"Cackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him in surprise. He continued to keep up the cuckoo sound, trying to laugh, and yet totally unable to accomplish even a cackle, as if some internal force clutched the diaphragm and mocked him, so that his efforts were reduced to a gurgling as in cynanche—like a dog choking with a rope round his craig, the sounds coming jerking out in barks, and dying away again ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... life and death to each. A female inside-passenger, with an infant in her arms, which she nearly let drop in her energies, was the coryphee of this chorus of tongues, which could be compared to nothing but bees in the act of swarming, or the cackle which the entrance of a fox causes in a hen-roost. We were no longer surprised at hearing the peasants whom we met conversing in a tone which we had mistaken for quarrelling. The French generally, indeed, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... too of a very handsome person; the only thing his father has ever given him. His grandfather, Lord Granville, has always told him to choose a gentlewoman, and please himself; yet I should think the ladies Townshend and Cooper would cackle a little. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... At all events, the young Cabyle seemed to be dusty and warm with walking. He even seemed fatigued, for, when about to pass the group of slaves, he stopped to rest and flung down his load. The shock of the fall must have snapped a number of legs, for a tremendous cackle burst from the bundles as they ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... hour west of our camp, which has five eyes, temperature 150 deg., slightly saline taste, and steam issues constantly. It is called Kasugwe Colambu. Earthquakes are well known, and to the Manyuema they seem to come from the east to west; pots rattle and fowls cackle ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... hysterical cackle of renewed hope. "The Little Black Crow!" she exclaimed. "See, my colonel, he is not worth an execution all to himself, so do we all go back to contemplate Prince Max's ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... something, in a slovenly way, for the British Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will pay for their own telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were our own; if one in ten thousand of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed made to be something else than a portion for foxes, and burrows in it himself, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... robins, when there were any in the neighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whine floated earthward the melody of the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... tying its legs together, the buni placed it beside the snake. But the latter would pay no attention at first to this new victim, but went on hissing at the buni, who teased and irritated it until at last it actually struck at the wretched bird. The hen made a weak attempt to cackle, then shuddered once or twice and became still. The death was instantaneous. Facts will remain facts, the most exacting critic and disbeliever notwithstanding. This thought gives me courage to write what happened further. Little by little the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... runs swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... after midnight, as I lay in my little cabin, by a heavy blow struck at the sides of the canoe close to my head, which was succeeded by the sound of a weighty body plunging into the water. I got up; but all was again quiet, except the cackle of fowls in our hen-coop, which hung over the side of the vessel about three feet from the cabin door. I could find no explanation of the circumstance, and, my men being all ashore, I turned in again and slept until morning. I then found my poultry ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... a sudden loud cackle of laughter. "Why! the feller tole me 'at this here Pigeon place was all three rings when it come t' history. Yessir! Tall, thin feller he was, in a three-button cutaway, English make, and kind of red-complected, with a sandy MUS- tache," pursued ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... of water—which bore no relation to rain, but seemed rather as though the earth were at the foot of a waterfall from which a river was leaping from on high—were hurled over the land. The shrieking of the wind had a wild and maniacal sound, the sound which Jamaicans have christened "the hell-cackle of a hurricane." This squall lasted longer, five minutes or more, and when it passed, the wind dropped somewhat, but did not die down. It raged furiously, its shriek dropped to a sullen and ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... had gone there was another hush. Then it was broken by a man's voice, an old man's voice with a cackle of derision and shrewd amusement in it. "By gosh!" said this voice, resounding through the whole room, "that strange young woman has bought ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... monotone above all the talk and the cackle of laughter; ears were dinned everlastingly by the thunder of the cataract near the village. The Noda waters break their winter fetters first of all at Adonia, where the river leaps from the cliffs into the whirlpool. The ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... lightning jumped and tumbled, And the ship, and all the ocean, Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; And the captain he was ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... echoed Joe Clausin. "I've got that spot marked with a red cross in my mind, and if this boat ever gets close to it again, you'll hear this chicken cackle right smart. It's been photographed on my brain so that I'll see it lots of times when I ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... trap! cackle, cackle, cackle!" scolded the disturbed cockerel. "To market, to market! jiggetty jig!" clucked a broody white hen roosting next to him. Pigling Bland, much alarmed, determined to leave at daybreak. In the meantime, he and the ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... nobler in the mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... making up the list—but, on the other hand, poultry seems to swarm everywhere. I never saw such long-necked and long-legged cocks and hens in my life as I see here; but these feathered giraffes appear to thrive remarkably well, and scratch and cackle around every Malabar hut. I have not seen a sheep or a goat since I arrived, nor a cow or bullock grazing. The milch cows are all stall-fed. The bullocks go straight from shipboard to the butcher, and the horses are never turned out. This is partly because there is no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... spring to drink, the domestic fowls moving about,—there is a touch of sweet, homely life in these things that the winter sun enhances and brings out. Every sign of life is welcome at this season. I love to hear dogs bark, hens cackle, and boys shout; one has no privacy with nature now, and does not wish to seek her in nooks and hidden ways. She is not at home if he goes there; her house is shut up and her hearth cold; only the sun and sky, and perchance ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... make Little Stevie cuss! Better get in on it. Some fight! Tennelly sent 'Whisk' for a whole basket of superannuated cackle-berries"—he motioned back to a freshman bearing a basket of ancient eggs—"we're going to blindfold Steve and put oysters down his back, and then finish up with the fire-hose. Oh, the seven plagues of Egypt aren't in it with what we're going to do; and when we get ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... your salvation, you must hearken to him; He censures nothing but deserves his censure. These visits, these assemblies, and these balls, Are all inventions of the evil spirit. You never hear a word of godliness At them—but idle cackle, nonsense, flimflam. Our neighbour often comes in for a share, The talk flies fast, and scandal fills the air; It makes a sober person's head go round, At these assemblies, just to hear the sound Of so much gab, with not a word to say; And as a learned man remarked one day Most ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... shepherd of a lot of fine tub sheep And a lot of pretty little lambs. Oh, he lives with his five and forty wives, In the city of the Great Salt Lake, Where they breed and swarm like hens on a farm And cackle like ducks to ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... lurched down to the settlement his voice rose in a high cackle of delirious song. These were ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... a thing that met his own approval Sol Rollin would cackle most cheerfully and then crack a knuckle by twisting a finger. His laugh was mostly out of register also. It had a sad lack of relevancy. He laughed on principle rather than provocation. Some sort of secret comedy of which the world knew nothing, was passing in his mind; it seemed to have its exits ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... "you've finished that idiotic cackle, perhaps you will explain how a monkey comes to be acquainted with the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... obeying it, in verse 38. One great hindrance to out-and-out discipleship is fear of what the world will say. Hence come compromises and weak compliance on the part of disciples too timid to stand alone, or too sensitive to face a sarcasm and a smile. A wholesome contempt for the world's cackle is needed for following Christ. The geese on the common hiss at the passer-by who goes steadily through the flock. How grave and awful is that irony, if we may call it so, which casts the retribution in the mould of the sin! The judge shall be 'ashamed' of such unworthy disciples—shall blush to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... was a statement wrung from him by a deputation which was inflicting on him the familiar talk about lawyers and the need of "business men" to run our affairs. I suppose there has been no more banal cackle in this war than the cackle about a "business Government" and ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... v. cap. 29.,—who tells us that these geese, from a consciousness of their own loquacity, always cross Mount Taurus with stones in their bills, to prevent any unlucky cackle from betraying ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the hideous, unearthly cry of the laughing-jackass, called often the bushman's clock; the screaming cry of thousands of parrots flying here and there through the forest; there was the cackle of the wattle-bird, the clear notes of the magpie, and the confused chattering of thousands of leather-heads; while many other birds added their notes to the discordant chorus, and speedily banished sleep from the eyes of their hearers. The stockmen ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... they staggered up again with indignant wagging of head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once. And all the time they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the world was coming to, when an honest duck's piece of water was suddenly stolen from him, and he was subjected to insult on the top ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Beer, Should learn it is a dodge of vested pelf, And, rich or poor, a man can't rob himself. It is the poor who suffer from temptation, And drink's detestable adulteration, That crying ill which no one dares to tackle! Whilst Witlers howl, and Water-zealots cackle. The poor are poisoned, not by honest drink, But lethal stuff that might scour out a sink. The Poor Man's Beer, quotha! Who'll keep it pure? Not rich monopolists, nor prigs demure, Those shriek for freedom, these for prohibition, "Vend the drugged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... saying: "For the wide world old Miriam grieves, and at home without bread her children she leaves." He's sorry for the girl, but not sorry for his own son! Sling her round your neck and carry her about with you! That's enough of such empty cackle! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... indulges in a hard, throaty cackle. "There ain't no such animal," says she. "Come now, you're in on this with him. He said so. What's it ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... his breath. He had thought that women had only two forms of laughter, the giggle of youth or the cackle of age. He had never dreamed that a woman could laugh like a mountain stream gurgling down over the rocks. Immediately he visioned young ferns dripping diamonds into a shadowed pool, though he did not attempt to formulate the vision in words. His answer ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the female voice—is a target which has been hit hard many times, and very justly. A ladies' luncheon can often be truly and aptly compared to a poultry-yard, the shrill cackle being even more unpleasant than that of a large concourse of hens. If we had once become truly appreciative of the natural mellow tones possible to every woman, these shrill voices would no more be tolerated than a fashionable luncheon ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... Mrs. Amsden, with a cackle. She added, "That's very polite of him, isn't it? You must be a great favourite with Mr. Colville. You will miss him ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... branches. The turkeys themselves were so occupied with the appearance of the woman that they lost thought of everything else. One of them, a gobbler, braced himself up, his breast bulged out, his head and neck drawn in; then quickly thrusting them forward, sent out a loud cackle. At this moment the pine-branches were violently tossed about. With noisy flapping of their wings the hens rose into the air; their companion flapped his wings but once or twice, and disappeared in the tree-top. For a moment the twigs and branches rustled and rattled; then all was still. A panther ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... ain't nobody to see me, and I feels clean insides. As I takes it, you do your washing for them as neighbors with you. If I had a neighbor!—just a dog, a little yaller dog—or some chickens to crow and cackle—" ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... was introduced, when he claimed the privilege of addressing the house, on the proper ground that he had been "brought up among the pigs, and knew all about them"—so we were brought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, the cackle of hens, and the cooing of pigeons, were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for Existence"—a principle ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... nothing comes of what has happened, the wonder and the gossip must die away? I know you believe every word I have said, and that you trust me, papa. Please, for my sake, be patient with all this gossip and cackle.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my man," answered the ancient mariner, "get your leg aboard, for we're going to sail right away. Hi, you, Sylvanus there, give another haul on them halliards afore you're too mighty ready to belay, with your stupid cackle." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... cackle was answered by a slow, unctuous chuckle, as of a fat and wheezy person; then a door was closed, and ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... loyalist—loyalist now, if never certainly before—sat down on the settle and laughed; a dry wizened cackle of a laugh that sounded like the crumpling of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He wriggled in ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... little imps broke out into a titter that sounded like the cackle of a hen trying to tell she had ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... may count on me. If that antidote turns up, I shall not fail to cackle over it in your columns. By the by, are you going to review the poison? Excuse so many mixed metaphors," she added, with a rather ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... coast clear? yes, I think so. Come, Susie, greedy as you are, you must take your part. You alone of all of us can cackle with the exact imitation of an old hen: get behind that tree at once and watch the yard. Don't forget to cackle for your life if you even see the shadow of a footfall. Nora, my pretty birdie, you must be the thrush for the nonce; here, take your post, watch the lawn ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... advantage of it, and thus to present to the envious world the proud spectacle of an Englishman honoured by the great French nation. I will narrate the matter as briefly as is consistent with my respect for accuracy, and with my contempt for the tapioca-brained nincompoops who snarl, and chatter, and cackle at me in the organ of Mr. J. Last Friday I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black "log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the sound of its hammer are heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as a crow, and nearly ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Were chuckling together; They'd two hundred roubles In notes, the old rascals! 260 Safe hidden away In the end of their coat-tails. They both had been yelling, ''We're beggars! We're beggars!'' So carried them home. ''Well, well, you may cackle!'' I thought to myself, ''But the next time, be certain, You won't laugh at me!'' The others were also 270 Ashamed of their weakness, And so by the ikons We swore all together That next time we rather Would die of the beating Than feebly give way. It seems ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... cackle from Hugh, whose grin had been growing wider and wider, now interrupted the discussion: "Ho, ho, ho! One of you is talking about aunts—your Aunt Maria—and the other is talking about ants—the beasts that go to the sluggard," he exploded. "You ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... invaded Rome, a detachment in single file scaled the hill on which the capitol stood, so silently that the foremost man reached the summit without being challenged; but while striding over the rampart, some sacred geese were disturbed, and by their cackle aroused the guard. Marcus Manlius rushed to the wall, and hustled the Gaul over, thus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Above all, that class of 'Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is shining, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... shoes protruded from the rail in a blue film of smoke. They twitched, as a dry cackle of laughter ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... inward over the empty "bay" and his fat legs left to wave wildly about in their effort to find a resting place. To add to his predicament, a scream of uncontrollable laughter rose from all the observers, even Mabel, in whose sake he so gallantly suffered, adding her shrill cackle to the others. ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... of silence; then a cackle of words from several of them together. The Greek's hands on his shoulders tightened. He heard the man's purring voice in ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... scurvy thing I find, Swans sing when dying, geese when blind. But now I smoke where lies the slander,— I call'd you goose instead of gander; For that, dear Tom, ne'er fret and vex, I'm sure you cackle like the sex. I know the gander always goes With a quill stuck across his nose: So your eternal pen is still Or in your claw, or in your bill. But whether you can tread or hatch, I've something else to do than watch. As for your writing ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was wearing this week; but although both had noticed the new ornament instantly, wild horses could not have drawn the question from them; her desire to be asked was too obvious. With her gay plumage, her "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," and her cheerful cackle, Huldah closely resembled ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... white goose by the leg, A goose—'twas no great matter. The goose let fall a golden egg With cackle and with clatter. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... a few moments, and then started for the stockade, in and out among houses and gardens, where all was silent save the occasional cackle and movement of the game-fowls many of the people kept. Twice they heard voices, but the place seemed to be pretty well plunged in slumber, and, with his spirits rising moment by moment, Frank hurried on, with Amy close behind him, till the houses were left behind without a soul being ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... the parade! Willow Lane's gettin' awful high-toned!" There was a loud cackle of laughter and Madame's shoulders shook with suppressed merriment. "That's Gladys Hurd," she said, shaking her head. "Poor Gladys, I'm afraid she's not a very good girl. She's not ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... tones and ill-defined edges. Its effect was due to its volume, readiness, and long continuance. Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle, it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was between a roar and the lazy drone ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... woman spat forth the word with a cackle of laughter. "Oh, you cannot fool the Black Woman, Yellow Brian! Listen—Brian your name is, and Yellow Brian your name shall be indeed, since this is your will. Owen Ruadh O'Neill lies at the O'Reilly stead at Lough Oughter, but you ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... Mudder tell them story we chillun noddin'! Some cackle out and all jump up and go back to picking out ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... little lights twinkled out in the huts and tents of their captors, and the deep bass drone of men's voices within mingled with the shrill cackle of women, and the high song of the mosquitoes without; and the smell of cooking and tobacco together came to them, so that they sniffed aloofly and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... opened in sunshine, was now become grey, very still and depressing. An intense and brooding silence reigned, broken by the splashing of the horse's hoofs in the scarcely ruffled water, and by the occasional peevish cackle of a gull hovering, on purposeless wings, between the waters and the mists. The low island lay in the dull distance ahead, wan and deprecatory of aspect, like a thing desiring to be left alone in the morose embrace ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... cackle over the promise of their inchoate offspring, doomed to perish unfeathered, before fate has decided whether they shall cluck or crow, for the sole use of the minions of the sun and the feeders of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he is one of the greatest of small men. Have you read Emerson or Lowell yet? Here are new men of real thoughtfulness whose minds are upon the truth which does not fade with passing events. These questions about Texas and Oregon, about tariffs, about Whigs and Democrats, what are they but the cackle of the moment? And yet there is something pathetic about Douglas. Why does he not settle to the solid study and experiences of the law? Why this catching at this and the other opportunity? Mr. Williams says that Mr. Douglas ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Exchequer Hen! Layer and sitter Of really first-rate quality. Though rival fowls are enviously bitter, That doth not bate her jollity. Her duties CAQUET BONBEC'S game to tackle, Without much cackle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... The cackle of a hen when she lays an egg, says a scientist, is akin to laughter. And with some of the eggs we have met we can easily guess what ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... a certain reluctance, "I undertook to provision the camp on spec, last winter, and—well, you know, I always run a little on food for the brain,"—Bartley broke into a reminiscent cackle, and Kinney smiled forlornly,—"and thinks I, 'Dumn it, I'll give 'em the real thing, every time.' And I got hold of a health-food circular; and I sent on for a half a dozen barrels of their crackers and half a dozen of their flour, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... are apt to underrate the importance of the speeches they are called upon to deliver, laying the greater stress upon the "business" they propose to originate, or the scenic effects that are to be introduced into the play. They sometimes describe the words of their parts as "cackle." But perhaps this term also may be accepted as applying, fitly enough, to much of the dialogue of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... disheartened a stranger to their ways. They were a set of hollow bronze statues that looked at me, but I knew that the living animals inside of them were tickled at my singing, strumming, and pirouetting. Cla-cla was, however, an exception, and encouraged me not infrequently by emitting a sound, half cackle and half screech, by way of laughter; for she had come to her second childhood, or, at all events, had dropped the stolid mask which the young Guayana savage, in imitation of his elders, adjusts to his face at about the age of twelve, to wear ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... one of the great routes for the migration of birds. Yesterday and several times to-day I saw flocks of geese flying over our heads and steering south, likely on their way to the Nile and great African lakes. During last night they kept up a constant cackle as they flew ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... a short, fat, excited person, met them in the hall with a cackle of alarm. "I'm awfully glad you've come," she exclaimed. "Your father has been taken with ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... it and snarled his answer angrily. "Dropped 'er on th' trail, an' threw her fine-lady b'longin's after 'er. 'Ain't got no use fer thet kind. Wonder what they was created fer? Ain't no good to nobody, not even 'emselves." And he laughed a harsh cackle that was not pleasant ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Jake Carson's shrill cackle cut through a low rumble of laughter. "That's passing it to him straight," said the old cattleman. "What's the ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... some great emergencies at first, but had clearly no pride in them. Before long she laid them aside altogether, and they had passed from our thoughts, when one day we heard her mellow note of laughter and her daughter's harsher cackle outside our door, and, opening it, beheld Mrs. Johnson in gold-bowed spectacles of massive frame. We then learned that their purchase was in fulfilment of a vow made long ago, in the lifetime of Mr. Johnson, that if ever she wore glasses, they should be gold- bowed; and I hope ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... a row there was in the henroost! The cocks began to crow loud enough to split their throats, and the hens to fly about and cackle. The man was nearly deafened, and yelled out at the top of his voice, 'What do you expect, you fools? Mice can only be caught with meat, and meat I must and will have too.' He then let them rave on, and quietly and methodically continued to pluck his chicken. When it was ready, he made a ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Boshman glided like a serpent among us, picked up the paper-knife, and triumphantly performed the very miracle in which the wizard had failed. A harsh cackle of laughter announced his success. But the mage was even with him, or rather he was 'odds and evens.' Rapidly he drew his forefinger across the ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... show it by painting on broad canvas a Carthaginian battle-scene or by photographing the details of a modern bedroom: a brief brightness, night and the odor of carrion, a crucified lion, a dying woman, the jeering of ribald mercenaries, the cackle of M. Homais. It is all one. If Flaubert deserved prosecution, it was not for making vice attractive, but for expressing with invasive energy that personal and desperately pessimistic conception of life by which ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... could not see them (for they seemed to disappear from before his eyes). The monarch heard also melodious strains of vocal music and the agreeable voices of preceptors engaged in lecturing to their disciples on the Vedas and the scriptures. And the monarch also heard the harmonious cackle of the geese sporting in the lakes. Beholding such exceedingly wonderful sights, the king began to reflect inwardly, saying, 'Is this a dream? Or is all this due to an aberration of my mind? Or, is it all real? O, I have, without casting off my earthly tenement, attained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... luck was not going even. One of the three won the throw, time after time, and crowed so loud at each success, that the others (as was only natural), turned first surly, then angry. But the winner heeded not their wrath, but continued to cackle insultingly, until their patience being all spent, they knocked over the table, and fell to blows. Now, surely, thought I, is the time for us. But my comrade still lay low, and signed to me to do the same. For we were unarmed, and had we been too ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lubin sagely. "The old hen feels herself badly off when the egg teaches her to cackle. That's human nature, that is. And then she was riled because she was afraid I shouldn't have time to get the garden-things in order by to-morrow, when it seems there's some sort o' company expected. I told ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... scavenger-bird. Other singers satirised each others' legs, and one, the Aretino of the time, mocked at king Ptolemy and scourged his failings in verse. The literary quarrels (to which Theocritus seems to allude in Idyl VII, where Lycidas says he 'hates the birds of the Muses that cackle in vain rivalry with Homer') were as stupid as such affairs usually are. The taste for artificial epic was to return; although many people already declared that Homer was the world's poet, and that the world needed no other. This epic reaction brought into favour Apollonius ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... happened, but when I caught sight of Skinny sitting in the water I just roared. Skinny sat there with his head above water making no attempt to move, but when I laughed he looked up indignantly and said, "Blime, mite, you'd cackle if a fellar broke his bleedin' neck," and then while I continued laughing he cursed the Germans with every variety of oath to which he could lay his tongue, vowing what he was going to do to get even, but all the ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... she said, with an apologetic cackle, "it ain't to be suppose as miraculs can be performed with regard to cookin', the fire havin' gone out, not bein' kept alight on account of the 'eat of the day, which was that 'ot as never was, tho', to be sure, bein' a ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... seemed to escape the stranger's hearing, for, full of his bottle, he now rubbed his somewhat sallow hands over it, and with a strange kind of cackle, meant to be a chirrup, cried: "Good wine, good wine; is it not the peculiar bond of good feeling?" Then brimming both glasses, pushed one over, saying, with what seemed intended for an air of fine disdain: "Ill betide those gloomy skeptics who maintain that now-a-days ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... doth lay, (Spreads the fame of her doing what she may.) About the yard she cackling now doth go, To tell what 'twas she at her nest did do. Just thus it is with some professing men, If they do ought that good is, like our hen They can but cackle on't where e'er they go, What their right hand doth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wide his book, The goose makes a long, long neck, to look, He opens his mouth, as if to cough, When, snippety-snap! her head flies off. Now, cackle loudly her sisters fond, Who are watching proudly from the pond, While off to the town that lies beyond, The whole of the frightened ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... a sentence to see the impression he was making, that uncouth fellow, Lively, moved by what happy inspiration he did not know, suddenly broke in, apropos of nothing, nodding his head, and speaking in a clear cackle, with, "Pray, sir, what is your opinion of the infallibility of the Pope?" Upon which every one but Jennings did laugh out: but he, au contraire, began to look very black; and no one can tell what ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... their feelings in a prolonged clucking, when suddenly Yushka, bareheaded and stick in hand, with three other house-serfs of mature years, flew at them simultaneously. Then the fun began. The hens clucked, flapped their wings, hopped, raised a deafening cackle; the house-serfs ran, tripping up and tumbling over; their master shouted from the balcony like one possessed: 'Catch 'em, catch 'em, catch 'em, catch 'em, catch 'em, catch ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... what the bird might be. One said, "It is surely a waterfowl, a duck, or it may be a goose; if we took it to the water it would swim and gabble." But another said, "It has no webs to its feet; it is a barn-door fowl; should you let it loose it will scratch and cackle with the others on the dung-heap." But a third speculated, "Look now at its curved beak; no doubt it is a parrot, and can crack nuts!" But a fourth said, "No, but look at its wings; perhaps it is a bird of great flight." But several cried, "Nonsense! ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... snapped at his heels. In another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could. In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver and more touching. It was the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cackle among these Lutherans,' he mocked at Margot. 'Heard you no hootings as your lady rode here ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... drownded, sure enough," spoke a woman's shrill voice, high above the cackle of the hens and the quack-quack of the ducks—"drownded dead, an' more's the pity; an' their ma dead, too, an' their pa in Africa, an' their aunties ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... the blood of every man of our kin to take to the sea. They are like hen-bred ducklings now, and they do but want a duck to lead them pondwards. Then may hen cackle in vain ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... legitimately within the scope of their judgment the verdict of the great mass of men is infinitely more trustworthy than that of any small body of men, no matter how cultivated. Of plenty of that narrow judgment of select circles which mistakes the cackle of its little coterie for the voice of the world, Cooper was made the subject, and sometimes the victim, during his lifetime. There were any number of writers, now never heard of, who were going to outlive him, according to literary prophecies then (p. 271) ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... because there was neither a canvas tent, a barn roof, nor the blue sky above him, but a neat white ceiling, where several flies buzzed sociably together, while from without came, not the tramping of horses, the twitter of swallows, or the chirp of early birds, but the comfortable cackle of hens and the sound of two little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... was once observed to attach itself in the strongest and most affectionate manner to the house dog, but never offered to go into the kennel except in rainy weather. Whenever the dog barked, the goose would cackle, and run at the person she supposed the dog barked at, and try to bite him by the heels. She would sometimes try to feed with the dog, but this the dog, who treated his faithful companion with indifference, would not allow. This bird ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... red rag, purposely fluttered as Hayden felt before the eyes of Mrs. Ames, that lady sniffed audibly and tossed her head, emitting at the same moment a faint, contemptuous cackle. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... shrikish notes; then instantly shook his wings with an extraordinary flapping noise, and followed that with several highly curious and startling cries, the concluding one of which sometimes suggested the cackle of a robin. All this he repeated again and again with the utmost fervor. He could not have been more enthusiastic if he had been making the sweetest music in the world. And I confess that I thought he had reason to be proud of his work. The introduction of wing-made sounds in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain himself; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in derision, then hopping into position on a limb and dancing to the music of his own cackle, and all for your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... face became distorted. "I am so chock full of eggs now that everything looks yellow. I dream of them. I cackle in my sleep. My whole interior is egg. I breathe and think egg. I gag when ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... drink at Pfahlert's Hotel, where a counter lunch—as good as many dinners you get for a shilling—was included with a sixpenny drink. "Get a quiet corner," said Mitchell, "I like to bear myself cackle." So we took our beer out in the fernery and got a cool place at a little table in a quiet ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal—and there was very little else to look at—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silences in this man's island, do they? he commented desperately to himself, thinking how different it was from America. Why, there they acted as if silence was an egg that had just been laid, and everyone had to cackle at once to cover it up. But here the talk constantly fell to the ground, and nobody but himself seemed concerned to pick it up. His attempt to praise Chev had not been successful, and he could understand ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... they fell to talking of other things and forgot the creature; till, suddenly, from within the temple came a crow that beat even Herbert's noisy ones. It was so loud and so sudden, and was so closely followed by a jubilant cackle, that all of them were a trifle startled while Wun Sing threw himself ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... way in which she took hold of herself with a grip of iron, scrubbed her face with his handkerchief, dabbed it thickly with powder from a small silver box, threw back her head and went up two stairs at a time. On the second floor there was a cackle of laughter, but doors were shut. On the third all was quiet. But on the fourth the tall, thin, Raphael-headed man was drunk again, arguing thickly in the usual cloud of smoke, which drifted sullenly into the passage through the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Quatorze; that the tears of Bayswater can possibly be compared for saltness with the lachrymal fluid distilled from South Audley Street glands; that the laughter of Clapham can be as catching as the cultured cackle of Curzon Street? But we, whose best clothes are exhibited only in parlours, what are we to do? How can we lay bare the souls of Duchesses, explain the heart-throbs of peers of the realm? Some of my friends who, being Conservative, ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... they don't come up stairs. It's nice to be in your own place, though the folks where I staid were very good and pleasant, I s'pose they thought I might remember them in my will," and she gave a shrill sort of cackle. "Now I tell you there isn't much fun in living to be old, and I seem to have lost my spunk. It's just a kind of drowsing life away. Now tell me what you did! My, but this toast tastes good! Better than ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... cold day in January we heard a faint cackle outside, and, opening the kitchen door, found our poor widow in a sorry plight. One foot was frozen, her feathers were all rough and dirty, her wings drooping, her bright comb changed to a dull red. How she escaped from the hen-house, surmounted the high fence, and hobbled or flew ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... eminent illusions and hallucinations does not pursue Lagune with sceptical! inquiries. Take his house—expose the alleged man of Chelsea! A priori they might argue that a thing so vain, so unmeaning, so strongly beset by cackle, could only be the diseased imagining of some hysterical phantom. Do you believe that such a thing as Lagune exists? I must own to the gravest doubts. But happily his banker is of a more credulous type than I.... Of all that Lagune ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... squares of many colors, atrocious reds, blues and yellows. These windows were opened a little at the top, and through the openings came soft sounds of Spring, the wind racing among the budding branches, the sudden call of a bird, and occasionally the crooning, sleepy cackle of hens from a distance. Now and then a cloud drifted by, across the sun, dimming the interior for a moment, so that the minister's voice seemed to come from farther off. The sunlight through the stained glass ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and took a long pull on one of my Carona-Caronas. It all seemed too good to be true. Only six hours before in my marble entrance hall I had listened disgustedly to the cackle of my wife's luncheon party behind the tapestry of my own ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... will pass your days at the gymnasia, glowing with strength and health; you will not go to the public place to cackle and wrangle as is done nowadays; you will not live in fear that you may be dragged before the courts for some trifle exaggerated by quibbling. But you will go down to the Academy[556] to run beneath the sacred olives with some virtuous friend of your ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... to be plenty—do take it." Under this encouragement, Grandy took the egg—while he was greatly enjoying it, suddenly there was a flutter in the corner of the hut. An old hen flew up from behind a box in the corner, lit on the side of the box and began to cackle loudly. The Major turned to Grandy and said, "I-I t-t-told you there was going to be a plenty. I invited you to dinner today because this was the day for the hen to lay." He went over and got the fresh egg from behind the box, cooked and ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... for some reason thought judicious for the society to hold its meetings in various places, now here, now there; but the most frequent rendezvous was the Cafe des Exiles; it was quiet; those Spanish Creoles, however they may afterward cackle, like to lay their plans noiselessly, like a hen in a barn. There was a very general confidence in this old institution, a kind of inward assurance that "mother wouldn't tell;" though, after all, what great secrets could there be connected with a ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... wall the men under Quinnox stood their ground; a solid, defiant line that fired with telling accuracy into the struggling horde. On the walls two Gatling guns began to cackle their laugh of death. And still the mercenaries poured through the gap, forming in haphazard lines under the direction ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the gentleman, behind whom we have been in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman's church on a Sunday in June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen's sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pass from the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... creatures are quite interesting. As you grow older, you will spend many an hour in trying to discover where the dividing line between INSTINCT and REASON is. It is SOMEWHERE. If you hatch some chickens by heat, miles away from any other fowls, the hens will cackle, and the cocks will crow, all the same, although no one has taught them. Why ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... poor Burrel's shock, Of Nature's debt to see his hens all payers, And laid in death as Everlasting Layers, With Bantam's small Ex-Emperor, the Cock, In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle, Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle! To see as stiff as stone, his un'live stock, It really was enough to move his block. Down on the floor he dash'd, with horror big, Mr. Bell's third wife's mother's coachman's wig; And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble, Burst out with natural emphasis enough, And voice that grief made ...
— English Satires • Various
... by the driver's encouraging, "Pop-pop! Dih-dih-dih! Ho-ho-ho! children of jungle swine; brothers to buffalo!" addressed to the horses lagging in the climb, fluttered away with his silly little cackle. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Cackle and lay, cackle and lay! How many eggs did you get to-day? None in the manger, and none in the shed, None in the box where the chickens are fed, None in the tussocks and none in the tub, And only a little one ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... had been merely the cackle of the feminine goose who likes writing to an advertised person, I would have torn them up, but they were sometimes signed by men, and often expressed the opinions of ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... existence, and his consequent horror of ennuyering his world—in short, to perceive the joke of life is rarely given to our people, whilst it forms the mainspring of the Parisian's savoir plaire. The finesse of the Frenchman, acquired in long loafing and clever cafe cackle—the glib go and easy assurance of the petit creve, combined with the chic of great habit—the brilliant blague of the ateliers—the aptitude of their argot—the fling of the Figaro, and the knack of short paragraphs, which allows him to print of a picture "C'est bien ecrit!" and of a subject, ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... parish of St. Giles's in the Fields, a young lady adorned with every accomplishment that can give happiness to the married state. Or we are told, amidst our impatience for the event of a battle, that on a certain day Mr. Winker, a tide-waiter at Yarmouth, was married to Mrs. Cackle, a widow lady of great accomplishments, and that as soon as the ceremony was performed they set out ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... accompanied by laughter. It seems that the display of the teeth by drawing back the corners of the mouth, which is called a "grin," and is associated in many dogs with a short, sharp, demonstrative bark, and in mankind with the cackle we call a "laugh," is a retention, a survival, of the playful, good-natured movement of gently biting or pulling a companion with the teeth used by our animal ancestors to draw attention to their joy and to communicate it to others. Gradually it has lost ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... perpendicularly upwards in a succession of jerks in a manner that he would have thought to be impossible. That was the last seen of Baxter. There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything. There were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He came down in a tremendous vol-plane from an unknown height. He never got off his machine and died in his pilot's seat. Died of what? ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows.... Is all this familiar to you, reader? In the house itself everything is a little awry, a little rickety—but no matter. It stands firm and keeps warm; the stoves are like ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the duke, I believe, to fly. Chartersea hissed out that he would not move a step until he had finished me, and as I bent over the body his point popped through my coat, and the pain shot under my shoulder. I staggered, and fell. A second of silence ensued, when the duke said with a laugh that was a cackle: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brood from January to April according to locality, laying from eight to twelve creamy white eggs under a bamboo clump or some dense thicket where a few leaves have been scratched together for a nest. The hen announces the laying of an egg by means of a proud cackle, and the chicks themselves have the characteristic "peep, peep, peep" of the domestic birds. After the breeding season the beautiful red and gold neck hackles of the male sometimes are molted and ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Here my knee, there my foot, Up and up, from shoot to shoot— And the blessed bean-stalk thinning Like the mischief all the time, Till it took me rocking, spinning, In a dizzy, sunny circle, Making angles with the root, Far and out above the cackle Of the city I was born in, Till the little dirty city In the light so sheer and sunny Shone as dazzling bright and pretty As the money that you find In a dream of finding money— What a ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... "I don't like to cackle too loudly, because of Muriel and Nesta," said Mavis. "But I am proud of you! It's been worth the grind, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil |
