"Sense of hearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standing by the quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to me, and bade him listen. He did so with the greatest attention. Turning to me he then said, "Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the state of your sense of hearing." I thought so too by that time, and I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this world, ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... may go further. The mental emotions excited by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him, you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... continually employed and most important may illustrate the way in which I should exercise the other senses. Sight and touch deal alike with bodies at rest and bodies in motion. But as only the vibration of the air can arouse the sense of hearing, noise or sound can be made only by a body in motion. If everything were at rest, we could not hear at all. At night, when we move only as we choose, we have nothing to fear except from other bodies in motion. We therefore need quick ears to judge from our sensations ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... or sustaining the total and permanent loss of sight in one eye or both eyes, shall receive the full amount of his insurance."[63] Similar definitions of disability have been worked out by the other railway organizations. The Conductors add to this "total loss of the sense of hearing." The Switchmen include "the loss of four fingers of one hand, at or above the second joint." Disability, as defined by the Letter Carriers, means inability, because of sickness or accident, to perform the regular ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy
... who are worthy, See and look with all your eyesight, Listen with your sense of hearing, Gather with your apprehension— Bow your heads, O trees, and hearken. Hush thy rustling, corn, and listen; Turn thine ear and give attention; Ripples of the running water, Pause a moment in your channels— Here I ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... all was as still as the tomb. It seemed as if the redskins were listening, in the hope of learning something of the fugitive through their sense of hearing when their eyes had failed them so long. If such were the case, they were disappointed, for the boy crouching in the gnarled tree would have suspended his very breathing, had it been in his power to do so, lest he ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... long period of silence and Henry made himself as small and obscure as possible, lest the warriors, moving about, might see him. But, fortunately the night had now turned quite dark, and where eyes might fail his acute sense of hearing would reveal the approach of any enemy. But as he lay close he again laughed inwardly more than once. The three were certainly holding the grotto in most gallant fashion, and Long Jim was fast becoming one of the ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... delusion.[73] He says that the patients he saw in the magnetic state had an appearance of deep sleep, during which all the physical faculties were suspended, to the advantage of the intellectual faculties. The eyes of the patients were closed, the sense of hearing was abolished; and they awoke only at the voice of their magnetiser. "If any one touched a patient during a crisis, or even the chair on which he was seated," says M. Cloquet, "it would cause him much pain and suffering, and throw him into ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... be no doubt that now I am safe," he thought. His fine ear could detect the faintly accentuated murmurs of the current breaking against the point of the island, and he forgot himself in listening to them with interest. But even to his acute sense of hearing ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... apprised of the approach of danger by this means, but when scattered in the forest, and dispersed out of range of sight, they are enabled by it to reassemble with rapidity and adopt precautions for their common safety. The same necessity is met by a delicate sense of hearing, and the use of a variety of noises or calls, by means of which elephants succeed in communicating with each other upon all emergencies. "The sounds which they utter have been described by the African hunters as of three kinds: ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... highly-trained sense of hearing. You and I, of course, possess pretty good ears for ordinary purposes. We can catch as soon as anyone else that muffled midnight hum, as of a distant threshing-machine beneath a blanket, which advertises the approach of the roaming Zepp. From constant practice, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... alone, and for quite a while in a low voice; and the governor listened attentively and with growing interest. Though Teanyi's voice was muffled, Shotaye still overheard the word Cayamo several times. Straining her sense of hearing, she caught the words tupoge, tema quio, finally Shotaye also. The tuyo listened, smiled, winked slyly, and at last laughed aloud. At the same time he turned his face to her and nodded most pleasantly; thereupon he said a few ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... he) I should be a savage, indeed, were I insensible of my own felicity, in having such a mild, complaisant, good-humoured, and considerate companion and housekeeper; but as I have got a weak head, and my sense of hearing is painfully acute, before I have recourse to plugs of wool and cotton, I'll try whether I can't find another lodging, where I shall have more quiet and less music.' He accordingly dispatched his man upon this service; and next day he found a small house in ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... was fair enough for stout walkers, and the air grew lighter and easier to breathe as the two ascended. But the settled gloom remained as it had remained for days back. Nature seemed to have come to a pause. The sense of hearing, no less than the sense of sight, was troubled by having to wait so long for the change, whatever it might be, that impended. The silence was as palpable and heavy as the lowering clouds—or rather cloud, for there seemed ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... the pleasures which correspond with these objects. It is necessary for the worthy, attentive and devout saying of the Office that each sense be guarded. The sense of sight should be guarded from gazing at objects at hand, persons, books, landscape, etc. The sense of hearing should be guarded in flying from the company of evil speakers, calumniators, detractors, those who speak of worldly affairs or who give evil counsel. It is necessary, too, to guard the tongue from evil speech. "I ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... were his faculties that his sense of hearing in its acuteness took in every word of the conversation between the seconds, a few paces distant. He heard his adversary's seconds say carelessly to the deputy sheriff, "I presume this is a case where there will be no apology or mediation," and the deputy's reply, "I reckon my man means business, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... This should be nearly filled with dry leaves or some substitute, and the end gathered up and tied with a string, so as to leave quite a hilt or handle for a firm grasp. All light is shut out of the place, so that the sense of hearing will be the only ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... this melody; nor is there in you mortals a duller sense than that of hearing. As where the Nile at the Falls of Catadupa pours down from the loftiest mountains, the people who live hard by lack the sense of hearing because of the loudness of the cataract, so this harmony of the whole universe in its intensely rapid movement is so loud that men's ears cannot take it in, even as you cannot look directly at the sun, and the keenness and ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... lustily. Under the weather-vane, on the farm-house roof, the pigeons trimmed their feathers, and cooed. Unfelt the coolness of the morning air, (for they were hot with exertion,) and regardless of moving shadows, or cooing doves, my two friends gave up the sense of hearing to their reels, and that of seeing to the career of the little zinc hooks at the end of their gut lines. When I looked at the insular P——, and his active rod, I thought him like to Archimedes who had found his extramundane spot of ground, and, as he threw the fly, and bent his back to let it ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... lost the sense of hearing; and I have lost the conversation of a learned, intelligent, and communicative companion, and a friend whom long familiarity has much endeared. Lawrence is one of the best men whom I have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a word. My mind was in a total daze. My mental processes came to a dead stop. I hovered in that painful state that predominates during the period of anticipation before some frightful explosion. I waited, I listened, I lived only through my sense of hearing! ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the [Greek: to kalon], truth, &c., as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... symbolical writings; whether these were characters unknown to the vulgar, or figures of animals, under which was couched a hidden and parabolical meaning. Thus, by a hare, was signified a lively and piercing attention, because this creature has a very delicate sense of hearing.(342) The statue of a judge without hands, and with eyes fixed upon the ground, symbolized the duties of those who were to exercise ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... but denies that names can. Socrates argues, that he may go up to a man and say 'this is year picture,' and again, he may go and say to him 'this is your name'—in the one case appealing to his sense of sight, and in the other to his sense of hearing;—may he not? 'Yes.' Then you will admit that there is a right or a wrong assignment of names, and if of names, then of verbs and nouns; and if of verbs and nouns, then of the sentences which are made up of them; and comparing nouns to pictures, you ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... talk; there was scarcely time to think. The road, the landscape, the very world, became a dizzying blur that destroyed all distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and the rapid-fire fusillade from the motor, all sense of hearing was benumbed. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... possess organs conformed to their purpose. It is the will to be which gave claws to the lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the most unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives extraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and touch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by their roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk upwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are "constant tendencies" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... were produced by anything so earthly as a rat. With that willingness to believe in a romantic impossibility, rather than in a commonplace improbability so natural to the human mind, she was more ready to conceive the existence of a ghost than that her own sense of hearing might have been less powerful than her fancy. About the footsteps she was quite as positive as she was about the scream; and in the last instance she had the evidence of Mrs. Tadman's senses ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... of Kate Moore, who some years since resided on a secluded island in the Sound. Disasters frequently occur to vessels which are driven round Montauk Point, and sometimes in the Sound when they are homeward bound; and at such times she was always on the alert. She had so thoroughly cultivated the sense of hearing, that she could distinguish amid the howling storm the shrieks of the drowning mariners, and thus direct a boat, which she had learned to manage most dexterously, in the darkest night, to the spot where a fellow mortal was perishing. Though well educated and refined, she ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... a human body, much less the truth of the wonders performed by the Word in this super-human and unearthly 'vice-corpus,' or 'quasi corpus:' least of all, would they assert either that the assurances of the Word were false in themselves, or that the sense of hearing might have been permitted to deceive the beloved Apostle, (which would have been virtual falsehood and a subornation of falsehood), however liable to deception the senses might be generally, and as sole and primary ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... so vivid and so full of detail had narrowed down to a few familiar phrases. "Just then Sherman and his staff came riding along," or "When I was camped on the upper waters of the Wisconsin." His memory was failing and so was his sense of hearing. He seldom quoted from a book, but he still cited Blaine's speeches or referred to Lincoln's anecdotes, and certain of Grant's phrases were often on his lips. In all his interests he remained objective, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... pilot's skill, and freely exchanged comments regarding him. To their murmured conversation, the steersman seemed dumb, deaf and indifferent; nevertheless, he gave the closest attention to every word, and his sense of hearing was as keen as that ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... of hearing a warning bark, but nothing broke the silence and he supposed that Clarke's friends were unable to find food enough for sledge-teams. This was reassuring, because the odds against him were heavy enough, knowing, as he did, that the Indian's sense of hearing is remarkably keen. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... glare up and down the road told him his foes were gone. His incredible sense of hearing registered the far-off pad-pad-pad of fast-retreating human feet, and showed him the course the two men were taking. He would have liked to give chase. It had been a good fight—lively and exciting withal—and Chum wished he might carry it into ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... huts, obviously some kind of billets. These were on the near side of the stream, about a dozen yards from the bridge. A door stood open and a light showed in it, and from within came the sound of voices.... Peter had a sense of hearing like a wild animal, and he could detect even from the confused gabble that the voices ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... use of as many senses as possible. When an impression has been given through eye and ear and touch, for example, it is more definite in the mind than when it has come only through the sense of hearing. ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... Edris," she answered, in low musical accents, that carried to his sense of hearing a suggestion, of something sweet ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and now recurs exactly same as before. For it is well known that the sense of smell is specially effective in awakening memories, and that in general it does not require much to rouse a train of ideas. And I may say, in passing, that the sense of sight is connected with the understanding,[1] the sense of hearing with the reason,[2] and, as we see in the present case, the sense of smell with the memory. Touch and Taste are more material and dependent upon contact. They ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the back kitchen, where somebody ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... me that an hour had passed, during which I stood behind the natural breastwork of a stone upon which my rifle rested, gazing straight away up the pass, and straining my sense of hearing to catch something to suggest that the enemy was in motion; but there was not a sound in the grim and desolate gap between the hills, and my beating heart sank lower and lower as I glanced back at Joeboy, who ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... beside her charge, sometimes moistening his parched lips, sometimes arranging his improvised pillow, and listening to every sound both near and distant, with that quick, discriminating sense of hearing which we acquire from watching over those we love, and which she had learned during the last illness of her mother. The night was now far advanced. Close beside her came the quick, hard breathing, and the indistinct murmuring ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... had not returned, the man said, when young Latimer reached the home the lawyer had made for them both. He did not know what to argue from this, but determined to sit up and wait, and so sat smoking before the fire and listening with his sense of hearing on a strain for the first ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... is thought to have very keen sight. For this reason, when we wish to say that a person can see very clearly or can look beyond the outward appearance of things, we call him lynx-eyed. Like all cats, the lynx possesses in his mustache a very correct power of feeling. This, with the sense of hearing and sight, guides him ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... like to sit, quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a huge pewter plate just within the church door, in which the offerings are placed as the worshipers enter or leave; and one always notes the preponderance of ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... half-opened door, the three ladies and d'Artagnon. At that crucial moment Etienne, whose sense of hearing was acute, heard in the cardinal's library poor Gabrielle's voice, singing, to let her ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... his sense of sight and smell were perfected, to the detriment of the sense of hearing which is not very musical. Repetitions, assonances, do not always shock Maupassant, who is sometimes insensible to quantity as he is to harmony. He does not "orchestrate," he has not inherited the "organ pipes" ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... in heaven, hearing her speak in this strain, Arjuna was overcome with bashfulness. And shutting his ears with his hands, he said, 'O blessed lady, fie on my sense of hearing, when thou speakest thus to me. For, O thou of beautiful face, thou art certainly equal in my estimation unto the wife of a superior. Even as Kunti of high fortune or Sachi the queen of Indra, art thou to me, O auspicious one, of this there is no doubt! That I had gazed particularly at thee, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the Preston children, remained with the family for several weeks, after Thanksgiving. Her visit was, on the whole, a pleasant one, though there were some shadows thoughtlessly cast over it by the children. Age had somewhat impaired her sense of hearing, but yet she always wanted to understand everything that was said in her presence. Often, when the children were talking to each other in a low tone, she would ask them what they were saying. Ella did not like these interruptions, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... fishing tackle he needed. He very skilfully thrust it low down into the water under the passing fish, and with a sudden movement sent the finny beauty flying through the air, and out upon the not very distant shore. When our canoe appeared around a bend in the river, his fine sense of hearing detected our approach. At first, he seemed to show fight, and acted as though he would defend his fish; but a bullet caused him to change his mind about fighting, and he fled into the forest leaving us to ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Their sense of hearing is so acute that they can distinguish sounds at an incredible distance, which cannot be detected by a European at all. I myself witnessed a singular exemplification of this fact. It was mid-winter; the Indians had pitched their tent, or wigwam, as usual, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... age the child begins to lisp, and at twelve months it is usually able to utter distinct and intelligible sounds of one or two syllables. The development of the senses and of the mind proceeds gradually. The sense of hearing is more active and further advanced than that of sight. Sounds are appreciated sooner than light or bright colored objects. The next sense which is developed is perhaps that of taste; then ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... though only partially, for so quick was the blind man's sense of hearing that in the middle of the conversation he said, sharply, "Somebody's ahint the dyke!" and he caught Grizel by the shoulder. "It's the Painted Lady's lassie," he said when she screamed, and he stormed against Tommy for taking such ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... thought, and consequently he would have no imagination to use. He would be, to all intents and purposes, a living corpse. Helen Keller has only two doors of sensation closed to her—the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. Touch, taste, and smell, however were left to her; and each was quickened and heightened in order to help so far as possible to perform the world of the defective senses. The reaching of the consciousness of this girl is considered by science to be akin to a miracle—yet only two senses ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... with a famous appetite, untroubled by Iff's aspersion on his sense of hearing, which was excellent; and he had certainly heard Miss Searle aright: she had named the St. Regis not once, but twice, and each time with the clearest enunciation. He could only attribute the mistake to her excitement ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Giandola, and in the afternoon rode along the little river Roida, which runs in a bottom between frightful precipices, and in several places forms natural cascades, the noise of which had well-nigh deprived us of the sense of hearing; after a winding course among these mountains, it discharges itself into the Mediterranean at Vintimiglia, in the territory of Genoa. As the snow did not lie on these mountains, when we cracked our whips, there was such a repercussion of the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... continually making over the descent of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders of the sky ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... invented the pedal! I mean the pedal which raises the dampers on the piano. A grand acquisition, indeed, for modern times! Good heavens! Our piano performers must have lost their sense of hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing? Alas, it is only the groaning of the wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern virtuosos, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing has deserted him, is blustering ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... glided silently away into the darkness, and the party sat straining their sense of hearing to the utmost, making out plainly enough now the dull sound of trampling hoofs, the jingling of trappings, and every now and then an angry snort or squeal as some ill-tempered beast resented the too near approach of one of its ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the old man had left the kitchen and retired. Then she came from her hiding-place and at one glance saw what she wanted—the list of conspirators, which Geoffrey had laid open on the table. Her keen sense of hearing had followed this paper as if it were visible to her eyes, and she knew that it had not been returned to Dacre. With a firm hand she seized the document, and the next moment she had left the room, closing the two doors behind her. She kept close to the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the ear-drum, as it is only there that it shows itself as a sense-organ and manifests such sounds as the man deserves to hear by reason of his merit and demerit. Thus a deaf man though he has the akas'a as his sense of hearing, cannot hear on account of his demerit which impedes the faculty of that sense organ [Footnote ref 3]. In addition to these they admitted the existence of time (kala) as extending from the past through the present ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes—his deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear, distinct conception is shaped in its mind. "Ideas," says M. Marcel in his essay on the Study ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... in the consulting-room suspect him? or did Thomas's shoes creak, and was her sense of hearing unusually keen? Whatever the explanation may be, the event that actually happened was beyond all doubt. Exactly as Doctor Wybrow passed his consulting-room, the door opened—the lady appeared on the threshold—and laid her hand ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... all the camels and were glad to rest under the shade we had made with boughs. Our rest lasted three days to allow Prempeh, who was very poorly, to recover. The flies, as usual, worried us unmercifully, but I was so thankful to regain once more my sense of hearing that I rather enjoyed their buzzing. I had for some weeks been so deaf that unless I had my attention fixed on something, I could not hear at all. I must have been a great bore to my companions very often, for frequently ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... to bed that night early, about ten o'clock. He couldn't sleep. His door was not quite closed and he could hear first Vera, then Uncle Ivan, lastly Markovitch go to bed. He lay awake then, with that exaggerated sense of hearing that one has in the middle of the night, when one is compelled, as it were, against one's will, to listen for sounds. He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creaking of some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... speech were almost gone, the sense of hearing was still left to him, and he understood what Henri said. He again moved his head in token of dissent; again pulled his friend towards him by the hand, and again muttered out a word, the last that he ever attempted to utter; ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... on the Point. Hoping that the tolling would continue, I aimed for the bell as straight as possible. With a couple of strokes the shore vanished, and nothing could be seen but fog. Rowing where there is plenty of light and yet nothing visible is embarrassing business. One must rely wholly upon the sense of hearing, as eyes are of no use in such a case. Fearing that the bell might cease before I got across, I bent with a will upon the oars and went racing through the fog. The sound grew more and more distinct with each peal, when, suddenly as the apparition of Norman's Woe, right before me sprang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... all halted, and, as they had done earlier in the evening, watched for their pursuers to pass. In this instance, however, the path was so screened that nothing could be seen, and our friends depended wholly upon their sense of hearing. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... feeding. For the beast is shy, it inhabits the densest, closest mountain cover, it possesses the keen eyesight and sense of smell of the bush-dwelling deer and antelope, and more than the average sense of hearing. There are very few of him. But the chief discouragement is that arising from his roaming tendencies. Other rare animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter finds tracks, new or old, his game is one of patient, skilful search. The greater kudu, however, seems in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... hesitating knock of the bronze ring on the outer door reached his ear. The chamber, which he occupied, was far removed from the vestibule, divided from it by the whole length of the atrium, and fauces; yet so still was the interior of the house, and so inordinately sharpened was his sense of hearing by anxiety and apprehension, that he recognized the sound instantly, and started to his feet, fearing he knew ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He could hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive very high sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf (this was found out later); and when we played blind-man's-buff on a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... not easy, of course, for the weak young telephone to make itself heard in that noisy workshop. No one, not even Bell and Watson, was familiar with its odd little voice. Usually Watson, who had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and Bell, who was a professional elocutionist, did the talking. And day by day the tone of the baby instrument grew clearer—a new note ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... which have long pupils of the eye, may think those things long which we call round, for as glasses represent the object variously, according to their shape, so it may be with our eyes. And so the sense of hearing deceives. Thus, the echo of a trumpet, sounded in a valley, makes the sound seem before us, when it is behind us. Besides, how can we think that an ear, which has a narrow passage, can receive the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Carlyle, while undressing, that certain sounds, as of talking, proceeded from the room underneath, which she had just quitted. She possessed a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did Miss Carlyle; though, indeed, none of her faculties lacked the quality of keenness. The servants, Joyce and Peter excepted, would not be convinced but that she must "listen;" but, in that, they did her injustice. First of all, she believed her brother ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... a pointer on scent, all his faculties united in attention toward the girl. To Rainey he seemed attempting to visualize her by sheer sense of hearing, by perceptions quickened in the blind. The doctor crossed to the girl and spoke to her in ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were entering my mind when I suddenly became unconscious, as on going to sleep. I cannot tell anything of the sense of hearing, as no sound reaches the ear to break the perfect stillness and silence of the regions between six and seven miles above the earth. My last observation was made at 1.54 p.m., above 29,000 feet. I suppose two or three minutes to have elapsed between ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... been well after midnight when a low booming sound drew my attention; but at first the sense of hearing was so strained that it was impossible exactly to locate it, and I imagined it was the thunder of big guns far out at sea carried to us by the rising wind. Then Maloney, catching hold of my arm and leaning forward, somehow brought the true relation, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was removed by his sense of hearing. Without the intervention of the dwelling to obstruct the sound, he caught the faint, rhythmic beating of the earth, barely audible and gradually growing fainter in the distance. It was just such a sound as is made by a horse going at a leisurely, sweeping ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... itself with music as music. It is assumed that, if anyone really loves this art, he is willing and glad to do serious work to quicken his sense of hearing, to broaden his imagination, and to strengthen his memory so that he may become intelligent in appreciation rather than merely absorbed in honeyed sounds. Music is of such power and glory that we should ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the crescent shape of the blade is to be able to draw it, edge-wise, through the water without making any noise, when they hunt the sea-otter, an animal which can only be caught when it is lying asleep on the rocks, and which has the sense of hearing very acute. All their canoes are painted red, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the dark. I could conceive then how the brain, excited by fear, or stimulated by emotion, might multiply these phantasms, moulding them into the likeness of objects and beings that never had any existence in reality. My sense of hearing, too, seemed preternaturally sharpened; I could hear the ticking of the watch in my pocket, the throbbing of my own heart, the murmur of the air in my lungs. I held my breath so that the slightest sound from any other source than my own organism should not escape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... luxuriousness was not an unusual experience, particularly among strangers, and was solely attributable to the narcotic of the soft climate. By gently yielding to this influence one seemed to dream while awake, and though the sense of hearing is diminished, that of the olfactories appears to be increased, and pleasant odors float on every passing breeze. One feels at peace with all human nature, and a sense of voluptuous ease overspreads the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... off one side of thy wig?" "Ah! bless thee," says the clerk, "thou hast cured me with that word." The mysterious "hiss" and "hush" were sounds from the frizzling of Peter's wig by the flame of the candle, which to his imperfect sense of hearing imported things horrible and awful. Such is the story which a writer in Hone's Year Book tells, and which is said to have afforded Peter Priestly and the good people of merry Wakefield ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... the trees, to get up to them before we were discovered. Uncle Jeff led the way, while Manley and I followed in Indian file. It was important not only to keep ourselves concealed, but to avoid making any noise, as the elk has a remarkably acute sense of hearing, and the slightest ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... underbrush. I decided, as the country outside of our lines was infested with rebel scouts and guerillas, to ride rapidly through the open country, but to walk through the wooded part, as it was so dark there that I could not see. If I walked, I could use the sense of hearing, and so be warned of the approach of either friend or foe. Should I hear advancing steps, I could easily ride out of the road into the woods out of sight, as there were no fences that bordered the road. I met with ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... unwilling to go back, and again and again he called Henry's name, listening with all the acuteness of which his trained sense of hearing was capable. Only the rushing of the torrent and the dripping of the rain ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... coarser vibrations must influence the inner ear, which is well developed, through the surrounding flesh and bones. It seems that the main use of the ear in fishes is in connection with balancing, not with hearing. In many cases, however, the sense of hearing has been demonstrated; thus fishes will come to the side of a pond to be fed when a bell is rung or when a whistle is blown by someone not visible from the water. The fact that many fishes pay no attention at all to loud noises does not prove that they are deaf, for an animal may ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... gunwale, he paused for fully a minute and listened. The stillness remained undisturbed, and it looked as if the way were clear for the daring attempt. At the very instant that Lena-Wingo began to exert a gently increasing pressure, his keen sense of hearing told him the sentinel was moving, and the scout paused before the frail boat had yielded ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... pigeons would gain nothing by carrying a compass. And so I feel safe in saying that if any man were so good and perfect an animal that he had the hound's sense of smell, the cat's eyesight, the rabbit's sense of hearing, the horse's sense of taste, and the homing pigeon's "locality," he would not be one whit better prepared to appreciate Kipling's "Dipsy Chanty," and not a hair's breadth nearer a point where he could write ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... know it is natural, and produced by natural means, comprehended by us. Now, how are we sure, or anybody sure, but that our dreams are produced by the same natural means? There is some faint resemblance of this in the sense of hearing; the bird is killed before we hear the report of the gun. However this is, I must speak well of the Knockers, for they have actually stood my good friends, whether they are aerial beings called spirits, or whether they are a people made of matter, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... you! it is very beautiful—very touching, too!" Speaking calmly, and slacking rein, so that the grating of the wheels among the stems of the scarlet lychnis, that grew in immense patches on our road, might not disturb his sense of hearing, which, by-the-way, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... fragrance, which comes through the nose; taste, which comes through the tongue; roughness or smoothness, which comes through the sense of touch; and you would hear musical notes made by the vibrations of the molecules, coming through the sense of hearing, were it keener. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. you would hear the sound of the orange also, for wherever there is vibration there is sound. All this, synthesised by the mind into one idea, is an orange. That is the root reason for the "association of ideas". It is not only ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... no doubt, were highly strung, and my sense of hearing unusually acute, for I went in momentary expectation of some uncanny happening. I had not long to wait. As I raised the glass to my lips and glanced across the table at my friend, I heard the first faint sound heralding ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... as if the eyes were about to open. The ears are still closed, and there is no evidence of a sense of hearing. They squeaked considerably when in the nest, but not at all when I took them out to note their development. The mother stays outside of the nest box much of the time now, probably to prevent the young ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... footsteps in the house, and whisperings, and people passing to and fro; but to all these Dacres was deaf, and they caused no more impression on his senses than if they were not. His ears and his sense of hearing existed only for these sobs and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... exclusion of everything else. They entered this state of abstractedness unconsciously. To do so intentionally, you go by the law of indirectness. For instance, take sight; concentrate your vision and your whole attention upon some object, real or imaginary, until soon the sense of HEARING becomes dormant. A little practice will enable you to study, think or sleep, regardless ...
— The Silence • David V. Bush
... room. All this information is conveyed to the normal child through the eyes. Dr. Illingworth, a noted educator of the blind in England, says: "Of course, there is no doubt that blindness tends to a higher and more perfect development of the sense of hearing, even in the uneducated, on the same principle that Nature almost always comes to the aid of her children in providing protective agencies of one kind or another, even in the very lowest organisms, and, naturally, for ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... hands had clenched themselves, and the nails were biting into the flesh of her palms. But she felt no pain. Her whole being seemed concentrated into the single sense of hearing as she waited there in the candle-lit gloom, listening for every tiny sound, each creak of a board, each scattering of loosened plaster, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... silence, and all three bent their hearing to the utmost. Through the continuous noise of the rain, the steps and voices of two men became audible from the other side of the wall; and, as they drew nearer, Brackenbury, whose sense of hearing was remarkably acute, could even distinguish some fragments of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Spaniards have carried the personification of these fragile works of men's hands far beyond the idolatries of ancient and modern times. Not content with addressing words to them, as if they possessed intelligence and the sense of hearing, they kiss their feet and their hands, as though the marble, the plaster, or the wood, of which they are made, were sensible of these demonstrations of tenderness. To kiss an image is an act of merit which ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... part in deliberation. By putting to confusion the musical scale, and destroying fifes and lutes, by deafening the ears of the blind Kuang, then, at last, will the human race in the world constrain his sense of hearing. By extinguishing literary compositions, by dispersing the five colours and by sticking the eyes of Li Chu, then, at length, mankind under the whole sky, will restrain the perception of his eyes. By destroying and eliminating the hooks and lines, by discarding the compasses ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fie, how slow am I of understanding! Was it all this while, Domine, labia aperies? Belike I have lost my sense of hearing, With broiling and burning ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... creatures, whose forms were as novel as the combinations of colours which marked their bodies. They were the scene of a perpetual whirl and flutter of wings, and before they betrayed themselves to the sight their locality could be detected by the sense of hearing from the never-ceasing hum and chirp of the insects and the calls of the birds which frequented them. They were the scenes of an eager, busy, active life; whilst in the twilight depths of the forest everything was ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... It is because one is listening so intensely for the guns to break out that all other sounds have lost their significance. One seems to have become all ears—to have no sense of sight or touch or taste or smell. All seem to have become merged in the sense of hearing. The very air itself seems tense with listening. Only the occasional rattle of a machine gun breaks the stillness. Even ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... used as a "Sonometer" for measuring the sense of hearing, and also for telling base coins. The writer devised a form of it for "divining" the presence of gold and metallic ores which has been applied by Captain M'Evoy in his "submarine detector" for exploring the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... and desperate energy,—for every shot may be his last,—these things require the soldier's close personal attention and make him oblivious to matters transpiring beyond his immediate neighborhood. Moreover, his sense of hearing is well-nigh overcome by the deafening uproar going on around him. The incessant and terrible crash of musketry, the roar of the cannon, the continual zip, zip, of the bullets as they hiss by him, interspersed ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... to the sun and wearing an expression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha that the child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish, happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing was nearly all he had,—though it did not occur to her that he might have more of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... to their present pitch in this way, why should decorative colours have arisen in some other way? Why should the eye be less sensitive to SPECIFICALLY MALE colours and other VISIBLE signs ENTICING TO THE FEMALE, than the olfactory sense to specifically male odours, or the sense of hearing to specifically male sounds? Moreover, the decorative feathers of birds are almost always spread out and displayed before the female during courtship. I have elsewhere ("The Evolution Theory", London, 1904, I. page 219.) pointed out that decorative ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... perceive them. The name Tanmatra which signifies that only indicates that they are concerned exclusively with one sense. Thus whereas the gross elements, such as earth, appeal to more than one sense and can be seen, felt and smelt, the subtle element of sound is restricted to the sense of hearing. It exists in all things audible but has nothing to do with their tangibility or visibility. There remain sixteen further modifications to make up the full list of twenty-four. They are the five organs of sense,[746] the five organs of action,[747] Manas or mind, regarded as a sixth and ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ostentatiously noisy rush of water which may be heard afar and awakens one at night. The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing. As usual, what we call "Progress" is the exchange of one Nuisance for ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... pressed more urgently, his brow writhed, and his dark eye seemed to shoot sparks of livid fire! He could write with astonishing correctness and facility, considering his situation; and, although denied the exquisite pleasure and priceless advantages of the sense of hearing, nature had given him ample compensation, by an eye, quick and far-seeing as an eagle's; and a smell, keen and incredible as that of a raven. He could discover objects moving miles away in the far-off prairie, when others ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... to conjecture as to the actual nature of those pleasures which, after the resurrection, the re-united body and soul will enjoy in heaven; but I can hardly persuade myself that melody and harmony will be wanting, when even the sense of hearing shall itself ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... most sensitive human ear, the highest limit of audibleness is reached by sound-waves estimated at twenty-eight-hundredths of an inch from node to node—equal to 48,000 vibrations per second. The extreme of lowness to which our sense of hearing is susceptible, has been placed at 75 feet from node to node—or 15 vibrations per second. This total range of audibleness covers 12 octaves; running, of course, far above and far below the domain of music. The extreme highness and lowness of sounds ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... beam. This is very ominous for Atzerott. The filthiness of this man denies him sympathy. He is a disgusting little groveler of dry, sandy hair, oval head, ears set so close to the chin that one would think his sense of hearing limited to his jaws, and a complexion so yellow that the uncropped brownness of his beard does not materially darken it. He wears a grayish coat, low grimy shirt, and the usual carpet slippers of threadbare red over his shifting and shiftless feet. His head is bent forward, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... departure? But that, the most natural outcome of the plan, Bracy, in his excitement, set aside as being the least likely to occur, and he lay in agony, straining every nerve to condense his faculties into the one great sense of hearing, till it seemed to him that his ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... instantly secured the inestimable assistance of the Faculty, who found that she was still alive, and set her arm, which had been broken. It was only afterwards discovered that she had utterly lost her sense of hearing. To use the emphatic language of the medical gentlemen (who all spoke with tears in their eyes), she had been struck stone deaf by the shock. Under these melancholy circumstances, it was found that the faculty of speech soon failed her altogether; and she ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other adherents. As to street noises, the rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in at the gateway in going past, and rushed out again: making the listening Mistress Affery feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the greatest change that ever ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... sooner in the creek than its eastern bank afforded us a shelter from the direct violence of the wind, the bush and trees growing so thickly right down to the water's edge that close inshore we were completely becalmed; and, thus sheltered, our sense of hearing helped us somewhat despite the deep roar of the gale overhead, while we quickly caught the knack of steering along the outer edge of the narrow belt of calm, in this way avoiding to a great extent the difficulties and petty mishaps that had at first so seriously ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the shock of the explosion I could feel bits of steel and earth pattering on my helmet like rain. After the first momentary shock I was in full possession of my wits, and I quickly realised that, for the moment at least, I had lost all sense of hearing in my right ear. But this was a small price to pay for the escape. Such a miracle would assuredly never happen again. A few hours later I had regained a good deal of hearing power, but it is not right yet. Experts, however, tell me that this effect will pass off in time. A fragment of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... transposition of the sense of hearing I will exemplify from the details of a case of catalepsy, or spontaneous trance, as they are given by the observer, Dr Petetin, an eminent civil and military physician of Lyons, where he was president of the Medical Society. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... "Music to-day, in the vigour of her youth, is emancipated and free and can do what she pleases. Many old rules have no longer any vogue; they were made by unreflecting minds, or by lovers of routine for other lovers of routine. New needs of the mind, of the heart, and of the sense of hearing, make necessary new endeavours and, in some cases, the breaking of ancient laws. Many forms have become too hackneyed to be still adopted. The same thing may be entirely good or entirely bad, according to the use one makes of it, or the reasons ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... gifted in the sense of touch above their fellows, who can judge of the quality of goods in the dark. There are others blest with penetrating eyesight. Others with a sense of hearing most acute. Also those with nice discriminating sense of taste and smell. These distinctions for a long time were regarded as the five senses of man, and he was believed to have only those five avenues of perception. Phrenology, however, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... have muscle feelings, or the sense of musculation; the sense of touch, the sense of pressure, the sense of warmth, the sense of cold, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of hearing and the sense of seeing. Altogether, we have nine important avenues, through which the inner man may gain a correct knowledge of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... the leeward. Sometimes we'd come upon them lying down, but, if in walking along, we'd broken a twig, or made the slightest noise, they'd think it was one of their mortal enemies, a bear—creeping on them, and they'd be up and away. Their sense of hearing is very keen, but they're not so quick to see. A fox is like that, too. His eyes ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... willed it, the process necessary to the support of existence here below might have been carried on without the least enjoyment on our part: the daily waste of the body might be repaired without the sweet sensations which attend eating and drinking; we might have had the sense of hearing without the delight we derive from sweet sounds; and that of smelling without the capability of enjoying the fragrance of the rose: but He whose wisdom and beneficence are above all comprehension, has ordained in another and a better manner, and annexed the most lively ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... night! Her ears had a sense of hearing that was preternaturally acute. The most distant step in the corridors was audible. Was it a reprieve? One such sound multiplied itself into the footsteps of two men walking, coming ever nearer—nearer—nearer till ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... absence of loop-holes removed to a great extent the fear of treacherous shots from the outside, yet in another respect it was an annoyance. The boys could see nothing of their assailants. The sense of hearing and conjecture it lelf were all that were left to inform them of what was going on ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... usual echoes of the places, where we are; their catenation with other irritative ideas, as those of vision, becomes dissevered or disturbed; and we attend to them in consequence, which I think unravels this intricate circumstance of noises being always heard in the head, when the sense of hearing begins to be impaired, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... long she had been unconscious. She saw that Rogers and Lawson were still below, and still talking. So keen was her sense of hearing—every nerve straining in the effort to learn more—that the voices of the men came in through the window with a resonance that, she felt, must be audible to ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... with that vast volume of voice, at once astonishing and delightful—"All in the downs the fleet lay moored;" and then followed the strain of love, manly love and constancy, in the beautiful language of Gay, and in tones so rich, so clear, so sweet! every faculty was absorbed in the sense of hearing! the hair seemed to rise, the flesh to stir! the silence of the audience was holy—they durst not, they could not, even applaud that which so enchanted them, for fear of losing a note—I really think I could have struck any ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... that the half-mile intervening was as still as death, and that half the way the sound sped over water, he couldn't have hoped to perceive it. If the wind had blown elsewhere than straight toward him from the enemy camp, or if his marvelous sense of hearing had been less acute, the result would have been the same; and there could have been no answer from this dark man at the cave mouth who stood so tense and still. Finally, by instinct as much as by conscious intelligence, he identified the sound, marked it as a reality rather than ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... ago at a hunting camp in North Carolina, I thought I had met the creature with the most acute sense of hearing of any living thing. I refer to Pearl, the mare. Pearl was an elderly mare, white in color and therefore known as Pearl. She was most gentle and kind. She was a reliable family animal too—had a colt every year—but in her ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the aesthetics of a school which finds "sense swooning into nonsense" admirable. And if a critic is so dull as to ask what "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle" means, or to whom it is addressed, none can help him any more than one can help a man whose sense of hearing is too gross for the tenuity of a bat's cry. A voice in the air thus sings the hymn of Asia at the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... in the same manner, they are passed through to the other side, and stretched taut on the windlasses by means of the handspikes until they give the same sound. Thus with tight wedging, catapults are tuned to the proper pitch by musical sense of hearing. ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... a degree of earnestness which left no room for doubt, even if the young man's own keen sense of hearing had not given warning but ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... weighs with ants, and not to any absence of the physical senses. Because they do not do as we should do under similar circumstances is no proof that they do not possess the power to hear and see. Experiments, for instance, have been made with bees to find out if they have any sense of hearing, by shouting close to a bee, drawing discordant notes on the violin, striking pieces of metal together, and so on, to all of which the bee remained indifferent. What else could she do? Neither of these sounds hurt if she heard them, nor seemed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... he suddenly applied his ear to the hole and listened intently for at least five minutes. Not a sound was audible to me, but, by an occasional pressure of the hand, Hall signified that some important disclosure was reaching his sense of hearing. At ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... the sense of hearing, it is first remarked that all children for some time after birth are completely deaf, and it was not till the middle of the fourth day that Professor Preyer obtained any evidence of hearing in his child. This child first turned his head in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... to the apartment in which the three Mahars slept I entered silently on tiptoe, forgetting that the creatures were without the sense of hearing. With a quick thrust through the heart I disposed of the first but my second thrust was not so fortunate, so that before I could kill the next of my victims it had hurled itself against the third, who sprang ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... more firmly and crawled cautiously toward the spot where he thought he had heard some one moving. The night was so dark that he could make nothing out of the shadows about him, being obliged therefore to trust entirely to his sense of hearing. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... spiritual being repelled evil by the necessity of the pure light in which I dwelt serene. I waited patiently for the mists to clear, so that I might again behold the beauty of my garden. Suddenly a soft clamour smote upon my sense of hearing, and a slender stream of light, like a connecting ray, seemed to be flung upwards through the darkness that hid me from the people I had created and loved. I knew the sound—it was the mingled music of the prayers of children. An infinite pity and pleasure ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... vision. He would call his nephew. Vainly he attempted to shout the word "Douglas," but to no avail. Where was his mouth? It seemed as if he had none. Was it all delirium? The strange silence—perhaps he had lost his sense of hearing along with his ability to speak—and he could see nothing distinctly. The mist had transferred itself into a confused jumble of indistinct objects, some of which ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... THY soul sleeps with thee in the coffin. And the music that belongs to HIS, separate from the instrument, ascends on high, to be heard often by a daughter's pious ears when the heaven is serene and the earth sad. For there is a sense of hearing that the vulgar know not. And the voices of the dead breathe soft and frequent to those who can unite the memory with ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... strained their sense of hearing. And then, above the slithering murmur of the water, they all distinctly ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... decision overruled the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Here Judge Edgerton, speaking for himself and two associates, said: "Exploitation of this audience through assault on the unavertible sense of hearing is a new phenomenon. It raises 'issues that were not implied in the means of communication known or contemplated by Franklin and Jefferson and Madison.' But the Bill of Rights, as appellants say in their brief, can keep up ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was impaired, his locomotion slow, and his left hand and arm yet helpless, his sense of hearing was acute enough to hear the words even across Monroe's conversation, for his sunken eyes lit up as he twisted his ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... are the Indriyas and the Visayas, etc.' Indriyas are organs of sense, and Visayas are objects on which the sense acts. Five Vijnyanas are—(1) The sense of sight, (2) the sense of hearing, (3) the sense of smell, (4) the sense of taste, (5) the ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya |
