"Spatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach
... around Fricourt a mighty crater of one of the mines exploded on July 1st at the hour of attack was large enough to hold a battalion. Germans had gone aloft in a spatter with its vast plume of smoke and dust scooped from the bowels of the earth. Famous since to sightseers of war were the dugouts around Fricourt which were the last word in German provision against attack. The making of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... clumsy in handling the dishes and plates. Wherefore'—she looked funnily over her shoulder—'you are to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip's gift, too! At this happy juncture a Queen's messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter'—she giggled—'a letter from a good, simple, ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... picture; it was all in your imagination, spurred by twenty-one simple words. And it was a moving picture, too, and it went away past the word-spurs, because you painted the balance of it yourselves like a flash. You saw the glass fall and smash on the floor, and you saw the water spatter the man's feet and trousers—then some of you saw him jump back and look up quick and kind of mad like at the person passing, and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... into the bleak darkness. It seemed more terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter of rain against the window would ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... well together, in an instant, Mr. Smithers is off and away in pursuit. His heavy rubber-boots spatter over the bricks with an echo that startles the sober residents from their slumbers. Strong of limb, and not wholly unaccustomed to such exercise, he rapidly gains upon the fugitive, who, finding himself so hotly followed, utters a faint cry, as if unable to control his terror, and suddenly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... lungs. The curtains fell back into place, the snoring stopped. Susan, all in a sweat and a shiver, lay quiet. Hoarse whispering; then in Burlingham's voice stern and gruff—"Get back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed——" The sentence ended with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling at man. Silence again, and after a few minutes the two snores resumed their bass accompaniment to the falsetto ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the very roofs of the houses; the lightning was seen to play about the church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times, in vain, to strike its ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... felt a little easier then, and went to work again: The sky was getting cloudier, 'twas coming on to rain. Before I knew, the clock struck six, and John had not come back; The rain began to spatter down, and all the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor with the three portions of ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... her mistress, sharply, "you may set the muffins down and go at once to Miss Pollyanna's room and shut the windows. Shut the doors, also. Later, when your morning work is done, go through every room with the spatter. See that you make ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... The fiery side of a fish glittered just beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay quivering on ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... in a serious tone, "I'd rather fall into the hands of the Germans, and have some chance for my life, than spatter myself all over ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... wilt, without casting lots, I grant thee freely, that thou mayst not blame me hereafter. Bind them about thy hands; thou shalt learn and tell another how skilled I am to carve the dry oxhides and to spatter men's cheeks with blood." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... coming toward me, men lying flat on it, protected by the bumper plate. I leaned against the lift door, and loosed a stream of needles against the side of the corridor, banking them toward the shuttle. Two men rolled off the shuttle in a spatter of blood. Another screamed, and a hand waved above the bumper. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... ole man. Haw! haw! he! he! ho! ho!" roared half a dozen fat men at my faceshusness, and they laffed and shook their sides, ontil I thought they'd colaps a floo and spatter me. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... champain ran with blood. As when the peasant his yoked steers employs To tread his barley, the broad-fronted pair 610 With ponderous hoofs trample it out with ease, So, by magnanimous Achilles driven, His coursers solid-hoof'd stamp'd as they ran The shields, at once, and bodies of the slain; Blood spatter'd all his axle, and with blood 615 From the horse-hoofs and from the fellied wheels His chariot redden'd, while himself, athirst For glory, his unconquerable hands Defiled with mingled carnage, sweat, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... that the Indians would fire, and as he and his comrades went under he heard the spatter of bullets on the water. When they rose to the surface again they were where they could wade, and they ran toward the bank. They reached dry land, but even in the obscurity of the night their figures ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... replying, all ears to this conversation, wondering just what had happened. He knew only that Delaney had run, leaving his revolver and a spatter of blood behind him. By degrees, however, he ascertained that his last shot but one had struck Delaney's pistol hand, shattering it and knocking the revolver from his grip. He was overwhelmed with astonishment. Why, after the shooting began he had not so ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber. And soon it was raining below us, down at the beaver pond—and then, with a drizzle and a spatter, the rain reached ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they are the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the way close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot through the darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it was very ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to the knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divest themselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their hunters, and warm their blood ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through the timberlands toward the west, shivered as a drop of rain touched his hand. He glanced up through the trees. The sky seemed clouded to the level of the pine-tops. He spurred his horse as he again felt a spatter of rain. Before him lay several miles of rugged trail leading to an open stretch across which he would again enter the timber on the edge of the hollow where Soper's cabin was concealed. When Corliss had suggested Soper's place as a rendezvous, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... yellow epaulets, rising and fluttering and sinking again among the lilies and mallows, and the white crane, paler than a ghost, wading in the grassy shallows. She saw the ravening garfish leap from the bayou, and the mullet in shining hundreds spatter away to left and right; and the fisherman and the shrimp-catcher in their canoes come gliding up the glassy stream, riding down the water-lilies, that rose again behind and shook the drops from their crowns, like water-sprites. Here and there, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... bullets came singing about the stone parapet, some of them chipping off little fragments from the top of the parapet itself, but most of them striking the great mass of rocks overhead and doing no harm whatever, except to spatter little fragments of lead upon the parapet ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... But, Spatter, I have something of greater confidence now to entrust you with. I think I have some claim to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... is part of the artist's business. The effect is a part of his art-effort in its inception. Emerson's substance and even his manner has little to do with a designed effect—his thunderbolts or delicate fragments are flashed out regardless—they may knock us down or just spatter us—it matters little to him—but Hawthorne is more considerate; that is, he is more artistic, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their feet and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim fighters from muddy spatter-dashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes turned to stare at us—eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre—as they swung along to the lilting ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... the spring of 1902. The rustling of the papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three- day old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old Vee's honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then his jaw dropped and the face stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... ever famous, smelt a rat (you've heard the story)— Saw it floating in the air, he promptly nipped it in the bud; But I think our modern Colonel gets the greater share of glory For inventing shameful arrows that could only spatter mud. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... plaster, all spatter and stain, Looked spotty in sunshine and streaky in rain; The window-sills sprouted with mildewy grass, And the panes from being broken were known to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... was comically that of a serious-minded European tourist. He not only purchased a catalogue, he treated it precisely as if it were the hand-book of the Autumn Salon in Paris. Carrying it in his hand, he spent busy hours minutely studying "Spatter Work," and carefully inspecting decorated bedspreads. He tasted the prize bread, sampled the honey, and twirled the contesting apples. Nothing escaped his notice. He was as alert, and (apparently) as vitally concerned as any of the "judges," but I, knowing his ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Berlin artist, by name Follbehr, who having the run of the army, was going out daily to do quick studies in water colors in the trenches and among the batteries. He did them remarkably well, too, seeing that any minute a shell might come and spatter him all over his own drawing board. All the rest, though, were generals and colonels and majors, and such—youngish men mostly. Excluding our host I do not believe there was a man present who had ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... arm from which the shirt-sleeve had been torn away that caught her attention first—a bare arm with a spatter of blood on it. It lay extended along the grass just beside the driveway. She was obliged to take a step or two toward it before seeing that it was Claude's arm, and that he himself was lying on the sward of the lawn, with a little trickle of ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... want to write 'em in here, because the snow would freeze our fingers so the ink would spatter ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... medicinal odors, as of the brewing of many roots, the fragrance of shores of sedges, ferns, and aromatic herbs steeped in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the creek, the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell of spatter-docks. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... probably because foolish parents seem to think it rather an amusing trait in their offspring. Now, the boy at Chittenden's who allowed his mind to wander, and did not concentrate, promptly made the acquaintance of the "spatter," a broad leathern strap; and the spatter hurt exceedingly, as I can testify from many personal experiences of it. On the whole, then, even the most careless boy found it to his advantage to concentrate. This clever teacher knew how quickly young brains tire, so he never devoted more ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... there are ways for authors to be great; Write ranc'rous libels to reform the State; Or if you choose more sun and readier ways, Spatter a minister with fulsome praise: Launch out with freedom, flatter him enough; Fear not, all men are dedication-proof. Be bolder yet, you must go farther still, Dip deep in gall thy mercenary quill. He who his pen in party quarrels draws, Lists an hired bravo to ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... to the drip, serenely careless of the thousand eyes upon him; he drank and clicked to Girl o' Mine, his mare. She pricked up her ears and approached a step or two; she tossed her head and whinnied; she was afraid of the drip and spatter of ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... voices, a scuffle and a scream; a gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... tangible danger completely obliterated all traces of nerves. He stood up in the firing-line. He drew himself up to the full of his height, and seemed to inhale with pleasure the dangerous air. All the time bullets were humming overhead like swift and malignant insects, or striking the ground with a spatter of brown earth. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... nature renders not Bigger and bigger the bulk of ocean, since So vast the down-rush of the waters be, And every river out of every realm Cometh thereto; and add the random rains And flying tempests, which spatter every sea And every land bedew; add their own springs: Yet all of these unto the ocean's sum Shall be but as the increase of a drop. Wherefore 'tis less a marvel that the sea, The mighty ocean, increaseth not. Besides, Sun with his heat draws off a mighty part: Yea, we behold that sun with burning ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Don't you spatter no grease a-fryin' that mush, or you'll wish you hadn't. I believe in the good old-fashioned rod, and there's one stuck up over that door, handy like. ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... These I have yet to see, perhaps yet more! Perhaps even I, reserved by angry fate, The last sad relic of my ruin'd state, (Dire pomp of sovereign wretchedness!) must fall, And stain the pavement of my regal hall; Where famish'd dogs, late guardians of my door, Shall lick their mangled master's spatter'd gore. Yet for my sons I thank ye, gods! 'tis well; Well have they perish'd, for in fight they fell. Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best, Struck through with wounds, all honest on the breast. But when the fates, in fulness of their rage, Spurn the hoar head of unresisting age, In dust ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... time for me to throw myself sideways into a convenient cleft, and to draw feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and high up the ravine on either side, was filled with tumbling, hissing snow, while the rocks on either side echoed with the musketry spatter of stones ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... most apparent. I don't believe, other things being equal, there is any other class of men who show such a disregard in public for other people's comfort as tobacco users do. A man would be considered a rowdy or a boor who should wilfully spatter mud on the clothing of a lady as she passed him on the sidewalk. But a lady to whom tobacco fumes are more offensive than mud, can hardly walk the streets in these days, but that men who call themselves ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... Julio from head to foot; taking in all the details of his military elegance. His cloak was worn thin and dirty; the leggings were spatter-dashed with mud; he smelled of leather, sweaty cloth and strong tobacco; but on one wrist he was wearing a watch, and on the other, his identity medal fastened with a gold chain. She had always admired her brother for his natural good taste, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rush, The intrepid Gauls the rash adventurers crush; And now, to vengeance Stung, with frantic air, Back on the British maindeck roll the war. There swells the carnage; all the tar-beat floor Is clogg'd with spatter'd brains and glued with gore; And down the ship's black waist fresh brooks of blood Course o'er their clots, and tinge the sable flood. Till War, impatient of the lingering strife That tires and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... made a quick, very slight upward movement; there was a spatter of ink; then the powerful, beautiful hand went on evenly "—tents noted." She rubbed the blotter over this line, put the pen in a cup of shot, and turned around. "What did ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... whenever the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and he tacked an enormous sign upon the willow under one of Hughie's lanterns. Owing to illness, it said, the ferry had been discontinued. Afterward he ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... reported had fled to Keegark by air the night before, which explained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. The Channel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of an occasional spatter of small-arms ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... in amazement. "I'm sure the white Ducks at the Farm can only waddle on the ground, or swim and spatter along the water when Wolf or Quick chases them for fun. And anyway their legs are very stiff and queer and grow very far back, as if their bodies were too heavy and going to fall down front, and they had to hold up their heads ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... that there was not a tottering grey-beard nor a toddling infant in the neighbourhood whose downfall they could encompass, the two became inseparable. It was pleasanter, they found, to play together, and go neck and neck round the eighteen holes, than to take on some lissome youngster who could spatter them all over the course with one old ball and a cut-down cleek stolen from his father; or some spavined elder who not only rubbed it into them, but was apt, between strokes, to bore them with personal reminiscences of the Crimean War. So they began to play together early and late. In ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... to do things. I want to work," cried Dora; "it would be cruel to keep me from the fun of helping you get supper. Haven't you something I can slip on instead of this dress? It is not very fine, but I don't want to spatter or burn it." ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, "There they are—BOTH ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Work, Painting, Leather Work, Fret Work, Picture Frames, Brackets, Wall Pockets, Work Boxes and Baskets, Straw Work, Skeleton Leaves, Hair Work, Shell Work, Mosaic, Crosses, Cardboard Work, Worsted Work, Spatter Work, Mosses, Cone Work, etc. Hundreds of exquisite Illustrations decorate the pages, which are full to overflowing with devices to ornament a home cheaply, tastefully, and delightfully. 300 ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... the lash and steel; Till when, up hill, the destin'd inn he gains, And trembling under complicated pains, Prone from his nostrils, darting on the ground, His breath emitted floats in clouds around: Drops chase each other down his chest and sides, And spatter'd mud his native colour hides: Thro' his swoln veins the boiling torrent flows, And every nerve a separate torture knows. His harness loos'd, he welcomes eager-eyed The pail's full draught that quivers by his side; And joys to see the well-known ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... three steps and entered the common room of the inn. It was well thronged at the time, but they found places at the end of a long table, and there they sat and discussed the landlady's Canary for the best part of a half-hour, until a sudden spatter of musketry, near at hand, came to startle the ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... is!" said Jennie. "I think I could manage with plants, if it were not for this eternal showering and washing they seem to require to keep them fresh. They are always tempting one to spatter the carpet and surrounding furniture, which are not equally benefited by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... continued. Later on there was rifle fire in the street, and, acting upon the Padre's suggestion, uncle and niece took refuge in their cellar, for the bullets were beginning to spatter on ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... Fabens, you'd have to come to that at last," said Colwell. "Wild beasts are thick as spatter around here; and you must down with some of 'em. It's no use to talk baby; you must kill the critters, or they'll eat you out of house ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... with an air of irascibility a stain of blood which his cut finger had left on the white paint near the lock. His eyes travelled from it to the muddy footprints of the two who had come in from the garden and to the spatter of earth-daubed leaves on the polished floor, and his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace of passion that made Ellen long to run to him and kiss him and bid him not give way to the madness of order so prevalent in this house. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... exploding all about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of her broken ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... certainly find the way. Whether Rachael had the courage to follow it was another question. She loved old Mrs. Gregory; they were good friends. But Rachael dismissed her with a little shudder, as from the spatter of icy water against her bared breast. The bishop? Rachael and Clarence duly kept a pew in one of the city's fashionable churches; it was the Breckenridge family pew, rented by the family for a hundred years. But they never sat in it, although Rachael felt vaguely sometimes ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Crack, crack, spatter, clatter, and crash comes the little carriage and team whirling into the San Luis. He hears it now. He knows what it means to him—Brent back and the pent-up words still unspoken! It nerves him to the test, it spurs him to the leap, it drives the blood bounding through his ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... him out," retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a woman ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... dismal winter's night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of politicians, jobbers, contractors, and newspapers, already scream "Hosanna," and attempt to spatter with lies and dust the road to the White House, and thus to prepare the way. And the medley already shakes hands, and enemies kiss each other, because if their elect succeeds, there will be peace over, and pickings for all the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... better. Yes, he would kill him like a dog, if the other—but no! The Hungarian, struck in the presence of the Tzigana, would certainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should be the sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko should spatter her face—a crimson stain upon her pale ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to-day? Ah! that thy heart 540 Were as my own, and that distinct as I Thou could'st articulate, so should'st thou tell, Where hidden, he eludes my furious wrath. Then, dash'd against the floor his spatter'd brain Should fly, and I should lighter feel my harm From Outis, wretch base-named and nothing-worth. So saying, he left him to pursue the flock. When, thus drawn forth, we had, at length, escaped Few paces from the cavern and the court, First, quitting my own ram, I loos'd my friends, 550 ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... slip past the sentries without being seen. I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into 'Spatter.' After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Ashcroft (which was the beginning of the long trail) at sunrise. The town lay low on the sand, a spatter of little frame buildings, mainly saloons and lodging houses, and resembled an ordinary cow-town in the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... night, Gypsy was awakened by a great noise. The wind was blowing a miniature hurricane through the trees, and the rain was falling in torrents. She could hear it spatter on the canvas roof, and drop from the poles, and gurgle in a stream through the ditch. She could hear, too, the loud, angry murmur of the trout brook and the splashing of hundreds of rivulets that dashed down the slope and over ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the little red-curtained windows you could look down to where the steerage passengers were gathered on the deck. When the bow of the great vessel plunged down into the big Atlantic waves, the smother of foam that shot upwards would be borne along with the wind, and spatter like rain against the purser's window. Something about this intermittent patter on the pane reminded the purser of the story, and so he ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... place?" He was on his knees digging a little trench with his knife, piling up the moist earth in miniature embankments, so that the dripping from the roof would not spatter this Princess of his whom he had ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heels, the caution is a good one for poets as respects truth to Nature. But it is a mischievous fallacy in historian or critic to treat as a blemish of the man what is but the common tincture of his age. It is to confound a spatter of mud ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... an elf-like measure to the music of an itinerant organist. Darting about, here, there, and everywhere, are packs of ragged little urchins. They paddle along in the dirty gutter, the black ooze from which they spatter over the passers on the sidewalk, and run with confiding recklessness against the legs of hurrying pedestrians. Ragged and poor as they certainly are, they do not often ask for alms, but continually give themselves up, with wild abandon, to chasing each other in and out between the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... him to a standstill, and I drew a bead behind his shoulder, and low down, resting the rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At the crack he ran off at speed, making no sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes, showing clear on the white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. For some minutes I followed the trail; and then, topping a ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of a low rock-wall, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... was soon completely surrounded by a thirsty mob, yelling and pushing and pulling to get to the bucket as the windlass brought it again and again to the surface. But their impatience and haste would soon overturn the windlass, and spatter the water all around the well till the whole crowd were wading in mud, the rope would break, and the bucket fall to the bottom. But there was a substitute for rope and bucket. The men would hasten away and get long, slim poles, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... retorted Bob, "but I'm not obliged to say what I mean now. I'm an alum. I can use as bad diction as I please and the long arm of the English department can't reach out and spatter my mistakes with ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... at once a scream from Alice, a big whoosh of wind, a flash way ahead (where I'd aimed), a spatter of hot metal inside the cabin, a blinding spot in the middle of the World Screen, a searing beam inches from my neck, an electric shock that lifted me from my seat and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to 350 on the mountains,—while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches. The character of such rain is totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,—one will spatter over the circumference of a saucer;—and the shower roars so that people cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... shall I tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, half-maddened, my ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... saw a blue flicker of sunlight on the steel as it whirled, saw the arm of Poleon Doret fling itself across the bar with the speed of a striking serpent, heard a smash of breaking glass, felt the shock of a concussion, and the spatter of some liquid in his face. Then he saw the man's revolver on the floor half-way across the room, saw fragments of glass with it, and saw the fellow step backward, snatching at the fingers of his right hand. A smell of powder-smoke ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... with a bullet as they rested in his breast pocket. He tramped along the road, and my sentries deflected his course away from the trenches, but he saw my men scattered about in the wood behind, and at daybreak the enemy artillery began to spatter the wood with a plentiful supply of shrapnel and shells. One dropped within twenty yards of myself and officers whilst at breakfast; pitching just under a tree, it lifted it into the air in a truly surprising manner. The number of shells—some of ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... head out of the window for some time, unmindful of the spatter of rain. But nothing happened. The man was gone. Of course the incident might not have the slightest bearing upon the previous adventures of this amazing night; still, it was suggestive. The young man had worn something round ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair breeze ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... everything to himself, and there was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave. Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud—we, of course, wished she would—but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook until there was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... came the spatter of German bullets against the side of the house; and occasionally a bullet struck home and left no sound, unless it was the sound of a man toppling over backwards to the floor, or a man as he clapped his hand to his head. The rifle ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... horn o'er yonder bridge, That with its wearisome but needful length Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright!— He comes, the herald of a noisy world, With spatter'd boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks! News from all nations lumb'ring at his back. True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind. Yet careless what he brings, his one concern Is to conduct it to the destined inn; And, having dropp'd th' expected bag, pass on. He whistles as ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... say," said Dick furiously, "that the ragpickers and sneaks that wade around in the slumgallion of this country would dare to spatter ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... estimate of the situation. This time the slug slapped rock close enough to spatter sandstone chips ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... care now, and don't spatter me all over the slide," said the cheerful stout girl, whose doll-like face was ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... jerk, he raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished in the same ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... voice the three sisters protested that she had better not; she was not properly equipped, and would ink herself all over. If she would pin down a leaf upon the scrap she held up, Grace should spatter it for her, and they would make it up ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was sharp. He did not spill over on every occasion. He had no little spurts of wit like a spatter of water on a hot stove, but when he let out his joke it went off like a percussion cap. The attention of the company being secured, he alluded to his present position as a change, he believed, for the better—from his former relation to society when he was preaching against, to the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... them as I do, And yet I love your hunters too, That nothing is so vile As strutting up and down a street,8 Dirt-spatter'd o'er from head to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... her chatter time flew; and Herrick was just beginning to think of the waiting chauffeur, when there was a sudden spatter of rain against the window panes; and looking out he saw that while they had been talking ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... They stood in their trenches. We fired. We got them by the ones and twos. They ducked, then—swoop—again the major was over them, and again they forgot. Up went their rifles, and spatter, spatter, the bullets went ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... ye young rascal!" exclaimed the woodsman, with a chuckle. "You'll have that whole spatter of Tories arter us. Couldn't you hide your clothes better 'n that? Might have left 'em ashore. If the old gentleman hadn't been blinder'n a bat at midday, he'd ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... to give workingmen old age pensions, because they never reach old age. They find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know which way to turn. And which way do they turn? They try voting. They ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... Patty girl!" cried her father. "I'd rather you'd have a good sense of humour than a talent for spatter-work!" ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... 'em as thick as spatter! They come when you're asleep, and there don't anybody know it. I shouldn't dare open my eyes in the night. They're wrapped in a sheet, all white, and their eyes snap like fire. Angeline says ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... the mouth of the cavern when they were yet a couple of hundred yards from it. It was a wide, low cleft in the north face of the chasm wall, and in front of it, spreading out like the flow of a stream, was a great spatter of white sand, like a huge rug that had been spread out in a space cleared of its chaotic litter of rock and broken slate. At first glance Aldous guessed that the cavern had once been the exit of a subterranean stream. The sand deadened the sound of their footsteps as ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... dull and overcast, there was a spatter of rain on the sidewalk, as Susan loitered over her late holiday breakfast, and Georgie, who was to go driving that afternoon with an elderly admirer, scolded violently over her coffee and rolls. No boarders happened to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... now," replied the Commissioner. "We already have, Matter, Batter, Tatter, Smatter Patter, Ratter, Spatter and Scatter." ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. Mud. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... shrill o'erhead, The bullets spatter thick below, By candle light we count our dead, While ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... a very quiet fellow When he's left alone; But oh, how he does roar and bellow, Rattle, snap and groan, Clatter, spatter, dash and patter, Rumble, shriek and moan Whene'er I take my sticks in hand And beat him soundly ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... angrily that if it were Collins's blood he had not missed it particularly, for he had moved away without leaving a sign of a trail. Where to I had no means of knowing, till five minutes later I found another spatter of blood on my corduroy road,—and as I looked at it my own blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collins who could have lain in wait for me; but he had had the nerve to walk away on my own road! Where to, beat me; but considering ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... first start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain in ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ceased coddling his chin to point a straight forefinger at him, with a triumphant: "You see!"—But Purdy who, sick and tired of the discussion, had withdrawn to the window to watch the rain zig-zag in runlets down the dusty panes, and hiss and spatter on the sill; Purdy puckered his lips to a sly and ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... yet. He had seized Burr, and hoisting him in his two arms was coming at a plunging run through the spatter of bullets and ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... she was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... shop-winders with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Budmouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to have seen ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... morrow, Gossip Joan." "Polly. Why, how now, Madam Flirt? If you thus must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let's try who best can spatter, Madam Flirt! "Lucy. Why, how now, saucy jade? Sure the wench is tipsy! How can you see me made The scoff of such a gipsy? [To him.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... thrive? in flatt'ry deal; Your scorn, your hate, with that conceal. Seem only to regard your friends, But use them for your private ends. Stint not to truth the flow of wit; Be prompt to lie whene'er 'tis fit. Bend all your force to spatter merit; Scandal is conversation's spirit. Boldly to everything pretend, And men your talents shall commend. I know the Great. Observe me right, So shall you grow like man polite." He spoke and bowed. With mutt'ring jaws The wond'ring circle grinned applause. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... work where the adobe mud was rotted. He poked the muzzle of the rifle through the crevice, took careful aim, and had the satisfaction of hearing a savage curse in the instant following the flash. He threw himself flat immediately, listening to the spatter and whine of the bullets of the volley that greeted his shot. They kept it up long—but when there was a momentary cessation he crept back to the entrance of the adobe house, entered, followed another passage and came out on the ledge farther along the side of the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "God Bless Our ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in the way of being generally invited to write about what interests me, instead of indulging in a kind of spray or spatter work of beneficial publicity—instead of getting off ideas at a nation with a nice elegant literary atomizer, I insist on making ideas do things and I plan on having my ideas done up solidly in ten solid men who will make the ideas look solid and ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee |
