"Rattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but—woe is me!—there are other senses besides sight, and my unfortunate nostrils drank in a most foetid polecatty odour, ever increasing as he drew nearer and nearer. Room to sit there was none; but, at the blast of the tube, the rattle over the pitty pavement soon shook the obnoxious animal down between us, squeezing the poisonous exhalation out of him at each successive jolt. As dawn rose, we saw he was a German, and doubtless the poor fellow was very hard-up for money, and had been feeding for some ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... some few fetish charms, and a beautiful ornament of wild cat and leopard tails, tied on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the centre of which was a little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt buttons. In among the tails hung three little brass bells and a brass rattle; these bells and rattles are not only "for dandy," but serve to scare away snakes when the ornament is worn in the forest. A fine strip of silky-haired, young gorilla skin made the band to sling the ornament from the shoulder when worn. Gorillas seem well enough known round here. One ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... was what suggested to him the idea of strolling down the beach, past the sentry, and on toward the fort. The darkness of the night, the rattle of hoofs, the clash of the bells, the quick challenge of the guard, the failure to give the countersign, the sharp volley of the sentinels, and the wild cry, "to arms," followed in rapid succession. The tocsin sounded, also the slogan. The culverin, ukase, and door-tender were all fired. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... morning he entered Mrs——'s drawing-room, with an open letter in his hand, and, in his peculiarly joyous and animated manner, exclaimed, "Don't be surprised if I play all sorts of antics! I am like a child with a new rattle! Here is a letter from my friend Lord Byron, telling me he has dedicated to me his poem of the 'Corsair.' Ah, Mrs.——, it is nothing new for a poor poet to dedicate his poem to a great lord; but it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... were tearing down the fences, and the companies were forming for battle in the fields, when there was a sudden outcry, the rolling thunder of many hoofs, and the sharp rattle of pistol-shots. A dense cloud of dust came whirling down the turnpike, and emerging from the yellow canopy the New York troopers, riding for their lives, dashed through the ranks of the startled infantry, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... acquaintance in Sussex of "an old family tortoise," which had then been domesticated for thirty years. It is clear that he fell in love with it at first sight. We have no means of tracing the growth of his passion; but in 1780 we find him eloping with its object in a post-chaise. "The rattle and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it that, when I turned it out in a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden." It reads like a Court Journal: "Yesterday morning H.R.H. the Princess Alice took an airing of half an hour on the ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... She groped her way past the stalls of the three Pleasants, whose dwelling she had invaded, to the upright ladder which led to the loft. The horses were all lying down after their hard day's work, and only one of them turned his great head with a rattle of his halter, to see who this small intruder could be. Lilac clambered up the ladder and was soon in the dark fragrant-smelling loft above, where the trusses of hay and straw were mysteriously grouped under the low thick ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Walter himself. "You will expect," he wrote to the same lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, "to see a person who had dedicated himself to literary pursuits, and you will find me a rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, half-sportsman, through whose head a regiment of horse has been exercising since he was five years old."[17] And what Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his poetry, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... of any shot whatever. I heard an owl hooting as I went home, and then the rattle of a heavy wagon, and the bells of horses. I have said ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... th' singin wol th' chap had to nudge him two or three times; then he'd throw daan his book an' fidget in his pocket as if he'd forgetten all abaat it, an' bring aght sixpenoth ov hawpneys, an' put 'em in wi' sich a rattle wol ivery body'd ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... recall from any other scene, as the natural train or circle, as he might say, of such a presence. For an instant he thought he had got the face as a specimen of imperturbability watched, with wonder, across the hushed rattle of roulette at Monte-Carlo; but this quickly became as improbable as any question of a vulgar table d'hote, or a steam-boat deck, or a herd of fellow-pilgrims cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, during a performance, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... before we could reach her. We went straight for her, therefore, keeping awash just as we were. They saw the sinking vessel in front of them and that little dark speck moving over the surface, and they suddenly understood their danger. I saw a number of men rush to the bows, and there was a rattle of rifle-fire. Two bullets were flattened upon our four-inch armour. You might as well try to stop a charging bull with paper pellets as the Iota with rifle-fire. I had learned my lesson from the Adela, and this time I had the torpedo discharged ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rose the gaunt sails of the mill. To reach it he walked on six score paces or more to the little landing-quay, where a raised path ran to the building. As he drew near to it he was astonished to hear the rattle of oars working in rollocks and a man's ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Civil War, and later for eighteen years in Congress, where he made a creditable but by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J. Guiteau, approached the President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body. Death followed, after a painful struggle, two ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... of the great city lay spread out below them like a map, with the thoroughfares indicated by faint twinkling lines of fire. And, as they continued to rise, the various disjointed sounds which, even at that early hour, pervaded the city, began to reach their ears: the rumbling of a wagon or the rattle of a cab over the stone-paved streets, the barking of a dog, the crow of some unnaturally wakeful rooster, the clank of shunting trucks at one or another of the many goods stations dotted here and there all over the metropolis, the distant ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... elephants)—heroes armed with swords and darts and bearing in their hands maces and stout clubs. And surrounded by hundreds of warriors with lances and spears in their hands, the monarch set out on his journey. And with the leonine roars of the warriors and the notes of conchs and sound of drums, with the rattle of the car-wheels and shrieks of huge elephants, all mingling with the neighing of horses and the clash of weapons of the variously armed attendants in diverse dresses, there arose a deafening tumult while the king ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... unaccustomed and sumptuous feast. Then the carvers got to work, and, as the waiters carried round the laden plates, comparative quiet reigned; but, when the plates began to reach the guests, the clatter of crockery, the rattle of knives and forks, and the babel of voices, made such a festive hubbub as was grateful to ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... sacrament to those Whose chains and handcuffs rattle? Whose backs soon after felt the blows, More heavy than thy cattle?" "I'm from the South," the ghost replies, "And I was there a teacher; Saw men in chains, with laughing eyes: I ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... fit and trim, Curly whiskered sons of battle, Very dignified and prim Till they hear the Jezails rattle; [25] Cattle thieves of yesterday, Now the wardens of the cattle, Fighting Brahmins of Lahore, ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... There is a dealer in weather-vanes. Other things dealt in hereabout are these: chronometers, "nautical instruments," wax gums, cordage and twine, marine paints, cotton wool and waste, turpentine, oils, greases, and rosin. Queer old taverns, public houses, are here, too. Why do not their windows rattle with a "Yo, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... press the head down, so that the apples shall remain firm and full under all kinds of handling. Apples may be pressed too much as well as too little. If pressed so that many are broken, and badly broken, they will soon get loose and rattle in the barrels, and nothing spoils them sooner than this. What we want is to have them just so they shall be sure to remain firm, and carefully shaking so as to have them well settled together, has as much to do with their remaining firm as the pressing down of the head. After the barrels are filled ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... looked at her, so swallowing is the character of ocean darkness, and so subtle apparently, so fleet in fact, the settling away of a fabric under canvas from an object stationary on the water. I could distinctly hear the rattle of the oars in the rowlocks, and the splash of the dipped blades, but could not discern the boat. It was speedily evident, however, that they were pulling wide of me; my ear could not mistake. Again I tried to shout, but to no purpose. Manifestly no one had thought of taking my bearings ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... ("The real American popcorn, equally famous in Paris and London, tuppence each packet!" from Vendor in gangway) ... history and life of the ... ("'Buffalo Bill Puzzle,' one penny!" from another vendor behind) ... impress one fact upon your minds; this is not ... (roar and rattle of passing train) ... in the ordinary or common acceptation of ... ("Puff-puff-puff!" from engine shunting trucks) ... Many unthinking persons have said ... (Piercing and prolonged scream from same engine.) This ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... a solemn and majestic manner. We cannot expect such big wheels to hurry themselves. Under the bridge, puffing a little more quickly, then we rattle through Westbourne Park and by Wormwood Scrubs. Puff-puffing much more quickly now, but not quite so loudly, as the driver has pulled the lever back and the steam goes up with less force through the chimney: working quietly. Away, away, on our iron steed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... stamens, to describe pistils without reference to their functions, or the why and wherefore of their existence, is to content one's self with husks in the presence of a feast of fatness - to listen to the rattle of dry bones rather than the heavenly harmonies of life. We have reason to be profoundly thankful for the signs to be seen on every side, that the dreary stuff which was called botany in the teaching of the past will soon cease to masquerade in its ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... this opportunity of finishing his will; but as the servants were all in attendance at supper he could not get any body to witness it; and for this he was obliged to wait till a very late hour, when all the company at last departed. The rattle of carriages at length died away; and when all was silence, just as he was about to ring for his witnesses, he heard Lady Sarah's step coming along the corridor towards the study: he went out immediately to meet her, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... into that corner. Through the pane Ruth saw a squirming mass of scaly bodies, mixed up with an old quilt. More than one tail, with rows of "buttons" and rattles on it, was elevated, and one angry serpent "sprung his rattle" sharply. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... hands also consisted of things of a very different nature. Her right hand bore a brazen rattle, through the narrow lamina of which, bent like a belt, certain rods passing, produced a sharp triple sound through the vibrating motion of her arm. An oblong vessel, in the shape of a boat, depended from her left hand, on the handle of which, in that part which ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... for Anglo-Indian Babies than for any class of the great exile community. Legislation provides them with neither rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor pension. Papa has a Raja and Star of India to play with; Mamma the Warrant of Precedence and the Hill Captains; but Baby has nothing—not even a missionary; Baby is without the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... staggered back. The room, the verandah, the whole world it seemed, was shaking and vibrating like a rickety steam-engine. For a moment the human senses were paralyzed by a deafening roar and rattle. Mademoiselle Brun turned to Denise, and for a time they clung to each other; and then Denise, whose strong young arms half lifted her companion from the ground, gained the open window. She held there for a moment, and then ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... sound that fell upon his ear as he left his door, was the blessing murmured by his bride. Again he felt disposed to turn back and sacrifice all for his affection; but already one of the city guard stood behind him, and the rattle of arms on the pavement told him that his arrest had not been lightly planned ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... the quarter to seven I heard the rattle of the cans outside. I opened the front door, and there was my man, singling out my cans from a bunch he carried and whistling through his teeth. He jumped a bit ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... begun; how would it terminate? Next there was a crashing sound as if the ship had struck on a rock, and she trembled in all her timbers, and there was still the roar of the great guns, but added to it the rattle of musketry; and now followed wild shouts and shrieks, and the clashing of steel as cutlass met cutlass, and men strove desperately for life, and there was the sharp report of pistol shots, and the cries increased; and there was the tramping ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... good thoughts attended, like the spring The swallows follow over land and sea. Pain sleeps at once; at once, with open eyes, Dozing despair awakes. The shepherd sees His flock come bleating home; the seaman hears Once more the cordage rattle. Airs of home! Youth, love, and roses blossom; the gaunt ward Dislimns and disappears, and, opening out, Shows brooks and forests, and the blue beyond Of mountains. Small the pipe; but O! do thou, Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not really care about the rod—he was not even thinking of it. He heard all the sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs, there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch which she had put out on the table to mark the time of Mary's sewing by. There ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Antiquities, when, in replacing the penholder, which is attached there by a small brass chain, some inattentiveness, some want of care, my ill-luck, in short, led me to set it down in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the desk. It tumbled-I heard the little chain rattle-it tumbled farther-then stopped short. The mischief was done. The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that drop—Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk, that small, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... hand. She diverted her search to candles, but these also were hard to find. She spent several minutes there in the darkness with the wind howling weirdly around like a lost thing seeking shelter, and the sand beating against the little window with a persistent rattle that worried her nerves with ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... marked "Lettres" to the dash-board, threw in a sacking-bag, and cap in hand, invited the traveller to mount with him "where there was air." The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... only whipped on his horses. The pony and the donkey were still galloping furiously, both their riders keeping their seats. Butchers' boys always seem glued to their saddles, so that there appeared nothing astonishing in Jem Rattle's not getting a fall; but how George, without his saddle, and not much accustomed to riding, sat so long was something more remarkable. Whether he might have got to the end of his race without accident if his father and mother had not now appeared by the side of the road it is impossible to say; ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... from shore to shore. The small arms make a rattle; Since wars began I'm sure no man E'er saw so strange ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... old, who once proudly to battle Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain; The escutcheon and shield, which with ev'ry blast rattle, Are the only sad vestiges ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... When you get to him rub him gently a few times with your hand, and then raise the saddle very slowly, until he can see it, and smell and feel it with his nose. Then let the skirt loose, and rub it very gently against his neck the way the hair lies, letting him hear the rattle of the skirts as he feels them against him; each time getting a little farther backward, and finally slipping it over his shoulders on his back. Shake it a little with your hand, and in less than five minutes you can rattle it ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... the hut. The sky was solid with stars; the moon rose like a sharp scythe. The confused rumor of women crying in fright resounded from the various huts; the men who had been sleeping in the open, also woke up and the rattle of arms echoed over ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... moment he had caught the rattle of wheels along the road, and had picked up his field-glass to see who was passing. It was only a coloured man jogging along in the heat and dust with a cart full of chicken-coops. The Colonel watched him drive up a lane that led to the back of ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and skirted great pits dug in the grassy roads to prevent the peasants from conveniently perpetrating thefts of wood. Once we came upon a party of timber-thieves (it was Sunday afternoon), who espied us in time to rattle off in their rude telyega with their prize, a great tree, at a rate which would have reduced ordinary flesh and bones to a jelly; leaving us to stare helplessly at the freshly hewn stump. Tawny hares tripped ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... were in the streets on the quest for cheap luncheons. Thorpe noted the manner in which some of them studied the large bill of fare placarded beside a restaurant door; the spectacle prompted him luxuriously to rattle the gold coins remaining in his pocket. He had been as anxious about pence as the hungriest of those poor devils, only a week before. And now! He thrust up the door in the roof of the cab, and bade the driver stop at his bank. Thence, after some brief but very agreeable business, and a ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... behind, and the cold it brought with it penetrated the cabin, driving them closer to the stove. All night it blew, and once, waking behind the tent canvas with which the bunk where she slept was screened, the girl caught a rattle on the wooden walls of the cabin, that sounded as if it were being peppered with innumerable pellets. In the morning the wind had fallen, but the cabin was unusually dark, and investigation revealed that in a single night ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... She heard the rattle of a tin cup against the jug. As she moved carefully down the way toward the spring, Blatch's ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... enumerate their palm trees, but they count the miles of their sea-coast, and the acres under cultivation and the height of the peaks, and revel in large statistics and the bigness generally, and forget how a few men rattle around in a great deal of scenery. They shout their statistics across the Rockies and the deserts to New York. The Mississippi Valley is non-existent to the Californian. His fellow-feeling is for the opposite coast-line. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... at a fearful pace, heeling over until the rippling water fingers the edge of the gunwale as if it were just getting ready to leap over and take possession. But the hilarious Koli balances himself on the sloping thwarts and jumps and sings and claps his hands, while the pipes screech and the drums rattle. Twice, or three times, does the whole fleet go out over the bar and wheel and return, each boat racing to be first, with no more sense of danger ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... shall the traitor rest, He, the deceiver, Who would win maiden's breast, Ruin, and leave her? In the lost battle, Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle With groans of the dying; Eleu loro There shall ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... middle, and got my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that the urchin was frighted, and let me drop, and I should infallibly have broke my neck, if the mother had not held her apron under me. The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle, which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon. There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the sharp ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... dropped with a flurried rattle against the fudge pan. "Oh!" a shriek of dismay, "my dear young and giddy friend, we're all out of sugar. What if we should want to make anything to-night? Let's run back to the grocery ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder than ever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenading upon the grass. I passed close to a little ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... impressed upon him that it was the only way in which he could become fashionable and acquainted with 'the best men.' He knew just enough of the affair not to be ridiculous; and, for the rest, with a great deal of rattle and apparent heedlessness of speech and deed, he was really an extremely selfish and sufficiently shrewd person, who never compromised himself. It is astonishing with what dexterity Guy Flouncey could extricate ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... might be fulfilled. Soon—ha, yes, in a few short hours the feud should be ended once and for all and the house of Conisby avenged to the uttermost. Thinking thus, I heeded no more the raving tempest around me until, roused by the plunge and rattle of the gibbet-chains, I raised my head and shaking my staff up at that black and shrivelled thing, I laughed loud and fierce, and, even as I did so, there leapt a great blaze of crackling flame and thereafter a thunder-clap that seemed to shake the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... course I admit, but your v squared and your v prime squared rattle in my head like nails ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... lot: But my spirit as they went, with them went and so I cried, * 'Ah return ye!' but replied she, 'Alas! return is not To a framework lere and lorn that lacketh blood and life, * A frame whereof remaineth naught but bones that rattle and rot: Mine eyes are blind and cannot see quencht by the flowing tear! * Mine ears are dull and lost to sense: they have no power ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... be upstairs; for presently they heard her running down, after which a fresh rattle began at the obstinate bolt. But still the door did not open, and at length Mrs. Worrett put her lips to the keyhole, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... Rachel, dear, rest your head on Charley's shoulder. You must. Charley always minds me, and you will have to. Now, buddy, just drop your head on hers a minute. Capital! Your light curls make her hair look more like black velvet than ever! That will do. Now I leave you to your fate. I am rattle-headed, I know, but I hope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... experience as such. We moved out and back for about a mile, eventually reaching a house called Blauwpoorte Farm.[3] It was not a bad place then, and was not shelled, though at night the bullets used to rattle round if you walked abroad. Here on the second day I took a small party of men, as a working party, to the shelters at the 'Sunken Road,' rather nearer the line. I think we were engaged in clearing the ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... dice-box. To rattle; to talk without consideration, also to move off or go away. To rattle one off; to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... that great black gulf, yawning beyond the extinguished footlights, makes your heart leap up at your throat; if without noting the quality or length of your part the just plain, bald fact of "acting something" thrills you with nameless joy; if the rattle-to-bang of the ill-treated old overture dances through your blood, and the rolling up of the curtain on the audience at night is to you as the magic blossoming of a mighty flower—if these are the things that you feel, your fate is sealed: Nature ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... although my line is far apart from yours. Whether you can do anything that I ask of you or not, I shall be happy then, as I would be now, to do you any just and right service.... Perhaps I have mistaken my vocation. Certainly, if I was back with my rocker on the Tuolumne, I'd make it rattle livelier than ever I did before. I have occasionally thought of London Bridge, but the Thames is now so d—-d cold and dirty, and besides I can swim, and any attempt at drowning would, through the mere instinct of self-preservation, only result in my ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rattle of the chain announced that the anchor was down. The sails were dewed up, ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... rattle, up drove a rickety post-chaise to the door of the parsonage. Out of it, and into the kitchen, came stalking a tall middle-aged woman, in a long black cloak, black bonnet, and black gloves, with a face ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the pure high notes of a woman's voice, sustained by the sound of the viol on which she accompanied her song, rose above the rattle of the storm against the casements, and floated up to the chamber of death. Don Juan stopped his ears against the barbarous ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... will last all the rest of my life," she said: "and so I take leave of your Majesty forever." She went accompanied by the regrets and tears of Anne of Austria, and leaving the field open to the new favorite, the king's "rattle," ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... uttered the last word than there was a rattle of firearms as the three of them discharged their weapons. There arose a mighty roar of anger as the bear felt the sudden pain of bullets ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... her I should have liked to see her dance, only there were no castanets to be had. Instantly she seized the old woman's only earthenware plate, smashed it up, and there she was dancing the Romalis, and making the bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening fell, and I heard the drums ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... purpose; you do it to anger me," thundered the justice, bringing down his hand on the tea-table and causing the cups to rattle. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... their generic name with some particularly beautiful relatives from the West Indies grown in hothouses here. But did not small bees alight on the keel and depress it, as in the lupine, next of kin (q.v.) there might be no seeds to rattle in the dark inflated pods that so delight ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... much of my stuff for safe keeping. As I was busy at the office during the day, I did the most of this packing in the evenings. In the course of this work I came to the little cabinet of which I have spoken, and threw it open in order to stuff it with cotton, so that the contents would not rattle about when moved." ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... listen to me, will you? You may at any rate do as much as that for me." And then Clara stood perfectly mute, looking into his handsome face as he continued to rattle out ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... first thrill of real alarm. I shouted, but my voice fell dead in the snowy air. The gale was blowing more furiously than ever, and the cold was so intense that it penetrated my thick clothing and caused my teeth to rattle together! ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... anger, but of anguish, that settled upon his face, for she had turned half away from him, and was gazing vacantly across the river. There was an unpleasant pause, which was broken by the noise of voices in alarm near the house, the trampling of hoofs, and the rattle of wheels. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... store world with a sense of kingly superiority. He listened indulgently to the idle chatter of the shop girls, the rattle of the cash boxes, and smiled at the seriousness with which this business of selling was pressed. What a tremendous ado they made of living, with year after year, month after month, day after day, looming endlessly before them! Not an act which ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... young man's forehead. He felt shamed and miserable. He couldn't flaunt his price-tag before these unbuyable souls whose beautiful and true marriage was based upon love, and sympathy, and mutual ideals! He couldn't rattle his chains, or explain Anne Champneys. He couldn't, indeed, force himself to speak of her at all. The thing was bad enough, but to talk about it—No! ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... us of this custom. When my Lord Arlington had bidden his friends to a feast, he subsequently diverted them by the tricks of a fellow who swallowed a knife in a horn sheath, together with several pebbles, which he made rattle in his stomach, and produced again, to the wonder and amusement of all who beheld him. [At a great dinner given by this nobleman, Evelyn, who was present, tells us that Lord Stafford, the unfortunate nobleman afterwards executed on Tower Hill, "rose from the table in some disorder, because ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Evelyn bade Vane hail Carroll and Mabel, who had disappeared. He sent a shout ringing through the vapor, and caught a faint and unintelligible answer. A flock of sheep fled past and dislodged a rush of sliding stones. Vane heard the stones rattle far down the hillside, and when he called again a blast of chilly wind whirled his voice away. There was a faint echo above him and ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... it occurred to poor Corvick to take his young bride a drive. He had no command of that business: this had been brought home to me of old in a little tour we had once made together in a dogcart. In a dogcart he perched his companion for a rattle over Devonshire hills, on one of the likeliest of which he brought his horse, who, it was true, had bolted, down with such violence that the occupants of the cart were hurled forward and that he fell horribly on his head. He was killed on ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... he said, dismally. "It took my nerve, but I felt of her face.... Thet orful wail is her breath chokin' in her throat.... Like a death-rattle, only long instead ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... differences amicably settled. A hearty welcome was extended even to strangers of presentable appearance." At that time the day was marked by tremendous eating and drinking, and its visiting customs sometimes developed into wild riot. Young men in barouches would rattle from one house to another all day long. "The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a noisy and hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed hurriedly, everybody shook hands all round, and the callers dashed out and rushed ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... does not see does not exist, while the weak man dares not open the doors of the cupboard hidden in every life for shivering terror of the secrets he knows are there. Wiser wickedness deliberately airs his skeleton now and then, and thereby the grisly presence grows less grisly, and the hollow rattle of the bones less threatening. The articulation remains the same, but the tone, so to speak, is ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... previous awful silence was there in the report of the guns, the rattle of musketry, the shouts of the officers, the cheers of the men, the crashing of spars and timber as the shot struck home, and the shrieks, and cries, and groans of the wounded! To these expressions of pain even the bravest cannot help giving way, when wounded where ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... when he turned round and observed that Master Snowball had heard the remark and was indulging in a quiet guffaw at his expense, he rounded on him a little more sharply. "I guess you'd better stow that, you ugly cuss!" said he menacingly; "or else I'll soon make you rattle your ivories to another toon!" Whereupon the darkey reduced his grin to a proper focus and endeavoured to look as ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... her heart, but could not reply. He set her down again, and went out. She heard the harness rattle, and the cart go off. She was left sitting on ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... places sounded the whir of a jade-cutter's wheel, a cobbler's rattle, or the clanging music of a forge. Yet everywhere the slow movements, the faded, tranquil colors,—dull blue garments, dusky red tiles, deep bronze-green foliage overhanging a vista of subdued white and gray,—consorted with the spindling shadows and low-streaming vesper light. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... purpose is not to "sow doubts," far from it, for that would have for its ideal mere intelligence and not social usefulness. It develops instead the "will to believe," and this serves the needs of the propagandists, who, as Mr. Will H. Hayes is reported to have said of the movies, "shake the rattle which keeps the American child amused so that it forgets its aches and pains." We may safely trust education to keep the American mind infantile, merely acquisitive and not critical. And thus the nonsenseorship seems sure to be perpetuated, and we ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... to his evening shroud, Where the western billows are roll'd, Behind a curtain of sable cloud, With a fringe of scarlet and gold; There's a misty glare in the yellow moon, And the drift is scudding fast, There'll be storm, and rattle, and tempest soon, When the heavens are overcast. The neutral tint of the sullen sea Is fleck'd with the snowy foam, And the distant gale sighs drearilie, As the wanderer sighs for his home. The white sea-horses ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fearful, sent the adults, as well as children to bed with blood chilled, every sense alert with fear, ready to see a ghost in every slip of moonshine, and trace to malign origin every sound breaking the stillness—the rattle of a shutter, the creak of a door, the moan of the winds or the cries of the birds and beasts of the night. For more than a century later, the belief in witchcraft kept a strong hold on the popular mind and had a marked influence on the character of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... latter days? when the gospel of Eternal Death is preached here in Oxford to you for the Pride of Truth? and "the mountain of the Lord's House" has become a Golgotha, and the "new song before the throne" sunk into the rolling thunder of the death rattle of the Nations, crying, "O Christ, ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... landing party. As these were lost to sight as they entered the town, those on board ship watched eagerly for the sound of combat. Nothing, however, was heard for a minute or two; then came a single shot, and then a rattle ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the streets seem deserted, except for the sound of occasional laughter and the rattle of dishes coming from the smaller restaurants as one passes. At this hour these places are full of workmen in white and blue blouses, and young girls from the neighboring factories. They are all laughing and talking together. A big fellow in a blue gingham blouse attempts to kiss the little ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of knights and the thick of events; and seeing what men want and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and of arm to come at the desired point. The greatest genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no rattle-brain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says everything, saying at last something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... come from?—out of blank space?—from nowhere? Yet here they were, filling his head, multiplying, expanding, making his blood rattle like boiling water in a tube as it rushed up to nourish ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... pacing the floor with impatient strides. "Pierre Philibert!" exclaimed he, "where is the poor lad? He must be sought for and saved yet. What demons have assailed him now? Was it the serpent of strong drink, that bites men mad, or the legion of fiends that rattle the dice-box in their ears? Or was it the last temptation, which never fails when all else has ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... still the gnat keeps up its sharp whirr; across the pleasant, persistent, fretful buzz of the flies sounds the hum of a big bee, constantly knocking its head against the ceiling; a cock crows in the street, hoarsely prolonging the last note; there is the rattle of a cart; in the village a gate is creaking. Then the jarring voice of a peasant woman, "What?" "Hey, you are my little sweetheart," cries Anton to the little two-year-old girl he is dandling in his arms. "Fetch the ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... life," returned Fouche, "but a real elegant divorce, followed by an imperial wedding, would rattle the bones of this blase old Paris as they haven't been rattled since ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... heard the rattle of the musketry on the left, and saw from the smoke of the Confederate guns that Sherman was engaged, he ordered Augur forward. Augur, as has been said, had been ready and waiting all day. His arrangements were to make the attack with Chapin's brigade, deployed across ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... sometimes very sorry when he perceived the people to smart more than they deserved. "How harshly you treated that man to-day," said I once, "who harangued us so about gardening." "I am sorry," said he, "if I vexed the creature, for there is certainly no harm in a fellow's rattling a rattle- box, only don't let him think that he thunders." The Lincolnshire lady who showed him a grotto she had been making, came off no better, as I remember. "Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer," said she, "Mr. Johnson?" "I think it would, madam," ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance; but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a secure ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... article of furniture. What did men use to fill up such a mighty receptacle, anyway? Stretch his possessions as he would, they only made a scattered showing at the bottom of three of the drawers. He laughed to see them lying there and hear them rattle about when he brought the drawers to with a click. However, it was very splendid to have a desk, whether one had anything to put in it or not, and perhaps in time he would be able to collect more pencils, rulers and blocks of paper. The contrast between not having any ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... against the flickering glow of the fire, and only seen against it, came creeping figures; and I suppose that some dull glitter of steel from helms or sword hilts betrayed us to them, for word was muttered among them, and the rattle of stones shifted by bare feet seemed to be all round us. I thought it time ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... noticed Armin standing near the door, his hand resting on a huge club which, in turn, rested on the floor. Calmly he was waiting for the final rush. Olaf was peering through the gun-hole again. And then came what he had expected—a rattle of fire from the snow-ridge. The PIT-PIT-PIT of bullets rained against the cabin in a dull tattoo. Through the door came a bullet, sending a splinter close to Armin's face. Almost in the same instant ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... its recipient, she lost no time in adopting it. As a preliminary, she went to Madrid. There, under expert tuition, she learned to rattle the castanets, and practised the bolero and the cachucha, as well as the classic arabesques and entrechats and the technique accompanying them. But she did not advance much beyond the simplest steps, for the time at her disposal was short, and the art of the ballerina is ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... pleasure in sitting up late. "Indeed," says one of his friends, "he would talk all night in preference to going to bed, and, in the Chaucerian style, he was a brilliant conversationalist, and his laugh was like the rattle of a pebble across a frozen pond." "No man of sense," Burton used to say, "rises, except in mid-summer, before the world is brushed and broomed, aired and sunned." Later, however, he changed his mind, and for the last twenty years of his life he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... us at our meal, and seemed to know when we sallied forth in solemn procession, each with a black tin tray, what coming event was casting its shadow before, for they began to arrive whenever they heard the first rattle of cups and saucers. Our feathered friends guessed intuitively that scraps would immediately follow the pleasant music, more delectable than any the Castle had hitherto furnished. If our bedroom was quaint, our youthful ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... quarreling," commanded Bertha Brown, sternly. "Now I've been learning something worth while. I know the saloon deck from the promenade deck, and I can rattle off 'fore' and 'aft' and 'port' and 'starboard' as if I'd been born ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... went at the pot-horse and again the bucking and squealing, with pots going clank, clink, rattle and away. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... another song, but she did not hear it; she was listening to footfalls in the garret above. With a presentiment of what was about to happen she sprang out of bed with a warning cry; but she was too late. There was a splash and rattle on the window-seat, a smothered curse, a quick descent, a triumphant laugh from above. Eulogia stamped her foot with rage. She cautiously raised the window and passed her hand along the outer sill. This time she beat ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... hear not thy rattle, though loudly it goes; Oh, suck not thy fingers! Oh, count not thy toes! The "Last Odds" and "Share List" to thee shall be read To-night ere thou'rt cosily tucked up in bed. Oh, two to one bar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... thud of hoofs and a rustling of parting foliage the cavalryman disappeared amid the underwood. A minute or two later a thin, dropping rattle of musketry, five hundred yards or so to the front, announced that the sharpshooters of the Fourteenth were at work. Almost immediately there was an angry response, full of the threatenings and execution of death. Through the lofty leafage ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... occupied his mind, and wrought upon his imagination. Being a stout walker, and caring little for any other form of exercise, in his free hours he covered many a league of pavement. A fine summer morning would see him set forth, long before milk-carts had begun to rattle along the streets, and on one such expedition, as he stepped briskly through a poor district south of the river, he was surprised to see an artist at work, painting seriously, his easel in the dry gutter. He slackened his pace ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... free; ten cents a saucer, and ginger-bread thrown in)—why out he goes, too quick. Oh, he's a daisy, he is! If you ever want to remind me of him, anybody, ask me to lend you a dime; and when I shake my head and my teeth rattle, I'll remember the ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... custom for a group of cronies to drop in at all hours of day and night. Louis was among those who came oftenest, and Sir Walter's sister writes: "He would frequently drop in to dinner with us, and of an evening he had the run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour or ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... illumine it be the eyes of those snakes, or dazzling meteors shining by their own light, or precious stones lit up by the beams of the sun. And thou must bring me a tooth from the jaw of a living king, and a rattle from his tail, and an eye from his skull. When thou shalt bring us an account of these things, the hand of my daughter shall accompany her heart, and the one shall become, as the other hath been, the property of the valiant Muscogulgee. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... around the tables. Of the wild excitement, the frenzy of gain, the outbursts of despair which one has come prepared to witness, there is not a sign. The games strike the bystander as singularly dull and uninteresting; one wearies of the perpetual deal and turn-up of the cards at rouge-et-noir, of the rattle of the ball as it dances into its pigeonhole at roulette, of the monotonous chant of "Make your game, gentlemen," or "The game is made." The croupiers rake in their gains or poke out the winnings with the passive regularity of machines; the gamblers sit round the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... let you get 'way, but a man got you now, wha'ar' been handlin' horses an' know how to hole 'em in the stalls. I boun' he'll have to butt like a ram to git out dis log hen-house," he said, finally, as he finished tying the last knot in his string, and gave the door a vigorous rattle ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... slept on such a night fully dressed. Shif'less Sol, Long Jim, Silent Tom, Heemskerk, and the rest were by the side of him, and all about them rose the sounds of an army going into battle, commands sharp and short, the rolling of cannon wheels, the metallic rattle of bayonets, the clink of bullets poured into the pouches, and the hum of men talking in ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... desirable plan, if you want to do anything, to do it in the way consecrated by custom, more especially if you are a woman. The rattle of a carriage along the road just behind me, and the fact that I started and turned suddenly hot, drove this truth home to my soul. The mist hid me, and the carriage, no doubt full of cousins, drove on in the direction of the house; but what an absurd position I was in! Suppose the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... that he had to be prating; and so would hush, still, and put all to quiet again. And that he might leave no argument unurged that might tend to make them secure, he said, and said it often, O Mansoul! consider that notwithstanding the old gentleman's rage, and the rattle of his high and thundering words, you hear nothing of Shaddai himself, when, liar and deceiver that he was, every outcry of Mr. Recorder against the sin of Mansoul was the voice of God in him to them. But he goes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... won her. The rattle of that conversation had driven all thoughts of doubt out of her mind. She would not have denied herself of his company now for any foolish pretext of convention. In that hurried summary of himself and his affairs, proving himself by it, without any pride and conceit, to be a man of very ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... mentor's admonitions, in covering an old cock-grouse with his second, and carefully following that flustered fowl's course with the point of his gun, pulled the trigger just as it skimmed, low down, with an agitated squawk, between his butt and mine. I heard the shot rattle through the heather, and two pellets hit ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and shapeless ruin. Its architectural glories are rapidly passing away in smoke and flame, such as have never been witnessed since the burning of Moscow, and amid a roar of cannon, a screaming of mitrailleuses, a bursting of projectiles, and a horrid rattle of musketry from different quarters which are appalling. A more lovely day it would be impossible to imagine, a sky of unusual brightness, blue as the clearest ever seen, a sun of surpassing brilliancy even for Paris, ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... third or fourth season, depending somewhat on the variety, two pounds of fruit or more to the foot of the main stem can be permitted. The novice, however, is likely to permit his vines to overbear with the result that the crop is cast, or the berries rattle, or the fruit turns sour before ripening. From the beginning to the finish of the season, in this method of pruning, much pinching of laterals is required. No hard and fast rule can be laid down for this pinching, but, roughly speaking, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... settled themselves at four tables, taking their places where chance or fancy led them, late comers having to fit in wherever they could find room. A babel of tongues in various languages reigned round the tables, amid which the rattle of knives and forks and plates and the popping of corks made a subdued hubbub. Gorla Mustelford, the motive for all this sound and movement, this chatter of guests and scurrying of waiters, sat motionless in the fatigued ...
— When William Came • Saki
... so," he admitted. "Oh, yes, she's pretty—no doubt about that. But I don't think she's fussy. You'll like her, Sheila. She doesn't scare or rattle easily. In some ways she reminds me ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... only, since his sword Went flashing through the battle— A twelvemonth only, since his ear Heard war's last deadly rattle— And yet, have countless pilgrim-feet The pilgrim's guerdon paid him, And weeping women come to see The place where they ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... rarely a town, a few wooden houses clustering around a green dome and gilt crosses, but it is all very mournful and depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it steals like a silent ghost across the desolate steppes. As a cure for insomnia it would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally engrossed in an ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... frequently heard of the number of rattle and other snakes to be met with on the banks of the lake, but these have been nearly exterminated by the settlers. During my stay in the suburbs I only found a few water-snakes, basking in the sun amongst the wilderness of aquatic plants that cover the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... hat, waiting all day long in his best at the bow-window of the Smyrna Coffee-House to get a bow from that other, and alas! better accredited royalty, the Prince of Wales; this picture, of an old beau, with his toy-shop of gold snuff-boxes, his agate-rings, his senseless obelisk, his rattle of faded jokes and blunted stories—all this had something very attractive to Goldsmith both in its humour and its pathos; and he has left us, in his Life of Nash, a study which is far too little known, but which deserves to rank among the best-read productions of that infinitely sympathetic ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... from the barren base of sand, and the molten air quivered on the overheated surface of the fearful desert. 114 degrees Fahr. in the shade under the water-skins; 137 degrees in the sun. Noiselessly the spongy tread of the camels crept along the sand—the only sound was the rattle of some loosely secured baggage of their packs. The Arab camel-drivers followed silently at intervals, and hour by hour we struck deeper into the solitude ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the direction of the schooner. I could not conceive what had happened. Had a mutiny taken place? Was Mr. Wyse re-enacting, with a less docile ship's company, the pistol scene on board the Glasgow steamer? Again resounded the rattle of the firing. At all events, there was no time to be lost in getting back, so, tying up the birds in three bundles, we flung ourselves down into the gully by which we had ascended, and leaping on from stone to stone, to the infinite danger of our limbs and necks, rolled rather than ran down ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... pollution of his presence, leaving him alone in the great house with the black page. And this house was shunned as though marked with the cross of the pestilence. The more high-spirited Jew-boys would throw stones at its windows or rattle its doors, but it was even keener sport to run after its tenant himself, on the rare occasions when he appeared in the streets, to spit out like their elders at the sight of him, to pelt him with mud, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... room. Caroline at intervals dropped her knitting on her lap, and gave herself up to a sort of brain-lethargy—closing her eyes and depressing her head—caused by what seemed to her the unmeaning hum around her,—the inharmonious, tasteless rattle of the piano keys, the squeaking and gasping notes of the flute, the laughter and mirth of her uncle, and Hannah, and Mary, she could not tell whence originating, for she heard nothing comic or gleeful in their discourse; and more ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... said I, "I am in this charming land which I entered for the first time to the noise of the drum and the rattle ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in the year, a picture on the wall might perhaps be as comforting as a blanket on the bed; and, at any rate, would be good for twelve months, while the blanket would help but six. I have seen an Irish mother, in a mud hovel, turn red with delight at a rattle for her baby, when I am quite sure she would have been indifferently grateful for a pair ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... up a shaly bank, Kit was glad to see a broken wall loom among the tossing flakes. This was the shaft-house of an abandoned mine, and there was a sheep-fold, built with pulled-down material, close by. He shouted and waited until he heard the dogs bark and a rattle of stones. The Herdwicks were coming down and presently broke out from the snow in a compact, struggling flock. Tom shouted and threw a hurdle across the entrance when the dogs had driven the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... it's true," says the lady, "the first news should come to me is that I'm a widow; for 'tis impossible it should happen as you say with a husband that hasn't one penny-piece to rattle on a tombstone." ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... artificial wood of spears was wet With yet warm blood; and trembling in the wind, Did rattle like the thorns which Nature set On the rough hide of an armed porcupine; Or looked like the trees which dropped gore, Plucked from the tomb of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... fawning spaniel, did not recur every instant to my mind; and it is not much less abhorrent to my nature, to see a venerable lion jumping over a stick, than it would be to behold a hoary philosopher forced by some cruel tyrant to spend his days in whipping a top, or playing with a rattle. Every thing to me loses its charm when it is put out of the station wherein nature, or to speak more properly, the all-wise Creator has placed it. I imagine man has a right to use the animal race for his own preservation, perhaps for his ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... he paused a little, attentive to the familiar rumour of the ship by night: the prolonged sloughing of riven waters down the side, gnashing of swells hurled back by the bows, sibilance of draughts in alleyways, groaning of frames, a thin metallic rattle of indeterminate origin, the crunching grind of the steering gear, the everlasting deep-throated diapason of the engines, somewhere aft in that tier of staterooms a persistent human snore ... nothing unusual, no ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... hands, the herd was large, An' watch an' watch we divided the night; We could hear the coyotes howl an' whine, But the darn'd critters kept out of sight Of the camp-fire blazin'; an' now an' then Thar come a rustle an' sort of rush, A rattle a-sneakin' away from the blaze, Thro' the rattlin', ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... a few ledges like narrow steps far below. It was pitch-dark down there, and not even his strong light could reach to the bottom. He tried tossing a few pebbles into it; listening he heard the faint rattle of their fall, but could not be sure whether they had landed on one of the ledges ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters of the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... a rattle they were off, and there ensued an exciting ten minutes as the taxicab scooted through the traffic, shooting across streets, and missing collisions by the narrowest of margins a dozen times in the course of the brief journey. The boys held on ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... portrait of Edward, the child Prince of Wales. It belongs to the end of the year 1538, when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of Holbein equipped him with the orb of sovereignty in the guise of a baby's rattle. It is in the coupling of distant kingship and present babyhood that the painter works his magic and reveals ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... jostle, a rattle of other voices, as though some one had untied a bag of lively resonant voices, and they were falling out on the ground, by one and two, and whole heaps. It was the disciples talking. And drowning them all, reverberating from the trees and walls, and tripping up ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... progress, Lord Seacliff was enjoying a refreshing sleep in his room on the fourth floor. Two hours passed. The noise of the traffic in the street below faded away. Only the rattle of an occasional belated cab broke the silence. In the hotel all was still. Mr. Brewster had gone to bed. Archie, in his room, smoked meditatively. Peace may have been ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... new courage, and with all their might bent to their work. With a vigorous push and a great rattle of stones the cart went ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy |
