"Tinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the clearing I heard the tinkling of a brook. Walking to its edge, I knelt and dipped my hot wrists in the cold stream, wetting my hands, face and matted locks, while the natives eyed me solemnly but with, I thought, looks of anxiety. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... highly ornamented. There were four circular revolving stands set in a row and loaded with articles in china and glass, all sorts of ornaments and nick-nacks, whose gilding and polish shone amid an harmonica-like tinkling whenever the hand of a gamester set the stand in motion. It then spun round, grating against a feather, which, on the rotatory movement ceasing, indicated what article, if any, had been won. The big prize was a live rabbit, adorned with pink favours, which waltzed and revolved ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... a bath tonight," said the dirty little boy as he heard the water splashing in the tub. The water was still the singing water that had sung all the way from the far-away hills. It had sung a bubbling song when it gurgled up as a spring; it had sung a tinkling song as it rippled down hill as a brook; it had crooned a flowing song when it bore the talking boats; it had muttered and throbbed and sung to itself as it ran through the big, big pipe. Now as it splashed into the dirty little boy's ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... his uncle had turned into a narrow doorway and mounted several flights of stairs. A tinkling bell was answered by a very hairy man who flung open the door before which they stood, crying, "Enter," in ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... on the ground and the river crisping with tinkling sheets of spreading ice when Clark again reached St. Marys and with characteristic energy laid his first plans. These were to supply the town with water and light, and the fact that the well remembered public promise was thus ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... nullah, hard by a clump of crooked saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo's gate, some jackals brought to light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe of Thuggee. But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna Tumbe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... with the songs of the priests, the clinking and tinkling of the metal sistrums, shaken by the holy women in the service of the god, and the measured tread of men praying as they marched in the procession which was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... me. She yielded to my encircling arms as does the Indian liana, with a gentleness so sweet and so sympathetic that I seemed surrounded with a perfumed veil of silk. At each turn there could be heard a light tinkling from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought I beheld a beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to vanish from human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance seemed to come from her lips, while her head, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... their tinkling, and the long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen, over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front door after him, while his younger brothers and sisters made holes ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... valves, and thickened ventricles with an air of alarming confidence. And yet we rather doubt his skill upon this point; we never perceived anything more than a sound and a jog, something similar to what you hear in the cabin of a fourpenny steam-boat, and especially mistrusted the "metallic tinkling," and the noise resembling a blacksmith's bellows blowing into an empty quart-pot, which is called the bruit de soufflet. Take our word, when medicine arrives at such a pitch that the secrets of the human heart can be probed, it need not go any further, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... staring with mingled fury and bewilderment for a few seconds; and then, having apparently arrived at the conclusion that discretion would perhaps in this case prove the better part of valour, he laid his hand upon the engine-room telegraph apparatus. A tinkling of bells in the ship's interior was distinctly heard by those aboard the Flying Fish, and presently the churning of water about the convict-ship's rudder suddenly ceased, showing that her engines had been stopped. At the same moment the officer on her bridge called a sailor to him, and, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few conclusive quirks, they give up ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... politics and science, and the new books and the new men, and how a genuine utterance of fellow-feeling outweighs the whole of it? Mark the words of Bacon:—"For a crowd is not a company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Borne on the winds through distant tracts of air, 70 And view the winged cloud all blackening from afar; While shady coverts and fresh streams they choose, Milfoil and common honeysuckles bruise, And sprinkle on their hives the fragrant juice. On brazen vessels beat a tinkling sound, And shake the cymbals of the goddess round; Then all will hastily retreat, and fill The warm resounding hollow of their cell. If once two rival kings their right debate, And factions and cabals embroil the state, 80 The people's actions will their ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... her starry court, and the guitars around are tinkling, as more than one rich voice deplores his mistress's cruelty, in hopes she may now relent. But see! there is one, who puts in requisition neither ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... carillons in their train. Vicissitude Had left these tinkling to the invaders' ear, And ravaged street, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... know—while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave 50 To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... purposes of pleasure. Father, beautiful paintings and grand buildings are nothing to him; nothing at all; and music might be the tinkling of tin kettles for all the meaning he finds in it. Father, dear, do ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... roused at last by the tinkling of a goat-bell almost over her head, and woke up just in time to see her luncheon, cloth and all, disappearing into the mouth of Nanni, the brown goat! Poor Leneli screamed with dismay, and Fritz and Seppi, thinking perhaps she had ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn't assuage. He looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he knew all about these. It's not upon each other that the animals in the same cage, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... him. He wasn't there yet, and that gave me a chance to see things. Four more heaps of glass, that seemed as if they had caught fire, hung in the other end of the room, and beyond them was a fountain of water, a-sparkling and a-flashing and a-tinkling in a make-believe garden by moonlight, with live fish swimming in it, and live flowers blooming in piles and heaps around it, and make-believe trees. Half running round the room was a lot of marble posts, with white flower-pots running over with sweetness, and linked together with running ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... chairs upon which the sacred person of the Mother had reposed were protected from sacrilegious touch by a broad band of satin ribbon. My companions expressed their admiration in subdued and reverent tones, and at the tinkling of the bell we reverently tiptoed out of the room to admit another delegation of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Women were boldly presented to any one's examination and reflected the lights of the room. Their beautiful arms and their ankles were covered with bracelets. At the least of their movements they all set up a tinkling silvery sound, and the little sister-in-law, who might easily be mistaken for an automaton doll, could hardly move under her load of ornaments. The young grandmother, our hostess, had a ring in her left nostril, which reached to the lower part of the chin. Her nose ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and her revellers vanish, and Tannhaeuser finds himself in a meadow, hears the tinkling herd-bells, and a shepherd's ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... with the rattle, the gong and other primitive forms of the article; but the subject seems worthy of a monograph. In Hebrew Writ the bell first appears in Exod. xxviii. 33 as a fringe to the Ephod of the High Priest that its tinkling might save him from intruding unwarned into the bodily presence of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... best devise means for obtaining notice of the approach of their great enemy the Cat. Among the many plans devised, the one that found most favor was the proposal to tie a bell to the neck of the Cat, that the Mice, being warned by the sound of the tinkling, might run away and hide themselves in their holes at his approach. But when the Mice further debated who among them should thus "bell the Cat," there was no one ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... quite unlike the brutal, vicious look of the lamas of Tachienlu. There was much that recalled the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church,—processions, genuflexions, chanting, burning of incense, lighting of candles, tinkling of bells,—all centring round a great figure of Sakyamuni. The words I could not understand, but the reverent expression on the monks' faces, their orderly bearing as they circled slowly round, keeping always ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... great hall and tried to pray. Before her hung a costly painting representing Jesus with a child in his arms, a lamb at his side. She smelt the fragrance of flowers, and heard the clinking of wine-glasses, the tinkling of silver and rare china, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... the sides of the mountain every thing seemed so beautiful, so thoughtful, and so calm! All the goats and cows were in motion along the mountain paths, each one tinkling his little bell and filling the rocks with gentle melodies. You can trace the lines of these cattle paths, running like threads all along the sides of the mountains. We went in the same road that we had gone in the morning. How different it seemed, in the soberness of this afternoon light, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the hoofs of the horses beat upon the pavements, the rocking automobiles honked in the distance, peasant izvozchiks had come especially from the outskirts of the city for the Shrovetide season and the tinkling of the bells upon the necks of their little horses filled the air. The prattle of voices—an intoxicated, merry Shrovetide prattle of voices arose everywhere. And in the midst of these various noises there was the young thawing ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... of salt, with a touch of ugliness. It has a sting like the sting of bitter ale; you acquire the love of it as men acquire a taste for olives. And the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune— or, rather, to an old tune; for you remember in your boyhood something akin to this spirit of adventure, this thirst for exploration, that now takes you masterfully by the hand, plunges you into many a deep grove, and drags you over many a stony crest. it is as if ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... uncontaminated daisies that trustfully throve beside some of them; the little fountains, with their one-legged or flat-nosed statues strutting ineffectually above them,—fountains either dry as dead revelers or tinkling a pathetic sob into a stone trough; the open views where the colors of sunlit marble and the motions of dancing light surrounded the peasants who sprang up from the ground like belated actors in a drama we only keep with us out ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... as they stood there, a step between them, there came—almost like the benediction of a cathedral bell—the soft, low tinkling chime of the ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... three had been out on some such expedition; the country side still looked gray and bare, though the leaves were showing on the willow and blackthorn and sloe, and by the tinkling runnels, making hidden music along the copse side, the pale delicate primrose buds were showing amid their fresh, green, crinkled leaves. The larks had been singing all the afternoon, but were now dropping down into their nests in the pasture fields; the air had just the sharpness ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pious ardor young Pressaeus brings, Betwixt the fortunes of contending kings; Lank, harmless frog! with forces hardly grown, He darts the reed in combats not his own, Which, faintly tinkling on Troxartas' shield, Hangs at the point and drops ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... hear. At first the wind Breathed a low prelude of the birth of sound, As if an organ far away were touched By unseen fingers; then the little stream That hurried down the hillside, swept the harp Of music into merry, tinkling notes; And then the lark that poised above her head On wings a-quiver, overflowed the air With showers of song; and one by one the tones Of all things living, in an order sweet, Without confusion and with deepening power, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver. He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... fell on the roof with a gentle murmur, tinkling merrily as though it were pleased to hear the happy laughter of the children playing in the garret of Michael Gratz's house in Philadelphia. Six children romped there that Saturday afternoon in early springtime, away back in the year 1712, Rebecca Gratz, ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... for the repetitions of the worshippers in the open air are not disturbing; and from far overhead comes a little tinkling from the light AEolian bells moved by the breeze high up on the Hte. If you look up you see the Hte against the blue. It is an elaborate piece of metal work on the tip top of the pagoda; you cannot make out its details but you can see it is made of diminishing hoops ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... very rabbits must come and sit-up there, the jays and pigeons settle above; everything in all the wood gather. Even one's own heart seemed to be drawn in by those beckoning arms, and the slow enchantment of that tinkling voice, and the look in those eyes, which, lost in the unknown, were seeing no mortal glen, but only that mazed wood, where friendly wild things come, who have no sound to their padding, no whirr to the movement of their wings; whose gay whisperings ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... many-visioned grate, but at times aware of the symbols and emblems there beautifully built up, of the ongoings of human life, when a knocking, not loud but resolute, came to the front door, followed by the rustling thrill of the bell-wire, and then by a tinkling far below, too gentle to waken the house that continued to enjoy the undisturbed dream of its repose. At first we supposed it might be but some late-home-going knight-errant from a feast of shells, in a mood, 'between malice and true-love,' seeking ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... to dispose of the fragments of ice in the earlier stages of sinking a shaft. To be rid of them, all that was necessary was to throw a shovelful vertically upwards towards the lee-side of the hole, the wind then did the rest. Away the chips would scatter, tinkling over the surface of the glacier. Of course, when two men were at work, each took it in turns to go below, and the one above, to keep warm, would impatiently pace up and down. Nevertheless, so cold would he become at times that a heated colloquy would arise between them on the subject of working ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... still do the daughters of Minyas go on with their work, and despise the God, and desecrate his festival; when, on a sudden, tambourines unseen resound with their jarring noise; the pipe, too, with the crooked horn, and the tinkling brass, re-echo; myrrh and saffron shed their fragrant odors; and, a thing past all belief, their webs begin to grow green, and the cloth hanging {in the loom} to put forth foliage like ivy. Part changes into vines, and what were threads before, are ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the men of Donegal. The sergeant took us to a hill back of the barracks where was a very lonely vale surrounded by steep hills wooded to the top. Down the perpendicular sides of this hill a waterfall dashes in the rainy seasons, but it was only a tinkling splash at this time. The sergeant and I had some conversation about Donegal, and of course Lord Leitrim. This noblemen has graven his name with an iron pen and lead on the rocks ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... ready to fly away is recalled by the Tinkling of a brazen Vessel, 3. and is put up into a new Hive, 4. Examen illud, avolaturum, revocatur tinnitu Vasis nei, 3. & includitur ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... foot of Salt Trace just as the lively tinkling of cowbells, as well as their own appetites, and the setting sun, suggests supper time; and their chafed buttocks, more used to a swivel chair than a saddle, pleaded for the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... sweet the cadence of his lyre! What melody of words! They strike a pulse within the heart, Like songs of forest birds, Or tinkling of the shepherd's bell Among ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... made in open canoes, which kept close to the shore, the crew disembarking and encamping each night. Dickenson tells with open-eyed wonder how the Spaniards kept their holiday of Christmas in the open boat and through a driving northeast storm; praying, and then tinkling a piece of iron for music and singing, and also begging gifts from the Indians, who begged from them in their turn; and what one gave to the other that they gave back again. Our baby at least, let us hope, had Christmas feeling enough to understand the laughing and ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... and in front of St. Peter's Church. He sees the interior without entering. It swarms with worshippers, packed into it as in the hollow of a hive. All there is breathless expectation, ecstatic awe; for the mystery of the mass is in process of consummation, and in another moment the tinkling of the silver bell will announce to the prostrate crowd the actual presence of their Lord; will open to them the vision of the coming heavenly day. Here, too, is faith, though obscured in a different manner. Here, too, is love: the love which in bygone days ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... suddenly the curling wires all over the walls gave out a curious tinkling, and letting themselves swiftly down in long slender spirals, like the dandelion curls you make in the spring, each set a tiny little clock on the floor. Then all the wires snapped back to their places on the wall. There were as many as fifty of these little clocks, beautifully made, and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... he is away, does his little daughter at home listen, listen, while she sits before the door, to hear the distant tinkling of the cow-bells. She is a loving little daughter, and she thinks of her father so far away alone, and wishes he was coming home to eat some of the sweet strawberries and cream ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... rank of society in England, whose sterling excellences are more widely felt than openly appreciated. She was not one of those active ladies who carry little bells on the skirts of their good deeds, so as to make a loud tinkling in the ears of the world. Hers was a quiet and unobtrusive work. Her views of usefulness and duty were, in the eyes of some of her acquaintance, old-fashioned and behind the age. Standing on one side, as it were, out of the whirl of good ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... glade, she would rest, and let her fancy build what heaven-reaching towers it would. On some brown bed of pine-needles, or on a friendly gray boulder close by the water-side, where she could give her eyes to its flow and foam, and her ears to its music,—music like the muffled tinkling of little silver bells in the distance,—she would let herself go out to her dream with the joyous, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... that poured from us were hushed by a gesture of her inflexible, white hand. Dazed by the news, we were herded back to our bedroom, hurried into stiff white collars and hustled into shining Sunday shoes. There was the sound of cold water tinkling in the basin; of straining bootlaces; and of the creaking of a loose board in the floor every time Mary Ellen stepped on it. Scarcely a word was spoken. Now that what we had so long strained towards was at hand we stood breathless before the immensity of it. The long year ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... bushy margin of ponds near the creek will soon be alive with the myrtle warblers—as numerous as English sparrows in a barn-yard. In the night time you may hear the "tseep" of the warblers as they wing their way swiftly towards the southland. Sometimes there is the tinkling sound of the bob-o-link, also flying in the night time, and in the morning there may be a flock of them in some meadow, leisurely getting their breakfast after their all-night flight, chattering to each other in the tinkling tones which are ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... clusters droops, unpruned of all her leaves; Where the olive buds and burgeons, to its promise ne'er untrue, And the russet fig adorns the tree, that graffshoot never knew; Where honey from the hollow oaks doth ooze, and crystal rills Come dancing down with tinkling feet from the sky-dividing hills; There to the pails the she-goats come, without a master's word, And home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd. There round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, Nor teems the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... minute or two to melt," Evans added. And again a silence fell, in which I could hear the lumps of ice tinkling as they knocked against the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the landscape of his dreams The lordly Niger flowed; Beneath the palm trees on the plain Once more a king he strode; And heard the tinkling ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... as he sat there and sent streams of milk tinkling down upon the bottom of the tin pail, what a fine scheme it would be to build a hoop big enough for the Muley Cow to jump through. It ought to be easy to teach her. For everybody knew that she was a famous jumper. She made more trouble, jumping the fence, ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... voice and grinds the stones more passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells, are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then, again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the glaciers ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... appropriated to that purpose. "My dear host, and you, signora," said Albert, in Italian, "excuse my apparent stupidity. I am quite bewildered, and it is natural that it should be so. Here I am in the heart of Paris; but a moment ago I heard the rumbling of the omnibuses and the tinkling of the bells of the lemonade-sellers, and now I feel as if I were suddenly transported to the East; not such as I have seen it, but such as my dreams have painted it. Oh, signora, if I could but speak Greek, your conversation, added to the fairy-scene which surrounds me, would furnish ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... father and daughter. These calls are both welcome and distasteful. Thereby opportunities are brought to their notice, but tinkling notoriety jars upon refined benevolent sense. Overzealous would-be almoners of desired bounties press special claims with deferential ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... burnous, sat Turk-fashion, playing checkers before a low doorway, while back in the shadow an indistinct figure, in flowing white drapery, touched the strings of some instrument which sent out a sound of thin tinkling, that could scarcely be called music because so tuneless ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... are hung two little AEolian harps, which at the least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of grass, emit a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside, to the very furthest limits of the distance, the cicalas continue their great and everlasting concert; over our heads, on the black roof, is heard passing ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... foam. The bell of the Immaculate Conception, cast in France a hundred years before, which had tolled for D'Artaguette, and made jubilee over weddings and christenings, and almost lived the life of the people, sent out the alarm cry of smitten metal; and a tinkling appeal from ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and the perfume of invisible lilacs drenches the street from the garden at the back. Beyond, the road dips past the bee-hives of la cure; and Boudry towers with his five thousand feet of blue pine woods over the horizon. The tinkling of several big stone fountains ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... hours of night, while the monks were sleeping, Brother Jasper had been supplicating his God for light; but in his soul remained a darkness deeper than that of the blackest night. At last he heard the tinkling of the bell that called the monks to prayers, and with a groan lifted himself up. He opened his cell door and went out into the cloister. With down-turned face he walked along till he came to the chapel, and, reaching his seat, sank again heavily ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... goeth walking in his garden Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play; The posies they are good to him And bow them as they should to him As he fareth upon his kingly way: The birdlings of the wood to him Make music, gentle music, all the day When our babe he goeth ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... close to Renny on the lawn, and her arm is twisted round Pauline's waist. She's big, and dressed awful grand. She has gold bangles on her arms, and tinkling gold things round her neck, and she's here, and I thought course you ought for to know. I thought so 'cos I love you. Aren't you pleased? Aren't I the sort of little girl you could perhaps give ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... days later a smart 'limousine' drew up to the door of Ugo's little house and a footman rang the old-fashioned bell, which went on tinkling in the distance for a long time after the rusty chain had been pulled. Ugo's Sicilian orderly opened the door at last in a leisurely way and appeared on the threshold in grey linen fatigue dress; on seeing the car and the Princess he straightened ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... yellowish buff in color, sprinkled, spotted or blotched in endless variety, with reddish brown. Size 1.35 x 1.10. These birds are very noisy, especially when the young are learning to fly, uttering a loud, tinkling, "killy, killy, killy." They have a very amiable disposition, and frequently nest harmoniously in the same tree with other birds, such ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... them and bought a pair, and whenever the Raja passed by the house in which the Rani lived, the maidservant made her mistress rattle the anklets, and then went outside and told the Raja to listen to the anklets tinkling as his son ran about the house. The Raja would tell the maidservant not to let the boy run about too much, lest he should fall and hurt himself; then she would hurry inside and tell the Rani to stop the jingling, and then come and tell the Raja that the boy was resting in his ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... led him into the bed of a stream, whose waters could be heard faintly tinkling on thin pebbles beneath their coverlet of ice and snow. His slow steps conducted him far along this open course. Soon after he had disappeared, around a curve in the distance there came the panther, following stealthily upon his ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... discovery that it was really bed-time, ceased its chirping; the loon no longer mocked the wolf, but still the man sat behind his smoke-smudge, tireless, unsleeping, waiting. Another half-hour crept by with leaden feet, then a new sound broke the stillness of the wild, the tinkling of a piano, sadly out of tune, followed by a chorus of voices lifted up in ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... capped the compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had been plunged into its tinkling depths! ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... of blue, stretching right athwart the horizon, was advancing rapidly, bearing straight down upon the brigantine, and soon it became possible to see the tiny wavelets sparkling in the dazzling sunlight, and to detect a soft, musical, liquid-tinkling sound, such as one may hear when the tide is rising on a flat, sandy beach on a calm summer's day. But by this time I had made the disappointing discovery that the blue line was merely a belt of rippling water about a quarter of a mile wide, with a ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... and soft As a raindrop's silvery patter, Or a tinkling fairy-bell, heard aloft, In the midst of the merry chatter Of robin and linnet and wren and jay, One syllable, oft-repeated: He has but a word to say, And of that ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Madonna, instead of shrines of the Christ; long lines of field-workers, each with his hoe, instead of little groups with the plough; grey oxen with great horns and slow step, instead of brisk horses with tinkling bells. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... But what music do we ever have in the churches? Who amongst you really likes all that music when I play it off the old scores that Gigi says were written by such great men, any better than you like the tinkling of the mandolines when you dance in the threshing barns? I am sure you all like the mandolines best. I know nothing here. I do not even know whether what I do is worth much or nothing. I think if I could hear great music once—if I could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... came to a little cold spring, bubbling up beside the road and tinkling over the steep bank. The road at this point ran along a hillside, and the slope below the road was clothed with blueberry and other dense shrubs. The backwoodsman was hot and thirsty. Flinging aside his battered hat, he dropped ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Holmes, were in part created by Bowdoin and Harvard. Among the most efficient officers of the late war were the graduates of the colleges. Without the college the ministry would become a "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" indeed, and without a learned ministry the church would languish. In the early years of the century, Mr. John Norris, of Salem, proposed to give a large sum of money to the cause of foreign missions. He was persuaded, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... fingers counting, as each night rolled the time nearer. All manner of fruits and other eatable vegetables were prepared, and cakes baked, in the household. The boys plucked bamboo stalks, and strung on their branches bright-colored ribbons, tinkling bells, and long streamers of paper, on which poetry was written. On this night, mothers hoped for wealth, happiness, good children, and wisdom. The girls made a wish that they might become skilled in needlework. Only one wish ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... I live" . . .) He looks blank as a wall, Poor ferryman! Round him and round him he gazes, But only gets deeplier lost in the mazes Of utter bewilderment. All, all are gone, And he stands alone, Like a statue of stone, In a doldrum of wonder. He turns to steer, And a tinkling laugh salutes his ear, With other odd sounds: "Ha, ha, ha, ha! Fol lol! zidzizzle! quee quee! bah! bah! Fizzigig-giggidy! pshee! sha sha!" "O ye thieves, ye thieves, ye rascally thieves!" The good man cries. He turns to his pitcher, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the wooden shutter and leaned out. He heard the roar of the many camps, blending into one vast undercurrent of sound; he caught the red gleam of fires half hidden behind intervening houses; now and then a bellowed chorus reached him. Also there were sweet tinkling sounds, of a kind which he had never heard before, which thrilled him strangely. Sudden desire took him to be out in the midst of this new stirring life; to see the crowded places, the mingling ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... in the street, hearing the cries of ambulant sellers, the calls of women and children, the tinkling bells and the rumble of the trams, and the voice of Fabiano Lari speaking—was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true friends, without which the world ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... man said: "Wait a moment!" and Leslie fancied that he recognized that voice quite as well as the other. Then there was a quick pull of the bell, the sound tinkling far back in the still house. Then came two sharp pulls after the pause of a moment, and then a fourth after another pause. Not until the fourth tinkle had been heard was there any other sound within the house. Then a door was heard to open and shut, and feet were heard in the hall. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... we require. Books and materials may be had almost for the asking. The great problem is to secure teachers—real teachers, teachers of power and devotion who are able to leave their impress on young lives. Without such teachers all the rest is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And to be a real teacher is ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... the litany of Our Lady, sung by a couple of hundred fresh female voices, ring agreeably through the still village. Towards the end of the festival the fun commences. The managers of the feast keep open houses, and dancing, drumming, tinkling of wire guitars, and unbridled drinking by both sexes, old and young, are kept up for a couple of days and a night with little intermission. The ways of the people at these merry-makings, of which ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... against Boeotia. Look to right: beyond the summits of Megara lifts a noble cone. It is an old friend, Acro-Corinthus. The plain within the hills is sprinkled with thriving farmsteads, green vineyards, darker olive groves. The stony hill-slopes are painted red by countless poppies. One hears the tinkling of the bells of roving goats. Thus the more distant view; while at the very foot of the hill of vision rises a temple with proud columns and pediments,—the fane of Demeter the "Earth Mother" and the seat of her Mysteries, renowned ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... holiday visits to the parsonage, which stood out as bright spots in the memories of their younger days—the journey thither in summer by moonlight through the woods, and in winter over the crisp white snow, with accompaniment of tinkling sledge-bells. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... you could speak with the tongues of angels and men; and if you knew all mysteries, and had all knowledge; and if you had faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not charity—even though you be a virgin—you are become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Neither will your virginity, nor all other gifts, profit you anything ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, the women of the harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Professor Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and which holds a pound of canaster, the Frau Professorin knows that for two hours Hermann is engaged, and takes up her stockings and ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... white slaver. The roan wasn't a bad horse at heart; he was frightened at something he couldn't understand. He tried to break and run. But at his bad heart the superintendent wasn't even a man, and no damned bronco was going to have his way with him. He rounded him back and sent him full at that tinkling, dreadful drip once more. So the roan fought on, till tumult rose ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... metals, and other clinking substances are believed to be media of communication with mysterious influences and forces. In Korea thousands of trees bedecked with fluttering rags, clinking scraps of tin, metal or stone signify the same thing. In Japan these primitive tinkling scraps and clinking bunches of glass have long since become the suzu or wind-bells seen on the pagoda which tintinabulate with every passing breeze. The whittled sticks of the Aino, non-conductors of evil and protectors of those who make and rear them, stuck up in every place ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Magdalen turned to leave the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled against a fragment of china lying near it. She stooped, and discovered that the tinkling ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... still be made—if not exclusively, at least pre-eminently their own. The ordinary look of the women was beauty, the ordinary accent was sweetness. The soft moonlight evenings were rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine piano. The tastes even ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... means, on the contrary, it was creeping nearer rapidly. When Bascomb came up on the poop he merely glanced at it for a moment and then called to the seamen to trim the yards in readiness to meet it. By the time that this had been done the line of demarcation was so near that the musical tinkling of the advancing ripples could be distinctly heard, although the sails still hung limp, idly flapping to the roll of the ship. Another minute, however, sufficed, then with a gentle preliminary rustling the canvas filled, the blue ripples reached the ship, passed inshore of her, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... twilight mountains where the heart-songs rise, Rise and fall and fade again from earth to air: Earth renews the music sweeter. Oh, come there. Come, ma cushla, come, as in ancient times Rings aloud and the underland with faery chimes. Down the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece Winding ever onward to a fold of peace, So my dreams go straying in a land more fair; Half I tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there. Fade your glimmering eyes in a world grown cold: Come, ma cushla, with me to the mountain's fold, Where the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... listening, and lowering his hand to the turf, bent over it and gazed again. "Ay, he could understand and see into you, my beauty! He could hear the little drums tum-a-rumbling, and the ox-bells and bangles tinkling, and the shuffle of the elephants going by; he could read the lust in you, and the blood and the sun flickering and licking round the kris that spilt it—for it's the devil you have in you, my dear. But we know ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... heard a pin drop. Shot sighed windily under the table and Keep laid his nose along his paws and turned eyes of worship on his mistress. Long afterwards Mary O'Gara remembered these things and how the wind sprang up and drove a few dead leaves against the window with a faint tinkling sound. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... on exploring, down to a tinkling, chilly brook, that had worn the snow away in little scoops, and ran dark between. They saw a robin glance its bright eyes and burst scarlet and grey into the hedge, then some pertly-marked blue-tits scuffled. Meanwhile the brook slid on coldly, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... a bench at one side of the fountain, whose tinkling splash filled the momentary silence before she answered, "I can't make it all out—" she smiled at him—"but I think you are right in saying that it is all O.K." He laughed, and stretched out his long legs comfortably. "You've ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... enough to believe in the need of—er—the saving power of the gospel. Full pews without that would make our church the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbal. We must have the old-time power in our churches to-day, ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... The tinkling of glasses and the sort murmuring of whispered conversation had ceased during Francis' story. Every one was a little affected—the soft throbbing of the violins upon the balcony was almost a relief. Then there was a little murmur of sympathetic remarks—but ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... books are written about China by two classes of people. There are books written by people who have spent the night in China, as it were, superficial and amusing, full of the tinkling of temple bells; and there are other books written by people who have spent years in China and who know it well,—ponderous books, full of absolute information, heavy and unreadable. Books of the first class ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... and almost barren lives of these isolated folk became illumined with a reminiscent glow as the tinkling notes of the guitar hushed to faint echoes of fairy bells hung on the silver boughs of starlit trees. "Adios, linda Rosa," ran the song. Then silence, the summer night, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... woods, the living presence—was it the only presence?—of the fire on the hearth. Even when the two had recovered their breath, neither spoke for some minutes, and it was only when a brand broke and fell forward in tinkling red coals on the marble hearth that Mrs. Pryor ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... some time before I could sleep, and when I did, my repose was disturbed by dreams. How long I slept I am unable to say, perhaps not more than an hour, when I was suddenly awakened. I listened. The noise of the horses, of which there were several hundred grazing in the valley, with the tinkling of the bells on their necks, were the only sounds that at first met my ear; all else was silent. Presently I heard a noise as if made by the stealthy tread of a man; then a voice, or perhaps the cry of some animal. It was repeated. I heard it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive; Sure thou would'st spread the canvass to the gale, And love with us the tinkling team to drive O'er peaceful freedom's UNDIVIDED dale; And we at sober eve would round thee throng, Hanging enraptured on thy stately song! And greet with smiles the young-eyed POSEY All deftly masked, as hoar ANTIQUITY. Alas, vain phantasies! the fleeting brood Of woe self-solaced ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... if by love possessed, Sank to the earth in feigned unrest, Up-starting quickly to pursue Their intermitted game anew. It was a lovely sight to see Those fair ones, as they played, While fragrant robes were floating free, And bracelets clashing in their glee A pleasant tinkling made. The anklet's chime, the Koil's cry With music filled the place, As 'twere some city in the sky; Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with their graceful forms inspire His modest soul with soft desire. With arch of brow, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... Button-Bright," replied the maiden in a sweet, tinkling voice. "The last time I saw you was ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the body of our literature? especially the poetic part of it. But always, instead, a parcel of dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad, who flood us with their thin sentiment of parlors, parasols, piano-songs, tinkling rhymes, the five-hundredth importation—or whimpering and crying about something, chasing one aborted conceit after another, and forever occupied in dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women. While, current ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... just in that spot where the little girls to whom I am writing part their hair. Attached to this, I have seen a circular piece of gold filled with rubies. Rings are worn on the toes as well as on the fingers, and bracelets of gold or silver on the wrists. Anklets similar to bracelets, and tinkling ornaments are worn on the ankles. The poor, who cannot afford to wear gold or silver bracelets, have them made of glass stained with different colors. I have seen nearly ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... wider year by year, and make a swallow- hole—such as you may see in plenty if you ever go up Whernside, or any of the high hills in Yorkshire—unfathomable pits in the green turf, in which you may hear the water tinkling and ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... by the window through which the shimmering lake shone in the sunset like rosy mother-of-pearl. Far up the mountain sounded the faint tinkling of goat-bells, and the clear, sweet yodelling of a peasant, on his homeward way. At intervals, the deep tolling of the bell of St. Oswald floated out across ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... then, I am to live in a palace," she answered, with a light tinkling laugh. "That is fine; but one may miss the verandas, all the whiteness and coolness. How ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... This he decided to do. Many and long were the hours that Jake spent in this lonely mountain retreat. For miles around there was little sign of human activity. No sound of woodman's ax was heard. The stillness of the long summer afternoons was broken only by the tinkling of the bells on the hillsides. A lone log cabin lifted its mud-chinked walls from the brow of a hill from under which flowed a babbling stream of clear water. In the attic of this lone cabin Jake Benton was regularly ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... exquisitely, daintily, lawfully Japanese. But I sat by my window till early morning. There was a very ghost of a summer moon. Out of the night came the velvety tones of a mighty bell; the sing-song prayers of many priests; the rippling laugh of a little child and the tinkling of a samisen. Every sound made for simple joy and peace. But I thought of the girl somewhere beyond the twinkling street lights, who, with mixed races in her blood and a strange religion in her heart, had dreamed dreams of this as a perfect land, and was now paying the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... roundelay Of the swart ploughman, sowing summer grain, And tinkling sheep-bell on the distant plain, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... minutes more the cheerful tinkling of the merry sleigh-bells was heard, and Frank Kennedy, accompanied by his hopeful son Charles, dashed up to the gate, and pulled ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... for—there were the bare walls at evening made more sombre by the glimmer of tapers; there was the black and grey flock of monks and secular clergy with bent, unexpectant faces; there was the occasional tinkling of little bells in the pauses of a monotonous voice reading a sentence which had already been long hanging up in the churches; and at last there was the extinction of the tapers, and the slow, shuffling tread of monkish feet departing in ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sounded dully within the shack—there was a tinkling sound as if a speeding bullet had bored a hole through a pane of glass and down fell his helmet. Jack picked it up and chuckled to find he could poke an investigating finger through a hole that had ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the open door and she watched them as they gathered round the little table, talking together in excited whispers. The tall, rough-looking fellow who had frightened her before picked up one of the tubes, and then, whether by accident or intention, let it fall, and the tinkling smash of the glass frightened them all so precipitately that they came tumbling out into the larger room. The big fellow whispered something to the student, who at once became more self-important than ever, and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole |
