Sentence Examples:
Precisely as he reached the street-door the manager raised the knocker; but the latch clicked, and the wicket was drawn slightly ajar.
On this cold December afternoon Peter stood, books in hand, and surveyed that aggravating knocker from his stand on the sidewalk.
It possessed neither bell nor knocker, but as one stepped upon the threshold this door opened noiselessly as if dumbly inviting the visitor to enter the square apartment discovered.
You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another.
To the brass knocker on her door, the rector applied himself, and sent a confident announcement of his presence through the house.
The knocker on the front door sounded peremptorily, and Bates turned away without another word, and admitted Stoddard, who came in hurriedly.
The knocker smote the wood with a hollow sound, like a stroke on the iron door of a vault, loud enough to rouse the dead.
They lie side by side, like three dogs in a triple kennel, with their heads outward and easily accessible to the individual who performs the functions of "knocker-up."
I confess I never had much ambition to wrench knockers, but that may have been because I was perfectly content with the world as it is without making it any more dangerous.
On the broad oaken door he had fashioned one of the most remarkable knockers and the most beautiful door knob that were known to Europe.
He walks up a little slope or up some steps to a friend's house, and just as he is lifting his hand to the knocker, he has a convulsion and falls down unconscious.
The old man could scarcely believe his ears when he heard the sound of the old brass knocker on the front door resound loudly through the house.
Then he brushed an imaginary speck off his sleeve, then he drew on a pair of buff kid gloves, then he went up the path, rapped at the knocker, and went in.
He went, and as he was standing just off the hall, waiting to be announced, the knocker on the great front door was raised, and fell with a resounding clang.
I, grandson of the man who built that house, my father's home and mine, lifted the brazen knocker of the door and heard no footstep anticipate my knock.
How they seemed to nudge each other and twinkle among themselves at the poor ass down there, who actually took himself and his doings so seriously as to flourish, even on a little brass knocker.
When, therefore, Holden struck with the knocker on the door, the obsequious Felix was at hand to open it, and show him into the parlor.
Betty lingered an instant to pick up odds and ends that might be spoiled by the rain, and when she turned from taking the red halter off the knocker, two lovely pink roses lay on the stone steps.
The canvas was waving violently now, and Madison traced the cord attachment, on little pulleys, across the ceiling to where it ran through the door and was affixed to the knocker without.
Stopping a moment to smooth her ruffled plumage and get her breath, she walked around to the front of the house, climbed the steps, and boldly lifted the great knocker.
However, I gave the blackened brass knocker a ceremonious rap or two, and I could have told by the sound of it, if in no other way, that there was nobody at home.
Passing the door at which I had first seen them, I noticed that where the knocker should have been there was nothing but a few bent nails and a splintered panel.
If they do, now and then, run away with a knocker, paint a sign, beat the watch, or huff a magistrate, they pay for their pastime, and that's sufficient.
He also had a nervous way of drawing one hand down his face till he lowered his jaw prodigiously, after which, like the handle of a knocker, it would fall back to place with quite a thump.
As he lifted the ponderous knocker upon Sylvester's door, he remembered vividly the only other occasion upon which he had visited those chambers.
Pinocchio at last, losing all patience, seized the knocker in a rage, intending to give a blow that would resound through the house.
Households were compelled to surrender bathtubs, door knobs and knockers, kitchen utensils, gas fixtures, bedclothes, etc.
He made for the front door and, without dismounting, plied the large brass knocker till a servant in livery made his appearance. "Is your master up?"
The very schoolboys lower their voices as they pass the darkened windows, and there needs no muffling of the knocker, for who would disturb the invalid?
When Margaret Bean came to the door the second time she heard the squeak of the fiddle, and clanged the knocker loud to overcome it.
Then came a clang of the knocker, and this time the girl ushered into the study a clamping, red-faced man in a shabby coat.
Jerome, for answer, stepped resolutely in, reached the knocker, raised it, and let it fall with a great imperious clang of brass, defying, as it were, his own shyness, like a herald at arms.
Thinking this was rather queer, but quite ready to attribute it to natural causes, I approached the building, and, making use of my knuckles in lieu of a knocker, beat a loud tattoo on the woodwork.
The grotesque faces supporting the triangular portico seemed to be mocking her, the enormous knocker transformed itself into a formidable obstacle.
It was even whispered that he once, in the company of some friends, made as though he would wrench the knocker off the door of some shop.
The day after Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremony had taken place, 'the knocker of her door,' to quote her own complacent phrase, 'was never still.'
You are terrified, if a stranger, by the resonance of this great door, as you let the huge iron ring which serves as knocker fall on the miniature anvil beneath it.
The autumn leaves were dull and sodden upon the drive; the bell and knocker upon the heavy door, from which the paint was worn in places, were rusty.
The knocker on the great door sounded, and it sprang open and quickly slammed again, and a stifled, strange sound followed, as of a scuffle.
Estelle's friend was talking about her piano, and how hard it was to get good servants nowadays, and say, Jim, I've heard knockers in my time, but Estelle is the original leader of the anvil chorus.
Tiptoeing up the steps, he was about to lift the heavy bronze knocker when a porter opened the door and motioned him to enter.
We mention here, for the benefit of political economists, that this knocker-down, who does the most disagreeable and laborious part of the work, has the lowest wages paid to any man in the house.
The knocker tied over thickly with a great muffler of cloth, lest the sound might come into the chamber; and then, awful stillness.
And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.
All who were not at the council were safely in their houses, and there was no one to notice the bent figure slowly dragging itself along, or to hear the feeble knocks as he tried to reach the great brass knockers, which were just too high for him to reach.
The large brass door knockers were vigorously plied, and sometimes quite a commotion was caused by "waking up the wrong passenger."
I therefore plied the knocker with my right hand, and kept the bell ringing with my left until I heard the door chain rattle within.
With something resembling a groan the surgeon went on, and in a few minutes more the party gained the piazza, and Jack was using the big knocker on the door lustily.
Meekly, when summoned, the private secretary went, and on reaching the front door, this particular morning, he found there another young man in the act of rapping the knocker.
It was only by a humble answer, and by begging the old gentleman to walk down and look at the discarded knocker, promising that it should be replaced if he thought proper, that he could be appeased.
The sound of the knocker had scarcely ceased to echo when I heard the shuffling of feet within, and the sound of chains and bolts being withdrawn.
Then my hand was on the knocker, and its fall startled me as the clatter echoed far down the street and seemed to wake the very dead.
He had laughed at Jem when he said his hand trembled, but his own shook as he took hold of the knocker, and gave the most comical double rap ever thumped upon a big front door.
Then the door opened suddenly, and the knocker, half detained in his grasp, slipped from his fingers and fell with a crash that made him tremble at his hardihood.
I could not have completed my third snore when there came a furious ringing at the street-door bell, and then an impatient thumping at the knocker, which awakened me at once.
He had screwed up his little yellow physiognomy into the shape of an ill-conditioned and battered face on a brass knocker.
The "knockers" boo-ed him from their shores and said he was crazy, but history plants his feet on the topmost rung of fame long after the bitter end, when short commons were with him uncommon short.
Just as they had finished, to their great satisfaction the studio knocker sounded the quick double knock that always heralded Griffin, and Judith flew to welcome her.
He opened the clicking latch of the gate and rattled the knocker on the front door of the little cottage; and a tall, motherly woman of the neighborhood appeared and ushered him in.
When half-past six struck, everyone crowded into the schoolroom, and presently a cab drove up to the door, and a modest rap sounded on the knocker.
There was a steep, sloping roof with wide eaves, a rather narrow doorway in the middle of the front, carved with very elaborate work, and an old knocker with a lion's head, small but fierce.
After examining all these Davy decided that, as he had a letter in charge, he was more of a postman than anything else, and he therefore raised the knocker and rapped loudly.
Still there was no reply; and, growing agitated now, Guest once more knocked loudly, with the repetition of the knocker, telling plainly of the trembling hand of him who raised it and let it fall.
At that instant his summons upon the tiny knocker was answered by the soft footfall of a woman, and the opening of the door a narrow way.
She had come all the way from Nuremberg to this spot, thinking it possible that in this spot alone she might receive succor; and now she stood there, fearing to raise the knocker on the door.
I see an old woman alone in a decrepit old caravan, with cobwebs on the knocker, with a blistered ensign flapping idly over the door.
He saw in his mind's eye the frowning portals of a convict settlement, and heard the boom of a giant knocker reverberating through gaunt aisles of despair.
She lifted the heavy brass knocker, which looked like the head of a dolphin, and gave three brisk blows on the closed door.
There was no opening in the wall, neither bell nor knocker at the door; those who came with couriers galloping before them to strike with their silver-headed canes could dispense with a knocker.
There being no bell, he had raised and let fall the great knocker, and then stood still in the sunshine looking placidly about him.
Under her care the mirrors glistened and the brasses shone; the very knocker on the great front entrance looked brighter whenever she passed by.
When he reached the great gate, he knocked boldly on the iron knocker, and the knock was so imperious that the porter hastened to open it at once.
At the knocker; and then in an instant another rattling series of knocks, as if a tethered donkey were trying to kick in the panel.
Rather timidly, but full of interest, she walked along the paved garden path, and tapped at the door with her knuckles, not being able to reach the knocker.
She lifted the knocker gingerly in her white gloved hand, and felt by no means reassured when she was shown in, and followed the servant up the narrow staircases to the attics.
The knocker on the front door was so bright that Pompey could see his own white teeth and rolling eyeballs reflected from the shining brass.
A fearful thought of the stranger intruded just here upon his fine resolves, and to dispel it he knocked noisily on the little brass knocker.
"Courage, courage," she murmured; and quickly laying hold of the knocker again, she smote thrice upon the panel and listened.
I was, however, most surprised at seeing no keyhole, no latch, no knocker, and from the absence of these I surmised that the door only opened from within.
Most of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the doors; perhaps not exactly suitable to an Ark as suggestive of morning callers and a postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building.
Just after the roof fell, so Father said, he and all the rest of the miners saw a band of knockers gathered around the pile of fallen roof and pointing at the figure of the woman crushed beneath.
With huge delight, he was absorbing all the superstitions of the sea, and giving the steersman a gruesome crop of tales of knockers and gas sprites underground.
Two persons had been standing at the door for a considerable time, and by every effort of knocker and bell endeavoring to obtain admittance.
The next minute he had given a heavy peal on knocker and bell, listened to the hollow echoes raised within the forbidding place, and stood waiting for the opening of the door.
The dull sound of the knocker at the outer door was heard, then a bell tinkled twice, several doors opened and shut, and a new personage entered the chamber.
The great door beneath was shut, like every other door; but there was a ponderous knocker, to which we directed our energies.
The brass numeral under the knocker was hanging by one screw, and had fallen round so that it might as well have been six as nine.
Then came comparatively decent dwellings with a vast display of green paint, and to the doors brass knockers of the most dazzling luster.
There he thundered with the knocker till he brought a maid-servant, half asleep, to the door, and asked to speak to old Frau Gr?fin instantly.
Before Mary could say anything more, a sudden clatter of hoofs outside announced the arrival of horsemen, and a minute later the sounding of the heavy brass knocker echoed through the hall.
Then descending over the dusty wheel, he lifted out his bag, and rapped twice upon the open door with the greenish knocker which he supposed had once been shining brass.
That was all the visitor heard, and the faint cry that ended the sentence was drowned in a second tremendous peal at knocker and bell.
It was plain enough where the door was now, for a light shone beneath it, and the sides looked light, showing its shape, just as another peal came from knocker and bell.
This innovation for a second time consigned the knocker to oblivion, and many there were who, not realizing its artistic value, cast it into the scrap heap.
Others, with a veneration for heirlooms, packed the knockers away in old hair trunks under the eaves of the spacious attic, together with other antiques of varying character.
How many men of letters from all over the world have lifted the knocker to gain admittance to our late loved poet's home, and think what stories such visits could furnish!
This knocker has attracted the attention of antiquarians throughout the country, who have given it much study in attempts to find out the period in which it was made.
Johnson house, and, as one gazes at it, he can in fancy see David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds ascending the steps, and if he pauses a moment longer he can no doubt even hear the metallic ring of the knocker, as it responds to the vigorous raps that they give.
The knockers had a supercilious perk to their bronze or brass noses, the dandelions on the lawns had a highly connected air, and the very pigs were evidently descended from "our first families."
The warm September sun touched lovingly the old brass knocker, and peeped behind the stately colonial pillars of the long veranda.