"Tinkle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mysterious; outside the walls, there are carven, gloomy palaces that once re-echoed to the tinkle of stringed instruments and the love-songs of some sultan's favorite—now fallen into ruins, or rebuilt to stable horses or shelter guns and stores and men; but eloquent in all their new-smeared whitewash, or in crumbling decay, of long-since dead intrigue. No places, those, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... known as "Tinkle," was as "dear and dainty" as ever, in a creamy white swiss, and May Egner wore lavender, although fully conscious of the disastrous effects of picnic sun on that perishable shade. It was a "last year's" gown, so May decided she might better get a few more turns ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... doesn't matter, it's the treatment, the treatment!" Biddy protested in a voice like the tinkle of a silver bell. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... grew indistinct. The leaves of the trees bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch out their green fingers to the plenteous shower. The tinkle of the fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming the impact of the rain-drops. Small cataracts tore in desperate haste down the slope ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... and the following he spent amid the faded grandeurs of the drawing-room, gazing longingly at the wide expanse of beach and the tumbling sea beyond. The house was almost uncanily quiet, an occasional tinkle of metal or crash of china from the basement giving the only indication of the industrious Mrs. Cox; but on the day after the quiet of the house was broken by the return of its master, whose annoyance, when he found the drawing-room clock stolen and a man in possession, ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... suddenly interrupted Dick, rising from his seat on the veranda rail and gazing intently down the highroad. The sounds of a vehicle and hoof-beats on the hard road, mingled with the shouts of a driver, the crack of a whip and tinkle of bells, were distinctly heard, and presently, a heavy lumbering stagecoach enveloped in a cloud of white dust and drawn by four mules was seen coming down the road ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... lantern and walk over to see Mr. Caruthers, the lawyer, who lived more than a mile away. When he saw the flicker of their lantern through the palm-trees he would wind up his little musical box and they could hear its tinkle of welcome. "We walked barefoot,"[59] says Mrs. Strong, "and I shall never forget those lovely walks at night and the feel of the soft, mossy grass under our feet. Mr. Caruthers was a clever, interesting man. ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Greek poets, and up and down the Anthology, are charming bits of rurality, redolent of the fields and of field-life, with which it would be easy to fill up the measure of this rainy day, and beat off the Grecian couplets to the tinkle of the eave-drops. Up and down, the cicada chirps; the locust, "encourager of sleep," sings his drowsy song; boozy Anacreon flings grapes; the purple violets and the daffodils crown the perfumed head of Heliodora; and the reverent Simonides likens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... with splenetic anger. The chorale of the trio is admirably devised and carried out. Its piety is a bit of liturgical make-believe. The contrasts here are most artistic—sonorous harmonies set off by broken chords that deliciously tinkle. There is a coda of frenetic movement and the end is in major, a surprising conclusion when considering all that has gone before. Never to become the property of the profane, the C sharp minor Scherzo, notwithstanding its marked asperities ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... woman laughed merrily, and Fouchette gave forth a singular, low, unmusical tinkle. She was astonished that the young lady should put such a question, then amused as she thought of Mother Podvin playing ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... indifferent, his eyes still on the fire. Stepping around the debris that filled the room, I had placed my hand on the latch, when I heard a stealthy footstep behind me. Brutus was at my elbow. There was a tinkle of a wine glass falling on the hearth. I turned to see my father facing me beside the table I had quitted—the calm modulation gone from his voice, his whole body poised and alert, as though ready to spring through the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the event; for the footpath soon after appeared a little wider and more worn, and the tinkle of a small bell gave the knight to understand that he was in the vicinity of some chapel ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... My sheep-bells tinkle frae the west, My lambs are bleating near; But still the sound that I lo'e best, Alack! I canna hear. Oh, no! sad and slow, The shadow lingers still; And like a lanely ghaist I stand, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... under stone bridges where the water lapped with little mouthing tongues at the walls, and the tall, gloomy buildings almost met overhead, so that only a tiny strip of star-buttoned sky showed between. And from dark windows high up came the tinkle of guitars and the sound of song pouring from throats of silver. And so we came to our hotel, which was another converted palace; but baptism is not regarded as essential to salvation in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the sound of Mrs. King's bell, and as soon as the first tinkle was heard she rushed into her dressing-room, exclaiming, "O, do come to the window, Missy Rosy! ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... tinkle of breaking and spilling glass had seized his attention. The sound came out ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... chords begin to tinkle Quicker, And your feet they flash and flicker— Twinkle!— Flash and flutter to a tricksy Fickle meter; And you foot it like ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... be heard the tinkle of guitars beneath bedroom- windows, notes were passed up on forked sticks, and missives freshly kissed by warm lips were dropped down through lattices; secret messengers came with letters, and now and again ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Fft! Only a—! A lash will tinkle thy hide for thee if thou dost not cure thy tongue of impudence. I, thy king, have ordered thee not to beg any more in the streets for bread. Signify, therefore, that thou wilt obey the orders of thy king by quickly touching thy forehead ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... quarters came the tinkle of the samisen, and a breeze laden with the scent of flowers brought with it also the distant sound of ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... fluttered he heard another sound also, as faint and sweet as if it were the ringing of little crystal bells. Georgina, on the other side of Barby, heard it too, and they looked at each other questioningly. Then Richard discovered where the tinkle came from, and pointed upward to call her attention to it. There, from the center of the ceiling swung a great, old-fashioned chandelier, hung with a circle of pendant prisms, each one as large and shining as the one ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Hymettus, the sun at night on Daphni, the nightingales and cicadas in the olives by Cephissus, the hum of bees on the sweet thyme of the mountain, the purple of the hills, the blue and the fire of the bay, the merry tinkle of the goat bells upon the rocks, the laugh of little children in the streets—all these made Athens fair, but could not take the cloud from ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... lightness. It must be added that she was warm and uncomfortable, having conscientiously superintended preparations in respect of commissariat in the overheated atmosphere of the basement; hurried upstairs—the imagined tinkle of the front-door bell perpetually in her ears—to pull her stays in at the waist and project herself into the aforementioned official garments—a very trying process on a June day to a person of ample contours and what may be described as the fluidic temperament. Later she had ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... after the vast andante of the cicadae is hushed, at the hour when the shining glow-worms "light their blue fires," and the "pale Italian cricket, delirious with its nocturnal madness, chirrups among the rosemary thickets," while in the distance sounds the melodious tinkle of the bell-ringer frogs, replying from one hiding-place to another, the old master shows us that profound and mysterious magic with which matter is endowed by the faintest ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... room. He wheeled about, his selfcontrol all slipping from him now. Suddenly she darted to the window, and with the hand that clenched the key she smote a pane with all her might. There was a smash of shivering glass, followed an instant later by a faint tinkle on the stones below, and the hand that she still held out covered ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... sensation of running away exactly as much as I. Not once did I let him mention insanity. I made him look at the wide stretches of meadow and the lines of pollard willows backed by billowing hills, and sniff the air, and listen to the cawing crows and the tinkle of cowbells and the gurgling of the river. And we talked—oh, about a million things far removed from our asylum. I made him throw away the idea that he is a scientist, and pretend to be a boy. You will scarcely credit the assertion, but he succeeded—more ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... wind was rising, and above the tinkle of the blacksmith's hammer there sounded the tap of the light shade as it flapped in the wind against the window-pane. Low, drowsy, moaning,—typical breath of prairie,—it droned through the loosely built house, with sound louder, but not unlike the perpetual roar ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... melted away, and a keen rushing breeze that came out of the north crisped the water. The vessel sprang forward when the ripples reached her; the flapping canvas went to sleep; and while each slack rope tightened a musical tinkle broke out at the bows. It grew steadily louder, and when the sun swung up red above the eastern hills, she had piled the white froth to her channels and was driving forward merrily with little sparkling seas tumbling, foam-tipped, after her. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... butter-market-day at Middelburg, as if I had not slept at all, but had listened throughout the night to the sweet, the incredibly sweet chimes that floated like perfume in the air. Yet I suppose I must have slept, for the bells had sometimes stopped playing their one melodious tune, to tinkle in my dreams, "One for you, and one for you, but never, never ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Of these latter, he tells us twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a Spanish general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a pendant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... dark face exposed to the starlight. The gentle movement of the cedar branches changed the shape of the bright patches on the grass where shadow and light met. The walls of the valley waved upward, dark below and growing paler, to shine faintly at the rounded rims. And there was a tiny, silvery tinkle of running ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... of the leafless woods. Then, by and by, from all the open fields the snow is driven back into the fence corners, and lies there in soiled and sullen heaps. In the woods it still lies deep; but there is everywhere the tinkle of running water, and it is not long till the brown leaf carpet begins to show in patches through the white. Then, overhead, the buds begin to swell and thrill with the new life, and when it is broad noon, all through the woods a thousand voices ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... cannon-balls-in-the-cellar roar, with just a light tinkle of hansom cabs sprinkled over the top of the solid sound; but that great straight street into which we suddenly flashed had no solid sound. It shrieked in short, sharp yells, made up of a dozen distinct noises, each one louder and more insistent ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a fret at once. Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or she would have coaxed him out of it. But she did not notice it now in her abstraction. She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated herself in a chair. Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said, reckless of the proper tense, "There was a woman wanted ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... she rose majestically above the pines which fringed the eastern horizon. In the air was a smell of tar-weed, deliciously aromatic; and the only sounds audible were the whispering of the tremulous leaves of the cottonwoods and the tinkle of the creek on its ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... doors. She led the way into what was called a private bar. They sat in cushioned chairs, and Douglas gave his order mechanically. A few feet away, with only a slim partition between them, was the general room full of men. The tinkle of glasses and hum of conversation grew louder and louder. It was a cold evening and a busy time. Douglas sipped his wine in silence. The girl opposite was humming a tune and beating time with her foot. She was watching him ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... whispering rock, from which hung delicate green tresses of the maiden's-hair fern. Above, the rock was lost in a steep wilderness of trees and dense undergrowth, which met the radiant sky somewhere where the eye could not follow. The bell-like tinkle of water out of sight was the only sound until I heard a patter-patter of webbed feet coming along the road. A flock of geese were moving homeward, followed by a woman, whose feet were as bare as theirs, and whose eyes were fixed ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... silence of a cat, Jack, who had taken off his shoes, tiptoed to the door between the two rooms. As he advanced he could hear a succession of small noises. One was a sort of purring sound. Then came the tinkle of metal on metal—a faint sound that would not have been audible but for the deep silence over the place. Then Jack saw a flicker of the light, as though some one or some object had come near enough to ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... There are silences which tinkle or buzz in the ears, causing them to ache with stress and strain; silences dull and sad as a wad of wool; silences as searching as the odour of musk—as soothing as the perfume of violets. The crisp silence of the seashore when absolute calm prevails is as different from the strained, sodden, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the crumbling banks falling into the current with a distant splash. Occasionally a swift rushing of wings overhead told us of the arrowy flight of diver or teal. Far in the distance twinkled the gleam of a herdsman's fire, the faint tinkle of a distant bell, or the subdued barking of a village dog for a moment, alone broke ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... hear the tinkle of a car-bell, or the roar of an omnibus, I feel a thrill of pleasure," I said; "I never was so glad to get ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, Free, peremptory, clear. No jingling serenader's art, Nor tinkle of piano strings, Can make the wild blood start In its mystic springs. The kingly bard Must smite the chords rudely and hard, As with hammer or with mace; That they may render back Artful thunder, which conveys Secrets of the solar track, Sparks ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... completely sheltered, whose hollow depth, carpeted with grass and curtained with various growth of trees, was the especial domain of my dear H——. A crystal spring of water rose in this "bosky dell," and answered with its tiny tinkle the muffled voice of the ocean breaking on the shore beyond. The place was perfectly lovely, and here we sat together and devised, as the old word was, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things above heaven, and things below earth, and things quite beyond ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... architecture is the "pyathat," or spire of five or seven roofs, each smaller than the other, which finish in what they call a "ti," or umbrella of wrought iron ornamented with flowers, and from which little bells and cymbals swing and tinkle in the breeze. These spires, however, are only erected over sacred buildings or ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... if you want to cry out to him, now is the time! Perhaps after all——! [The tinkle of the bells sounds close at hand, in the wood.] Make haste, Gunhild! Now they ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... all, mingled with all—always, everywhere—the brattle of cornet and trombone, the whang of piano, the wail of violin, the tinkle of the noble harp, an aristocrat in base company, weeping ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... get a glimpse of the light in Madeleine's window. I should observe, it was also Gabrielle's, for the sisters shared the same room. The moon cast strong lights and shadows, and I kept in the shade till close to the house, when what was my disgust to hear the wretched tinkle of a guitar under the window! Serenades might be all very well for Italy, but we did not favor them in Nismes; and stepping briskly up to the musician, I said abruptly, "We want none of this ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... she knows, with wilful paces, How to make her zone Gleam and please him; and her ear-rings Tinkle love; and grown ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... took from the coat pocket into which it had been untidily stuffed, in order to search underneath. But the nervous jerk she gave pulled out something else also—something small, which fell to the floor with a tinkle as of a tiny stone striking wood, when it touched a chair leg, and rolled under the chest of drawers. Clo had not time to see what the thing was. There was only a flashing glimpse of a pebble-like object as it disappeared. But her heart ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... glorious, the sea a mirror, and here was the Maidens' Cove, into which they dipped from the cliff edge, as suddenly as a kite swoops from the sky. In a moment they were lost to sight, and only the tinkle of their laughter among the blue, purple and creamy reflected lights of the cove told ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... held them, Englishmen in a world or savage or Spanish, but their spirits followed the speaker to green fields of Kent or Devon. They saw the English summer, saw the twilight fall, heard the lonely tinkle of far sheep-bells, heard the nightingales singing beneath the moon that shone on England. Friends' homes opened to them; Grenville welcomed them to Stowe, Sidney to charmed Penshurst. Then to London and the Triple Tun! Bow Bells rang ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... is the semicircular water [1], And we gather the cress about it. The marquis of L is coming to it, And we see his dragon-figured banner. His banner waves in the wind, And the bells of his horses tinkle harmoniously. Small and great, All follow the prince in his progress ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... little grove of palms close to the low sea wall came the soft tinkle of guitar, and now and then a burst of joyous song, while under the spreading roof of the broad portico or lanai, the murmur of voices, the occasional ripple of musical laughter, the floating haze of cigarette smoke, told where a party of worshipers were gathered, rejoicing ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... a light to Clarice. She knew it for the superlative in Mallinson's grammar of abuse. Bourgeois! The term was the palm of a hand squashed upon a lighted candle; it snuffed you out. Convicted of bourgeoisie, you ought to tinkle a bell for the rest of your life, or at the easiest be confined east of Temple Bar. Applied to Drake the word connoted animosity pure and simple, animosity suddenly conceived too, for it was not a week since Mallinson had been boasting of his friendship with the man. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Carolines sent his unearthly shik-shuck into the stillness, where one fancied it a little projectile of sound crushed in its efforts to pierce the tremendous silence of the night. One's imagination pictured the places where there were lights and music, the tinkle of glasses, and the laughter of men and women, and the wilderness suffered in the comparison. Coral atolls with waving palm trees are delightful spots when one reads of them when seated in a comfortable armchair in a snug library, ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the tinkle of water falling upon water," cried Bradford gazing down toward the outlet of Town Brook. "There must be ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... again or slept? And could he hear the tinkle of ice against the sides of a tall thin tumbler of lemonade, or was it the sound of a waterfall of clear, cold water close by? Were the servants asleep, or was the drink he had ordered being prepared?... No—he ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... she awoke it was twilight in the court. The doves were cooing and fluttering in the cornices and the cockatoo was preening his lemon colored topknot. At first Kathlyn had not the least idea where she was, but the light beyond the lattice, the flitting shadows, and the tinkle of a stringed instrument assured her that ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... ago talked it all over with Ethelwynn, and she entirely agreed with me. I had not the slightest desire to have a consulting-room of my own in Harley Street. All I longed for was a life in open air and rural tranquillity; a life far from the tinkle of the cab-bell and the milkman's strident cry; a life of ease and bliss, with my well-beloved ever at my side. The unfortunate man compelled to live in London is deprived of half of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... anyone contemplating its mild current. The mountains walling in the vale are lined with growths of heather, fern, and blossoming furze to their very crests, and the verdurous picture they hem is one of poetic calm and plenty. Labourers are digging away in the fields below, the tinkle of cow-bells is heard from the pastures, and anon blends with their Arcadian music the soft chiming of church-bells summoning to prayer; there is a mill with its clacking wheel, and a foundry with a tuft of smoke curling from its chimney; orchards and ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the street I hear The tinkle of a bell, It's first far off, and then quite near; It's passing, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a moon, is fondled by the fluttering petals in her hair, The exciting moisture of his lips induces langour in her limbs, Her earrings bruise her cheeks while dancing with the motion of her head, Her girdle by the tremor of her moving hips is made to tinkle, She utters senseless sounds, through fever of her love, He decorates with crimson flowers her curly tresses, curls which are upon her lively face a mass of clouds, Flowers with crimson flashings lovely in the forest ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... There was a subdued tinkle of laughter. "All right. I'll find it." There was a brief pause. "That number is Cornish 9-3834. Better ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... voice speaks not, in lisping notes, The madrigals of lesser minds! My heart tones thunder from the throats Of throbbing seas and raging winds; And yet, the master-spirit finds The tenderness of mother earth Is there expressed, despite the dearth Of tinkle ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... With tinkle, tankle, tinkle, Through fern and periwinkle The cows are coming home; A-loitering in the checkered stream Where the sun-rays glance and gleam, Clarine, Peachbloom and Phoebe Phillis Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies In a drowsy dream; To-link, to-lank, to-linklelinkle, O'er banks ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... yonder fell, The tinkle of that cattle-bell, Came, and have never come before, Go, and are ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... loose and trembled into silvery confusion. Small secretive noises came from them as if minute confidences were passing from bough to bough, and through their murmurous undertone the drip of the spring fell with a thin, musical tinkle. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... breeze do blow over the hill, An' the vlock's a-spread over the ground; When the vaice o' the busy wold sheep dog is still, An' the sheep-bells do tinkle all round; Where noo tree vor a sheaede but the thorn is a-vound, There, a zingen a zong, Or a-whislen among The sheep, the young shep'erd ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... impossible happened, and I had no meat. What meat did I ever have except an occasional fledgling, killed in its cradle, or a lizard, or small tree-frog detected, in spite of its green colour, among the foliage? I would roast the little green minstrel on the coals. Why not? Why should he live to tinkle on his mandolin and clash his airy cymbals with no appreciative ear to listen? Once I had a different and strange kind of meat; but the starved stomach is not squeamish. I found a serpent coiled up in my way in a small glade, and arming myself with a long stick, I roused him from ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... departure, and I retired to sleep and to dream of fiery craters, with snakes crawling out of them, and gigantic roosters picking up the snakes one by one and dropping them over a mountain of salt into a lake of boiling water. I was pleased when morning came, and I heard the comparatively cheering tinkle from bells on the team of mules drawing the little "bob-tail" street-car ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... the hymn ceased the organ began to play again, and the car once more resumed its march. The Custodia trembled from base to summit, and the motion made a quantity of little bells hanging on to its Gothic adornments tinkle like a cascade of silver. Gabriel walked along holding on to one of the crossbeams, with his eyes fixed on the pilots, feeling on his legs the movements of those who pushed this scaffolding, so similar to ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... rose-gardens, in the centre of which, tilted at a sharp angle, appeared the seat of a pair of corduroy trousers, whose wearer seemed to be engaged in hunting for snails. Thrushes sang in the green shrubberies; rooks cawed in the elms. Somewhere in the distance sounded the tinkle of sheep bells and the lowing of cows. It was, in fact, a scene which, lit by the evening sun of a perfect spring day and fanned by a gentle westerly wind, should have brought balm and soothing meditations to one who was the sole heir ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... skeleton key was selected from the bunch, and then back went his arm to the shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very watch ticking in my pocket, and ever and anon the tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key. Then—at last—there came a single unmistakable click. In another minute the mahogany door and the iron gate yawned behind us; and Raffles was sitting on an office table, wiping his ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... tinkle of falling glass; I looked up and saw that the window was shattered. The muslin curtain in front of it had been torn down by the passage of the brick, and the street without was visible from where I sat. A considerable crowd had gathered on the pavement. They saw me and a loud cry went up. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... Adele were attending to the cars. Cora was just about to call up her own house when the tinkle of the telephone bell startled her. She picked up the receiver and was not surprised to find the party ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... thing. True, he had hit an upstairs window pane, but he hadn't intended to do that. He had merely shot at a raucous jaybird in a tree, and the upstairs window pane, the innocent bystander, as it were, had fallen inward with a sharp tinkle of broken glass. The mishap had brought down on him the warning from his father that if it, or any similar exploit, were repeated, the air ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... resembled this man. But now the suggestion of revenge had seized hold upon her frightened imagination. What if this stranger had been deputed to take vengeance upon her for all her other victims? And if this was revenge, then worse things yet were in store for her. The tinkle of the horses' bells cut through the rumbling of the wheels; the sharp, shrill sound struck upon her like a cry of anguish, and in her terror she was ready to risk everything in a leap from the carriage. But no sooner did she relax her hold ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... troops," says Charles Darwin, "are turned into one field to graze in the morning, the muleteer has only to lead the madrinas a little apart and tinkle their bells, and, although there may be 200 or 300 mules together, each immediately knows its own bell, and separates itself from the rest. The affection of these animals for their madrina saves infinite trouble. It is nearly impossible ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... her striking the sand was terrific, though the tinkle of the bell borne in on the gale showed that the engines had been slowed down. The funnels were shaken down, and the masts broke off, falling forward. A wild shriek from a hundred throats cleft the roaring of wind and wave. The mast fell, the foremast, with all its cumbering top-hamper ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... six o'clock. The harness-bells tinkle gaily to the heavy trot of the big horse; and we laugh as we are jolted violently one against the other. We drive through the villages, those happy Normandy villages where everything seems eloquent of the richness of the soil. They are still asleep, the white curtains are drawn and the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... to the shore, which has since been called by his name. Greatly athirst, he struck a rock with his staff, and water gushed forth in answer to the stroke. Taking ship, he crossed the firth and entered a little wood. All at once, to his extreme joy, the bell he carried commenced to tinkle, and he knew he had reached the end of his journey—the valley of Ros-ynys, afterward ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... straight toward Joan and Powell. In a last effort to save Joan from the terrible doom of the crystal lances as long as possible, Powell flung his own body as a shield in front of the half-fainting girl. The tip of one of the crystalline arms struck his chest with a crashing tinkle of musical glass. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... and "Here's to the devil with the Latin grammar!" exclaimed O'Toole. He flung open his window and hurled the book out across the street with the full force of his prodigious arm. There followed a crash and then the tinkle of falling glass. O'Toole beamed contentedly ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... tempted constantly to live beyond their means. It is a country "where there ain't no Ten Commandments, and a man can raise a thirst." Then the Sampoluc and Quiapo districts, where the carriage-lamps are weaving back and forth among pavilions softly lighted, where the tinkle of the samosen is heard, and where O Taki San, immodest but bewitching, stands behind the beadwork curtain, her kimono parted at the knee,—this is the world of the Far East, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half the men were under water in a moment, but they had all, one after another, come up to the surface again for breath, when,—tinkle, tinkle, babble and gush, came the princess' laugh over the water from far away. There she was, swimming like a swan. Nor would she come out for king or queen, chancellor or daughter. But though she ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... the sun. On we swept, past bluff and grove, wooded glen and valley, and dark ravines lighted up far inland with wild falls of water. A fresh land-breeze filled our sails, the embayed waters were gentle as a lake, and every wave broke with a tinkle against our coppered prow. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... sentimental and poetic properties of her nature. She had a way of poking fun at herself, which, when exercised, sent the elfin figures scattering with a celerity suggestive of the departure of her own pupils at the tinkle of the bell for dismissal. Then she was left alone with her humor and her New England conscience, that stern adjuster of real values and enemy of spiritual dissipation. This same conscience was ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... eagle-eyed Catherine of Russia had so quietly waited and looked when the helpless and hopeless orgie of 1789 began. The Past from which he emerged, the Future which he evoked, both loom larger than human in the shadow of that colossal figure. What a silly tinkle, as of pastoral bells in some Rousseau's Devin du Village, have the 'principles of 1789,' when the stage rings again with the stern accents of the conqueror, hectoring the senators of the free and imperial ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he intended getting more. The sound cheers him; it is not exactly monotonous, owing to the bells being of various sizes and also greatly varying in thickness, so that they produce different tones, from the sharp tinkle-tinkle of the smallest to the sonorous klonk-klonk of the big, copper bell. Then, too, they are differently agitated, some quietly when the sheep are grazing with heads down, others rapidly as the ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... see the face of the priest at the altar. His voice was unfamiliar. The tinkle of the bell sounded from an infinite distance. The sound of footsteps came down the aisle. It must be some one carrying the plate for the offering. As he advanced slowly she could hear the clink of the ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... the gentleman drew the trigger, and the next instant a pane of window-glass, fully six feet from the outmost rim of Mr. Byle's straw hat, was shivered to pieces, and the fragments were heard to tinkle as they fell within the barn. The chagrin of the mortified rifleman was cunningly abated by Peter's declaring that he himself was at fault in confining his master's attention to vertical rather than to horizontal considerations; but while he thus explained away the failure, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... glides sweetly with a pleasant trotting tinkle of bells by the green parkside of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear the sirens singing, and to see them combing their gilded locks, on the yellow sands of Piccadilly Circus—so called, no doubt, from the number of horses and the skill of ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... sallow young man is shaking the ice in a whisky-and-soda into a nervous tinkle as ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... had received from Paris an unpublished opera of Auber's. Emily seated herself at the piano—her host took the violin—Clarendon was an excellent flute player—and the tinkle of the Viscount's guitar came in very harmoniously. By the time refreshments were introduced, Charles Selby too was in his glory. He had already nearly convulsed the Orientalist by a theory which he said he had formed, of a gradual ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Sometimes he gasped; the rill of softened tinkle ran on, and, glaring watchfully, I fancied I could detect his shape in the white vapour, like a shadow thrown from afar by a tallow dip upon a snowy sheet—the lank droop of his posturing, the greasy locks, the attentive poise of his head, the sentimental ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the dark, but the shot must have been too high. In the same instant I heard him slip on the smooth parquet and the tinkle of glass as the broken window swung open. Hastily I reflected that his car must be at the moat end of the terrace, and that therefore to reach it he must pass outside this very room. Seizing the damaged escritoire, I used it as a ram, and charged the window nearest ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... ever chosen merely for the tinkle; each has always its part in producing an impression which is produced always through language. Words are perhaps the hardest of all material of art: for they must be used to express both visual beauty and beauty of sound, as well as communicating a grammatical ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... to find the threadlike entrance to the bay you bring the flag-staff over Cart-wright's barn. He has vague theories of his own as to the annual shifting of the channel. He knows where to take the city children to look for tinkle-shells and mussels. He knows what winds bring in the scallops from their beds. He knows where to dig for clams, and where to tread for quahaugs without disturbing the oysters. He has a good deal of fragmentary ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost license of inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... at it, but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives them scant leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and tinkle all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches a muffled hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under the canon drifts, and long before any appreciable spring thaw, the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... excitement of a fire engine. The dragoman jumped down from his seat beside the driver and scrambled hurriedly into the hoiel, in the gloom of which hemet a serene stillness which was punctuated only by the leisurely tinkle of silver and glass in the dining room. For a moment the dragoman seemed really astounded out of specch. Then he plunged into the manager's room. Was it conceivable that Monsieur Coleman was still at luncheon? ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 'With a small tinkle of sugarplums.And oh,' said Hazel eagerly, 'do give them some little niceties to put on! Or let me. I have great faith in the power ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Patter, patter, tinkle, tinkle—two and three abreast they came. Timid citizens in breezy costumes about to blow out the candle made haste to do so, and peered goggle-eyed round the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... white mists loitering among the ranges. Hear! a dog barks in the Cove, a cock crows, a horn is wound, far, far away; it echoes faintly. And once more only the sounds of the night—that vague stir in the windless woods, as if the forest breathes, the far-away tinkle of water hidden in the darkness—and the ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... her surprise at seeing a richly dressed stranger on the doorstep, and would perhaps think she had made a mistake in the house; and Mrs. Fiske would not know whether to hand over the cards she held ready in her whitely gloved fingers—in the interval between the clanging shut of the gate and the tinkle of the doorbell Sylvia endured a sick reaction against life, as an ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... over the bench hangs still a tangle of the broken bell wires. When colonial Brandon was filled with guests, there must often have been a merry jangle above the old stone bench and a swift patter of feet on the flags. Standing there to-day, one can almost fancy an impatient tinkle. Is it from some high-coiffured beauty in the south wing with a message that must go post-haste—a missive sanded, scented, and sealed by a trembling hand and to be opened by one no steadier? or is it perhaps from some bewigged councillor with knee-buckles glinting in the firelight as he waits ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... a little under the blow, which had been a heavy one, but her wits were clear, and, moving swiftly to a bell button, the pressure of her finger was answered by a tinkle below. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible. Striking most disagreeably on Clifford's auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him to start upright out ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half concealed by an ordnance map, left unfolded. 'For the last year or two I think she has given it up. I'm afraid we are not strong in matters of art. Neither of the girls can play very well, though of course they both tinkle for their own amusement. Maurice—the poor lad who was killed—gave a good deal of artistic promise; father keeps some little water-colours of his, which men in that line ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... The tinkle of the church bell was heard at the usual time, and Mr Crawley, hat in hand, stood ready to go forth. He had heard nothing of Mr Thumble, but had made up his mind that Mr Thumble would not trouble him. He had taken the precaution to request ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... his loved sultana In sleep still breathes the sigh, The name of some black-eyed Tirana, Escapes our lips as we lie. Till, with morning's rosy twinkle, Again we're up and gone— While the mule-bell's drowsy tinkle Beguiles the rough way on. Oh the joys of our merry posada, Where, resting at close of day, We, young Muleteers of Grenada, Thus sing the gay ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... ... as I stood before the door I heard the sunrise song of Rossini's Wilhelm Tell ... a Red Seal record ... accompanied by the slow, dreamy following of a piano's tinkle ... like harp sounds or remote, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... but no one was looking out for them. They could hear the tinkle of a piano in the distance. Then a servant appeared, followed by a stout lady, who came forward to greet them in a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... begins to boom and crack. The ice is like the tight head of a big bass drum, but the drummer is inside and the sound comes muffled. The frost is the peg which tightens all the strings of earth and makes them vibrant. The tinkle of sleigh bells on the wagon road fully a mile away comes with ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... sun, and once in a while a castle in the woods, white-walled, red-roofed, peaceful enough now in its old age, but hinting at wild oats sown and reaped when it was young. Hinting broadly, too. At nights shaken with the flare of torches and the clash of arms, at oaths and laughter and the tinkle of spurs on the worn steps, at threats and bloodlettings and all the good old ways, now dead, out of date, and less indebted to memory than imagination. And then at galleries with creaking floors, at arras and the rustle of a dress; whisperings, too, and the proud flash of eyes, hands lily-white, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... without; but the restraint is torture. We, too, must join the revellers, and have a sleigh-ride. Girls, get on your fur; wrap yourselves up warmly in the old bear-skin; hunt up the old guitar; the sleigh is at the door, the moon is beaming. The bells tinkle and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... himself, and suddenly some one back by the plate struck a fine clean ball with a click and threw the bat with a resounding ring on the hard ground as he made for a home run. Billy started and looked keenly at the bat, for somehow the ring of it as it fell sounded curiously like the tinkle of silver. Who said thirty pieces of silver? Billy threw a furtive look about and a cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. Queer that old Bible story had to stick itself in. He could see the grieving in the Master's eyes as Judas gave Him that kiss. She had made the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... necklace, and some three or four necklaces, of dog-teeth, of agate beads (these being immensely prized, agate not being native to the Philippines), or of anything else the form, color, and hardness of which could make it answer for purposes of ornament. One young woman had on sleigh-bells, the tinkle of which we heard before we saw its source, an incongruous sound in those parts. These bells must have been brought down by Chinese trading from the plains of Manchuria. Two or three young men displayed what looked like lapis lazuli around their ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... the wooded slopes of Kettle. Startled, birds winged away from the treetops, little wild creatures skurried through the undergrowth, yet in the care-free, silvery tinkle of those merry voices there was no ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... doors were of powdered lacquer, and bulls and peacocks were wrought on them in raised and polished gold. The tilted roof was of sea- green porcelain, and the jutting eaves were festooned with little bells. When the white doves flew past, they struck the bells with their wings and made them tinkle. ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... deep as midnight's mystic stars, Freighted with love they trembling gazed above, As pleading for some mortal's bitter pain: When answered—soft untwined the clasping hands, The bright wings furled—my heart stood still to hear 'The footfalls tinkle on the tufted floor'— The eyes met mine—O God! my lost Lenore! Too deeply awed to clasp her to my heart, I knelt and gasped—'Lenore! my lost Lenore! Is there a home for Love beyond the skies? In pity answer!—shall we meet again?' Her eyes in rapture floated; solemn, calm, Then softest ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... week Johnnie Green was able to milk quite well. When he sat down beside the Muley Cow he could play a merry tune as he made the tiny streams of milk tinkle against the bottom of the milk pail. And he managed to milk the Muley Cow while his father was ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... are pale and stars are cold, Dew should rise from the grass in little bubbles, And tinkle in music amid green leaves. Something immortal lives in such air— We breathe, we change. Our bodies become as cold and bright as starlight. Our hearts grow young and strange. Let us extend ourselves as evening shadows And learn the nocturnal ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Otter," said Lumley, as a low rumbling of distant thunder broke the silence of the night, which would have been profound but for our voices, the crackling of the fire, and the tinkle of a ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... be hoped, is properly confused, but here the little idyll of the chop is brought to a close by the tinkle of a bell. ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sang to us, Light was our talk as of faery bells— Faery wedding-bells faintly rung to us Down in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the words ere an object came hurtling through the air. It struck the searchlight fairly upon the lens. There was a quick cry of distress from Ned, a rattle of broken glass, the tinkle of the falling searchlight. For a moment complete silence reigned. The next instant there was a rush of ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the mist. The sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's tinkle, and the demoralizing ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... have exhibited nothing out of the ordinary. From the reclining hundreds came the soft bleating of ewes calling their young, which is only heard at the daily bedding, the low-toned blethering of the others of the flock, and the tinkle of bells. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... old cracked tea-kettle of a bell, every tinkle of which is enough to throw a strong man into convulsions, upon my life ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... their taller shadows over the bright and dewy turf, and the last mists clearing away from the distant woods and blending with the spotless sky. Everything was sweet and still, save, indeed, the carol of the birds, or the tinkle of some restless bellwether. It was a rich autumnal morn. And yet with all the excitement of his new views in life, and the blissful consciousness of the happiness of those he loved, he could not but feel that a great change had come over his spirit since ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... tinkle of the bell and went to receive his message and order a car for morning. Then he returned to the merciful darkness of night, and paced the driveway until light came peeping over the tree tops. He prepared breakfast and an hour later ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... setting we reached it together. I entered the town over the bridge, and the stream under it, washing the walls of the high-piled, many-gabled old inn where I proposed to pass the night. I should hear it still rippling on with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, as I stretched myself down among the cool lavendered sheets, and little by little let slip ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... they had been given after he got in. His ear was more alert now. He noted the change from wood-paving to rough metal. Then more wood, and an indubitable omnibus blundering by; then more metal, in better repair; quieter streets, the tinkle of cans, the milkman's queer cry; and finally, "Next to the right and the fifth house on your left," in the voice with ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... tinkle of a bell across the grounds startled her into sitting posture. No, it wasn't David, after all,—somebody else,—some other woman's David, likely, ringing for the nurse. Carol sighed. How could David get well and strong out here, with all ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... gardens, tall With roses, riot; swift my gladness glides To that old pasture where the mushroom hides, The chicory blooms and Peace sits mid them all. Fenced in with rails and rocks, its emerald slopes,— Ribbed with huge granite,—where the placid cows Tinkle a browsing bell, roll to a height Wherefrom the sea, bright as adventuring hopes, Swept of white sails and plowed of foaming prows, Leaps like a Nereid on the ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... river, Their bells, which tinkle in minor thirds, Faintly sweet, like passionate birds Whose warbling wakens a sense of pain,— Thrill through the nerves and make them quiver,— Heart, my ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... them round his own smooth garland, making the bright side show, the vivid greens, the sharp thorns, manliness. He loved it. Indeed to Sopwith a man could say anything, until perhaps he'd grown old, or gone under, gone deep, when the silver disks would tinkle hollow, and the inscription read a little too simple, and the old stamp look too pure, and the impress always the same—a Greek boy's head. But he would respect still. A woman, divining the priest, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... thinking of the letter beneath her pillow, promising her return to college at the beginning of next term; but at the first tinkle of her alarm-clock she was up, and, dressing by candlelight, went softly down the stairs and out into the keen air of the morning. The stars were still bright overhead, and there was no light in the east; but Gertrude Windsor was not the first abroad; for at the gate Eddie, the two Willies, and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... not. Oh, might there be help yet, and some new life's beginning! —Lo, lighter the mist grows: there come sounds through its dulness, The lowing of kine, or the whoop of a shepherd, The bell-wether's tinkle, or clatter of horse-hoofs. A homestead is nigh us: I will fare down the highway And seek for some helping: folk said simple people Abode in this valley, and these may avail us— If aught it avail us to live for a little. —Yea, give it us, God!—all the fame and the glory We fought for ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... morose and grave in spite of the fact that the squirrel, the long-tailed monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch took great pains to distract him and lead him into the right path. The goose would tell fairy-tales, and in the midst of them the brook would tinkle a ballad; a great heavy stone would caper about ludicrously; the rose stealing up affectionately behind him would creep through his locks, and the ivy stroke his careworn forehead. But his melancholy and his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... summer he would go to sit in the churchyard of Shorne. First, however, he would have to pass through the village of Higham, where, too, was his nearest railway station, though he often preferred to walk over and entrain at Gravesend or Greenhithe. But the pleasant tinkle of harness bells was a familiar sound in the night to the Higham villagers, as the carriage was sent down from Gadshill Place to meet the master or his friends returning from London by the ten o'clock train. Dickens took a kindly and active interest in the affairs of the village, and the last ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... with the field as a camel among tent-ropes. A destroyer's bows are very fine, and her sides are very straight. This causes her to cleave the wave with the minimum of disturbance, and this boat had no desire to cleave anything else. None the less, from time to time, she heard a mine grate, or tinkle, or jar (I could not arrive at the precise note it strikes, but they say it is unpleasant) on her plates. Sometimes she would be free of them for a long while, and began to hope she was clear. At other times they were numerous, but when at last she ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... just such weather in those days, and such weather is sadly lacking in these. Our climate has changed very much since then. Less snow and cold and more rain now. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle! The merry sleigh bell! After the advent of the first snow, and when deep enough, there might be heard the sleigh-bell, either on a grocer's or butcher's sleigh, or on an improvised sleigh made ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... your fortune in utter disregard of age and sex, and plays a tune that cannot be recognised. When such a machine has registered a German matron's weight at 115 pounds and informed her that she will some day be President of the United States, it is ludicrous to have it break into a tinkle of self-appreciation, like a spaniel barking his own approval after walking across the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... and to arrange the pans on a level foundation of sticks or stones, in position. Father often used to haggle the tree a good deal in tapping. "By Fagus," he would say, "how awkward I am!" The rapid tinkle of those first drops of sap in the tin pan, how well I remember it! Probably the note of the first song sparrow or first bluebird, or the spring call of the nuthatch, sounded in unison. Usually only patches of snow lingered here and there in the woods and the earth- stained ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... until the lights on shore seemed mere specks, and we could just perceive the gentle roll of the Atlantic swell. He rested on his oars and listened. The voices of the others were lost in the distance, and only the tinkle of a banjo wafted from afar broke the night's tranquillity. The water was alive with phosphorescence that sparkled like gems ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the silence at first seeming tremendous; then, faint but distinct, he heard the tinkle and slide of the brazen rings supporting ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... tinkle of glasses in the hotel saloon, and through the open door came the fragrance of mint and pineapple. There was a white-clad, wax-mustached man behind the bar in there, who, as Markham knew, could make a morning cocktail "to raise the dead," and not to raise them stark and rigid, like the bodies ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... lined with royal blue velvet, appeared, and on a golden salver a letter. The letter, broad and weighty, was placed so as to exhibit the seal, which was a large impression in red wax. The bell continued to tinkle. The open panel almost touched the couch where the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... at last by the musical tinkle of a bell. He turned his face toward the sound, but could see nothing. The bell was coming nearer; it came nearer still. Then he saw here and there through the trees small, moving patches of white; an old ewe followed by two lambs came from behind a clump of bushes, and the moving patches ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... caw-caw distressfully at the wind, which tossed them hither and thither in the air and lashed the tall trees, threatening at each fresh gust to blow their nests to pieces. Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold that kept the others silent and made me blue. One day I spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... wedding presents that were accumulating at their house in Exeter Street. So I held it on my lap going in by train from Lexington, where Blakey lived, and when I got out at the old Lowell Depot—North Station, now—and got into the little tinkle-tankle horse-car that took me up to where I was to get the Back Bay car—Those were the prehistoric times before trolleys, and there were odds in horse-cars. We considered the blue-painted Back Bay cars very swell. You remember them?" he ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... Then I got my pole of mountain ash, made hook and line ready, dug some worms and went fishing. I cared not so much for the fishing as for the solitude of the woods. I had a bit of thing to do. In the thick timber there was a place where Tinkle brook began to hurry and break into murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... stalking figure and the fact of her mind being locked round one terrible and inevitable thought, she saw the changing beautiful glow of the fire-logs and the cold, pitiless stars and the mustering shadows under the walls. She heard, too, the low rising sigh of the wind in the balsam and the silvery tinkle of the brook, and sounds only imagined or nameless. Yet a stern and insupportable silence weighed her down. This dark canon seemed at the ends of the earth. She felt encompassed by illimitable and stupendous upflung mountains, insulated in a ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey |
