gainst the grain. The night before he joined the coast-guardsmen, he was down at the Book-in-Hand, and 'twas little like that I'd let the good chance pass—I might never have another; for Gover'ment folk will not easy work a quarrel on their own account. I mind ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... accompanied him to the door. Ruth gave little heed to their movements. Her agitated heart had grasped the fact that the lines upon her father's face had grown weaker and paler, his breathing shorter and more rasping; when she passed him and touched his hand, it seemed ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... said the abbe, rubbing his chin with his forefinger, and making a rasping sound on ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Wild Burro Springs, so named because the burros common to this region come there to drink. Just as we drew rein to allow our horses to quench their thirst, the sultry silence was shattered beyond repair. Such a rasping, choking, jarring sound rolled and echoed back and forth from crag to crag! "What's that?" I gasped, after I had swallowed my heart two or three times. The Chief pointed to a rock lying a few feet away. Over the top of this an enormous pair of ears protruded, and two big, solemn ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... sighed, and "Esther," she said, in a voice which must naturally have been rasping, but which she had apparently learned to control like a violin—"Esther dear, if you could ever understand what offices have done for me! On the East Side—always it was work and work and watch all the pretty girls in our block get T. B. in garment-factories, or marry fellows that weren't any ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the first time the beating in of lead pipe has been called for. The knack of doing this comes only by slow and continued practice. The lead must be "humored" into shape and not "driven" into shape. The end of the pipe is tapered still more by rasping off the end. About 3/4 inch should extend into the brass ferrule. With the bending irons, the lead extending into the brass ferrule is beaten against the inside wall of the ferrule. A good way to do ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... he was being eyed in curiosity and impatience by the eager folk behind. He heard Mrs. Tutts's rasping whisper as he ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... she spoke they heard the distant rasping of the beetle-legs. And before the shells were well in mid-current they saw the beetle horde coming round the bend; in the front of them Bram, reclining on his shell couch, and drawn ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... pressed into service, and was stoning raisins, or eating them, a close observer would have found it difficult to discover which. She was certainly rasping the nerves of her sister in a variety of those endless ways by which a thoughtless, restless, questioning child can almost distract a troubled brain. Ester endured with what patience she could the ceaseless drafts upon her, and worked at the interminable cookies with commendable zeal. Alfred came ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... left vacant—apparently for Arthur, as a distinguished stranger: but he had turned shy, and had placed himself next to the young lady in spectacles, whose high rasping voice had already cast loose upon Society such ominous phrases as "Man is a bundle of Qualities!", "the Objective is only attainable through the Subjective!". Arthur was bearing it bravely: but several faces wore a look of alarm, and I thought it ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... will pray for her," she thought, and folded her hands. Then a voice sounded behind her, hollow as the roll of falling earth; rasping as coffin cords: ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... by various names: "Brant Bird," "Bead-bird," "Horse-foot-Snipe," "Sand-runner," "Calico-back," "Chicaric" and "Chickling." The two latter names have reference to its rasping notes, "Calico-back," to the variegated plumage of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... train was suddenly slid wide open with a horrid, rasping noise, and people began to press upon the man who examined the tickets. It was then that Barbara's roving and troubled eyes came to rest, you may say, in Wilmot's, with a look so sweet, so confiding, so trusting, that it seemed to the young man that the pain of separation was going to be ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... remained stationary, as if in waiting for the fatal messenger. It came the next moment. True to its aim, the tiny sphere of lead entered the head of the bear at the most vulnerable point, and the life went out from that huge mass. A rasping growl, a few spasmodic throes, and ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to serve as means of communication, and which ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... stay, arranged for under instructions from the Council," Bright assented, in his hard, rasping voice. "He has been most of the time under the influence of some new form of anaesthetic gas with which I have been experimenting. To-night, however, I must have made a mistake in my calculations. Instead of remaining in a state ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the two "ice drink"—a tray containing long glasses, tinkling ice, claret, lemons, cake, and biscuits. He set the tray upon the table. As he did so his hand came in contact with Fluffy. With a rasping cry of indignation ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... wheeled with more impatience than the Adjutant, Forbes, had seen him exhibit through many vexatious, worrying months. His voice took on a rasping note. He tapped the papers on the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... death. The charge is made at a gallop, the animal sometimes coming on silently, with the mouth shut, and sometimes with the jaws open, the lips drawn back and teeth showing, uttering at the same time a succession of roars or of savage rasping snarls. Certain bears charge without any bluster and perfectly straight; while others first threaten and bully, and even when charging stop to growl, shake the head and bite at a bush or knock holes in the ground with their fore-paws. Again, some of them charge home with a ferocious resolution ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... clung to it pertinaciously in others. He offended local magnates by preaching at them from the pulpit, giving them pretty freely a piece of his mind as to their conduct and ways of life, and, indeed, turning them to public ridicule with rough and rasping sarcasms. With the Indians he could not do much, if only for the fact that he had to speak to them through an interpreter. The tongue, says Jean Paul Richter, is eloquent only in its own language, and the heart in its own religion. It certainly was not from lack of zeal and energy that Wesley ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... chief did not relish Craig's bellicose manner, nor the glare in his one eye that showed, nor the imputation of vindictive rebuke in his rasping tones. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... contact it with his home-made radio, and once again he received a succession of strange, rhythmic noises which he could not doubt were speech of some kind or other—a rasping, grating speech, to be sure, utterly unlike the speech of McIlvaine's own kind. It rose and fell, became impatient, urgent, despairing—McIlvaine sensed all this and strove ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... loudly. The September wind whirled its rain and dead willow leaves over the hut floor. A rasping sound, like the filing of a saw, came from ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... cut adrift. The Webb passed up following the Queen. The latter, having gained sufficient distance, turned and charged down, but as the Indianola was turning up at the same moment the blow on the starboard bow glanced, the vessels rasping by each other; and as the Queen cleared the stern of her enemy, the latter planted two IX-inch shot successfully, killing 2 and wounding 4 of her crew and disabling two guns. During all this time the Indianola kept firing her guns whenever they could be made to bear, but, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... here reviles The almost whispered warble from the hedge, And takes a locust's rasping voice and files ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... baskets into the depths of the cellar, watching them glide down the rails laid over the steps, and listening to the rasping noise which the casters of these osier waggons made in their descent. Down below there was a scene of exquisite horror. They entered into a charnel-house atmosphere, and walked along through murky puddles, amidst which every now and then purple eyes seem to be glistening. At times the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... this sentence was interrupted by a sharp, rasping sound of Big Jim clearing his throat and shuffling to his feet. He, too, looked the minister full in the face with a searching gaze, shook his head sadly, and walked leisurely down the aisle and out of the door. The minister paused again and frowned. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... came Blatch's rich, rasping tones. "Ef I didn't know it was you I'd be liable to think they was a shiverin' squinch-owl in here with us. Buck, step out and scout, will ye? Git back as soon as ye can, 'caze we're ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... up like fortifications in front of them; a shaggy beard and mustache of mixed black, white, and grey; a prodigious cameo ring on the forefinger of one hairy hand; the other hand always in and out of a deep silver snuff-box like a small tea-caddy; a rough rasping voice; a diabolically humourous smile; a curtly confident way of speaking; resolution, independence, power, expressed all over him from head to foot—there is the portrait of the man who held ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... had expected that realization of the facts would produce these symptoms in him, but now that they had presented themselves she was finding them rasping to the nerves. "I should have thought the ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... seemed in one spot to have been strengthened by fresh timbers. Attacking this stealthily with the aid of some tools hidden in his oil-skin clothing, in the light of the lantern he bore a fanciful resemblance to the predatory animals around him. The low continuous sound of rasping and gnawing of timber which followed heightened the resemblance. At the end of a few minutes he had succeeded in removing enough of the outer planking to show that the entire filling of the casing between the stanchions was composed of small boxes. Dragging out one of them with feverish ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the state, being pursued by detectives just as if for all the world he were an ordinary person—an obscure private citizen, say, or an ex-convict! The judge himself was very indignant, and his friends on the local press were rasping in their comments. In a long editorial entitled "The Shadow of the Spy," one Atlanta paper denounced the proceedings root and branch. It affirmed that the governmental spy system had assumed such proportions during the past few years as to threaten one ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... pattern against a purple sky lit by the gorgeous flame of the morning star retreating before the coming sun, we all collected buckets and rags and bottles and sponges. In Indian file we were led by Sam around the hill, up a steep path that was bordered by coral-strung buck-bushes and rasping blackberry brush, and to his little farm-house perched on a plateau almost up to the top of the hill. It was long and low, with a wide red roof that seemed to hover in the whitewashed walls and green ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the other hand, I find a thin neck attached to a thin body, and I also find a whole pack of wolves, hollow, rasping tone, and difficult of production—in ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... himself was. Therefore Danglar, and logically enough from his viewpoint, had jumped to the conclusion that, since they had not come together, only one of them, the Adventurer, was acting in the affair to-night, and—Danglar's voice was rasping in her ears. ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... trying to save the ship; and Captain Wilbur himself, in a diver's suit, has inspected the wreck. Surely, he should know if it is possible to salve her! He says no, and it is reported that the insurance companies are in agreement with him.' Lee Fu's voice dropped to a rasping tone. 'The lives, of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... time gained a little insight into Joan's peculiarities, Eve argued no further, but sat herself down on a convenient seat, waiting for the time when the rasping sound of the brush would come to an end. Her patience was put to no very great tax, for after a few minutes Joan flung the brush along the table, exclaiming, "Awh, drabbit the ole scrubbin'! I must ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... are like pandemonium let loose; all the pupils studying aloud together, making a deafening, rasping noise. Sessions from 7 to 10 A. M., 3 to 6 ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... direction whence it had come. Under the dusk of the lake shore I would sometimes come upon a pair of the huge animals, the cow restless, wary, impatient, the bull now silent as a shadow, now ripping and rasping the torn velvet from his great antlers among the alders, and now threatening and browbeating every living thing that crossed his trail, and even the unoffending bushes, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... a rasping of the iron latch, and a little girlish figure clothed from head to foot in a white night veil danced in. She clapped her hands ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... built, elderly man, had picked himself out of a drift with the assistance of his lackey and was brushing the snow from his long fur cloak. A fur cap, pulled down over his eyes, hid his face, but his gestures were angry, and his voice was high and rasping. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... best black tea, good quality—yours is generally atrocious, Mrs. Oswald—that's the next thing on the list,' said poor trembling, shaky Miss Luttrell, the Squire's sister, a palsied old lady with a quavering, querulous, rasping voice. 'Two pounds of best black tea, and mind you don't send it all dust, as you usually do. No good tea to be got nowadays, since they took the duties off and ruined the country. And I see a tall young man lounging about the place sometimes, and never touching ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... against each other, were still for a long moment, and then my gasping, rasping voice came ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... played for him and he accepted me as a pupil. I am free to admit that my tone, which people seem to be pleased to praise especially, I owe entirely to Leonard, for when I came to him I had the so-called 'German tone' (son allemand), of a harsh, rasping quality, which I tried to abandon absolutely. Leonard often would point to his ears while teaching and say: 'Ouvrez vos oreilles: ecoutez la beaute du son!' ('Open your ears, listen for beauty of sound!'). ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... thrust of a big needle, he sprang several feet in the air, and began frantically clutching at the tormenting substance. The second or third attempt secured the spark, which clung to his hand, burning his fingers to that extent that he emitted a rasping exclamation, bounded upward, and by a particularly vigorous flirt of his hand freed it of the spark, which ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... sensitive feelings, and keen faculties, subjected to the rough rasping of coarse, self-satisfied, unspiritual natures, had almost lost their equilibrium. As to natural condition no one was sounder than she; yet even now when she had more than begun to see its falsehood, a headache would suffice to bring her afresh under the influence ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... something. It was a faint, rasping noise such as might have been caused by the cautious pushing of a box or large smooth object over the floor. If this were so, the article could not have been moved more than a few inches, for the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... few months; but several that I saw were killed through the large Harlequin beetle (Acrocinus longimanus) laying its eggs in the cuts, and the grubs that are hatched boring great holes all through the trunk. When these grubs are at work you can hear their rasping by standing at the bottom of the tree, and the wood-dust thrown out of their burrows accumulates in heaps on the ground below. The government attempts no supervision of the forests: any one may cut the trees, and great destruction is going on amongst them ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... how you criticise your neighbors," spoke a rasping voice near by. "As a matter of fact you are rather ugly-looking creatures yourselves, and I'm sure mother has often told us we were the loveliest and prettiest things ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supported the thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others. They ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... seen in a crowd. A voice markedly individual, not merely because it was somewhat high-pitched for a man's, but rather for a quality not easily defined, which gave to it a certain vibrant, unpleasant harshness, sounding metallic almost, rasping, as though with the hiss of steel surfaces rubbing. Altogether impossible to describe adequately, yet, as Judith ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... very good woman in an elegant city home, with all my little wishes gratified, and nothing to offend my taste. But I fear, yes, I know, I should be a miserable, if not a wicked woman, in a poor home, with nothing but rasping, wearing poverty, day after day. Why, the very smell and steam of the wet flannels coming from the kitchens of small houses where I have happened to be on washing-days, has made me uncomfortable for hours. I know I am not heroic, ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... a scraping that chalk made! He searched about with his fingers around the big boulder. Yes, there it was; the wind, no doubt, had blown it off. He pulled it toward him. The pebble was drawn across the boulder with another and louder rasping that sounded fearfully in the night. Then at once a gasp, a scuffle, a rush, a splash of something in mud, or water—horrible sounds of a being choking, strangling or trying to speak. For a moment Yan sank down in terror. His lips refused to move. But the remembrance of the cow came to help ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to sleep, after hobbling their horses and turning them out to graze. They lay down in their gaberdines. The stars of night gazed directly down upon them. They could hear the countless myriads of insects which filled the grass; their rasping, whistling, and chirping, softened by the fresh air, resounded clearly through the night, and lulled the drowsy ear. If one of them rose and stood for a time, the steppe presented itself to him strewn with the sparks of glow-worms. At times the night sky was illumined in spots by the glare ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... nobody was word-perfect and a rasping prompter would not keep ahead as he ought to have done; the scenery and the make-ups were daubs, and I was filled with amazement that having quite wantonly undertaken to do this thing these people ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... humor with themselves, and the girl said it was so cold and rough that she wished her father had not gone, either. The general appeared just before dinner and frankly avowed the same wish. He was rasping and wheezing from the dust which filled his lungs; he looked blown and red, and he was too angry with the company he had been in to have any comments on the manoeuvres. He referred to the military chiefly in relation to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
