|
|
|
More "Humming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thy workes; the rouzing preface of all these Letters. Casars eye made his souldiers prodigall of their blood. The Atheist thinks God takes as much notice of him and his prayers, as hee doth of the humming of Flyes and Bees; and therefore, no marvell if his service bee formall and fashionable. The faithfull Christian by faiths prospective sees him at home, and heares him saying, Well done thou good servant; which maketh him to worke out his heart. Behold him as the ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... The lake was flooded with light, and the big trees of the forest crowning the hill were silver coroneted. The unfolding leaves had hidden the new cabin from the bridge, but the driveway shone white, and already the upspringing bushes hedged it in. Insects were humming lazily in the perfumed night air, and across the lake a courting whip-poor-will was explaining to his sweetheart just how much and why he loved her. A few bats were wavering in air hunting insects, and occasionally ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, the requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible on her knees. When she returned, her mouth was hard and her eyes were shining ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantelpiece. As she came in he pointed ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... they reached the somewhat sheltering woods, there sounded from the air above them several explosions, and with them was an undercurrent of humming and droning as if from ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... they got the word, but there was no time to cipher on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have been better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my station and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was sure to have use for it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he was not himself. All afternoon in a mood of tropic sunrise he collected rents, or with glad vagueness consented instantly to their postponement. "I've come about the rent again," he said beamingly to one delinquent tenant of his father's best client; and turned and walked away, humming a waltz-song, while the man was still coughing as a ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... crowns, and at their departure would find fresh arrivals who would make good arrangements with her, and by this means she would be able to take back money and presents to her people. The girl cleaned the room and prepared the meals so well, singing and humming, that this day the soldiers found in their den the look of a monk's refectory. Then all being well content, each of them gave a sol to their handmaiden. Well satisfied, they put her into the bed of their commandant, who was in town with his lady, and they petted and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Certain Humming-birds also, according to Gould, decorate their dwellings with great taste. "They instinctively fasten thereon," he stated, "beautiful pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the middle, and the smaller on the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... women are working today than were working 2 years ago. The average factory work week is once again more than 40 hours; our industries are turning out more goods than ever before; and more than half of the manufacturing capacity that lay silent and wasted 100 weeks ago is humming with activity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... Sir, I heard a humming, (And that a strange one too) which did awake me: I shak'd you Sir, and cride: as mine eyes opend, I saw their weapons drawne: there was a noyse, That's verily: 'tis best we stand vpon our guard; Or that we quit this place: let's ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... an amorous Danae, or by whatever name a fair one visited by the gods might be called, if indeed it were not a shepherdess or huntress to whom they descended. And as elements of this kind, from "Ovid's Metamorphoses," or the "Pantheon Mythicum" of Pomey, were humming in swarms about my head, I had soon put together in my imagination a little piece of the kind, of which I can only say that the scene was rural, and that there was no lack in it of king's daughters, princes, or gods. Mercury, especially, made so vivid an impression ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of a thin tendril instead of gut. Half a coco shell is fixed in the middle of the bow, which, when playing, is placed against the abdomen, and serves as a sounding board; and the string when struck with a short wand, gave out a pleasing humming sound, realizing the idea of the harp and plectrum in their simplest forms. Others accompanied the musician on Jews' harps of bamboos, as accurate as those of the Mintras on the Malay Peninsula; and there was one who played on a guitar, which he ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the red sham to her skirt, Sissy was able to chaperon her senior all the more effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the coming of his friend in the latter's study, and when Borgert entered, serene of brow and humming an operatic ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... and in both cases the people felt it. Away and alone, in the heart of Africa, when mourning "the pride and avarice that make man a wolf to man," Livingstone would welcome the "good time coming," humming the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She hoisted herself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, striding beneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her, faintly humming to himself: ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... night I was in Zinkand's," he said. "The music playing, glasses clinking, voices humming, women laughing, and I was ordering eggs—yes, sir, eggs, fried and boiled and poached and scrambled, and in all sorts of ways, and downing them as ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care that the stick did not reach ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... westerly arch which celebrates Waterloo, there to sniff and immerse myself in the town. The hour is 8:15 post meridien and the time is early summer. I have just rolled down Wellington Street from the Strand, smoking a ninepence Vuelta Abajo, humming an ancient air. One of Simpson's incomparable English dinners—salmon with lobster sauce, a cut from the joint, two vegetables, a cress salad, a slice of old Stilton and a mug of bitter—has lost itself, amazed and enchanted, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... fair, Ray round with flames her disk of seed, And many a rose-carnation feed With summer spice the humming air; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at play beneath its wide-spreading branches, one fine day in the early spring. He had his lap full of flowers, which the fields and lanes had supplied him with, and he was humming a tune to himself as ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... the sullen thud and swish of racing seas along the vessel's skin, kept the storm ever in mind: the dizzy plunge of the bows into great gray seas, with its accompanying rise of the stern and the hollow jar and thump of the rudder-post in its port, kept the interior humming with sound ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... with a rich pearly shell prepared for the purpose, it will change houses, and then, secured by a gold or silver chain, roams about the wearer, waving its red and blue claws in a warlike manner. Birds are, perhaps, more commonly used as natural ornaments than any other, and a cloak of the skins of humming birds is one of the most magnificent objects to be imagined. One, of a rare species, was once sold in Europe for $5,000. Single birds are often worth $700 or $800. A cloak of the skin of the great auk would bring $8,000 or $10,000. Some of the most beautiful pheasants ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... upon discovery bent, upon adventure. Reconnoitering, as from some deep ambush in the shrubberies where the blackbirds hid and whistled, it flew down against the house, stared in at the nursery windows, fluttered up and down the glass with a marvellous, sweet humming—and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... door a humming voice floated out to her, and going inside, she found the girl, in a new frock, practising a dance step before the mirror. "This is the lame duck, mother, but it's different from the one we danced ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... slab of wood round his head, hitting it on the ground once or twice to make it spin. The thing gave out a droning sound. The crowd of yelling fiends around the corpse became suddenly quiet. The droning increased to a loud humming. Every eye ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... let his eyes wander to a far corner of the room. Humming a careless little tune, he sauntered across to the open liquor shelves, selected a garish green bottle and turned unhurriedly back toward the door. The group ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... too true. The Griffin's cup of sorrow and mortification was full. Four great indignant tears trembled upon his cheeks ready to fall. He had been compelled that day to stand and listen to people humming his, the Griffin's, own, pet song as they left the Court, and the Griffin had not been able to ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... summer afternoon, Paris sat in the shade of a tree at the foot of Mount Ida, while his flocks were pasturing upon the hillside before him. The bees were humming lazily among the flowers; the cicadas were chirping among the leaves above his head; and now and then a bird twittered softly among the bushes behind him. All else was still, as if enjoying to the full the delicious calm of ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... hopeless that the great jolly face of Mrs. Council stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not worn for years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting. Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar-tip. Both women felt all this peace and beauty of the morning, dimly, and it disturbed Mrs. Council because the other ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... blotches on grass nibbled short by flocks of sheep, were fresh and green in the sunlight. Wild flowers spangled them with gold and silver. No horrors lurked in the woods, where birds sang shrill choruses to the humming undertone of nature's organists. Little French towns stood white on the hillsides and in villages of whitewashed houses under thatch roofs, with deep, low barns filled with the first fruits of the harvest, peasant girls laughed ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... a glimpse of Kitty curled up on the mat outside the door, with the skipping-rope still in her hand. She had evidently been listening to the singing, for she crept away, but in the distance I could hear her humming 'Ye banks and braes' in a sweet childish treble that was very harmonious ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the strange inebriate stood swaying over the prostrate girl, making a grave, drunken effort to grasp the situation, then the Italian proprietress came into the room humming a cheerful strain, and carrying a burden of fried sausages. She beheld the horror, uttered a piercing scream, and dashed up the narrow stairs. Nickie went up the stairs after her, anxious to explain. The horrified people pressing at the front door and the windows saw him pass out ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... little John bringing up the rear. But though often disturbed in the enjoyment of those delightful recitations, they nevertheless sunk deep into John Clare's mind, until he found himself repeating all day long the songs he had heard, and even in his dreams kept humming— ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... garden of the house in which he was born there was always a huge straggling patch of mignonette. His mother used to sit there on summer mornings and read to him, and when he lay on his back in the sunshine he used to watch the butterflies and humming-birds and trees, and sniff the fragrance that filled the air. When his mother died, he wandered into the garden, sought the familiar corner, and flung himself on the bed of mignonette to cry his ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... earth swarms with a billion other similar creatures with the same needs, the same destiny; for, after all, the difference between a Zulu and a Greek is not much greater than that between a purple-green humming-bird and a canary; and to think that this wave of man appearing to-day on the staid old earth, like the swarms of innumerable insects of June, is but one of a million other waves of a million other years. To consider, furthermore, that all those who have ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... military and proud. Then came the porters in single file, the one carrying the folded lion skin leading the way; those bearing the waterbuck trophy and meat bringing up the rear. They kept up an undertone of humming in a minor key; occasionally breaking into a short musical ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... sympathy is quickly influenced by the example of those around them. Mrs. Howard led the traveller to speak of what he had seen in different countries—of natural history—of the beaver, and the moose-deer, and the humming-bird, that is scarcely larger than a bumble bee; and the mocking-bird, that can imitate the notes of all other birds. Charles niched himself into a corner of the sofa upon which the gentlemen were sitting, and grew very attentive. He was rather surprised to perceive that ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the treasures of the estate, anxious to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns, uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a branch from ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 3d. At 5 A.M. we saw three hands who had left us the day before on board the Humming Bird privateer, who had been enticed by some of the owners to leave us by making of them drunk. About 10 we saw their canoe going ashore with our hands in her, also Joseph Ferrow, whom we had brought from Rhode Island, and since given him clothes, but who had entered on board that sloop as boatswain. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... funereal order, with gently springing, mincing, jogging action, some holding up twigs, others balancing open baskets of grain and tools on their heads, and with their bodies, arms, and heads in unison with the whole hobbling-bobling motion, kept in harmony to a low, mixed, droning, humming chorus. As the sultan's door was approached, he likewise rose, and, mingling in the crowd, performed ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... magna neglecta. Horned lark. Otocoris alpestris leucolaema. Yellow warbler. Dendroica aestiva. Western wood-pewee. Contopus richardsonii. Humming-bird. Trochilus colubris. Long-tailed chat. Icteria ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... from the roar of the crowd, Hand of the beggar, and purse of the proud, Gladly go back to the humming of bees, Carols of birds, and the whisper of trees, Gladly dispense with the voices of men, Thankful to ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... and doubling the size of the building; the fruit trees had been pruned and tended; an old grape arbour raised and trained into a quaint sort of pergola, a strange sight, then, in America; a beautiful old sun-dial drowsed in a tangle of nasturtiums. A delicate, dreamy humming led my eyes to a group of beehives (always dear to me because of the Miel du Chamounix and our happy, sweet-toothed boyhood!) and near a border of poppies, marigold and hardy mignonette a great hound lay, vigilant beside a large, shallow basket, shaded by a gnarled wistaria clump. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... been done?" Newman repeated the words, unconscious of their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying; M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears. All that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious. "Do you suppose I can take this?" he asked. "Do you suppose it can matter to me what you say? Do you ...
— The American • Henry James
... great leap the Eagle soared away from the camp amidst the humming of bullets from the rifles of the angry Uhlans, who fired rapidly but without proper aim. Accustomed as they were to shooting at targets on a level with themselves, they found it an entirely different proposition to properly aim their weapons when their quarry was at some ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... or two to see if Basil would come to her. Then, as he did not, she returned to the morning room where he had had his lesson. He was still there, standing by the window, but she was pleased to hear as she went in that he was humming to himself the air that Ulric had ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... geese, canary birds, and native birds in cages. Here also were archaeological relics, plants, beetles and birds for gathering. And here too, for the first time, I had the opportunity of examining his great collection of Ecuadorean humming-birds and a magnificent lot of Guatemalan quetzal skins, among them probably ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the children were really distressed, with the exception of Friedrich, who had, as usual, given about half his attention to the subject in hand; and who now sat absently humming to himself the account of Bluebeard's position and character, as ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... painful to spend an hour with him, although his conversation was very profound and interesting. But it was like attempting to take up and solve a difficult problem in geometry. I was tired, and wanted to be humming a negro melody to myself. He was a man of absolute integrity, not caring whether he pleased or displeased anybody. He had a good deal of literary knowledge, was specially fond of Emerson, and knew him very thoroughly, both prose and verse. He had a good deal ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... hide me in some hollow lair, Red hills of Var! and ye umbrella-pines, Cover me like a gamp! I cannot bear This Apparition with its armed lines Humming the strain, "Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... felt her heart beat against their bark; when I look at the lake, the mountains, snows and meadows, trees and jagged rocks, swimming in a warm atmosphere which seems to bathe all nature in one perfumed liquid; when I hear the sighing breeze, the humming insects, and the quivering leaves, the waves of the lake breaking on the shore, with the gentle rustling sound of silken folds unrolling one by one; when I see the shadow of her whom God has made my companion until my life's end cast beside mine upon the grass ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of a little girl being carried on the shoulders of two others. She sits with outstretched arms as they walk about with her, and all the rest clap their hands and, stopping before each hut, sing pretty airs, some beating time on their little skirts of cow-skin, and others making a curious humming sound between the songs. Excepting this and the skipping-rope, the play of the girls consists in imitating the serious work of their mothers—building little huts, making small pots and cooking, pounding corn in miniature mortars, or hoeing tiny gardens. The boys play ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... distant encampment caught the keen eye of Jackson as he rode, humming, care-free, the burden of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the cause of the handsome corollas of the trumpet creeper (Tecoma radicans) being so often split and torn has been accounted for in various ways in published notes on the subject. Humming birds and ants have been blamed, the humming birds being such constant visitors of these flowers that it really seemed as though they must be the authors of the mischief. I have often watched them when they appeared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... a very charming place. It is a place where it is permitted to you to surrender yourself to the most delicious reflections. You are in the presence of humming-birds, not ostriches or owls. The people are smoking cigarettes, or cigars at worst, not meerschaums. The establishment itself is a dazzle of decoration, a little corner of the Louvre. There is no shouting or swearing, but a pleasing hum. The calls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... he heard of nothing else, but the daughters of the house, and the maids, humming it over in every corner, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... had become a warm and comfortable residence well finished and well furnished. In 1801 Nairne wrote to his sister, with some natural exultation, that where he had at first found an untrodden wilderness were now order, neatness, good buildings, a garden and plenty of flowers, fruits and humming birds. In the winter one might often say "O, it's cold," but means of warming oneself were always available. His wife had proved always a useful helper and was indeed a motherly, practical woman, beloved by the people. These came ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming, singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000 paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... an apt pupil to Timothy's friendly instructions when he had come home from college and passed on his acquirements in the art terpsichorean. The lessons had taken place in the central, biggest space in the barn, as she had said, with Timothy humming an accompaniment until breathless, and then she taking up the tune in her turn. This little taste of the joys of dancing had made her long for more. She failed to see how anything that made for such pure and unadulterated delight could be so wicked ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... were soon to take up their attention. While they were talking a strange humming arose on every side and seemed to fill the entire hut. At first, it was like a swarm of bees, but it grew louder and louder till it threatened to swell ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... front gate, Simeon and Abel overtook a woman. She had a long shawl over her head, and she was humming some faint air of her ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... came humming out from Weald. It would be armed, of course. It came droning, droning up the forty-odd thousand miles from the planet. Calhoun swore. He could not call his students and tell them what was happening. The guard-ship ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... very good of you." And, pausing a few moments, he looked abstractedly into the air, humming ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... had been a trustworthy guide; she had brought me out of the depth of elf-land into the material world again. It had been a singular adventure, certainly; and I mused over it with a sense of mysterious pleasure as I sauntered along, humming snatches of airs, and accompanying myself on the strings. Hark! what light step was that behind me? It sounded like Elsie's; but no, Elsie was not there. The same impression or hallucination, however, recurred several times before I reached the outskirts ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... held on to life for your sake as an atonement for my sins. Now, I go! Cumberledge—your notebook. Subjective sensations, swimming in the head, light flashes before the eyes, soothing torpor, some touch of coldness, constriction of the temples, humming in the ears, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... questioningly, some shouting words I could not hear. Then I saw some running; and next, as I stood there wondering, came another crack, and then a volley like the noise of a great fire licking into dry wood, and things that were not bees humming round about. A distant man in a yellow hunting shirt stumbled, and was drowned in the tangle as in water. Around me men dropped plough-handles and women baskets, and as we ran our legs grew numb and our bodies cold at a sound which had haunted us in dreams by night—the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fourth was this elegant box, with a view of Margate on the lid; then came these six sherry labels with silver rims; a snuff-box with an inwisible mouse; a coral rattle with silver bells; a silk yard measure in a walnut-shell; a couple of West India beetles; a humming-bird in a glass case, which I lost; and then these dozen bodkins with silver eyes—so that altogether I have made a pretty good night's work of it. Kitey Graves wasn't in great force, so after I had sung ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... sudden fit of madness. She had caught up a light shawl, which she extended from hand to hand, as if she were dancing with some one, and then she proceeded to execute a slow waltz in this circumscribed space, humming the improvised music in a mystical and rhythmical manner. And what were these dark utterances that the inspired one gave forth, as she glanced from time to time at ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Ruby-throated humming-birds, with breasts of burnished gold, fluttered about the garden on the terrace in front of me in dainty flight, or else poised themselves in mid-air opposite the sweet-smelling blossoms of the frangipanni, their little wings moving so rapidly as to make them appear without motion; broad-backed ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... appeared PRECISELY AT THE RIGHT MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH to which their adaptations were appropriate, and precisely at the proper place in which all the conditions of life to which they were adapted occurred: the humming-birds at the same time as the flowers; the trichina at the same time as the pig; the bark-coloured moth at the same time as the oak, and the wasp-like moth at the same time as the wasp which protects it. Without processes of selection we should be obliged ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... stood thus with his hand pressed against his breast until a wagon went through the street at a sharp pace; he followed it and went home. He had to stand for a long time and rattle the front door before it would open, then he ran humming up the stairs, and when he had entered the room he threw himself down on the sofa with one of Smollett's novels in his hand, and read and laughed till after midnight. At last it grew too cold in the room, he ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... generally am. Well, I can see what we don't want of these forests sailing sawn up to China, and this river sprinkled with sawmills and wood-pulp factories. Then I can hear the big dynamoes humming, and the thump of the mine stamps run with the current the men who put them down will get for nothing. What we're wasting round Somasco is going to feed ten thousand people by ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... nearer to the carcase of the hear, they became aware of a curious humming sound in the air. The cause was soon apparent and the mystery that had puzzled them was solved when they reached the beast. The carcase was covered with bees while close above it hummed a swarm of others watching for an exposed place to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... need of him, Shall want its Man, predestined by that need, To pour his life in fiery word or deed,— The strong Archangel of the Elohim! Earth's hollow want is prophet of his coming: In the low murmur of her famished cry, And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly, Ye hear the near invisible humming Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky Into cool ripples of new life and hope, While far in its dissolving ether ope Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer With Sabbath gleams the troubled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... [Suddenly finding that he has nothing else to say, and being ill at ease in consequence, he strolls about the room humming a certain ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... great piles of a certain plant or weed are collected and put in such a position that the smoke will be carried against the nesting-places of the swarms. The piles are then fired. The smoke neither kills the bees nor does it drive them off; it merely stupefies them. When the humming of the bees is hushed, comb and honey are easily removed. A considerable part of the wax is exported, but thousands ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... blossoming of flowers. The corn-lands promised a rare harvest, and the apple orchards were weighed down with their red and white blossoms. The little brown streams in the woods brimmed over in the grass, and the air was full of sweet mellow sunlight, a cool fragrant breeze, a continual music of humming bees and soaring larks and mule-bells ringing on the roads, and childish laughter ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... among cushions, and gently to ride out along streets and roads that she had so often tramped in every kind of weather, was enough to intoxicate Jenny. She heard the soft humming of the engine, and saw lamps and other vehicles flashing by, with a sense of effortless speed that was to her incomparable. If only she had been mentally at ease, and free from distraction, she would have enjoyed every instant of ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... was as taut as a bowstring and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea gully, and the Hispaniola would go humming ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about one hundred and fifty kinds of birds on the island of Puerto Rico. Among these are the mocking bird, the wild canary, the sugar bird, the thrush, the humming bird, the owl, the hawk, the dove, the cuckoo, the oriole, the nightingale, and the Guinea bird. During the migrating season, many other birds fly ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... The slope was free from snow, and as the electrical waves swept in close succession, about thirty seconds apart, they snapped, hummed, and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones (porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only a few steps without weakening ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... had set Odo's memories humming like a hive of bees, and without heeding his companion's allusions he asked—"And ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... kirkyard, "just," as they said, "to hae anither look at the orator;" and he must pass through the midst of them. With his very soul steeped in shame, and his cheeks covered with confusion, he stepped from the kirk door. A humming noise issued through the crowd, and every one turned their faces towards him. His misery was greater than he could bear. "Yon was oratory for ye!" said one. "Poor deevil!" added another, "I'm sorry for him; but it was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... the papers. We think the tale one of the quietest, prettiest things we have seen. You have been temperate in the use of localities, which generally spoil poems laid in exotic regions. You mostly cannot stir out (in such things) for humming-birds and fireflies. A tree is a Magnolia, etc.—Can I but like the truly Catholic spirit? "Blame as thou mayest the Papist's erring creed,"—which and other passages brought me back to the old Anthology days and the admonitory lesson to "Dear George" on "The Vesper ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... lake about one hundred and fifty miles west of the point of junction. The two rivers, about the place of their confluence, are bordered by immense prairies covered with herbage, but destitute of trees. The point itself was ornamented with wild flowers of every hue, in which innumerable humming-birds were "banqueting ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... crowd about the hole, crawling over each other, and going in and coming out. Thorn could hear them humming from where he stood. He swung his torch from his arm; then, hand over hand, up the tree ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... seemed very curious to watch the sails going round in the darkness, but Jimmy could see them rise and fall, because they looked black against the blue sky. The mill was so near that he could hear the noise of the sails as they went round, it sounded like a very loud humming-top, and there were one or two patches of light to be seen in ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... common instinct, and, without speech, made our way back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs, Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice, and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... and saw that Rose's eyes were just closing. Still humming the last lines of the lullaby, she cast about in her mind for something else; and there came to her another song of quaint old Thomas Dekker, which she loved even more than ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... fire: the unfriendly elements Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time To give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight Must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze; Where, for a monument upon thy bones, And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse, Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida. Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink and paper, My casket and my jewels; and bid Nicander Bring me the satin coffer: lay the babe Upon the pillow: hie thee, whiles I say A priestly farewell ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... "I guess it didn't take me thinking five seconds. I set the wires humming asking a description of this fighting kid. I got it. It was my man. The feller ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... I loved her as I might have discovered a new world; and I tried to express this fact, as I should have learned a new, unworldly language. I could no more have spoken unkindly to her than I could vivisect a humming-bird. I obeyed her lightest look as if she had given me an anaesthetic. Her love intoxicated me. I seemed to be the first lover who had ever used this phrase. My heart originated it, with a sense of surprise at my own imaginative quality. I was chloroformed ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... is enjoyed while she is watching alone the opening of her buds of beauty, and steeping their slumbering senses in the sweet wild music of her country. I still sometimes hear in fancy her cradle-song humming in my own Old Indian ear as I am falling asleep—although many a long year has passed since I heard it in reality, and many a long league is now between me and the land of the dear, good, black, comical, kindly ayah. Let me try whether I cannot render it, even loosely, in our own strong Anglo-Saxon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... that?" she asked, and looked round on all sides; but the old man was gone, and her little child was gone; he had taken it with him. And there in the corner the old clock was humming and whirring; the heavy leaden weight ran down to the floor—plump!—and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Well, my dear fellow, the remedy's easy; work at it a little harder;" and Somers walked on, humming a tune. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... cables of orchids, of weird shapes and vivid colouring reaching from bough to bough. Yes, there was plenty to see and marvel at, and there would be more when those few yards of rippling water had been spanned and their feet pressed the lush grass of yonder flowery mead close by the river's margin; humming birds, the plumage of which shone in the sun like burnished gold and glowing gems, butterflies as big as sparrows, with wings painted in hues so gorgeous that the painter who should attempt to reproduce them would be driven to despair, enormous dragon-flies flitting hither and thither ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... working the elevating gear, as the gun moved slowly round. The gun roared and jumped back on its mount six or eight inches, but promptly slid back again—forced back by powerful springs. The shell sped on its way, humming as it went, and struck a little short of the target, sending up a great fountain as it was exploded by the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... the crest of the hill, and in sight of the shack, shining with early lamp-light deep down among the trees of the gully, I could see Colin innocently at work on a salad, and hear him humming to himself his eternal "Vive ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... felt the effects of the fisherman's generosity, and that without needing to confess to him any necessities. As it was the custom for the little populace of Nisida to spend its leisure hours before Solomon's cottage, the old man, while he walked slowly among the different groups, humming his favourite song, discovered moral and physical weaknesses as he passed; and the same evening he or his daughter would certainly be seen coming mysteriously to bestow a benefit upon every sufferer, to lay a balm upon every wound. In short, he united in his person all those occupations whose business ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and bowed before me. I lifted ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... eye!" yelled back a courageous Irishman. "What do you think these oars are, anyway—a flock of humming birds? Whoever heard of feathering a hundred-ton weight? Feather Pike's Peak, say I; it's ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... talks, these lungs that shout, These thews that hustle us about, This brain that fills the skull with schemes, And its humming hive ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... what they call a dance of peace, and is carried on in a manner like this: They—or all that wish to participate in the dance—form in a circle around the camp-fire, singing, or rather humming, a certain tune. I went to the people of the train and told them that the Indians and myself were going to have a peace dance, and all that wished to see it could come to the camp- fire and look on. I think every ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... changing his birch-bark shoes and the linen bands on his legs, started off to see the squire. After he had got three roubles from Volgin, and the same sum from Nicholas Petrovich, he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unbinding sheaves, others ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... enjoy the pleasant walk freely; for you know, or if you do not know I hope you will learn, that it is always those who are busiest at their work that can be merriest in their hours of leisure. Nothing gives us such an appetite for enjoyment as hearty work. So Amy tripped on, humming a cheerful hymn, while poor Kitty kept on saying over and over again the words of her hymn, and vainly trying to stop her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and the fish kept ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within him? Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments? What good will those arguments do? No use whispering poetry to a man in a boiler shop. No use humming a love song in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the tune to be ground. And there is but one tune, and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind! Here's the Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why, good people, when he comes smoothly spinning through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going benevolent Humming-Top, and when you come about him with your complaints of the Grubber, you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is! What do you think of his showing himself to-night, that I may have all the blame on Monday? What do you think of his having had me over the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... are many and beautiful. Sun-birds rival the flashing colors of the humming-birds in the jungle openings; king-fishers of large size and brilliant blue plumage make the river banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... themselves. She whined like a dog in great distress, and dragged herself along apparently with the greatest difficulty. As I pursued her, she ran very nimbly, and presently flew a few yards. Then, as I went on, she flew farther and farther each time, till at last she got up, and went humming through the woods as if she had no interest in them. I went back and caught one of the young, which had simply squatted close to the ground. I then put in my coatsleeve, when it ran and nestled ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... than ever, and when she thought she caught a triumphant gleam in Mr. Bombus's eyes and heard him humming in an aggravating undertone, "In the Sweet By-and-by," she could restrain herself no longer, but raised her hand and struck him a sounding blow. Instantly she was most deeply repentant, and would have begged his pardon; but as she turned to address him, his cocked ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... the Ladrones (Anson's Voyage). Those found in the Pellew Islands Crawfurd) are believed to be feral; and lastly, it is asserted that they have become feral in New Zealand, but whether this is correct I know not.) as that a humming-bird should be found in the Old World. From the character of the other gallinaceous birds of Africa, it is not probable that Gallus is an African genus. We need not look to the western parts of Asia, for Messrs. Blyth ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... who constantly sings a Voluntary in spite of the whole Company, was more musical than ordinary after reading my Paper; and has not been contented with that, but has danced up to the Glass in the Middle of the Room, and practised Minuet-steps to his own Humming. The incorrigible Creature has gone still further, and in the open Coffee-house, with one Hand extended as leading a Lady in it, he has danced both French and Country-Dances, and admonished his supposed Partner ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and went on. The house seemed strangely quiet to him, though he could hear Winnie humming in the kitchen and appetizing odors promised a dinner on time. In the upstairs hall, Rosemary tip-toed to meet him, her eyes ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... weak and unsteady; and after clearing the northern end of Luzon the Retriever kicked round in a belt of light and baffling airs for a week. Then the monsoon freshened somewhat and the Retriever once more rolled lazily away on her course, with young Matt Peasley humming chanteys on her quarter-deck and pondering the mystery that confronts all mankind in their first adventure in fatherhood. Would it be a boy or a girl? He was expressing to himself for perhaps the thousandth time the hope that ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Lady Juliana Douglas," said the little Baronet, with much difficulty hobbling towards her, and attempting to take her hand. "Come, Harry, love; here, Cupid," cried she; and without noticing the enraged Sir Sampson, she passed on, humming a tune, and leaning upon ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... at the window with his hands in his trousers' pockets, humming a little tune and watching this amazing phenomenon which a whole village had believed to be witchcraft, as though the thing surprised him not one whit; as though, in fact, he was a trifle amused at it. Which indeed ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... was cast, and there was no going back. She heard the deep voice humming the magic melody as he came. In a moment the superb figure came into sight, moving with that royal ease of carriage so ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... returning migrations. A voyager sometimes meets with many of our common birds far out at sea. Such wanderers, it is said, when suddenly overtaken by a fog, completely lose their sense of direction and become hopelessly lost. Humming birds, those delicately organized, glittering gems, are among the most common of the land species seen ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... constantly flying about, and often insects humming, even at Christmas, we have no conception of the utter want of all appearance of life in the mountain regions in which I was now travelling. We waited on the watch till the main body of our party came up, and then, seeing no enemies, pushed on to our ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... probably get the idea that Mote and Bate used to work for his folks. He can go to a musical show, and while the performance is going on he can tell everybody in his section just which composer each song number was stolen from, humming the original air aloud to show the points of resemblance. He can do this, I say, and, what is more, he does do it. At the table d'hote place, when the Neapolitan troubadours come out in their little green jackets and their wide red sashes he is right ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... homa. Humane humana. Humanity humaneco. Humanity (mankind) homaro. Humble humila. Humble humiligi. Humble, to be humiligxi. Humerus humero. Humid malseka. Humidity malsekeco. Humiliate humiligi. Humility humileco. Humming-bird kolibro. Humorous humora. Humour humoro. Hump gxibo. Hunchback gxibulo. Hunger malsato. Hungry malsata. Hungry, to be malsati. Hundred, 100 cent. Hundredweight centfunto. Hunt cxasi. Hunting-lodge cxasdometo. Hurdle ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that descent no pen can describe. Every moment I expected to feel my shoulder gripped from behind, or to feel the hands of some mysterious and infernal power around my neck. Close behind me followed my companion, humming— ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reptiles and the birds. Only two specimens of this same animal have been found. This could easily be an exceptional species of created birds differing no more from the normal bird than the ostrich or humming bird. If there were transitional forms we ought to have them by the millions. No transitional forms have been found between reptiles and mammals; and we have seen that there are no reliable forms between man and mammals. The numerous missing links make a chain impossible. Evolution ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... rode home by departing daylight, a solemn tranquillity reigned throughout the scene. The gentle lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep just penned in their folds, the humming of the insects of the night, the distant murmurs of the sea, the last notes of the birds of day, and the first warblings of the nightingale, broke upon the ear, and served rather to increase than lessen the peaceful ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... shot sounded amidst the tumult of rushing waters and singing rigging. The echo was quickly bitten off by the rising wind. The shot sounded dully above the humming ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... flower." It is again "the bouquet of jewels, which sparkles in the fire of the day." It can be believed that their imagination would know how to furnish a new poetical appellation for each of the one hundred and fifty species which constitute this marvelous tribe of humming-birds. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... to disentangle this desert-music that their intoning voices woke, from the humming of the blood in his own veins. But he succeeded only in part. Sand was already in the air. There was reverberation, rhythm, measure; there was almost the breaking of the stream into great syllables. But was ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... however, all was very quiet round the old inn. The birds were singing, and the bees humming in the pleasant sunshine. The house looked clean and tidy, and no one was to be seen except three persons bending over a table, with their heads close together, deeply absorbed in whatever business they were engaged in. Two of these persons were Dame Bedard, the sharp landlady of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... eastward of this gaily-humming hive the long shuttered front of a deserted ducal mansion struck a note of protest and mourning amid the noise and whirl and colour of a seemingly uncaring city. On the other side of the roadway, on the ...
— When William Came • Saki
... game, the more the merrier. Each player is told to play some imaginary instrument. The leader with an imaginary baton, begins by humming some lively, familiar tune. The players follow with motions suitable to their instruments and sing the ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... not see him, she did not hear him. The silence was profound. The only sound to be heard was the humming of the bees circling around the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there was nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, stretched at full length on the bare ground, seeking the coolness of the shade. He raised his head growling, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and she shuddered a little at the thought of some hastily contrived grave, quite close to her, perchance. She had no intention of entering the tower, only to show herself in the ruins; surely if Martin were in hiding there he would contrive some means to let her know. Still humming the ballad, slightly louder than before, she went a little farther into the ruins, and stopped by a piece of fallen stone-work which had constantly afforded her a resting-place. It was here that Gilbert Crosby had caught his foot ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... bugles stopped of themselves, and Moti forgot about them, but the brightness did not go out of Sunni's face, and all day long he went about humming the air of 'Weel may the keel row,' with such variations as might be expected. He grew very thoughtful toward evening, but his eyes shone brighter than any sapphires in the Maharajah's iron boxes. As to an old Mahomedan woman from Rubbulgurh, who ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... twenty minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted with whitecaps. The Chickamin would hang on the crest of a wave and shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... motion, justling and turning. It is an heape of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages, and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babell. The noyse of it is like that of bees, an humming buzze mixed with walking tongues, and feet. It is a kind of still rore, or loude whisper. It is the greate exchange of all discourse, and noe business whatsoever but it is here stirring and on foote. It is the Synode of all pates politicke, jointed and layed together in most serious ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... red hammock, showing slim ankles that gleamed like marble through a thin film of bronze-brown silk. As she went into the house humming some Italian air she had picked up, Mary thought how young and innocently gay she seemed. It was almost impossible to believe her the same woman who had sobbed behind a disguising veil in Rose Winter's drawing-room, begging Mary to swear ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wash my hands of you," concluded the woman defiantly. "Make your choice, my child," she added with a meaning laugh and moved away, humming a snatch from a French chanson which brought the hot ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... garments and stand forth at once in bright array bedecked with fruits and flowers; here in very deed, and on the grandest scale, Nature seems with one touch to sweep away the wintry snow, and with another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... it? Out with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"—asks Mime, in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at twilight,... when there are sounds in the distance of rustling, humming and soughing, when wild muttering gusts sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker around you, a swelling confused sound surges toward you,—have you not felt a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning chill shakes your frame, your senses swim ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... top of the granite steps, waiting to greet the Durwards, whose approach was already heralded by the humming of a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... in La Plata, New York, 1892. Not about the Southwest or even North America, but Hudson's chapters on "The Puma," "Some Curious Animal Weapons," "The Mephitic Skunk," "Humming Birds," "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," "Horse and Man," etc. come home to the Southwest. Few writers tend to make readers so aware; no other has written so delightfully of the lands ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... over and over again, tapping my foot to keep time as I did so. Then Mac would join in, and perhaps another of our company. And before long everyone at the table would catch the infection, and either be humming the absurd words or keeping time with his feet, while the others did so. Sometimes people didn't care for my song; I remember one old Englishman, with a white moustache and a very red face, who looked as if ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... alert for any signs of awareness of their presence! Wait—" The Ihelian made a third adjustment on the mentacom, and it emitted a slight humming sound, and the orange glow vanished. "This will screen us for a short period, at least," he said. "And if we've not been already detected, perhaps we'll be able to follow. If you'll continue ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... doorway, then peered out cautiously. There was not a single pedestrian in sight. No need of hiking any further in this rain; so he hunted for a taxi. To-morrow he would set the wires humming relative to old Stefani Gregor. Boris Karlov, if indeed it were he, would lead the way. Hadn't Stefani and Boris been boyhood friends, and hadn't Stefani betrayed the latter in some political affair? He wasn't sure; but a glance among ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... often in my lonely wanderings, when I saw wee men in green coats among the heather, but oftener on the soft green turfy bits on the hill. And one awful time when the hill road was all silent and the grasshoppers hidden and quiet, an eerie humming came into my ears like a language I could not understand, and I felt myself waiting for something. Round the turn of the hill before you come to the old quarry it came, and I stopped stricken as a rabbit when a snake sways before it, for there ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... whenever he took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the hair outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat turned against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long face, humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without a change of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in front. A round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... months went by. Two years had passed. Angelique was now fourteen years of age and quite womanly. When she read the "Golden Legend," she would have a humming in her ears, the blood circulated quickly through the blue veins near her temples, and she felt a deep tenderness ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Julia, at my right hand there. Ah! was I not right? The roses are creeping already—creeping into their proper place. Sit back in your chair and eat slowly and drink the yellow wine, and listen to the humming of those bees. So soon you will become normal, a woman, just what you should be. Heavens! It is well that I came to see Maraton. When I saw you this morning in that room, I said to myself—'There is a human creature who half lives. What a sin to half live!' . . . Taste that salad, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at last Edith went up the staircase, and Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl softly humming to herself as she undressed, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... day off and he was going fishing. Humming to himself, he got out his reel and flies and other paraphernalia and contentedly arranged them in the back of his car. Visions of the fine, quiet time he was going to have went through George's mind, and his inhabitant decided he had better leave. He ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... like pennons on the breeze. Under the cottage eaves some swallows built their nests every spring, and to the garden came, as soon as the yellow and white honeysuckles and blue larkspurs and many-colored four-o'clocks bloomed, myriads of humming-birds, looking like rubies, and diamonds, and opals, and emeralds, and topazes, and sapphires, that had taken to themselves wings, and flown from all parts of the world to visit the living gems in this lovely spot. In the autumn, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... revealing a multitude of lines, so deeply scored, so terrible in their proclamation of deadly hate, that the sight of them would have startled the most case-hardened member of the crowds down there where the candles were twinkling in the humming camp. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the waist. She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming-top. The whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not even reap the reward—her father, or husband, or other male attendant always taking the money. She is petite, constitutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can manage to make her; ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... several times, and as these thoughts had come over her, her returning lucidity had vanished and a fresh attack of fever had shaken her. But this time her head seemed clearer; the cloud and humming had left her which had impeded the use of her ears ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... box. Mr Bickersdyke's clothes lay at the head of one of the sofas, but nobody else had staked out a claim. Psmith took possession of the sofa next to the manager's. Then, humming lightly, he undressed, and made his way downstairs to the Hot Rooms. He rather fancied himself in towels. There was something about them which seemed to suit his figure. They gave him, he though, rather a debonnaire look. He paused for a moment before the looking-glass to examine himself, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... a little distance from the house and Henrietta had to rouse herself from the state between waking and sleeping, thought and imagery, in which she had passed the journey. The jarring of the brake shocked her into a recognition of facts and the gentle humming of the engine reminded her that life had to go on as before. The persistent sound, regular, not loud, controlled, was like existence in Nelson Lodge; one wearied of it, yet one would weary more of accidents breaking the healthy beating of the engine: to-night had been one of the accidents ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... through the hot, deserted farm-yard to the house. As they entered the shaded living-room, his mother came from the kitchen, humming a bit of tune. Her eyes lit up when she saw them. She talked cheerfully as she worked. The boy said nothing. He seemed to be looking out of the open window into the orchard; instead, through his lowered eyelashes, he followed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her dutiful daughter, "I'm sure I hope not! Really, I'm very well satisfied with it;" and, getting up and going to the mirror, she set about altering the riband in her hair, humming the while the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... child—and of her face when she had lifted it to him out of the crowded street, that first day, and smiled at him... and of their long talks since. It was the Child who understood. The strange ladies had smiled at him and talked to him and drank their tea and talked again... he could hear the soft, keen humming of their voices and the flitter of garments all about him as they moved. But the child had sat very still—only her face lifted, while he told her of Athens and its beauty... and he had told her again—and again. She would never ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... purring noise the helicopter shot upward. Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint humming noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, crackling detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there was another ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... hot, the sky was blue, and the air was full of the humming and buzzing of bees and flies. A white butterfly flitted by, but soon went away over ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... herself in a little square place, with three doors, two opposite each other, and one opposite the top of the stair. She stood for a moment, without an idea in her little head what to do next. But as she stood, she began to hear a curious humming sound. Could it be the rain? No. It was much more gentle, and even monotonous than the sound of the rain, which now she scarcely heard. The low sweet humming sound went on, sometimes stopping for a little while and then beginning ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... ingenious uses to which bird lime is said to have been applied with success, is in the capture of humming-birds. The lime in this instance is made simply by chewing a few grains of wheat in the mouth until a gum is formed. It is said that by spreading this on the inside opening of the long white lily or trumpet-creeper blossom, the capture of a humming-bird is almost certain, and ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... and soaps, Pills and dopes, We all must advertise. Copper cents, Not common sense. Are the things we prize. We confess Such a dress Isn't quite becoming, But we suppose Hopkins knows This keeps business humming." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... impossible, the white man, tortured but a moment before, tipped sleepily into Fong Wu's arms. The Chinese waited until a full effect was secured, when he lifted his limp patient to the blanket-covered ironing-table. Then he went out for fuel, built a fire, and, humming softly—with no fear of waking the other—sat down to watch ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... humming as she put on her berry cap and pulled it over at a rakish angle. She had spent a very profitable afternoon laughing at herself. At first the laughter had been a little too grim, but before long the grimness had disappeared ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... he was apparently covering them with pictorial designs—strange-looking figures. He worked rapidly and attentively, sometimes threw back his head and held out his drawing at arm's-length, and kept up a soft, gay-sounding humming and whistling. The lady brushed past him in her walk; her much-trimmed skirts were voluminous. She never dropped her eyes upon his work; she only turned them, occasionally, as she passed, to a mirror suspended above the toilet-table ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... said nothing, but he looked at her, and she had no wish that he should say more. She was still calm and pale, but the blood throbbed in her temples. "You are Queen of France now," it seemed to be humming—"queen, queen, queen!" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gazetteer,—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes at Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's elbow a thousand poetic abstractions. He so often disturbed Pelisson, that the latter, raising his head, crossly said, "At least, La Fontaine, supply me with a rhyme, since you have the run of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... days, Mr. King never let Phronsie out of his sight. A new and more splendid doll, if possible, was bought, and all sorts and styles of clothes for it, which Phronsie took the greatest delight in caring for, humming happily to herself at the pleasure the poor man's little girl was taking at the same time with ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... brought his filament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure so far underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tiny glass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit of increasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium and vacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increased almost beyond imagination, followed one after another. The Miner throbbed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... one of the small iridescent beetles, of which there are many varieties. As they move about in the light, the color appears to change, like the color of the head and throat of a South American humming-bird. If the appetite of your horny toad is like that of a common toad, it will prefer an insect diet. But it will live weeks without eating anything, and unless you allow it to hunt for itself, it will probably die of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... back to the hanging between the two rooms, he listened again. This time she was awake and softly humming the air of "The sands of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... tired of hearing this, and now humming a soft note of thanks, proceeded with her task, declaring that she would make the best gingerbread boy that could possibly ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... of. To begin with she was more affectionate than usual, seeming to wish with the honey of her kisses to sweeten the bitter cross which the mistress was doomed to bear. Then she hesitated. She fidgeted about the room humming. At last she said that the doctor had come at the request of Serge, who was most anxious about his wife's health. And that excellent Doctor Rigaud, who had known her from a child, had found her suffering from great weakness. He ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... beautiful tribes by which they are inhabited. Our residence on the island of Wakenaam had been truly a tropical one. During the night, the tree frogs, crickets, razor-grinders, reptiles, and insects of every kind, kept up a continued concert. At sunrise, when the flowers unfolded themselves, the humming birds, with the metallic lustre glittering on their wings, passed rapidly from blossom to blossom. The bright yellow and black mocking-birds flew from their pendant nests, accompanied by their neighbours, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... things women die in childbirth,' kept humming in his brain from his ancient Hebrew lore. He did not remember what they were, except that one was the omission of the wife to throw into the fire the lump of dough from the Sabbath bread. But these neglects could not be visited on a Christian, he ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... imposing, with very few exceptions. Long, light, low one-story or two-story sheds they are, about as costly to erect as a row of wooden stables with us. Yet sheds like these turn out silks that sell all round the world. Sometimes only by inquiry, or by the humming of the machinery, can you distinguish a factory from an old yashiki, or an old-fashioned Japanese school building,—unless indeed you can read the Chinese characters over the garden gate. Some big brick factories and breweries exist; ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... it to me, for it begins to interest me." And the count, humming an air from "Lucia," went to sit down on a bench, while Bertuccio followed him, collecting his thoughts. Bertuccio ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hat under his left arm, walk'd with both hands in the waistband of his breeches, and his cane, that hung negligently down in a string from his right arm, trail'd most harmoniously against the pebbles, while the master of it was tripping it nicely upon his toes or humming to himself." About this period in cold weather men wore muffs as well as wigs. A ballad, describing the frost fair on the Thames in the winter of 1683-84, mentions amongst ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... assassin had fled. While I was looking round, with that pensive curiosity that one feels in places where great crimes have been committed, soldiers were ascending and descending; they stopped to look at me, and then went away singing and whistling; some near me were humming; others were laughing loudly in the courtyard. All this youthful gayety was in sharp and moving contrast to the sad gravity of those memories, and seemed like a festival of children in the room where died a grandparent ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... dug-out that the odious bombardment had compelled us to hollow out of the hillside ten metres deep. There, in complete darkness, night was awaited for the chance to get out. But once my fellow non-commissioned officers and I began humming the nine symphonies of Beethoven. I cannot tell what thrill woke those notes within us. They seemed to kindle great lights in the cave. We forgot the Chinese torture of being unable to lie, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... cheerfully, "sometimes when I stand at our garden-gate, and look round me for miles and miles away, and the sweet air blows past me, and the bees are humming, and the birds calling to one another, and everything is so peaceful, with father happy over his work not far off, I think I don't know how happy I am. I try to catch hold of the feeling and keep it, but it slips away somehow. Only I thank ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. One was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... words, the father, who had been arranging his cravat in the glass, while he uttered them in a disconnected careless manner, withdrew, humming a tune as he went. The son, who had appeared so lost in thought as not to hear or understand them, remained quite still and silent. After the lapse of half an hour or so, the elder Chester, gaily dressed, went out. The younger still sat with his head resting on his hands, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... parlor and Mr. Allison's library. But she stopped short at the threshold, for there, just within the rich folds of the hanging barrier, apparently searching for some particular book among the shelves nearest the parlor and farthest from the library lights, and humming musically to himself as he ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... rest; all his weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... white as the tablecloth. She stared at the Jones man as if she couldn't believe her eyes, and her breath come short and quick. I thought sure she was going to cry. And what she ate of that meal wouldn't have made a lunch for a hearty humming-bird. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... as if especially intended for him; and he repeated them to himself that he might remember them, they sounded so sweet and comfortable heard for the first time just when he most needed comfort. Miss Celia saw a new expression in the boy's face as she glanced down at him, and heard a little humming at her side when all stood up to sing the cheerful hymn with which they ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... light from the wings, soon to give place, when the curtain rises, to the brilliant light from the theatre, Cardailhac in black coat and white cravat, his hat cocked over one ear, casts a last glance over the arrangement of the scenery, hastens the workmen, compliments the ingenue, humming a tune the while, radiant and superb. To see him, no one would ever suspect the terrible anxieties by which his mind is beset. As he was involved with all the others in the Nabob's downfall, in which his stock company was swallowed up, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cigarette with a resigned look and goes on making notes. DAN enters from the kitchen, keeping time to the music, carrying a bunch of roses, wearing overalls over flannel trousers and a brown golf jacket, and smoking. He goes to the fireplace and clumps the roses into a vase on the mantelpiece, humming the tune. He crosses to the gramophone, still in rhythm, MRS. BRAMSON keeping time skittishly with her hands. He turns off the gramophone and looks over OLIVIA'S shoulder ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... little drawing room, where she sat ready to preside over her china tea tray with its quaint Sevres cups and saucers and parcel gilt apostle spoons, while a tall stand was on her left with its bronze kettle humming and whispering, and uttering a pleasant coo now and then, as it felt the warm kisses of ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... pleasant place is a college dormitory at night! The rooms with their green-hooded lights and boyish similarity of decoration, the amiable buzz and stir of a game of cards under festoons of tobacco smoke, the wiry tinkle of a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his pipe (one of those new "class pipes" with inlaid silver numerals, which appear ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... who possessed a sweet mellow voice, and was cheering himself, as he stood at the helm, by humming a hymn, or something like one, for the words were not distinguishable in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... chamber; the charge singed the hair of a captain, and the bullet lodged in the middle of the word "Prudencia" on the facade of the Municipality. The captain would have it that he was killed, spun round on his own centre like a humming-top, and finally, coming to himself, shook out his clothes in search of the lead. There was a roar of laughter, and the careless soldier who had endangered the life of his officer was allowed to pass without rebuke. That was the worst point in Carlist discipline ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... wild, beautiful song, his sisters humming the accompaniment. Then one song and another was called for, and the night rang with ballad and barcarole, glee and round. There never seemed to be any limit to ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... took the fish right behind the gills. He gave a quick spurt that brought the line humming from its spool. Scotty followed quickly, caught the shaft, then sped upward ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... rivers, about the place of their confluence, are bordered by immense prairies covered with herbage, but destitute of trees. The point itself was ornamented with wild flowers of every hue, in which innumerable humming-birds were "banqueting nearly the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... unobserved. He might easily have passed her, for it was nearly dark from the yew-tree and the row of elms that shut out, the western sky, where the sunset was just dying away. His mind, too, was occupied with other things, and he was humming over the verse of a hymn the boys had been singing—'Far from my heavenly home.' There was no drilling into them the proper rendering of the ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... I knew them better!—are good to look at, and I think the bees, the woodpeckers, the humming-birds and other wood folk must find some of them good otherwise. At Eagles Mere there was a yellow birch in the bark of which scores of holes had been drilled by the woodpeckers or the bees, at regularly spaced intervals, to let the forest life drink at will of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances—a trifle clumsily—at harvest feast when the grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming bird and the bee dance about the flowers which dance to the breeze. The innocent lamb, type of the White Christ, dances on the green, and the matronly cow perpetrates an occasional stiff enormity when she fancies herself unobserved. All the sportive rollickings of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... still could see that slender strand of imperm wire, how its silvery length had turned to red under the blue flame. Deep red at first and then brighter until it flamed in almost white-hot incandescence. And all the while the humming of the transformer as the force field built up. The humming of the transformer and the muted roaring of the burner and the glowing heat in the length ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... gay plumage and varied melodies, inspired delight; every traveller expressed his pleasure in listening to the mocking-bird, which carolled a thousand several tunes, imitating and excelling the notes of all its rivals. The humming-bird, so brilliant in its plumage, and so delicate in its form, quick in motion, yet not fearing the presence of man, hunting about the flowers like the bee gathering honey, rebounding from the blossoms into which ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... as boys sailing kites. One of the models fluttered and settled down before it reached the other side, and David's machine, which had commanded most attention because it was different, started out bravely enough, its little propeller making a busy humming as it skimmed along. But it had gone hardly ten yards before it collapsed and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... pleased. Chloe was half a century old, with a warm, affectionate, red heart under her black seeming; and it pulsated around me now, as I lay there, under her care, in absolute quiet, hushed to content by her humming ways ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... simply told in the golden words of a poet. They are calculated to teach us humanity toward the winged creatures of the air, so often the victims of our cruel sports. We have The Swallow, The Eagle, The Robin, The Cock, The Swan, The Falcon, The Wood Dove, The Humming Bird, The Scarlet Tannager, The Peacock, and The Owl, each bird occupying his own illuminated page; each with his own simple and touching legend. Mr. Leland's little poems will speak to many a heart, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... said, taking the old man by the sleeve, and leading him down the road with him. "There is something that I have to say to you, and it is easier for me to say it now, when the good beer is humming in my ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scolding. "What are they about?" He waited patiently. At last all was still, as though suddenly cut off; they had separated. He was meaning to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened and someone began going downstairs humming a tune. "How is it they all make such a noise?" flashed through his mind. Once more he closed the door and waited. At last all was still, not a soul stirring. He was just taking a step towards the stairs when he heard ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... which the ungallant M. de Maupeou had had the politeness to send me in the morning. One of the company proceeded to cut it, when scarcely had he pierced the crust, than its perfidious contents proved to be an immense swarm of cockchafers, which spread humming and buzzing all over the chamber. Zamor, who had never before seen these insects, began to pursue them all over the room, buzzing and humming as loudly as they did. The chase lasted a long time; but at last the poor cockchafers weary of carrying on the war, and mistaking the peruke ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... was alone in the yellow sunlight which poured over the slope from the west: and I went musing on till getting to the corner of the stables I saw Darry just round the corner grooming a black horse. He was working energetically, and humming to himself as he worked a refrain which I learned afterwards to know well. All I could make out was, "I'm going home"—several times repeated. I came near before he saw me, and he started; then bid me good evening and "hoped I found ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... women, some children, and a good bourgeois of about forty years old, who, seeing that the collection was about to begin again, quitted his place with an air of profound contempt for all these new songs, and humming an old pastoral which he placed infinitely above them. It seemed to him that several men as he passed them made him signs; but as he did not belong to any secret society or any masonic lodge, he went on, singing ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... porker in the backward regions of the place, the stamp of a horse's foot, and the rattle of a chain in a manger-ring—sounds quite unmusical in themselves—blended with the birds' singing, and the thick humming of the bees, into an actual music in which no note was discordant. The day was without a cloud, and the soft light was diffused everywhere on a ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... "Ogostine," but festal lilts of Italy, liquid and strangely sweet to her; and at such times, when the actual voice was not in her ears, still she blushed with delight to hear in her heart the thrilling echoes of his barcaroles, and found them humming cheerily ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... family luxuries and you are lost as far as satisfying them economically is concerned," remarked a clever housewife. "Even a rat will not taste bread when bacon is nigh," observed a sage physiologist. The demand for flavor grows and grows with pampering, till nothing but humming-birds' tongues and miniature geese floating in a sea of aspic jelly will satisfy the palate of him who eats solely for flavor—who never knows the sauce of hunger, or the deliciousness of a plain crust of bread. We must be on ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... and scarlet vine, Over the doorway twist and twine And every day, when the house is still, The humming-bird comes to the window-sill. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... sitting pressed to one another, seemed like one person. A poet would have admired their two heads, inspired by the same sentiment, colored in the same tones, silent and saddened in presence of that humming happiness sparkling in diamonds, gay with flowers,—a gayety in which there was something fleeting. The joy of those noisy and splendid groups was visible; that of Ginevra and Luigi was buried in their bosom. On one side the tumult of common pleasure, on the other, the delicate ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... detract little from the beauty and interest of the woodlands. The warblers, the humming bird, the tanager, the bob-o-link, the ovenbird, the vireos, the chat, the red start, the oriole, the dickcissel, the black-billed cuckoo, all greeted their friends as numerously as ever. So with the flowers: the columbine, the shooting star, the painted cup, the puccoon, the beautiful ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... full of the idea. He talked about it to his clerks at the store. He looked into restaurant windows, humming a tune in the excess of his delight. He looked into bakers' windows and confectionery shops, and a whiff of frying bacon from a little blind court he passed almost set him dancing. Indeed, Mr. Grapewine was ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... cod and haddock in the other seasons. He never felt so happy as when he was on the sea; and if he couldn't go to sea, he sat alone at home in the croft mending his gear. He never went down to the harbour for work like the other fishermen and never worked on the land. Humming away and talking to himself he fiddled about in his shed, around his boat-house or his croft, his hands all grubby with tar and grease. If addressed, he was abrupt and curt in his answers, sometimes even abusive. Hardly ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... people are. I don't feel the joy of the little animals playing, the freedom of the flight of birds, the ghostly plucking of the growing grass, the sweet stab of the mating lust of the wild-horned apigator, the humming of bees working to build a hive, and the sleepy stupid arrogance of the giant cabbage-eating deuxnez. I can feel nothing without the Skin I have worn so long. I ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... Kate humming, "Somewhere the sun is shining," solely, I believe, because she knew it aggravated me. At any other time I should probably have thrown a pillow at her, but just now I was too eager to see if Jim ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Correy!" I snapped as I hurried to the instrument. "Dival, take those reports." I gestured towards the two attention signals that were glowing and softly humming and thrust my head into the shelter of the television instrument's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... growing dusk as the man went away. The crickets sang with a loud, accusing, clamour. Slowly we turned and went into the dark house, David whistling under his breath. Elizabeth was resting in her chair. She was humming an old hymn ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... with a white moss which hangs from their branches to the ground. At night-time, when the moonlight falls, pearly grey, on the indeterminate crest of the forests, the trees look like an army of phantoms in long, trailing veils. In the daytime a crowd of large, beautiful butterflies, brilliant humming birds, and blue-winged jays and parroquets come and cling to the moss, which then resembles a white tapestry embroidered ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the idea that Mote and Bate used to work for his folks. He can go to a musical show, and while the performance is going on he can tell everybody in his section just which composer each song number was stolen from, humming the original air aloud to show the points of resemblance. He can do this, I say, and, what is more, he does do it. At the table d'hote place, when the Neapolitan troubadours come out in their little green ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition as it was explanatory, from her point of view, of the method in which Wordsworth composed, and was helped in his labours by his enthusiastic sister. 'Well, you know,' she said, 'Mr. Wordsworth went humming and booing about, and she, Miss Dorothy, kept close behint him, and she picked up the bits as he let 'em fall, and tak' 'em down, and put 'em together on paper for him. And you may be very well sure as how she didn't understand ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... waist; he carry'd his hat under his left arm, walk'd with both hands in the waistband of his breeches, and his cane, that hung negligently down in a string from his right arm, trail'd most harmoniously against the pebbles, while the master of it was tripping it nicely upon his toes or humming to himself." About this period in cold weather men wore muffs as well as wigs. A ballad, describing the frost fair on the Thames in the winter of 1683-84, mentions amongst ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... father, but his heart ached when he thought of the woman who should be by his side. Oh that they two could undertake this magical journey together, silent and alone in a silent and lonely world. He made no inquiries for Anne, and Daisy said nothing. Only when the car was humming along the homeward road to land them at the church did she open her mouth. The awe had worn off, and she babbled as of old in the very face ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... of the trail and passed her as though she had been a cactus or a rock that he must walk around! Mary V went hot all over, with rage before her wits came back. Johnny had not gone ten feet ahead of her when she was humming softly to herself a little, old-fashioned tune. And the tune ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... of earth; Fit playfellow for Fays, by moonlight pale, In harmless sport and mirth, (That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!) Thou human humming-bee extracting honey From ev'ry blossom in the world that blows, Singing in Youth's Elysium ever sunny, (Another tumble!—that's his precious nose!) Thy father's pride and hope! (He'll break the mirror with that skipping-rope!) With pure heart newly stamp'd from Nature's ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... bees went for honey, And the humming-birds too; And there the pretty butterflies ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... I was playing when you came in? (Sits down at the piano.) I heard it everywhere in Germany. (Begins to play and sing, but stops short.) But, bless my soul, here is the music! You can play it and sing it for yourself. (Goes out, humming the air.) ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... stretches on and on under the forests of the Vosges, there is a stone-breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first time I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swelling heart for the great city. The sight of this man did me good, for he was humming a song as he broke his stones. We exchanged a few words, and he said at the end: "Well, good-by, my boy, good courage and good luck!" Since then I have passed and repassed along that same route, under circumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a very poetical nature; but I think the scene by which we were surrounded aroused what little I had. The birds were finding their way to the hedgerows to seek rest for the night, ever and anon giving a faint chirp of content. The beetles went humming heedlessly by, the bees laden with honey returned to their hives, and all nature seemed to be at peace. The honeysuckle and the hedge flowers that grew in wild confusion perfumed the lane in which we walked; the nuts hung ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... I watch thy coming, As evening shadows stretch o'er moor and dell; When the wild bee hath ceased her busy humming, And silence hangs on all ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the crowds filled the space from wall to wall, so that when a string of coolies came along, bearing burdens in the usual manner from a stick over the shoulder and humming the cheerful though monotonous "get-out-of-the-way" tune, we had to step aside, close against or into some store to let them pass; and when an occasional chair came along it swept the entire traffic aside as a taxi might in a crowded alley of ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... bound, is brewing tea! She's humming at her work the way she will, And, happen so, she maybe thinks of me And wishes she'd another ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that the fertility of a cheerful mind crowds everything, so that the tree is entangled in its own branches; or it may be that the cheerful mind cares less whether it is understood or not; as a man is less articulate when he is humming than when ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of the Dominie, the boys perceiving that he was no longer wrapped up in his algebra, had partly settled to their desks, and in their apparent attention to their lessons reminded me of the humming of bees before a hive ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the task a mind polished and matured by judgment and experience. But, generally speaking, we rather expect reason than rhyme from an elderly gentleman; and when the reverse is the case, the pursuit fits them as ridiculously as would a humming-top or a hoop. Yet there are many who, having passed a life in the sole occupation of making money—the most unpoetical of all avocations—that in their retirement entertain themselves with such fantastic pranks and antics, as only serve to amuse the lookers-on. A ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath; her head was humming with new knowledge. "I'm much obliged to you," she repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: "How ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... transported him; and he did these things instinctively, mechanically, without interruption to his rapture. Speed and the wind of speed, the air rushing by like a water-race as he ripped through it, the streaming past him of trees and hedges, the humming and throbbing of his engines, were ecstasy to Jimmy. He had learned to drive the thing, and his sense of power over it gave him the physical exaltation that he craved for. I believe that when he sat in his motor-car, driving it, he was filled, intoxicated, with the ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... an hour later Hans Mueller was heard coming back. The German boy was humming to himself and at the same time throwing up the new ball he had ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... Humming a bar of a Genoese barcarole, Muriel ran up stairs to join her governess; but Salome turned and followed the master of the house to the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... surface of splendid flowers. The scarlet cups of the trumpet-vine (bignonia), the white starlike blossoms of the cypress-creeper, and the pink flowers of the wild althea or cotton-rose (hibiscus grandiflora), all blended their colours, inviting the large painted butterflies and ruby-throated humming birds that played among their silken corollas. As if in contrast with these bright spots in the landscape, there were others that looked dark and gloomy. You could see through long vistas in the forest, where the trees grew out of green slimy water. Here there was no underwood, either ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... told. Lives crammed with a succession of such grand and palpitating adventures lie beyond the reach of clumsy words. The sweetness sometimes was intolerable, and then they shared it with the entire lawn and so obtained relief—yet merely in order to begin again. The humming of the rising Spring continued with the thunderous droning of the turning Earth. Never uncared for, part of everything, full of the big, rich life that brims the world in May—ah, almost fuller than they could hold sometimes—they passed with existence ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... through the Western reserves like red fire through prairie-grass, blowing almost into flame the war-spirit of the young braves of the Bloods, Piegans and Sarcees and even of the more stable Blackfeet. Three days after that check, the news of it was humming through every tepee in the West, and for a week or more it took all the cool courage and steady nerve characteristic of the Mounted Police to enable them to ride without flurry or hurry their daily patrols through ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... varied is the flight of birds! The falcon soars above the clouds, and remains in the air for many hours without any sign of exertion. The swallow, the lark, and other species, sail long distances with little effort. Others, like the sparrow and the humming-bird, have a fluttering flight. Some, as the owl, fly without any noise; and some, like the partridge, with ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Arlee hesitated, while her imagination fluttered about the thought like humming-birds about sweets. Already she was thinking of the story she could have to tell to her fellow travelers here and to the people at home. It was a chance, she repeated to herself, in a thousand, and the familiar details of phones and motors ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of the 2nd was a beautiful summer's day; nature was in perfect repose; the birds sang gayly, the humming of bees and fragrance of flowers filled the air. We were busily engaged making our morning ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had experienced up to that time, lasting ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... hurrying visitors pass, he walked into the next room designated for interviews. On opening the door he was struck by the deafening shouts of a hundred throats turned into a continuous humming noise. Only as he neared the people, who, like flies swarming on sugar pressed their faces against a net which divided the room in two, did Nekhludoff understand the cause of the noise. This room with windows in the rear wall ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... breakfast to transport her to where saddle-horses were waiting in the Park. Sometimes it would turn up about lunch-time and stand impatiently chugging while she changed into sport's clothes, after which it would dash away with her, humming contentedly, into the depths of the country. It was the magic-carpet which obeyed all her desires. After war-days, with their petrol shortages and restricted travel, it seemed more than ordinarily magic. It made emphatic as nothing else could have done, the freedom and serenity which ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... began to fall, and has continued to pour down steadily ever since. The night is gloomy. Adjutant Wilson, in the next tent, is endeavoring to lift himself from the slough of despond by humming a ditty of true love; but the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... "convoy the two little cruisers to Annapolis." His offer was accepted with so many gushing responses that the poor man looked about as bewildered as a great St. Bernard which has inadvertently upset a cage of humming birds, and finds them fluttering all about him. Lily and Helen were of a different type from the girls he knew best, but he accepted the situation gracefully and enjoyed himself hugely with the ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... gay that morning. On the previous day she had gone with Pierre and Antoine on a cycling excursion over frightful roads in the direction of Montmorency, whence they had returned in a state of mingled anger and delight. When Guillaume stopped her in the little garden, he found her humming a song while returning bare-armed from the scullery, where some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... none of them thought harm from him. And in the night, when they were at their dance about the mountain, the Coyote stole the fire, and ran with it down the slope of the burning mountain. When the Fire Spirits saw what he had done they streamed out after him, red and angry, with a humming sound like a swarm of bees. But the Coyote was still ahead; the sparks of the brand streamed out along his flanks, as he carried it in his mouth; and he stretched his body ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... of unreality hung about the events of the last few days. I felt myself slowly waking as though from a nightmare. The dazzling sunshine was everywhere around us; the whir of reaping machines, the slighter humming of bees, and the song of birds, were in our ears; the perfume of all manner of flowers, and of the new-mown hay, made the air wonderfully sweet. My guest, in a cool grey flannel suit and a Panama hat, was by my side, looking like a man who has taken a new lease of life. He had ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... trustworthy guide; she had brought me out of the depth of elf-land into the material world again. It had been a singular adventure, certainly; and I mused over it with a sense of mysterious pleasure as I sauntered along, humming snatches of airs, and accompanying myself on the strings. Hark! what light step was that behind me? It sounded like Elsie's; but no, Elsie was not there. The same impression or hallucination, however, recurred several ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... taken care during this experiment to place the bobbin quite near the horse's ear, so that he could hear the humming of the interrupter, undertook a second experiment in the following way: Having detached the conductors from the armature, he placed himself in front of the horse (as shown in Fig. 2), and began to imitate the humming sound of the interrupter with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... terrified by the harrowing emotions the song always roused in her, but more by the dreadful sensation of walking that crowded Avenue with a man humming German at ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... made his purchase, and hurried back to the rectory. The shop-keeper stood in the doorway looking in surprise at this grown man who came to buy a top. And at home in the rectory the old housekeeper listened in equal surprise to the humming noise over her head. She thought at first it might be a bee that had got in somehow. Then she realised that it was not quite the same noise, and having already concluded that it was of no use to be surprised ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... more wax, more vigorous polishing, more singing, with longer pauses for breath. "'Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees bloom?'" he bellowed—sprinkle of wax, right foot, left foot, any foot at all. Now and then he took the score from his pocket and pored over it, humming the air, raising his eyebrows over the high notes, dropping his chin to the low ones. It was a wonderful morning. Between greetings to neighbors he sang—a bit of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I should longer have indulged my self, had not the dear Creatures called to me to ask what I wanted, when I could not answer, only To look at you. I went to one of the Windows which opened to the Area below, where all the several Voices lost their Distinction, and rose up in a confused Humming; which created in me a Reflection that could not come into the Mind of any but of one a little too studious; for I said to my self, with a kind of Pun in Thought, What Nonsense is all the Hurry of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with the chanting of amorous phrases of invitation addressed to the woman. At daylight the man stands up alone and swings the churinga, causing it first to strike the ground as he whirls it round and round and makes it hum. His friends remain silent, and the sound of the humming is carried to the ears of the far-distant woman, and has the power of compelling affection and of causing her sooner or later to comply with the summons. Not long ago, at Alice Springs, a man called some of his friends together and performed the ceremony, and in a very ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to the gate under the arch of boughs dimly lit by the moon. She stretched her arms passionately toward him. Then she went in to go to bed. But at the sound of Ruth humming gayly in the next room, she realized that she could not sleep with her heart full of evil thoughts. She must have it out with her cousin. She knocked ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... this time appeared the fourth and concluding volume of his engravings, and the fifth of his descriptions. The whole comprised four hundred and thirty-five plates, containing one thousand and sixty-five figures, from the Bird of Washington to the Humming Bird, of the size of life, and a great variety of land and marine views, and coral and other productions, of different climates and seasons, all carefully drawn and colored after nature. Well might the great naturalist felicitate himself upon the completion of his gigantic ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... we went to Venice; and now comes the singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which I forget the name: but in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice. Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites a ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... harp still kept up its rhythmic humming; and presently, muffled by distance and winding passages, as it seemed out from the very stones of the rugged tower, in a voice, harsh, strong, yet cultivated, came the second verse of that love-song, sung with a full heart, throbbing ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... are still going on. The boys are all well and lively, except that I have just passed Randall standing gloomy at the door of his tent, feeling very much insulted because someone at breakfast called him a grabber. Apart from him the street is humming with talk, as the boys make up their ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... because he would thrash her if she didn't. I guess she never had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, because she got above a fellow in the class. I guess she never had him twitch off her best cap, and toss it in a mud-puddle. I guess she never had to give her humming-top to quiet the baby, and had the paint all sucked off. I guess she never saved up all her coppers a whole winter to buy a trumpet, and then was told she must not blow it, because it would ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... were to send me one. I have been true to Ben all along. I have never given him up. He may get out of place in life, but he is sure to get back again. A true heart always does. I am sure that it is a spinet that he will send. I dreamed," she added, "that I heard a humming sound in the air something like a harp. I dreamed it in the morning, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... day late in June when the rich, thick, amber light of afternoon seemed to float in the air. Warm summer lay on the land. The bees were humming in the rose vines over the porch. Mrs. Iden, who evidently heard Lane's step, appeared in the path, and nodding her gladness at sight of him, she pointed to ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... slowly, the wings are fluttered fast, giving vertical blows; if it wants to pause absolutely in still air, (this large birds cannot do, not being able to move their wings fast enough,) the velocity becomes vibration, as in the humming-bird: but if there is wind, any of the larger birds can lay themselves on it like a kite, their own weight answering the purpose of the string,[14] while they keep the wings and tail in an inclined plane, giving them as much gliding ascent as counteracts the fall. They nearly all, however, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and stepped inside. A pile of sheet music lay upon the table, and she stood a few minutes beside it, turning over the leaves and humming softly to herself. There was a rap at the door, and Uncle ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... inch of ground was carpeted with thick moss, more splendid than the weavings of any loom of man, into which the feet sank noiselessly. Everywhere the peaceful stillness was tempered only by a slight humming of the trees, and the songs of myriad birds, not a human being within screaming distance, unless some gang of bandits stalked us in the depth of the forest. More likely they were by now sodden with the aftermath of Sunday festivities, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... noon, the base of the musical fountain, he found it composed of a white friable sandstone, and presenting on two of its sides sandy declivities. He watched beside it for an hour and a quarter, and then heard, for the first time, a low undulating sound, somewhat resembling that of a humming top, which rose and fell, and ceased and began, and then ceased again; and in an hour and three quarters after, when in the act of climbing along the declivity, he heard the sound yet louder and more prolonged. It seemed as if issuing from under his ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... through all!" he cried, speaking loudly because of a humming in his ears. "They are lying in the streets! They are dying, are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing! But I have come through all ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... find the aqueduct trailing, thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not a wilderness; it is rather a preserve. And, fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a hermit's cavern. In the midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humming with the business of pleasure; and the palace, breathing distinction and peopled by historic names, stands smokeless ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an embarrassing nature to speak of. To begin with she was more affectionate than usual, seeming to wish with the honey of her kisses to sweeten the bitter cross which the mistress was doomed to bear. Then she hesitated. She fidgeted about the room humming. At last she said that the doctor had come at the request of Serge, who was most anxious about his wife's health. And that excellent Doctor Rigaud, who had known her from a child, had found her suffering from great weakness. He ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol-Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... groan—whether of remorse for having taken the bank-notes, or of disgust at the task before him, I am unable to say. After writing a few lines (too far away from my peep-hole to give me a chance of reading over his shoulder), he leaned back in his chair, and amused himself by humming the tunes of popular songs. I recognized "My Mary Anne," "Bobbin' Around," and "Old Dog Tray," among other melodies. Whether these do or do not represent secret signals by which he communicates with his accomplices remains to be seen. After he had amused himself for some time by humming, he got ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... complexion; and the limbs that rested in a careless attitude on the stone bench were long and languid, though with years and favourable circumstances there might be a development of beauty and dignity. Her lips were crooning at intervals a mournful old Scottish tune, sometimes only humming, sometimes uttering its melancholy burthen, and she now and then touched a small harp that stood by her side on ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Peschiera, three of these men sprang into the boat, and got ready their oars. The fourth carefully re-adjusted a plank thrown from the boat to the wharf, and offered his arm obsequiously to Peschiera. The count was the first to enter, and, humming a gay opera air, took his place by the helm. The two females were next lifted in, and Violante felt her hand pressed almost convulsively by the man who stood by the plank. The rest followed, and in another minute the boat bounded swiftly over the waves towards a vessel ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... though she did it by fits and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron and was moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,—to him; but to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... up for this, I have here almost an avenue of fine lemon-trees, in cases; humming-birds, which are a marvel and enchantment to me; and fire-flies, which are exquisite in the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional. Some of our best novelists patronize this tone. The words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning. This is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... insupportable thirst. A few yards from the well I constructed a large wooden trough, which I kept filled with water; and each day it was visited by the most extraordinary flocks of birds of every size and variety of plumage—from emus down to what looked like humming-birds. Huge snakes, ten and fifteen feet long, bustled the kangaroos away from the life-giving trough; and occasionally the crowd would be so excessive that some of the poor creatures would have to wait hours before their thirst was satisfied,—and ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... working today than were working 2 years ago. The average factory work week is once again more than 40 hours; our industries are turning out more goods than ever before; and more than half of the manufacturing capacity that lay silent and wasted 100 weeks ago is humming with activity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... Tresserves, at the foot of those chestnut-trees that have felt her heart beat against their bark; when I look at the lake, the mountains, snows and meadows, trees and jagged rocks, swimming in a warm atmosphere which seems to bathe all nature in one perfumed liquid; when I hear the sighing breeze, the humming insects, and the quivering leaves, the waves of the lake breaking on the shore, with the gentle rustling sound of silken folds unrolling one by one; when I see the shadow of her whom God has made my companion until my life's end cast beside mine upon the grass or sand; when ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the glare as if they were afloat; the hippos took to the water, and a deep and drowsy silence fell upon the great river. But man, ever restless, was astir, and through the stillness there was borne to the three a soft continuous humming, that merged quietly into the short, clamorous throbs of an engine at work ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the northern end of Luzon the Retriever kicked round in a belt of light and baffling airs for a week. Then the monsoon freshened somewhat and the Retriever once more rolled lazily away on her course, with young Matt Peasley humming chanteys on her quarter-deck and pondering the mystery that confronts all mankind in their first adventure in fatherhood. Would it be a boy or a girl? He was expressing to himself for perhaps the thousandth time the hope that it would be a boy, when from the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Jerry; "while I was out on the bay this early morning, my lad, what all the town is humming about, goes to my home and takes everything—everything of any vally and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... been issued the little ration of smoking tobacco allowed after each evening meal did any sign of a relaxation of taut nerves appear. It was Brady who showed the first signs of returning good spirits. He commenced humming "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and presently to voice the words, but he was well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even then there seemed a dismal note in even the ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... And, humming his rustic roundelay, the yeoman went on his road, the sound of his rough voice gradually dying away as the distance betwixt ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... came to a stop, and Mr. Magee looked down into a great array of faces, and heard for the first time the low unceasing rumble of an angry mob. Afterward he marveled at that constant guttural roar, how it went on and on, humming like a tune, never stopping, disconnected quite from the occasional shrill or heavy voices that rang out in distinguishable words. The mayor looked coolly down into those upturned faces, he listened a moment to the rumble of a thousand throats, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... assumed air of careless indifference, in the hope of thereby concealing the momentary weakness into which his better feelings had so nearly betrayed him, Sergius strolled off, humming a Gallic wine song. AEnone also rose; and, struggling to stifle her emotion, confronted ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the room. I swung on the Botz signaling apparatus. It was connected. Within a moment I had it humming. The fluorescent tubes lighted with their lurid glare; they painted purple the body of the giant duty-man who lay sprawled at my feet. I drew on all the ship's power. The tube-lights in the room quivered and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... dreary household. During the day the servants had straggled in from Bellegarde, and Virginia had had prepared those dishes which her father loved. Mrs. Colfax chose to keep her room, for which the two were silently thankful. Jackson announced supper. The Colonel was humming a tune as he went down the stairs, but Virginia was not deceived. He would not see the yearning in her eyes as he took his chair; he would not glance at Captain Lige's empty seat. It was because he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mournful enough lounging place in which to spend convivial evenings. However, it seemed that when the sergeant-major had decreed amusement the non-commissioned officers' mess overlooked all trifles in brave determination to obey. They marched in, humming tunes (each a different one, and nearly all high tenor) and took seats in a room at the rear of the building with their backs against a mud-brick wall that was shiny from much ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... up the hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all round—gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming-birds, but they say not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his shoulder; his brown breast glittering with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shout at the same time, and I would if I could trust this pullet in the skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was crude emotion, and I knew it, but I felt it work in my own body as I let the significance of what she had told ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... direful tidings, the valiant Peter started from his seat—dashed the pipe he was smoking against the back of the chimney—thrust a prodigious quid of tobacco into his left cheek—pulled up his galligaskins, and strode up and down the room, humming, as was customary with him when in a passion, a hideous north-west ditty. But, as I have before shown, he was not a man to vent his spleen in idle vaporing. His first measure, after the paroxysm of wrath had subsided, was to stump upstairs to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Cellar, Cool and Neat, With Humming Ale, and Virgin Wine Repleat. Wine whets the Wit, improves its Native Force, And gives a pleasant Flavour to Discourse, By making all our Spirits Deboniar, Throws of the Lees, the Sedement of Care. But as the greatest Blessing Heaven lends May be debauch'd, ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... high as he watched the warlike preparations, and, glancing across to where near Haughmond Abbey floated the rebel standard, he found himself humming one of the rough old war tunes he ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... perfect, tempting were her lips— The bee or humming-bird that sips From scarlet blossoms in the South Beguiled might be by such ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... the kitchen while she washed the plates; then he had heard her humming softly in the sitting-room; now she had gone up-stairs and was silent. The thoughts and sensations that had been suddenly and strangely inhibited a few hours ago came into play again, warmed his blood once more, repossessed ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... could hear the bees humming. Chickens were merrily moving about. Cowbells far up the road were sounding irregularly. A jay came by and yelled an insolent reveille, and Howard sat up. He could hear nothing in the house but the rattle of pans on ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... but, in a court opening inwards from this, there was a surrounding seclusion of quiet dwelling-houses, with beautiful green shrubbery and grass-plots in the court, and a great many sunflowers in full bloom. The windows were open; it was a lovely summer afternoon, and I have a sense that bees were humming in the court, though this may have been suggested by my fancy, because the sound would have been so well suited to the scene. A boy was reading at one of the windows. There was not a quieter spot in England than ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Wind, scratched his chest and rubbed his fingers together, when out from between them flew Datilye, the Humming-bird. Datilye was told to make a circuit of the earth and report what he saw. He started off toward the east, circled south, west, north, and back from the east. All was well; the earth was most beautiful, very smooth, and covered with water on the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... preserved, eventually, only six of his captures: a moth, silver and green; a butterfly of steely, iridescent blue; a solemn, black-coated cricket; a bee bound round with the five golden rings of Italy; a tiny, rainbow-hued humming-bird, found dead in a fast-shut moon-flower; and, finally, a slender, bright-winged dragon-fly. These, humanely chloroformed and pasted upon cards, Ivan studied, wondering at his own interest; nor ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... rear cabin, or motor compartment, and a scene of confusion met their gaze. Two of the foreign men who had seized the ship lay stretched out on the floor near the humming machinery, which had been left to run itself. A look in the other direction, toward the main cabin, showed a group of the foreign spies bending over the inert body of La Foy, the Frenchman, stretched out on ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... 33. Humming a tune to ourselves, drumming with our fingers on the table, making a noise with our feet, and such like, are all breaches of good manners, and indications of our contempt for the persons present; therefore they should hot ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... battles of the heart. I must impress this pompous old fool that I know all the intrigues of his proposed elevation. He will unbosom, and both trust and fear me. These pampered civilians are as haughty in their way as the military and be damned to them," mused Hawke, cheerfully humming his battle song, those words of a ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... much troubled with a small black ant; infesting our provisions during the day and running over our persons, and biting us severely at night. A large yellow hornet with two black bands over the abdomen, was seen, humming about the water-holes. A crow was shot and roasted, and found to be exceedingly tender, which we considered to be a great discovery; and lost no opportunity of shooting as many as we could, in order to lessen the consumption of our dried meat. We again ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... tell you. It seems to me EXTREMELY clever, like everything I have read of his; but I am not shaken—perhaps you will say that neither gods nor men could shake me. I demur to the Duke reiterating his objection that the brilliant plumage of the male humming-bird could not have been acquired through selection, at the same time entirely ignoring my discussion (page 93, 3rd edition) on beautiful plumage being acquired through SEXUAL selection. The duke may ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... its lord and master, from the servants left in charge of that most noble and encumbered property. Accordingly he quitted his apartment, threw a ghastly smile into his countenance, and then came quickly upon his clerks, humming a few cheerful notes, with about as much spirit and energy as a man might have if forced to sing a comic song just before his execution. Thoroughly persuaded that the officials had not obtained an inkling of what had transpired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Museum, was its business manager. These men, with Field, were given carte blanche to surround themselves with a staff and news-gathering equipment to make the Tribune "hum." And they did make it hum, so that the humming was heard far beyond the borders ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... with an empty hat-rack, and so into the surgery. From the back of the house came the sound of a piano—scales, played very slowly. The surgery was empty. I noticed a card with letters of the alphabet printed on it in different sizes; and then the piano ceased, and there was the humming of an air in the passage, and a tall man in a frock-coat, slippered and spectacled, came ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... with contempt and some derisive laughter. When Ralph pressed it, there was humming and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... pavilion, to cover them with His feathers, to hide them in His secret place, to hold them in the hollow of His hand or stretch around them the everlasting arms! These men were true children of Nature. As the humming-bird among its own palm-trees, as the ephemera in the sunshine of a summer evening, so they lived their joyous lives. And even the full share of the sadder experience of life which came to all of them but drove them the further ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... and the fifth at 50 meters. In the first, gun jammed at 50 meters. In the second, at 5200, the Boche in his excitement lost his wings, and descended on his aerodrome in a wingless coach; his ears must be humming (16th). The third was a nose-to-nose combat with a fighting Aviatik. Too much impetus: I failed to hammer him hollow. In the fourth, same joke with an L.V.G. in a group of three: I failed to hammer him, I lurched: pan, a bullet near ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... indifference of the nurses to the necessary cleanliness required. The whole becomes alive with cockroaches and other vermin, creeping over the patients; and the mosquitoes prey upon the unfortunate sufferer, or drive him mad with their unceasing humming preparatory to their attacks. Add these new trials to the groans of the dying, which, during my residence on board, never ceased, and at night were more awful and painfully distinct. The nurses were all men, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... grew stronger each moment; it was like the rumbling beneath the earth, that precedes the earthquake. No one spoke as yet louder than the other—the master-voice had not yet risen. That dulled noise seemed like a far-off humming, and had it not been so intense, and so very human, it might have been compared to the wrath of a myriad of bees confined in the darkness of their hives, with the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... shook the summer air—the sound of a cannon fired very far away, perhaps on the citadel of Strasbourg. It was so distant, so indistinct, that here in this peaceful country it lingered only as a vibration; the humming of the clover bees ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... Curling and humming its cadences, It slips past me under the rim of the gorge, As I peer down through the scarlet sumacs. Sparkling in the sunlight, Shimmering in the moonlight, On and on it goes, A silvery ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... climbed again, and went up between limestone rocks, higher and higher, till the noise of waters became indistinct, a faint humming of swarming hives in summer. He walked some distance on level ground, till there was a break in the banks and a stile on which he could lean and look out. He found himself, as he had hoped, afar and forlorn; he had strayed into ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... cheerful aspect of this homely but comfortable interior. The room served as both kitchen and dining-room. On the right of the flaring chimney, one of the cast-iron arrangements called a cooking-stove was gently humming; the saucepans, resting on the bars, exhaled various appetizing odors. In the centre, the long, massive table of solid beech was already spread with its coarse linen cloth, and the service was laid. White muslin curtains fell in front of the large windows, on the sills of which potted ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... telling her the substance of his conversation with the rector, and now curled up on the low wooden seat, his small legs crossed underneath him, he was gazing dreamily out into the sweet-scented garden. The bees were droning, and the gnats humming amongst the tall hollyhocks and crimson and white roses close by; the birds were already twittering their last 'good-nights' to one another, and a soft, peaceful spell seemed to be falling ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Carmel rose from her seat, and went on to the terrace at the foot of the steps. She looked for a moment or two at the crimson slope of flowers and the shining lake, as if to put herself into the right mental atmosphere, then, humming a lively but haunting tune, she ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... him warmly and let him go, smiling at the tuneless humming that accompanied his departure. Who at a casual glance would have taken Nick Ratcliffe for one of the keenest politicians of his party, a man whom friend and foe alike regarded as too brilliant to be ignored? He had even been ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... little the music is understood by the children. They finish, as in Miss George's school at Washington, by singing over their daily work with the didactic material. The "Children's House," then, resembles a hive of bees humming as they work. ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... the hill on the opposite side, and then commenced crossing, arm in arm, the stubble-field that lay stretched out before them. All around them nothing whatever was stirring—not a sound, not even the chirping of a bird, or the humming of a beetle, interrupted the profound silence; neither a house, nor any trace of human life, was to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... one gets a new idea of what scenery can be; while beneath superb tree-ferns and untattered bananas, and palms, and bright-flowered lianas, and graceful trailers, and vermilion-colored orchids, and under sun-birds and humming birds and the most splendid butterflies I ever saw, a torrent, as clear as crystal, dashes over the rocks, and adds the music of tumbling water to the enchantment of a scene whose loveliness no words can give any idea of. The pass ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the Humming-Bird, comes darting to our oriel, my Orient. As I sat sewing, his sudden, unexpected whirr made me look up. How did he know that the very first Japan-pear-bud opened this morning? Flower and bird came together by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Minneapolis, with its elegant homes; its commodious churches; its great University—with its four thousand students—; its well-equipped schools—with their forty-two thousand pupils—; its great business blocks; its massive mills; its humming factories; its broad avenues; its pleasant parks; its population of a quarter of a million of souls; all this had not then even been as much as ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... carriage, and carrying a wand, was a young lady not larger than a child's little finger, but so beautiful that no humming-bird could equal her in beauty. She had the bluest of blue eyes, and yellow crinkled hair ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various
... afternoon, soft and balmy; a little haze on the sky, the least veil upon the Mong's further shore; the summer roses hanging their heads, heavy with sleep and sweetness. The honeysuckles on the porch grew sweeter and sweeter as the sun went down, and the humming-birds dipped into those long flagons, or poised them selves in mid-air ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and a complexion which would have been fair, but for the traces it bore of a hotter climate than that of either France or America. He seemed to be all alone, and to be feeling very lonely that night; and he was leaning over the rail, peering out into the mist, humming to himself a sweet, wild air in a ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... and there a cottage, a nest of bloom. There were the stolid farmers working in their old-fashioned methods, there was a sound of strokes in the dusky woods where some men were chopping that brought faint, reverberating echoes, there was the humming of bees, the laughter of children. Little naked Indian babies ran about, the sun making the copper of their skins burnished, squaws sat with bead work, young fellows were playing games with smooth stones or throwing at a mark. French women had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... insects, a tropical chorus of many octaves, from the deep drone of the bee to the high, keen pipe of the mosquito. Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light. Within we were seated round the cane table, on which lay a sealed envelope. Inscribed upon it, in the jagged handwriting of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is coming! Birds are singing, bees are humming; Silent lakes amid the mountains Look but cannot speak their mirth; Streams go bounding in their gladness, With a bacchanalian madness; Trees bow down their heads in wonder, Clouds of purple part asunder, As the Maiden of the Morning Leads the blushing Bride ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... bark and look up to see it smiling back red and yellow smiles; who could not walk down the slope and see apples lying in ridges, or pairs, or dotting the grass everywhere. Robert was half-asleep, dreaming of apples. He felt thirsty, and heard a humming like the buzz of bees around the cider-press. He and aunt Corinne used to sit down by the first tub of sweet cider, each with two straws apiece, and watch their faces in the rosy juice while they ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... strolling around the diners without the slightest droop, and pouring out wine in an off-hand and quite obviously hostile manner. I have seen him, towards the end of the meal, yawning. I remember another whom, positively, I heard humming—a faint sound indeed, but menacing ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... enchanted Eden seemed the land, For birds on dazzling many-colored wings Made the trees blossom—parrots red, green, blue, Humming-birds like live jewels in the air, Strange ducks with spoon-shaped bills,—and overhead Like some fantastic frieze of living gold, The little yellow monkeys leaped and swung Chattering of Setebos in their ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... and dazzling smile, she ran out to put the chocolate on the grill, and arrange the sandwiches and fruit and cake on the table around the bowl of drooping roses, and then, humming blithely, hurried into her own room to change from her heavy dress to a ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... suddenly, standing at his window watching London caught by the evening light, saw for an instant his work in front of him again. London with her towers, her roofs and chimneys—smoke and mist and haze weaving a web—and then beneath it, humming, buzzing, turning, all the lives, all the comedies, all the tragedies—Kings and princes, guttersnipes and duchesses, politicians ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... this, I went forward with as much lightheartedness as could be managed, humming a song to myself, and carefully putting aside thoughts of warmth and supper, while the dusk increased and the great forest vegetation seemed to grow ranker and ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was done, there was I, knowing little enough of what had come and gone, dazed, with my sword bloody and bent, my head humming, and my foot on the breast of an English knight, one Robert Heron. Him I took to prisoner, rescue or no rescue, and so sat we down, very weary, in the midst of blood and broken arms, for many had been slain ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... barmaid, with a titter. "No—I ain't one of your fashionable sort. Gracious no! I shouldn't feel as if I'd anything on me, not more than if I'd forgot—Well, there! I'm talking." She put down the glass abruptly. "I dessay I'm old fashioned," she said, and walked humming ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... or five of these men had stumbled at the same moment, the others would have been crushed to death, but not a man stumbled. They came ashore with a slow, regular, almost dancing gait, humming a low monotonous chant, as if to enable them to step in time, and making serio-comic motions with arms and hands, until they deposited safely in a cart a weight that ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... monarch, laying aside all signs of royalty, entered that excellent asylum with but his minister and his priest, desirous of beholding that Rishi who was an indestructible mass of ascetic merit. And the king saw that the asylum was like unto the region of Brahman. Here were bees sweetly humming and there were winged warblers of various species pouring forth their melodies. At particular places that tiger among men heard the chanting of Rik hymns by first-rate Brahmanas according to the just rules of intonation. Other places ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... rather small, but very bright and piercing. His natural expression was grave, almost severe, but his smile was extremely winning, and he was jovial in humor. He was very fond of the country, walking in the fields, where under a tree he would lie for a half day together, humming the melodies which occurred to him, and making notes in the bits of blank paper which he always carried. These pocket note books have been preserved, and we find in them themes in crude form which he used for some important movement or other, often several years later. Among ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... the cows had all been turned into the home paddock for the night, but now a strange humming noise made itself heard ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... from the snowy surroundings; in the glare of light the purity of the blossoms grew dazzling, and the sun flushed hangings, nosegays, and wreaths of flowers, with a very semblance of life. Over the roses a bee flew humming. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of bed at last, and staggered to the foot of the companion-ladder with it. Then there was a halt, two legs sticking obstinately across the narrow way and refusing to be moved, while a furious humming proceeded from the ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... her listless and dejected, powerless and repining; but gaiety expanded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. At all ordinary diet and plain beverage she would pout; but she fed on creams and ices like a humming-bird on honey-paste: sweet wine was her element, and sweet cake her daily bread. Ginevra lived her full life in a ball-room; elsewhere she ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that such fun might come out of this Wayne business. Why can't you let it alone? It doesn't really so much matter to you—what's a road or so? For me it's the one joke that may save me from pessimism. Take fewer men and give me an hour's fun. Really and truly, James, if you collected coins or humming-birds, and I could buy one with the price of your road, I would buy it. I collect incidents—those rare, those precious things. Let me have one. Pay a few pounds for it. Give these Notting Hillers a chance. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... variation; represents Prince ARTHUR as saying of Irish Members, "You have not got the pose that marks the cast of VERE DE VERE." Proceedings occasionally lively; grow a little monotonous after first five hours. Met STUART hurrying off, humming to himself the ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... fairies rushed into the hall, with a little sound like the noise of a humming-bird's wings when it passes close to you. From the lower end of the hall, where they came in, they went straight through the crowd to where the King and Queen sat. They dropped on their knees before them for an instant, and then rose and spoke to them. In a moment ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... known that he would go; but still I must say that it is a disappointment—a great disappointment. These trials are sent for our good, and——I do wish you would not keep up that perpetual humming, Eleanor. On an occasion like this it is especially trying. And how pale you look!" she added, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
