"High-pitched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... palace, using a smaller type anionizer, which, I noticed, was set just right so that while all of Nunami would be leveled, the temple with its great tower would be beyond the impact and left standing. Just as we had set it correctly, we heard a high-pitched whistle, which was the preconcerted signal among the raiders to use if any danger was nigh. We looked up directly and saw its reason: a squadron of Zards had been garrisoned inside the palace and had not left like the others, apparently because its sole ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... steamer unobserved. He edged around outside the lantern shine and went on along the beach to the native village. As he had foreseen, all the able-bodied men were down at the boat-landing working cargo. The grass houses seemed lifeless, but at last, from one of them, came a challenge in the querulous, high-pitched tones of age: ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... While I first found these sparrows near Peabody, they were also fairly common, a few days later, in northeastern Kansas, about a mile back from the Missouri River, where their low alto strains formed a kind of gray background for the high-pitched trills of the Harris sparrows and the loud pipings of the cardinals. Quaint as our little contralto's solos are, they have a distinct fascination for me, and now that I no longer live in the Sunflower state, I miss them sorely when the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... know what is going on here?" went on Josiah Crabtree, in his high-pitched voice. "Who ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... a high-pitched and querulous tone. "No! I want to see if this business owns me, or if I own it. Why should you need to communicate with me? Whenever I'm off a day you always sign everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time; so it's only the usual thing, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... To take one example among many, the pitch and intonation of the voice often impress more than the words. A nurse with a querulous tone has a restless nursery; she makes the high-spirited contradictory and the delicate fretful. In teaching, a high-pitched voice is exciting and wearing to children; certain cadences that end on a high note rouse opposition, a monotonous intonation wearies, deeper and more ample tones are quieting and reassuring, but if their solemnity becomes ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... inextricable heap. Originally it had been a little frame building of one story with a gabled roof. Then it had gradually become an embryo town; it budded in all directions, upward as well, kaleidoscopically increasing to a vast mass of little bits of facade, high-pitched roofs, deep bays, and overhanging gables, all mingled together in an endless confusion, till in the middle it was five stories high. And there a bluish ring of vapor always hovered, revealing the presence of the well, that hidden ventilating shaft for the thronging inmates of the "Ark." ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... what she may have said to Aunt Christie while Swan received some final instructions above, is of less consequence than what Miss Crampton may have felt when she found herself at the top of the stairs in the long room, with its brown high-pitched roof—a room full of the strangest furniture, warm with the sun of August, and sweet with ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... plays are so bad that it is difficult to believe that they brought her a fortune. But no doubt it was their faults that made them popular—their sentimentalities, their melodramatic absurdities, their strangely false and high-pitched moral tone. They are written in a jargon which resembles, if it resembles anything, an execrable prose translation from very flat French verse. "Ah, Manuel!" exclaims one of her heroines, "I am now amply punished by the Marquis for all ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Dick understood that they did not expect much from their Government. One said the English would send a cruiser and something might be done by the Americans; another explained the Monroe Doctrine in a high-pitched voice. Dick, however, tried not to listen, because difficulties he had for some time seen ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... Stephen's attention was the General's voice, somewhat high-pitched, in the key that he used in telling a story. These were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... And, lifting his hands to his mouth, he sent out a stentorian yell that rolled up the slope, rang against the cliffs, pealed and broke and died away. Then he waited, listening. From far up the slope came a faint, wild cry, high-pitched and sweet, to create strange echoes, floating away to ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... them. My first glimpses of Santa Chiara gave me this earnest of romance. It was walled and fortified, the streets were narrow pits of shade, old tenements with bent fronts swayed to meet each other. Melons lay drying on flat roofs, and yet now and then would come a high-pitched northern gable. Latin and Teuton met and mingled in the place, and, as Mr. Gibbon has taught us, the offspring of this admixture is something fantastic and unpredictable. I forgot my grievous thirst and my tired feet in admiration and a certain ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... could see right through to the glass door left open over the barrier and into the space beyond. A well-dressed, dark, bushy-bearded man stood there carrying a hand-bag, which he placed on the ledge before him. Hewitt raised his hand to enjoin silence. The man spoke in a rather high-pitched voice and with a slight accent. "Is Mr. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a confused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. "Bajo el traidor—Muerte el traidor!" were the words they seemed ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... from the wood, the heroic General hurried back and regained the 22nd at the moment it was rushing to storm the first nullah. Riding to the first rank, he raised that clear, high-pitched cry of war which had at Meeanee sent the same fiery soldiers to the charge. It was responded to with ardour, led by Major Poole, who commanded the brigade, and Captain George, who commanded the corps. ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Suddenly rose the high-pitched yell of the scout, sounding the charge. Snorting, swerving, the horses of the others followed his, terror smitten but driven in by men most of whom at least knew how ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... chorus, which he performed with a fairly close imitation of the original cries of periods before parliaments were instituted, thus representing a stage in the human development besides the borough of Bevisham. He arrived in the best of moods for the emission of high-pitched vowel-sounds; otherwise in the worst of tempers. His uncle had notified an addition of his income to him at Romfrey, together with commands that he should quit the castle instantly: and there did that woman, Mistress Culling, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in upon the Turks. It was a stirring scene. The powerful Indians sat their horses with the utmost grace. Their drawn sabres flashed in the sun. As they came to close quarters the turbaned heads bent forward and we could hear the shouts and high-pitched cries of triumph as the riders slashed at the foe. The wounded and dead testified to their skill as swordsmen. The whole sight reminded me more of the battle books I read as a boy than anything ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... Where it ran with the road the wall gave way to a lofty gate and iron fence, through which those passing could see a stretch of noble turf, as wide as a polo-field, borders of flowers disappearing under the shadows of the trees; and the chateau itself, with its terrace, its many windows, its high-pitched, sloping roof, broken by towers ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... began in stereotyped, high-pitched tones as she pressed the spring. "You duck!" she added a trifle more enthusiastically, viewing the bowknot of gems in the form of a pin—a design of diamonds four inches wide with a centre stone of pigeon's-blood ruby. "You couldn't have pleased me more"—trying ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... furious knock somebody ventured into the hall. Then Julie's voice, high-pitched with excitement and consternation, exclaimed, "Mercy on us!" With that she dragged the basket into her abode ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... more like betting or training people, though." She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, "I tell you Dick knows all about this Porter ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... of the rope at his ankles never came. As he lay with his eyes closed, a high-pitched voice broke the quiet. "If a man starts to haul on that line, I'll shoot him dead!" Jeremy turned his head and looked. There stood Stede Bonnet, his face ashen gray and trembling, but with a venomous fire in his sunken eyes. He held a pistol ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the town of his birth), a worthy follower of Vesalius. In 1594, in the thirtieth year of his professoriate, he built at his own expense a new anatomical amphitheatre, which still exists in the university buildings. It is a small, high-pitched room with six standing-rows for auditors rising abruptly one above the other. The arena is not much more than large enough for the dissecting table which, by a lift, could be brought up from a preparing room below. The study of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... penetrated and enhanced by the faint sweet scent of Banksia roses, that clothed the rickety woodwork in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... cultivated the high-pitched voice that she regarded as the hall-mark of good breeding, and, in that silent rush downhill, Medenham could not avoid hearing each syllable. It was eminently pleasing to listen to Cynthia's praise of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to live as Christ would have us, and that because He would have us? Love to Him that does not keep His commandments is either spurious or dangerously feeble. The true sign of its presence in the heart and the noblest of its operations is not to be found in high-pitched expressions of fervid emotion, nor even in the sacred joys of solitary communion, but in its making us, while in the rough struggle of daily life, and surrounded by trivial tasks, live near Him, and by Him, and for Him, and like Him. If I live so, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... found the consul's house and knocked at the door, whereupon a high-pitched, querulous voice ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and bending low in the bright stream of sunlight. Young girls, with flowers in their laps, sat under the wide-spreading boughs of a big tree. The blue smoke of wood fires spread in a thin mist above the high-pitched roofs of houses that had glistening walls of woven reeds, and all round them rough wooden pillars under the sloping eaves. He dispensed justice in the shade; from a high seat he gave orders, advice, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Hyperides, however numerous, cannot make him sublime. He never exhibits strong feeling, has little energy, rouses no emotion; certainly he never kindles terror in the breast of his readers. But Demosthenes followed a great master,[1] and drew his consummate excellences, his high-pitched eloquence, his living passion, his copiousness, his sagacity, his speed—that mastery and power which can never be approached—from the highest of sources. These mighty, these heaven-sent gifts (I dare ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... though our ears hear it, we don't separate the sounds. If you'll notice, you do hear a sort of humming. It's very high-pitched, though." ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... and high-pitched, like the voice of a man half mad with delirium. Those that answered him spoke in terms not less measured. Had a pack of wild hounds been slipped suddenly to its prey, no howls more terrifying could have been heard than those which echoed in that house of mystery. ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... becomes a poet of the tender kind, passed out from among us—to travel to Paris in an aeroplane. I do not know whether it was this latter event, or the expression of a philosophy so entirely at variance with my own, or perhaps the sound of the high-pitched plaintive voice, that gave me the sense of incongruity, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... placed on a splint and treated by rest, and a month later the aneurism had decreased to one half its former size, the wall having greatly increased in firmness. Pulsation was easily controlled by pressure above the tumour; there was no thrill present, but a high-pitched bellows murmur. The patient was sent ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... the far bank came an order. It was Laputa's voice, thin and high-pitched, as the Kaffir cries when he wishes his words to carry a great distance. Henriques repeated it, and the infantry halted. The riders of the column in front of the litter began to move ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the narrow street, almost brushing the faces of the motley throng that passed beneath. Tom-toms and cymbals beat and clashed, while from the Chinese theater came the shrill piping of reeds and the high-pitched chanting ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... in the hall to glance over his newspaper, heard the high-pitched voice running on in the parlor. At first he hardly listened; then these ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... say, Uncle, Uncle!' a high-pitched voice shouted, and a seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat, new white felt boots, and a warm cap, ran hurriedly out of the house into the yard. 'Take me with you!' he cried, fastening up his coat as ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... head; offend the ear, grate upon the ear, jar upon the ear. Adj. creaking &c v.; stridulous^, harsh, coarse, hoarse, horrisonous^, rough, gruff, grum^, sepulchral, hollow. sharp, high, acute, shrill; trumpet-toned; piercing, ear-piercing, high-pitched, high-toned; cracked; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at the magistrate, then at the crowd, as if to impress them also, the old man told in a high-pitched, excited voice all the details—his seeing Davy Allen pass in front of his house last Friday afternoon, his missing the dog, his finding the block of wood down the road beside the pasture fence, his over-hearing the squire's talk right here in the store, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... attendants. Almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robe Graham had worn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it about his shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of a high-pitched bell. Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... to use my present privilege to say a word for these outsiders with whom I belong. Many years ago there was one of them from Canada here—a man with a high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree with all the points of my philosophy. At a lecture one day, when I was in the full flood of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine, exclaiming: "But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment . . . ," in so sincere a tone that the whole room burst ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... their knavery better than any one: but that did not keep him from supporting them in order to retain their support. And if in private he never hesitated to speak of the people in terms of contempt, on the platform he was a different man. Then he would assume a high-pitched voice, shrill, nasal, labored, solemn tones, a tremolo, a bleat, wide, sweeping, fluttering gestures like the beating of wings: exactly ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... lad in a high-pitched, piercing voice, intended to confuse his enemy. And it served its ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... would be tired to death, and you don't look any too chipper." Maud turned and stared at Wollaston, who was standing aloof. "I declare, he looks as if he had been up a week of Sundays, too," said she. Then she called out to him, in her high-pitched treble, which sounded odd coming from her soft circumference of throat. Maud's voice ought, by good rights, to have been a rich, husky drone, instead of bearing a resemblance to a parrot's. "Say, Wollaston Lee," she called out, and the boy approached ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... discussing the matter, a thin, high-pitched voice from the edge of the crowd, broke in, "That there's a good lift alright, but hit ain't nothin' t' what I seed when I was t' ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... especially popularised by the powerful voice of Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. Since the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to keep the population of the world from starvation it seems ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... a hammock chair not far from the drawingroom window. The voices of Miss Lentaigne and his uncle reached him, the one high-pitched and firm, the other, as he imagined, apologetic and deprecatory. The sound of them, the words being indistinguishable, was somewhat soothing. Frank felt as the poet Lucretius did when from the security of a sheltered nook on the side of a ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the extraordinary sight of the Chief of the Mountain Division in a ferment of excitement that was near hysteria. But the flashing of the red that swept like a finger of flame across every station number of the big board did not mean that ordinary matters were at hand. A voice was speaking; its high-pitched shrillness showed that the excitement of the moment was not confined to the office of the ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... bubbling and musical sound of laughter, resisted but triumphant. The young man dropped his prize; had it been possible, he would have bounded from the carriage. The lady, meanwhile, lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill to trill of the most heartfelt, high-pitched, clear, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man's excited antics and high-pitched threats and wailings, we were very soon the centre of a pushing, inquisitive throng; faces peered at me, fists were shaken and voices reviled me, in especial one, that of an evil-faced man whose narrow eyes seemed vaguely familiar. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... looked, thinking only of the curve of Helen's lips and the dancing light in her eyes, and the glowing colour of her soft flesh, Prof. Darmstetter's thin, high-pitched voice grated ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... corner of the lane and street outside came the scuffling to and fro of many feet, as though in uncertainty, in indecision, in hesitancy. A dozen voices spoke at once, high-pitched, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Lawrence county stone. The marble's bluish gray is relieved by sparkling crystallizations, and its unwrought blocks are handled with an ornamental effect in the piers, lintels, and arches, and well set off by a simple high-pitched slate roof, with terra-cotta hiprolls, crestings, and finials. The open porches are both ornamental and useful, taking the place of piazzas. The tower is embellished with a terra-cotta frieze. All accommodations for an executive staff for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... knocked on the door of the apartment of the girl to whom he had never spoken except over the telephone and whose name he remembered to be Irene Stanton, a high-pitched, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... about a dozen native lads, one of whom, upon sighting the strangers, took to his heels and ran, as though for his life, to an eminence at no great distance, where, placing his hands funnelwise to his mouth, he began to shout, in a peculiar, high-pitched tone of voice, a brief communication of some sort to some unseen person or persons. At the same time one of the other lads, after intently scrutinising the newcomers for several minutes, advanced cautiously toward them and finally halted—evidently holding himself ready to bolt at ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... words which startle Paracelsus into a recognition of his own error. But the knowledge that he has left love out of his scheme of life is no guarantee that he will ever acquire the fervour and the infinite patience of love. The whole scene, with its extravagant poetic beauties and high-pitched rhetoric, leaves a painful impression of unreality, not in the shallower but in the deepest sense of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... his right hand being engaged in the mechanical readjustment of his dress. Mr. Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his story, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down his untasted and overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of his last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... low, whirring whistle of the wind. Not like the moan of an approaching tornado is this wind, but like the high-pitched note of an engine running smoothly at high speed. Characteristic and peculiar, boys, is that heralding wind, with a throbbing note in its character. That day, too, came the white squalls, lasting a minute or two each, with puffs of furious wind and a bucketful of rain, ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... included no punishments for his enemies, and he desired every one for his friend. The round, pink face, the high-roached, yellow hair, the friendly, blue eyes, had no place for hate in them, and in the high-pitched, soft voice was no note of terror to evil doers. His countenance did not betray his power; that was in his tireless little legs, his effective hands, and his shrewd brain motived by a heart too kind for the finer moral ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... You're a liar and a cheat.... You imposed yourself upon my hospitality under false pretenses.... I hate myself for breathing the same air as you." He would break off to laugh foolishly, in a high-pitched note of derision at himself. "Stand up, Dick Gordon, and hear the lady tell you what a coyote you are. Stan' up and face the music, you quitter. Liar ... spy ... cheat! That's you, ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... knew," she said, in a loud, high-pitched voice. "Good heavens! Peter knew; and refused his food because Michael was dead. And I said he had dyspepsia! Michael, oh Michael! Your wife didn't know you were dead; but your dog knew! Oh Michael, Michael! Little ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... of outdoor life and training. Their gestures were full and free. The tones of their voices were high-pitched, but they spoke more slowly than their Eastern cousins, as if feeling the necessity, even when confined, of making every word carry. No one lolled in his seat, but sat upright, as if still having the feel ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... in French in a high-pitched voice. "You want to see me concerning that mad English girl? What picturesque lies do you intend to ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... was rapidly drawing to a close; he had to return to Paris. Towards the end of his sojourn he wrote to his former pupil, Robert Fisher, who was in Italy, in a high-pitched tone about the satisfaction which he experienced in England. A most pleasant and wholesome climate (he was most sensitive to it); so much humanity and erudition—not of the worn-out and trivial sort, but of the recondite, genuine, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... throw some sticks on the fire, then went out to turn the smoke flap of the wigwam, for the wind was changed and another set was needed to draw the smoke. They heard several times again the high-pitched "yap yurr," and once the deeper notes, which told that the dog fox, too, was near the camp, and was doubtless seeking food to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... know. The mandarin language of Peking is after all the mother-language of officialdom, the madre linqua, less nervous and more precise than any other dialect and invested with a certain air of authority which cannot be denied. The sharp-sounding, high-pitched Southern voice, though it may argue very acutely and rapidly, appears at an increasing disadvantage. There seems to be a tendency inherent in it to become querulous, to make its pleading sound specious because ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... it was nearly pitch-dark, and the sound had for some time ceased, he was crouching upon a high-pitched roof of great slabs, his fingers clutched around the edges of one of them, and his mountaineering habits standing him in good stead, protected a little from the force of the blast by a huge stack of chimneys that rose to windward: while he clung thus waiting—louder ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... had been mistaken. His master had never been sensible; he was declaiming again, in his high-pitched, unnatural voice. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... let loose a weird, high-pitched howl, which I didn't recognize at the time as the old Rebel yell, but know now that it was. Uncle Noah had gone into action. That walkin' stick of his was a second-growth hickory club as thick as your wrist at the big end. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... human voice. Such a cry will often haunt the moors and wolds from above at nightfall. The voice hied on, sank, seemed swallowed; it rose, as if above water, in a hush of wind and trees. The trees bowed their heads rageing, the voice drowned; once more to rise, chattering thrice rapidly, in a high-pitched key, thin, shrill, weird, interminable, like winds through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that I had to sing to myself; I forget what the song was, but I know, there was something about lovers' meetings in it. As I reached the foot of the stairs I heard voices in the dining-room; one of them was rather high-pitched and hard, but it sounded pleasant enough as it said, "Well, St. Alleyne, you've beaten me this time, and I suppose I must give in, but it will take you long years to make ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... excellences and the defects of Shelley. In person he was well-grown and slim; more nearly beautiful than handsome; his complexion brilliant, his dark-brown but slightly grizzling hair abundant and wavy, and his eyes deep-blue, large, and fixed. His voice was high-pitched—at times discordant, but capable of agreeable modulation; his general ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... an explosion of sound under the decent person's window, and a hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. Then it gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned by a chorus of shrill, small voices. The person—I am afraid his decency begins to drop off him here—leans on his broad window-sill and looks out. The street is filled with children of every ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... to take the boat away from us?" he asked in his high-pitched, childish voice. "If ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... First-born,’ written in memory of the Duke of Clarence. Down went knife and fork as Swinburne half rose from his chair to reach across the table for the manuscript. “She is as a god to mortals when compared to most other living women poets,” he exclaimed. Then, in his thin-high-pitched, but exquisitely modulated voice he half read, half chanted, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... boy, running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. Then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"I cannot mind the words, I cannot say my prayers. Oh! will nobody say them for me? If mother, as is not in Lon'on, were here, she would do it fast," he ended, flinging out one thin arm and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... tread. As he was unfastening the kitchen door, which led out upon a rough plank platform called the "back porch," Marthy Burr stuck her head in from the adjoining room where she slept, and called his name in a high-pitched, querulous voice. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable, might have provoked a smile in more sophisticated society, but Zephaniah listened to her with deep gravity, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sails were gray with grime; a strangling odor of oil and tar, of cooking and of opium, of Chinese punk and drying fish, pervaded all the air. In the waist, Hoang and Jim, bare to the belt, their queues looped around their necks to be out of the way, were stowing the dory and exchanging high-pitched monosyllables. Miss Herrick's sister had not come aboard. The three visitors—Jerry, Ridgeway, and Josie—stood nervously huddled together, their elbows close in, as if to avoid contact with the prevailing filth, their immaculate white outing-clothes detaching themselves violently ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a high-pitched, majestic voice: and when she had ended, she said, "I imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr Johnson as a writer of fiction." The Captain screwed his lips up, and drummed on the table, but he did not speak. She thought she would ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... complaint in the village. The women chattered together with shrill, high-pitched voices. The men were glum and doubtful of aspect, and the very dogs wandered dubiously about, alarmed in vague ways by the unrest of the camp, and ready to take to the woods on the first outbreak of trouble. The air was filled with suspicion. No man was sure of ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... warning: "No Trespass." On the opposite side of the wide strip of meadow-land, in which cattle grazed placidly, he could see the abandoned house where Alix Crown was born,—a colourless, weather-beaten, two-storey frame building with faded green window shutters and a high-pitched roof blackened by rain and rot. Every shutter was closed; an atmosphere of utter desolation hung ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... open air. The front of the house consists of two large windows on either side of a very rustic-looking house door, and three dormer windows in the roof—a slate roof with two gables, prodigiously high-pitched in proportion to the low ground-floor. The house walls are washed with yellow color; and door, and first-floor shutters, all the Venetian shutters of the attic windows, ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... like the sahibs whom they were accustomed to meet, but when he had removed his goggles they saw that he was certainly a sahib. Smith was about to ask some one to direct him to Mr. Jenkinson's when a native policeman pushed his way through the crowd, and in a shrill, high-pitched voice and wonderful English, announced that he had come to take the number of the carriage; it was clearly a case of furious driving to the danger ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Jane! Did you find something?" cried Tommy, in a shrill, high-pitched voice that Margery declared might have been heard a mile ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... the former, in a high-pitched tone, in which a man's rage was mingled with a schoolboy's whimpering fear. "He's mad, sir. He ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... swung out, closed in with a smart smack, and the giant on her deck crouched to spring. He squealed, a high-pitched ululation of anger. Another sound was abroad, the jangling of the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... with compressed lips and livid features as a host of black disk-like things covered the squirming body, spinning madly as if driven by atomic energy and emitting a myriad high-pitched tones like the angry buzzing of a swarm of bees. Antazzo's body shriveled as the things hummed on in their devilish work. Soon there was but a tiny heap of clothing with the angry black disks whirling ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... of that most foreign of all capitals, New York. They nearly all spoke French and German better than they did English, for their accent in those languages was very sweet and winning in its incorrectness, while their English was high-pitched and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the door; for on our way through the kitchen, with its high-pitched and unceiled roof,—a very cavern for echoes,—we discovered the source of the noise, and of our fright. Within a large wooden packing-case lay a poor little lamb, and its dying throes had wakened us all up, as it kicked ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... clearly, in a rather high-pitched voice. He accompanies his remarks with many nervous little gestures. His hands, at times, stray into his pockets. He leans over the reading desk as if he would like to get down into the audience and make it a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... consisted of a pretty girl, a lady of middle age and stately demeanor, plainly her mother, and a light-haired, weedy young man of about twenty. It had been the almost incessant prattle of this youth and the peculiarly high-pitched, gurgling laugh which shot from him at short intervals which had drawn Jimmy's notice upon them. And it was the curious cessation of both prattle and laugh which now made him ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... what had been a corner. The red-tiled roof was so high-pitched as to be almost perpendicular. The dormer windows of the attics were as picturesque as anything in Nuremberg. The side-walls were broken in their surface by little odd red-tiled roofs covering projecting casements, and the house was shored up and ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... of some Christian martyr, the probable patron saint of Cagayan. Before the principal altar stood quaint prayer stools of ebony carved to resemble kneeling human figures, and in the loft was a very good organ, though somewhat high-pitched and ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... nestlings were one week old they uttered their first cry. It was not at all a "peep," but a cry, continued a few seconds; at first only when food was offered to them, but as they increased in age and strength more frequently. It was much like a high-pitched "[e]-[e]-[e]," and on the first day there was but one voice, which grew rapidly stronger as the hours went by. The next day another and a weaker cry joined the first, now grown assured and strong. But the music of the father was hushed the moment the youngsters began; from that time until ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... frightening, clear as a cameo, but dark, far off. Julia was the English beauty, in a lovely blue dress. Her hair was becomingly untidy on her low brow, her dark blue eyes wandered and got excited, her nervous mouth twitched. Her high-pitched, sing-song voice and her hurried laugh could be heard in the theatre. She twisted a beautiful little fan that a dead artist had ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... not alone. He found Mademoiselle de Cressy in charge of the tea-table and the conversation. Like many Frenchwomen, she had a high-pitched voice; she also had definite opinions on matter-of-fact subjects. Now when you have come to talk gossamer with an attractive and sympathetic woman, it is irritating to have to discuss Tariff Reform and the position of the working classes in Germany with somebody else, especially ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... feeble shuffle, not a young man's tread. With the sound of uncertain feet came the hard tap-tap of a stick against the door, and the high-pitched voice of eld, "Open, open; let me in!" Again Tyr flung up his head in a long ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... not hear. Neither did she hear Reddin, who was still at a distance, and was spurring till the blood ran, as in the tale of the death-pack, yelling: 'I'm coming! Give her to me!' Nor the little cleric, in his high-pitched nasal voice, calling: 'Drop it! They'll pull you down!' while the large gold cross bumped up and down on his stomach. The death that Foxy must die, unless she could save her, drowned all ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... chapel built in the native style; it was upwards of a hundred feet long by forty-five wide, and nearly thirty high. It had a high-pitched roof, with curved ends, and two rows of columns, each three of the lower column supported a short beam, from which sprang a second series bearing the ridge-pole. These, as well as the horizontal beam, were beautifully ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Government offices in Whitehall were to be rebuilt; Mr. Scott competed, and his designs were successful. Naturally, they were in the Gothic style, combining "a certain squareness and horizontality of outline" with pillar-mullions, gables, high-pitched roofs, and dormers; and the drawings, as Mr. Scott himself observed, "were, perhaps, the best ever sent in to a competition, or nearly so." After the usual difficulties and delays the work was at last to be put in hand, when there was a change of Government ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... whispered the rabbi, and even as he spoke a great noise was heard. It was like the wild chattering of many high-pitched voices. Through all the windows and the doors a strange crowd poured into the synagogue. There were demons of all shapes and sizes. Some had big bodies with tiny heads, others huge heads and quaint little bodies. Some had great staring eyes, others had long wide mouths, and many had only ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... of Bacchus," the stranger chanted, in a pompous, high-pitched voice. "Emerge from the lubberland of dreams, and be swift in attendance upon a wight whose wandering star has led ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... vicinity of one's house or the pounding of a plumber working within the house, this being accentuated in the latter case by the thought of impending financial disaster. Even the confused and disagreeable sound due to the clatter of high-pitched women's voices at teas and receptions may, when frequently repeated, be productive of changes in the nerve cells sufficiently marked to give rise to the unusual reactions which are ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... bearing small, round metal shields embossed with weird designs that meant nothing to me. Squatted here, without fire, they fell silent at our approach, eyeing me with curiosity and the beginnings of anger at my intrusion. Nokomee began to talk swiftly in that rattling, high-pitched tongue of theirs. I squatted down on my heels, took out my pipe, lit it. At the flare of my match Holaf struck it from my hand. I realized it had been a blunder, even a spark might attract attention to their presence ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... the Leonville school-house sharply outlined against the sky, upon the summit of a high, rising ground. It stands quite alone as though in proud distinction for its classic vocation. Its flat, uninteresting sides; its staring windows; its high-pitched roof of warped shingles; its weather-boarding, innocent of paint; its general air of neglect; these things strike one forcibly in that region ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... room, which was some twenty feet square, roughly sided and floored with bamboo slats; there was no ceiling, so that a quarter of the high-pitched thatching of the house showed overhead. A dozen middle-aged Hillmen stood along the wall, evidently the influential men of the village. Across from them an aged Hillman sat ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... hear Jeckley's high-pitched voice distinctly; he seemed to be put out about something; ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you," he said in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the bathroom he somehow got shut outside. So he lay down and breathed heavily through the bottom of the door and varied this by thin, high-pitched yelps—which were really squeals, and very extraordinary as proceeding from such a large and ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... of their connection, fraught with poignant remorse and fascinating delight, were very agitating to the count. Amalia went occasionally to the Grange. At the social gathering in the evening she would give an account of her visit in a high-pitched voice; and he was in an agony of confusion, anxiety, and distress, whilst she with perfect sang froid told all that she could tell; spoke of the garden, scolded him for its state of neglect; and she amused herself with bringing home some plants every time she went there, so as to clear ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... The resemblance between her present mode of indicating a wish and her son's way of speaking to the servant below was very striking; even the quality of their voices had much in common, for Hubert's was rather high-pitched. In face, however, the young man did not strongly evidence their relation to each other: he was not handsome, and had straight low brows, which made his aspect at ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... she said in her high-pitched voice, "I suppose you have to take the children home in good season, or ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... they saw us." He laughed, but it was a high-pitched, tense laugh. "We don't dare even use the telescope. Our rescue ship will be right overhead, visible to the naked eye before we see it. Three days more—that's what ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... not before I had heard the woman say, in a lower, concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched railings: "This is the last time. I tell you—the last time. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the Gospel Hymns as "sensational" have always been obliged to except this modest lyric of Christian peace and its sweet and natural musical supplement by Dr. W.H. Doane. No hurried and high-pitched chorus disturbs the quiet beauty of the hymn, a simple da capo being its only refrain. "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" sang itself into public favor with the pulses of hymn and ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and turrets and battlements, its grey time-eaten walls, its rows of mullioned heavy-headed windows, and the quiet cloistered air that spoke of study and reflection; and perceiving on one side a row of large windows, with great buttresses between, and a species of steeple on the high-pitched roof, he made bold (just to try the effect) to address Mr. Filcher by the name assigned to him at an early period of his life by his godfathers and godmothers, and inquired if that building was ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... sentiment produced a natural reaction. Not a few of the intimates of the Hotel de Rambouillet found a relief from their fatigue of fine manners and high-pitched emotions in the unedifying jests and merry tales of the tavern. A comic, convivial, burlesque or picaresque literature became, as it were, a parody of the literature of preciosity. Saint-Amand (1594-1661) was at once a disciple of the Italian Marini, the admired "Sapurnius" ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... him good-night in a cheery voice as they passed him. The doorkeeper stood and watched the pair for a minute as they left the Square and turned down a narrow street which led to the poorer part of the town, and thence to the quays. He heard Gaspard's high-pitched voice and shrill laughter, and, in answer, Benham's thick tones and heavy shout of drunken mirth. Once or twice these sounds repeated themselves, then they ceased; the footsteps of the Frenchman and his companion died away in the distance. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... who had held down the lower end of a quartet in his university days, growled an accompaniment under his breath as he blithely peeled the potatoes. Occasionally a high-pitched note or two came from the direction of the engineer; he could not spare much wind while clambering about the machinery, oil-can in hand. The architect, alone, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... ceased. It was followed by the loud clapping of hands—with exclamations in high-pitched voices. "Who is it?" "Where did you find him?" "What's his name?"—for they judged, from Mrs. Taine's introductory words, that she expected them ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... know, Ellen. I haven't had time to think. There have been so many things to think about since the funeral I haven't got used yet to the idea that mother's really gone." Julia's voice was quiet and controlled, in sharp contrast with Ellen's high-pitched, nervous tones. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... potions of "dragons' bones." Perhaps there was a Buddhist priest or two, a barber, or a tailor. Often a professional entertainer sat cross-legged on the kang telling endless stories or singing for hours at a time in a high-pitched, nasal voice, accompanying himself upon a tiny snakeskin violin. It was like a stage drama of concentrated ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... was lost in a cackle of French interspersed with high-pitched laughter. The friend sat down for a few minutes, joked with the "Captain," drank the remainder of his cocktail, and patted him familiarly on the cheek. Esther stole a glance at the beautiful blonde woman and found her calm, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... helpless, toward the fetid burrow allotted to me, and fell asleep. An hour or so later I was awakened by a piercing scream—the shrill, high-pitched scream of a horse in pain. Those who have once heard that will never forget the sound. I found some little difficulty in scrambling out of the burrow. When I was in the open, I saw Pornic, my poor old ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... halt, and for a moment now that little group of three stood in conversation. What the lady said, Peter could not hear at all, for she lowered her voice; the Colonel's reached him in a confused rumble, but the Governor was neither considerate nor indistinct; he had a high-pitched voice which carried far, and believing himself witty, he desired to be heard ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... a high-pitched whine over our heads! Quite loud from the start, though it sounded as if it were very deep up in the haze. It swiftly dropped in ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... we took our departure, gingerly picking our way down the rickety steps. The last we heard of Uncle Robert was a snatch of Negro ballad sung in a high-pitched, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... lad of good intelligence, as lads run, and barring a trifle of affectation and a certain squeamishness in speech. When I would go exploring into a woman's heart, I must pay my way in the land's current coinage of compliments and high-pitched protestations. Yes, yes, such sixpenny phrases suffice the seasoned traveler, who does not ostentatiously display his gems while traveling. Now, in courtship, Master Mervale, one traverses ground more dubious than the Indies, and the truth, Master ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... with chaplets of crusht flowers; sometimes, of people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and preaching fiercely; the sun just streaming down through some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light; and strolls away, among the rags and smells, and palaces, and hovels, of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... out the paper, and began to read in a high-pitched monotonous voice, and without any regard to punctuation, of which, indeed, in all probability, the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell) |
