|
|
|
More "Twang" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but unmistakeably glass. The whole effect of the face, however, was singularly pleasing to the discerning critic. An out of door, reckless, humorous, honest personality was stamped on every line of it and every movement of the man. When he spoke his voice had a marked tinge of the twang of the wild west that sounded a little oddly on the lips of a country gentleman in these northern parts. He wore an open flannel collar, a shooting coat, well cut riding breeches and immaculate leather leggings, finished off by a most substantial pair of shooting boots. Unlike Mr. Malcolm Cromarty, ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn," "Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... landlord has promised them after much negotiation for the week after next. The morning promenade is a wonderful sight; such a host of bilious faces, such an endless variety of eccentric costumes, such a Babel of tongues, among which the shrill twang of our fair American cousins is peculiarly prominent, could be found in no other place in the civilized world. A moralist would assuredly find here abundant food for reflection on the wonderful powers of self-deception possessed by mankind. We all get up at most inconvenient hours, swallow ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... from beneath a sealskin cap, her stars and stripes toboggan making a spot of colour in the midst of the universal whiteness. No one thought of addressing her except in a more or less successful imitation of an American twang, or without including the words "I guess" in every sentence, and she smiled in response, well satisfied to ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who notices similar mysterious manifestations on the part of donkeys, would have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... seek rest in changing preachers, but there is nothing in that to bring it. You may leave the minister who thumps the desk and listen to a man with a nasal twang, but you are still restive and unsatisfied. You think the reason your peace of soul is disturbed is that Mrs. Garrulous talked about you, or that the weather is rainy and disagreeable, or that the meetings are dull, or that ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... of his plans to seize Tell, and without a dream of danger, for the pass was silent and seemed deserted. But suddenly to his ears came the twang of the bow he had heard before that day; through the air once more winged its way a steel-barbed shaft, the heart of a tyrant, not an apple on a child's head, now its mark. In an instant more Gessler fell from his horse, pierced by Tell's fatal shaft, and breathed his last before ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... the wreck, heeling her over until her starboard waterway was buried. The breaking sea swept the deck like a cataract, lifting the boat clean off it, just as I sprang back into the cockpit; there was a little jerk and a twang as the rope parted, and in an instant we were afloat and driving rapidly away ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Loud twang'd thy bow, mighty youth, in the foray, Dread gleam'd thy brand in the proud field of glory; And when heroes sat round in the Psalter of Tara, His counsel was sage ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... fizzing, and sputtering, and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a distant nose seemed to twang, the door opened, and a tall lantern-jawed gentleman, wearing a goat-beard and an expression of dauntless cunning, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... him was to ask, "When you first came amongst us, major, you spoke with the barbaric provincialism and nasal twang of your countrymen, but in your years with us you have lost them. Could ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... on to camp, but Fox-eye would not turn back. He drew his arrows from the quiver, and prepared to fight. But, even as he placed an arrow, a Snake had crawled up by his side, unseen. In the still air, the Piegan heard the sharp twang of a bow string, but, before he could turn his head, the long, fine-pointed arrow pierced him through and through. The bow and arrows dropped from his hands, he swayed, and then fell forward on the grass, dead. But now the warriors ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... He had, at any rate, learnt that his strange guests were brother and sister. The man, he presumed, must be Signor Vicinironi—or count, or prince, as it might be. It was wonderful what good English he spoke. There was just a twang of foreign accent, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Suddenly the sharp twang of a citerne was heard in the street below her window,—nothing new in these piping times of love and minstrelsy; but so sensitive was the ear now become to exterior impressions, that she started, as though expecting a salutation ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... on the repetition, "Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it in his ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up at me; I nodded; and as the executioner clapped his heels together, straightened himself, and drew the arrow to his ear, we heard a low twang! And saw the black hand of the Seneca pinned to his own bow by the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Rustem raised his bow, with eager eye Choosing a dart, and placed it on the string, A thong of elk-skin; to his ear he drew The feathered notch, and when the point had touched The other hand, the bended horn recoiled, And twang the arrow sped, piercing the breast Of Ushkabus, who fell a lifeless corse, As if he never had been born! Erect, And firm, the champion stood upon the plain, Towering like mount Alberz, immovable, The gaze and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... himself of this pious burst, he proceeds to a castigation of the English for their observations on the nasal twang of his countrymen, and also for their criticism upon the sense in which sundry adjectives are used; and, to show the superior purity of the American language, he informs the reader that in England "the most elegant and refined talk constantly of "fried 'am" ... they seem very reluctant to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... are you?" The speech is a stately drawl very different from the nasal twang of Eliphalet's bringing up. "Reckon you don't come from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... day crowded blazing upon the golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and through. She fell down in utter darkness. All around ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr. Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon apropos to nothing which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... mungrel breed of like pernicion, 1150 And growing up, became the sires Of scribes, commissioners, and triers; Whose bus'ness is, by cunning slight, To cast a figure for mens' light; To find, in lines of beard and face, 1155 The physiognomy of grace; And by the sound and twang of nose, If all be sound within disclose, Free from a crack or flaw of sinning, As men try pipkins by the ringing; 1160 By black caps underlaid with white, Give certain guess at inward light. Which serjeants at the gospel wear, To make the spiritual calling clear; The handkerchief ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... of age, he does not look more than thirty. His face is ruddy, his eyes bright, his voice firm and ringing. He must be a man of considerable strength and—I should say—of more than ordinary animal courage and animal appetite. There is not a nerve in his body which does not twang like a piano wire. In appearance, he is tall, broad, and bluff, with red whiskers and reddish hair slightly touched with grey. His manner is loud, coarse, and imperious; his talk of dogs, horses, and convicts. What ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and overflowing with a magnificent and truly Eastern redundancy of the most poetical tropes. I will now proceed to give you an extract from the celebrated speaker on the war side—"the renowned Jonathan J. Twang." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... grew deeper as he advanced, and soon it became tolerably dark at the bottom where the high walls shut out the light. Suddenly his horse stumbled, and, as Ted shot over its head, he heard the twang of a broken wire that had been ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... assembled a group of seamen, among whom were Tyrker the Turk, one of Thorward's men named Swend, who was very stout and heavy, and one of Karlsefin's men called Krake, who was a wild jocular man with a peculiar twang in his speech, the result of having been long a prisoner in Ireland. We mention these men particularly, because it was they who took the chief part in conversations and in story-telling. The two Scots were also there, but they were very quiet, and talked little; nevertheless, ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... turquoise and with malachite, With bronze and purple pied, I march before him like the night In all its starry pride; LULLI may twang and MOLIERE write His pastime to provide, But seldom laughs the KING So much as when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... July have passed away, Like a tide. Doors are open, windows wide. Why in stuffy London stay?" Sing the Sirens (slyboots they!) With a Tennysonian twang, To the Tourist, (Not the poorest You may bet your bottom dollar, Which those Sirens aim to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... of saying pretension and pomposity do have a wonderful effect here in New York. I don't know whether it was the missionary or the plenipotentiary that brought my cousin to her oats, but rather think it was the latter—having a foreign twang to it, of course, it impressed ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... cried, and her raised voice had a sudden twang in it—suggestive of the streets; of the People. "No—you needn't trouble to make soft eyes at me. I know you now—I know that what that man said was true. He called you a coward and a cad. You are worse! You are ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... a new-comer received his ticket, and wished to secure his place for the coming repast, he would turn his plate, cup, and saucer up; which mode of reserving seats seemed respected by the rest. And as the evening wore on, the shouting and quarrelling at the doorway in Yankee twang increased momentarily; while some seated themselves at the table, and hammering upon it with the handles of their knives, hallooed out to the excited nigger cooks to make haste with the slapjack. Amidst ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... burning went out. But Arjuna, endued with energy, continued eating in the dark, his hand, from habit, going to his mouth. His attention being thus called to the force of habit, the strong-armed son of Pandu set his heart upon practising with his bow in the night. And, O Bharata, Drona, hearing the twang of his bowstring in the night, came to him, and clasping him, said, 'Truly do I tell thee that I shall do that unto thee by which there shall not be an archer equal to thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and made Falcon swerve, and heard therewith the twang of the bowstring and straightway the shaft flew past his ears. Falcon galloped on, and the carle cried out: "There is the highway toward the Burg! Do thy best, do thy best! ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... little. The spicy twang of the sassafras was yet on her tongue. "I'm afraid you won't give her back ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... his woebegone countenance the newcomer came to a sudden halt in his impetuous advance, exclaiming in a voice with a peculiar and characteristic nasal twang: ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... shadow and his mate the panther call. From the prairies and the regions where the pine-plumed forest grows Shall arise the tawny legions with their lances and their bows; And again the shouts of battle shall resound along the plain, Bows shall twang and quivers rattle, women wail ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... of ensnared aural foreign body in a lady, aged about forty years, who, while "picking" her left ear with a so-called "invisible hair-pin" several hours before the consultation, had heard a sudden "twang" in the ear, as if the hair-pin had broken. And so, indeed, it had; for on the instant she had attempted to jerk it quickly from the ear the sharp extremity of the inner portion of its lower prong sprang away from ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... power to give, for they had already been transferred with all the other treasures of a young and loving heart, to the keeping of a dark-eyed youth of Manilla. He had been rudely repulsed by her parents, but often would the cautious twang of his guitar bring her to a midnight interview. These clandestine meetings were interrupted. Her dark-eyed lover no longer came, and she was told she would never see him more. A marriage with the Don was urged, she resisted—the alternative was a convent! In pity she implored a short ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... it arrives, it is thrown down on the sand, to swelter in the heat with the rest, and remains there probably for days before it is transferred into the cask. It is this proceeding which gives to sherry that peculiar leather twang which distinguishes it from other wines—a twang easy to imitate by throwing into a cask of Cape wine a pair of old boots, and allowing them to remain a proper time. Although the public refuse to drink Madeira as Madeira, they are in fact drinking ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... its slender sickle to the thicker quarter, the impatience of my Cockney waxed with it; but, at length, the firing of muskets, the twang of horns, and the rattle of tom-toms, gave notice from the river that COOMBA, the bride, was approaching the quay. Joseph and myself hastily donned our clean shirts, white trousers, and glistening pumps; and, under the shade ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... arms and sat down. Some late roisterers passing by in the street were heard singing to the twang of a mandolin. It was a full, deep song, and the casual voices blended in perfect accord. As the harmony floated out of hearing, she looked up at him with a ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the dreadful American accent, I hazarded my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own to ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... everyone else most intimately. Scarce one but was related to half the people in the room. And all were in the gayest of spirits, for there, in a far corner, old Nicholas Grut every now and again gave the strings of his fiddle an impatient twang, as an intimation that all this was sheer waste of time, and that the only proper business in life was dancing. And presently they would begin, and they would dance until the sun rose, and then—well, the new day had its own rites and ceremonies, and eyes were bright and pulses leaping, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... judge from the following succinct and business-like memorandum of a ghost-seer. "Anno 1670. Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether a good spirit or a bad, returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume, and most melodious twang. M.W. Lilly believes it was ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... with all the approved renderings of the Episcopal morning service, but when the clergyman who officiated at the Abbey began to twang out "Dearly beloved brethren," &c., in a nasal, drawling semi-chant, I was taken completely aback. It sounded as though some graceless Friar Tuck had wormed himself into the desk and was endeavoring, under the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... the boom of the fairy bassoon, And the oboes and horns as they strike up a tune, And the twang of the harps and the sigh of the lutes, And the clash of the cymbals, the purl of the flutes; And the fiddles sail in To the musical din, While the chief all on fire, with a flame for a hand, Rattles on the gay measure and ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... lithe body, the dry face on which there has been no tint of the rose since the baby's long-clothes were first abandoned, the harsh, thick hair, the thin lips, the intelligent eyes, the sharp voice with the nasal twang—not altogether harsh, though sharp and nasal—all these traits are supposed to belong especially to the Yankee. Perhaps it was so once, but at present they are, I think, more universally common in New York than in any ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... know my mind. I hate that same twang, twang, twang, fum, fum, fum, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, then scrue go the Pins, till a man's Teeth are on an edge; then snap, says a small Gut, and there we are at a loss again. I long to be in bed with a—hey ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... that I should take exception to the guffaw? Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Cezannes I ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business. But my notion about Cezanne was that he was a fond old man who distracted himself by daubing. I could ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... with a winy color upon her lips, the faintest perceptible shadow of fading upon the roses of her cheeks, a little anxious wrinkle between her earnest gray eyes, a slight nasal twang in her New England voice, and a fresh flounce upon her old black alpaca dress—the first morning of her experience in an atelier des dames in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was crystalline, that the dingy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... when Don Juan whipped it up round his leg and went off at full gallop. My little black horse knew perfectly well what had happened, though his head was exactly in the opposite direction; and he tugged with all his might, and leant over more than ever. The two lazos tightened with a twang, as though they had been guitar-strings; and in a moment the unfortunate bull was rolling with all his legs in the air, in the midst of a whirlwind of dust. Having thus humiliated him we let him go, and off he went at full speed. All this time the proprietor of the field was ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. "I'll show you whether I got ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... remarkable specimen come? It was difficult to say. One thing was noticeable, and that was that he expressed himself fluently in English without a trace of the drawling twang that distinguishes the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Twang! The arrow sped through the air, but it was too dark for them to follow its flight with their eyes. With their hearts in their mouths, they ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... Concombres.—The bottle contains 160 grammes of a very inelegantly made emulsion, smelling of very common rose-water, with an unpleasant twang about it, and giving a strongly alkaline reaction. It consists of soap, glycerin, and cotton seed oil, made ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... various grades of hunger, from the economic appetite on the first floor, where the plebian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very house-top, where are administered comforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its length with the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... repeating forms, noting shades and tints, and I studying without pictorial intent, when we heard a hail in the road below our bank. It was New Hampshire, near the Maine line, and near the spot where nasal organs are fabricated that twang the roughest. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... was young, but already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets were lit with kerosene. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... — N. taste, flavor, gust, gusto, savor; gout, relish; sapor^, sapidity^; twang, smack, smatch^; aftertaste, tang. tasting; degustation, gustation. palate, tongue, tooth, stomach. V. taste, savor, smatch^, smack, flavor, twang; tickle the palate &c (savory) 394; smack the lips. Adj. sapid, saporific^; gustable^, gustatory; gustful^; strong, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... white, western moonlight threw sharp, blue shadows below us. The streets were silent at that hour, and we could hear the gurgle of the fountain in the Post Office square across the street, and the twang of banjos from the lower verandah of the Hotel Lincoln, where the colored waiters were serenading the guests. The drop lights in the office were dull under their green shades, and the telegraph sounder clicked faintly in the next room. In all his long tirade, Crane never raised his voice; he spoke ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of the day are done. The firing squad leave the guns. The twang of guitar and screech of violin open ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... sense of smell, in its ordinary state, much connexion with our present subject. Mr. Aubrey tells us, indeed, of an apparition which disappeared with a curious perfume as well as a most melodious twang; and popular belief ascribes to the presence of infernal spirits a strong relish of the sulphureous element of which they are inhabitants. Such accompaniments, therefore, are usually united with other materials for imposture. If, as a general opinion assures us, which is not positively ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Billy Grey and Ludwig Wolfen stood on the top of it and sang, or tried to sing, 'Home Sweet Home'; and the writer of this memory of those old Pacific days sat in a chair in the doorway and wondered where we should all be the next year. For, as we sang and danced, and the twang, twang of Sera's guitar sounded through the silent night without, Tom Devine, the American, held up his hand to MacBride, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... memories are short. They seem prone to enjoy the present, forgetful of the past and regardless of the future—happily, I say, for those humpy and hairy creatures are not unacquainted with man's devices—the sudden surprise, the twang of the red-man's bow and the crack of the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the vocal ligaments is in either case absolutely the same, and it takes the form of one vowel or another, solely according to the shape which the "resonator" assumes, and which may be described as a mould into which the tone is cast. The quality of the voice also—its throatiness, its nasal twang, its shrillness, harshness, and ugliness, or its purity, roundness, fulness, and beauty—depend mainly upon the nature of the resonator, and upon the way in which we work it. It is, therefore, a matter of the highest ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... house that had been recommended to me, and after partaking of coffee—the best I ever remember to have drunk—I sought my room, Tom insisting upon sleeping on the floor in the same chamber, and my last waking recollections were of the pungent fumes of tobacco, and the tinkle, tinkle, twang of a guitar ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... little slow to an American; that he could have no idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, Boston without its twang!" ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... birch-bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark-skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber. All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop-hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... wave, far ahead the boys could see the lights of the Brutus. Only for a second, however, for the next minute she would vanish in the trough of a huge comber, and then they could hear the strained towing cable "twang" like an overstretched ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... shock 'em, a ginger-beer bottle or "Bass," Wot 'appens to drop 'mong the lilies, or gets chucked aside on the grass, Makes 'em gasp like a frog in a frying-pan. Br-r-r-r! Wot old mivvies they are! Got nerves like a cobweb, I reckon, a smart Banjo-twang makes 'em jar. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... country, but no child of Rome was ever so little like a Roman. Arms and battles were to him abominable, as they are to us. But arms and battles were the delight of Romans. He was ridiculed in his own time, and has been ridiculed ever since, for the alliterating twang of the line in which ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... stole into her mind that she thought she saw the forms of her dead children and dead grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel ropes and strike her, with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked again, there was no barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen held a candle close ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... wonder and with hope they watched their would-be rescuer. Now he halted not ten paces from the unconscious Manyuema. The shaft was drawn back its full length at the height of the keen gray eye that sighted along its polished surface. There was a sudden twang as the brown fingers released their hold, and without a sound the raider sank forward upon his face, a wooden shaft transfixing his heart and protruding a ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... but smiling bland, He yields them to her curious hand, When, instant, twang! the arrow flew, So just her aim, it pierced him through, Right through his heart, the luckless lad! (A heart, to do him right, he had); All prone he lies, in throbbing anguish, Through many an hour ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... him why he had hidden the money, as we had the United States colours up. He said he thought it was the Sumter, and wanted to be on the safe side. The whole scene between the officer and the captain of the Joseph Park was ludicrous in the extreme. The answers to questions with that Yankee nasal twang and Yankee cunning, the officer seeing through it and enjoying it all the while, made many jokes in ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... temperament would allow a single occupation. Then he picked from the ground a long, slender pencil of white wood, a sliver, perhaps, from the making of a spear shaft, and began strumming with it upon the taut sinew string. This made a twang of a new sort, and again the boy and girl were interested temporarily. But, at last, even this variation of amusement with the new toy became monotonous, and Bark ceased strumming and began a series ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... news was sure to be met with. As he came towards it, however, he heard the loud sound of a man's voice going steadily on as if with some discourse. "Some preachment," said he to himself: "they've got a thorough-going Roundhead, I can hear his twang through his nose! Shall I ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I sang and shouted, Keeping measure, as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As it sprang ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... head over the gathered heap of straw. "Ah," he said—"got in again, I see! The shutters must be looked to." "I daresay," I remarked, looking disconsolately around me, "you don't find it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "Very easy!" said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought, with also a good deal of Highland hauteur—as was of course quite natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish remarks—"No, nor easy at all, or it would ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... shy of this young person, because, having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the, to her, novel wrongs in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... sonatas in A, Heedless of what your next neighbour may say! Dance and be gay as a faun or a fay, Sing like the lad in the boat on the bay; Sing, play—if your neighbours inveigh Feebly against you, they're lunatics, eh? Bang, twang, clatter and clang, Strum, thrum, upon fiddle and drum; Neigh, bray, simply obey All your sweet impulses, stop not or stay! Rattle the "bones," hit a tinbottom'd tray Hard with the fireshovel, hammer away! ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... his ghostly bosom; but he was more allured by the sweet savour of the good things of this world at Arlingford Castle, than deterred by his awe of the lady Matilda, which nevertheless was so excessive, from his recollection of the twang of the bow-string, that he never ventured to find her in the wrong, much less to enjoin any thing in the shape of penance, as was the occasional practice of holy confessors, with or without cause, for the sake of pious discipline, and what was in those days called ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... droll of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor," Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thoroughly he goes in for his beau ideal of the hero. Here are, the splendid candelabra which the emperor gave on the occasion. We heard mass, but the service was very formal, and the priest might have been a real downeaster, for he had a horrid nasal twang, and his "sanctissime" was "shanktissime." The history of these churches is strange, and I think a pretty good book might be written on the romance of church architecture. The portal of the north aisle ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... would drop a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... foolish, especially after coming from London, where many nice maids looked at me (on account of my bulk and stature), and I might have been fitted up with a sweetheart, in spite of my west-country twang, and the smallness of my purse; if only I had said the word. But nay; I have contempt for a man whose heart is like a shirt-stud (such as I saw in London cards), fitted into one to-day, sitting bravely on the breast; plucked out on the morrow morn, and the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that it was better to secure the substance than endeavour to catch the shadow—so I bought the book, and spared myself the pain of listening to the oratory of the writer. Mrs. Moodie! he had a shocking delivery, a drawling, vulgar voice; and he spoke with such a nasal twang that I could not bear to look at him, or listen to him. He made such grammatical blunders, that my sides ached with laughing at him. Oh, I wish you could have seen the wretch! But here is the document, written in the same ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Puritanism. Butler in his "Hudibras" poured insult on the past with a pedantic buffoonery for which the general hatred, far more than its humour, secured a hearing. Archbishop Sheldon listened to the mock sermon of a Cavalier who held up the Puritan phrase and the Puritan twang to ridicule in his hall at Lambeth. Duelling and raking became the marks of a fine gentleman; and grave divines winked at the follies of "honest fellows" who fought, gambled, swore, drank, and ended a day of debauchery by a ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... by this time and could only look at his comrades in helpless wonder. Then the twang of a banjo sounded through the rooms and to the thrumming of the strings came a voice ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... to her. She had to lie and hear love things made dreadful By his shouts in the night. He'd shout and shout Until the strength was shouted out of him, And his voice died down slowly from exhaustion. He'd pull his bars apart like bow and bow-string, And let them go and make them twang until His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow. And then he'd crow as if he thought that child's play— The only fun he had. I've heard them say, though, They found a way to put a stop to it. ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... pretty good claret, here, eh, Silverbridge?" He could never hit off his familiarity quite right. He had my-Lorded his young friend at first, and now brought out the name with a hesitating twang, which the young nobleman appreciated. But then the young nobleman was quite aware that the Major was a friend for club purposes, and sporting purposes, and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... began, in a broad country twang, which could not overpower the sad melody of the air, or the rich sweetness of his ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... from Marie Louise, far down the flowery lane of the table. She could not see him at all, for the candles and the roses. Just once she heard his voice in a lull. Its twang carried it all ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... real and his apparent place, and act in some noble conformity with all that. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel-pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... down to his right Colt. A blaze of flame leaped from the region of his hip. Along with the crashing roar of the explosion came a sharp, metallic twang. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to relate to ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... continues the Major, "gives great scope to our country euphonic twang, altogether inexpressible in type; bahnt deeyown comes as near to it as my ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... friend of Mr. Saulsbury's," he drawled with a mournful twang. "We've got plenty o' bread and milk for strangers. Somebody's spread the idea we run a hotel here and we're pestered a good deal with folks that want to stop for a meal. We take care o' 'em mostly. The wife and little ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... of the same case, the discharge is thin, watery, acrid, irritating, and profuse. The nose may be "stopped up" from the swollen and thickened condition of the lining mucous membrane, so as to necessitate respiration through the mouth, giving to the voice a disagreeable nasal twang. From the nature of the obstruction in this condition, it is useless for the sufferer to endeavor to clear the passage by blowing the nose; this only tends to render a bad matter worse, by increasing the irritation ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... name in which they themselves delight, and therefore, though there is a sound of slang about it, I give it here. One certainly soon learns to know a Bim. The most peculiar distinction is in his voice. There is always a nasal twang about it, but quite distinct from the nasality of a Yankee. The Yankee's word rings sharp through his nose; not so that of the first-class Bim. There is a soft drawl about it, and the sound is seldom completely formed. The effect on the ear is the same as that on ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... to Georgia in search of a precarious livelihood. He obtained permission to build him a little log hut by the side of a running stream; and, for a year or two, people going along the road could hear the snap and twang of his bowstring as he whipped wool or rabbit fur into shape. Some said he was from North Carolina; others said he was from Connecticut; but whether from one State or the other, what should a hatter do away off in the woods in Putnam County? Grandsir Kendrick, who ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... against you growe olde, if you mean to liue my yeares: but happy the father that begot thee, and thrise happy the Nurse that soffred such a toward yonker as thy selfe: I know thy vertues as well as thy selfe, thou hast a superficiall twang of a little something: an Italian ribald can not vomit out the infections of the world, but thou my pretty Iuuinall, an English Dorrell-lorrell, must lick it vp for restoratiue, & putrifie thy gentle ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... Look at the broad chest with which he breasts the water so gallantly; see how proudly he carries his antlered head! He has no fear in those lonely solitudes—he has never heard the crack of the hunter's rifle—he heeds not the sharp twang of that bow-string, till the arrow rankles in his neck, and the crimson flood dyes the water around him. He turns, but it is only to present a surer mark for the arrow from the old hunter's bow. And now the noble beast turns to bay, and the canoe is rapidly launched by the hand of the Indian girl. ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... who can't think why the names of my heroines of title should always be Hebrew. 'Twas my comrade, Sir Alister Knox, said, "Noo, dinna ye fash wi' Apollo, mon; Gang to Jewry for wives and for concubines, lad—look at David and Solomon. And it gives an erotico-scriptural twang," said that high-born young man, "—tickles The lug" (he meant ear) "of the reader—to throw in a touch of the Canticles." So I versified half of The Preacher—it took me a week, working slowly. Bah! You don't half know the sex, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... by gentlemen performers whose names and faces I know not, and such was the never ceasing rattling and noise in the card-room, where I was kept almost all the evening, that a general humming of musical sounds, and now and then a twang, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... then almost opposite, and now, as I listened to hear the traitorous signal of murder—"Pax vobiscum"—and the twang of bow-strings, on the night there rang a voice, a woman's voice, soft but wondrous clear, such as never I knew from any lips but hers who then spoke; that voice I heard in its last word, "Jesus!" and still it is sounding in ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... promised to go to Lambert's rooms after dinner on that evening; he had asked us because he said we ought to have a talk about the freshers' wine, but we knew well enough that he intended to twang his wretched banjo and sing little love songs which made the night hideous. If only he would have sung comic things he might not have caused such wholesale pain, though I should not like to speak positively upon that point. I did not go to this entertainment ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... common enough amongst clever, well-educated young men, who know not what it is to speak in the House of Commons. He heard much slovenly English, much trite reasoning, some eloquent thoughts, and close argument, often delivered in a jerking tone of voice (popularly called the parliamentary twang), and often accompanied by gesticulations that would have shocked the manager of a provincial theatre. He thought how much better than these great dons (with but one or two exceptions), he himself could speak,—with what more refined logic, with what more polished periods, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... speak, and it was evident to me that he cloaked his own voice, putting on the nasal twang and the manner ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... mobile from his somewhat scornful mouth to his deep-set, observant eyes, and clearly denoted the absence of the stolid Saxon strain in his blood. His accent too, though not that of an educated man, was quite free from the hateful Cockney twang. His dress was spare as his figure, but though well worn there was something spruce and trim about his whole demeanour which indicated that he was not totally indifferent to the impression he created on others. He ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... on marsh and meadow, Sullen strode the moody hunter. Saw he not the bear or beaver, Saw he not the elk or roebuck; From his path the red fawn scampered, But no arrow followed after; From his den the sly wolf listened, But no twang of bow-string heard he. Like one walking in his slumber, Listless, dreaming walked the Panther; Surely had some witch bewitched him, Some bad ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... 'tis to hedge My temples here with heavy sedge, Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide, Or to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermined root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the fishes twang? But now away, my hooks, my quills, And angles, idle utensils! The young ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... already told the Prioress that his men had spied a lad accompanying the shepherd who escorted the lady, and who, he thought, had a certain twang of south country speech; and no sooner had he carved for the ladies, according to the courtly duty of an esquire, than the inquiry began as to who had found the maiden and where she had been lodged. Prioress Agnes, who had already broken her fast, sat meantime with the ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beneath which was the entrance to the tunnel, was nothing to the uproar which now arose, to the shouts which echoed across the dreary camp, to the reports of rifles which men, almost too aged to work, and employed as guards, let off in every direction. There was the twang of bullets in the air, while the darkness was punctuated by many a spot of flame, which showed where the sentries were doing duty. That commotion brought the Commandant flaring out of his quarters again, stamping his feet with anger, bellowing with passion. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and that his mother and sister should have his lordship's prayers to the saints ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... card. He gave Philip a glance but did not speak to him; he dictated a letter to the typist, a girl who sat at a small table in one corner; then he asked Philip his name, age, and what experience he had had. He spoke with a cockney twang in a high, metallic voice which he seemed not able always to control; Philip noticed that his upper teeth were large and protruding; they gave you the impression that they were loose and would come out if you gave ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... starven hands grew plump and sleek. But for all sign of wealth he wore He swaggered neither less nor more. He talked the stuff he talked before, And bragged as he had bragged of yore, With his Yankee chaff and his Yankee slang, And his Yankee bounce and his Yankee twang. And, to tell the truth, we all held clear Of the impudent little adventurer; And any man with an eye might see That, though he bore it merrily, He recognised the tacit scorn Which dwelt ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... flanks could reach the centre, the shock had come. All order being lost, the combat was hand to hand one party fighting fiercely for victory, and the other knowing that they stood at the awful peril of their lives. After the first discharge of the musket and the twang of the bow, the struggle was maintained with knife and axe; the thrust of the former, or the descent of the keen and glittering tomahawk, being answered by sweeping and crushing blows of the musket's but, or by throttling grasps of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... have excellent news from our house at St. Herem. M. Hardy, the infidel, the freethinker, has at length entered the pale of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." Rodin pronounced these last word with a nasal twang, and the devout lady bowed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and which drinkers of some imported stuff (described as one part cognac and three parts silent spirit) fail to recognise as real brandy. If coffee is not muddy and thick and does not possess a mawkish twang of liquorice, it is suspected. The delicate aromatic flavour, the fragrant odour, the genial and stimulant effects are now almost unknown, except in limited circles. North Queensland is capable of growing ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... came blowing his horn to the steps of the porch, and there stopping his cart, addressed the farmer's wife in the true nasal twang that characterises the lower class of New Englanders, and inquired "if she had ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... "could make this possible," when, looking up, he caught the face of a young man at a further table, full of enjoyment, ordering "spargetty" and half a bottle of "grayves," with a cockney twang, and an unutterable ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... old. The colour all through is a mellow brown; the reed is of medium width, well developed, and nearly equal all over, and it is singularly bowed from bottom to top, meeting, when joined (for it is in two parts), just as will a string of a violin when you hold it in both hands, and twang it to ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... any Hottentot twang, if that's what you mean. Nor did he say, "Caesar and Pompey berry much alike, 'specially Pompey," which is the only specimen of negro language I can remember ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out in Act ii. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... ludicrous turn, but fortunately the Dominican intervened. "Gentlemen," he began in an authoritative tone and with the nasal twang that so well becomes the friars, "you must not confuse things or seek for offenses where there are none. We must distinguish in the words of Fray Damaso those of the man from those of the priest. The latter, as such, per se, can never give offense, because they spring from absolute truth, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... few emotions, try chaperoning a young room-mate answering to the name of Sada San, who is one-half American dash, and the other half the unnamable witchery of a Japanese woman; a girl with the notes of a lark in her voice when she sings to the soft twang of ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... replied the seaman, with more than ever of the nasal twang; "it iss a coot many miles to where the poat comes in—so the poy Tonal' wass tellin' ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element of tremendous noise from the conflicts of ancient days! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... seemed to stop and stand, foaming, panting, quivering like a wild mare, while the green, gray-bearded, dew-drenched forest—island and mainland—amid a singing of innumerable birds, glided down upon her, opening the chute to gulp her in without a twang of her guys or a ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... with age, and strapped on the inside with a lighter-coloured and newer material; also a very dirty coloured cotton shirt, open in front, and showing a large expanse of hairy chest. His voice was husky from much swearing at profligate cattle, and there was a curious nasal twang in his tone, a sort of affectation of Americanism that was a departure from the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the sheriff yet waited for William to be measured for his grave, suddenly men heard the twang of bowstrings and the whistling flight of arrows through the air, and at the same moment both sheriff and justice fell writhing from their steeds, with the grey goose feathers standing in their breasts. All the bystanders fled from the dangerous neighbourhood, and left the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... recommend our readers to try the Chinese plan, always provided they are so fortunate as to have a good sound article of pleasant flavor. With most of the tea found in England, and especially so with that generally used in America, the sugar and cream are no doubt necessary to drown the "twang." A Chinaman would put this practice on a par with putting sugar in Chateau Lafitte. Tea is the wine of the Celestial. A mandarin will "talk" it to you as a gourmet talks wine with us; dilate upon its quality ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... night in talking, singing, and gaming. In the peaceful camp of the Third Alabama, in that state, the scenes were similar. There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... daunted, he attacked mate the third; and was led to infer better things, as the young gentleman commenced expatiating on the "purple sky," and "dark blue sea." This hope did not last long; for this lover of nature turned round to Sir Henry, and asked him in a nasal twang, if he preferred Cooper's or Mr. Scott's novels? Delme was not naturally a rude man, but as he turned away, he hummed ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... an inch or two, a slight gesture to indicate the ceiling again. He brought his other hand up, and using both, cocked the Colt, that click carrying with almost a shot's sharp twang through the room. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... a fine buck went by. He had not spied us while we lay still, but the moment my comrade moved, he threw up his head and bounded off. Yet not before a quick twang from Sir Ludar's bowstring had sent an arrow into his quarter. "Are you mad?" cried I, in terror, "it is ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the bell till it broke with a twang; I entered leisurely. It was enough to try the temper of a saint, such senseless, wicked rages! There she lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them to splinters! Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... come to tell old Surefoot about his daughter's love," the letter goes on, "you should fall into a positive imitation of his manner: crest, motionless, and hands in front, and deliver your preambles with a nasal twang. But at the second invitation to speak out, you should cast this to the winds, and go into the other extreme of bluntness and rapidity. [Quite right!] When you meet him after the exposure, you should speak as you are coming to him and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... tops half a mile asunder, announced that "our lady" was approaching. Whereupon a great hubbub arose; dogs barked, and feminine voices responded eagerly. Two or three muskets were presently discharged, and the twang of the balls as they passed near gave my nerves rather an unpleasant shock. I did not then know that the Black Mountaineers always receive their friends thus; in this instance female hands had loaded and fired, the men being almost all away fighting. A band of brightly-clad ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou see'st him, draw; and as thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang'd off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... keeping up a lively fire just ahead and on the right, and there was every prospect of an interesting time. Very soon we were ordered forward to skirmish. As the order was received, Smith remarked, with a peculiar twang to his heavy voice and an ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... a New-Englander. His background was that of Boston and its remote suburbs. And when he preaches the necessity of the cooperative commonwealth, he does it with a Yankee twang. In fact, he is as essentially native American as Norman Thomas, the present leader of the Socialist Party in ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... given with due emphasis, if not discretion, they all stood up round the table. "Now, my boys, keep time. Mr Prose, if you attempt to chime in with your confounded nasal twang, I'll give you ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... set the noble Captain as a guard upon his lady-love. Cursing his unlucky fate, that brought them out to interrupt his converse with the mistress of his heart, and prevent the arrangement of an elopement, he bent the Captain's bilbo hilt to point till it rebounded with a loud twang, and stepping away up the Tweed, fell into a deep meditation as to the manner by which he should secure Isabel. As he went along, his eye fell upon that source of so much contention between the men of Berwick and the border barons, the dam-dike of the Newmilne, and against which the Lord ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... is Harold! Good day, Dobbins! [Exit. DOBSON. 'Arold! The feller's cleaen daaezed, an' maaezed, an' maaeted, an' muddled ma. Deaed! It mun be true, fur it wur i' print as black as owt. Naaeay, but 'Good daaey, Dobbins.' Why, that wur the very twang on 'im. Eh, lad, but whether thou be Hedgar, or Hedgar's business man, thou hesn't naw business 'ere wi' my Dora, as I knaws on, an' whether thou calls thysen Hedgar or Harold, if thou stick to she I'll ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... simply as "Chatz." He possessed all the traits to be found in boys who have been born and raised south of Mason and Dixon's line, was inclined to be touchy whenever he thought anyone doubted his honor, talked with a quaint little twang that was really delightfully musical, and taken in all had grown to be a ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... 'Twang, twang, twang,' goes old Tom's horn at the top of the wood, whither he seems to have flown, so quick has ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that—short, lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself, old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those queer winds that on a sultry day in summer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was dark in the adjoining chambers. The wind was high, and blew gustily round the mansion. The few servants, consisting of a son of the steward, footman, and page, were all buried in profound slumber. Genji called to them loudly, and they awoke with a start. "Come," said he, "bring a light. Valet, twang your bow-string, and drive away the fiend. How can you sleep so soundly in such a ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... his movements close to them as he searched out the arrows. Once, as one of them felt for an arrow which had narrowly missed him, he encountered Jerry's back with his hand and acknowledged the sharp slash of Jerry's teeth with a wild yell of terror. They tried firing at the twang of Nalasu's bowstring, but every time Nalasu fired he instantly changed position. Several times, warned of Jerry's nearness, they fired at him, and, once even, was ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... condescending landlord has promised them after much negotiation for the week after next. The morning promenade is a wonderful sight; such a host of bilious faces, such an endless variety of eccentric costumes, such a Babel of tongues, among which the shrill twang of our fair American cousins is peculiarly prominent, could be found in no other place in the civilized world. A moralist would assuredly find here abundant food for reflection on the wonderful powers of self-deception possessed by mankind. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... bullfrog's croak, the craft that Sam Williams had lately mastered to inspiring perfection. This sonorous accomplishment Penrod had determined to make his own. At once guttural and resonant, impudent yet plaintive, with a barbaric twang like the plucked string of a Congo war-fiddle, the sound had fascinated him. It is made in the throat by processes utterly impossible to describe in human words, and no alphabet as yet produced by civilized man affords the symbols to vocalize ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;—you know I am fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso, to my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong twang of Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus—and Titus Livius was positively Polybius ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Lance heard a twang of Scotch in the "very rare" which pleased him. But he kept his position by the doorway, and he continued bashfully turning his big hat round and round against his chest,—though the action went oddly with the Lorrigan look and the athletic poise of him. "Yes, ma'am. Quite ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... in. Lanpher plucked at the loose strings of his courage, and managed to draw out a faintly responsive twang. "I'll show you whether I got guts—" ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... greater sums than in this way of life, by methods which he until then never heard of, and will I am confident, to this day carry the charms of novelty to most of my readers. Of these the first she put upon him was going on what they call the "twang," which is thus managed: the man who is the confederate goes out with some noted woman of the town, and if she fall into any broil, he is to be at a proper distance, ready to come into her assistance, and by making a sham quarrel, give her an opportunity of getting ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Avenue when we crossed it again, yet we all went on about our daily tasks as one passes the blind man on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. He may receive a penny, a twang of the heart strings, but he must be passed to go into the shop. My list was in my purse bearing but a faint resemblance to the demands of other years. I thought as I took it out what confusion of mind would have been my portion ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... no more "get along" without his spice of cant, than without his chew of tobacco and his nasal twang. What follows, however, took even us ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... found that if we were soft-hearted or soft-headed, they would say the whole family were prisoners. One thing that surprised and shocked us was to hear the little kids swearing; they would use the most frightful oaths, and the funny part of it was that they gave them the pure cockney twang; I suppose they had heard and were imitating the Imperial troops. Well, after travelling all day we finally arrived in C—— and we were marched off to our first billets. I belonged to "C" Company and ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... accent, I hazarded my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own to strictly American readers that our speech is dreadful, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... never know such prosperity. I do not wish to be murdered; no man does; yet rather than see the ostrich and deer chased beyond the horizon, the flamingo and black-necked swan slain on the blue lakes, and the herdsman sent to twang his romantic guitar in Hades as a preliminary to security of person, I would prefer to go about prepared at any moment to defend my life against the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... harmonics and succession of harmonics in thirds and in sixths. His long fingers were of invaluable service to him in unusual stretches, and his fondness for pizzicato passages may be traced to his familiarity with the twang of his father's mandolin. He shone chiefly in his own compositions, which were written in keys best suited to the violin. Students will find all that he knew of his instrument and everything he did in his Le Stregghe ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... people do not take off their masks even with their accomplices, "yes, madame, we have excellent news from our house at St. Herem. M. Hardy, the infidel, the freethinker, has at length entered the pale of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." Rodin pronounced these last word with a nasal twang, and the devout lady ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... enjoy the changes of the voice. I know when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if I do not understand a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the tree above him. Some new danger, he thought, but he dared not take his eyes from the yellow green orbs before him. There was a sharp twang as of a broken banjo-string, and at the same instant an arrow appeared in the yellow hide ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fancy stops Mersenne had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... culmination of a great and honourable social service, a conviction that had been her tacit comfort during much distasteful loyalty seemed to shrivel and fade. No doubt the writer was a thwarted blackmailer; even her accustomed mind could distinguish a twang of some such vicious quality in his sentences; but that did not alter the realities he exhibited and exaggerated. There was a description of how Sir Isaac pounced on his managers that was manifestly derived from a manager he had dismissed. It was dreadfully like him. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with wide, astonished, woeful ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... slabs, to drink from one of the milk-bowls. The cream was sweet, rich, and nourishing, and I was so absorbed directly, that I did not heed the footfalls of a tall, broad, vigorous man, who said in a quiet way, but with a deep, sonorous voice, and a decided Northern twang— ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... his head and made Falcon swerve, and heard therewith the twang of the bowstring and straightway the shaft flew past his ears. Falcon galloped on, and the carle cried out: "There is the highway toward the Burg! Do thy best, do ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... been the murderer of her first! And the best of the joke is—she does not know it! My "Co." has also been much amused by a brightly-written Novel, in one volume, called A Bride from the Bush. Mr. E. W. HORNUNG evidently knows his subject well, and has caught the exact tone, or rather nasal twang of our Australian cousins. My "Co." says that "the Bride" is a particularly pleasant young person, thanks to her youth, good heart, and beauty. However, it is questionable—taking her as a sample—whether her "people" would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... answer, but I do not know what train of thought my casual remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated, and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar intonations which for some time had ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... shatter the sunlit stillness, save the three-fold sound of their going—the clatter of hoofs, the clank and rattle of the tonga-bar rising and falling to a tune of its own making, and the brazen-throated twang of the horn, which the tonga-drivers of Upper India have elevated to a ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... slip from tune to twang! Sweets bitter grow, as aye they did; For e'en the Roman poet sang "Surgit amari aliquid." Our pigmy worries turn us grey; And sorrows fierce are less acute; Our hearts are riddled every day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... Circulated description of John Porter through the county. Tall and lean; when fifteen years old shot a man in a brawl, and went north. Has been absent thirteen years. Assumed the appearance of a northern man and speaks with Yankee twang. Father was absent at the time of attack. Captured three hours after. Declares he knows nothing about doings of the gang. Haverley and Corben were friends of his sons. Came and went when they liked. Will be tried on ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and forks broke the stiffness after the blessing. Mrs. Tanner bustled back and forth from the stove to the table, talking clamorously the while. Mr. Tanner joined in with his flat, nasal twang, responding, and the minister, with an air of utter contempt for them both, endeavored to set up a separate and altogether private conversation with Margaret across the narrow table; but Margaret innocently had begun a conversation with Bud about the school, and had to be addressed ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... like angry coals of brilliant fire, returning several times to the attack with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious, reverberating, sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, and curiously like the real bleat of some small quadruped. At other times the males may be seen darting high up in the air, and whirling about each other in great ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... of posse wounded; one, William Hannay, killed. Circulated description of John Porter through the country. Tall and lean; when fifteen years old shot a man in a brawl, and went North. Has been absent thirteen years. Assumed the appearance of a Northern man and speaks with the Yankee twang. Father was absent at the time of attack. Captured three hours after. Declares he knows nothing about doings of the gang. Haverley and Corben were friends of his sons. Came and went when they liked. Will be ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth. A stranger passing might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates in Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and drawl: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... gal I've done my best to attract the notice of, while I was serving her in the shop—that is, when I've seen her get out of a carriage! There has been luck to many a chap like me, in the same line of speculation: look at Tom Tarnish—how did he get Miss Twang, the rich pianoforte-maker's daughter?—and now he's cut the shop, and lives at Hackney, like a regular gentleman! Ah! that was a stroke! But somehow it hasn't answered with me yet; the gals don't take! How I have set my eyes to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... came, then almost opposite, and now, as I listened to hear the traitorous signal of murder—"Pax vobiscum"—and the twang of bow-strings, on the night there rang a voice, a woman's voice, soft but wondrous clear, such as never I knew from any lips but hers who then spoke; that voice I heard in its last word, "Jesus!" and still it is sounding ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... of the old women were smoking clay or corncob pipes; the children laughed, cried, played with each other, rolled upon the ground, and disported themselves as children, white, black, or particolored, do all the world over; the occasional twang of a banjo and a fiddle was heard, and everything looked like enjoyment and anticipation. Of course, the huts of the future brides constituted the centre of attraction: from the chattering of tongues within we inferred that the wedding dresses were exposed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the strings would act in unison when striking the butt of the arrow. And so we had all things ready for the discharge; whereupon, I placed my foot upon the trigger, and, bidding the bo'sun watch carefully the flight of the arrow, pushed downwards. The next instant, with a mighty twang, and a quiver that made the great stock stir on its bed of rocks, the bow sprang to its lesser tension, hurling the arrow outwards and upwards in a vast arc. Now, it may be conceived with what mortal interest we watched its flight, and so in a minute discovered that ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... play, your sonatas in A, Heedless of what your next neighbour may say! Dance and be gay as a faun or a fay, Sing like the lad in the boat on the bay; Sing, play—if your neighbours inveigh Feebly against you, they're lunatics, eh? Bang, twang, clatter and clang, Strum, thrum, upon fiddle and drum; Neigh, bray, simply obey All your sweet impulses, stop not or stay! Rattle the "bones," hit a tinbottom'd tray Hard with the fireshovel, hammer away! Is not your neighbour ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... not easily tired; and I'm tough, though I'm small," she retorted, with her pretty twang. "By the way, speaking of to-morrow night. I wonder whether this Mr. Falconer would come up ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... descended upon the brigantine, and darkness broken only by the paling lights on the schooner and the red glow of the mate's pipe. Then out of the quiet came the sharp twang of a hawser, and the brigantine shivered. Both watchers started up and ran to the side, striving to penetrate the blackness. The lines ran down to their proper bollards, as usual, and the river sluiced swiftly ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... upbraided her husband as he was scaling the palisades to escape by night, fortified him with wine, girded his sword on herself, and caused her female attendants—of whom there were "several tens"—to twang bowstrings. Katana, taking heart of grace, advanced single handed; the Yemishi, thinking that his troops had rallied, gave way, and the Japanese soldiers, returning to their duty, killed or captured ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of cheek and lips, Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... bed and took his pulse. "The fever," said Demetrius, "has just left me." "O yes," replied the father, "I met it going out at the door." Demetrius's great actions made Antigonus treat him thus easily. The Scythians in their drinking-bouts twang their bows, to keep their courage awake amidst the dreams of indulgence; but he would resign his whole being, now, to pleasure, and now to action; and though he never let thoughts of the one intrude upon the pursuit of the other, yet, when the time came for preparing for war, he showed as much ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... most intimately. Scarce one but was related to half the people in the room. And all were in the gayest of spirits, for there, in a far corner, old Nicholas Grut every now and again gave the strings of his fiddle an impatient twang, as an intimation that all this was sheer waste of time, and that the only proper business in life was dancing. And presently they would begin, and they would dance until the sun rose, and then—well, the new day had its own rites and ceremonies, and eyes ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter as quick as the Frenchman paid it; but what then? By the twang of string! it would be a bad thing if money was not made to be spent; and how better than on ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a woman's voice that spoke, soft and wheedling, yet with a certain unpleasant twang in it. She spoke to Melody, who sat still, with folded hands, and head bowed as ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... hour elapsed before anything of note occurred. Then, an elderly man whom I did not know, a farmer, by his dress, drew a copy of the "Kiota Tribune" from his pocket, and, stretching it towards Johnson, asked with a very marked Yankee twang: ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... mountaineers, who talk to each other from hill tops half a mile asunder, announced that "our lady" was approaching. Whereupon a great hubbub arose; dogs barked, and feminine voices responded eagerly. Two or three muskets were presently discharged, and the twang of the balls as they passed near gave my nerves rather an unpleasant shock. I did not then know that the Black Mountaineers always receive their friends thus; in this instance female hands had loaded and fired, the men being almost all away fighting. A band of brightly-clad women, not less ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... hand in hand, they journeyed homeward in a glorified silence. The oxen appeared to guide themselves very fairly. The sunset flushed strangely the roadside hillocks. The nighthawks swooped in the pale zenith with the twang of smitten chords. And from a thick maple on the edge of a clearing a hermit-thrush fluted slowly over ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... sick!" I heard him shout. "Thought she looked in prime condition at the Springs." (Bush language frequently has a strong twang ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... these circumvolutions, the male frequently dives almost perpendicularly downwards, a distance of forty feet or more, uttering, when he turns at the bottom of his descent, a singular note, resembling the twang of a viol-string. This sound has been supposed to proceed from the action of the air, as the bird dives swiftly through it with open mouth; but this supposition is rendered improbable by the fact that the European species makes a similar sound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the orchard, like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou see'st him, draw; and as thou drawest, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang'd off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... tracks. If aeronautics is to be made popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether it is ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... of this pious burst, he proceeds to a castigation of the English for their observations on the nasal twang of his countrymen, and also for their criticism upon the sense in which sundry adjectives are used; and, to show the superior purity of the American language, he informs the reader that in England "the most elegant and refined talk constantly of "fried 'am" ... they seem very reluctant to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... and her long, low, queer-smelling warehouses in the lower town; her spick-and-span caleches and her dingy trolley-cars; her sprinkling of soldiers and sailors with Scotch accent and Irish brogue and Cockney twang, on a background of petite bourgeoisie speaking the quaintest of French dialects; her memories of an adventurous, glittering past and her placid contentment with the tranquil grayness of the present; her glorious daylight outlook over the vale of the St. Charles, the level shore of Montmorenci, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... seize the side of his swift little vessel and lean over towards the approaching cutter, as, snatching off his wide white Panama hat, he passed one duck-covered white arm across his yellowish-looking hairless face and shouted fiercely and in a peculiar twang— ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... excuse me, sir, I beg of you," she replies, "I have not touched an instrument of music half a dozen times since I was married—one, you know, has so much to do." Thus music as a science lags in the rear, while musical instruments in myriads twang away in the van: and thus the window cobweb having caught its flies for the season is swept away ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... endeavour to catch the shadow—so I bought the book, and spared myself the pain of listening to the oratory of the writer. Mrs. Moodie! he had a shocking delivery, a drawling, vulgar voice; and he spoke with such a nasal twang that I could not bear to look at him, or listen to him. He made such grammatical blunders, that my sides ached with laughing at him. Oh, I wish you could have seen the wretch! But here is the document, written in the same style in which it was spoken. Read it; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their destestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... by two white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And if by chance a plash of a wild duck, or the guttural twang of a bullfrog, struck our ears, as we stole quietly by—away we sped, nor paused until completely out of the woods. Then, when I reached home, what a world of adventures and imaginary terrors would I have to ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... talking of his plans to seize Tell, and without a dream of danger, for the pass was silent and seemed deserted. But suddenly to his ears came the twang of the bow he had heard before that day; through the air once more winged its way a steel-barbed shaft, the heart of a tyrant, not an apple on a child's head, now its mark. In an instant more Gessler fell from his horse, pierced by Tell's fatal shaft, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... breeches pocket, clenched his right, and raised his arm, he begins his learned dissertation on well digested principles, ardent desire of truth, incessant struggles to shake off prejudices, and forth are chanted, in nasal twang and tragic recitative, his emanations of soul, bursts of though, and flashes ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... spite of everything the most opulent and generous of the Christian nations, the donor whose gold and presents flowed into Rome in a never ending stream. At last Leo XIII arose to reply to the bishop and the baron. His voice was full, with a strong nasal twang, and surprised one coming from a man so slight of build. In a few sentences he expressed his gratitude, saying how touched he was by the devotion of the nations to the Holy See. Although the times might be bad, the final triumph could ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... utterly uncomprehending glance. This shaft had also gone wide of the mark, and he was not the man to bother about stray arrows. Upon my word, he was too unsuspecting; he was not fair game. I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,—that he had not even heard the twang of the bow. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... one knee, bracing himself as firmly as he could against the rock, and, with his shield above his head and his sword in his hand, awaited the attack of the enraged animal. He heard the twang of the bow behind him; then he felt a mighty blow, which beat down his shield and descended with terrible force upon his helmet, throwing him forward on to his face. Then there was a heavy blow on his back; and it was well for him ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... sounded again and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... which now arose, to the shouts which echoed across the dreary camp, to the reports of rifles which men, almost too aged to work, and employed as guards, let off in every direction. There was the twang of bullets in the air, while the darkness was punctuated by many a spot of flame, which showed where the sentries were doing duty. That commotion brought the Commandant flaring out of his quarters again, stamping his feet with anger, bellowing with passion. It would also have brought every ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... wood, tacks, spools, pins, and the like. But when robbed of all these he could generally secrete a piece of elastic, which, when put between his teeth and stretched to its utmost capacity, would yield a delightful twang when played upon with the forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no others besides her own,—were allowed to see the inhabitant of the big black case; and now that the deanery was so nearly deserted, Posy's fingers had touched the strings and had produced an infantine moan. "Grandpa, let me do it again." Twang! It was not, however, in truth, a twang, but a sound as of a prolonged dull, almost deadly, hum-m-m-m-m! On this occasion the moan was not entirely infantine,—Posy's fingers having been something too strong,—and the case was closed and locked, and grandpa ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, Boston without its twang!" ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had called on the Sisters and asked them to tea at the Goyle, and there had come to the conclusion that Sister Beata was an admirable, religious, hardworking woman, of strong opinions, and not much cultivated, with a certain provincial twang in her voice. She had a vehement desire for self-devotion and consecration, but perhaps not the same for obedience. She sharply criticised all the regulations of the Sisterhoods with which she was acquainted, wore a dress of her own ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Stover gravely shook hands with a quick, business-like little man with a Western mustache, a Down-East twang and a general air ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... been given with due emphasis, if not discretion, they all stood up round the table. "Now, my boys, keep time. Mr Prose, if you attempt to chime in with your confounded nasal twang, I'll give you ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... laughed at the nasal twang which Annie gave to the words, and Prudy imitated it to perfection, ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... Londoner by his accent; so you can a Scotchman; or a Yorkshireman for that matter: why should you not be able to tell an American? The error of your countrymen consists in attributing to all our people the nasal twang, which is almost peculiar to one section of the country. If I were asked the peculiar characteristic of a New-Yorker's speech, I should say monotone. Notice any one of our young men—you will find his conversational voice pitched in the same key. Sumner goes ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... technical shortcomings might be, he could make any tune sound pretty when he sang it. He had the native gift of ease, pathos, rhythm, humor, and charm—and a delightful sympathetic twang in his voice. His mother must have sung something like that; and all Paris went mad about her. No technical teaching in the world can ever match a genuine inheritance; and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... de Concombres.—The bottle contains 160 grammes of a very inelegantly made emulsion, smelling of very common rose-water, with an unpleasant twang about it, and giving a strongly alkaline reaction. It consists of soap, glycerin, and cotton seed oil, made ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... lighted matches glowing redly in the linstocks, a few of the bolder inhabitants summoned up courage enough to shout an inquiry as to what was amiss. And when at length the more persistent ones were told, in good Castilian, that yet had in it the suspicion of an alien twang, that nothing was amiss, and were advised to return to their beds and resume their interrupted slumber, suspicion at last began to awake, and instead of returning to bed the citizens proceeded to arouse their households, and ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... Why do you sit there, fool, and twang at that harp? There's no occasion for making music. Nobody has been winning any battles. How long has it been since a great fight was ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... before those on the flanks could reach the centre, the shock had come. All order being lost, the combat was hand to hand one party fighting fiercely for victory, and the other knowing that they stood at the awful peril of their lives. After the first discharge of the musket and the twang of the bow, the struggle was maintained with knife and axe; the thrust of the former, or the descent of the keen and glittering tomahawk, being answered by sweeping and crushing blows of the musket's but, or by ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Similar effects are also produced upon the saliva, and hence it is that habitual snuff-takers are often unable to speak with proper distinctness; and the sense of taste for the same reason is very much obtunded. A snuffer may always be distinguished by a certain nasal twang—an asthmatic wheezing—and a sort of disagreeable noise in respiration, which is nearly allied to incipient snoring. Snuff also frequently occasions fleshy excrescences in the nose, which, in some instances, end in polypi. Individuals have oftentimes ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... boy, Charlie Maxfield by name, though known simply as "Chatz." He possessed all the traits to be found in boys who have been born and raised south of Mason and Dixon's line, was inclined to be touchy whenever he thought anyone doubted his honor, talked with a quaint little twang that was really delightfully musical, and taken in all had grown to be a prime favorite ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Indian of North or South America, instead of an Indian of the "East Indies," he would have pierced those fishes with an arrow at every twang of his bow. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the Canton of the Grisons made me familiar with all sorts of Valtelline wine; with masculine but rough Inferno, generous Forzato, delicate Sassella, harsher Montagner, the raspberry flavour of Grumello, the sharp invigorating twang of Villa. The colour, ranging from garnet to almandine or ruby, told me the age and quality of wine; and I could judge from the crust it forms upon the bottle, whether it had been left long enough in wood to ripen. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... lisp in his "s" I accepted as part of the "real Yankee" utterance. Nor, indeed, was this unnatural, in view of the "th" sound, that stumbling-block of every foreigner, whom it must needs strike as a full-grown lisp. Bender spoke with a nasal twang which I am now inclined to think he paraded as an accessory to the over-dignified drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I had noticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans as well, so, altogether, English ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... sang and shouted, Keeping measure as I sped, To the harp-twang of the snow-shoe As ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... one knows exactly when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... broad chest, with which he breasts the water so gallantly; see how proudly he carries his antlered head; he has no fear in those lonely solitudes—he has never heard the crack of the hunter's rifle—he heeds not the sharp twang of that bowstring, till the arrow rankles in his neck, and the crimson flood dyes the water around him—he turns, but it is only to present a surer mark for the arrow of the old hunter's bow; and now the noble beast turns to bay, and the canoe is rapidly launched by the hand ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... called "intoning." It is a plaintive, rhythmical chant, with as strong an unction of the nasal as ever prevailed in a Quaker or Methodist meeting. I cannot exactly understand why Episcopacy threw out the slur of "nasal twang" as one of the peculiarities of the conventicle, when it is in full force in the most approved seats of church orthodoxy. I listened to all in as uncritical and sympathetic a spirit as possible, giving myself up to be lifted ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... No Man's Land; not human sounds, for such carry far—the beat of a hammer on a post, the sharp twang of unrolling barbed wire as it catches, and then springs away—voices even come as through a megaphone in the eerie silence—but these are long-drawn sighs that penetrate the inner consciousness and hushed murmurs that fall on the ear of the soul. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... over the gathered heap of straw. "Ah," he said—"got in again, I see! The shutters must be looked to." "I daresay," I remarked, looking disconsolately around me, "you don't find it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "Very easy!" said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought, with also a good deal of Highland hauteur—as was of course quite natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish remarks—"No, nor easy at all, or it would not be locked up in this ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... new school is a sad backslider. He would think it undignified to beat a boy; he wears a black frock coat, keeps novels in his cabin, wears a finger-ring, and tries to look like a ship-broker. He mixes his north-country accent with a twang learned in the West-end theatres, and he never goes ashore without a tall hat and an umbrella. His walk is a grievous trouble to his mind. The ideal ship-broker has a straight and seemly gait; but no captain who ever tried to imitate the ship-broker could quite do away with ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... a little man is that little Fokare, my lor," Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not look to have ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... maybe allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family. On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike,—so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ascribed without hesitation to the goldfinch or the pine finch, had I heard them in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... heavenly twang," observed one, disapprovingly, as one letter largely composed of Scriptural ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... l. 16 Chaplain [Mr. Twang], and leaning. 4to 1696 'her Chaplain, and leaning'. I have inserted Twang's name and given in l. 19 speech-prefix 'Twang' which all former editions mark 'Chap.', altering, however, to 'Twang' later in this ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... heard him say, without a trace of the Yankee twang in his speech, "you have your orders, and see that they are executed forthwith. In this matter I intend to have ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... cutting two wires. Another pole was climbed and only one wire cut from it. With this strand he made a joint so that the two ends of the despatcher's wire could be brought in easy contact. Then by knocking the two ends together he sent the warning. His cutting of the wire had made a peculiar loud twang and one of the outlaws heard it. Becoming suspicious, he and his partner started up the track to investigate. They came upon Dick, kneeling on one knee, engrossed in his work, and without one word ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... fancies, I sat on the side of my bed, I heard, the first time for a long while, the music beneath my window. At the first twang of the guitar a ray of light darted into my soul. I opened the window, and called down softly, that I was awake. "Pst, pst!" was the answer from below. Without more ado, I thrust the note into my pocket, took my fiddle, got out ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... enjoyment of this phase of human nature was hardly possible so long as they had to proceed warily on a forest trail, their eyes keen for the first glimpse of a hideously painted face, their ears alert for the twang of a bowstring or the hiss of a feathered arrow. Their deep but practical interest in the Indians found expression in scores of books, which fall roughly into three groups. In the first are the scholarly works of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... for Cyril, prattled with Lady Temple, or studied with Rachel, all was done with grace, zest, and sympathy peculiarly her own. Two practisings at the school removed the leaden drawl, and lessened the twang of the choir; and Mr. Touchett looked quite exalted, while even Rachel owned that she had hardly ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the violin, the lively twang of a guitar, the "boom! boom" of a drum marking time, the stentorian voice of the master of ceremonies, reached her plainly as she lay staring at the stars through the single window of her room. She liked the sounds; they were cheerful; ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... cities, as Boston, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia, have certain nasal peculiarities or variants. The Bostonian affects the English. The New Englander, especially in the north, has a comical twang, which you can produce by holding the nose tightly and attempting to speak. When he says down it sounds like daoun. It is impossible for him not to overvowel his words, and nothing is more amusing than to hear the true Yankee countryman talk. The Philadelphian is quite as ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... Putnam—a short, rugged, fat, white-haired farmer from Connecticut of bluff manners and nasal twang and of great animation for one of his years—he was then fifty-seven. He was often seen flying about the camp on a horse. The young man had read of the heroic exploits of this ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... of Afghan character, I must mention that whenever the Jezailchis could snatch five minutes to refresh themselves with a pipe, one of them would twang a sort of a rude guitar as an accompaniment to some martial song, which, mingling with the notes of war, ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... all surprising when he suddenly stepped on a stick that broke with a sharp twang. And, before he could dodge behind a tree, the fellow beyond ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... of my boyhood. I dared not picture her as growing up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... fellow; methinks he makes a strange figure with that ragged, tattered coat appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights, and went abroad often at unseasonable hours; ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... built of poles and was old. Many a rain had beaten against the "chinking" and we had no trouble in finding openings through which we could plainly see all that went forward within. Just as I looked in I heard the twang of a banjo, and I saw the old negro sitting on the edge of a bed, picking the instrument, while two white men were patting a break-down and two others were trying to dance. At the fire-place a negro woman was frying meat and baking ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... was all the night Speeding the arrows' deadly flight. All in the dark his bow-string's twang Was answered; for some white shield rang, Or yelling shriek gave certain note The shaft had pierced some ring-mail coat, The foemen's shields and bulwarks bore ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... not often avail himself, as his nerves were seldom in a fit state for riding. His hair was dark red, and he wore red moustaches, and a great deal of red beard beneath his chin, cut in a manner to make him look like an American. His voice also had a Yankee twang, being a cross between that of an American trader and an English groom; and his eyes were keen and fixed, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... faltering or hoarse. Such faults are not serious to a master salesman. If your vocal equipment is physically normal, your voice can be made pleasing. In order to make your tones agreeable, learn to vibrate them naturally through your nose. A mouth tone is displeasing. The so-called "nasal twang" that sounds so unpleasant is a mouth tone prevented from free vibration through the nose. Humming, as you know, both indicates pleasure and is a pleasant sound. It is produced with the mouth closed, by ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... torn to pieces in the whirlwind of voices which assail him from the disputing parties, in each of whose languages he tries to explain; but, poor patient Jew! you never could speak any of them intelligibly, and your nasal twang, and drawling accent, so disguises what you do say, that nothing but a miracle could make you understood. The screams, the grimaces, the gestures which these people exhibit, during their unavailing efforts to render themselves understood, appear inexpressibly ludicrous ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... cheeks, flushed by the recent rowing. She knew that she should be home, for supper would be waiting and her father would be impatient. But she hesitated. Her thoughts were out there on the water where she loved to be. The twang of the wind as it swept through the trees along the shore, and the beat of the surf upon the gravelly beach were music sweet ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... magnet, the same results would happen in the other wire if it were rapidly moved toward and away from this permanent magnet. If the reader should stretch a wire tightly between two pegs on a table, and should then hold the arms of a common horseshoe magnet very near it, and should twang the stretched wire with his finger, as he would a guitar string, the electrometer would show an induced alternate current in the wire. Since this is an illustration of the principle of the dynamo, stated in its simplest form, it may be well to remember that in this manner—with ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... to me, my dear Wilfrid. I am not quite so bad as I paint myself; say to yourself she has arthritis, she is sixty-five, and her new companion reads aloud with a twang; then you will only wonder ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with a rich old Spaniard who owned a leaky old barque which was employed in the coasting trade. The captain of her was a Dutchman who spoke English very imperfectly, and what he did know was spoken with a nasal Yankee twang. It was a habit, as well as being thought an accomplishment in those days, as it is in these, to affect American dialect and adopt their slang and mannerisms in order to convey an impression of importance. ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... belle France boasts of being Art's true henchman! That cosmopolitan claim she should be mute on. "Art for Art's sake!" shouts the thrasonic Frenchman, "Save when that Art is Teuton," Though Art's not marred for him by subtle sin A German twang poisons e'en Lohengrin. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... Ben Jonson's masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into the English language, and metaphors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... musical instruments; for in those days not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight papistical twang), after bewailing with ingenious particularity the sins and back-slidings of himself and people, and the ingratitude of the whole land, and recounting the innumerable blessings that had crowned their basket and their ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... to a general store, where they occupied themselves in making out an order for supplies and arranging for their delivery on the following day. The trader was a loquacious individual with the unmistakable "Yankee" twang and nasal whine of the man from that important speck of the United States called ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... great archer,—and enters upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble: at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved! It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but you ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... 'pot' of some local brewer's manufacture—a man who knows exactly what he likes, and arranges to meet the hardy digestion of the mower and the reaper. He prefers a rather dark beer with a certain twang faintly suggestive of liquorice and tobacco, with a sense of 'body,' a thickness in it, and which is no sooner swallowed than a clammy palate demands a second gulp to wash away the relics of the first. Ugh! ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... known her some time in their lives. Here bossed on silver vase, a marriage train Moves round to music: lookers-on cast flowers Before the timid bending bride: meanwhile, Stalwart and proud, her bridegroom smiles abroad As at a dazzling sun: the pipers blow, The harpers twang, the cymbals clash, youths sing; Six maidens walk behind to hold her veil, One pair are sad, the next look vain, and two Prettily whisper secrets to themselves. Here from old paper stands, and looks of men The manliest, and king of English kings, The lion Cromwell, in his dress of war: Beneath him ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... the fountain of Dirce,[230] and any body who thinks it worth while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets, some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic fever, like poor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... mules, are you?" The speech is a stately drawl very different from the nasal twang of Eliphalet's bringing up. "Reckon you don't come from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to perfection. . . ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... body. As he came, with a half saunter, half swagger, along the street, I knew him again at once by his appearance; and, as he came nearer, I saw from his manner that he was intending to stop and speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in a soft, melodious voice with a colonial "twang" which was far from being disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear gave a certain additional interest to his remarks, he saluted me with ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the hot towns paddling in the surf of Spanish waters, And prowl beneath dim balconies and twang discreet guitars, And sigh our adoration to Don Juan's lovely daughters Till they lifted their mantillas and their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... than Captain Wilding's affectation. For indeed there seem to be as many ways of pronouncing English as there are people that speak it, and even in Norfolk itself I have met with people who were not free from something like the Suffolk twang. Seeing, I suppose, that I was disappointed by this answer, he leant over and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... old woman, "is the third night, and these fires must blaze yet eleven nights and days more, during which time the axe is not seen in the hand of the forester, nor doth the bow twang in the woods of Tarapajan; neither may he which seeth these rites depart till ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... slight start of recognition when he saw the American. It was not the first time he had seen the lean brown face and deep-set eyes, but he kept this to himself. In spite of his nasal twang and a little surface roughness, Hugh Rossiter was decidedly a gentleman: the mere fact of his presence at the Manor House was a sufficient proof of this. But he was evidently a very eccentric and unconventional being. In age ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Arrah, what a twang! An' it's what they call Shemaky, I'm thinkin'!" says the fellow, screwing his face into all manner ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... its sunshine, with its opulent colour, luminous and soft; I think of the cities, the white cities bathed in light; of the desolate wastes of sand, with their dwarf palms, the broom in flower. And in my ears I hear the twang of the guitar, the rhythmical clapping of hands and the castanets, as two girls dance in the sunlight on a holiday. I see the crowds going to the bull-fight, intensely living, many-coloured. And a thousand scents are wafted ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... brother," he invited earnestly, almost eagerly, notwithstanding his monotonous nasal twang. "Step inside and find peace. Step inside and the Lord will help you. Throw your burden ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wrangling over a game at draughts which they were playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers was silenced. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... at the head of the stairway looked straight ahead where a man with a strong bow held himself close in the shadow of a great rock. When the twang of the bow string sounded, she loosened not her hand from that of Ka-yemo as he fell, but with her other hand she pulled aside the robe from her breast—also the necklace of the white metal, that not anything turn aside the point of the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "over-dare" in speaking to your nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both, because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join'd stools at the arm's end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have made the whole body of divinity tremble at the twang of our bow, and enforc'd Saturnius himself to lay by his curled front, thunder, and three-fork'd fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a reveller of eighteen ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... countenance, and a straight, narrow forehead, and coarse, silvery hair, that stood erect upon his head. "I have come again, you see; but don't let your choler get up, my little stranger. Peace and little men ought to keep each other company," spoke the man, with a strong, nasal twang, after having adjusted his thumbs in the arm holes of his waistcoat, and passed twice or thrice up and down the, room, with a tantalizing air. Ephraim Flagg had given up driving the stage between New London ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... crowded blazing upon the golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... account of the unfortunate Violinist, by a musician: "It was about the month of November, 1753, that I, with some friends, were met to spend the evening at a tavern in the City, when this man, in a mean but decent garb, was introduced to us by the waiter; immediately upon opening the door I heard the twang of one of his strings from under his coat, which was accompanied by the question, 'Gentlemen, will you please to hear my music?' Our curiosity, and the modesty of the man's deportment, inclined us to say yes, and music he gave us, such as I had never heard before, nor shall again under the same ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... some one about," he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some one aimed—Ah, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... knee, bracing himself as firmly as he could against the rock, and, with his shield above his head and his sword in his hand, awaited the attack of the enraged animal. He heard the twang of the bow behind him; then he felt a mighty blow, which beat down his shield and descended with terrible force upon his helmet, throwing him forward on to his face. Then there was a heavy blow on his back; and it was well for him that he ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... till it broke with a twang; I entered leisurely. It was enough to try the temper of a saint, such senseless, wicked rages! There she lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... mean to liue my yeares: but happy the father that begot thee, and thrise happy the Nurse that soffred such a toward yonker as thy selfe: I know thy vertues as well as thy selfe, thou hast a superficiall twang of a little something: an Italian ribald can not vomit out the infections of the world, but thou my pretty Iuuinall, an English Dorrell-lorrell, must lick it vp for restoratiue, & putrifie thy gentle ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... these consisted of teaching a club of girls to sew, of instructing a group of mothers in the art of making cakes and pies and salads, and of hearing a half hundred little children repeat their A B Cs. Only the difference in setting, only the twang of foreign tongues, only the strange precociousness of the children, made life at all different from the life at home. She told herself, fiercely, that she might be a teacher in a district school—a country school—for all ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... whir and a twang the elastic wood flung upwards, and the bound man was shot away from its tip with the speed of a lightning flash. He sang through the air, spinning over and over with inconceivable rapidity, and the great crowd of rebels held their breath in silence ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... slowly to thy well-known rivulet, And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick fierce cry That rends the utter silence! 'tis the whoop Of battle, and a throng of savage men With naked arms and faces stained like blood, Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream; Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short, As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors And conquered vanish, and the dead remain Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, the frighted bird comes ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... me; I nodded; and as the executioner clapped his heels together, straightened himself, and drew the arrow to his ear, we heard a low twang! And saw the black hand of the Seneca pinned to his own bow ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... peculiar to these mountaineers, who talk to each other from hill tops half a mile asunder, announced that "our lady" was approaching. Whereupon a great hubbub arose; dogs barked, and feminine voices responded eagerly. Two or three muskets were presently discharged, and the twang of the balls as they passed near gave my nerves rather an unpleasant shock. I did not then know that the Black Mountaineers always receive their friends thus; in this instance female hands had loaded and fired, the men being almost all away fighting. A band of brightly-clad ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... they came, then almost opposite, and now, as I listened to hear the traitorous signal of murder—"Pax vobiscum"—and the twang of bow-strings, on the night there rang a voice, a woman's voice, soft but wondrous clear, such as never I knew from any lips but hers who then spoke; that voice I heard in its last word, "Jesus!" and still it is sounding ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... and position were but the culmination of a great and honourable social service, a conviction that had been her tacit comfort during much distasteful loyalty seemed to shrivel and fade. No doubt the writer was a thwarted blackmailer; even her accustomed mind could distinguish a twang of some such vicious quality in his sentences; but that did not alter the realities he exhibited and exaggerated. There was a description of how Sir Isaac pounced on his managers that was manifestly derived from a manager he had dismissed. It was dreadfully like him. Convincingly like him. There ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in the Canton of the Grisons made me familiar with all sorts of Valtelline wine; with masculine but rough Inferno, generous Forzato, delicate Sassella, harsher Montagner, the raspberry flavour of Grumello, the sharp invigorating twang of Villa. The colour, ranging from garnet to almandine or ruby, told me the age and quality of wine; and I could judge from the crust it forms upon the bottle, whether it had been left long enough in wood to ripen. I had furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Koppen was described as a brisk, genial, talkative old fellow, rather fat, with a clear complexion, sound teeth, shrubby grey beard, a twang barely sufficient to authenticate his transatlantic descent, and the digestion of a boa-constrictor. He was tremendously fond of buttered tea-cakes—so the Duchess said; a man who, in the words of Madame Steynlin, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... token,' said Elder Hawkins's deep bass voice, speaking with the strong nasal twang of ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and hand in hand, they journeyed homeward in a glorified silence. The oxen appeared to guide themselves very fairly. The sunset flushed strangely the roadside hillocks. The nighthawks swooped in the pale zenith with the twang of smitten chords. And from a thick maple on the edge of a clearing a hermit-thrush fluted slowly over and over his ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... to the cottage, and LeFroy at his post in the storehouse nodded sagely to himself as the notes of the girl's rich contralto floated loud and clear above the twang ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the voice. I know when it is low or high, clear or muffled, sad or cheery. The thin, quavering sensation of an old voice differs in my touch from the sensation of a young voice. A Southerner's drawl is quite unlike the Yankee twang. Sometimes the flow and ebb of a voice is so enchanting that my fingers quiver with exquisite pleasure, even if I do not understand a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... there the rope kept on vibrating and the anchor jarred as Scoodrach descended; while, as Max pressed the stock down, and it rose and fell like a spring beneath his foot, he kept his eyes fixed upon the edge of the cliff, where the rope seemed to end, when there was a dull twang, as if the string of some gigantic instrument had snapped, and, to his horror, the rope rose from the top of the cliff as if alive, and struck and coiled round him ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... head and made Falcon swerve, and heard therewith the twang of the bowstring and straightway the shaft flew past his ears. Falcon galloped on, and the carle cried out: "There is the highway toward the Burg! Do thy best, do thy best! Lo ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... that ragged, tattered coat appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... was not softened with the modification of banter, but rasped with the twang of suspicion as though the speaker expected to give offense—and did not care. Young Edwardes received it with a peal of laughter so infectious that the man in the chair looked ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... out," said Tudie, with a twang that resounded as the music came to a stop. "Oh, Em—Miss Terriberry, this is Mr. Carver; he's ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... by planning how we will behave when we are taken prisoner by the Germans. He is safe, because he is an American citizen. The unfortunate thing about me is my passport, otherwise, by means of a well-simulated nasal twang I might get through as an American novelist. I've been mistaken for one often enough in my own country. But, as I don't mean to be taken prisoner, and perhaps murdered or have my hands chopped off, without a struggle, my plan is to deliver ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... decent man such as Watson spoke of; the throat and neck were not of the kind one expects in a singer, but, of course, we must not argue too much from this; the hands showed breed, certainly, but they had never been used to twang the strings of ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... Hghelghghagllaghem. For the pronunciation of this polysyllabic cognomen, I can only give you a few plain instructions; commence it with a slight cough, continue with a gurgling in the throat, and finish with the first convulsive movement of a sneeze, imparting to the whole operation a delicate nasal twang. If the result is not something approaching to the sound required, you must relinquish all hope of achieving it, as I did. Luckily, my business was to dance, and not to apostrophize the lady; and accordingly, when the waltz struck up, I hastened ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... her speculatively. "Well," he said at length, speaking with something of a twang, "I guess your father knows what he's about, but it beats me to understand why he has me here to study. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... The few servants, consisting of a son of the steward, footman, and page, were all buried in profound slumber. Genji called to them loudly, and they awoke with a start. "Come," said he, "bring a light. Valet, twang your bow-string, and drive away the fiend. How can you sleep so soundly in such a ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... should take exception to the guffaw? Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Cezannes I ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business. But my notion about Cezanne was that he was a fond old man who distracted himself by daubing. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... spending the night in talking, singing, and gaming. In the peaceful camp of the Third Alabama, in that state, the scenes were similar. There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, and fighting, both real and mimic." The colonel ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the innocent fugitive from the world requires. The great amiable cats that purr in the back room. The old pictures and playbills on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner by the window. Or the table just under that really lovely little portrait of Robert Burns—would there be any more propitious place ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... rare case of ensnared aural foreign body in a lady, aged about forty years, who, while "picking" her left ear with a so-called "invisible hair-pin" several hours before the consultation, had heard a sudden "twang" in the ear, as if the hair-pin had broken. And so, indeed, it had; for on the instant she had attempted to jerk it quickly from the ear the sharp extremity of the inner portion of its lower prong sprang away from its fellow, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... guide than Thomas Johnson. Words cannot produce a eulogium sufficient for his merits. But, as I have since learned, he was not quite so Spanish as I had imagined. Three years among the bodegas of Xeres had taught him, no doubt, to appreciate the exact twang of a good, dry sherry; but not, as I now conceive, the exactest flavour of the true Spanish character. I was very lucky, however, in meeting such a friend, and now reckon him as one of the stanchest allies of the house of ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... as he advanced, and soon it became tolerably dark at the bottom where the high walls shut out the light. Suddenly his horse stumbled, and, as Ted shot over its head, he heard the twang of a broken wire that had been stretched ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies; who have built this Constitution; who saunter here with vague communings,—not without thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddlestrings twang and warble every where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet; long lamp-galaxies fling their coloured radiance; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and bawl, "Grande Acceptation, Constitution Monarchique:" ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... buck went by. He had not spied us while we lay still, but the moment my comrade moved, he threw up his head and bounded off. Yet not before a quick twang from Sir Ludar's bowstring had sent an arrow into his quarter. "Are you mad?" cried I, in terror, "it ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who notices similar mysterious manifestations on ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Matt," urged Joe. "Nothing like the merry old twang to make the new boys feel at home ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... Priapus would be reinstated in their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with wide, astonished, woeful eyes—disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in a scabbard, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the women ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... The nasal twang of Yankeedom is a plant that needs no nourishing. Its roots are grown wide and deep; so much so, that those who love it need not fear that it will pine away and die, if it bears no fruit of song, ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... a decrepit old man who went by the name of "Bowed Johnnie Ker,"—a Cameronian, with a nasal twang, which his pupils learnt much more readily than they did his lessons in reading and arithmetic, notwithstanding a liberal use of "the tawse." Yet Johnnie had a taste for music, and taught his pupils to SING ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... trade, who had come to Georgia in search of a precarious livelihood. He obtained permission to build him a little log hut by the side of a running stream; and, for a year or two, people going along the road could hear the snap and twang of his bowstring as he whipped wool or rabbit fur into shape. Some said he was from North Carolina; others said he was from Connecticut; but whether from one State or the other, what should a hatter do away off in the woods in Putnam County? Grandsir Kendrick, who was shrewd, close-fisted, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... first floor, where the plebian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very house-top, where are administered comforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its length with the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... broad heath the bowstrings twang, While high in air the arrows sang. The iron shower drives to flight The foeman from the bloody fight. The warder of great Odin's shrine, The fair-haired son of Odin's line, Raises the voice which gives the cheer, First in the track of wolf or bear. His master voice drives them along To Hel—a ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the crimson curtain,—the sexual division of the boat, —behind which I continually heard whispers and stealthy footsteps; the noise of a comb laid on the table or a slipper dropped on the floor; the twang, like a broken harp-string, caused by loosening a tight belt; the rustling of a gown in its descent; and the unlacing of a pair of stays. My ear seemed to have the properties of an eye; a visible image pestered my fancy ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... concerning the Jewel-robbery in the Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out in Act ii. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... ensued when the chief employment of the evening ceased, Nigel appealed much to Myra, and endeavoured to draw out her mind and feelings. He lent her books, and books that favoured, indirectly at least, his own peculiar views—volumes of divine poesy that had none of the twang of psalmody, tales of tender and sometimes wild and brilliant fancy, but ever full of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... their partners; the steel-strung tamboricas strike up a lively twanging air, to which the circle of dancers endeavor to shuffle time with their feet, while at the same time moving around in a circle Livelier and faster twang the tamboricas, and more and more animated becomes the scene as the dancing, shuffling ring endeavors to keep pace with it. As the fun progresses into the fast and furious stages the youths' hats have a knack of getting into a jaunty position on the side of their heads, and the wearers' faces ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... already been transferred with all the other treasures of a young and loving heart, to the keeping of a dark-eyed youth of Manilla. He had been rudely repulsed by her parents, but often would the cautious twang of his guitar bring her to a midnight interview. These clandestine meetings were interrupted. Her dark-eyed lover no longer came, and she was told she would never see him more. A marriage with the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... little vessel and lean over towards the approaching cutter, as, snatching off his wide white Panama hat, he passed one duck-covered white arm across his yellowish-looking hairless face and shouted fiercely and in a peculiar twang— ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... they said "dooty" and "roomor" and "noos" and "clawg," and sometimes would pop out "his'n" and "her'n." Several of the Stenes had been in business thirty years in metropolitan Chicago, yet they spoke in the twang of a Yankee hill-country. The women of the family were famous housekeepers—too neat to keep a cat lest there might be a cat hair on the carpet, and never liking visitors unless there was a dreadful note of preparation, and then they received grandly. To show Lydia their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... was making rapid strides to wealth here, as a landed proprietor and store-keeper without rivalry. Others of the clan Gregor had come out, allured by tidings of his prosperity; and so the broad Doric of lowland Scotch resounded about the tavern table almost as much as the Canadian twang. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... paradox (it is nothing worse) maybe allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family. On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike,—so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ascribed ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Hey you! Wake up, can't you?" Far off as the voice seemed at first, there was a delicious, home-sickness-provoking, nasal twang to ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the crowd ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... understood the situation; but Camp was restless and uneasy as if he expected to find the cattle in the corrals at the ranch. Camp was years the older of the two, a pudgy man with a florid complexion and nasal twang, and kept the junior member busy answering his questions. Uncle Lance enjoyed the situation, jollying his sister about the elder contractor and quietly inquiring of the red-haired foreman how and where ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... play you are selling my knife," and reaching out and taking it in my hand, after making a few preliminary remarks, I began with the twang of the almost extinct down east Yankee, and in a high-pitched voice and at lightning ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the strongest dancer in all Albainn. The company sat facing me as I stepped it over a couple of sword-blades, and their backs were to the door. Mackenzie was humming a port-a-bheul with a North Country twang even in his nose, and I was at my last step when the door opened with no noise and a girl looked in, her eyes staring hard at me alone, and a finger on her lips for silence. A man of less discernment would have stopped ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... individual article the light, artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element of tremendous noise from the conflicts of ancient days! What a tool it would have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... wrecked by fanaticism. In his journey he was attended by one whom he called his armor-bearer, and their entrance into each village was signaled by a loud hymn sung by the excited pair. The very tone in which Davenport preached has been perpetuated by his admirers; it was a nasal twang, which had great effect. A law was passed against those irregularities, and Davenport was thrown into Hartford jail, where he sang hymns all night, to the great admiration of his friends. On being released he went to Lyme, where, after sermon, a bonfire of idols was made, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... brigantine, and darkness broken only by the paling lights on the schooner and the red glow of the mate's pipe. Then out of the quiet came the sharp twang of a hawser, and the brigantine shivered. Both watchers started up and ran to the side, striving to penetrate the blackness. The lines ran down to their proper bollards, as usual, and the river sluiced ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... an accomplishment, of which we have never before had occasion to speak: he was a first-class mimic; and he took no little pride in showing off his powers. He could imitate the brogue of an Irishman the broken English of a Dutchman, or the nasal twang of a Yankee, to perfection; and one day, while he was in the barn saddling his horse, he carried on a lengthy conversation with Bob Kelly (who was on the outside of the building), about some runaway cattle, and the old trapper thought ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... of, while I was serving her in the shop—that is, when I've seen her get out of a carriage! There has been luck to many a chap like me, in the same line of speculation: look at Tom Tarnish—how did he get Miss Twang, the rich pianoforte-maker's daughter?—and now he's cut the shop, and lives at Hackney, like a regular gentleman! Ah! that was a stroke! But somehow it hasn't answered with me yet; the gals ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of his age and class. He could have entered into this circle of strangers—strangers for the most part, in all probability, to one another—and in ten minutes' time been one of them. Their screams, their twang, their slang, their gossip, their jolly banter, and their gay ineptitude would have been to him like a welcome home. But he was Norrie Ford, known by name and misfortune to every one of them. The boys and girls on the pier, the elderly women in the rocking-chairs, even the waitresses ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... make you glad— To make you glad and gay, Till your eyes gleam bright As the stars at night When as light as the light of day Sing some song as I twang the strings Of my sweet guitar through its wanderings?" And she sighed in the weary way she had,— "Do not sing—it ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... I had promised to go to Lambert's rooms after dinner on that evening; he had asked us because he said we ought to have a talk about the freshers' wine, but we knew well enough that he intended to twang his wretched banjo and sing little love songs which made the night hideous. If only he would have sung comic things he might not have caused such wholesale pain, though I should not like to speak positively upon that point. I did not go ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... forward, to see the infernal machine, on which I was to be elevated, glaring more and more hideously in the blaze of a noonday sun—and the hangman's rapscallions watching for their prey —and the horrible psalm-singing—the cursed twang still rings in my ears—and the screeching hungry ravens, a whole flight of them, who were hovering over the half-rotten carcass of my predecessor. To see all this—ay, more, to have a foretaste of the blessedness which was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... unfinish, careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic genius, and not "put on," that secretly pleases the soul more than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect verse?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in the very names of his songs-"O for ane and twenty, Tam," "John Barleycorn," "Last May a braw Wooer," "Rattlin roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast," "Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," "Merry ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... best Provence oil. This is no small distinction in the almanac des gourmands, as there is no article in which it is so difficult to hit the critical taste of a Provencal. I have seen them often make hideous faces at the twang of oil which a Spaniard would abuse, and an Englishman admire, for its tastelessness. A Provencal lady, with the knowing air of a bonne menagere, told us, that no traveller could meet with really good oil, for that the ordinary sort which we ignorantly thought excellent, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... shock had come. All order being lost, the combat was hand to hand one party fighting fiercely for victory, and the other knowing that they stood at the awful peril of their lives. After the first discharge of the musket and the twang of the bow, the struggle was maintained with knife and axe; the thrust of the former, or the descent of the keen and glittering tomahawk, being answered by sweeping and crushing blows of the musket's but, or by throttling grasps of hands that were clenched ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... chin seemed to meet in a sharp point. His face showed that form of despair so common in those whom whiskey has helped to degenerate. He did not smile—he scowled continuously, and his voice had been imprecatory so long that it whined in the same falsetto twang as ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... fire, for Ti-hi, without waiting for orders, drew an arrow to its head, the bow-string gave a loud twang, and the next instant we saw a savage bound from the ledge where he had hidden and run across the intervening space, club in one hand, bow in the other, yelling furiously ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... moved toward and away from this permanent magnet. If the reader should stretch a wire tightly between two pegs on a table, and should then hold the arms of a common horseshoe magnet very near it, and should twang the stretched wire with his finger, as he would a guitar string, the electrometer would show an induced alternate current in the wire. Since this is an illustration of the principle of the dynamo, stated in its simplest form, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... heeling her over until her starboard waterway was buried. The breaking sea swept the deck like a cataract, lifting the boat clean off it, just as I sprang back into the cockpit; there was a little jerk and a twang as the rope parted, and in an instant we were afloat and driving rapidly away to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... down on his shoulder exposed to the burning rays of the sun. When it arrives, it is thrown down on the sand, to swelter in the heat with the rest, and remains there probably for days before it is transferred into the cask. It is this proceeding which gives to sherry that peculiar leather twang which distinguishes it from other wines—a twang easy to imitate by throwing into a cask of Cape wine a pair of old boots, and allowing them to remain a proper time. Although the public refuse to drink Madeira as Madeira, they are in fact drinking it in every ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... pious burst, he proceeds to a castigation of the English for their observations on the nasal twang of his countrymen, and also for their criticism upon the sense in which sundry adjectives are used; and, to show the superior purity of the American language, he informs the reader that in England "the most elegant and refined talk constantly of "fried 'am" ... they seem very reluctant to hacknowledge ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor —' 'In troth mester what d'ye ca'um (replied the lawyer), your wit has run you into a filthy puddle — I'm truly consarned for your waeful case — The ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Evening Bells." The twang of the wind-harp also resounds through Bowles' Sonnets. See for the Aeolus' harp, vol. i., p. 165. and Cf. Coleridge's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... it loosely in large loops upon the ground so that it might run easily without hitching, then he tied the end of the thread tightly around one of his arrows. He fitted the arrow to the bow and drew the feather to his ear. Twang! rang the bowstring, and the feathered messenger flew whistling upon its errand to the watch-tower. The very first ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that—short, lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself, old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city street out of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... plumped, like a vast shower-bath, over the deserted town. The night was dark and windless: the street lit glimmeringly from end to end, lamps, house windows, and the reflections in the rain-pools all contributing. From a public-house on the other side of the way, I heard a harp twang and a doleful voice upraised in the "Larboard Watch," "The Anchor's Weighed," and other naval ditties. Where had my Shyster wandered? In all likelihood to that lyrical tavern; there was no choice of diversion; in comparison with Stallbridge-Minster ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... doin' i' heaven," he asked, "wi' a crown o' gowd on my heead and nowt to do all day but twang a harp, just as if I were one o' them lads i' t' band? What mak o' life's yon for a chap like me, that's allus bin used to tug an' tew for ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... never seasick, and he was the most willing man I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talked about himself. His history, so far as we were concerned, began the day he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone can tell. He was a Yankee—that much we knew from the twang in his speech. And that was all we ever ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... reverence along the route. A bullfight is usually a feature of a saint's day too, with the whole town going to the Plaza de Toros to watch. The paseo will be especially gay at fiesta time, and as darkness falls, the guitars will start to twang, castanets will click and all the young people will gather in the main square to take part in folk dances until morning. Sometimes the saint's fiesta will last a whole week, with bullfights every afternoon and a fair ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... and Crown Ash Hill—from which latter spot, the operations of the pack in the bottom may be comfortably and securely viewed—leaving the whips to flog as many hounds out of cover as they can, and Tom to entice as many more as are willing to follow the "twang, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sitting down on chairs we took any position we could on the floor mats that were placed at our disposal. At the first sound from the throat of a famous singer in a staccato "E-E-E-E," we all sprang to our feet thinking she was possibly going into some sort of a fit. With a twang on the strings of the flattened out little instrument, we subsided, concluding that the concert had begun. Then when the others joined in, the mingled sounds were not unlike the wail of cats on the back fence. The girls themselves looked pretty, in ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... with cases. There she had to attend lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors and students. Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. When she had put on flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just their sort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, her eyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemed altogether just the ticket. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... can't help it. I was born and bred a west-country man, thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon," the very soul of me adscriptus glebae. There's nothing like the old country-side for me, and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon tongue, as one gets it fresh from the veritable chaw in the White Horse Vale; and I say with "Gaarge Ridler," ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Mississippi met; shaggy lowered heads and flying tails and a thousand hoofs swept past him; and after them fleet naked men, who made themselves one with the horses they rode. The buffalo herds were flying before their hunters. He heard bowstrings twang, and saw great creatures stagger and fall headlong, and lie ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... body who thinks it worth while may contradict him. At Castri we drank of half a dozen streamlets, some not of the purest, before we decided to our satisfaction which was the true Castalian, and even that had a villanous twang, probably from the snow, though it did not throw us into an epic ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... alterations. I am sorry I cannot deliver the latter; but the state of our work in Chancery is such that the sittings cannot be well curtailed, even for an hour. I trust some member of the board, with a strong nautical twang, will be so good as to deliver it; and if the speaker could but adopt that hitch of the trouser which made Lord Clarence Paget so effective in the House of Commons, it would, I have no doubt, add much to the effect of a ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses, bounded on the nor'-west by the beer, stood pretty far to the right of a metallic object that's at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of our Missis's eye—you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... repetition, "Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it in his own ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fish-horns' twang. Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and another Princess Bressano) were very smart, and all the people in the chapel were dressed as for a ball. There was a priest at the table to tell the girls what to do. High Mass was performed, then a long sermon was delivered by a priest who spoke very fluently, but with a strange twang and in a very odd style, continually apostrophising the two girls by name, comparing them to olives and other fruit, to candelabri, and desiring them to keep themselves pure that 'they might go as virgins into the chamber of their beloved.' When the Sacrament was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... taste, flavor, gust, gusto, savor; gout, relish; sapor^, sapidity^; twang, smack, smatch^; aftertaste, tang. tasting; degustation, gustation. palate, tongue, tooth, stomach. V. taste, savor, smatch^, smack, flavor, twang; tickle the palate &c (savory) 394; smack the lips. Adj. sapid, saporific^; gustable^, gustatory; gustful^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was a splendid May day—to-day seems inclined to be soft, as we call it; but tant mieux. Yesterday had a twang of frost in it. I must get to work and finish Boaden's Life of Kemble, and Kelly's Reminiscences,[263] for ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... tune. Masha was all a-quiver, like birch-bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark-skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber. All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop-hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into song like a mad thing, drawing herself up and holding up her head, and Tchertop-hanov ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... of just men made perfect, I ceased to search further for it in that procession,—for though the men composing it might be just enough, they were evidently a long way from perfection. And when it is remembered that all these harps were twang-twanging away furiously, and that their strings were being swept over with no Bochsa fingers, few will wonder that I longed for cotton-wool, and blessed the memory of Paganini, who had only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... and profuse. The nose may be "stopped up" from the swollen and thickened condition of the lining mucous membrane, so as to necessitate respiration through the mouth, giving to the voice a disagreeable nasal twang. From the nature of the obstruction in this condition, it is useless for the sufferer to endeavor to clear the passage by blowing the nose; this only tends to render a bad matter worse, by increasing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... way from a corner saloon came the twang of a mandolin; and half a dozen Mexican labourers began singing a Spanish folk song. In a shop at his right a Jap girl sold soda water; in another open door an old Chinaman mended shoes; and from another came the click of billiard balls. But ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... a-laughing again; upon which we all fell a-laughing for half an hour. One of the Honest Fellows got behind me in the interim, and hit me a sound slap on the back; upon which he got the laugh out of my hands, and it was such a twang on my shoulders, that I confess he was much merrier than I. I was half angry; but resolved to keep up the good humour of the company; and after holloing as loud as I could possibly, I drank off a bumper of claret, that made me stare again. "Nay," says one of the Honest Fellows, "Mr. Isaac is ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... my dear Wilfrid. I am not quite so bad as I paint myself; say to yourself she has arthritis, she is sixty-five, and her new companion reads aloud with a twang; then you will ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sit i' Parliament Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang; If t' coontry goes to t' dogs, it's 'cause they've sent Ower mony city ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... metal friction, and a loud twang. The lever came free, a length of broken cable flopping into view. The tower fell over as the two on the other side ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... jammo ja," sang the loud, hoarse voices; then a tremendous scrape and twang, and the yelled-out burden, "Funiculi, funicula; funiculi, funicula; jammo, jammo, jammo, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... and instantly there was a low musical "twang," like that caused by the striking of a Jew's harp, or the quick vibration of a piece of watch-spring; a sharp click followed, and something was heard to fall on to the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... into the equatorial house, bringing Mr. Adams, the rival of Leverrier, [Footnote: See Chapter VII.]—another short man, but bright-looking, with dark hair and eyes, and again the thick voice, this time with a nasal twang. He is a fellow of Pembroke College, and master of arts. If Mr. Adams had become a fellow of his own college, St. John, he must have gone into holy orders, as it is called; this he was not willing to do; he accepted ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... hours Godfrey got back. Just before he reached the tree he heard the shrill "twang! squeak!" of the kit, and soon found himself face to face with Professor Tartlet, who, in the attitude of a vestal, was watching the sacred fire ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Then Rustem raised his bow, with eager eye Choosing a dart, and placed it on the string, A thong of elk-skin; to his ear he drew The feathered notch, and when the point had touched The other hand, the bended horn recoiled, And twang the arrow sped, piercing the breast Of Ushkabus, who fell a lifeless corse, As if he never had been born! Erect, And firm, the champion stood upon the plain, Towering like mount Alberz, immovable, The gaze and wonder ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Many people may think me foolish, especially after coming from London, where many nice maids looked at me (on account of my bulk and stature), and I might have been fitted up with a sweetheart, in spite of my west-country twang, and the smallness of my purse; if only I had said the word. But nay; I have contempt for a man whose heart is like a shirt-stud (such as I saw in London cards), fitted into one to-day, sitting bravely on the breast; plucked out on the morrow morn, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Harp so well, That he tickled Eurydice out of Hell, With a Twing come Twang, and a Twing come Twang; but, Some say Euridice was a Scold Therefore the Devil of her took hold, With a Twing ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the daring of the onslaught, or whether he was hampered by his orders, did not shoot: he stood wavering; and before he had time to come to himself, Dick bounded at his throat, and sent him sprawling backward on the turf. The arrow went one way and the bow another with a sounding twang. The disarmed forester grappled his assailant; but the dagger shone and descended twice. Then came a couple of groans, and then Dick rose to his feet again, and the man lay motionless, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... language, and no doubt somewhat modified by the influence of Scandinavian legends on the mind of the translator. In its present form it is not a poem but a prose work, and though the flow of the ballad and the twang of the minstrel's harp still often make themselves felt even through the dull Latin translation of Johan Peringskiold, there are many chapters of absolutely unredeemed prose, full of genealogical details and the marches of armies, as dry as any ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... favouring power attends, And from Olympus' lofty tops descends. Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;(50) Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound. Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread, And gloomy darkness roll'd about his head. The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow, And hissing fly the feather'd fates below. On mules and dogs the infection first began;(51) And last, the vengeful arrows fix'd in man. For nine long nights, through all the dusky air, The pyres, thick-flaming, shot a dismal glare. But ere the tenth revolving day was run, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... quality and of raiment at its utmost. Dawn was in the east, and the guests were departing. Singly or in pairs, glittering in finery, they came mincing down the steps, the ghost of the night's smirk fading to jadedness as they sought the dark recesses of their chairs. From within sounded the twang of fiddles still swinging manfully at it, and the windows were bright with the light of many candles. When the door was flung open to call the chair of Lady Mary Carlisle, there was an eager pressure of the ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... sale of cake like the Dutch wafelen, and among the stalls were conjurors, cheap-jacks, singers, and dice throwers; while every moment brought its fresh motor-car or carriage load, nearly all speaking English with a nasal twang. Meanwhile every one shouted, the naphtha flared, the drums beat, the horses champed. The street was full too, chiefly of peasants, but among them myriad resolute American virgins, in motor veils, whom nothing can ever surprise; a few American men, sceptical, as ever, of anything ever ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... very realistic transcription of a negro banjo performance, the banjo effect on the piano, in his case, I think, having been accomplished by the touch, whereas many others find themselves obliged to lay a sheet of music on the strings in order to impart to the vibrations the peculiar twang of ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... folks, I guess," was the reply, spoken with a Yankee drawl and twang. "I'm bringing news from Massachusetts." He slapped the great pocket of his plain coat, calling attention to its well-filled condition as with square papers. "Letters from the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... craft seemed to stop and stand, foaming, panting, quivering like a wild mare, while the green, gray-bearded, dew-drenched forest—island and mainland—amid a singing of innumerable birds, glided down upon her, opening the chute to gulp her in without a twang of her guys or a stain ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... she thought she saw the forms of her dead children and dead grandchildren peopling the barge, and waving their hands to her in solemn measure; then, as the rope tightened and came up, dropping diamonds, it seemed to vibrate into two parallel ropes and strike her, with a twang, though it was far off. When she looked again, there was no barge, no river, no daylight, and a man whom she had never before seen held a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... more "get along" without his spice of cant, than without his chew of tobacco and his nasal twang. What follows, however, took even us ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... along this strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... into a loud laugh, and then placing his hat a little more on one side, and assuming a nasal twang, he said, "Neow dew tell, if you're from Massachusetts. How dew you dew, little Yankee, and how are all the folks ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... strong to be mere trimmers and conformers, too well poised and thoughtful to fling off into intemperate protest and revolt. Laughter is genuine which has in it neither the shrill, hysterical note of mere excitement nor the hard, metallic twang of the cynic's sneer— which rings in the honest voice of gracious good humor, which is innocent and unsatirical. Speech is genuine which is without silliness, affectation, or pretense. That character is genuine which seems built by nature rather than by convention, which is stuff of independence ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... hung His bow, and ample quiver; at his back Rattled the fateful arrows as he mov'd; Like the night-cloud he pass'd, and from afar He bent against the ships, and sped the bolt; And fierce and deadly twang'd the silver bow. First on the mules and dogs, on man the last, Was pour'd the arrowy storm; and through the camp, Constant and num'rous, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... given in the best possible form the little drama of the talk in the garden. No shade of Mr. Temple Barholm's characteristics was lost. Palliser gave occasionally an English attempt at the reproduction of his nasal twang, but it was only a touch and not sufficiently persisted ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... knows exactly when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With a range of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... a tone of authority, and with that nasal twang which is so characteristic of the friars, "there is no reason why you should thus confuse matters or take offense where it is not intended. We should distinguish between what Father Damaso says as ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... charge, Walter, and do with him as you will. Guard well lest he betray us once again. Take him from my sight, for his breath poisons the room. And now, Nigel, if that worthy graybeard of thine would fain twang his harp or sing to us—but what in God's name ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thy apparent place, and know him and his real and his apparent place, and act in some noble conformity with all that. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel-pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, this twangling, jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou dost well ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one could hear it faintly twang: ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... hair-brushes and looking at myself in the glass began to use them. Suddenly a hush fell upon the noise outside, and I heard (the ports of my cabin were thrown open)—I heard a deep calm voice, not on board my ship, however, hailing resolutely in English, but with a strong foreign twang, "Go ahead!" ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... gentleman, called Scrogie, who took it into what he called his head, poor man, to be ashamed of the name he bore, though owned by many honest and respectable men, and chose to join it to your surname of Mowbray, as having a more chivalrous Norman sounding, and, in a word, a gentlemanlike twang with it?" ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... singer from time to time. I heard one fine bird singing in the stereotyped form. As he sang a flicker flicked in the distance. Whereupon the pine warbler sang again, the same trill but with a tittering twang about it that just jocosely imitated the flicker. I saw no other warbler or other bird near enough to be the beneficiary of this joke. He did it just for himself, and his motions as he flew over to the next tree seemed a visible chuckle that ended in a saucy ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... shriek of the violin, the lively twang of a guitar, the "boom! boom" of a drum marking time, the stentorian voice of the master of ceremonies, reached her plainly as she lay staring at the stars through the single window of her room. She liked the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I drop everything and go out to find something ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Days ensue This Sentence not severe; I hang your Husband, Child, 'tis true, But with him hang your Care. Twang dang dillo dee. ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... my friends who have visited Australia say they haven't got manners, and all have a cockney twang. When they open their mouths they ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... after partaking of coffee—the best I ever remember to have drunk—I sought my room, Tom insisting upon sleeping on the floor in the same chamber, and my last waking recollections were of the pungent fumes of tobacco, and the tinkle, tinkle, twang of a ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... this gidayu as to why the native waxes enthusiastic over the pose and vivid gestures of the geisha, who is the one to interpret these dramatic recitations. To her falls the "kotoba." The descriptive lines are recited by a chorus to the harsh and effective twang of the samisen. The samisen may not afford music, but it can give expression to the emotional in feeling. The gidayu recitation is a favourite art with the Go Inkyo[u] Sama. Symposia are held, before which the old gentleman recites, often enough without chorus; ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... things. To-day was of a hard, glittering frost; the sun, like a round, red lacquer tray, fell heavily, slowly through a faint pale sky that was not strong enough to sustain it. The air had the cold, sweet twang of peppermints in the throat. Polchester was a painted town upon a blue screen, the Cathedral towers purple against the sky; the air was scented with burning leaves, and cries from the town rose up clear and hard, lingering and falling like notes of music. Somewhere they were ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... popular, every one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see whether it is ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... Captain Snaggs, the hoarse words of command ringing through the ship fore and aft, and making even the ringbolts in the deck jingle—albeit they were uttered in a sort of drawling voice, that had a strong nasal twang, as if the skipper made as much use of his nose as of his mouth in speaking. This impression his thin and, now, tightly compressed lips tended to confirm; while his hard, angular features and long, pointed, sallow face, closely shaven, saving as to the projecting chin, which ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the boat and fairly tossed it skipping along the surface of the water. The lamp blew out as a window pane broke, and the woman was thrown to the floor in a confusion of chairs, table, and other loose objects. Happily, the stove was screwed fast to the floor. The anchor line broke with a loud twang, and the black confusion was lighted with flares and flashes ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... the front of the sofa. He had, at any rate, learnt that his strange guests were brother and sister. The man, he presumed, must be Signor Vicinironi—or count, or prince, as it might be. It was wonderful what good English he spoke. There was just a twang of foreign accent, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... when the chief employment of the evening ceased, Nigel appealed much to Myra, and endeavoured to draw out her mind and feelings. He lent her books, and books that favoured, indirectly at least, his own peculiar views—volumes of divine poesy that had none of the twang of psalmody, tales of tender and sometimes wild and brilliant fancy, but ever full of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... used to know him too well in my drinking days. He'll never disguise that look of that wicked eye of his from them as knows him well; and though he's got summat in his mouth to make him talk different, I could tell the twang of his ugly ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... travel in it. The meals were most elaborate and excellent; and I feel sure that any royal family happening to travel incognito on the ship would have been satisfied with them. But my neighbours at table were not. "We shall not dine down here again," said one of them, speaking with the twang I have described. "After to-night we shall have all our meals in the Ritz Restaurant." I looked at her reflectively, and next day after breakfast I stood on the bridge and looked at the other emigrants. The women were singing an ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... and then Long Tom said, "There is another has had his lesson, Sir Eustace. I heard a bow twang across there, and as there was no cry you may be sure that the shaft sped straight, and that the man had ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... peace. He was a shrewd, sensible old man, of a remarkably kind and genial disposition, but just about the homeliest looking individual I ever saw. And he had a most singular, squeaky sort of a voice, with a kind of a nasal twang to it, which if heard once could never be forgotten. He was an old friend of my father's, and had been his legal adviser (so far as his few and trifling necessities in that line required) from time immemorial. And ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Caroline, Madge, Amelia— These I reckon the essence of prose!— Cavalier Katherine, cold Cornelia, Portia's masterful Roman nose, Maud's magnificence, Totty's toes, Poll and Bet with their twang of the sea, Nell's impertinence, Pamela's woes! Anna's the name of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the teacher had to deal with, Polly Vaughn was the greatest. She was nearly perfect in all her studies, but a little mischievous and very dear to him. "Pretty;" that is one thing all said of her there in Faraway, and they said also with a bitter twang that she loved to lie abed and read novels. To Sidney Trove the word "pretty" was inadequate. As to lying abed and reading novels, he was free to say that he ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... door opening into the kitchen was opened; and all stood up in both rooms, while the minister, tall, large, one hand resting on the spread table, the other lifted up, said, in the deep voice that would have been loud had it not been so full and rich, but without the peculiar accent or twang that I believe is considered devout by some people, 'Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, let us do all to the glory ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... recognition of danger in the very charm of her attitude, or a twang of digestion, that caused a sudden dumbness to fall on James. He did not remember ever having been quite alone with Irene before. And, as he looked at her, an odd feeling crept over him, as though he had come across ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... much of a surprise for Horace, but he was spared the humiliation of owning it by the entrance of some half-dozen dusky musicians swathed in white and carrying various strangely fashioned instruments, with which they squatted down in a semi-circle by the opposite wall, and began to twang, and drub, and squall with the complacent cacophony of an Eastern orchestra. Clearly Fakrash was determined that nothing should be wanting to make the entertainment a ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... To twang the lyre from time to time, or knock a few mellow plunks out of the harp, was regarded with much favor by the Anglo-Saxons, who were much given to feasting and merriment. In those pioneer times the "small and early" had not yet been introduced, but ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... a lighter-coloured and newer material; also a very dirty coloured cotton shirt, open in front, and showing a large expanse of hairy chest. His voice was husky from much swearing at profligate cattle, and there was a curious nasal twang in his tone, a sort of affectation of Americanism that was a departure from the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... are trying to find was tall," said Merritt quickly, "and has a slight cast in his left eye. He talks with something of a twang, as though he might be ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... good claret, here, eh, Silverbridge?" He could never hit off his familiarity quite right. He had my-Lorded his young friend at first, and now brought out the name with a hesitating twang, which the young nobleman appreciated. But then the young nobleman was quite aware that the Major was a friend for club purposes, and sporting purposes, and not for ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... with the modification of banter, but rasped with the twang of suspicion as though the speaker expected to give offense—and did not care. Young Edwardes received it with a peal of laughter so infectious that the man in the chair ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... main supports, and threading the starlight as they came. Night slowly brought her beauty and her mystery upon the world. The filmy pattern opened. There was a tautness in the lines that made one feel they would twang with delicate music if the wind swept its hand more rapidly across them. And now and again all vibrated, each line making an ellipse between its fastened ends, then gradually settling back to its thin, almost invisible bed. Cables of thick, elastic ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... thought him by his face to be Scottish; nor could his accent undeceive me. For as there is a lingua franca of many tongues on the moles and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a free or common accent among English-speaking men who follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New England Port; from a cockney skipper, even a Scotsman sometimes learns to drop an h; a word of a dialect is picked up from another band in the forecastle; until often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask for the man's place of birth. So it was with Mr. Jones. I thought ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited—only a few minutes—until the whirring wheels of that "Defiance" coach were heard rolling towards us as certain as death. Twang goes the horn; up goes the trunk; down come the steps. Bah! I see the autumn evening: I hear the wheels now: I smart the cruel smart again: and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the billiard-tables in England, and the pockets were twice as large. The four balls, with which they played, were not much bigger than those generally used at bagatelle. The queus were uncovered at the top with leather; and the player had the satisfaction of hearing the sharp twang of his bare-headed queu as each time it struck the little ivory ball. No chalk was in the room. The Danes possess no word in their language expressive of that convenient mineral. In Denmark, credit is never given. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. The musical world might have been a literal expression. Civilisation has contracted it ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... received into the bosom of that Church of which his sovereign, many of his family, and the greater part of the civilized world, were members." And his lordship added a postscript, of which Esmond knew the inspiring genius very well, for it had the genuine twang of the seminary, and was quite unlike poor Frank's ordinary style of writing and thinking; in which he reminded Colonel Esmond that he too was, by birth, of that Church; and that his mother and sister should have his lordship's prayers to the saints (an inestimable benefit, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a distant nose seemed to twang, the door opened, and a tall lantern-jawed gentleman, wearing a goat-beard and an expression of dauntless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... twang in his mouth, and a cracking pain in his head, he stood one moment and sniffed in the salt sea breeze. The moon was unfortunately on the waters, and her cool, beneficent light reminded him, with disgust, of the hot, burning glare of the Baron's saloon. He thought of May Dacre, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... trouble in making the men go to sleep instead of spending the night in talking, singing, and gaming. In the peaceful camp of the Third Alabama, in that state, the scenes were similar. There was always "a steady hum of laughter and talk, dance, song, shout, and the twang of musical instruments." It was "a scene full of life and fun, of jostling, scuffling, and racing, of clown performances and cake-walks, of impromptu minstrelsy, speech-making, and preaching, of deviling, guying, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... there came faintly to his ears the twang of a dart gun; the shrill scream of its deadly vibrating missile; a violent ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... and in the festivities, he frequently held with his more confidential friends; I had loaded my astonishing memory with scraps of theology and of fun. I could sing a French drinking song, taught me by the sub-prior Frere Jacques, and intonate a "Gloria in Excelsis" with a true nasal twang. I had actually learned the Creed in English;[3] and could call all the brothers by their name. I had even learned the Savoyard's dance from my friend Frere Jacques, and sung "Gai Coco" at the same time, like Scaliger's parrot, from whose history Frere ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... said Elder Hawkins's deep bass voice, speaking with the strong nasal twang of the Puritans ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... from the village, which lay a half-mile back; no roll of wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. Burr Gordon kept on in utter silence until he came near the Hautville house. Then he began to hear music: the soaring sweetness of a soprano voice, the rich undertone of a bass, and the twang of stringed instruments. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... it has not exactly the genuine twang, but I hope no one will observe that but himself. I have more incidents in it than usual in works of the class—an elopement, a divorce, a duel, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... I've done my best to attract the notice of, while I was serving her in the shop—that is, when I've seen her get out of a carriage! There has been luck to many a chap like me, in the same line of speculation: look at Tom Tarnish—how did he get Miss Twang, the rich pianoforte-maker's daughter?—and now he's cut the shop, and lives at Hackney, like a regular gentleman! Ah! that was a stroke! But somehow it hasn't answered with me yet; the gals don't take! How I have set my eyes to be ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... and a twang the elastic wood flung upwards, and the bound man was shot away from its tip with the speed of a lightning flash. He sang through the air, spinning over and over with inconceivable rapidity, and the great crowd of rebels held their ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... skill. A certain hogshead was given to each of them to taste, and their opinion asked as to the condition, quality, goodness, or badness, of the wine. One tried it with the tip of his tongue; the other only put it to his nose. The first said the wine savored of iron; the second said it had rather a twang of goat's leather. The owner protested that the vessel was clean, and the wine neat, so that it could not taste either of iron or leather. Notwithstanding this, the two famous tasters stood positively to what they had said. Time went on; the wine was sold off, and, on cleaning ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable twang of a banjo; and a fat ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... ventured in hansoms, nor climbed to the topmost 'bus, Nor talked with a twang in the latest slang; They left these fashions to us. But, ah, she was sweet and pleasant, though possibly not well-read, The excellent wife who cheered your life, And vanished at ten ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... lute he twang-ed straightway, And thereon began most sweetly to play; And after that lessons were played two or three, He strained out this song ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... a peculiar patois, pass for pleasantry amongst those who are not over-nice about the quality of that article. The tone of voice is peculiar; it is pitched in the usual savage key, modified by the twang of the chapel and by the cantilene of the Yankee—originally Puritan Lancashire. Hence a 'new chum' may hear the women talking for several days before he finds out that they are talking English. And they speak two different dialects. The first, used with strangers, is 'blackman's ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... was notable about these women, from the youngest to the oldest, and with hardly an exception. In spite of their piety, they could twang off an oath with Sir Toby Belch in person. There was nothing so high or so low, in heaven or earth or in the human body, but a woman of this neighbourhood would whip out the name of it, fair and square, by way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a gage of ben bouse,[4] And stall thee by the salmon into clowes,[5] To maund on the pad, and strike all the cheats, [6] To mill from the Ruffmans, Commission, and slates, [7] Twang dells i' th' stiromel, and let the Quire Cuffin And Harman Beck strine and trine to the ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... type of smart country boy grown to manhood in the country. His tone, like his manner, was sharp and quick and businesslike, but he spoke with the Down-East twang and used the Cape phrases and metaphors. He was younger than I, but he looked older, and, of late, it had seemed to me that he was growing more ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... easily tired; and I'm tough, though I'm small," she retorted, with her pretty twang. "By the way, speaking of to-morrow night. I wonder whether this Mr. Falconer would come ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... to take a look at that knave," the bowman remarked, drawing a fresh arrow from his sheaf. "By the twang of string! I'll swear I drilled him clean ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... His eyes narrowed, his brows drew themselves down broodingly. The thing seemed to him to suggest dim, cloudy, vast possibilities; and he groped in his brain for some hint of the nature of these possibilities. Yet as far as he could see it was good for nothing but to make a faintly pleasant twang for the amusement of women and children. At last he could keep his hands off it no longer. "Give it to me," said he suddenly, laying hold of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and his apparent place, and act in some noble conformity with all that. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel-pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, this twangling, jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... a-quiver, like birch-bark in the fire; her delicate fingers flew playfully over the guitar, her dark-skinned throat slowly heaved under the two rows of amber. All at once she would cease singing, sink into exhaustion, and twang the guitar, as it were involuntarily, and Tchertop-hanov stood still, merely working his shoulders and turning round in one place, while Nedopyuskin nodded his head like a Chinese figure; then she would break out into song like a mad thing, drawing herself up and holding up her head, and Tchertop-hanov ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... well, they know my mind. I hate that same twang, twang, twang, fum, fum, fum, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, then scrue go the Pins, till a man's Teeth are on an edge; then snap, says a small Gut, and there we are at a loss again. I long to be in bed with a—hey tredodle, tredodle, tredodle,—with a hay tredool, tredodle, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... deserted by his troops. His wife saved the situation. She upbraided her husband as he was scaling the palisades to escape by night, fortified him with wine, girded his sword on herself, and caused her female attendants—of whom there were "several tens"—to twang bowstrings. Katana, taking heart of grace, advanced single handed; the Yemishi, thinking that his troops had rallied, gave way, and the Japanese soldiers, returning to their duty, killed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... hill-top, but of any wayfarer whatever in that land. It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady. The masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious county families it was not ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... nothing against him in her judgment that he was a greasy, fawning, pawing, creeping, black-browed rascal, who could not look her full in the face, and whose every word sounded like a lie. There was a twang in his voice which ought to have told her that he was utterly untrustworthy. There was an oily pretence at earnestness in his manner which ought to have told that he was not fit to associate with gentlemen. There was a foulness of demeanour about him which ought to have given to her, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Why, Don Benito is a very capricious commander. But he is not the first of the sort I have seen; though it's true he rather exceeds any other. But as a nation—continued he in his reveries—these Spaniards are all an odd set; the very word Spaniard has a curious, conspirator, Guy-Fawkish twang to it. And yet, I dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Ah ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... one was safe. The war party might at any moment find itself ambushed by the very ones it hoped to surprise. The snap of a twig; the dropping of a fruit from some tall tree; each sudden sound was interpreted as the twang of a hostile bow. Overwrought nerves peopled the jungle with spectral enemies; they found relief ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... answer, with the true cockney twang. "Trade ain't very brisk. There's too bloomin' many of us ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the House would not be the least useful!" That portion of the Major's speech which referred to the Duke's kind countenance had been learned by heart, and was thrown trippingly off the tongue with a kind of twang. The Major had perceived that he had not been at once interrupted when he began to open the budget of his political aspirations, and had allowed himself to indulge in pleasing auguries. "Nothing ask and nothing have," had been adopted ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... animal could turn to charge this new assailant an answering twang sounded from among the trees and a second arrow, sent with unerring precision, imbedded itself in the deer's body. As the stag fell, a lad of some sixteen years, clad in the dress of a forester, ran hastily forward and reached the animal at the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... as Cleopatra, to-night. Little Maurice is now singing to her. Did he take his guitar under his arm? It was here; for I saw a green bag near his hat, when we came in to-night.' Just then we heard the twang of a guitar under the window, and Redmond, in spite of himself, could not help a grimace.—Is it not a droll world?" said Laura, after a pause; "things come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... hair over her brow, while several tresses fell across her cheeks, flushed by the recent rowing. She knew that she should be home, for supper would be waiting and her father would be impatient. But she hesitated. Her thoughts were out there on the water where she loved to be. The twang of the wind as it swept through the trees along the shore, and the beat of the surf upon the gravelly beach were ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... should like to know by what warrant he undertakes to do that. He says I do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained in the same vinegar and persimmon school, [laughter;] I have not been doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twang which may characterize the gentleman, and which may be considered to be the evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally speak as a man, and as a good-natured man, I think. I hope I entertain no ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Southern boy, Charlie Maxfield by name, though known simply as "Chatz." He possessed all the traits to be found in boys who have been born and raised south of Mason and Dixon's line, was inclined to be touchy whenever he thought anyone doubted his honor, talked with a quaint little twang that was really delightfully musical, and taken in all had grown to be a prime favorite ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... survive, the voice has a peculiar nasal twang, as in phonation the air is expelled through the nose instead of through the mouth, and the articulation, especially of certain consonants, is very indistinct. Taste and smell are deficient. The constant exposure of the nasal and pharyngeal mucous membrane renders it liable ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... lead a lady to the piano. "Do excuse me, sir, I beg of you," she replies, "I have not touched an instrument of music half a dozen times since I was married—one, you know, has so much to do." Thus music as a science lags in the rear, while musical instruments in myriads twang away in the van: and thus the window cobweb having caught its flies for the season is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... up, his mouth turned down; His accent caught a nasal twang; He oiled his hair; there might be heard The grace of God in every word Which Peter said ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... accused of fraud. It is in a similar position to the good grape brandy which Victorians produce, and which drinkers of some imported stuff (described as one part cognac and three parts silent spirit) fail to recognise as real brandy. If coffee is not muddy and thick and does not possess a mawkish twang of liquorice, it is suspected. The delicate aromatic flavour, the fragrant odour, the genial and stimulant effects are now almost unknown, except in limited circles. North Queensland is capable of growing ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... he was a man!' "Well, we dream our dreams, sentimental little girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like kittens on life. I have opened mine, Larry,—very wide open. There isn't a sentimental chord in my being that you can twang any longer.... But we can be good-tempered and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, or go over to the country club and find some one to play billiards,—only let me finish what you are pleased to call my ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... crash and clatter of blocks and sheets as the wind caught it on the other quarter, making the long switch of a mast to spring like a bow, while the weather-shrouds slacked up for a moment in bights, and then came back taut with a twang you might have heard a mile! We could now see, as the space opened behind the rock, another frightful jagged ledge, on which the rollers were heaving in liquid masses high up a precipitous rock, and where the channel ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... drinking.] This wine is liquid gold. I quaff to your good health and ease of mind. This is good wine. It warms my chilly blood With all the dreamy heat of Spain. I hear The clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, [Sipping wine. The long-drawn heaving of the ocean wave, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... have they not been demolished, but tell their whole story still, in spite of wide gaps and breaks—ay, and with a far more soul-moving voice than when they could show to the enemy their crenated parapets without a flaw, when not a stone was wanting to any tower or gateway, and when the twang of the cross-bow might have been heard from every loophole. There are heaps of stones where the lizard runs, where the coiled snake basks untroubled, where the dwarfed fig-tree sprouts when the spring has come, and where the wild cucumber ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... mind unredeemed by virtue save in the shape of remorse—unvisited by weakness, until it came transmuted into the tiger of madness—whose very sermons were satires on God and man—whose very prayers had a twang of blasphemy—whose loves were more loathsome than his hatreds, and yet over whose blasted might and most miserable and withered heart men mourn, while they shudder, blend tears with anathemas, and agree that the awful mystery of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... ragged, tattered coat appearing under his livery; can't he go spruce and clean, like the rest of the servants? The fellow has a roguish leer with him which I don't like by any means; besides, he has such a twang in his discourse, and an ungraceful way of speaking through the nose, that one can hardly understand him; I wish the fellow be not tainted with some bad disease." The witnesses further made oath, that the said Timothy lay out a-nights, and went abroad often ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... BYRON, I tell yer; I stretched myself, orty-like, hout, And wished it could go on all night, wich my pardner did ditto, no doubt. Modern Venice in minichure, CHARLIE, ain't really so dusty, you bet; I wos quite a Bassanio in breeks, and I ain't lost the twang of it yet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... her cousin, in lieu of gossip, for entertainment. The stories were old to her, except as she found a new listener to them, and they had never had any vital interest for her. They had simply made her imagination twang pleasantly, and now they could hardly stir the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... scolds with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... man with a very nasal twang to bless the humble fare set before them, and a very long prayer followed before the benches were drawn closer to the board, and the large bowls of bread and milk, flavoured with strips of onion, were attacked by the hungry brethren with large, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... I would rather be a free man, not bound to be a greater fool than Dame Nature made me all the hours of the day. But when I got back to the Garter, what should I find but that poor old Martin had been stricken with the dead palsy while he was playing his rebeck, and would never twang a note more; and there was pretty Perronel weeping over him, and Nat Fire-eater pledging his word to give the old man bed, board, and all that he could need, if so be that Perronel should be trained to be one of his glee-maidens, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... effect of the face, however, was singularly pleasing to the discerning critic. An out of door, reckless, humorous, honest personality was stamped on every line of it and every movement of the man. When he spoke his voice had a marked tinge of the twang of the wild west that sounded a little oddly on the lips of a country gentleman in these northern parts. He wore an open flannel collar, a shooting coat, well cut riding breeches and immaculate leather leggings, finished off ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... every reluctant step, as the struggling feet were thrust forward, to see the infernal machine, on which I was to be elevated, glaring more and more hideously in the blaze of a noonday sun—and the hangman's rapscallions watching for their prey —and the horrible psalm-singing—the cursed twang still rings in my ears—and the screeching hungry ravens, a whole flight of them, who were hovering over the half-rotten carcass of my predecessor. To see all this—ay, more, to have a foretaste of the blessedness which was in store for me! Brother, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... are right, colonel; we have had sufficient. I shall be getting a democratic orator's twang, or a crazy parson's, if I go on much further. He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:—"Jenny sends you her compliments, respects, and best wishes, and hopes she may see you before she goes to her friend Clara Sherwin and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be shot!" he burst out suddenly, with a plaintive twang. Then he grinned. The boy still in him had prompted the absurdity. And the rough warrior had laughed at it. Boy and warrior faced each other, either surprised that the other existed. The boy flushed resentfully at the veteran's contemptuous grunt. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... With this strand he made a joint so that the two ends of the despatcher's wire could be brought in easy contact. Then by knocking the two ends together he sent the warning. His cutting of the wire had made a peculiar loud twang and one of the outlaws heard it. Becoming suspicious, he and his partner started up the track to investigate. They came upon Dick, kneeling on one knee, engrossed in his work, and without one word of warning shot him in the back. They left him for dead, but thank God he did ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... at all surprising when he suddenly stepped on a stick that broke with a sharp twang. And, before he could dodge behind a tree, the fellow beyond ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... of blossoms, dim and gray, Lost on the wind? Ah, no, Hark, from yon clump of English may, A cherub's mocking crow, A sudden twang, a sweet, swift throe, As Daisy trips by Dan, And careless Cupid drops his bow ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... side of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the brushwood opposite, and an occasional red coat gleaming out through the hedge above. Just then the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her speaking eyebrows and replied, quite loud now, for the choir leader had stood up already with his tuning-fork in hand, and one could hear it faintly twang: ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... me of the travellers whom he had escorted and who, he believed, were all princes or princesses; but if I asked him about his relations or his companions he remained silent, and assumed an air of indifference and boredom. When cadging for a promise of substantial baksheesh, the nasal twang of his voice assumed caressing inflexions. He thought out subtle stratagems and expended whole treasuries of prayers in order to obtain a cigarette. Noticing that I liked to see the donkey-boys treat their beasts with kindness, he used, in my presence, to kiss Rameses ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble;—at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved!—It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 16 Chaplain [Mr. Twang], and leaning. 4to 1696 'her Chaplain, and leaning'. I have inserted Twang's name and given in l. 19 speech-prefix 'Twang' which all former editions mark 'Chap.', altering, however, to 'Twang' later in this ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... flavor, gust, gusto, savor; gout, relish; sapor^, sapidity^; twang, smack, smatch^; aftertaste, tang. tasting; degustation, gustation. palate, tongue, tooth, stomach. V. taste, savor, smatch^, smack, flavor, twang; tickle the palate &c (savory) 394; smack the lips. Adj. sapid, saporific^; gustable^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the head of the stairway looked straight ahead where a man with a strong bow held himself close in the shadow of a great rock. When the twang of the bow string sounded, she loosened not her hand from that of Ka-yemo as he fell, but with her other hand she pulled aside the robe from her breast—also the necklace of the white metal, that not anything turn aside the point of the arrow which ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... kiss and the gift of a silver butter-knife. The good widow did not know which to be most charmed with. The butter-knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her initials, M.B.P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in luxuriant flourishes; but then the kiss had such a fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation! The late Perry's kisses, from first to last, had wanted point. They were, as the Spanish proverb would put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want of a moustache. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the innocent fugitive from the world requires. The great amiable cats that purr in the back room. The old pictures and playbills on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner by the window. Or the table just under that really lovely little portrait of Robert Burns—would there be any more propitious ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... so that my breast could hardly contain it. I reached the camp and sold my pears like lightning, for there is no want of money there, nor of the will to spend it. What a hubbub, Maria! It seemed like the gayest kind of a fair; nothing was to be heard but the twang of guitars, singing, and hurrahs for the queen. I need only tell you that the commander-in-chief has had to forbid so much singing and guitar playing at night, because it served as a guide to the accursed Moors. I was just inquiring for ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... might be, he could make any tune sound pretty when he sang it. He had the native gift of ease, pathos, rhythm, humor, and charm—and a delightful sympathetic twang in his voice. His mother must have sung something like that; and all Paris went mad about her. No technical teaching in the world can ever match a genuine inheritance; and that's ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... young, but already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets were lit with kerosene. Here and there a slush lamp ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... boasts of being Art's true henchman! That cosmopolitan claim she should be mute on. "Art for Art's sake!" shouts the thrasonic Frenchman, "Save when that Art is Teuton," Though Art's not marred for him by subtle sin A German twang poisons e'en Lohengrin. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... in a tone of authority, and with that nasal twang which is so characteristic of the friars, "there is no reason why you should thus confuse matters or take offense where it is not intended. We should distinguish between what Father Damaso says as a man, and what he ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... take off their masks even with their accomplices, "yes, madame, we have excellent news from our house at St. Herem. M. Hardy, the infidel, the freethinker, has at length entered the pale of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." Rodin pronounced these last word with a nasal twang, and the devout lady ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some one aimed—Ah, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... tell old Surefoot about his daughter's love," the letter goes on, "you should fall into a positive imitation of his manner: crest, motionless, and hands in front, and deliver your preambles with a nasal twang. But at the second invitation to speak out, you should cast this to the winds, and go into the other extreme of bluntness and rapidity. [Quite right!] When you meet him after the exposure, you should speak as you are coming to him and stop him in ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... approaches the nest, looking like angry coals of brilliant fire, returning several times to the attack with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious, reverberating, sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, and curiously like the real bleat of some small quadruped. At other times the males may be seen darting high up in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... sugar —how do I get on? This is No. 15," said Appleboy, counting some white lines on the table by him; and taking up a piece of chalk, he marked one more line on his tally. "I don't think this is so good a tub as the last, Tomkins, there's a twang about it—a want of juniper—however, I hope we shall have better luck this time. Of course, you ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... vacation of some apartment which a condescending landlord has promised them after much negotiation for the week after next. The morning promenade is a wonderful sight; such a host of bilious faces, such an endless variety of eccentric costumes, such a Babel of tongues, among which the shrill twang of our fair American cousins is peculiarly prominent, could be found in no other place in the civilized world. A moralist would assuredly find here abundant food for reflection on the wonderful powers of self-deception possessed by mankind. We all get up at most inconvenient hours, swallow a certain ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth—but, no, doctor; there is nothing of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... camp, but Fox-eye would not turn back. He drew his arrows from the quiver, and prepared to fight. But, even as he placed an arrow, a Snake had crawled up by his side, unseen. In the still air, the Piegan heard the sharp twang of a bow string, but, before he could turn his head, the long, fine-pointed arrow pierced him through and through. The bow and arrows dropped from his hands, he swayed, and then fell forward on the grass, ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... his dinner the sun had set, and night had dropped down softly over the Bay. Capri had disappeared. The long serpent of lights had uncoiled itself along the sea. Down below, very far down, there was the twang and the thin, acute whine of guitars and mandolines, the throbbing cry of Southern voices. The stars were out in a deep sky of bloomy purple. There was no chill in the air, but a voluptuous, brooding warmth, that shed over the city and the waters a luxurious benediction, giving absolution, surely, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... of this is why, for years afterwards, lanky, easy-going Bushmen, riding lazily past Dave's camp, would cry, in a lazy drawl and with just a hint of the nasal twang— ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... particularly interested in Putnam—a short, rugged, fat, white-haired farmer from Connecticut of bluff manners and nasal twang and of great animation for one of his years—he was then fifty-seven. He was often seen flying about the camp on a horse. The young man had read of the heroic exploits of this veteran ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"—giving a sort, of sentimental twang to the two words,—"and sends it round among you!" And forthwith the loving-cup—several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables—came slowly down with all ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... family were prisoners. One thing that surprised and shocked us was to hear the little kids swearing; they would use the most frightful oaths, and the funny part of it was that they gave them the pure cockney twang; I suppose they had heard and were imitating the Imperial troops. Well, after travelling all day we finally arrived in C—— and we were marched off to our first billets. I belonged to "C" Company and we were quartered ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... gold-digger at a fortunate rush, he does not indulge in Allsopp or Guinness. He hoarsely orders a 'pot' of some local brewer's manufacture—a man who knows exactly what he likes, and arranges to meet the hardy digestion of the mower and the reaper. He prefers a rather dark beer with a certain twang faintly suggestive of liquorice and tobacco, with a sense of 'body,' a thickness in it, and which is no sooner swallowed than a clammy palate demands a second gulp to wash away the relics of the first. Ugh! The second requires a ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... seaman, with more than ever of the nasal twang; "it iss a coot many miles to where the poat comes in—so the poy Tonal' wass ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... caught a twang of it from your friend Captain Con; only you don't rattle the eighteenth letter of the alphabet in the middle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... white oaks. A half dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... fingers, barely resting on the harp-strings, suddenly contracted in a nervous tremor; a low twang echoed the ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... possessed all the traits to be found in boys who have been born and raised south of Mason and Dixon's line, was inclined to be touchy whenever he thought anyone doubted his honor, talked with a quaint little twang that was really delightfully musical, and taken in all had grown to be a prime favorite ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Zoe, 'pears like you's out o' sorts. Haan' I got nof'n berrer to do dan be tellin' tales ob old women dat's a-waitin' for de Lord's salvation?" said Flor, with a twang of great gravity,—and proceeded thereat to make her exit in a series of lively somersaults through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... him yet? A very queer fish, with a twang you could cut with a knife. Don't think you'll like him," said Lord Harfield, who was jealous of every man who so much as bowed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... he had no connection with all that went on about him, he heard the twang of bursting shrapnel down the road. He had straightened himself wearily and taken a step forward, when he found himself sinking into the puddle. A feeling of relief came over him. His legs sunk in the puddle; he lay without moving against the muddy bank. The frogs had gone, but from somewhere ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Vrain became excited she usually spoke plain English, without the U. S. A. accent, but on growing calmer, and, as it were, recollecting herself, she adopted the Yankee twang and their curious style of expression and ejaculation. This led him to suspect that the fair Lydia was not a born daughter of the Great Republic, perhaps not even a naturalised citizeness, but ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... marvelled how his Honour could waste his time and mine by putting what he thought were searching questions to the accused relating to his past. Francis Smethurst, who had quite shaken off his somnolence, spoke with a curious nasal twang, and with an almost imperceptible soupcon of foreign accent, He calmly denied Kershaw's version of his past; declared that he had never been called Barker, and had certainly never been mixed up in any murder case ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... this time and could only look at his comrades in helpless wonder. Then the twang of a banjo sounded through the rooms and to the thrumming of the strings came a voice in ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... ourselves encompassed about as by some great conspiracy. We walked curiously up the little street until we reached the last house in the village, and came out beyond the screen of its wall. At the same instant something sang past my ear like the twang of a Jew's harp, my foot caught in a coil of wire, and I fell headlong. My companion, lagging behind and not yet clear of the friendly wall, stopped dead and cried to me not to stand up. I crawled back among the rubbish to the cover of the house. We took counsel together. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... upstairs, opened the window of the bathroom quietly, and slipped on to the leads. There were a couple of insulators here, against the wire of one of which Henson tapped his knuckles gently. The wire gave back an answering twang. The other jangled ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... hiave. The language however which is spoken is the most classical and pure Italian and except the above mentioned aspiration it is delightful to the ear; peculiarly so to those who come from the north of Italy, and have only hitherto heard the unpleasing nasal twang of the Milanese and the exceeding uncouth barbarous dialect of Bologna. Another striking peculiarity is the smart appearance of the Tuscan peasantry. They are a remarkably handsome race of men; the females unite with their natural beauty a grace and elegance that one is quite astonished ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... was not at all surprising when he suddenly stepped on a stick that broke with a sharp twang. And, before he could dodge behind a tree, the fellow ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... voice has a peculiar nasal twang, as in phonation the air is expelled through the nose instead of through the mouth, and the articulation, especially of certain consonants, is very indistinct. Taste and smell are deficient. The constant exposure of the nasal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... vowed her gold they wanted not, Their faith would never falter, They longed to tie this single Knott In the Hymeneal halter; So daily at the door they rang, Cards for the belle delivering, Or in the choir at her they sang, Achieving such a rapturous twang ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wheels, or shout, or peal of bell. Burr Gordon kept on in utter silence until he came near the Hautville house. Then he began to hear music: the soaring sweetness of a soprano voice, the rich undertone of a bass, and the twang of stringed instruments. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... again that I was very well; and he looked at me thoughtfully, put one end of a bit of matting between his teeth, and drew it out tightly with his left hand. Then he began to twang it thoughtfully, and made it give out a dull ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a distant nose seemed to twang, the door opened, and a tall lantern-jawed gentleman, wearing a goat-beard and an expression of dauntless cunning, stepped into ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... following succinct and business-like memorandum of a ghost-seer. "Anno 1670. Not far from Cirencester was an apparition. Being demanded whether a good spirit or a bad, returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume, and most melodious twang. M.W. Lilly believes it was a ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... significant "Ahems," and who took his place on guard in the condemned cell. But Trompe-la-Mort's sworn foe was released too late to see the great lady, who drove off in her dashing turn-out, and whose voice, though disguised, fell on his ear with a vicious twang. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... travelling in America, don't condescend to the "guessing" and other loose styles of expression, and don't affect the nasal twang. Americans, with all their boast of one man being as good as another, are greatly pleased to entertain or travel with Englishmen having a title, and they pay a marked respect to Britishers who speak in a classical style, and who, ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... used to sing 'em. There was one song with a chorus, and it said something like this." The Infant dropped into the true barrack-room twang: ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... this prelude evidently was to awaken the lady in whose honour it was perpetrated; but Militona's window continued closed and dark; and at last the man, compelled to content himself with an invisible auditory,—in spite of the Spanish proverb, which says, no woman sleeps so soundly that the twang of a guitar will not bring her to the window,—began to sing in a strong Andalusian accent. The serenade consisted of a dozen verses, in which the singer celebrated the charms of a cruel mistress, vowed inextinguishable love, and denounced fearful vengeance upon all rivals. The menaces, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... be taken by surprise, if such a paradox (it is nothing worse) maybe allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family. On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike,—so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ascribed without hesitation to the goldfinch or the pine finch, had I ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... planks; and then, what with screaming, yelling, like the Indian war-whoop, cheering, and the thundering noise of the planks, grating along the deck, together with the ringing and clattering of their metallic vessels, they made altogether such a hideous "rattle-come-twang," that it was enough to raise all Chatham. All this was transacted in utter darkness. The officers doubtless saw, that bloodshed and promiscuous death would be the consequence of firing among the rioters, and prudently left it to subside ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... colonel; we have had sufficient. I shall be getting a democratic orator's twang, or a crazy parson's, if I go on much further. He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:—"Jenny sends you her compliments, respects, and best wishes, and hopes she may see you before she goes to her friend Clara Sherwin ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but already turbulent. The hot wind had passed, and the air was sweet and free from dust. As he moved along the street, Done's ear caught the squeak and the twang of fiddle and banjo coming through the confusion of voices. Step-dancing and singing were the most popular delights. The ability to sing a comic song badly was passport enough in digger society. The streets ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... colour. As they came nearer I saw that the cloth of their garments was somewhat coarse, but stout and serviceable. I knew, somehow, that they had been shooting at the butts, and, indeed, I could still hear a noise of men thereabout, and even now and again when the wind set from that quarter the twang of the bowstring and the plump of the ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... Sheikh, obstinate as a Pathan, royal as a Turk, buzzing like a Bahna.' This refers to the noise of the cotton-cleaning bow, the twang of which as it is struck by the club is like a quail flying; and at the same time to the Bahna's loquacity. Another story is that a Bahna was once going through the forest with his cotton-cleaning bow and club ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... The twang of a banjo trailed in above the voices, with a sound of scuffling. Loud laughter broke the thread of the song leaving "Mary Ann!" to soar out alone. Then the chorus ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... stand on the Common, and proclaim aloud, 'Here's a nice young missionary, in want of a job! Charity for sale cheap! Who'll buy? who'll buy?'" said Maggie, with a resigned expression, and a sanctimonious twang to ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Lords, Soldiers will not flye indeede; I have seene the day, I could have crackt a tree of yew, made my bowstring whisper in mine eare in[249] the twang, tost my pike lustilye. Tis since the siedge of Parthia: bith-'mas a great while; I was lustie then at the service was done there, yet I love the discourse. Come my Lord, I chuse your companye, leave Tulley to the Ladies; he can tell them tales of Venus and Adonis ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... lips, as her husband had anticipated. It is probable that the most tragic event conceivable in her existence could not have affected her more powerfully than the twang of the musical box and the twisting and turning of the insolent little wooden head. She came round to the front of the counter with gleaming eyes ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... nation we do not talk so much too fast, as too loud. Tens of thousands twang and slur and shout and burr! Many of us drawl and many others of us race tongues and breath at full speed, but, as already said, the speed of our speech does not matter so much. Pitch of voice matters very much and so does pronunciation—enunciation ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... when chaps that sit i' Parliament Weant tak advice frae lads that talk farm-twang; If t' coontry goes to t' dogs, it's 'cause they've sent Ower mony city ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... bread, fried eggs, and a skein of wine. We fell to; but, alack! what from the smut of the chimney and the dust of the pan, the eggs were done in the chiaro scuro style; the wine had so villanous a twang, that a few sips of it contented me; and the bread, black as it was, was the only thing palatable. I got the landlady persuaded to boil me an egg; and though the Italian peasants only dip their eggs in hot water, and serve them up raw, it was preferable ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... all he said. "You keep out of sight, because of your twang. I'll teach them a little good English—better than ever came out of Cornwall. The best of all English is not ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... stone, I shall twang my chords with grace, Till thy window-pane hath shone With thy lamplight and ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... tall man with a very nasal twang to bless the humble fare set before them, and a very long prayer followed before the benches were drawn closer to the board, and the large bowls of bread and milk, flavoured with strips of onion, were attacked by the hungry brethren with ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... melancholy, grizzled man of the name of Tari (Charlie) Coffin. He was a native of Oahu, in the Sandwich Islands; and had gone to sea in his youth in the American whalers; a circumstance to which he owed his name, his English, his down-east twang, and the misfortune of his innocent life. For one captain, sailing out of New Bedford, carried him to Nuka-hiva and marooned him there among the cannibals. The motive for this act was inconceivably small; poor Tari's wages, which were thus ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... countenance the newcomer came to a sudden halt in his impetuous advance, exclaiming in a voice with a peculiar and characteristic nasal twang: ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... softened with the modification of banter, but rasped with the twang of suspicion as though the speaker expected to give offense—and did not care. Young Edwardes received it with a peal of laughter so infectious that the man in the chair ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... received very well. The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a twang, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,—an offence which would not be endured for a moment by English ears. I will take ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the right, my venerable cropshin, they will indeed; the tongue of the oracle never twang'd truer. Your courtier cannot kiss his mistress's slippers in quiet for them; nor your white innocent gallant pawn his revelling suit to make his punk a supper. An honest decayed commander cannot skelder, cheat, nor be seen in a bawdy-house, but he shall be straight ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... fever," said Demetrius, "has just left me." "O yes," replied the father, "I met it going out at the door." Demetrius's great actions made Antigonus treat him thus easily. The Scythians in their drinking-bouts twang their bows, to keep their courage awake amidst the dreams of indulgence; but he would resign his whole being, now, to pleasure, and now to action; and though he never let thoughts of the one intrude upon the pursuit of the other, yet, when the time came for preparing for war, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the face, however, was singularly pleasing to the discerning critic. An out of door, reckless, humorous, honest personality was stamped on every line of it and every movement of the man. When he spoke his voice had a marked tinge of the twang of the wild west that sounded a little oddly on the lips of a country gentleman in these northern parts. He wore an open flannel collar, a shooting coat, well cut riding breeches and immaculate leather leggings, finished off by ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... contains 160 grammes of a very inelegantly made emulsion, smelling of very common rose-water, with an unpleasant twang about it, and giving a strongly alkaline reaction. It consists of soap, glycerin, and cotton seed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... "Ah," he said—"got in again, I see! The shutters must be looked to." "I daresay," I remarked, looking disconsolately around me, "you don't find it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "Very easy!" said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought, with also a good deal of Highland hauteur—as was of course quite natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish remarks—"No, nor easy at all, or it would not be locked up in this way: but ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... pride; that's what that is. I prided myself on hangin' to the Bayport twang through thick and thin. Among all the Spanish 'Carambas' and 'Madre de Dioses' it did me good to come out with a good old Yankee 'darn' once in a while. Kept me feelin' like a white man. Oh, I'm a Whittaker! I know it. And I've ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... recollect driving down (with a certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own mother to the end of the avenue, where we waited—only a few minutes—until the whirring wheels of that "Defiance" coach were heard rolling towards us as certain as death. Twang goes the horn; up goes the trunk; down come the steps. Bah! I see the autumn evening: I hear the wheels now: I smart the cruel smart again: and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of people ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... weavers, and shoemakers, not the shadow of a gentleman among them!—a man who ate brose, went with bare knees, worked like any hind, and did not dare offend his wretched relations by calling his paltry farm his own!—for the sake of such a fellow, with a highland twang that disgusted his fastidious ear, his own daughter made a mock of his authority, treated him as a nobody! In his own house she had risen against him, and betrayed him to the insults of his enemy! His conscious importance, partly from ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... insolence. At the best they utter impertinences which, issuing from a big and barbarous mouth in a peculiar patois, pass for pleasantry amongst those who are not over-nice about the quality of that article. The tone of voice is peculiar; it is pitched in the usual savage key, modified by the twang of the chapel and by the cantilene of the Yankee—originally Puritan Lancashire. Hence a 'new chum' may hear the women talking for several days before he finds out that they are talking English. And they speak two different ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... on which I was to be elevated, glaring more and more hideously in the blaze of a noonday sun—and the hangman's rapscallions watching for their prey —and the horrible psalm-singing—the cursed twang still rings in my ears—and the screeching hungry ravens, a whole flight of them, who were hovering over the half-rotten carcass of my predecessor. To see all this—ay, more, to have a foretaste of the blessedness which was in store for me! Brother, brother! And ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... asked as to the condition, quality, goodness, or badness, of the wine. One tried it with the tip of his tongue; the other only put it to his nose. The first said the wine savored of iron; the second said it had rather a twang of goat's leather. The owner protested that the vessel was clean, and the wine neat, so that it could not taste either of iron or leather. Notwithstanding this, the two famous tasters stood positively to what they had said. Time went on; the wine ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Happily their memories are short. They seem prone to enjoy the present, forgetful of the past and regardless of the future—happily, I say, for those humpy and hairy creatures are not unacquainted with man's devices—the sudden surprise, the twang of the red-man's bow and the crack of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... unbound, And cast his purple garment on the ground. A trench he open'd: in a line he placed. The level axes, and the points made fast (His perfect skill the wondering gazers eyed, The game as yet unseen, as yet untried). Then, with a manly pace, he took his stand: And grasp'd the bow, and twang'd it in his hand. Three times, with beating heart, he made essay: Three times, unequal to the task, gave way; A modest boldness on his cheek appear'd: And thrice he hoped, and thrice again he fear'd. The fourth had drawn it. The great sire with joy Beheld, but with a sign forbade the boy. His ardour ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... age, with a winy color upon her lips, the faintest perceptible shadow of fading upon the roses of her cheeks, a little anxious wrinkle between her earnest gray eyes, a slight nasal twang in her New England voice, and a fresh flounce upon her old black alpaca dress—the first morning of her experience in an atelier des dames in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little room on Montmartre, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... lifted an inch or two, a slight gesture to indicate the ceiling again. He brought his other hand up, and using both, cocked the Colt, that click carrying with almost a shot's sharp twang through ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... cheek and lips, Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... practice, in the main, was confined to the courts of justices of the peace. He was a shrewd, sensible old man, of a remarkably kind and genial disposition, but just about the homeliest looking individual I ever saw. And he had a most singular, squeaky sort of a voice, with a kind of a nasal twang to it, which if heard once could never be forgotten. He was an old friend of my father's, and had been his legal adviser (so far as his few and trifling necessities in that line required) from time immemorial. And for a year or so prior to the outbreak ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter as quick as the Frenchman paid it; but what then? By the twang of string! it would be a bad thing if money was not made to be spent; and how better than on ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent twang of chlorine tainted the air. So much we know from what was heard at the time and from what was subsequently ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... the Coast the empirical rule is that sheep carry their tails down, and goats carry their tails up; fortunately you need not worry much anyway, for they both "taste rather like the nothing that the world was made of," as Frau Buchholtz says, and own in addition a fibrous texture, and a certain twang. Small cinnamon-coloured cattle are to be got here, but horses there are practically none. Now and again some one who does not see why a horse should not live here as well as at Accra or Lagos imports one, but ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... take a walk, the two of you. God knows I'm a good Catholic, but there's some things—get out, the two of you! Let your nerves ease up a bit. Sure we all pound and twang like a wet tent in ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... attends, And from Olympus' lofty tops descends. Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound;(50) Fierce as he moved, his silver shafts resound. Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread, And gloomy darkness roll'd about his head. The fleet in view, he twang'd his deadly bow, And hissing fly the feather'd fates below. On mules and dogs the infection first began;(51) And last, the vengeful arrows fix'd in man. For nine long nights, through all the dusky air, The pyres, thick-flaming, shot a dismal glare. But ere the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... disposed of those affections, no longer in Maraquita's power to give, for they had already been transferred with all the other treasures of a young and loving heart, to the keeping of a dark-eyed youth of Manilla. He had been rudely repulsed by her parents, but often would the cautious twang of his guitar bring her to a midnight interview. These clandestine meetings were interrupted. Her dark-eyed lover no longer came, and she was told she would never see him more. A marriage with the Don was urged, she resisted—the alternative was a convent! In pity she implored a ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... when all can ride abreast; the very muteness of the flying pack; the onslaught of a light brigade, or of "a flying squadron under the Admiral of the Red" sailing away over a sea of grass towards a region almost untrodden by man; the long sweeping stride of a well-bred horse; the unceasing twang of the horn to encourage flagging hounds beaten off by the pace and those which got left behind at the start; lastly, the glorious uncertainty! Can it last? Where will it all end? Shall we run ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... Hark, that quick fierce cry That rends the utter silence! 'tis the whoop Of battle, and a throng of savage men With naked arms and faces stained like blood, Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream; Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short, As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors And conquered vanish, and the dead remain Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods Are still again, the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... glimpse of quality and of raiment at its utmost. Dawn was in the east, and the guests were departing. Singly or in pairs, glittering in finery, they came mincing down the steps, the ghost of the night's smirk fading to jadedness as they sought the dark recesses of their chairs. From within sounded the twang of fiddles still swinging manfully at it, and the windows were bright with the light of many candles. When the door was flung open to call the chair of Lady Mary Carlisle, there was an eager pressure of the ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... show the proper amount of thrilling interest. They said the fountain was queer. The water never poisoned anybody; but sometimes the marble strings of the marble harp in the marble hand or the marble daughter would be heard to twang in the night. Weird music came from the fountain at ghostly hours. Of course, the little harp the statue holds is in the form of a lyre; and what the people were who told these stories about the ghostly twanging of the instrument—you ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... burst into a loud laugh, and then placing his hat a little more on one side, and assuming a nasal twang, he said, "Neow dew tell, if you're from Massachusetts. How dew you dew, little Yankee, and how are all ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... at all." There was a nasal tone in his voice always—a twang that grated on sensitive ears. He turned on Gilbert. "How about dinner?" he asked, almost as though the young fellow ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... was there betimes, and the morn was windy as on the day before, but the clouds higher and of better promise for the day. Face-of-god walked to and fro on the Maiden Ward, and as he turned toward Burgstead for the tenth time, he heard, as he deemed, a bow-string twang afar off, and even therewith came a shaft flying heavily like a winged bird, which smote a great standing stone on the other side of the way, where of old some chieftain had been buried, and fell to earth at its foot. He went up to it and handled it, and saw that there was a piece of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... kitchen was opened; and all stood up in both rooms, while the minister, tall, large, one hand resting on the spread table, the other lifted up, said, in the deep voice that would have been loud had it not been so full and rich, but without the peculiar accent or twang that I believe is considered devout by some people, 'Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, let us do all to the ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... single occupation. Then he picked from the ground a long, slender pencil of white wood, a sliver, perhaps, from the making of a spear shaft, and began strumming with it upon the taut sinew string. This made a twang of a new sort, and again the boy and girl were interested temporarily. But, at last, even this variation of amusement with the new toy became monotonous, and Bark ceased strumming and began a series of boyish experiments with ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... arren't famous," he said. His voice had the faint, infinitely sweet twang of certain Irishry; a thing as delicate and intangible as the scent of lime flowers. "Our noble friend"—he indicated Carlos with a little flutter of one white hand—"has told me what make of a dare-devil gallant ye are; breaking the skulls of half the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... his somewhat scornful mouth to his deep-set, observant eyes, and clearly denoted the absence of the stolid Saxon strain in his blood. His accent too, though not that of an educated man, was quite free from the hateful Cockney twang. His dress was spare as his figure, but though well worn there was something spruce and trim about his whole demeanour which indicated that he was not totally indifferent to the impression he created on others. He looked round the "office," ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight papistical twang), after bewailing with ingenious particularity the sins and back-slidings of himself and people, and the ingratitude of the whole land, and recounting the innumerable blessings that had crowned their basket and their store, entreated ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Americans because we did not speak with the dreadful American accent, I hazarded my belief that this dreadfulness was personal rather than national. But he would not have it. Boston people, yes; they spoke very well, and he allowed other exceptions to the general rule of our nasal twang, which his wife summoned English enough to say was very ugly. They had suffered from it too universally in the Americans they had met during the summer in Germany to believe it was merely personal; and I suppose one may own to strictly American ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... back once more to the telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room to another located in a remote part of the building. One day Watson accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near this telegraph wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the twang. A few seconds later Watson was startled when an excited and somewhat disheveled figure burst into his room. "What was that?" shouted Bell. What had happened was clearly manifest; a sound had been sent distinctly over an electric wire. Bell's harmonic telegraph immediately went into the discard, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... dared not picture her as growing up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this morning, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... see the hot towns paddling in the surf of Spanish waters, And prowl beneath dim balconies and twang discreet guitars, And sigh our adoration to Don Juan's lovely daughters Till they lifted their mantillas and their dark eyes shone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at his post. "What is it, Richarn?" I asked. "They are shooting arrows into the camp, aiming at the fire, in hopes of hitting you who are sleeping there," said Richarn. "I watched one fellow," he continued, "as I heard the twang of his bow four times. At each shot I heard an arrow strike the ground between me and you, therefore I fired at him, and I think he is down. Do you see that black object lying on the ground?" I saw something a little blacker than the surrounding ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... habit, going to his mouth. His attention being thus called to the force of habit, the strong-armed son of Pandu set his heart upon practising with his bow in the night. And, O Bharata, Drona, hearing the twang of his bowstring in the night, came to him, and clasping him, said, 'Truly do I tell thee that I shall do that unto thee by which there shall not be an archer equal ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... itself—was a hatter by trade, who had come to Georgia in search of a precarious livelihood. He obtained permission to build him a little log hut by the side of a running stream; and, for a year or two, people going along the road could hear the snap and twang of his bowstring as he whipped wool or rabbit fur into shape. Some said he was from North Carolina; others said he was from Connecticut; but whether from one State or the other, what should a hatter do away off in the woods in Putnam County? ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... the first, speaking with a nasal twang I couldn't quite place. "Will it take this bit of ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... I do not know what train of thought my casual remark had suggested in him, for presently he began to speak. He spoke in a low voice, without any expression, but his accents were educated, and it was a relief to hear him after the twang and the vulgar intonations which for some ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... inexpressibly calm and peaceful—yet it was busy with sound and with movement. Rooks, those sanctimonious humbugs, circled overhead, cawing thieves' warnings, that had the twang of sermons, to other rooks, out of sight in neighbouring seed-fields. Lapwings, humbugs too, but humbugs in a prettier cause, started from the shrubberies where their eggs were hidden, and fluttered lamely towards ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... that had been recommended to me, and after partaking of coffee—the best I ever remember to have drunk—I sought my room, Tom insisting upon sleeping on the floor in the same chamber, and my last waking recollections were of the pungent fumes of tobacco, and the tinkle, tinkle, twang of a guitar beneath ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... in hansoms, nor climbed to the topmost 'bus, Nor talked with a twang in the latest slang; They left these fashions to us. But, ah, she was sweet and pleasant, though possibly not well-read, The excellent wife who cheered your life, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... attempt made, in addition, to disguise the fact that the delinquent I speak of (I had almost written renegade) is an Irishman. No wonder that he should attempt the disguise, for he must deeply feel his delinquency. In all cases such as this, the Cockney twang and occasional curtailment is assumed to overcome the brogue, but in vain. For the first half dozen words of each paragraph in a conversation it gets on well enough, but the conclusion ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... one must be able to take part in it. It must cease to be a highly specialized business. It must be put on a basis where the ordinary person can snap the flying wires of a machine, listen to their twang, and know them to be true, just as any one now thumps his rear tire to see ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... his voice got hold of those who heard him, and once more the big building rang with cheering. As the sound of hearty acclamation died away there was a great clatter of thrust-back benches through which the tuning of a fiddle broke. Then out of the tentative twang of strings rose, clear and silvery, the lament of Flora Macdonald, thrilling with melancholy, and there were men and women there whose hearts went back to the other wild and misty land of rock and pine and frothing river which they had left far away across the sea. It may be that the musician desired ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... downy wing Was fluttering now, as quickly to depart; When twang'd an arrow from Love's mystic string, 30 With pathless wound it pierc'd him to the heart. Was there some magic in the Elfin's dart? Or did he strike my couch with wizard lance? For straight so fair a Form did upwards start (No fairer deck'd the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... introduced one by one to the audience in short speeches. These worthies delivered harangues on the subject of horses and their uses; and the speeches were really very respectable, and not too long, but were delivered in general with a strong nasal twang. There were persons from all parts of America; Ohio, Carolina, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their destestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... mouth, put his left hand in his breeches pocket, clenched his right, and raised his arm, he begins his learned dissertation on well digested principles, ardent desire of truth, incessant struggles to shake off prejudices, and forth are chanted, in nasal twang and tragic recitative, his emanations of soul, bursts of though, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... hoarsely orders a 'pot' of some local brewer's manufacture—a man who knows exactly what he likes, and arranges to meet the hardy digestion of the mower and the reaper. He prefers a rather dark beer with a certain twang faintly suggestive of liquorice and tobacco, with a sense of 'body,' a thickness in it, and which is no sooner swallowed than a clammy palate demands a second gulp to wash away the relics of the first. Ugh! The second requires a third swig, and ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... their domestic degenerates. The sun was shining full in at the little diamond-paned window. The window was open, and a late fly of metallic hue was shooting about with a pinging noise, like the twang of some instrumental string. But neither fly, nor sun, nor the tick of the little clock on the mantelpiece had awakened the cat. It was the click of the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... life, by methods which he until then never heard of, and will I am confident, to this day carry the charms of novelty to most of my readers. Of these the first she put upon him was going on what they call the "twang," which is thus managed: the man who is the confederate goes out with some noted woman of the town, and if she fall into any broil, he is to be at a proper distance, ready to come into her assistance, and by making a sham quarrel, give her an opportunity of getting off, perhaps after ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... come. All order being lost, the combat was hand to hand one party fighting fiercely for victory, and the other knowing that they stood at the awful peril of their lives. After the first discharge of the musket and the twang of the bow, the struggle was maintained with knife and axe; the thrust of the former, or the descent of the keen and glittering tomahawk, being answered by sweeping and crushing blows of the musket's ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... into the lane they heard the twang of Waddles's guitar from the cook shack, the booming voice raised in song in mid-afternoon, a thing heretofore unheard of in the annals of ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... his head as stiff as a pump-handle; and scarcely crediting his ears, he returned a searching look at the cat, who very quietly proceeded in a sort of nasal twang— ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... what with screaming, yelling, like the Indian war-whoop, cheering, and the thundering noise of the planks, grating along the deck, together with the ringing and clattering of their metallic vessels, they made altogether such a hideous "rattle-come-twang," that it was enough to raise all Chatham. All this was transacted in utter darkness. The officers doubtless saw, that bloodshed and promiscuous death would be the consequence of firing among the rioters, and prudently left it to subside ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... sir; reviews and title-pages constitute a good part of modern literary acquirements. But upon my honour, sir, one hears young ladies now talk of nothing but architecture and divinity. Botany is quite gone out; and music, unless there's a twang of Papistry about it, is generally voted a bore. In my younger days—(really, sir, you needn't laugh, for I haven't had a love affair these two years)—in my younger days, when one talked about similarity of tastes and so forth, it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... "and hey for the life I love! Away with tanbark and filthy vats and foul cowhides! I will follow thee to the ends of the earth, good master, and not a herd of dun deer in all the forest but shall know the sound of the twang ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever-welcome meadow-lark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its "z-d-t, z-d-t," and what character in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... These deficiencies or drawbacks Lizzie recognised. But it was nothing against him in her judgment that he was a greasy, fawning, pawing, creeping, black-browed rascal, who could not look her full in the face, and whose every word sounded like a lie. There was a twang in his voice which ought to have told her that he was utterly untrustworthy. There was an oily pretence at earnestness in his manner which ought to have told that he was not fit to associate with gentlemen. There was a foulness of demeanour ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... warrant he undertakes to do that. He says I do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained in the same vinegar and persimmon school, [laughter;] I have not been doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twang which may characterize the gentleman, and which may be considered to be the evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally speak as a man, and as a good-natured man, I think. I hope I entertain no malice ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... floated through the windows and wandered into the woods. The twang of the tuning-fork was drowned by a succession of cries. The smart young man's eyebrows went up to meet his roach while he stood in the aisle astonished to see a lady in trailing black clothes pounce upon ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and we found that if we were soft-hearted or soft-headed, they would say the whole family were prisoners. One thing that surprised and shocked us was to hear the little kids swearing; they would use the most frightful oaths, and the funny part of it was that they gave them the pure cockney twang; I suppose they had heard and were imitating the Imperial troops. Well, after travelling all day we finally arrived in C—— and we were marched off to our first billets. I belonged to "C" Company and we were quartered ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... demonstrated that, however slow he might be in some other things, he could twang ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... Apollo of the prairie; yes, with a strong nasal twang, and a decided taste for tobacco ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates in Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and drawl: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rain-sodden grass in the ditches is dying; The berries are red to the crest of the thorn; Coronet-deep where the beech-leaves are lying The hunters stand tense to the twang of the horn; Where rides are refilled with the green of the mosses, All foam-flecked and fretful their long line is strung; You can see the white gleam as a starred forehead tosses, You can hear the low chink ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... with hands on hips, Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase Bacchus round some antique vase, Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, Over and over the Maenads sang: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... be entirely conducted on these principles; man cannot live by Almavivery alone; and the Great Creature, having failed upon several theatres, was obliged to step down every evening from his heights, and sing from half-a-dozen to a dozen comic songs, twang a guitar, keep a country audience in good humour, and preside finally over ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tabret, or harp, or other musical instruments; for in those days not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight papistical twang), after bewailing with ingenious particularity the sins and back-slidings of himself and people, and the ingratitude of the whole land, and recounting the innumerable blessings that had crowned their basket and their store, entreated that notwithstanding their manifold ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... going on Earl Haakon sat apart conversing with his chieftains. As they did so they heard a bow-string twang, and before a hand could be raised a keen-pointed arrow pierced the body of Gissur the White, one of the chiefs, and he fell over dead. The arrow had come from the ship of Bue the Big, and thither men ran in haste. What they saw was Haavard the Hewer, still standing on his knees, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... our colony. He is almost as great a pasha among the ladies as Bulbul. They crowd in flocks to see him at Saint Waltheof's, where the immense height of his forehead, the rigid asceticism of his surplice, the twang with which he intones the service, and the namby-pamby mysticism of his sermons, have turned all the dear girls' heads for some time past. While we were having a rubber at Mrs. Chauntry's, whose daughters are following the new mode, I heard the following talk (which made me revoke by ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his race. His face and his body, which was clothed in black, were invisible in the darkness; but his big white eyes shone out, and there came from them a light like a ray of dawn through the chinks of a door. He spoke in a husky, monotonous tone, with a slight nasal twang that gave it the soft melody of music heard at night in the streets. Sometimes the breathing of an ass, or the soft lowing of an ox, accompanied, like a chorus of invisible spirits, the voice of the slave as he recited the gospels. His words ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the preparation and sale of cake like the Dutch wafelen, and among the stalls were conjurors, cheap-jacks, singers, and dice throwers; while every moment brought its fresh motor-car or carriage load, nearly all speaking English with a nasal twang. Meanwhile every one shouted, the naphtha flared, the drums beat, the horses champed. The street was full too, chiefly of peasants, but among them myriad resolute American virgins, in motor veils, whom nothing can ever surprise; a few American men, sceptical, as ever, of anything ever happening; ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... "family compact" so ably brought to a crisis. The secretary of all the governors Lower Canada had yet had, corresponded, most confidentially, with his home masters, somewhat, perhaps, to the prejudice of his honor the administrator. As general Simcoe loathed the nasal twang, attenuated appearance, and the vulgar republicanism of a downeast American, so Mr. Witsius Ryland abominated Romanism. Speaking of the Roman Catholic clergy of Canada, he says:—"I call them Popish to distinguish them from the clergy of the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... then a bow-string in the direction of San Juan hill, and the twang seemed to be getting louder and to be coming toward the little blue farm-house. No cannon was in sight; there was no smoke visible, and many, with an upward look, wondered what the queer sound could be. Suddenly there was a screeching, crackling answer in the air; the atmosphere ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... meet any friend of Mr. Saulsbury's," he drawled with a mournful twang. "We've got plenty o' bread and milk for strangers. Somebody's spread the idea we run a hotel here and we're pestered a good deal with folks that want to stop for a meal. We take care o' 'em mostly. The wife and little gal sort o' ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... juncture I opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong twang known by some supercilious English as ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... half a dozen spears' lengths from the brushwood when the sharp twang of a bowstring broke the stillness, and an arrow that was meant for the Queen's face flew just between her and the Lady Anne. The fair woman flushed suddenly at the danger; on the dark one's forehead a vein stood out, straight from the parting of the hair, downward between the eyes. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... blown dry and dusty by residence in tents on a hill-top, but of any wayfarer whatever in that land. It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body, yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste; but, finally, rather heady. The masses worshipped it, the minor gentry loved it more than wine, and by the most illustrious county families it was not despised. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... labour and enjoyment in them. Every week showed him a new town or city: classic Edinburgh, dirty Glasgow—cleaner nowadays—roaring Liverpool, rainy Manchester, smoke-clouded Birmingham and Sheffield, granite-built Aberdeen, jolly Dublin, with an unaccustomed twang in the whisky, after the Scottish progress; Belfast, Cork, Waterford. Everywhere character studies in shoals; dialect studies every day and all day long. Paul could train his tongue, before the twelve months' tour was over, to the speech of Exeter, or Norwich, or Brighton, or Newcastle, or Berwick, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... paddle, but this time he missed, and down went the otter again. It did not dive deep, however, and the shaft of the arrow told where it might be expected. As its round head, with bright, staring eyes, thrust up above the water, there came the twang of the young Aleut's bow, and the second arrow chugged into the body of the otter. Even the older hunter greeted this shot ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... roll. His step quickens. He cuts the wildest figures in a frenzy of abandoned joy. With a leap through the door he is gone. The guitar stops with a sudden twang and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... cheek, And his starven hands grew plump and sleek. But for all sign of wealth he wore He swaggered neither less nor more. He talked the stuff he talked before, And bragged as he had bragged of yore, With his Yankee chaff and his Yankee slang, And his Yankee bounce and his Yankee twang. And, to tell the truth, we all held clear Of the impudent little adventurer; And any man with an eye might see That, though he bore it merrily, He recognised the tacit scorn Which dwelt about him ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the wolf shall chase his shadow and his mate the panther call. From the prairies and the regions where the pine-plumed forest grows Shall arise the tawny legions with their lances and their bows; And again the cries of battle shall resound along the plain, Bows shall twang and quivers rattle, women wail their warriors slain; And by lodge-fire lowly burning shall the mother from afar List her warrior's steps returning from the daring deeds ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... again and nearer. There was a little laugh in a girl's voice, then the dry twang of the plucked strings of a guitar, then silence. After a minute the guitar strings twanged again, and a girl's voice began to sing ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... drop a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Mr ——, is a poor little weakly Israelite, but very inoffensive, although he speaks with a horrible Yankee twang, which Mr Sargent and the Judge are singularly ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... the arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies; who have built this Constitution; who saunter here with vague communings,—not without thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddlestrings twang and warble every where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet; long lamp-galaxies fling their coloured radiance; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and bawl, "Grande Acceptation, Constitution Monarchique:" it behoves the Son of Adam to hope. Have not Lafayette, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... we are trying to find was tall," said Merritt quickly, "and has a slight cast in his left eye. He talks with something of a twang, as though he might be ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... among them!—a man who ate brose, went with bare knees, worked like any hind, and did not dare offend his wretched relations by calling his paltry farm his own!—for the sake of such a fellow, with a highland twang that disgusted his fastidious ear, his own daughter made a mock of his authority, treated him as a nobody! In his own house she had risen against him, and betrayed him to the insults of his enemy! His conscious importance, partly from doubt in ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the Prioress that his men had spied a lad accompanying the shepherd who escorted the lady, and who, he thought, had a certain twang of south country speech; and no sooner had he carved for the ladies, according to the courtly duty of an esquire, than the inquiry began as to who had found the maiden and where she had been lodged. Prioress Agnes, who had already broken her fast, sat meantime with the favourite ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rose on a wave, far ahead the boys could see the lights of the Brutus. Only for a second, however, for the next minute she would vanish in the trough of a huge comber, and then they could hear the strained towing cable "twang" ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... well. The Senator spoke with a clear, sonorous voice, no doubt with a twang, but so audibly as to satisfy the room in general. "I shall not," he said, "dwell much on your form of government. Were I to praise a republic I might seem to belittle your throne and the lady who sits on it,—an offence ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... I heard scarce a note. There were quartettos and overtures by gentlemen performers whose names and faces I know not, and such was the never ceasing rattling and noise in the card-room, where I was kept almost all the evening, that a general humming of musical sounds, and now and then a twang, was all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... been demolished, but tell their whole story still, in spite of wide gaps and breaks—ay, and with a far more soul-moving voice than when they could show to the enemy their crenated parapets without a flaw, when not a stone was wanting to any tower or gateway, and when the twang of the cross-bow might have been heard from every loophole. There are heaps of stones where the lizard runs, where the coiled snake basks untroubled, where the dwarfed fig-tree sprouts when the spring has come, and where the wild cucumber pushes forward its yellow ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... hout, And wished it could go on all night, wich my pardner did ditto, no doubt. Modern Venice in minichure, CHARLIE, ain't really so dusty, you bet; I wos quite a Bassanio in breeks, and I ain't lost the twang of it yet. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... excellent; and I feel sure that any royal family happening to travel incognito on the ship would have been satisfied with them. But my neighbours at table were not. "We shall not dine down here again," said one of them, speaking with the twang I have described. "After to-night we shall have all our meals in the Ritz Restaurant." I looked at her reflectively, and next day after breakfast I stood on the bridge and looked at the other emigrants. The women were singing an interminable droning ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... dull, as a rule, but a few cracked viciously as though fired close at hand. These last followed the vacuum of low-flying bullets and had a spat and twang of ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... right, colonel; we have had sufficient. I shall be getting a democratic orator's twang, or a crazy parson's, if I go on much further. He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:—"Jenny sends you her compliments, respects, and best wishes, and hopes she may see you before she goes to her friend Clara Sherwin and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... own,—were allowed to see the inhabitant of the big black case; and now that the deanery was so nearly deserted, Posy's fingers had touched the strings and had produced an infantine moan. "Grandpa, let me do it again." Twang! It was not, however, in truth, a twang, but a sound as of a prolonged dull, almost deadly, hum-m-m-m-m! On this occasion the moan was not entirely infantine,—Posy's fingers having been something too strong,—and the case was closed and ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Americans filed into his studio, and ranged themselves round his father's statue, and, after much silent examination, the spokesman of the party inquired, "Well, sir, what is this intended to represent?" William Story, in telling these little anecdotes, gave the Yankee twang to ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... observation founded on fact, that the language which a Roman Catholic of the lower class does not understand, is the one in which it is disposed to pray. As for him he had lots of English prayers, though he was totally ignorant of that language. The twang from the nose, the loud and rapid tone in which he spoke, and the malaproprian happiness with which he travestied every prayer he uttered, would have compelled any man to smile. The priests laughed outright before the whole congregation, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Nearer and nearer! Instinctively he thrust out his fiddle at them. The jarring of the strings made than leap back. Hope returned. He drew his hand violently across the strings—twang, twang! Instantly the wolves sprang back as if he had fired ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... and I liked his unaffected way of saying it. His voice had more of the homely, homelike, rural twang in it than I had heard in New York in many a day. I mentally doubled the fee I had intended to give him. And now Alva and she were coming down the stairway. I was amazed at sight of her. Her evening dress had given place to a pretty blue street suit ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... thyself and thy real and thy apparent place, and know him and his real and his apparent place, and act in some noble conformity with all that. What! The star-fire of the Empyrean shall eclipse itself, and illuminate magic-lanterns to amuse grown children? He, the god-inspired, is to twang harps for thee, and blow through scrannel-pipes, to soothe thy sated soul with visions of new, still wider Eldorados, Houri Paradises, richer Lands of Cockaigne? Brother, this is not he; this is a counterfeit, this twangling, jangling, vain, acrid, scrannel-piping man. Thou dost well ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... four hours Godfrey got back. Just before he reached the tree he heard the shrill "twang! squeak!" of the kit, and soon found himself face to face with Professor Tartlet, who, in the attitude of a vestal, was watching the sacred fire ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... exquisitely modulated, yet resonant as the twang of a harp, now seemed of itself to draw and hold each listener; while a certain extravagance of gesticulation—a fantastic movement of both form and feature—seemed very near akin to fascination. And so flowed on the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... them to tea at the Goyle, and there had come to the conclusion that Sister Beata was an admirable, religious, hardworking woman, of strong opinions, and not much cultivated, with a certain provincial twang in her voice. She had a vehement desire for self-devotion and consecration, but perhaps not the same for obedience. She sharply criticised all the regulations of the Sisterhoods with which she was acquainted, wore a dress of her own device, and with Sister Mena, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... says it has not exactly the genuine twang, but I hope no one will observe that but himself. I have more incidents in it than usual in works of the class—an elopement, a divorce, a duel, a ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... long as we hold the heights, Verdun is safe." His simple French, innocent of argot, had a good country twang. "But oh, the people killed! Comme il y a des gens tues!" He pronounced the final s of the word gens in the manner of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... couple of blocks the light flung out on the pavement and marked another saloon. Bright doors swung back and forth. The intermittent throb of a piano and twang of a violin, making merry with the misery of the world; voices brokenly above it all came at intervals, loudly as the ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... applause.) What cheer! (Laughter.) Well, you blokes what are you grinning at? I am a chickaleary cove, that's what I am. But I know what would knock you! You would like to 'ear about 'Ome Rule. Eh? What cheer! 'Ere goes. (Reveals his Home-Rule scheme with a Cockney twang and dialect. Then disappears and re-appears in his customary evening dress.) Thank you most earnestly. (Loud cheers.) And now I am afraid I must bid you good-bye. But before leaving, I must confess to you that I have never had the honour of appearing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... and then fell end over end, crashing in the forest. With a bellow of fury, Mado fired with the kalbite tube at his hip. There was the twang of the propelling ray, and the slender arrow-like torpedo sped forth on its message of death, singing spitefully as it cleaved the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... Jewel-robbery in the Merchant of Venice. He read me the Play; and very well; thoroughly understanding the text: with clear articulation, and the moderate emphasis proper to room-reading; with the advantage also of never having known the Theatre in his youth, so that he has not picked up the twang of any Actor of the Day. Then he read me King John, which he has some thoughts of editing next after Richard III. And I was reminded of you at Ipswich twenty-eight years ago; and of your Father—his look up at Angiers' Walls as he went out in Act ii. I wonder that Mrs. Siddons should have told ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... representation—something in the nature of a caricature, as you might say—of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Ralph just handed me the book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to be a description of my conversation; American peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn't have listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving a report of my conversation, if she liked but I didn't like the idea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... was perpetrated; but Militona's window continued closed and dark; and at last the man, compelled to content himself with an invisible auditory,—in spite of the Spanish proverb, which says, no woman sleeps so soundly that the twang of a guitar will not bring her to the window,—began to sing in a strong Andalusian accent. The serenade consisted of a dozen verses, in which the singer celebrated the charms of a cruel mistress, vowed inextinguishable love, and denounced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... whole world is the richer for his labors, and only the Watkinsons can find any delight in dwelling on the failings he possessed in common with meaner mortals. To say that Goethe should be "an object of horror to the whole self-respecting world" is simply to indulge in the twang of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Go sir Andrew: scout mee for him at the corner of the Orchard like a bum-Baylie: so soone as euer thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw'st, sweare horrible: for it comes to passe oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharpely twang'd off, giues manhoode more approbation, then euer proofe it selfe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with more than ever of the nasal twang; "it iss a coot many miles to where the poat comes in—so the poy ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... surmising that such is only played on by the spirits of just men made perfect, I ceased to search further for it in that procession,—for though the men composing it might be just enough, they were evidently a long way from perfection. And when it is remembered that all these harps were twang-twanging away furiously, and that their strings were being swept over with no Bochsa fingers, few will wonder that I longed for cotton-wool, and blessed the memory of Paganini, who had only one string to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... title in itself—was a hatter by trade, who had come to Georgia in search of a precarious livelihood. He obtained permission to build him a little log hut by the side of a running stream; and, for a year or two, people going along the road could hear the snap and twang of his bowstring as he whipped wool or rabbit fur into shape. Some said he was from North Carolina; others said he was from Connecticut; but whether from one State or the other, what should a hatter do away off in the woods in Putnam County? Grandsir Kendrick, who was shrewd, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... there was no light, and concluded that the Germans were not in. So much the better. He went to sleep about one o'clock, fully decided that if they came up later and woke him with their horrible noises he would not rest till he had roused the landlady and made her reprove them with that authoritative twang, in which every word was like the lash ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... honeyed a Cockney twang) speedily came back to report that Miss. French had left about half-an-hour ago, and was not likely ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... to speak through their nose. A more intimate acquaintance with their manner belies this reputation. It is rather a drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in every sentence a curious shifting of emphasis. America, with the true instinct of democracy, is determined to give all parts of speech an equal chance. The modest pronoun is not to be outdone by the blustering ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... breathe the wish that this land may never know such prosperity. I do not wish to be murdered; no man does; yet rather than see the ostrich and deer chased beyond the horizon, the flamingo and black-necked swan slain on the blue lakes, and the herdsman sent to twang his romantic guitar in Hades as a preliminary to security of person, I would prefer to go about prepared at any moment to defend my life against the sudden ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... quick aim at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was a twang as the arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol grip forward and back to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later. Another arrow went ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... the sense of smell, in its ordinary state, much connexion with our present subject. Mr. Aubrey tells us, indeed, of an apparition which disappeared with a curious perfume as well as a most melodious twang; and popular belief ascribes to the presence of infernal spirits a strong relish of the sulphureous element of which they are inhabitants. Such accompaniments, therefore, are usually united with other materials for ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... I was saying, Domenico Was wont of my skill to make such light, That, seeing him go on a certain night Out with his lute, I followed. Hot From a war of words, I heeded not Whither I went, till I heard him twang A madrigal under the lattice where Only the night before I sang. —A double robbery! and I swear 'Twas overmuch for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham was speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone, thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large, white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing his words well, so that, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cavalry were keeping up a lively fire just ahead and on the right, and there was every prospect of an interesting time. Very soon we were ordered forward to skirmish. As the order was received, Smith remarked, with a peculiar twang to his heavy voice and an odd twist ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... if he had no connection with all that went on about him, he heard the twang of bursting shrapnel down the road. He had straightened himself wearily and taken a step forward, when he found himself sinking into the puddle. A feeling of relief came over him. His legs sunk in the puddle; he lay without moving against the muddy bank. The frogs had gone, but from somewhere ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... wizen-faced man, with broad shoulders, and possessing great muscular strength. I suspected from the first, from the way he spoke, that he was not a Yankee born. His language, when talking to me, was always correct, without any nasal twang; and that he was a man of some education I was convinced, when I heard him once quote, as if speaking to himself, a line of Horace. He never smiled, and there was a melancholy expression on his ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... seized the rifle belonging to Potts. Colter sprang on shore, wrestled the weapon from the hands of the Indian, and restored it to his companion, who was still in the canoe, and immediately pushed into the stream. There was the sharp twang of a bow, and Potts cried out that he was wounded. Colter urged him to come on shore and submit, as his only chance for life; but the other knew there was no prospect of mercy, and determined to die game. Leveling his ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... delivered on the 20th by Sir William Erle.] with a few verbal alterations. I am sorry I cannot deliver the latter; but the state of our work in Chancery is such that the sittings cannot be well curtailed, even for an hour. I trust some member of the board, with a strong nautical twang, will be so good as to deliver it; and if the speaker could but adopt that hitch of the trouser which made Lord Clarence Paget so effective in the House of Commons, it would, I have no doubt, add much to the effect of a ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... herself from his arms and sat down. Some late roisterers passing by in the street were heard singing to the twang of a mandolin. It was a full, deep song, and the casual voices blended in perfect accord. As the harmony floated out of hearing, she looked up at him ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... surprise, if such a paradox (it is nothing worse) maybe allowed to pass. But when I heard them twittering in the distance, as I did almost immediately, I had no suspicion of what they were. The voice had nothing of that nasal quality, that Yankee twang, as some people would call it, which I had always associated with the nuthatch family. On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike,—so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... glass. The whole effect of the face, however, was singularly pleasing to the discerning critic. An out of door, reckless, humorous, honest personality was stamped on every line of it and every movement of the man. When he spoke his voice had a marked tinge of the twang of the wild west that sounded a little oddly on the lips of a country gentleman in these northern parts. He wore an open flannel collar, a shooting coat, well cut riding breeches and immaculate leather leggings, finished off by a ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Dicky Steele has set up for a saint, and assumed the methodistical twang, some hopes of conversion may be left even for such reprobates as myself. Where, may I ask, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and vigilant, darting out as the stranger approaches the nest, looking like angry coals of brilliant fire, returning several times to the attack with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious, reverberating, sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, and curiously like the real bleat of some small quadruped. At other times the males may be seen darting high up in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the distinct twang of an American voice came to her as a message of peace, so pushing back the stuff she entered to find herself confronted by ten pairs ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... April bird, that one does not have to go to the woods or away from his own door to see and hear, is the hardy and ever- welcome meadowlark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its "z-d-t, z-d-t" and what character in its long, piercing note! ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... embracings were expected of near kindred; and, indeed, the King and Queen were equally occupied with their brother and nieces; but presently Eleanor heard a low voice observe, with a sort of sarcastic twang, 'If Madame has sufficiently satiated her tenderness, perhaps she will remember the due of others.' Margaret started as if stung, and Eleanor, looking up, beheld a face, young but sharp, and with a keen, hard, set look in the narrow eyes, contracted ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Green and Crown Ash Hill—from which latter spot, the operations of the pack in the bottom may be comfortably and securely viewed—leaving the whips to flog as many hounds out of cover as they can, and Tom to entice as many more as are willing to follow the "twang, twang, twang" ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... your sonatas in A, Heedless of what your next neighbour may say! Dance and be gay as a faun or a fay, Sing like the lad in the boat on the bay; Sing, play—if your neighbours inveigh Feebly against you, they're lunatics, eh? Bang, twang, clatter and clang, Strum, thrum, upon fiddle and drum; Neigh, bray, simply obey All your sweet impulses, stop not or stay! Rattle the "bones," hit a tinbottom'd tray Hard with the fireshovel, hammer away! Is not your neighbour your ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... always shy of this young person, because, having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the, to her, novel wrongs in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... confined to the courts of justices of the peace. He was a shrewd, sensible old man, of a remarkably kind and genial disposition, but just about the homeliest looking individual I ever saw. And he had a most singular, squeaky sort of a voice, with a kind of a nasal twang to it, which if heard once could never be forgotten. He was an old friend of my father's, and had been his legal adviser (so far as his few and trifling necessities in that line required) from time immemorial. And for a year or so prior ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... which he did not often avail himself, as his nerves were seldom in a fit state for riding. His hair was dark red, and he wore red moustaches, and a great deal of red beard beneath his chin, cut in a manner to make him look like an American. His voice also had a Yankee twang, being a cross between that of an American trader and an English groom; and his eyes were keen and fixed, and cold ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian's lustihood Far down a heavenly hollow. Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow: Tara! it twang'd, tara-tara! it blew, Yet wavered oft, and flew Most ficklewise about, or here, or there, A music now from earth and now from air. But on a sudden, lo! I marked a blossom shiver to and fro With dainty inward storm; and there within A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
