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More "Jabber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ear that caused him to look round. Crouched by the entrance to the churchyard was a beggar in filthy rags, his face hideously bandaged, before him on the pavement a little heap of matchboxes; this creature kept uttering a meaningless sing-song, either idiot jabber, or calculated to excite attention and pity; it sounded something like "A-pah-pahky; pah-pahky; pah"; repeated a score of times, and resumed after a pause. Hilliard gazed and listened, then placed a copper in the wretch's extended palm, and turned ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... holiday trip to witness the great festival of St. Agatha. With two exceptions, they were a wild and senseless, though good-natured set, and in spite of sea-sickness, which exercised them terribly for the first two days, kept up a constant jabber in their bastard Arabic from morning till night. As is usual in such a company, one of them was obliged to serve as a butt for the rest, and "Maestro Paolo," as they termed him, wore such a profoundly serious face all the while, from his sea-sickness, that the fun never came to an end. As they were ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... correctly. And having said this, with a respectful and barely perceptible smile of satisfaction addressed to me, he turned to the woman. And no sooner had he turned to her, than his whole face altered. He said, in a peculiar, scornful, hasty tone, such as is employed towards dogs: "What do you jabber in that careless way for? 'I sit in the taverns.' You do sit in the taverns, and that means, to talk business, that you are a prostitute," and again he uttered the word. "She does not know the name for herself." This tone offended me. "It is not our place to abuse her," said ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... white streaks. I tried to make them understand I came as a friend, and endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that whichever way I turned my path was barred by these wild men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some of the tribe followed, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... towed; and now, having discharged her boarding-party, their boat pushed forward to capture ours, which lay beneath us bumping idly against the Gauntlet's stem. I heard some half a dozen of them start to jabber as they found it empty. I divined—I could not see—the astonishment in their faces, as they stared up ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... your privileges are far greater than his, save that you have the Major as an appendage in place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. Of their professional capacity I am unable ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... offer (however little suited to my taste), or remaining a burden upon my mother, it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "Ho!" "He!" and "Hi!" respectively, in varying tones according to their varied character. Then they commenced a jabber, which we are quite unable to translate, and turned Tom over on his back. The motion awoke him, for ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... friend,' he said to me again at the garden gate. 'Take my advice and lie very low. Don't talk, don't meddle with drink, learn all you can of the native jabber, but don't let on you understand a word. You're sure to get on the track of something. Good-bye, my boy,' and he waved ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the departmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring of stranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the inscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently, sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one trace of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... as the ace of spades and twice as natural. But the little "nigs" kill me outright, they looking so much like a lot of monkeys, I know of nothing so comical. I could sit half the morning watching them and hearing them jabber. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... as a fish—grim as a gutted wreck. That's the man for me. All the others there are married, or going to be, or ought to be, or sorry they ain't. Every man jack of them has a petticoat in tow—dash me! Never heard in all my travels such a jabber about wives and kids. Hurry up with your dunnage—below there! Aye! I had no difficulty in getting them to clear out from the yacht. They never saw a pair of gents stolen before—you understand. It upset ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he called the Holy Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an opportunity of seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything he liked with Holy Mary: ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that enthusiasm ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Mink came into camp, assisting the white hunter, several squaws began an excited jabber that brought out a ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... it, for I haven't much taste that way. Father has us educated according to our tastes; that is, if we show a little talent for any one thing, he has us try to perfect ourselves in that one thing. Julia is the linguist, and can jabber French and German like natives. Father also insisted on our being taught the common English branches very thoroughly, and he says he could get us situations to teach within a month, if ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the passage or hall of their dwelling, while others, who have neither the one accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive instrument of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Cousin. "There it is again! A Mingo talkin', a Seneca, I'd say—Hear that jabber! Delaware—Wyandot—Taway (Ottawa). With a blanket o' Shawnee pow-wow. By heavens, Morris! This is Cornstalk's whole force. They've learned that Dunmore is at the Hockhockin' an' will be j'inin' up with Lewis any day, an' old Cornstalk thinks to ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... lifting her black eyes to her father's; "I ain't no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy—for it ain't anything else, though he's good meanin' enough—that happened ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... mountains, and that in the open road there is no danger of banditti, he advances. In a moment he is in the midst of the Gypsy group, in a moment there is a general halt; fiery eyes are turned upon him replete with an expression which only the eyes of the Roma possess, then ensues a jabber in a language or jargon which is strange to the ears of the traveller; at last an ugly urchin springs from the crupper of a halting mule, and in a lisping accent entreats charity in the name of the Virgin and the Majoro. The traveller, with a faltering hand, produces his purse, and is proceeding ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... thousand tongues Jabber harsh jargon from a thousand lungs. **** Dire was the din—as when in caverns pent, Hoarse Boreas storms and Eurus works for vent, The aeolian brethren heave the labouring earth, And roar with elemental ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to jabber to each other, in a low voice; but we could not, of course, make out what they said, and I don't think they were able to imagine what we intended to do. We were standing near the inner door of the great entrance-way, and into this they now marched ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... a chap as turns the orgin—the best I ever 'eard— Oh lor' he does just jabber, but you can't make out a word. I can't abear Italians, as allus uses knives, And talks a furrin lingo all their miserable lives. But this one calls me BELLA—which my Christian name is SUE— And 'e smiles and turns 'is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... could hear the flocks of birds flying in the air and feel the stamping feet below as herds of animals ran in every direction. We heard the vibrant jabber of monkeys from tree-tops, and each time a new tree fell there was more jabbering and more leaping away from tree ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... uncle, failed to appreciate pwes, which were now held within stated bounds; he preferred out-of-door entertainments, as the heat, the smoke, the smell of raw plantain skins, the band, and the jabber were too much ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... a jabber of hissings and gutturals. Carmena jerked her hand about in swift signs and cried back in uncouth thick-tongued Apache words. The dispute at last ended in a sullen mutter from below and a sudden thudding of ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Pelham was cool and steady, and his self-possession encouraged the crew to their best efforts. The boat ran up under the lee of the wreck, and made fast to one of the masts. As soon as it was secured, both of the men on the rail began to jabber ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... out over the level field in the dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He felt the expansive thrill of the planter, the employer—the man who organizes an enterprise and ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... tumbled along in front of us, his bare feet plashing from log to log and mud-heap to mud-heap, his gray woolly head wagging right and left, and his cutlass brushing almost instinctively at every bough he passed, while he turned round every moment to jabber something, usually in Creole French, which, of course, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a tenet of her faith, although she always forgot to act upon it. Only Miss Waghorn continued the train of ideas this started, with a coherence that surprised even herself. Somehow the jabber about dreams, though in a language that only enabled her to catch its general drift, had interested her uncommonly. She seemed on the verge of remembering something. She had listened with patience, a look of peace upon her anxious old face that was noticed even by Jane ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... lying on a buffalo robe; her hands and feet were bound; the floor was littered with blankets and beaded buckskin garments. Through a narrow opening she saw that the day was far spent; Indians and horses passed to and fro; there was a bustle outside and jabber of Indian jargon; the wind blew hard and drops of rain pattered on ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... confident jabber among the slingers and archers below as the birds arrived. The catapult was turned about toward us, and lashed tightly to stakes driven in front and behind. Then the birds were hitched to the cord ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... Mr. and Mrs. Sargent and their gifted daughter Ella, also the professor of Greek in your Kansas State University, Miss Kate Stephens. She interpreted the utterances of the ever-present guides, whose jabber ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the great festival of St. Agatha. With two exceptions, they were a wild and senseless, though good-natured set, and in spite of sea-sickness, which exercised them terribly for the first two days, kept up a constant jabber in their bastard Arabic from morning till night. As is usual in such a company, one of them was obliged to serve as a butt for the rest, and "Maestro Paolo," as they termed him, wore such a profoundly serious face all ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... did jabber away, and ask us all sorts of questions, none of which we could answer, from not being able to muster a word of French amongst us. The other boats came up, and then there was still more jabbering; and then the Frenchmen made us all ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... bother, smash! You'll have it all in a crash. Jabber, smash, bother! You'll have the worst of ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... wore short dresses and high bodies or shirts, and their cheeks, noses, and foreheads thickly covered with red paint. Both parties soon set up a lively jabber in Sioux; but General Parker gave a sign, and all were as ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Chippewa girls are good enough for Chuck. I ain't counting on taking up with those Frenchies. I don't like their jabber, from what I know of it. I saw some pictures of 'em, last week, a fellow in camp had who'd been over there. Their hair is all funny, and fixed up with combs and stuff, and they look real dark ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and Speak ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... by me," he said. "I ain't jerry to all the Dago jabber yet, though I've copped off a little of it in the past two weeks. Put me ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all savages here," he told me; "you must not mind. The sentry has orders to keep everybody away from the palace, as people come in the afternoon and squat under my windows to jabber, and I cannot sleep. Those orders, I assure you, were not meant for you. You will be my guest all the time you are in the city, and ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved to be of a nature ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid is laughing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there but returned convicts and released galley-slaves. The Republicans and the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... see, Sir Jabber," remarked the King to the can-opener, "that you have such a prying disposition. As a matter of fact, all the things you mention are none of ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... moustache, like the coat of a badger, growing about his mouth. He had a huge ruddy face, and looked dull and stupid, as he no doubt was, for when I spoke to him, he did not seem to understand, and answered in a jabber, valgame Dios! so wild and strange, that I remained staring at him with mouth and eyes open. The other was neither tall nor red-faced, nor had he hair about his mouth, and, indeed, he had very little upon his head. He was very diminutive, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... seem to grasp the purse-strings with one hand while they hold a drawn sword in the other. There is no security to be found in any corner of the State; and no projects, formed for the future of its people. To be sure, certain parties prate and jabber about the Volunteer Service and national defenses; but what have they to defend? If their frontier were bristling to-morrow with forts and bayonets, all they could hope to accomplish would be the shutting out of American liberty and national prosperity from the people. This must be self-evident to ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... into camp, assisting the white hunter, several squaws began an excited jabber that brought out a couple ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... sign to Miss Ponsonby; she rose, and followed him into the garden. 'I cannot endure the jabber of these men,' said ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... day to the black cook, so pray have the kindness to come and say two or three words in Moors to the people below.' Whereupon, without any hesitation, we followed the steward into the cabin. 'Here's one who can jabber Moors with you,' bawled he, bustling up to the new comers. On observing the strangers, however, who sat on one of the sofas, instead of addressing them in 'Moors,' we took our hands out of our pockets, drew ourselves up, and making ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the political opinions which he had adopted at home. To the last, he always spoke of foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, and to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... having stolen an Indian pony and shot his way from the midst of the Sioux away up on No Wood Creek, on the west side of the hills, and having ridden by night and hidden by day until he got back to the Platte and Frayne, people felt sure of it. Pete could talk Sioux better than he could jabber English. He declared the Indians were in the hills by thousands, and were going to take Hay and the young lady away off somewhere to be held for safe keeping. He said the two troops that, never even halting at Frayne, had pushed out on the trail, would only get into trouble if they tried to enter ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill! How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying! How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch! They jabber and screech and curse, but their puny voices do not reach up here. They fret, and fume, and rage, and pant, and die; "but I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to stretch out in,—not that it ever sleeps much, but it has a larger sphere of action,—do you take? I don't know whether you have had this feeling of surprise, Doctor, but I have, hearing those little imps talk French, when, to save my soul, I can't jabber it that way myself. In course of nature they must talk that lingo, for they are quilted in French—kissed in French—fed in French—and put to bed in French,—and told to pray to the Virgin in French, for that's the language she loves best. She knows a great many languages, but she ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... streaks. I tried to make them understand I came as a friend, and endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that whichever way I turned my path was barred by these wild men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... JABBER. To talk thick and fast, as great praters usually do, to chatter like a magpye; also to speak a foreign language. He jabbered to rne in his damned outlandish parlez vous, but I could not understand him; he chattered to me in French, or some other foreign language, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan by name, both old fighting-men who had borne arms against us at Chilian-wallah. They could talk English pretty well, but I could get little out of them. They preferred to stand together and jabber all night in their queer Sikh lingo. For myself, I used to stand outside the gate-way, looking down on the broad, winding river and on the twinkling lights of the great city. The beating of drums, the rattle of tomtoms, and the yells and howls of the rebels, drunk with opium and with bang, ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs Jabber. My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... forward silently, without a sound, swiftly—pausing only to listen for a second's space at the doors as he passed. From this one came that clink of coin; from another that jabber of Chinese; from still another that overpowering stench of opium—and once, iron-nerved as he was, a cold thrill passed over him. Let this lair of hell's wolves, so intent now on their own affairs, be once roused, as they certainly ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... French-Italian; Italian jongleurs singing in impossible French; Paduan penny-a-liners writing Carolingian cyclical novels in French, not of Paris, assuredly, but of Padua—a comical and most hideous jabber of hybrid languages—this was how the Carolingian stories became popular in Italy. Meanwhile, the day came when the romantic Arthurian tales had to dislodge in Italy before the invasion of the classic epic. Troy, Rome, and Thebes had replaced Tintagil and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... fast enough," said the man with a hoarse chuckle. "Yah! There's no fight in them. They'll chatter and jabber a bit, and their skipper'll swear he'll do all sorts o' things, but you stick to the boat as soon as your ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... beggars they are to blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame— No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war, When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you; And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts That drive them out to jabber ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... important for all her inhabitants that she should be on the winning side.... Oh, she will be, no doubt, we've the advantage in numbers and wealth, if not in military organisation or talent.... If only the Potterites wouldn't jabber so. It's a unique opportunity for them, and they're taking it. What makes me angriest is the reasons they vamp up why we're fighting. For the sake of democracy, they say. Democracy be hanged. It's a rotten system, anyhow, and how this war is going to ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous—a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and were lighthearted almost to a fault. They had had no credit to pledge for the season's stores. They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 400 B.C. The instrument is dumb. Ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of "talking-machines," like Faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. These automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; but they lack even the sterile utility of the imitative art of ventriloquism. The real great invention lies in creating devices that shall be able to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in our ways; Some whose reforming hands engage To lash the lewdness of the age; Some for the public service go Perpetual envoys to and fro: Whose able heads support the weight Of twenty ministers of state. We scorn, for want of talk, to jabber Of parties o'er our bonnyclabber; Nor are we studious to inquire, Who votes for manors, who for hire: Our care is, to improve the mind With what concerns all human kind; The various scenes of mortal life; Who beats her husband, who his wife; Or how the bully at ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... home. I don't want to learn Frenchified ways, nor to eat frogs and snails and all sorts of nastiness; still, it would be fun going to a place so different to England, and hearing no English spoken, and learning all their rum ways, and getting to jabber French." ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... ungrammatical, seemed most in favour with the Manor 'house-party,'—and for a time splinters of language flew about like the chips from dry timber under a woodman's axe, without shape, or use, or meaning. It was a mere confused and senseless jabber—a jabber in which Maryllia took no part. She sat very quietly looking from one face to the other at table with a critical interest. These were the people she had met every day more or less in London,—some of them had visited her aunt constantly, and had invited her out to dinners ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... hall of their dwelling, while others, who have neither the one accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... and their backs would get broken. So when they were big enough they sat on the floor and she talked to them and told them funny things and acted 'em off and laughed, and they'd laugh too. It was like a play to see 'em. And they'd jabber back and she'd make b'lieve she understood it all. She was a wonderful child's nurse an' there'll be trouble enough without her. But the babies went to bed early an' then she'd come down an' wipe the dishes for me an' they made no call on her. But Jack was a holy terror, he was that ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... appendage in place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. Of their professional ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... five years before, just where he left it, with the words "Heri discebamus" (Yesterday we were teaching). What a lesson in this remarkable example of self-control for those who allow their tongues to jabber whatever happens to be uppermost in ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid her; continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many others who pretended to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... haven't much taste that way. Father has us educated according to our tastes; that is, if we show a little talent for any one thing, he has us try to perfect ourselves in that one thing. Julia is the linguist, and can jabber French and German like natives. Father also insisted on our being taught the common English branches very thoroughly, and he says he could get us situations to teach within a month, if it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... from the five who were completely psychotic. The weird babblings of fifty-year-old Barry Miles disconcerted him. They sounded like little Charlie O'Neill's strange semi-connected jabber, but Westinghouse's Dr. O'Connor said that it seemed to represent another phenomenon entirely. William Logan's blank face was a memory of horror, but the constant tinkling giggles of Ardith Parker, the ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... seen the monkeys' cage in the beast-garden here. That is the world. It is not strength, or merit, or talent, or reason that is of any use there; it is just which monkey has the skill to squeeze to the front and jabber through the bars, and make his teeth meet in his neighbours' tails till they shriek and leave him free passage—it is that monkey which gets all the cakes and the nuts of the folk on a feast-day. The monkey is not bad; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... God, but the holiest nigger is, in my opinion, the one that's nearest the devil. Then you saw yourself, Captain Meadows, how they went on during the voyage, reading books that was writ on wood instead o' paper, and sitting up right through the night to jabber together on the quarter-deck. What did they want to have a chart of their own for and to mark the course ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He's the best-looking man in the bunch. He's so tall and straight, too, and so—so bishop-y in the set of his clothes. They fit him. But he doesn't jabber as much as the rest. I s'pose 'twould be just like the things that happen to me to find out that that giant bean-pole which keeps teetering around the room is the bishop." She indicated a very tall, very slender man, who at that moment chanced ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... unfinished longer tales, but brought none of them to completion. The German drama interested him. Once he wrote to Mr. Rogers that he had translated "In Purgatory" and sent it to Charles Frohman, who pronounced it "all jabber and no play." ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beggars in the streets of Rome and Naples; so much squalidness and misery; no cleanliness; an utter want of comfort; and such superstition; and such an absence of all true and evangelical seriousness. They push and fight while Mass is going on; they jabber their prayers at railroad speed; they worship the Virgin as a goddess; and they see miracles at the corner of every street. Their images are awful, and their ignorance prodigious. Well, Willis saw all this; and I have it on good authority," ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... silence in the huddled group of men. Then the newspapermen came to life and excited talk became a jabber of words around them. Trent took the arm of Mathieson and turned him. He tried to lead the scientist away from the newspapermen but one of them stepped forward and ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... rapidly wore off. Now, on either side, appeared a fleet of fishing canoes, the wild songs of their naked crews coming across the water, as with rugged sails of matting lolling at their ease, they steered towards the shore. We overtook some of them, and such a loud jabber as they set up, talking to each other, or hailing ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... no doubt of it—if I would listen to your wretched jabber! Enough! if you talk any more I'll go home again. A fine state of things, truly—that I am to have my mind dissipated when I'm in working trim by the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... God that he tells us we ought to feel! Love a God like that! If he were as good as my mother, I would love him! But we have all to look out to protect ourselves from him! Mr. Parson, there's no such being as you jabber about! It puzzles me to think what ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the inscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently, sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one trace of Binhart ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous—a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville and Caius. Here I am; and I choose ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... you could see old Cambridge and Ponkapog. I love them as dearly as ever, but privately, my dear, they are not much improvement on idiots. It is melancholy to hear them jabber over the same pointless anecdotes three and four times of an evening, forgetting that they had jabbered them over three or four times the evening before. Ponkapog still writes poetry, but the old-time fire has mostly gone out of it. Perhaps ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that whichever way I turned my path was barred by these wild men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some of the tribe followed, others went on ahead, flitting like shadows ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... had nothing to do with either the Boers or their laws. Many attempts were made during these visits to elicit the truth about the guns and cannon; and ignorant of the system of espionage which prevails, eager inquiries were made by them among those who could jabber a little Dutch. It is noticeable that the system of espionage is as well developed among the savage tribes as in Austria or Russia. It is a proof of barbarism. Every man in a tribe feels himself bound to tell the chief every thing that comes to his knowledge, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid is laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tuck a great likin' to childern," said he; "but I kindy liked little Clint; his cheeks was so soft, and smooth, and his eyes snapped sich funny fire; and he was olers so full o' his cunnin' jabber. I hope the painters haint ketched him. They yelled despotly last night; but I hope they haint ketched him yit. I'd like to see him agin, and baird his dimple face for ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... them when one does not know what they are talking among themselves; they jabber like Jews, and when they talked to me they were poking fun at me. Besides, there was some talk of free distribution ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... course. I don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF. If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say 'Well, I must be going now—hope I'll see you again'—and then I take a walk. Where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... character and to entertain it with thankful hospitality. When at last that which we have always longed for is arrived and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial land, then to be coarse, then to be critical and treat such a visitant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vulgarity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion, this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own, nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any religion but this, to know that wherever in ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say and Speak ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... blame him. He has no business to be so partial to you. All the difference between us is, that you can jabber Dutch a little. That isn't worth ten dollars a week extra. He's down on me for something or ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... with his clawlike hands, as if he understood me not. It was a lie, for I knew that he and the English tongue were sufficiently acquainted. I told him as much, and he shot at me a most venomous glance, but continued to shrug, gesticulate, and jabber in Italian. At last I saw nothing better to do than to take him, still by the collar, to the edge of the garden next the churchyard, and with the toe of my boot to send him tumbling among the graves. I watched him pick himself up, set his attire ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... process had not passed, it need hardly be said, unobserved; and by the time that our meal was concluded quite a large audience of women had gathered round to witness the performance. The animated jabber and hearty ringing laughter of several of the younger women and the somewhat abashed yet pleased expression of our own particular friend seemed to indicate that badinage was not altogether unknown, even in this obscure African village. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... from all I've heard, this Paris is an awful place and—good-by. Good-by. In Lucerne in two days or Interlaken in three. It's got to be that, or back I come, remember. I HATE to leave you all alone amongst these jabberin' foreigners. I'm glad you can jabber, too, that's one comfort. If it was me, all I could do would be to holler United States language at 'em, and if they didn't understand that, just holler louder. I—Yes, Mr. Hepton, I AM comin' ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... crowd's to be at Andrews' by 4, and it's fully that now; so come on at once. We'll go 'round by Munson's and have Hi send a boy to look after your horse. Come; and I want to introduce my friend here to you, and we'll all want to smoke and jabber a little in appropriate seclusion. Come on." And the impatient Major had linked arms with his hesitating ally and myself, and was turning the corner of ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... to the so-called battle-field before leaving for the South. We started in a covered waggonette with no springs to speak of, drawn by six mules, and a pair of horses as leaders. Two Kaffirs acted as charioteers, and kept up an incessant jabber in Dutch. The one who held the reins looked good-natured enough, but the other, whose duty it was to wield the enormously long whip, had a most diabolical cast of countenance, in which cruelty and doggedness were both clearly ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... How the Frenchmen did jabber away, and ask us all sorts of questions, none of which we could answer, from not being able to muster a word of French amongst us. The other boats came up, and then there was still more jabbering; and then the Frenchmen made us all get ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. Great gray and black gulls screamed against ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... married to the same man, so each had decided to try a little change, whereupon Lizzie, the second waitress—a buxom Irish girl who despised "furriners" in general and Japanese in particular—bid Oku hold his tongue and not jabber such heathenish nonsense. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... over the level field in the dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He felt the expansive thrill of the planter, the employer—the man who organizes an enterprise and ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ever more in earnest, ever more soul-tied ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... what you were saying that I lost the thread of my story. We were listening to an excited jabber of nonsense in the hotel—for instance, one of the negro servants said you went away of your own free will—and wondering what on earth we could do, when this genii of an Arab came to me in a mysterious way, and led me straight on your track. Shall ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to have improved amazingly in the two months you have been away," the latter said, as they came out from the shop; "you seem to jabber ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... iron—they had no iron—but flint or bone shaped by a flint knife. Where the paint was not splashed or patterned over them, their faces could be liked very well. Lips were not over full, the nose slightly beaked, the forehead fairly high, the eyes good. They did not jabber nor move idly but kept measure and a pleasant dignity. They seemed gentle and happy. So were they when we ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... a pleased and confident jabber among the slingers and archers below as the birds arrived. The catapult was turned about toward us, and lashed tightly to stakes driven in front and behind. Then the birds were hitched to the cord of the immense bow, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... was more than the English master or Teeny-bits expected. The four Chinese, who had been observing in apparent astonishment this sudden performance on Teeny-bits' part, gazed at the mark and began to jabber among themselves in a manner that showed plainly enough their excitement and agitation. One of them even took a step nearer as if to obtain a clearer view. Chuan Kai, however, quickly brought their demonstration to an end. He exclaimed sharply in his singsong language and stepped toward them ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... maneuver in visible astonishment. They drew together and talked it over, flew down close to the Clubhouse, flew about it in circles, examined it on every side, made even one perilous trip across the roof, the tips of their feet tapping it in vicious little dabs. But flutter as they would, jabber as they would, the Clubhouse preserved a tomb-like silence. After a while they banged on the shutters and knocked against the door; but not a sound or ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... as soldiers, of any in the regiment, but this Seventh regiment when it went into action jabbered and talked Dutch to exceed in volubility any female sewing society ever assembled. As they came up and got into position the volume of jabber almost overcame the rattle of musketry and the roar of artillery. I am certain their conduct did not favorably impress our men. If the German Emperor's army is not made of grimmer stuff than I saw exhibited in ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... rapidity that was comical, for Ariadne had the upper hand now. Rose adored pretty things, longed to wear them, and the desire of her girlish soul was to have her ears bored, only Dr. Alec thought it foolish, so she never had done it. She would gladly have given all the French she could jabber for a pair of golden bells with pearl-tipped tongues, like those Ariadne wore; and, clasping her hands, she answered, in a tone that ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he called the Holy Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an opportunity of seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything he liked with Holy Mary: ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... time for brooding. They have to pump ahead to save what remained of their capital stock. But Khalid, nevertheless, would brood and jabber. And what an inundation ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... jabber that is likely to lead to a very good result. A cousin of his is one of the guard that came down with us. He has told this warder about our fight, and asked him to say that he and his comrades were very angry at ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... now an important city—and made fast to our buoy. Instantly the ship was surrounded by sampans, and the occupants, not a few of whom were Chinese, swarmed aboard, eager to find buyers for the fruit, sake, and other articles which they had for sale. The jabber of tongues was incessant and deafening, and the importunities of the salesmen a trifle annoying; but Nakamura quickly sent them to the right-about, and inviting me to go up on the bridge with him—we were staying aboard ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... eye-sight. I shall never forget them. The one was as tall as a giant, with much tawny moustache, like the coat of a badger, growing about his mouth. He had a huge ruddy face, and looked dull and stupid, as he no doubt was, for when I spoke to him, he did not seem to understand, and answered in a jabber, valgame Dios! so wild and strange, that I remained staring at him with mouth and eyes open. The other was neither tall nor red-faced, nor had he hair about his mouth, and, indeed, he had very little upon his head. He was very diminutive, and looked like a jorobado (hunchback); but, valgame ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... mark, with regret, that self has introduced itself here. The heartless loquacity—we must say heartless, for, in a matter of such deep interest, facility of speech bespeaks the feelings light—the unshrinking jabber with which people tell you their soul's history—their past impressions and present difficulties—their doctrines and their doubts—their manifestations and their experiences—not in the ear of confidence, to have those doubts removed and those doctrines verified; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... engaged in cutting an inscription on the tombstone of his wife, recently dead; and a poor idiot, who found his living in the kitchen, and to whom the deceased had shown kindness; used to come every day to the churchyard, to sit beside me, and jabber in broken expressions his grief. I was struck with the extremeness of his idiocy: he manifested even more than the ordinary inability of his class to deal with figures, for he could scarce tell whether nature had furnished him with one head or with two; and no power of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... camp, assisting the white hunter, several squaws began an excited jabber that brought ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... he was startled by a piercing scream to the rear. He backed out from the tunnel and stood upright once more. He heard the sound of people splashing round in water. The screamer began to jabber like a maniac, punctuating his ravings with shrieks. Another was cursing vehemently, and a third appealing to the saints. Lermontoff quickly knelt down in the watercourse, this time facing the upper cell, and struck his ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... turns the orgin—the best I ever 'eard— Oh lor' he does just jabber, but you can't make out a word. I can't abear Italians, as allus uses knives, And talks a furrin lingo all their miserable lives. But this one calls me BELLA—which my Christian name is SUE— And 'e smiles and turns 'is orgin very proper, that he do. Sometimes 'e plays a polker ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... you were a big scholar, Mr Jack, sir," continued Ned, "but I didn't think you were up to this jibber-jabber.—Thankye, old chap. Nice state you've got my hands in though. Why, I don't believe the size gloves I should want are made. Look, Mr Jack, about four-and-twenty they'd ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Burmese Interprut'r an' my clanin'-rod. Sez I to the man, "My paceful squireen," sez I, "you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to my frind here, where your frinds are whin they're at home?" Wid that I introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst to jabber; the Interprut'r interprutin' in betweens, an' me helpin' the Intilligince Departmint wid my clanin'-rod whin ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was marked, stained abominably, that he went from her presence. He said to himself: "I've dished myself now with my silly jabber. Damn ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... was ankle deep everywhere. And such a lot of Negroes; shiftless, lazy dogs, black as the ace of spades and twice as natural. But the little "nigs" kill me outright, they looking so much like a lot of monkeys, I know of nothing so comical. I could sit half the morning watching them and hearing them jabber. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... the last landing-place, each carrying over his shoulder a small but heavy sack. A large weighing-machine, that had been used for cargo at the last port, stood on the deck; and round this the fishermen had gathered, and, with much unintelligible jabber, seemed ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... could not have idled away the time even if she had wanted to, for the Mexican woman came for her, with smiling gesticulation and jabber that manifestly meant dinner. Carley could not understand many Mexican words, and herein she saw another task. This swarthy woman and her sloe-eyed husband favorably ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... on my knees, they could not see me, nor could I see them; but their laughter and their infernal jabber—for these buccaneers were the sweepings of half-a-dozen nations—came to my ears as distinct as though I stood among them. And under the grip of terror I crawled to the front of the gallery and peered ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... baby haff come ter town! Jabber und jump till der day gone down— Jabber und sphlutter und sphlit hees jaws— Vot a Dutch baby dees Londsmon vas! I dink dose mout' vas leedle too vide Ober he laugh fon dot altso-side! Haff got blenty off deemple und vrown—? Hey! Leedle Dutchman ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... finish!" he cried. "You seem to think jabber does everything. The end of it all is, that either you give me the money or I take it—and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... in the same tone as before. "Just fancy a chap like you turned into an officer. You can jabber a few words of French, and may have picked up a smattering of navigation on board the Foxhound, though I've a notion you must pretty well have forgotten all you knew by this time, and you may be fond of books, but all that won't turn a fellow who has come out of the gutter, ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... certain hour in the public walks, without wearing any other dress than that in which he saw him. "The fellor has got no more stuff in his pate," continued this polite stranger, "than a jackass, to think I could not find my way hither thof I could not jabber your French lingo. Ecod! the people of this country are sharp enough to find out your meaning, when you want to spend anything among them; and, as for the matter of dress, bodikins! for a thousand pound, I would engage to live in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and barely perceptible smile of satisfaction addressed to me, he turned to the woman. And no sooner had he turned to her, than his whole face altered. He said, in a peculiar, scornful, hasty tone, such as is employed towards dogs: "What do you jabber in that careless way for? 'I sit in the taverns.' You do sit in the taverns, and that means, to talk business, that you are a prostitute," and again he uttered the word. "She does not know the name for herself." This tone offended me. "It ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... dwelling, while others, who have neither the one accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive instrument of ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for other people," said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads of them—Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing on dulcimers—she's had them come up at night and visit her in her bedroom. They jabber and hoot and smoke, I believe. She's established ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... very fine," said the bosun gloomily, "but what about the lingo, sir? We may dress up as much as you like, but nohow can we twist our tongues to the jabber of these Frenchies, and I could no more march a score of miles without using my clapper than I could ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... never saw a Wallachian eating or silent. They talk like madmen, and drink like madmen. In drinking they use small phials, the contents of which they pour down their throats. When I first went amongst them I thought the whole nation was under a course of physic, but the terrible jabber of their tongues soon undeceived me. Drak was the first word I heard on entering Dacia, and the last when I left it. The Moldaves, if possible, drink more, and talk more ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... short dresses and high bodies or shirts, and their cheeks, noses, and foreheads thickly covered with red paint. Both parties soon set up a lively jabber in Sioux; but General Parker gave a sign, and all were ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... arrived within a couple of hundred yards of the open. Sick of the oppressive jungle, and eager for the change to a type of country with which they were more familiar, they were swinging on through the tree-tops at a great pace, when that savage, snarling jabber which they so dreaded was heard in the branches behind them. Grom instantly put A-ya in the lead, while he himself dropped to the rear to meet this deadliest of perils. There was no need to urge his party to haste; but it seemed to them all as ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... recover; but flutter worse and worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in madhouse, and straitwaistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such brownlocked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had, through some segment of that Eighteenth Century of Time. She disappears here from the Revolution and Public History, for evermore. (Deux Amis, vii. 77-80; Forster, i. 514; Moore, i. 70. She did not die till 1817; in the Salpetriere, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the talk of the aborigines. Some think it is the English word jabber, with the first letter pronounced as in German; but it is pronounced by the aborigines yabba, without a final r. Ya is an aboriginal stem, meaning to speak. In the Kabi dialect, yaman is to speak: ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... "There it is again! A Mingo talkin', a Seneca, I'd say—Hear that jabber! Delaware—Wyandot—Taway (Ottawa). With a blanket o' Shawnee pow-wow. By heavens, Morris! This is Cornstalk's whole force. They've learned that Dunmore is at the Hockhockin' an' will be j'inin' up with Lewis ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... grown too fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... in Italy tended to confirm him in the political opinions which he had adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, and to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like the language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... great deal of fuss and bustle on board the brig, while the Frenchmen were clearing away and lowering the boats; then, with a vast amount of jabber, they went down the side, took their places, and shoved off, with me ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... greeted them as they entered. At little tables lit up by pink candles sat small groups of shirt fronts and butterfly ties with fair heads and pretty frocks. Waiters were coming and going with champagne and silver dishes; there was a clatter of knives and forks, and a jabber of voices and laughter. And all the time there came the sounds of the band, with the "Tra-la-la" from the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... a self-respect—not a bold, disagreeable assurance, but a sort of rough, unassuming dignity that was both pleasant and becoming. He did not sit down with his hat on, and his chair tilted backward, and chatter and jabber as if he were of quite as much importance as his benefactor, but stood respectfully, with uncovered head, and answered Mr. Bond's questions modestly and politely, and waited to be asked before he made himself at home in ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... received a boy about seven or eight years old. The boy had traveled four months across the desert from Lake Chad. He knew nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his mother tongue, and could jabber only some fragments of speech picked up from the other slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long journey he was emaciated to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand up. He ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... "Lay off that jabber, old bucks, the two of ye!" commanded Officer Rellihan, swinging across the room. "I'm here to kape th' ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs. Jabber. My dear, Mrs. Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a coat on a hot day because ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... perceived it, and as we went home together, congratulated me on my good fortune. But so far was Bruin from entertaining the least suspicion, that he encouraged me to begin a conversation with my mistress in a language unknown to him, by telling her, that he had a gentleman who could jabber with her in French and other foreign lingoes as fast as she pleased; then, turning to me, said, "Odds bobs! I wish you would hold discourse with her in your French or Italian, and tell me if she understands it as well as she would be thought ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... in front of us, his bare feet plashing from log to log and mud-heap to mud-heap, his gray woolly head wagging right and left, and his cutlass brushing almost instinctively at every bough he passed, while he turned round every moment to jabber something, usually in Creole French, which, of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... harlot, naturally frank and truthful, with some liking for me (for she looked forward to our voluptuous dallyings), she gave me for a long time much amusement, and I heard the incidents of her short life. She would jabber like a magpie about them when she knew me well, which she soon did, and began to look to me regularly for her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... well for you to sit there jabber, jabber, jabber, Miss Dora," exclaimed the unceremonious Elizabeth; "you're dressed, all but your bonnet. You've only just to pop that on, and there you are. But my young lady isn't half dressed yet. And now, come along, Miss Laura, and have your hair ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... noticed about her was the pleasure it gave her to refer to her husband or to quote him. Her prattle was so full of, "My husband says, says my husband," that it seemed as though the chief purpose of her jabber was to parade her married state and to hear herself talk of her spouse. The words, "My husband," were music to her ears. They actually meant, "Behold, I am an old maid ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... always wanted to revolt about something, anyway. One of my ancestors helped throw the English breakfast tea into Boston Harbour. But I don't want to get all het up about this unless there's really something in it besides jabber." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fierce-looking chaps, Mahomet Singh and Abdullah Khan by name, both old fighting-men who had borne arms against us at Chilian-wallah. They could talk English pretty well, but I could get little out of them. They preferred to stand together and jabber all night in their queer Sikh lingo. For myself, I used to stand outside the gate-way, looking down on the broad, winding river and on the twinkling lights of the great city. The beating of drums, the rattle of tomtoms, and the yells and howls of the rebels, drunk ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about everywhere that Lantier was a friend and a true one. People might jabber about them; he knew what he knew and did not care a straw for their gossip, for he had respectability on his side. When they all three went out walking on Sundays, he made his wife and the hatter walk arm-in-arm before him, just by way of swaggering in the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... we could hear the flocks of birds flying in the air and feel the stamping feet below as herds of animals ran in every direction. We heard the vibrant jabber of monkeys from tree-tops, and each time a new tree fell there was more jabbering and more leaping away ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... it took," went on Drysdale. "I thought old Murdock would have wept on his neck. As it was, he scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... single encounter with Toddie had taught me to respect the young gentleman's force of character. So again I bowed my head, and repeated what Budge had reported as "papa's blessin'," Budge kindly prompting me where my memory failed. The moment I began, Toddie commenced to jabber rapidly and aloud, and the instant the "Amen" was pronounced he raised his head and ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... like to go to her to-night?—Well, go. I shan't need you. Don't jabber, you make my head spin. Go at once and stay until morning; leave the cigarettes on the tray and the wine on the table—that is all. Just ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... have believed it of myself that I could see into it as quick as I have. I couldn't say as I understand everything they say just when they're saying it; but I understand it right enough when I've had time to translate like. If foreigners didn't talk so fast and run their words one into another, and jabber as if their mouths was full of puddin', it'd be easier for them as is English. Now, there's 'wee' and 'nong.' I know 'em whenever I hear 'em, and that's a good bit ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... keeps step with the spirit; and actuality forestalls, in a way, the selection by memory; significance, pleasantness, choice, not brute outer circumstance, determining the accentuation, the phrasing (in musical sense) of our life. For life must be phrased, lest it become mere jabber, without pleasure or lesson. Indeed, one may say that if games teach a man to stand a reverse or snatch an opportunity, so bicycling might afford an instructive analogy of what things to notice, to talk about and remember on life's high-roads ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... instant noise and confusion on deck; the silence that had held the tongues of the crew was now no longer necessary, and the jabber, the oaths, the shouting, the loud, defiant laughs, the rumbling of the gun-carriages, the creaking of tackle-blocks, the thud of rammers and sponges, the calls for cartridges, all combined to create a hubbub ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... to perch on the roof of th' ark, and jabber over the drowning world; that was why. So, ever after that, when a magpie flies across, turn back, or look to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... man, "My paceful squireen," sez I, "you shquot on your hunkers an' dimonstrate to my frind here, where your frinds are whin they're at home?" Wid that I introjuced him to the clanin'-rod, an' he comminst to jabber; the Interprut'r interprutin' in betweens, an' me helpin' the Intilligince Departmint wid my ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... it's important for all her inhabitants that she should be on the winning side.... Oh, she will be, no doubt, we've the advantage in numbers and wealth, if not in military organisation or talent.... If only the Potterites wouldn't jabber so. It's a unique opportunity for them, and they're taking it. What makes me angriest is the reasons they vamp up why we're fighting. For the sake of democracy, they say. Democracy be hanged. It's a rotten system, anyhow, and how this war is going to do anything for ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... a great likin' to childern," said he; "but I kindy liked little Clint; his cheeks was so soft, and smooth, and his eyes snapped sich funny fire; and he was olers so full o' his cunnin' jabber. I hope the painters haint ketched him. They yelled despotly last night; but I hope they haint ketched him yit. I'd like to see him agin, and baird his dimple face for him; the ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow beings whenever ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... there, now, what a depth of stupidity lies behind his brown visage; what bucketsful of ignorance swell out his black pate, but he expresses it all in the single word 'Waugh!' because he's a philosopher. If he was like La Certe, he'd jabber away to us by the hour of things he knows nothin' about, and tell us long stories that are nothin' less than big lies. I'm glad you think me a philosopher, Little Bill, for it takes all the philosophy I've got to keep me up to the scratch of goin' about the world ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... they quite deafened me by their jabber. I tried signs, but before I could make them understand me I was seized with another shivering fit, and was carried below. The vessel held on her course, I have no doubt, but I was in no condition to know anything ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... up, Tony," said Magnus, lowering. "I'll look after my own affairs of the heart. Anyway, here's them two old hens what have been makin' me sick with their jabber and nonsense all these weeks. Ain't I goin' to have a chance to ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... better have tea on one of the ordinaries. "Pooh, volcanic!" says the leading tourist, and the ladies say how interesting. The island begins to rock, and so do the minds of its visitors. They start and quarrel and jabber. Fingers burst up through the sand-black fingers of sea devils. The island tilts. The tourists go mad. But just before the catastrophe one man, integer vitae scelerisque purus, sees the truth. Here are no devils. Other ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke, then—"Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the main road to towns an' sich like—this is a bye, an' 'ere ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... accommodation nor the other, deposit their receptacles for the weary on the pavement in the street. The black domestics form a tertulia on the door-steps or squat together in dark unoccupied parts of the corridors. Their jabber is incessant and occasionally requires a gentle reminder. Sometimes one of their company essays a wild melody, accompanying his song on a primitive instrument ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... to be sworn to by half a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his Commanding Officer would put in certificates of the prisoner's moral character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the witnesses would smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper would lose his head in cross-examination, and the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... and, in compensation, received a boy about seven or eight years old. The boy had traveled four months across the desert from Lake Chad. He knew nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his mother tongue, and could jabber only some fragments of speech picked up from the other slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long journey he was emaciated to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand up. He crawled on all fours and kissed the hand of his new master, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... she made up because she used to say, when we first met, I was like a Spaniard; and I can jabber Spanish among other lingos. It's more her native tongue, you know, than English. I only refer to it because I want you to have a special name of your own for me, and I don't want it to be that one. It can't be Nelson, because—well, I can ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... administered to us alternately by means of a flat wooden spatula. This feeding process had not passed, it need hardly be said, unobserved; and by the time that our meal was concluded quite a large audience of women had gathered round to witness the performance. The animated jabber and hearty ringing laughter of several of the younger women and the somewhat abashed yet pleased expression of our own particular friend seemed to indicate that badinage was not altogether unknown, even in this obscure ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... They talk like madmen, and drink like madmen. In drinking they use small phials, the contents of which they pour down their throats. When I first went amongst them I thought the whole nation was under a course of physic, but the terrible jabber of their tongues soon undeceived me. Drak was the first word I heard on entering Dacia, and the last when I left it. The Moldaves, if possible, drink more, and talk more than ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... things were of interest to him, and his knowledge, acquired with astonishing facility, formed the fund of talk which had singular charm alike for those who did and those who did not understand it. Undeniably shy, he yet, when warmed to a subject, spoke with nerve and confidence. In days of jabber, more or less impolite, this appearance of an articulate mortal, with soft manners and totally unaffected, could not but excite curiosity. Lady Teasdale, eager for the uncommon, chanced to observe him one evening as he conversed with his neighbour ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... down;—and you cast about for new methods of reform. Democratic government, somehow, does nothing of what was expected of it; is not the panacea;—you see that, to bring the chaos of affairs into order, you must stop all this jabber and tinkering, and set up some undivided council,—some Man, for God's sake!—a Dictator who can keep his own and other people's mouths shut and hands busy, and get things done unimpeded. So you make one more grand reform for the sake of efficiency, and set up your Imperator, and have peace, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... fluttered that it will never recover; but flutter worse and worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in madhouse, and straitwaistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such brownlocked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had, through some segment of that Eighteenth Century of Time. She disappears here from the Revolution and Public History, for evermore. (Deux Amis, vii. 77-80; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... small fishing village, but now an important city—and made fast to our buoy. Instantly the ship was surrounded by sampans, and the occupants, not a few of whom were Chinese, swarmed aboard, eager to find buyers for the fruit, sake, and other articles which they had for sale. The jabber of tongues was incessant and deafening, and the importunities of the salesmen a trifle annoying; but Nakamura quickly sent them to the right-about, and inviting me to go up on the bridge with him—we were staying aboard to lunch with the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... occupations and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better nature; it was like breathing pure air after the fever heat of a sick room; it was like hearing the birds sing after the meaningless jabber of Bedlam. Mr. Carleton indeed did not put the matter quite so strongly to himself. He called Fleda his good angel. He did not exactly know that the office this good angel performed was simply to hold a candle to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... fine an ear for their own native woodnotes as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose as the inhabitants in High German; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low Dutch. However this may be, we may consider those whose tongues hardly seem to be under the influence of reason, and do not keep up the proper conversation of human creatures, as imitating ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... skull is closely shaven all round. They all have skimpy white jackets and skirts from which their skinny little yellow legs stick out kicking in the effort to master their tasks. In a loud sing-song jabber they are repeating something which they read off the slates they hold in front of them. It would be funny to learn lessons lying flat on the floor, wouldn't it? But these boys have never sat on chairs in their lives; they will have to learn that as an accomplishment if they ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... had no credit to pledge for the season's stores. They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the Athens of 400 B.C. The instrument is dumb. Ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of "talking-machines," like Faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. These automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; but they lack even the sterile utility of the imitative art of ventriloquism. The real great invention lies in creating devices that shall be able to evoke from tinfoil, wax, or composition at any time to-day or in the future ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... I went with her pulling herbs in the fields and swamps, and with one word English and one of jabber, we knew each other's meaning, and I gave her the buckle of my belt which was broke and none here ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... talk of the aborigines. Some think it is the English word jabber, with the first letter pronounced as in German; but it is pronounced by the aborigines yabba, without a final r. Ya is an aboriginal stem, meaning to speak. In the Kabi dialect, yaman is to speak: in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was afraid of a fall and their backs would get broken. So when they were big enough they sat on the floor and she talked to them and told them funny things and acted 'em off and laughed, and they'd laugh too. It was like a play to see 'em. And they'd jabber back and she'd make b'lieve she understood it all. She was a wonderful child's nurse an' there'll be trouble enough without her. But the babies went to bed early an' then she'd come down an' wipe the dishes for ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... interests, have become a subject of general conversation. We would have it so; but we mark, with regret, that self has introduced itself here. The heartless loquacity—we must say heartless, for, in a matter of such deep interest, facility of speech bespeaks the feelings light—the unshrinking jabber with which people tell you their soul's history—their past impressions and present difficulties—their doctrines and their doubts—their manifestations and their experiences—not in the ear of confidence, to have those doubts removed and those doctrines verified; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... short by frankly saying that I had nothing to do with either the Boers or their laws. Many attempts were made during these visits to elicit the truth about the guns and cannon; and ignorant of the system of espionage which prevails, eager inquiries were made by them among those who could jabber a little Dutch. It is noticeable that the system of espionage is as well developed among the savage tribes as in Austria or Russia. It is a proof of barbarism. Every man in a tribe feels himself bound to tell the chief every ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... further entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid her; continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many others who pretended to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... privileges are far greater than his, save that you have the Major as an appendage in place of a prefix.) The aforesaid Rali Bey was far the best specimen of a Turkish military doctor whom I ever met. As a rule, they are not an attractive set. Almost invariably Constantinopolitans, they jabber execrable French fluently enough, and affect European manners in a way which is truly disgusting: add to this a natural disregard of cleanliness, and an obtrusive familiarity, and nothing more is wanted to complete the picture. Of their ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... remaining a burden upon my mother, it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved to be of a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... He was a Cuban. Father had picked him up at Havana, where he was looking out for somebody who could teach him English instead of the queer jabber that he learned, second-hand, from a wizened little French adventurer, who had set up as a teacher of languages, and had nearly forgotten even his own. I did get sold in the most ridiculous way over father's telegram that announced his coming! ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... "Little old Chippewa girls are good enough for Chuck. I ain't counting on taking up with those Frenchies. I don't like their jabber, from what I know of it. I saw some pictures of 'em, last week, a fellow in camp had who'd been over there. Their hair is all funny, and fixed up with combs and stuff, and they look ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... he told me; "you must not mind. The sentry has orders to keep everybody away from the palace, as people come in the afternoon and squat under my windows to jabber, and I cannot sleep. Those orders, I assure you, were not meant for you. You will be my guest all the time you are in the city, and I ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very spiteful appearance. Other kinds, as the Inuus ecaudatus, apparently do not thus act. Again, other kinds—and this is a great anomaly in comparison with most other animals—retract their ears, show their teeth, and jabber, when they are pleased by being caressed. I observed this in two or three species of Macacus, and in the Cynopithecus niger. This expression, owing to our familiarity with dogs, would never be recognized as one of joy or pleasure ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... principal article of "chow-chow" for the crew. Everybody in China has a boy, and Charley had his; a regular young imp of a fellow of about his own age. Aling was his name; Charley used to call him Ting-a-ling, and would jabber horrible Chinese to him by the hour. Aling jumped down the steps, two at a time, with Charley's traveling bag; but Aho, more sedate and dignified, marched after him; Charley and I joined Akong in the front of the boat, and with ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... inquiring of stranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?" And time after time the curious yellow faces would bend over the picture, the inscrutable slant eyes would study the face, sometimes silently, sometimes with a disheartening jabber of heathen tongues. But not one trace of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... shiftless, lazy dogs, black as the ace of spades and twice as natural. But the little "nigs" kill me outright, they looking so much like a lot of monkeys, I know of nothing so comical. I could sit half the morning watching them and hearing them jabber. ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... people cannot laugh at you as well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous—a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville and Caius. Here I am; and I choose to stare you in the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... proper, in his chuckly sorter style, With his thumb 'ooked orful hartful, and his chickaleary smile. "JIM," sez he, "wot price your jabber? Do yer think the blooming blokes Cares a cuss for me and you, JIM, any more than ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... and the erect white gentleman, before his desk in his elbow-chair, when, after his breakfast, about to open the letters and the books relating to this part of his charge, used sometimes to grin over his work, and jabber to himself his hard scoffs and gibes over the sins and follies of man, and the chops and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in visible astonishment. They drew together and talked it over, flew down close to the Clubhouse, flew about it in circles, examined it on every side, made even one perilous trip across the roof, the tips of their feet tapping it in vicious little dabs. But flutter as they would, jabber as they would, the Clubhouse preserved a tomb-like silence. After a while they banged on the shutters and knocked against the door; but not a sound or movement ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the broken balustrade, could hear the guttural jabber of their beast-talk, the clicking play of their fangs; could see the craning necks, the talons that held spears, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... would have suffered from exposure to cold. I however regretted this but little. The white bear was shaking his shaggy coat, the wolf pacing uneasily up and down his den, birds pluming their feathers in the dull red light, while the monkeys' ceaseless jabber sounded from the walls of ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning. The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and finally begin—jabber, jabber, jabber—trying to talk me down, as if I ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... we have wronged him," said Blake. "The best way is not to talk too much to him. We might let something slip out without knowing it. Let him jabber as much as he likes. We'll ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolflike, the wolves had never told him how they hated him. "Listen you!" he cried. "There is no need for this dog's jabber. Ye have told me so often tonight that I am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life's end) that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ye will do, and what ye will not do, is not yours to say. That ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... most wonderful thing. An American or an Englishman, or any one speaking English, could take with him a translatophone and travel around the world, understanding the language of every nation, of every people—the polished tongues of civilization, the speech of the scholars of the Orient, and even the jabber of the wild savages of Africa. To be sure, he could not expect to answer those who spoke to him, but what of that? He would not wish to speak; he would merely desire to hear. All he would have to do would ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... expect us to return all together almost immediately. By this time, thanks to Yamba's able and intelligent lessons, I was able to speak the queer language of the blacks with some show of fluency, and I could understand them well enough when they did not jabber ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of the scenery, in somewhat gushing phrases. The woman paid no attention to him. Provoked by her irresponsiveness, he said, "You don't seem to care for this magnificent scenery?" She took the pipe from her mouth and delivered this settler: "I enjies it; I don't jabber." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... of our minister, Joshua Hopewell (he was the most larned man of the age, for he taught himself e'enamost every language in Europe); well, next spring, when I went to Boston, I met a Frenchman, and I began to jabber away French to him: 'Polly woes a french say,' says I. 'I don't understand Yankee yet,' says he. 'You don't understand!' says I, 'why it's French. I guess you didn't expect to hear such good French, did ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... paint a few show-pictures. But I know very little about it, for I haven't much taste that way. Father has us educated according to our tastes; that is, if we show a little talent for any one thing, he has us try to perfect ourselves in that one thing. Julia is the linguist, and can jabber French and German like natives. Father also insisted on our being taught the common English branches very thoroughly, and he says he could get us situations to teach within a month, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... smile of satisfaction addressed to me, he turned to the woman. And no sooner had he turned to her, than his whole face altered. He said, in a peculiar, scornful, hasty tone, such as is employed towards dogs: "What do you jabber in that careless way for? 'I sit in the taverns.' You do sit in the taverns, and that means, to talk business, that you are a prostitute," and again he uttered the word. "She does not know the name for herself." This tone offended me. "It is not ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... of the Spanish and the Sclavonic. Some jabber a little French. The men are generally athletic, very dark complexioned and have strong, energetic features, wavy hair and sonorous voices. The women, when young, are remarkably beautiful; but like all who lead an exposed and migratory life, they become hideous ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... observations which Addison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the political opinions which he had adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of foreign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French, and to talk against ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one were to squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there but returned ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... They've grown too fly. You've got only to pass a remark on his sail-cloth coat to make him shut up. All the town knows it. But he's got you to listen to his crazy talk whenever he chooses. Don't I hear you two at it, jabber, jabber, mumble, mumble——— ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... elderly woman seemed to be astonished at such a name, but the Lambertini gave no explanation. Nevertheless, people seemed to think it rather curious that a man who did not know a word of French should be living in Paris, and that in spite of his ignorance he continued to jabber away in an easy manner, though nobody could understand what ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Minty, lifting her black eyes to her father's; "I ain't no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy—for it ain't anything else, though he's good meanin' ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... as dat, nohow. When dat cussed mule—I tell you fair, Massa Tom, dis chile conclude dat riding not such a berry easy ting after all—when dat cussed mule ran into French camp, de soldiers dey catch him, and dey take Sam off, and den dey jabber and laugh for all de world like great lots of monkeys. Well, for some time Sam he didn't say nothing, all de wind shook out of his body. Besides which he couldn't understand what dey say. Den all of a sudden, to Sam's surprise, up came a colored soldier, and he speak to Sam in de ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... give a glance at the Van der Werf's papers, though Captain Cornelisz was ready for him with the wrong set. "I guess," says he, "you'll spare yourself the trouble to pretend you ain't a Dutchman"; and when the skipper flung his arms about and began to jabber like a play-actor, 'twas "All right, Mynheer; we'll talk about that at Falmouth. Look here, boys," he sings out to his boarding party, "we've something here too good to be let out of sight. My idea is to reach back for Polperro in company, and let Mr. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grin, and jabber, and grin, like a pesky set o' natural born monkeys, that's ten times better nor you is any day of your good for nothing, sneaking lives. Goodness, gracious, marsy on me alive!" continued the dame, whom the reader has doubtless recognized as Mrs. Younker; "I only jest wish you had to change ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... "He!" and "Hi!" respectively, in varying tones according to their varied character. Then they commenced a jabber, which we are quite unable to translate, and turned Tom over on his back. The motion awoke him, for he sat up ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... an' e' goes wallop down the 'ole length of the companion, from top to bottom, an' busts three of 'is ribs. Of course we all ran an' picked 'im up, an' said we 'oped 'e wasn't much 'urt. But 'e says, "None of yer jabber, ye swines; 'elp me inter my bunk, and two of yer bring me a 'ot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... himself dangling uncomfortably on the porch railing close beside the chair of a shadowy girl who was buried in its depths. He could look down into the place where he imagined her face might be. He was quite close to her and in the jabber of voices she was silent. No one seemed to pay him the slightest attention, and his interest mounted in a growing intimacy of silence with this girl in the chair. A door opened and he saw Myrtle's figure pass across ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... naturally frank and truthful, with some liking for me (for she looked forward to our voluptuous dallyings), she gave me for a long time much amusement, and I heard the incidents of her short life. She would jabber like a magpie about them when she knew me well, which she soon did, and began to look to me regularly for her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... warning me that a troop of monkeys was coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back, grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up, waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the nets toward the bank ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... snorting and terrified, there rang out on the still night air the most awful shriek I ever heard, the wail of a woman in horror and dismay. Then dull, heavy blows; oaths, curses, stifled exclamations; a fall that shook the windows; Gleason's voice commanding, entreating; a shrill Chinese jabber; a rush through the hall; more blows; gasps; curses; more unavailing orders in Gleason's well-known voice; then a sudden pistol shot, a scream of "Oh, my God!" then moans, and then silence. The ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... so interested in what you were saying that I lost the thread of my story. We were listening to an excited jabber of nonsense in the hotel—for instance, one of the negro servants said you went away of your own free will—and wondering what on earth we could do, when this genii of an Arab came to me in a mysterious way, and led me straight on your track. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... thoughtfully pressed me to sit down, while the children pranced about to let off the steam of their enjoyment. After a few minutes he invariably joined me, and led the conversation to the same topic. Above the roar of the lions, above the jabber of the monkeys, he shouted in my ears to know if I were still obdurate. Wouldn't I help him? Why wouldn't I help him? If I really loved Evelyn, and cared for her welfare, how could I stand aside? I must see—surely I must see that she belonged to the essentially feminine type of women who ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sentences, often slangy, and occasionally ungrammatical, seemed most in favour with the Manor 'house-party,'—and for a time splinters of language flew about like the chips from dry timber under a woodman's axe, without shape, or use, or meaning. It was a mere confused and senseless jabber—a jabber in which Maryllia took no part. She sat very quietly looking from one face to the other at table with a critical interest. These were the people she had met every day more or less in London,—some ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
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