"Whirr" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at Petrovskoe, every one had been used to wash and dress for the meal, and then to repair to the drawing-room as the appointed hour (two o'clock) drew near, and pass the time of waiting in lively conversation. Just as the clock in the servants' hall was beginning to whirr before striking the hour, Foka would enter with noiseless footsteps, and, throwing his napkin over his arm and assuming a dignified, rather severe expression, would say in loud, measured tones: "Luncheon is ready!" Thereupon, with pleased, cheerful faces, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... called a locust. . . . It is remarkable for the loud song, or chirruping whirr, of the males in the heat of summer; numbers of them on the hottest days produce ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... they are the symptoms; and if ever there was an intense and vivid life, Susan had it. She got up and dressed, and leaned from the window, watching the two-horse reaper in the wheat fields across the hollow of the pasture, and listening to its faint musical whirr. The cows which had just been milked were moving sedately through the gate into the pasture, where the bull, under a tree, was placidly awaiting them. A boy, in huge straw hat and a blue cotton shirt and linsey woolsey ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a big easy-chair, Randall McLean heard the crash of the horses' hoofs and the whirr-r-r of the wheels on the gravelly road in front, and demanded of the attendant ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... will see nothing but ground-flowers and a glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song—and of the hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the girls had just started out from the hospital to go to their cave when they heard a German airplane, the irregular chug, chug of its engine distinguishing it unmistakably from the smooth whirr of the Allies' planes. The girls looked up and almost over their heads was an enemy plane, so low that they could see the insignia on his machine, and see the man in the car. He seemed to be looking down at them. In sudden panic they fled to a nearby tree and hid close under its ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Another pause, with the whirr of distant machinery breaking the stillness. No speech on either side until Pellams felt that he must say something or the blood in his throat ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the birds, or the soughing of the branches; they seem to come from the swamp life underneath the branches, at the roots of trees. There's a ceaseless stir as of a myriad of reptiles creeping in the slime. Listen long enough and you will fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. Now and again a more distinctive sound emerges from the rest—the croaking of a bull-frog, the whining cough of a crocodile. At such sounds Hatteras would start up in his ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... went the machine, ticking fast and lightly over the belts of the rough jeans pants. Whirr, whirr, yes, and Miss Sophie was actually humming a tune! She felt ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession before subsiding with another rattle: but to Sam it sounded ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... lyre too, reach me the lyre, that I may sing a battle-song. . . . Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from the heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate the huts. . . . Words like bright javelins, that whirr up to the seventh heaven and strike the pious hypocrites who have skulked into the Holy of Holies. . . . I am all joy and song, all sword and flame! Perhaps, too, all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams wrapped in brown paper has flown ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... next time Holroyd maltreated him, Azuma-zi went presently to the Lord of the Dynamos and whispered, "Thou seest, O my Lord!" and the angry whirr of the machinery seemed to answer him. Thereafter it appeared to him that whenever Holroyd came into the shed a different note came into the sounds of the dynamo. "My Lord bides his time," said Azuma-zi to himself. "The ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... was coming. He listened, too, but the movements of the horses and the rattle of their harness were all the sounds he could hear. Naab returned to his seat; the team started, now no longer in a trot; they were climbing. After that Hare fell into a slumber in which he could hear the slow grating whirr of wheels, and when it ceased he awoke to raise himself and turn his ear to the back trail. By-and-by he discovered that the black night had changed to gray; dawn was not far distant; he dozed and awakened to clear light. A rose-red horizon lay far below and to the eastward; the intervening descent ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Another soft whirr in the instrument, a momentary flash of light close around it, and, behold, the crow had turned from black ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... new-mown hay in the air, and gangs of reapers were out in the fields getting in the harvest, the whirr of the threshing- machine, which the squire had lately brought down from London, making a hideous din in the meadows by the pond, where it had been set up; puffing and panting away as if its very existence were a trial, and scandalising the old-fashioned village folk—who did not believe ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... so loudly as to waken them once or twice. Near dawn they heard the howling of wolves and the curiously similar hooting of a horned owl. There is, indeed, almost no difference between the short opening howl of a she-wolf and the long hoot of the owl. As he listened, half awake, Rolf heard a whirr of wings which stopped overhead, then a familiar chuckle. He sat up and saw Skookum sadly lift his misshapen head to gaze at a row of black-breasted grouse partridge on a branch above, but the poor doggie was feeling too sick ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Him not! He is standing there in the midst of scenes of natural beauty though His foot leaves no impression on the untrodden sand, and His form casts no shadow on the flowers or greensward. He is standing there in that dingy counting-house, or amid the whirr of the deafening machinery, though He fills no space, and utters no word audible to human ears. He is standing there in that home, watching the sick, noting unkindness and rudeness, smiling on the little deeds done for His sake, though ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Blurr. Gone. On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... nose and eyes been so close to the water, Jack Carleton would have caught the reflection of another face just behind his own—a face which would have driven all thirst away and caused him to bound to his feet, as though he had heard the whirr of a coiled ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... schools, so there were none. Preachers came and offered their wares without money and without price, but there were no churches. For the wares of the preachers flushed no faces and burned no throats, nor were there rattles even in contribution boxes, and there was no whirr of painted wheels. Even the hundred rumbling stamps of the Rainbow mill might as well have pounded empty air or clashed their hard steel shoes on their hard steel dies for all the profit that came to the far-away stockholders of the great ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... be collected and sent by any opportunity offering to the nearest point of shipment to hospital or camp. Fruits were gathered and made into preserves or wine "for the sick soldiers." Looms were set up on every plantation. The whirr of the spinning-wheel was heard from morning until night. Dusky forms hovered over large iron cauldrons, continually thrusting down into the boiling dye the product of the looms, to be transformed into Confederate ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... careless, youth is fleet, With heart and wing of bird! The lark flew up beneath our feet, To his copse the pheasant whirr'd; ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... of birds who has spent the day in the field puts away his glasses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a passing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in mid September, unsheath your glasses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy position and focus on the moon. Shut out all earthly scenes ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... plot and the bronzed oaks beyond, as if loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In the solitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortune and pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the open lot—a distant murmur from the big city that was otherwise ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... which she declared was the color of a wild morning-glory, that a remark of her mother's, in the next room, filled her with dismay. It had not been intended for her ears, but it floated in distinctly, above the whirr ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... clang and roar of the streets below, seething with holiday traffic. The elevator opposite her door buzzed up and down unheeded. She did not even notice when it stopped on her floor, and some one walked across the corridor with a heavy tread. But the whirr of her door bell brought her to herself with a start, and she looked up impatiently, half inclined to pay no attention to the interruption. Then thinking it might be some business message which she ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... me a warm embrace and many kisses. I climbed on to the front seat of the buggy beside my escort, he whipped the horses—a cloud of dust, a whirr of wheels, and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... The whirr of the machinery and the strong breeze made by the boat's motion, made it certain that no one could hear us, and so I began my attack: "Mr. van Tuiver, I am a friend of your wife's. I came here to help her in this crisis, and I came to-day to meet you ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... All around us was exquisitely green. The strong sea-breeze had suddenly fallen, and was succeeded by a calm; the atmosphere, now very warm, was laden with the perfume of flowers. In the valley resounded the ceaseless whirr of the cicalas, answering one another from shore to shore; the mountains reechoed with innumerable sounds; the whole country seemed to vibrate like crystal. We passed among myriads of Japanese junks, gliding softly, wafted by imperceptible breezes on the smooth ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... short interview with Ulick, and was amused by observing that little Maurice had learnt as much Irish as Ulick had dropped. After the passing fever about his O had subsided, he was parting with some of his ultra-nationality. The whirr of his R's and his Irish idioms were far less perceptible, and though a word of attack on his country would put him on his mettle, and bring out the Kelt in full force, yet in his reasonable state, his good sense and love of order showed ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... earth—at least proclaim At vacant holes the overtaken game) That men who marked you nourishing the tongue, And saw your arms so vigorously swung, All marveled how so light a breeze could stir So great a windmill to so great a whirr! Little they knew, or surely they had grinned, The mill was laboring to raise ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... rested, toss their heads impatiently. We take our seats in the carriage, open wide beneath a sparkling sky, whirl past the palace and its ghost-like recollections, and are half way on the road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and whirr of wheels before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There is just time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand bare-headed to salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along the sky. Then the open road invites us with its varied ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... it, and began to mount it slowly. The lights of the city shone below them. Domini saw great sloping lawns dotted with streets and by trees. Scents of hidden flowers came to her in the night, and she heard a whirr of insects. Still they mounted, and presently reached the top ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... shoulders and smiled unbelievingly. Her recollection of Pink Upham was of a big red-faced fellow overgrown and awkward, with a disgusting habit of twisting every one's remarks into puns, and of uttering trite truths with the air of just having discovered them. The warning whirr of a clock about to strike made her spring down from the stool ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... year,) stands in one window. The other window is always open and looks out on the park. There is a dovecote just opposite the window, and doves promenade up and down upon the roof of it, and fly about, and sometimes whirr down on the sill itself. That pleases Liszt. His writing-table is beautifully fitted up with things that match. Everything is in bronze—inkstand, paper-weight, match-box, etc.—and there is always a lighted candle ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... strange ways of serving God You sweep a room or turn a sod, And suddenly to your surprise You hear the whirr of seraphim And ?uid you're under God's own eyes And building ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... close behind, pulled up beside the other horse and threw himself off. Even as he touched the ground a sharp whirr met his ear and he saw the fat, still body and vibrating tail of the snake. He wrenched the pistol from the holster, took the quickest aim of his life and pulled the trigger. After the shot apparently nothing had changed. The whirr of the rattle went ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... I'll never see Those hills again, a blur of blue and rain Across the old Willamette. I'll not stir A pheasant as I walk, and hear it whirr Above my head, an indolent, trusting thing. When all this silly dream is finished here, The fellows will go home to where there fall Rose-petals over every street, and all The year is like a friendly festival. But I shall never ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... at intervals, for the night was partially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward, saw a horseman coming in his direction. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... slackening of the coupling chains, in combination with the concussion of the buffers as they hitch up suddenly again, sounds a regular obbligato accompaniment—the scream of the steam whistle, and the thundering whish and whirr of the train through a deep cutting or tunnel, or over a bridge with water below, coming in occasionally as a sort of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... chain, and induced it to remain quiet in the breast of his jacket. Then he sat again on the table and looked fixedly at the door of the room he had just left. He listened also intently. He heard a dry sound of rustling; sharp cracks as of dry wood snapping; a whirr like of a bird's wings when it rises suddenly, and then he saw a thin stream of smoke come through the keyhole. The monkey struggled under his coat. Ali appeared with his eyes starting out of ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... with ceaseless whirr and drone, With moss and lichens to the roof o'ergrown An undertone to every other sound, The blind old horse ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Belgians, who had got through and occupied the grounds of a villa on the edge of the village. We stopped the car, and I got out and went ahead, they remaining with leveled rifles, in their usual hospitable manner. When I got to within twenty feet of them we heard the whirr of a machine gun—which the Belgian soldiers call a cinema—and a German armoured car poked its nose around the corner for a look-see. It was firing high to draw a return fire and locate any Belgians there might be in the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... full of trailing brambles, loaded with ripe blackberries; when the air is full of the farewell whistles and pipes of birds, clear and short—not the long full- throated warbles of spring; when the whirr of the partridge's wings is heard in the stubble-fields, as the sharp hoof-blows fall on the paved lanes; when here and there a leaf floats and flutters down to the ground, although there is not a single breath of wind. The country surgeon ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... forests as deep as possible into his little lungs, and outraged the solemn silences with shouts and squeals of sheer ecstasy, which Uncle Andy had not the heart to suppress. Then, all at once, he remembered what the thrilling air, the gold and scarlet of the trees, the fairy ice films, the whirr of the partridge wings, and the sharp cries of the bluejays all meant. It meant that soon Uncle Andy would take him back to town, the cabin under the hemlock would be boarded up. Bill the Guide would go off to the lumber camps beyond the Ottanoonsis, and Silverwater would be ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... in the Village of the Seven Palms. Flocks of crows are swarming in from their roosting place in the palmyra jungle beside the dry sand river; the cattle are strolling out from behind various enclosures where they share the family shelter; all around is the whirr of bird and insect as the teeming life of the tropics wakes to greet "my ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... distance came the faint hollow rattle which strikes terror to man in the wilderness. The volume of sound was suddenly augmented: there appeared to be a duet. Immediately it was supplemented by a loud furious hissing; a moment later by a whirr ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... on a tree, well toward the north; that a little gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth, curious and yet fearful; that an eagle with a faint whirr of wings had alighted on a bough, and was looking at the three; that the eagle thinking they might be dangerous had unfolded his wings again and was flying away; that a deer passing to the west had caught a whiff of them on the wind and was running with all speed in the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... any one who took note of their departure. The pellucid and comforting light of the blinded sun grew warmer; the hum of industry in the town behind rose cheerfully upon the quiet air, and as the calling of the April bluebird in the fields grew more faint, the splash of the oars and the whirr of the gray water-fowl began to be accompanied by a low distant ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... The whirr and snort of a taxi broke the thread of her thoughts. With a grinding of brakes the cab came to a standstill at the entrance to the block of flats, and after a few minutes Emily, the unhurried maid-of-all-work, whom Nan's sense of fitness had re-christened "our Adagio," jerked ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and wheels,—and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on the tops ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... A brace of partridges had sprung up at some distance, and with a wild whirr of their wings were now directing their low and rapid flight toward the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... rose high among the clouds; the busy hum of the city ceased; the din of war and warriors' roar was hushed. The music of the cricket, the whirr of the owlets, might easily have been heard, when the holy Dame and the Palmer met. The Abbess had chosen a solemn hour, to disclose a ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,—the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... they had eaten together in the little back dining-room. The son noticed that the heat had told on his father, and he blamed himself for keeping him in this dusty, deserted town, while he completed his laboratory work. The electric cars made a great whirr, just around the corner, every few moments, and the little strip of park behind the house was full of the poor people who had crawled out of their hot holes to get some breathable air in the green spots abandoned by the rich. Jarvis ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... man enters upon his first real sovereignty of nature. As we hear the whirr of the dynamo or listen at the telephone, as we turn the button of an incandescent lamp or travel in an electromobile, we are partakers in a revolution more swift and profound than has ever before been enacted upon earth. Until the nineteenth century fire was justly accounted the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... by insects alone I found my credulity taxed to its utmost limit; and it was not until I was solemnly assured by Mr Austin that such was the case that I quite believed it. It was not unlike the "whirr" of machinery, save that it rose and fell in distinct cadences, and occasionally—as if by preconcerted arrangement on the part of every individual insect in the district—stopped altogether for a few moments. Then, indeed, the silence became weird, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... of the Purcell sonnet is not so clearly worked out as I could wish. The thought is that as the seabird opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means the whirr of the motion, but also unaware gives you a whiff of knowledge about his plumage, the marking of which stamps his species, that he does not mean, so Purcell, seemingly intent only on the thought or feeling he is to express or call out, incidentally lets you remark the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... gigantic sedges the long-necked water-fowl by dozens. It arouses the killing propensity in me most dreadfully, and I really entertain serious thoughts of learning to use a gun, for the mere pleasure of destroying these pretty birds as they whirr from their secret coverts close beside my path. How strong an instinct of animal humanity this is, and how strange if one be more strange than another. Reflection rebukes it almost instantaneously, and yet for the life of me I cannot help wishing I had a fowling-piece whenever I put up a covey ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... ineffable disdain, Bainton almost threw his ladder into the tool-shed, thereby scaring a couple of doves who had found their way within, and who now flew out with a whirr of white wings that glistened like pearl in the sunlight as they spread upwards and away ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... park to the farm. It was a splendid August evening. The reaping was still in progress, and the whirr of the machine rose slumbrous through the stillness. But of the Vicarage children there ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... workshops in Albion Villa. Ned's study, as he called it, and the drawing-room. In the former shavings flew, and settled at their ease, and the whirr of the lathe slept not; the latter was all patterns, tapes, hooks and eyes, whalebone, cuttings of muslin, poplin and paper; clouds of lining-muslin, snakes of piping; skeins, shreds; and the floor literally sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... keeping sharp lookout, I reconnoitered about the place; I was so excited that I didn't stop to drink. And suddenly—whirr-rr-rr! With a tremendous noise up flew two grouse, and three more, and lit in the willows right before me. I guess I was nervous, I wanted them so bad; for I jumped back and stumbled and fell, and broke the arrow square in two with ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... scarcely above a whisper, and Juliet crouched low against the peaty wall of the butt. There was an instant's silence, and then crack, crack, shots sounded from the other end of the line. Another minute and Lord Ashiel's gun went up; she heard the whirr of approaching wings before she covered both ears with her hands to deaden the noise of the explosions she knew ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... blinked surprisingly in early windows, forth over wet, dim fields went cows from their houses: even in this hour touched the fields again the feet of the hippogriff. And the moment that the man dismounted and took off his magic halter the hippogriff flew slanting away with a whirr, going back to some airy dancing-place of ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... Whiz! whirr! Away flew the Fiddler like a bullet, and there was Ill-Luck carrying him by the belt again. Away they sped, over hill and valley, over moor and mountain, until the Fiddler's head grew so dizzy that he had ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... questioning, Von Barwig found the family he was looking for on the fourth floor of a crowded tenement house in Rivington Street. He heard the whirr of sewing machines and as he opened the door he saw the father of his pupil, and several others, all sewing rapidly as if for dear life. The six machines made such a noise he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. As soon as Branski saw Von Barwig, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... alarm. The Baroness, handling the brittle wires with her delicate little fingers, gave me the numbers as I wanted them, and carefully held the coil whilst I unrolled it. Suddenly one of them coiled itself up again with a whirr, making the Baroness utter an impatient "Oh!" Lady Adelheid enjoyed a hearty laugh, whilst I pursued the tangled coil to the corner of the room. After we had all united our efforts to extract a perfectly straight ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... was always a very silent habitation,—situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing- reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds—now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie—but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of the slowly widening dawn. An hour passed—and Alwyn still remained in the same position,—as pallidly quiescent as a corpse stretched out for burial. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Mrs. Ashton—gossiping Mrs. Graves, who knew all that took place in the parish, and a great deal of what never did take place. She had just been telling it all unreservedly in her hard way; things that might be said, and things that might as well have been left unsaid. She went out leaving a whirr and a buzz behind her and an awful sickness ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Egbert Crawford really loved the little cousin for whom he was playing so unfairly. Sword-factories had sprung up, since the breaking out of the war, along the little streams which emptied into the Mohawk, through the Oneida Valley; and some of them kept up the clink of the trip-hammers and the whirr of the emory-wheels that shaped and polished sword-blades, not far from West Falls. One day, in June, while his star seemed to be so certainly in the ascendant in the family of John Crawford, Mary and himself ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... gloomy, one-windowed bedroom with its litter of half-unpacked suitcases and an overflowing trunk, and she cried heartbrokenly because she knew she would never in this world be able to forget that terrible, winking eye and the clicking whirr of Luck's camera. Just to think of facing it gave her a "goose-flesh" chill,—and she did so want to ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... them, ready to spring into the air. We cock our guns, agree to shoot respectively at the birds which go right or left or straight before us, and then advance to flush the covey ourselves. The staunch dog never winces as we pass her: two paces, three, a sudden rush and whirr as of many wings, five sharp reports in quick succession and four birds down! Another, wild with fright, rises straight up for twenty feet and darts off behind us, but his beautiful head droops as the crack of my last barrel resounds on the air and a cloud of feathers floats downward. The shot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... fourteenth century. To find its analogue, we must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than his contemporary Taddeo di Bartolo.[156] A Gabriel, rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna, with all the whirr of arch-angelic pinions and the glory of Paradise around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello's vehemence. The same quality, more tempered, is noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephesus at Pisa.[157] Few faces in the paintings ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... The wailing cry sounded through the leafy solitude; but no answer came save the whirr of wings or the chatter of startled birds. But even more shocking than that terrible cry—more disturbing and eloquent with dreadful suggestion—was the way in which she peered, furtively, but with fearful expectation, among ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... blackbirds clamored along the river. Some crows followed the workers at a distance, hunting for grains of corn, and over in the woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs. From time to time a flock of quail arose before them with a whirr and scattered down the fields, reassembling later at the call of their leader, from a rider of the snake fence, which inclosed ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... glad, so glad, not sorry," was her dreamy response. She lapsed into silence as the somnolent drone of the motor and the whirr of the wheels caused the tired ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... so soon the ways of the city. The first time he saw one of those little wheeled houses, all windows and full of people, come rushing down the street with a fearful whirr and clank of bell, he wanted to bolt. But the man on his back spoke in an easy, calm voice, saying, "So-o-o! There, me b'y. Aisy wid ye. So-o-o!" which was excellent advice, for the queer contrivance whizzed by and did him no harm. In a week he could ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... granite rock, Else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. A murky vapour thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan. The roots upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the, wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! Aloft strange voices dost ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... have trudged to and fro about long enough, and have half a mind to throw up the contract with fate. But hold on a bit. There is something worse than too much work, and that is idleness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds of labor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men stand day after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin's head to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewing machines, above which bend delicate women stitching ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... howitzers, have a perceptible time of approach, an increasing whine, and a great burst on the percussion—dirt in all directions. And even if a shell hit on the front of the canal bank, and one were on the back of the bank, five, eight, or ten seconds later one would hear a belated WHIRR, and curved pieces of shell would light—probably parabolic curves or boomerangs. These shells have a great back kick; from the field gun shrapnel we got nothing BEHIND the shell—all the pieces go forward. From the howitzers, the danger is almost as great behind as in front if ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... light flashed dazzlingly upon walls and ceiling and gave its tenants the aspect of crimson devils. What the furnace meant or why it was built, I was soon to learn; for presently one of the men gave an order, and upon this an engine started, and a whirr of fans and the sucking of a distant pump answered to the signal. "Air," said I to myself; "they ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... a little whirr, but no answer. The person at the other end had rung off. By this time I was getting angry. In five minutes time I rang up again. The ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... clicked away in its box. As he did so he made some casual remark and then sat down again. After the 10.40 had gone through, there followed a period of silence which seemed almost oppressive. All at once the stillness was broken by the whirr of the electric bell, which sounded so sharply in our ears that we both ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... against a background of green wheat and green leaves. A little later, and the ripe harvest would pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we got the dark newly-turned land for a background again, and they were red once more. By that time, we should have ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whirr of our wheel would be lost in the breaking of the waves. Our next variety in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous medley of colours in the autumn woods, and, by the time we had ground our way round to the heathy ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... their concave faces together. They gave off a muffled clink of hollowness when he tapped them. When he shook the armor, there was something extra in the sound, and that impelled him to hold a plate close to his ear. He heard a soft, rhythmic whirr of machinery. ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... off along the stony beach to the left, halted frequently, while stray bullets passed with a low whirr overhead and out to sea; and turned finally up a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... journey to town, which at any other time would have been a rattle and whirr of delight and interest, seemed endlessly monotonous to me, full of sad thoughts at parting with all I loved; and I was glad enough when the train at length puffed and panted its way into the terminus at ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... narrow, sluggish stream, but capable, as we at Norton Bury sometimes knew to our cost, of being roused into fierceness and foam. Now it slipped on quietly enough, contenting itself with turning a flour-mill hard by, the lazy whirr of which made a sleepy, incessant monotone which I ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... to lift his hands, but was unable to do so, so he lifted his voice instead! Yerkes, in the whirr of the machine, doubtless mistook the voice for that of the boy, for he paid no attention ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... though no breath fanned your cheek, your senses easily detected the delicious odor of a distant garden of sweet roses. The sea sparkled with phosphorescence. Not a sound was heard except the panting of the hard-worked little donkey-engine and the whirr of the line as it came up taut and dripping from the ocean depths. The lamp, hanging from the mast, threw a bright glare on deck, presenting the strongest contrast with the black shadows, firm and motionless as marble. The ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... cuckoos, Pee-wits and sparrows join the piercing cries Of gorgeous herons, while now upward flies The eagle screaming, joyful spreads his wings Above the forest; and the woodchuck rings A wild tattoo upon the trees around; And humming-birds whirr o'er the flowering ground In flocks, and beat the luscious laden air With emerald and gold, and scarlet, where These perfect forms with godly grace divine, In loveliness upon the rock recline. Sweet joy is slender formed, with bright black eyes That sparkle oft and dance with ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... discovery, the little fellow was peering cautiously in, when, with a sudden bound, Kobuk dashed by him nearly knocking him over. There was a whirr of wings overhead, sounds of bird alarm, and half a dozen swallows circled wildly about the frantic Kobuk before finding a place of escape through the hole in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... unclean sheet. Those who were decoyed into these staterooms endured them with disgust while the boat was at anchor; but when the paddle-wheels began to revolve, and dismal din of clang and bang and whirr came down about their ears, and threatened to unroof the fortress of the brain, why, then they fled madly, precipitately, leaving their clothes mostly behind them. But I am anticipating. The passengers arrived and kept arriving; and we watched, leaning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... floor, And then shet up, jest like a box, so you couldn't sleep any more. Wa'al, 'Bijah he fixed it all complete, and he sot it at half-past five, But he hadn't more 'n got into it, when—dear me! sakes alive! Them wheels began to whizz and whirr! I heard a fearful snap, And there was that bedstead with 'Bijah inside shet up jest like a trap! I screamed, of course, but 'twant no use. Then I worked that hull long night A-tryin' to open the pesky thing. At last I got in a fright: I couldn't hear ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... to be reckoned nesh and soft, and Mary's schooling were to be kept up, mother said, and father he were always liking to buy books, and go to lectures o' one kind or another—all which took money—so I just worked on till I shall ne'er get the whirr out o' my ears, or the fluff out o' my throat i' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... apartment there came a peculiar click and rumble, followed by a whirr of wheels, as if someone was running out a small motor close by. At the same time, the two friends noticed the unmistakable odor of ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the afternoon sky, and crossing the western crimson with long pennons of black. And out of the murk there came from afar a blue-and-white pigeon which circled largely several times over the offices of the Signal. At length it descended, and I could hear the whirr of its strong wings. The wings ceased to beat and the pigeon slanted downwards in a curve, its head lower than its wide tail. Then the little head gradually rose and the tail fell; the curve had changed, the pace slackened; the pigeon was calculating with all ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... as holding off far enough to spoil no moment of that perfect day. They were conscious of the waving grains and of the perfume of the buckwheat drifting like snow in the fields beyond the wheat; conscious of the meadow-lark and the wood-robin's note; of the whirr of a locust; and the thud of a frog in the cool green of a pool deep with brown shadows; conscious of the circling of mated butterflies in the simmering gold air; of the wild roses lifting fair pink petals from the brambly banks beside the road; ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... his car out among the tall weeds close to the line of scrub willows edging the creek; extinguished his lights, including the tail-lamp; left his engine running; stood listening a moment to the whispering whirr of his motor; then, taking the flash light from his pocket, he climbed over the roadside wall and ran back across the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... all was made clear, for the line of Indians advanced obliquely towards the long grass till the leading man came almost in touch a couple of hundred yards in advance, when all at once there was the wild whirr of wings, and about a couple of dozen great birds sprang into ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... have passed away forever. The whirr of the spinning-wheel, or shout of the hunter, no longer sound along the banks of the St. Lawrence. No canoe of the painted warrior now glides silently by the shore; for Montreal with its three thousand inhabitants when Vaudreuil beat his retreat, to its present population of 300,000, has thrown ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... before, but with the swift-cutting flight of a falcon pouncing down upon its prey. It seemed descending not in a straight line, but in an acute parabolic curve, like a thunderbolt or some aerolite projected toward the surface of the sea. But the bird, with a whirr like the sound of running spindles, was going in a definite direction, the point evidently aimed at being the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... The old stormy rivers of my grief are dead Now at the spring; not one tear left unshed. Mine eyes are sick with vigil, endlessly Weeping the beacon-piles that watched for thee For ever answerless. And did I dream, A gnat's thin whirr would start me, like a scream Of battle, and show me thee by terrors swept, Crowding, too many for ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... waiting till the story was done, the dragon-fly flew off with a whirr, and darted to and fro, hunting for its breakfast, glittering splendidly as it flashed among the leaves or darted close above the water. Daisy forgot her disappointment in a minute, and went fishing for ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and comforted the people, saying, "The Lord hath given us a sign, and He will feed us, as He fed the people of Israel in the wilderness; for He has sent us a fine flight of fieldfares across the barren sea, so that they whirr out of every bush as ye come near it. Who will now run down into the village, and cut off the mane and tail of my dead cow which lies out behind on the common?" (for there was no horsehair in all the village, seeing that the enemy had ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... fire—the nimble little bandicoot scuttled away towards his hollow log, looking so uncommonly like a well-fattened rat, that I mentally wonder how I could ever have had the courage to eat one, and a flight of rainbow-hued Blue Mountain parrots, who have held their ground to the last, whirr up with a prodigious flapping of wings, and, alighting on a gum-tree, can be seen hanging about the blossoms, head downwards, sucking out the honey with their uncouth beaks and awkward little tongues, which seem but badly adapted to such a delicate task. But I find I am digressing ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... given him that summer. He did not really care about the rod—he was not even thinking of it. He heard all the sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs, there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch which she had put out on the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... straight on over my head; so of course there was nothing in sight when I turned. As an owl's flight is perfectly noiseless (the wing feathers are wonderfully soft, and all the laminae are drawn out into hair points, so that the wings never whirr nor rustle like other birds') I had heard nothing, though he passed close enough to strike, and I was listening intently. And so another mystery of the woods was made plain by ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... strange whirr and a clicking in the apartment beyond, as if some machinery was in motion. But then came a loud voice and the other sounds stopped. By getting down on his hands and knees Adam Adams was enabled to hear nearly all that was said in the place beyond ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... of the day which he had selected the club-house was empty, and he had just resigned himself to a solitary game, when, with a whirr and a rattle, a grey racing-car drove up, and from it emerged the same long young man whom, a couple of days earlier, he had seen wriggle out from underneath the same machine. It was Reggie Byng's habit also not to ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his taste for mice, but in his quiet ways. His broad wings are fringed with the softest down, so that they move with as little sound as a feather fan. The owl is a large bird, but his wings never make the sharp whirr of ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... not the contralto note Of cuckoos hid on either hand, The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat When eve's brown ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... The whirr of the motor announced its coming from afar off; but, so swiftly did it travel, that it was upon them a moment later. As it swung around and on to the drive of The Cedars ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer |
