"Twang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... break not, if we come to any tough play. Nay, mistress, I had a sword, ay, the flower of Smithfield for a sword, a right fox,[298] i'faith; with that, and a man had come over with a smooth and a sharp stroke, it would have cried twang, and then, when I had doubled my point, trac'd my ground, and had carried my buckler before me like a garden-butt, and then come in with a cross blow, and over the pick[299] of his buckler two ells long, it would have cried twang, twang, metal, metal: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Only long ages and many changing epochs; only home-loving prelates, ample monies, and architects of genius, could have created so beautiful and unique a fabric. It was the admiration of transatlantic tourists with a twang; the desire of millionaires. Aladdin's industrious genii would have failed to build such a masterpiece, unless their masters had arranged to inhabit it five centuries or so after construction. Time had created it, as Time would destroy it, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... crude, but the little quiver in his voice got hold of those who heard him, and once more the big building rang with cheering. As the sound of hearty acclamation died away there was a great clatter of thrust-back benches through which the tuning of a fiddle broke. Then out of the tentative twang of strings rose, clear and silvery, the lament of Flora Macdonald, thrilling with melancholy, and there were men and women there whose hearts went back to the other wild and misty land of rock and pine ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... felt like Lord BYRON, I tell yer; I stretched myself, orty-like, hout, And wished it could go on all night, wich my pardner did ditto, no doubt. Modern Venice in minichure, CHARLIE, ain't really so dusty, you bet; I wos quite a Bassanio in breeks, and I ain't lost the twang of it yet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... striking of a match, and the pleasant twang of cigar-smoke greeted her nostrils. The two men seemed splendidly masculine, important, self-sufficient. The triviality of feminine atoms like herself, Rose, and Millicent, occurred to her almost as a new fact, and she ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... trust embarrassed Minuit, but he had never denied the request of any man. His time, as his sign affirmed, was everybody's. Yet a thrill, a twang, a twinge of delicious fear passed through him now. He loved this girl dearly, but he feared to love at all. He had now both the parental and the womanly recognition, and his days were lonely even with his garrulous ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Walton is in his Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... walk, the two of you. God knows I'm a good Catholic, but there's some things—get out, the two of you! Let your nerves ease up a bit. Sure we all pound and twang like a wet tent in ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... seems torn to pieces in the whirlwind of voices which assail him from the disputing parties, in each of whose languages he tries to explain; but, poor patient Jew! you never could speak any of them intelligibly, and your nasal twang, and drawling accent, so disguises what you do say, that nothing but a miracle could make you understood. The screams, the grimaces, the gestures which these people exhibit, during their unavailing efforts to render themselves ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the answer, with the true cockney twang. "Trade ain't very brisk. There's too bloomin' ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... contains 160 grammes of a very inelegantly made emulsion, smelling of very common rose-water, with an unpleasant twang about it, and giving a strongly alkaline reaction. It consists of soap, glycerin, and cotton seed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... a dark, low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the innocent fugitive from the world requires. The great amiable cats that purr in the back room. The old pictures and playbills on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner by the window. Or the table just under that really lovely little portrait of Robert Burns—would there be any more propitious ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... this influence. What fine manners, to be sure! The waiters in the diningroom, in white ties and dress-coats, move on springs, starting even to walk with a complicated use of all the muscles of the body, as if in response to the twang of a banjo; they do nothing without excessive motion and flourish. The gestures and good-humored vitality expended in changing plates would become the leader of an orchestra. Many of them, besides, have the expression of class-leaders—of a worldly sort. There were ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... masks even with their accomplices, "yes, madame, we have excellent news from our house at St. Herem. M. Hardy, the infidel, the freethinker, has at length entered the pale of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." Rodin pronounced these last word with a nasal twang, and the devout ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with a strong nasal twang, 'but they ain't very fresh. I shud be 'fraid to resk b'ilin' 'em. I could fry some, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inflections of his voice struck upon Sara's keyed-up consciousness as an indifferent finger may twang the stretched strings of a violin, producing a shuddering ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... thy well-known rivulet, And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick fierce cry That rends the utter silence! 'tis the whoop Of battle, and a throng of savage men With naked arms and faces stained like blood, Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream; Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short, As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors And conquered vanish, and the dead remain Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, the frighted ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... supports, and threading the starlight as they came. Night slowly brought her beauty and her mystery upon the world. The filmy pattern opened. There was a tautness in the lines that made one feel they would twang with delicate music if the wind swept its hand more rapidly across them. And now and again all vibrated, each line making an ellipse between its fastened ends, then gradually settling back to its thin, almost invisible bed. Cables of thick, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... into the kitchen was opened; and all stood up in both rooms, while the minister, tall, large, one hand resting on the spread table, the other lifted up, said, in the deep voice that would have been loud had it not been so full and rich, but without the peculiar accent or twang that I believe is considered devout by some people, 'Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, let us do all to the glory ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the rowers. Twang! sung their war-bows the song of the cord, and the air was full of hissing whispers of Death as their shafts hurtled past. Round and round the two galleys circled in a strange dance, each steersman striving to bring his craft bows on, so as to ram and crush the other, while they lurched ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... clothed in black, were invisible in the darkness; but his big white eyes shone out, and there came from them a light like a ray of dawn through the chinks of a door. He spoke in a husky, monotonous tone, with a slight nasal twang that gave it the soft melody of music heard at night in the streets. Sometimes the breathing of an ass, or the soft lowing of an ox, accompanied, like a chorus of invisible spirits, the voice of the ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... softly-breathing God! his downy wing Was fluttering now, as quickly to depart; When twang'd an arrow from Love's mystic string, 30 With pathless wound it pierc'd him to the heart. Was there some magic in the Elfin's dart? Or did he strike my couch with wizard lance? For straight so fair ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... confessor, not without some misgivings in his ghostly bosom; but he was more allured by the sweet savour of the good things of this world at Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda, which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang of the bow-string, that he never ventured to find her in the wrong, much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... quick aim at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was a twang as the arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol grip forward and back to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later. Another arrow went ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... her speculatively. "Well," he said at length, speaking with something of a twang, "I guess your father knows what he's about, but it beats me to understand why he has me here to study. I ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... singer of no common stamp, and of whom any nation might be proud, and I have often met men in society sing together most delightfully, either duets, trios, or quartettos, and totally devoid of the nasal twang, or, as the reader will observe, delightful it ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... and hot biscuits and honey on her cousin, in lieu of gossip, for entertainment. The stories were old to her, except as she found a new listener to them, and they had never had any vital interest for her. They had simply made her imagination twang pleasantly, and now they could hardly stir ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that—short, lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself, old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those queer winds ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sought her; 110 They vowed her gold they wanted not, Their faith would never falter, They longed to tie this single Knott In the Hymeneal halter; So daily at the door they rang, Cards for the belle delivering, Or in the choir at her they sang, Achieving such a rapturous twang As ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... talking of his plans to seize Tell, and without a dream of danger, for the pass was silent and seemed deserted. But suddenly to his ears came the twang of the bow he had heard before that day; through the air once more winged its way a steel-barbed shaft, the heart of a tyrant, not an apple on a child's head, now its mark. In an instant more Gessler fell from his horse, pierced by Tell's fatal shaft, and breathed his last before the eyes of his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Andalusia. My mind is suddenly ablaze with its sunshine, with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are wafted across my ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... hieroglyphic bark Told when the warlike bow should twang, The torch of light with glowing spark, Is held aloft ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... down, cap'n," said a voice startlingly like Harris's. It was Meeker, or Thirkle, as his men called him, imitating the high-pitched nasal twang of the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... trying to find was tall," said Merritt quickly, "and has a slight cast in his left eye. He talks with something of a twang, as though he might be ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... a head appeared through the opening above, followed by a body. It was that of one of the native guides. Voices were heard coming through the passage: one voice had a twang to it that surely Mrs. Peterkin had heard before. Another head appeared now, bound with a blue veil, while the eyes were hidden by green goggles. Yet Mrs. Peterkin could not be mistaken,—it was—yes, it was the ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... brief weeks of my boyhood. I dared not picture her as growing up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the mandoline began to twang again, and the soft Italian voice went on with "La Donna ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... all surprising when he suddenly stepped on a stick that broke with a sharp twang. And, before he could dodge behind a tree, the fellow beyond had ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... again that I was very well; and he looked at me thoughtfully, put one end of a bit of matting between his teeth, and drew it out tightly with his left hand. Then he began to twang it thoughtfully, and made it give out a dull ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, hi's" ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... than Thomas Johnson. Words cannot produce a eulogium sufficient for his merits. But, as I have since learned, he was not quite so Spanish as I had imagined. Three years among the bodegas of Xeres had taught him, no doubt, to appreciate the exact twang of a good, dry sherry; but not, as I now conceive, the exactest flavour of the true Spanish character. I was very lucky, however, in meeting such a friend, and now reckon him as one of the stanchest allies of the house of Pomfret, Daguilar, ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... lonely pool, covered with pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate to my ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... he thought, "could make this possible," when, looking up, he caught the face of a young man at a further table, full of enjoyment, ordering "spargetty" and half a bottle of "grayves," with a cockney twang, and an unutterable ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... tune. Masha was all a-quiver, like birch-bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark-skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber. All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop-hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into song like a mad thing, drawing herself up and holding ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... round his leg and went off at full gallop. My little black horse knew perfectly well what had happened, though his head was exactly in the opposite direction; and he tugged with all his might, and leant over more than ever. The two lazos tightened with a twang, as though they had been guitar-strings; and in a moment the unfortunate bull was rolling with all his legs in the air, in the midst of a whirlwind of dust. Having thus humiliated him we let him go, and off he went at full speed. All this time the proprietor ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... condescending landlord has promised them after much negotiation for the week after next. The morning promenade is a wonderful sight; such a host of bilious faces, such an endless variety of eccentric costumes, such a Babel of tongues, among which the shrill twang of our fair American cousins is peculiarly prominent, could be found in no other place in the civilized world. A moralist would assuredly find here abundant food for reflection on the wonderful powers of self-deception possessed ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Circuit, who has made a fortune in Railroad Committees, and whose dinners are so good—bellowing out with Tancred and Godfrey, "On to the breach, ye soldiers of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye dauntless archers, twang your cross-bows well; On, bill and battle-axe and mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours—id Deus vult." After which comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of Sharon and the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the entire country of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... berth in a whaler. He married at New Bedford and sailed with Captain Tucker—this was his second whaling trip, he said, and he wanted no more. I told him I was glad to learn that he was a countryman of mine, but not surprised. His speech was well-larded with americanisms, "but," said I, "the true twang is wanting, and," added I, laughing, "I should know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and guesses if I had to eat you should I ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... been an Indian of North or South America, instead of an Indian of the "East Indies," he would have pierced those fishes with an arrow at every twang of ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... I nodded; and as the executioner clapped his heels together, straightened himself, and drew the arrow to his ear, we heard a low twang! And saw the black hand of the Seneca pinned to his own bow ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... camp and sold my pears like lightning, for there is no want of money there, nor of the will to spend it. What a hubbub, Maria! It seemed like the gayest kind of a fair; nothing was to be heard but the twang of guitars, singing, and hurrahs for the queen. I need only tell you that the commander-in-chief has had to forbid so much singing and guitar playing at night, because it served as a guide to the accursed Moors. I was just inquiring for the King's regiment, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation—a fantastic movement of both form and feature—seemed very near akin to fascination. And so flowed on ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Go, Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou see'st him, draw; and as thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang'd off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... exactly when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... he took hold of the yard rigged out on one side to keep the lugger upright, the others did the same on the other side, and as the cable was tightened once more with a jerk, which gave forth a musical deep bass twang, Smith shouted, "All together!" and with his companions, he began to give the hull a gentle rocking movement from ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Twang! The arrow sped through the air, but it was too dark for them to follow its flight with their eyes. With their hearts in their mouths, ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... in. Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. "I'll show you whether I got ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... in Europe, the trumpeter of a French cavalry corps had a fine charger assigned to him, of which he became passionately fond, and which, by gentleness of disposition and uniform docility, equally evinced its affection. The sound of the trumpeter's voice, the sight of his uniform, or the twang of his trumpet, was sufficient to throw this animal into a state of the greatest excitement; and he appeared to be pleased and happy only when under the saddle of his rider. Indeed he was unruly and useless to every ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... me here, keep me here for years, if they will; but they cannot make me associate with these people." And she recalled with a shudder the gnarled, horny hand which she had touched in jumping from the cart,—she had never felt anything like it; the homely speech, and the nasal twang with which it was delivered; the uncouth garb (good stout butternut homespun!) and unkempt hair and beard of the "odious old savage," as ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... they know my mind. I hate that same twang, twang, twang, fum, fum, fum, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, then scrue go the Pins, till a man's Teeth are on an edge; then snap, says a small Gut, and there we are at a loss again. I long to be in bed with a—hey tredodle, tredodle, tredodle,—with a hay tredool, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... master, the swabber, the boatswain and I, The gunner and his mate, Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary, But none of us cared for Kate. For she had a tongue with a twang, Would cry to a sailor, go hang! She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,— Then to sea, boys, and let ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... trembled at the sight and sound, and his old horse, quivering in every limb, moaned piteously, as if in pain. On came the steeds, until they almost touched the shore, then rearing, they seemed about to spring on to it. The frightened dwarf turned his head to fly, and as he did so he heard the twang of a golden harp, and right before him who should he see but the little man of the hills, holding a harp in one hand and striking the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn was the greatest. She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a little mischievous and very dear to him. "Pretty;" that is one thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels. To Sidney Trove the word "pretty" was inadequate. As to lying abed and reading novels, he was free to say that he ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... about as by some great conspiracy. We walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion, lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... a recognition of danger in the very charm of her attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall on James. He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene before. And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as though he had come across ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... acquaintance appeared to be a man of sixty or thereabouts. A crowbar and shovel which he carried over his shoulder seemed a part of his rough laborer's costume. He had a shrewd, good sort of face, and a Yankee twang to his speech. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... yoke of fat steers should belong. A dozen keen-eyed bowmen were there, and among them some of the best fellows in the Forester's and Sheriff's companies. Down at the end of the line towered the tall beggar-man, who must needs twang a bow-string with ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited—only a few minutes—until the whirring wheels of that "Defiance" coach were heard rolling towards us as certain as death. Twang goes the horn; up goes the trunk; down come the steps. Bah! I see the autumn evening: I hear the wheels now: I smart the cruel smart again: and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of people parting from ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mouth, incredibly wide, with shrewd, mobile lips, which habitually smiled. A tuft of yellow beard on the end of his sharp chin, gave his face a comical expression resembling that which caricature bestows on Uncle Sam. His voice was pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; but a habit of giving his declarative sentences an interrogative finish, might denote that he came from the mountain regions of Pennsylvania or Virginia. A pair ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... which it received the visitor. People of the highest rank called on him; ambassadors left cards; the leading musical societies vied with each other in their zeal to do him honour. Even the poetasters began to twang their lyres in his praise. Thus Burney, who had been for some time in correspondence with him, saluted him with an effusion, of which it will suffice ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... hopped-up layout anyway, fellah, if it ain't on Earth?" broke in a voice with a decided East Side twang. Blake quickly turned and saw that the gangster had remained with them in that eery flight in the green net. There was an expression of dumfounded amazement upon the man's heavy face, and he was obviously anxious to be friendly ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... attempted to force his way round to the front of the sofa. He had, at any rate, learnt that his strange guests were brother and sister. The man, he presumed, must be Signor Vicinironi—or count, or prince, as it might be. It was wonderful what good English he spoke. There was just a twang of foreign accent, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... head and made Falcon swerve, and heard therewith the twang of the bowstring and straightway the shaft flew past his ears. Falcon galloped on, and the carle cried out: "There is the highway toward the Burg! Do thy best, do thy best! ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... called his armor-bearer, and their entrance into each village was signaled by a loud hymn sung by the excited pair. The very tone in which Davenport preached has been perpetuated by his admirers; it was a nasal twang, which had great effect. A law was passed against those irregularities, and Davenport was thrown into Hartford jail, where he sang hymns all night, to the great admiration of his friends. On being released he went to Lyme, where, after sermon, a bonfire of idols was made, to which the women ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... wore He swaggered neither less nor more. He talked the stuff he talked before, And bragged as he had bragged of yore, With his Yankee chaff and his Yankee slang, And his Yankee bounce and his Yankee twang. And, to tell the truth, we all held clear Of the impudent little adventurer; And any man with an eye might see That, though he bore it merrily, He recognised the tacit scorn Which dwelt about ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... whole party of Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crowded blazing upon the golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and through. She fell down in utter darkness. All around her was a flaming furnace. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Tsyn-deh at the head of the stairway looked straight ahead where a man with a strong bow held himself close in the shadow of a great rock. When the twang of the bow string sounded, she loosened not her hand from that of Ka-yemo as he fell, but with her other hand she pulled aside the robe from her breast—also the necklace of the white metal, that not anything turn aside the point of the arrow which ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... think that well-bred and educated people speak and behave after much the same fashion all the world over. Few Baltimorean voices are free from a perceptible accent; it is more marked in the gentler sex, but rarely so strong as to be disagreeable. The ear is never offended by the New England twang, or Connecticut drawl, and some ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... must know that, as we are now in an Age of great Philosophers and Men of Reason, so of great quickness and fancy! and that Greek and Latin, which heretofore (though never so impertinently fetched in) was counted admirable, because it had a learned twang; yet, now, such stuff, being out of fashion, is esteemed but very ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... the bowstrings twang, While high in air the arrows sang. The iron shower drives to flight The foeman from the bloody fight. The warder of great Odin's shrine, The fair-haired son of Odin's line, Raises the voice which gives the cheer, First in the track of wolf ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... knee, bracing himself as firmly as he could against the rock, and, with his shield above his head and his sword in his hand, awaited the attack of the enraged animal. He heard the twang of the bow behind him; then he felt a mighty blow, which beat down his shield and descended with terrible force upon his helmet, throwing him forward on to his face. Then there was a heavy blow on his back; and it was well for him that he had on backpiece as well as breastplate, or ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... had ended with a last resounding twang, And within the harp's dumb chambers murmurous echoes faintly rang, Up then sprang the guest, and straightway downward rolled his garment dun— There stood Harold, the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the day are done. The firing squad leave the guns. The twang of guitar and screech of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... to whip the Government-team to a right-about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted to Diana that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the discreditable Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative and prophetic twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded the Ministry, the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised the breeze' wantonly as well as disagreeably. Any one can whip up the populace if he has the instruments; and Tonans frequently intruded on the Ministry's prerogative to govern. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... people may think me foolish, especially after coming from London, where many nice maids looked at me (on account of my bulk and stature), and I might have been fitted up with a sweetheart, in spite of my west-country twang, and the smallness of my purse; if only I had said the word. But nay; I have contempt for a man whose heart is like a shirt-stud (such as I saw in London cards), fitted into one to-day, sitting bravely on the breast; plucked out on the morrow morn, and the place ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... set teeth, and he aimed with all his heart and soul in it. There came the twang of the bowstring, and the next moment the gooseshaft was flying towards ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... a half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear gave a certain additional interest to his remarks, he saluted me ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"—giving a sort, of sentimental twang to the two words,—"and sends it round among you!" And forthwith the loving-cup—several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables—came slowly down with all the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ensconced in Young R.'s favourite armchair, nodded ponderously and beat time to the twang of Mr. Jenkins's banjo, whereto Mr. Stevens sang in a high-pitched and rather shaky tenor the latest musical success yclept "Sammy." Thus, Mr. Jenkins strummed, Mr. Stevens trilled, and Mr. Brimberly alternately beat the tempo with a plump white finger and sipped ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... hot towns paddling in the surf of Spanish waters, And prowl beneath dim balconies and twang discreet guitars, And sigh our adoration to Don Juan's lovely daughters Till they lifted their mantillas and their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... over the deserted town. The night was dark and windless: the street lit glimmeringly from end to end, lamps, house windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools all contributing. From a public-house on the other side of the way, I heard a harp twang and a doleful voice upraised in the "Larboard Watch," "The Anchor's Weighed," and other naval ditties. Where had my Shyster wandered? In all likelihood to that lyrical tavern; there was no choice of diversion; in comparison with ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... was a sudden step forward, and a sharp, determined twang of their bow-strings. Then the air was white with the cloud of their arrows, and next moment the foremost ranks of the Genoese were seen ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... percentage of the profits for his trouble. Mr. Rattray was also of assistance to them when, as soon as the expense could be managed, these two middle-aged Americans, whose grief was not less impressive because of its twang, arrived in London to arrange that their daughter's final resting-place should be changed to her native land. Mr. Bell told him in confidence that while he hoped he was entirely devoid of what you may call race prejudice against the English people, it didn't, seem as if he could let ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... modify that view, for Bidan (Prosper) prospered more rapidly even than himself. That grey look was out of the boy's face within three weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he could say, with his dreadful Provencal twang, that he felt "tres biang." A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes, and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his limbs seemed almost to have lost their joints, they wambled ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... longest speech, she delivered in quiet, Neutral American, the speech that covers the great prairie states and is as near accentless and pure as American English ever is. It branded her Ozark twang as a lie, and a great many other things about her. But it added something very solid to ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Loud twang'd thy bow, mighty youth, in the foray, Dread gleam'd thy brand in the proud field of glory; And when heroes sat round in the Psalter of Tara, His counsel was sage ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... a woman's voice that spoke, soft and wheedling, yet with a certain unpleasant twang in it. She spoke to Melody, who sat still, with folded hands, and head bowed as if in ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... implement he may be said to have, in this country and among its white inhabitants, reinvented. Seated in our easy-chair, we follow him gayly and untiringly into the depths of the woods, drink in the rich, cool, damp air, and revel in the primeval silence that is only broken by the twang of the bowstring or the call of its destined victim. We enjoy his marvellous shots with some little infusion of envy, and his exemplary patience under ill-success and repeated failure with perhaps more. We end, like his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... each to his slumber laid, When the country folks came to serenade; With twang of fiddle, and toot of horn, And shriek of fife, they stayed till morn! Poor Campers! never a wink got they! So they started for home at ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... commonly reputed to speak through their nose. A more intimate acquaintance with their manner belies this reputation. It is rather a drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in every sentence a curious shifting of emphasis. America, with the true instinct of democracy, is determined to give all parts of speech an equal chance. The modest pronoun is not to be outdone by the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... do Mungo half so well. It is I, sir, I that can do Mungo to the very life. Now I say, boys, with what feeling could I pour out from my heart and soul, "Oh cussa heart of my old massa—him damn impudence and his cuss assurance." This he followed with a spirited twang of "Dear heart" on the violin, accompanying it with the words. Again a noise was heard. "What can it be?" said one. "What can it be?" said another. There was a push at the door. "Oh!" cried Hodgkinson, "it's only one of the hogs that roam about the alley, who, having more taste than the old ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... excess, which, to religionize daily life, took the words of Scripture, and especially those of the Old Testament, as the language of common intercourse, which issued them from a gloomy countenance, with a nasal twang, and often with a ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... moment a fine buck went by. He had not spied us while we lay still, but the moment my comrade moved, he threw up his head and bounded off. Yet not before a quick twang from Sir Ludar's bowstring had sent an arrow into his quarter. "Are you mad?" cried I, in terror, "it is the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... such gorgeous millinery as would have shocked the grave people of thirty years ago. The deep bass note which once pealed from the belfry with a solemn and solitary dignity of sound has now lost it all amid the jangle of a half-dozen bells of lighter and airier twang. Even the parson himself will not be that grave man of stately bearing, who met the rarest fun only benignantly, and to whom all the villagers bowed,—but some new creature full of the logic of the schools ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... over the pose and vivid gestures of the geisha, who is the one to interpret these dramatic recitations. To her falls the "kotoba." The descriptive lines are recited by a chorus to the harsh and effective twang of the samisen. The samisen may not afford music, but it can give expression to the emotional in feeling. The gidayu recitation is a favourite art with the Go Inkyo[u] Sama. Symposia are held, before which the old gentleman recites, often enough without ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... rope kept on vibrating and the anchor jarred as Scoodrach descended; while, as Max pressed the stock down, and it rose and fell like a spring beneath his foot, he kept his eyes fixed upon the edge of the cliff, where the rope seemed to end, when there was a dull twang, as if the string of some gigantic instrument had snapped, and, to his horror, the rope rose from the top of the cliff as if alive, and struck and coiled round him with a ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... tired; and I'm tough, though I'm small," she retorted, with her pretty twang. "By the way, speaking of to-morrow night. I wonder whether this Mr. Falconer ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... a twang the elastic wood flung upwards, and the bound man was shot away from its tip with the speed of a lightning flash. He sang through the air, spinning over and over with inconceivable rapidity, and the great crowd of rebels held their breath in silence as they watched. He passed high above the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... past the row of buildings until they came to a general store, where they occupied themselves in making out an order for supplies and arranging for their delivery on the following day. The trader was a loquacious individual with the unmistakable "Yankee" twang and nasal whine of the man from that important speck of the United States called ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... men say that here she walked A thousand moons ago; They never raise the war whoop here, And never twang ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... dull, as a rule, but a few cracked viciously as though fired close at hand. These last followed the vacuum of low-flying bullets and had a spat and twang of ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... with him,' said Miss Geraghty, who had still about her a twang of the County Clare, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... smoke and the roar of the elevated trains. To make the air more salubrious an oxygen apparatus had been placed in the room, which liberated just enough gas to make the air fresh and to give it an autumn twang. ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... sing, 'Home Sweet Home'; and the writer of this memory of those old Pacific days sat in a chair in the doorway and wondered where we should all be the next year. For, as we sang and danced, and the twang, twang of Sera's guitar sounded through the silent night without, Tom Devine, the American, held up his hand to ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... speaks my mind,' said Elnathan, with a half-sanctimonious, half-waggish look, and slight nasal twang. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... a good fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who notices ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... order being lost, the combat was hand to hand one party fighting fiercely for victory, and the other knowing that they stood at the awful peril of their lives. After the first discharge of the musket and the twang of the bow, the struggle was maintained with knife and axe; the thrust of the former, or the descent of the keen and glittering tomahawk, being answered by sweeping and crushing blows of the musket's but, or by throttling grasps of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... was deserted by his troops. His wife saved the situation. She upbraided her husband as he was scaling the palisades to escape by night, fortified him with wine, girded his sword on herself, and caused her female attendants—of whom there were "several tens"—to twang bowstrings. Katana, taking heart of grace, advanced single handed; the Yemishi, thinking that his troops had rallied, gave way, and the Japanese soldiers, returning to their duty, killed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... do not talk so much too fast, as too loud. Tens of thousands twang and slur and shout and burr! Many of us drawl and many others of us race tongues and breath at full speed, but, as already said, the speed of our speech does not matter so much. Pitch of voice matters very much and so does ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... itself—was a hatter by trade, who had come to Georgia in search of a precarious livelihood. He obtained permission to build him a little log hut by the side of a running stream; and, for a year or two, people going along the road could hear the snap and twang of his bowstring as he whipped wool or rabbit fur into shape. Some said he was from North Carolina; others said he was from Connecticut; but whether from one State or the other, what should a hatter do away off in the woods in Putnam County? Grandsir Kendrick, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... the boom of the fairy bassoon, And the oboes and horns as they strike up a tune, And the twang of the harps and the sigh of the lutes, And the clash of the cymbals, the purl of the flutes; And the fiddles sail in To the musical din, While the chief all on fire, with a flame for a hand, Rattles on the gay measure ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... said Duncan, with no small touch of spitefulness in his tone, "—twang twanging at teir fine colden herps! She'll not be thinking much of ta herp for a music maker! And peoples tells her she'll not pe hafing her pipes tere! Och hone! Och hone!—She'll chust pe lying still and not pe ketting up, and when ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets were lit with kerosene. Here and there a slush lamp or a torch blazed ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... elapsed before anything of note occurred. Then, an elderly man whom I did not know, a farmer, by his dress, drew a copy of the "Kiota Tribune" from his pocket, and, stretching it towards Johnson, asked with a very marked Yankee twang: ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... and his secretary had been called and had filled the court with the echoing twang of New York (the controlled fury of the aged Witt was highly effective), Mrs. Henry Leek was invited to the witness-box. She was supported thither by her two curates, who, however, could not prevent her from weeping at the stern voice of the usher. She ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... This wine is liquid gold. I quaff to your good health and ease of mind. This is good wine. It warms my chilly blood With all the dreamy heat of Spain. I hear The clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, [Sipping wine. The long-drawn heaving of the ocean wave, The gentle cradling of a tropic tide; Its native golden ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... just like one of Tadema's pictures on the move—barring the brougham! The players led the way in white, with the dark wood chanters mounted with silver bells and mouthpieces, and made music with a little of the twang of our pipe chanter, but without the continuity and lift or crisp grace-notes. Young girls, with their faces tinted yellow with saffron, followed in dull red dresses. Behind the procession were classical-looking houses, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... fifty-man-power bow, constituted the heavy, and the individual article the light, artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element of tremendous noise ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... I that I should take exception to the guffaw? Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Cezannes I ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business. But my notion about Cezanne was that he was a fond old man who distracted himself by daubing. I could not say how my conversion to Cezanne began. When one is ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... no answer, but I do not know what train of thought my casual remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated, and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar intonations which for some ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... her speaking eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one could hear it faintly twang: ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sacred like a second region of Brahma. And the sounds of the Yajus, the Riks, the Samas, and other words uttered by the Brahmanas, were exceedingly delightful to hear. And the Vedic recitations of the Brahmanas mingling with the twang of bows of the sons of Pritha, produced a union of the Brahmana and Kshatriya customs that was highly beautiful. And one evening the Rishi Vaka of the Dalvya family addressed Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti seated in the midst of the Rishis, saying, 'Behold, O chief ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... recommend our readers to try the Chinese plan, always provided they are so fortunate as to have a good sound article of pleasant flavor. With most of the tea found in England, and especially so with that generally used in America, the sugar and cream are no doubt necessary to drown the "twang." A Chinaman would put this practice on a par with putting sugar in Chateau Lafitte. Tea is the wine of the Celestial. A mandarin will "talk" it to you as a gourmet talks wine with us; dilate upon its quality and flavor, for the grades are innumerable, and taste and sip and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... saliva, and hence it is that habitual snuff-takers are often unable to speak with proper distinctness; and the sense of taste for the same reason is very much obtunded. A snuffer may always be distinguished by a certain nasal twang—an asthmatic wheezing—and a sort of disagreeable noise in respiration, which is nearly allied to incipient snoring. Snuff also frequently occasions fleshy excrescences in the nose, which, in some instances, end in polypi. Individuals have oftentimes a predisposition to cancer ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and that his mother and sister should have his lordship's prayers to the saints (an inestimable benefit, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... it broke with a twang; I entered leisurely. It was enough to try the temper of a saint, such senseless, wicked rages! There she lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them to splinters! Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... of the violin, the lively twang of a guitar, the "boom! boom" of a drum marking time, the stentorian voice of the master of ceremonies, reached her plainly as she lay staring at the stars through the single window of her room. She ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... thinking, then, for you to imagine how I gesticulated and spouted to Parload that night. You figure us as little black figures, unprepossessing in the outline, set in the midst of that desolating night of flaming industrialism, and my little voice with a rhetorical twang protesting, denouncing. . ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... recommended to me, and after partaking of coffee—the best I ever remember to have drunk—I sought my room, Tom insisting upon sleeping on the floor in the same chamber, and my last waking recollections were of the pungent fumes of tobacco, and the tinkle, tinkle, twang of a guitar ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy: When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her: Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold In the butt's heart ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sang and shouted, Keeping measure as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As it ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... to young Robin when he saw Little John or one of the other men let fly an arrow with a twang of the bow-string and a sharp whizz of the wings through the air, to quiver in a mark eighty or a hundred yards away, or to pierce some flying wild goose or duck passing in a flock high in air; but by degrees that which had seemed so marvellous soon ceased to astonish ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... expect to be taken by surprise, if such a paradox (it is nothing worse) maybe allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family. On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike,—so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ascribed without hesitation to the goldfinch or the pine finch, had I heard ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... sir Andrew: scout mee for him at the corner of the Orchard like a bum-Baylie: so soone as euer thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw'st, sweare horrible: for it comes to passe oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharpely twang'd off, giues manhoode more approbation, then euer proofe it selfe would ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... come to tell old Surefoot about his daughter's love," the letter goes on, "you should fall into a positive imitation of his manner: crest, motionless, and hands in front, and deliver your preambles with a nasal twang. But at the second invitation to speak out, you should cast this to the winds, and go into the other extreme of bluntness and rapidity. [Quite right!] When you meet him after the exposure, you should speak as you are coming to him and stop him in mid-career, and then attack him. You ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... twang of a bow-string, Mackenzie swept low to the ground, and a bonebarbed arrow passed over him into the breast of the Bear, whose momentum carried him over his crouching foe. The next instant Mackenzie was up and about. The bear lay motionless, but across the fire was the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... played—and then, in the middle of a favorite two-step, a mandolin string snapped with a sharp twang, and Bud came as close to swearing as a well-behaved young man may come in the ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... at length reaches his ear. The "quien viva?" is upon his lips; but he lives not to utter the words. Half-a-dozen bowstrings twang simultaneously, and as many arrows bury themselves in his flesh. His heart is pierced, and he falls, almost without uttering ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... tattooed serpent winding its way round the strong wrist to the elbow (oh, wonderful make-up box!)—on the edge of the marble bar, and called loudly for a drink. His very voice was raw and husky with a tang of the sea in it. Dollops's nasal twang took up the story, while the barmaid—a red-headed, fat woman with a coarse, hard face, who was continually smiling—looked them up and down, and having taken stock of them set two pewter tankards of frothing ale before them, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... vernacular. (Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn," "Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry hae I been teething a Heckle," ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... up, his mouth turned down; His accent caught a nasal twang; He oiled his hair; there might be heard The grace of God in every word Which Peter said ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... then almost opposite, and now, as I listened to hear the traitorous signal of murder—"Pax vobiscum"—and the twang of bow-strings, on the night there rang a voice, a woman's voice, soft but wondrous clear, such as never I knew from any lips but hers who then spoke; that voice I heard in its last word, "Jesus!" and still it is sounding ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable twang of a banjo; and a fat ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... stranger approaches the nest, looking like angry coals of brilliant fire, returning several times to the attack with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious, reverberating, sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, and curiously like the real bleat of some small quadruped. At other times the males may be seen darting high up in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger and with ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our country-women bear in America by looking a "perfect ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... and who soon taught him how to gain much greater sums than in this way of life, by methods which he until then never heard of, and will I am confident, to this day carry the charms of novelty to most of my readers. Of these the first she put upon him was going on what they call the "twang," which is thus managed: the man who is the confederate goes out with some noted woman of the town, and if she fall into any broil, he is to be at a proper distance, ready to come into her assistance, and by making a sham quarrel, give her an opportunity of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... toward them. Directly over the shaft, with head slightly inclined, like that of a hunter sighting over his gun, were the gleaming eyes and face of the young Shawanoe. It looked as if he had turned his head to one side that he might catch the music made by the twang of the string when it should dart forward with the speed of the rattlesnake striking ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis |
