"Whistling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was sound asleep at the bottom of his pocket, with the result that the only one who caught the words of warning was—the squirrel. For a squirrel's ears are so sharp that it can even hear the grub whistling to itself inside a rotten nut; ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... rose that nearly blew our torches out. Caught in the labyrinth of bushes and rocks, the wind angrily shook the branches of the blossoming syringas, then, shaking itself free, it turned back along the glen and flew down the valley, howling, whistling and shrieking, as if all the fiends of the forest together were ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... saw smoke arise above the tops of the invaded forest-trees. Then he heard the growing clangor of a locomotive's bell, then other whistling and the approaching rumble of steel wheels upon steel rails, the groan of brake shoes gripping, the rattle of contracted couplings, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... and whistling came again, but he did not see any explosion near the chateau. One could not tell much from such a swift and passing sound, but he concluded that it was a German shell replying. He had seen a German battery near the house and it would not ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for a measurable time, so that they could hear far off a flower-girl's laugh outside Charing Cross, and someone whistling furiously for a taxicab in one of the streets off the Strand. Then the Captain, with a movement so sudden that it might have been passion or play-acting, took Sir Wilson Seymour by ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of my brother officers using the glass, exclaimed, "There he is on his white horse." I should not forget to state that when the enemy's artillery began to play on us, we had orders to lie down, when we could hear the shot and shell whistling around us, killing and wounding great numbers; then again we were ordered on our knees to receive cavalry. The French artillery—which consisted of three hundred guns, though we did not muster more than half that number—committed terrible havoc during the early part ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... either bank, save the Baron of Brimside and Christopher. And the Baron laid him down on the ground and fell to whistling the tune of a merry Yule dance; but as for Christopher, he looked on his foeman, and deemed he had seldom seen so big and stalwarth a man; and withal he was of ripe age, and had seen some forty winters. Then he also cast himself ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... child could throw its ball. He could fling a stone from one bank of the Rhone to the other where it was two hundred yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments are added an equal skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... While her machinery stands, she moves steadily forward in her course; and so far as any idea of danger is concerned, the passengers in their cabins and state rooms below pay no more regard to the storm than a farmer's family do to the whistling and howling of the wind among the chimneys of their house, in ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... perfection. The girls forgot all about Peggy's "call down," as a summons to Mrs. Vincent's study was banned, and had a rapture over Polly's whistling and Peggy's singing, nor were they satisfied until a dozen airs had been given in the girl's very best style. Then came the story of the concerts at home, and Polly's whistling at the Masquerader's Show when Wharton Van Nostrand fell ill, and a dozen other vivid little glimpses of the ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... his way to a consultation, but he ordered his relative to go and pay his respects to Mistress Fawcett, and rode on whistling. The two he had recklessly left to their own devices exchanged platitudes, and covertly examined ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... cockpit beneath the awning must be prepared as a dressing-room for Cynthia; next Euergetes summoned on deck to valet me with the simple bucket. And when I am dressed and tingling from the douche, and sit me down on the cabin top, barefooted and whistling, to clean the boots, and Euergetes has been sent ashore for milk and eggs, bread and clotted cream, there follows a peaceful half-hour until Cynthia flings back a corner of the awning and, emerging, confirms the dawn. Then begins the business, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into the street. It sounded as if some one had emptied a hodful of coal onto the house-roof from the height of the clouds. Another silence followed. Suddenly it was broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... variety of birds' nests. The old birds, following their young, established themselves in this new colony. Virginia, at stated times, distributed amongst them grains of rice, millet, and maize. As soon as she appeared, the whistling blackbird, the amadavid bird, the note of which is so soft: the cardinal, the black frigate bird, with its plumage the colour of flame, forsook their bushes; the paroquet, green as an emerald, descended from the neighbouring fan palms; the partridge ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... "Let me see. Now that you mention it, I remember seeing two puddin'-thieves at nine-thirty this morning. But they weren't stealing puddin's. They were engaged stealing a bag out of my stable. I was busy at the time whistling to the carrots, or ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... scatter many a flower and bud From branches that o'erhang the flood. There flows the stream like lucid pearl, Round islets here the currents whirl, And perfect saints from middle air Are flocking to the waters there. See, there lie flowers in many a heap From boughs the whistling breezes sweep, And others wafted by the gale Down the swift current dance and sail. Now see that pair of wild-fowl rise, Exulting with their joyful cries: Hark, darling, wafted from afar How soft their pleasant voices are. To gaze on Chitrakuta's hill, To look upon this ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... cried the previous speaker, firing a pistol, the bullet whistling near Larry's ear, but striking in the wall behind him. Before he could draw another, Larry and the lieutenant threw themselves upon him, and in spite of his struggles dragged him downstairs. His shouts aroused several ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... The New Year of 1894 dawned with the thermometer 36 degrees below zero. By February the Fram had drifted to the 80th degree of latitude. "High festival in honour of the 80th degree," writes Nansen. "Hurrah! Well sailed! The wind is whistling among the hummocks, the snow flies rustling through the air, ice and sky are melted into one, but we are going north at full speed, and are in the wildest of gay spirits. If we go on at this rate we shall be at ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Indeed, he was sure he could. So the next afternoon he set out for the hills, whistling merrily as he tramped along with the hares hopping ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... days, though the people continued sickly, death had not visited us, and the spirits of the crew and passengers rose accordingly. The great desire was to get a breeze. Sailors have a trick of whistling when they want wind—trick it is, because very few really believe that their whistling will bring a wind. It was amusing to see everybody whistling; the boys forward took it up—the passengers aft; the gruff old boatswain was whistling more furiously than anybody, but I saw him cock his ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... went down the street, whistling blithely, he kept his hand in his pocket on the half-dollar. He had had much more money with him a little while before, but that was to pay to some one else. This half-dollar was wholly his own money, and, with the prospect it carried of earning ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... to offer him money; but he, who had stolen millions, refused to accept money from a man without a shadow. He put on his hat, and left the room whistling. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... see a durn thing that's the matter with it!" shouted he, trying to make himself heard above the whistling ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... France the Germans came to St. Eloi, where they remained very long. Then they advanced to Ypres. The whole winter I heard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells. I learned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awful war. I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leave for ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... carrying in my mouth the coins I had stolen from my former blind master. But one night, when I was fast asleep, it was decreed by an evil destiny that the key should be placed in such a position in my mouth that my breath caused a loud whistling noise. My master concluded that this must be the hissing of the snake; he arose and stole with a club in his hand towards the place whence the sound proceeded; then, lifting the club, he discharged with all his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... not a little embarrassed. For a moment he seemed about to try to soothe her; but be checked this impulse, and looked away, whistling softly to himself. After a few moments he went on, speaking in ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Nothing could force a movement from him. Neither his blood, which did not cease to flow, nor the blows which redoubled in fury, nor the wrath of the torturer, who grew excited himself and intoxicated with the execution, nor the sound of the horrible thongs, more sharp and whistling than the claws ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... waited for the superintendent from Scotland Yard. Nigel at first stood still for some moments. From outside came the cheerful but muffled roar of the London streets, the hooting of motor horns, the rumbling of wheels, the measured footfall of the passing multitude. A boy went by, whistling; another passed, calling hoarsely the news from the afternoon papers. A muffin man rang his bell, a small boy clattered his stick against the area bailing. The whole world marched on, unmoved and unnoticing. In this sombre apartment alone tragedy reigned in sinister silence. On the sofa, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... common comforts his situation imperiously demanded. The white-washed sides of the narrow fire-place were encrusted with a green damp, and the chimney-vent was stuffed with straw and fragments of old carpet, to prevent the cold wind from whistling through the aperture. The common expression, 'He has seen better days,' never so forcibly occurred to me as at that moment. He had seen better days: he had toiled cheerfully through the day, and sat ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... this latter occupation included in the "first aid" program, as I have recommended it for many years. When a man whittles, he whistles, maybe not just at first, but some day, almost before he realizes it, he finds himself whistling, and he is then well on the road toward a sane acceptance of the new conditions. I have found whittling to be as soothing to masculine nerves as knitting or crocheting to feminine ones. The ability to use the hands in some light work, removes the feeling of ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... A whistling, shrieking ululation rent the air and the officer's coils tightened as he reared a few feet of his length upright, shooting out half a dozen tentacular arms to various switches and controls upon his board, while throughout the great heptagon, hundreds of other Vorkuls sprang ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... besiegers' ranks were constantly swelled by way of the breach, yet in that confined space their very numbers hampered them, while from sheltered wall and gate-tower Giles and his archers showered them with whistling shafts very fast and furious; so in that narrow place death was rife and in the fitful torch-glare was a sea of tossing steel and faces fierce and wild, and ever the clamour grew, shouts and screams and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... at the camp, after a long struggle, he succeeded in sending back an Army Service waggon to bring in the stragglers, but just as the waggon was about to leave, he heard coming up the road, a party stepping out briskly to the music of their own whistling. In the rear of the party marched the chaplain, laden down with one man's ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... as in front of it a long, long line of low-stacked sinuous trucks slipped along in the rear of the engine, all was open view before us; and all day long, as the engine trudged onwards—hands in pockets, so to speak, and whistling merrily as it trudged—I stood beside the Maluka on the little platform in front of the passengers' car, drinking in my first deep, intoxicating draught of the glories of the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... shore. At length Uncle Eb clambered up, pulling us up after him, one by one. Then he whistled to Old Doctor, who whinnied a quick reply. He left us standing together, the blanket over our heads, and went away in the dark whistling as he had done before. We could hear Old Doctor answer as he came near, and presently Uncle Eb returned leading the horse by the halter. Then he put us both on Old Doctor's back, threw the blanket ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... us the world wags on pretty much the same, but when a man has been planting violets on his mother's grave he does not feel like whistling and making merry. Besides, to tell the truth,—which I do not like to shirk,—I am getting very tired of this dismal, unlucky place. If I had known as much before I bought it as I do now, all the locomotives in America could not have dragged me here. I was a stranger, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... not stop till I had mounted the piazza. Further suspense was unendurable. My approach had been unnoted, nor had I seen any of the family. Noiselessly as possible I opened the door and stood within the hallway. I heard Mrs. Yocomb's voice in the kitchen. Reuben was whistling upstairs, and Zillah singing her doll to sleep in the dining-room. I took these sounds to be good omens. If she had not come there would not have been ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... withdrew and Quest made a brisk toilet. The nameless fears of the previous night had altogether disappeared. To his saner morning imagination, the atmosphere seemed somehow to have become cleared of that cloud of mysterious depression. He was whistling to himself from sheer light-heartedness as he turned to leave the room. Then the shock came. At the last moment he stretched out his hand to take a handkerchief from his satchel. A sudden exclamation broke from his lips. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... freezing and his teeth were chattering, and the chambermaid coming to the cupboard on pretence of getting some linen, said to him, "Your hour of bliss approaches. Madame to-night has made grand preparations and you will be well served. But work without whistling, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... great hall was vibrating from the machines and black shadows filled the air. He reassured her with a smile, swearing that there was nothing to fear, only she should be careful not to let her skirts get caught in any of the gears. He went first and she followed into the deafening hubbub of whistling, amid clouds of steam peopled by ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... his hat and tried to walk jauntily to the fire, whistling a bit of a tune. The effort was a sad failure. "Here's where I get off. I'm in sure bad luck. Somebody must have put a copper on me when I was born. I 'low I gotter ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... master tailor in a country town employed a number of workmen. They had been to see some tragic melodrama performed by some players in a booth at the fair. A very slow, doleful, but catching air was played, which so laid hold of the tailors' fancy that for some time after they were found slowly whistling or humming the doleful ditty, the movement of their needles keeping time to it; the result was that the clothing that should have been sent home on Saturday was not finished until the Wednesday following. The music had done it! The master tailor, being something of a philosopher, ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... announced that they were At Liberty, or specified the kinds of roles they were accustomed to fill, as Leads or Heavies, Dancing Soubrettes and Boys; Leads, Emotional and Juvenile; Heavy or Juvenile or Emotional Leads. There were gentlemen seeking engagements who were Artistic Whistling Soloists, Magicians, Leading Men, Leading Heavies, Singing and Dancing Comedians, and there were both ladies and gentlemen who were now Starring in this play or that, but were open to offers later. A teacher of stage dancing promised instruction in skirt and serpentine dancing, as well ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the air around the lurching vehicle: flitting and darting things. Insects came in twin cones, siphoned toward the headlights. There was an endless chittering whistling tok-tok-toking in the ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... now, rising to a whining scream as another squad of dark ships roared overhead, moving East and South, jets whistling in the night. "This is what your ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... cranes, belated wild geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the neighboring waters their home for the rest of the winter. Great flocks of ducks are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... bow; Against the whirl of leaves and dust Kine dropp'd their heads; the tortured gust Jagg'd and convuls'd the ascending smoke To mockery of the lightning's stroke. The blood prick'd, and a blinding flash And close coinstantaneous crash Humbled the soul, and the rain all round Resilient dimm'd the whistling ground, Nor flagg'd in force from first to last, Till, sudden as it came, 'twas past, Leaving a trouble in the copse Of brawling birds and tinkling drops. Change beyond hope! Far thunder faint Mutter'd its vast and vain complaint, And gaps and ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... outlaw gave him a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, merrily whistling ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, but she, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... proved that the colour of a luminous body, like the pitch or note of a sounding body, must be changed by velocity of approach or recession. Everyone has noticed on a railway that, on meeting a locomotive whistling, the note is lowered after the engine has passed. The pitch of a sound or the colour of a light depends on the number of waves striking the ear or eye in a second. This number is increased by approach and lowered ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... flying away, they were too glad to come up and take the food from my hand. Whenever also I fed them, I whistled just a faint whistle, like this. And so, at last, as soon as they heard my whistle, they knew that I was going to give them some food, and I kept on whistling all the time they were feeding in the same gentle tone. It took me, I suppose, three or four months before I could trust those birds out; and now, if I did not continue to feed them, and whistle all the time, they would soon ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... such a position. 'The noise and the clamour,' says one spectator, 'were awful. The yells of the Dutch, the screams and shrieks of dying men and horses, the cries of natives, howls of dogs, the firing, the galloping of horses, the whistling of bullets, and the whirr volleys make in the air, made up such a compound of awful and diabolical sounds as I never heard before nor hope to hear again. In the confusion some of the men killed each other ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the men were going to their work, and were hurrying quickly past her. Rosalie did not like to stop any of them to ask them the way, they seemed too busy to have time to speak to her. She ventured timidly to put the question to a boy of fifteen, who was sauntering along, whistling, with his hands in his pockets; but he only laughed, and asked her why she wanted to know. So Rosalie walked on, very much afraid that after all she might be walking in the wrong direction. She next asked some children on a doorstep; but ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... and Sipiagin took leave of him in the French fashion, quickly lifting his hand several times to his lips and nose, and walked away, whistling and waving his cane energetically, not at all like an important official and state dignitary, but like a jolly Russian ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... feeling greatly relieved that he had reported the finding of the box and walked slowly along whistling merrily. As he turned off the street upon which Don Esteban lived he heard soft footsteps behind ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... our flask, then," said the old glover; "for I reckon the Dominican tower is tolling midnight. And hark thee, son Henry; be at the lattice window on our east gable by the very peep of dawn, and make me aware thou art come by whistling the smith's call gently. I will contrive that Catharine shall look out at the window, and thus thou wilt have all the privileges of being a gallant Valentine through the rest of the year; which, if thou canst not use to thine own advantage, I shall be led to think that, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... tree, he began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and ceased whistling but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan—his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... had Milt claimed relation to a group regarding which his only knowledge was the information derived from the red school-history to the effect that they all carried blunderbusses, put people in the stocks for whistling, and frequently said, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" But he had made his boast with a clear eye and a pleasant, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... to go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one general channel, that ran with great violence on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.' Johnson's Works, ix. 155. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... to national musical color other than their own, had a great deal to do with it in this case. Whatever the cause, the popular attitude toward the opera was displayed in the manner peculiar to Italy, the discontented majority whistling, shrilling on house keys, grunting, roaring, bellowing, and laughing in the good old-fashioned manner which might be set down as possessed of some virtuous merit if reserved ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... forbore to press the matter any further at the moment. The "yes" had been uttered more in pleasantry than with any other feeling, but, by holding it in reserve, presuming on it gradually, and using it in a crisis, it might be worth—"let me see," calculated Tom, as he went whistling down Broadway, "that 'yes' may be made to yield at least a cool $100,000. There are John, this girl, and two little ones. Old Monson is worth every dollar of $700,000—none of your skyrockets, but a known, old fortune, in substantial houses and lands—let ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... would suit terrestrial lungs, or what its pressure to the square inch might be, they cautiously opened a port-hole a crack, retaining their hold upon it with its screw. Instantly there was a rush and a whistling sound as of escaping steam, while in a few moments their barometer stood at thirty-six inches, whereupon they closed the opening. "I fancy," said Dr. Cortlandt, "we had better wait now till we become accustomed ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... in low tones at the gate, then said good-night, K. D. B. entering the house, the captain bowing with great deference, his hat in his hand. Then he turned about, glanced once or twice at the house, set his hat at an angle, and disappeared across the square, whistling a tune, his ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... on deck again he noted that the "Bertha Millner" had already left the whistling-buoy astern. Off to the east, her sails just showing above the waves, was a pilot-boat with the number 7 on her mainsail. The evening was closing in; the Farallones were in plain sight dead ahead. Far behind, in a mass of shadow just bluer ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of half-starvation; I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of men, and that too in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of the farthing that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or paper! That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me! I was ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... a very dismal one to the major. He petted his garden as usual, and whistled softly to himself, as was his constant habit, but he insanely pinched the buds off the flowering plants, and his whistling—sometimes plaintive, sometimes hopeless, sometimes wrathful, sometimes vindictive in expression—was restricted to the execution of dead-marches alone. He jeopardized his queen so often at chess that Parson Fisher deemed it only honorable to call the major's attention ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... had set fire to a house near the bank. Another night, eight boats ran by, throwing a shower of shot, and two burning houses made the river clear as day. One of the batteries has a remarkable gun they call "Whistling Dick," because of the screeching, whistling sound it gives, and certainly it does sound like a tortured thing. Added to all this is the indescribable Confederate yell, which is a soul-harrowing sound to hear. I have gained respect ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... cold, and the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted out for the laundress; but, for my own uncommercial part, I cannot pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet, faint temper, something like the smell of damaged oranges, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... flame. Williams came and looked in at him once, and then went back to the stool which he occupied just outside the elevator-shaft when not running it. He whistled softly between his teeth, with intervals of respectful silence, and then went on whistling in absence of any whom it ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Again that same shrill whistling scream of dreadful agony and fear, that had caused them to rein up their horses so suddenly a moment before, came from the valley beyond the brow of the little hill up which they had been slowly riding, and chilled the very marrow ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... order, came one loud, flaming, whistling discharge from that living barrier. Harry's horse—Elizabeth Philipse's Cato—reared, as did others of his troop. Some of the men came to a quick stop, others were borne forward by the impetus of their former speed, but soon reined in for orders. No man fell, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the unharnessing, and preparation of their supper, they collected into bunches, and sitting on their haunches, growled and snapped at one another, each fearful that his neighbor should gain an advantage, and all the time emitted dismal, whistling whines of impatience. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... who had been like hounds held back by the leash, were only too glad to get their orders; and in an instant there was quite a blaze of fire from both sides of the boat, the bullets cutting and whistling through the thick trees and undergrowth; and the movement on the banks, with the cracking and rustling of the bushes and tufts of bamboo, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... sweeter tones trilling," explained Malcolm. Mr. Dovesky laughed, saying in a question of music that would constitute quite a difference. They went to the brook and lunched and made easy records of syllabic calls that could be rendered in words and by whistling. Then all of them gathered around Mr. Dovesky while he drew lines, crossed them with bands and explained the staff, and different time, and signatures, and together they had ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... agreed to this and in a few minutes they were all three sitting gravely on the big settee by the fire, a flatiron in each boy's lap, each with a hammer and the basket of nuts in reach, and all dolefully whistling—with as much discord as possible. The whistling did certainly try the girls' nerves; but the boys were not to be trusted under any ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... Only one letter for the villa this morning." He handed her the solitary missive which the mail had brought and departed, whistling cheerfully, on his way ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... well-fed, carefully groomed, beautiful little dog. Ailie, still so excited that she forgot to be shy, put Bobby through his pretty tricks. He rolled over and over, he jumped, he danced to Tammy's whistling of "Bonnie Dundee," he walked on his hind legs and louped at a bonnet, he begged, he lifted his short shagged paw and shook hands. Then he sniffed at the heap of coins, looked up inquiringly at Mr. Traill, and, concluding that here was some property to be guarded, stood by the ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... was beginning to be decidedly uneasy, and was about to go upstairs, when Mr. Merrill came down the rotunda whistling, with his hands in his pockets. He stopped whistling when he spied the storekeeper, and approached him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to that," answered Christie, "I judge that I owe it to your own; but impute it to whom ye list, I owe a life among ye, and there is an end." And whistling as he went, he left the apartment, seeming as if he held the life which he had forfeited not worthy ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... judge would have advanced slowly and quietly, and the deer might never have known he was coming till a rifle bullet hit him; but this man's errand must have been a different one, for he came striding noisily through the trees and bushes and over the dead leaves, whistling "I Want Yer, Ma Honey," at the top of his whistle. If you are obliged to be out in the woods during the hunting season, and don't care to kill anything, it is always best to make as much noise as you can. There is less danger that some other fool will take you for a deer and shoot ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... present at the commencement. The Rebels advanced in the most daring manner, and in pretty good order, having placed their Musketeers in the front who kept up a brisk fire. I continued behind the Infantry for about fifteen minutes, during which time the balls were whistling on every side. I was so ignorant as to enquire what occasioned the whistling noise, and being informed it proceeded from the balls, I began to think of providing for my safety, as my presence there was useless, having at this time no Arms. I then ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... those fish, I rolled a smoke, carelessly whistling the while a strain from an opera I had once heard. For some reason or other that strain had been in my head all day. I had gotten up in the morning with it; I had whistled it during the fight with the head wind. The Kid called it "that Dago tune." ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... support easily the enormous load of his evils and of his faults. His mind was born anew every day. He had, more than any other person, a capacity for diversion. The first day that he saw the sun rise on his funereal rock at Saint Helena, he jumped from his bed, whistling a romantic air. It was the peace of a mind superior to fortune; it was the frivolity of a mind prompt in resurrection. He ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... But Dolly pinched up her lips; she wasn't going to give in, and smiling would have been a sort of beginning of giving in, you see. And Max, to save himself from any weakness of the kind, started whistling, which nurse promptly put a stop to, telling him that whistling at table was not ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... Four times a year he inspected the troops, and just as many times in the year were the troops obliged to devote themselves to rigorous display. The rest of the time was spent in social intrigue and whistling for the war-clouds that ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... from Major Parr, who came to tell me so after you had left. Remember, too, that you and your Mohican are most necessary to General Sullivan. Interpreters trained by Guy Johnson are anything but plenty; and another Mohican who knows the truest route to Catharines-town is not to be had for whistling." ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... only on Jehovah's land. But ever as the day of fuller understanding dawned, the sovereignty of Jehovah widened and his power usurped the place and function of all other gods. Amos saw him using the nations as his pawns; Isaiah heard him whistling to the nations as a shepherd to his dogs; Jeremiah heard him cry, "Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? . . . Do not I fill heaven and earth?" [13]; until at last we sweep out, through ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... knew where he had put up his horse, and knew he could hardly take any other way than the foot-path to Testbridge. He could not be more than a few yards ahead of her, she thought. Presently she heard him whistling, she was sure, as he walked leisurely along, but she could not see him. The way was mostly between hedges until it reached the common: there she would catch sight of him, for, notwithstanding the gauzy mist, the moon gave plenty of light. On she went swiftly, still fancying at intervals ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... questions, my friend," he returned, "I have considered already again and again. They have passed before me in the storm of battle, when the earth was shaking with the thunder of the cannon, with the balls singing and whistling around me, with my comrades falling right and left, my horse shot under me, my hat pierced with bullets. They have floated before me by the still watch-fire under the starry vault of the sky. I have thought them all through, felt them all through. I have weighed them, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it struggled on Till the battle front was won, Then the car, its journey done, Lo! was stationary; And where bullets whistling fly, Came the sadder, fainter cry, "Help us, brothers, ere we ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... face at him and the boy, whistling derisively, disappeared through the door, not failing to ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... graves; and in the silent vault, Where lies your own pale shroud, to hover o'er it, Striving to enter your forbidden corps, And often, often, vainly breathe your ghost Into your lifeless lips; Then, like a lone benighted traveller, Shut out from lodging, shall your groans be answered By whistling winds, whose every blast will shake Your tender ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... sure,' said Solomon,—'that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and howling of the gale through ropes ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... behind him. He noiselessly drew the spring-bolt, opened the door, and looked out into the hall. He heard a peculiar sound. It was as though a gigantic lobster was floundering and scrambling in some distant part of the old house. Accompanying this sound was a loud, whistling breathing, and frequent ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Then the whistling and thumping went on more vigorously than before, and Rose, recognizing the voices, peeped through the half-open door to behold a sight which made her shake with suppressed laughter. Steve, with a red tablecloth tied around his waist, languished upon ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Whistling softly, the man with the yellow envelope ambled nonchalantly into the cage; fixed the operator with a truculent stare, and demanded ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the birds, and to blow on pipes from the whistling of the zephyr through the reeds; and those simple tunes gave as much rustic jollity as our more elaborate ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the moods of spring, but the days that are her true children have only one mood; they are all full of the rising and dropping of winds, and the whistling of birds. New flowers may come out, the green embroidery of the hedges increase, but the same heaven broods overhead, soft, thick, and blue, the same figures, seen and unseen, are wandering by coppice and meadow. The morning that Margaret had spent with Miss Avery, and the ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... fisherman's rough clothes, and had even sacrificed his long dark hair, covering his head with one of Harry's red woollen caps. He was altogether so different in appearance from what he had been yesterday, that he ventured forward, and leant whistling against the side of the boat, while Harry parleyed with the soldiers. Perhaps they suspected Harry a little, for they insisted on searching his hut, and as they were coming out, one of them began to tell ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about! I wanted to shout and sing. I played idiotic tricks, walking backwards and forwards, like one of Shackleton's penguins. Then I went back to the glass again, actually whistling a tune! Except for the black patch over my eye, I appeared very much the same as I used to do before the war. My shoulder is practically straight now. I am a little thinner, and perhaps my face bears traces of suffering, but in general ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... of trust!—How very bright Faith's fire-lit room looked, with the wind whistling all about, and the red light on her open Bible. She turned on. And like the full burst of a chorus after that solo, she seemed to hear the whole ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the snowy lairs and caverns of the Atlas, there came creeping and crawling to the coast the most abject of the human race—black, naked, withered beings, their bodies covered with red paint, their hair cut in strange fashions, their language composed of muttering and whistling sounds. By day they prowled around the camp, and fought with the dogs for the offal and the bones. If they found a skin, they roasted it on ashes, and danced around it in glee, wriggling their bodies and uttering abominable cries. When the feast was ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the show had been confided, with language and a plot, both pregnant with more than Platonic morality. Some idea of the magnificence of these displays, which beggared the royal privy-purse, drove household-treasurers mad, and often left poet and machinist whistling for pay, may be gathered from the fact that a masque sometimes cost as much as two thousand pounds in the mechanical getting-up, a sum far more formidable in the days of exclusively hard money than in these of paper currency. Scott has described, for the benefit of the general ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... disposition of his nature, but also the power and influence which beauty is destined to exercise over him. The love of solitude and meditation is already traceable in the child. He loves to wander at night among the dark and solitary cloisters of his Abbey; he loves to listen to the whistling of the wind re-echoed by the cloisters; he delights in the murmurs of the waters of his lake when the winter storms disturb their serenity, and uproot the strongest oaks of his park. Proud of his race, his whole nature sympathizes with the glorious deeds of his ancestors, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the glass so that he could sweep the edge of the plain; but the time went on, and the mounted party might, after all, have been a cloud-shadow for all the sign that he could see, and at last he began to grow weary and think of whistling to Ned ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... scurrilous abuse; for we see the latter often slip from a man unwittingly in passion, but consider the former as a thing voluntary, proceeding from malice and ill-nature; and therefore we are generally more offended at a sharp jeerer than a whistling snarler. Such a jest has indeed something designedly malicious about it, and often seems to be an insult skilfully devised and prepared. For instance, he that calls thee salt-fish monger plainly and openly abuseth; but he that says, I remember when you wiped your nose upon your sleeve, maliciously ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and then I'll fix the motor and transmission," he decided. "The front wheel I can buy in town, as this one would hardly pay for repairing." Tom was soon busy with wrenches, hammers, pliers and screw-driver. He was in his element, and was whistling over his task. The motor he found in good condition, but it was not such an easy task as he had hoped to change the transmission. He had finally to appeal to his father, in order to get the right proportion between ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... towards the extremity. The male, for instance, of Selasphorus platycercus, when adult, has the first primary wing-feather (Fig. 44), thus excised. Whilst flying from flower to flower he makes "a shrill, almost whistling noise" (56. Gould, 'Introduction to the Trochilidae,' 1861, p. 49. Salvin, 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1867, p. 160.); but it did not appear to Mr. Salvin that ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his banjo. He, too, liked the new summer "hit;" in fact, every one was whistling it as well as they could, but it took tuned strings to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer's spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beached margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... cries as vividly as if I had heard them again this morning. While feeding, or quietly enjoying the morning sun, the gray gibbon (Hylobates concolor) emits in leisurely succession a low staccato, whistle-like cry, like "Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!" which one can easily counterfeit by whistling. This is varied by another whistle cry of three notes, thus: "Who-ee-hoo! Who-ee-hoo!" also to be duplicated by whistling. In hunting for specimens of that gibbon, for American museums, I could rarely locate a troop save by the tree- top talk ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... was a little girl like you I used to enjoy whistling about the place so much that father called me his little flute. I can still see the shocked expression of my aunt who visited us, when she heard me running about whistling like a boy. She was a grand dame of society in New York, and her girls were doing embroidery and being taught ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... which led from his quarters to the oak hall, whistling sotto voce a bar or two of the Schumann as he went; then his manner became sombre as he crossed the polished boards and entered the passage beyond which led ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... of eight sat astride upon a farmyard gate, whistling and beating time with a hazel-switch. He had fastened his belt round the gate-post and was using it as a bridle, his bare knees gripped the wooden bar under him, and his little brass-tipped heels flashed in the sun ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... birds, fish, and so on. Some have finger-holes, enabling the pitch to be altered and give different tones, others have a little ball of clay set loosely in a hollow place, so that when the air is set in motion a shrill whistling ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... watch another Upper game. This time "the Bull" was more or less quiet. Lovelace was at the top of his form, and Meredith twice cut through brilliantly and scored between the posts. Then life seemed to Buller very good. After the game he rolled up to his house perfectly satisfied, whistling to himself. It was not until the Saturday that Gordon actually played in a game. He was originally performing on the Pick-Up; but after a few minutes he was fetched to fill a gap in a House game. He was shoved into the scrum, was perfectly useless, and spent his whole time ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... my nieve did shake. Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, When wi' an eldritch, stoor quaick—quaick— Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter'd, like a drake, On whistling wings. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... I knew that her prophecy was right again, for the rain was blowing in my face and slashing on the upper window. The wind, too, was whistling along the roofs, with a try at chimney-pots and spouts. It was the wolf in the fairy story who said he'd huff and he'd puff, and he'd blow in the house where the little pig lived; yet tonight his humor was less savage. Down below I heard ash-cans toppling ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Otto. 'Ahasuerus reaches you the sceptre; more, he will obey you in all points. I should have been a dog to come to whistling.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as you do, I suppose," replied Tarlton, turning away abruptly, and whistling as he ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... words, my friend, there was music of a million armies of all sorts of birds, whistling and whirring over the green earth; and the echoes of their tremendous singing shook all the trillions of tiny new leaves and made the waves of air to dance—how shall I say?—like the waves of a sea ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... out of the night. "You're doing fine, Kid; keep her a-going," he commended, in an undertone as he passed, and Thurston moistened his unaccustomed lips and began industriously whistling "The Heart Bowed Down," and from that jumped to Faust. Fifteen minutes exhausted his memory of the whistleable parts, and he was not given to tiresome repetitions. He stopped for a moment, and Bob's voice chanted ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... (it was early in October, 1773) I was alone in my quarters, listening to the whistling of the autumn wind and watching the clouds passing rapidly over the moon. A message came from the Commandant that he wished to see me at once at his house. I found there Chvabrine, Iwan Ignatiitch, and the "ouriadnik" of the Cossacks. Neither ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... they may not be troubled with their barking: For Voice differs as much from a Simple Breath, as doth that hoarse Sound, which we excite, by rubbing the tops of our Fingers hard upon some Glass or Table, which is quite differing from that same soft whistling Sound, which is heard when we lightly rub with the Hand ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... hill on Cliff Street that night I turned by the bushes and caught the gleam of Marjie's light. I gave the whistling call we had kept for our signal these years, and I saw the light waver as a ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... earth is full of music! Thou dost swing Thy fragrant censer high, and dwellers in The dusty city raise their toil-worn heads From desk and bench, and cry "Summer is here!" And straight they smell new hay and clover blooms; And see the trout swift-darting in the brooks: And hear the plover whistling in the fields. And little children dream of daisy chains; And pent-up youth thinks of a holiday; A holiday with romps, and cream, and flowers. O, Rain! O, soft, sweet Rain! O liberal Rain! Touch our hard hearts, that we may more become Like that ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... stared. Surely the heavy breath had come more quickly a moment ago. It seemed an age between each rise and fall of the coverlet. There was a ghastly whistling sound ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... doors burst open and the Spanish soldiers began to stream through them. Suddenly Foy's nerve returned to him and he grew steady as a rock. Lifting his crossbow he aimed and pulled the trigger. The string twanged, the quarrel rushed forth with a whistling sound, and the first soldier, pierced through breastplate and through breast, sprang into the air and fell forward. Foy stepped to one side ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... shouts of fury, and aimed at the sharpshooters; but the Tyrolese had already disappeared again, whistling and cheering, behind the wagon, which was still ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... a bad boy," Johnnie Green's father said one day. "He's mischievous and destructive; and he's forever screeching and whistling. But there's something about him that I can't help liking.... Maybe it's because he always has ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... stop! stop!" I called and yelled in an agony of apprehension; but I might as well have appealed to the wind that went whistling by. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... grenadiers, without uttering anything, when, to my sorrow, one of my best and most orderly men advanced, saying, "My colonel, permit me to try my fortune!" I assented, and he went coldly amidst hundreds of bullets whistling around his ears, set fire to the cannon, which blew up a depot of powder, as was expected, and in the confusion returned unhurt. La Fayette then presented him with his purse. "No, monsieur," replied he, "money did not make me venture upon such a perilous undertaking." ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... army of the poor. Thousands in a small way of life, ay, and even in the smallest, go through life with tenfold as much honour and dignity and peace of mind, as the rich gluttons whose dainties and state-beds awakened Villon's covetous temper. And every morning's sun sees thousands who pass whistling to their toil. But Villon was the "mauvais pauvre" defined by Victor Hugo, and, in its English expression, so admirably stereotyped by Dickens. He was the first wicked sansculotte. He is the man of genius with the moleskin cap. He is mighty pathetic and beseeching ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to travel through the forest before he could reach the little log cabin where his wife, as well as his little daughter Zella, awaited his return, but he was used to long walks and tramped along the path whistling cheerfully to ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... moss-covered soil, the haunt of rabbits and lizards. These spots are obscured by the melancholy umbrage of pines, whose eternal murmurs are in unison with vacancy and solitude, with the reverberations of the torrents and the whistling of the blasts. Hickory and poplar, which abound in the lowlands, find ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... replied, with an unpleasant whistling intake of breath; with another profound bow to the ladies, he turned and followed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... part of the ceremony was secret and lasted for several days. After that the public ceremony began. Painted according to ritual, they danced in a line from east to west and back again, whistling as they danced, every gesture having its symbolic meaning. The whistle symbolized to them the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... easily distinguish it. These monosyllables fly with amazing rapidity; then they are continually disguised by elisions, which sometimes hardly leave anything of two monosyllables. From an aspirated tone you must pass immediately to an even one; from a whistling note to an inward one: sometimes your voice must proceed from the palate; sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal. I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I spoke ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... from freezing. On both sides, and above us, lay the pure white snow; below us a huge abyss, into which the rocky ridge descended like a darkened stairway to the lower regions. The awful stillness was unbroken, save by the whistling of the wind among the rocks. Dark masses of clouds seemed to bear down upon us every now and then, opening up their trapdoors, and letting down a heavy fall of snow. The heat of our bodies melted the ice beneath ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... such pruning of coats, Such chirping, such whistling, such clearing of throats, Such polishing bills, and such oiling of pinions, Had never been known in the biped dominions! The Tailor-Bird[2] offer'd to make up new clothes For all the young Birdlings ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... into which he was rushing, he was entirely unconscious, until the crack of Smith's rifle broke upon his astonished ear. He was unharmed, however, and quick as thought he wheeled and plunged back in the direction from which he came; Spalding's rifle, as it echoed through the forest, with the whistling of the ball in close proximity to his head, added ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... antagonist that the farmer was able to knock him out with the butt of his gun. He broke away and fled, whistling on a police whistle for the dog just as Del Mar ran up. A couple of shots from Del Mar flew wild as the farmer ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... members are all familiar with the calls of the various wild birds, a bird-call match makes a charming game when the party is gathered around the camp-fire. The leader begins by whistling or singing the call of a wild bird; if it can be put into words so much the better. For instance, we will take the first few notes of the wood-thrush, which F. Schuyler Mathews has put into notes and words ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... he was all the time employed in disengaging Trumpeter, whom he got out of the ditch, trembling and as quiet as possible. "Let's down," says I. "Presently," says he; and taking off his coat, he begins whistling and swishing down Trumpeter's sides and saddle; and when he had finished, what do you think the rascal did?—he just quietly mounted on Trumpeter's back, and shouts out, "Git down yourself, old Bearsgrease; you've only to drop! I'LL give your 'oss a hairing arter them 'ounds; and you—vy, you ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... admirable and shining family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was a sound as ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... was reported lately that steps were to be taken to intimate to Owen, that it was a constant habit of his to cough as he took his seat in the desk. I was told once myself, that it was remarked throughout Deerbrook that I seemed to be half whistling as I walked up the street in the mornings; and that it was considered a practice too undignified for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... dim gas jet on the landings never revealed his outline; and sometimes he did not come into the room at all, but hovered outside the window, peering through the dirty panes, or sending his whisper into the chamber in the whistling of the wind. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... dangerous to Art as the demi-monde is to morals, according to Alexandre Dumas), who say such utter stupidities about me in the papers and elsewhere, that I really should not like to die yet, if only not to disturb their beautiful business. You were even complaining of one single whistling blackbird [Merle; means also a whistling or hissing fellow.] pastorally perched on your book— what shall I say then of the croaking of that host of ravens and of obliques hiboux [Oblique owls; the term is repeated afterwards, and evidently refers to some joke, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... as a particularly vicious blast came whistling by, it canted as though it were going to fall. Eric, who was a few feet away from the cart, jumped forward to save it, but missed his footing and fell into the mush-ice twenty ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... doctor spoke pleasantly to Alicia, shook hands with me effusively, and went off whistling. All was right with the world. I'd refused him, you understand! Instead of being enraged and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... green trees and thicker grows the dust; Ever, though, to little people any path is pretty So it leads to newer lands, as they know it must. Some go to singing less; some go to list'ning; Some go to thinking over ever-nobler themes; Some go anhungered, but ever bravely whistling, Turning never home ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... can't whistle, when I'd love to, so," said Cricket, meditatively, for whistling was one boyish accomplishment ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... him. Through the darkness they could only vaguely see his silhouette, with the great bundle under his arm. Whatever may have been Rateau's fears of being shadowed awhile ago, he certainly seemed free of them now. He sauntered along, whistling a tune, down the Montagne Ste. Genevieve to the Place Maubert, and ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the distance some one was whistling a doleful tune. The spring wind blowing in their faces was fresh and moist, a soft wind laden with the smell of earth. A clumsy hound came slouching around the corner of the little porch and, wagging his tail, stopped below them; the light shone down into his big, glistening ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... dreadful is going to happen through that awful quarrel! Dibbs is polishing up two swords and whistling the "Dead March in Saul" in a way that makes my blood ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... outside a churchyard. If he were burying the child of his old age, he could not look more cut up. SARK, who, probably owing to personal associations, is beginning to develop some sense of humour, walked by the side of him this morning whistling ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... my adventures, putting in a lot of local colour about cannonades, explosions, whistling bullets and hailstorm barrages, in a style worthy ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... are many adversaries.' He knew the door was opened because the adversaries were many. And because there were so many of them, would he run away? Some of us would have said: 'I must abandon that work, it bristles with difficulties; I cannot stop in that post, the bullets are whistling too fast.' Nay! says Paul; 'I abide till Pentecost'—a good long while— because the post is dangerous, and promises ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Peter, walked along whistling. Suddenly he saw a spot on the road shining as dazzlingly as if a bit of the sun itself had fallen to the earth. "A bit of glass," thought Peter. But it was not a bit of glass after all, but a fine golden florin which must have dropped from ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the shore, When they dragged his war-boats down to the sea; The dawn-wind whistling his spears among. And the magic song ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... wisely, but is utterly at a loss how to go at the problem, having none of the intuitive sympathy of a woman. The boy is busy with his pencil, and represents sounds by shapes, letters by colours. For example, "the sound of an orchestra he drew as a round, smoky spot; whistling as a spiral thread." In making letters, he always painted L yellow, M red, and A black. He draws a picture of a house with a soldier standing in front of it. The father rebukes him for bad perspective, and tells him that the soldier ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps |
