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Jangling   Listen
noun
Jangling  n.  
1.
Idle babbling; vain disputation. "From which some, having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling."
2.
Wrangling; altercation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Jangling" Quotes from Famous Books



... handle. A jangling peal rang discordantly, echoing through the emptiness within. No one came. They rang again and again—but there was no sign of life. Then they walked completely round the house. Everywhere silence, and shuttered windows. If they could believe the evidence of their ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... that I can never reconcile with my conception of an All-Wise Creator the type of 'ghost' you are at present interested in; it seems to me incredible that the spirits of the departed should be permitted to return and indulge in the ghostly repertoire of jangling chains, gurgling, etc., apparently for the sole purpose of scaring housemaids and other timid or hysterical people." The first and most obvious remark on this is, that our correspondent has never read or heard a ghost story, save of the Christmas magazine type, ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... joy, forms of men who, though justified in rebellion by every human suffrage, remained loyal to the end and proved by endurance a more imperial humanity. Socrates unperturbed by mortal injustice; Dante a deep harmonious voice amid jangling destinies; William the Silent serene in every desperate conjecture—these seemed now the more perfect captains. If exile had done no more than transfer my allegiance to such as these, I had not borne the lash ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... their Tamarind tree. Daylight dies, The Camp fires redden like angry eyes, The Tents show white, In the glimmering light, Spirals of tremulous smoke arise, to the purple skies, And the hum of the Camp sounds like the sea, Drifting over the sand to me. Afar, in the Desert some wild voice sings To a jangling zither with minor strings, And, under the stars growing keen above, I think of the ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... to produce a poet, or a race of Tories. Once within the embracing solitude of Roselawn, the discordant jangling of common people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur, no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... said old Mr. Beebe, when the little green door with its jangling bell had really closed on her and on Johnny, "as soon as we get these shoes back again in the boxes, you better run into th' parler, 'cause Ma's been ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... their teens they have wit to perplex us, With letters and lovers for ever they vex us; While each still rejects the fair suitor you've brought her; Oh, what a plague is an obstinate daughter! Wrangling and jangling, Flouting and pouting, Oh, what a plague is an ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... With jangling knells Our studious minds disturb. No organ grinders ever call, No hucksters mar our peace; For traffic shuns our neighborhood And leaves us to ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... Ladyfield almost intolerable. For the roads, crisp, yellow, straight, demanded his going on them; the sun-dart among distant peaks revealed the width and glamour of the world. "Come away," said the breezes; passing gipsies all jangling with tins upon their backs awoke dreams poignant and compelling. When the summer was just on the turn at that most pitiful' of periods, the autumn, he must go ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... voice of the dark river, the clangor of the midnight bell, the shadowy figure at the doorway—all these circumstances had combined to stimulate my imagination and disorder my brain. But now, on my arrival at this house, these feelings had passed away. These signs of commonplace life—the jangling sleigh-bells, the lighted windows, the departing company—had roused me, and brought me to myself. Finally, there came the sound of Jack's voice, hearty, robust, healthy, strong— at the sound of which the dark shadows of my mind were dispelled. And it was ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... moment I wondered if I had heard aright, or if the sound portended the coming of some servant of the doctor, who was locking up the establishment for the night. The jangling sound was repeated, and in such a way that I could not suppose it to be accidental. Some one was deliberately rattling a small bunch of keys in an ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... party gets the better of the other. Each overthrows the other; but neither perceives that he is himself overthrown. Hence, though each demolishes the other, neither is convinced, and the controversy still rages. Nor can there ever be an end of this wrangling and jangling while the arguments of the opposite parties have their roots in a common error. Let the work of Mr. Symington, or any other which advocates a limited atonement, be taken up, its argument dissected, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... at the window of the room he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the noises by appropriate maltreatment of a jangling guitar. More magnanimous than Nero, he would thus give musical warning of the forthcoming municipal upheaval that Quicksand was ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... us that the Crown Prince has been captured, and that the enemy is retreating. No official confirmation has come to hand however; but the flags are down at last, and the jangling of bells has ceased, and we have not heard "Deutschland ueber Alles" for twenty-four hours, "Gott sei Dank"! Prince Joachim is wounded, and he has sent a telegram worded after the manner of his dear Papa, thanking God who ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... of light on one side of the hall, such as may be likened to that which filters under a door-sill. Presently this was followed by the sound of jangling brass rings. A heavy velvet portiere—which I, being in darkness, had not discovered—slipped back. My glance, rather blinded, was first directed toward the flame of the candle. Then I lowered it—and surrendered ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... attention. I wait for my milkless nero, Free to observe undistracted all sorts and sizes of persons, Blending civilian and soldier in strangest costume, coming in, and Gulping in hottest haste, still standing, their coffee,—withdrawing Eagerly, jangling a sword on the steps, or jogging a musket Slung to the shoulder behind. They are fewer, moreover, than usual, Much and silenter far; and so I begin to imagine Something is really afloat. Ere I leave, the Caffe is empty, Empty too the streets, in all its length the Corso Empty, and empty I ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... very name Casa Grande. She hated the narrow, half-lighted hallway with its "tree" where no one ever hung a hat, and the seat beneath where no one ever sat down. She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with the bell buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling of the hall telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of whichever bell button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller. She hated the meek little Filipino boy who swept that ugly hall every morning. She hated the scrubby palms in front. She hated the pillars ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... motioned the audacity back down the nave again to the place where Cobbett officiated. Back, clatter, clatter, blushing and confused, the stranger retreated, watched, as it seemed to him, by a thousand sarcastic and cynical eyes. The bells slipped from their jangling peal into a solemn single note. The Mere People were in their places at the back of the nave, the Great Ones leaving their entrance until the very last moment. There was a light in the organ-loft; ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... knife, And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life. "This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me, And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy." The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path, And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath. "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is yet to run: By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer — what ha' ye done?" Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... and adventure, Thro' the green land The grey roads go beckoning and winding, Peopled with wains, and melodious With harness-bells jangling: Jangling and twangling rough rhythms To the slow march of the stately, great horses ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... swiftly. He spoke eagerly, and his tone was quite different from that which his companion was used to. It was as if some deep note in his more obscure nature had been struck, and was now making itself heard above the raucous jangling of discord by which his life was torn. His words were almost passionate, and there was a ring of truth in them which was astonishing, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... alive with cattle browsing on a sparse turf. The way winds on among the herds; we form in close marching order, with the guide in front and spiked staffs ready for use; for these neighbors are a trifle wild and not used to strangers. They feed on unconcernedly, jangling their bells, but one or two of the bulls cast inquiring glances upon us, and we prudently retire to our pockets the bright red sashes bought in Cauterets until we have ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... them in orbs, snakes gordian, intertwining; Some with caskets deep did blazon mystical emblems, Emblems muffled darkly, nor heard of spirit unholy. 260 Part with a slender palm taborines beat merrily jangling; Now with a cymbal slim would a sharp shrill tinkle awaken; Often a trumpeter horn blew murmurous, hoarsely resounding. Rose on pipes barbaric ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... of "Justice," or "God save your Majesty," as the trial went on, but all save the loud outcries of the soldiers was hushed as, on the 30th of January 1649, Charles passed to his doom. The dignity which he had failed to preserve in his long jangling with Bradshaw and the judges returned at the call of death. Whatever had been the faults and follies of his life, "he nothing common did, nor mean, upon that memorable scene." Two masked executioners awaited the king as he mounted the scaffold, which had been erected outside ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... to me It speaks of far-off days, When a boyish skater mingling free Amid the merry maze. Methinks I see the broad ice still; And my nerves all jangling feel, Blent with the tones of voices shrill, The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... father, when the revolutionary troubles commenced, William, his youngest son, removed into Lower Canada. The other children all remained in Albany County, except Christian, who, when the jangling land disputes and conflicts of titles arose in Schoharie, followed Conrad Wiser, Esq. (a near relative), to the banks of the Susquehanna. He appears eventually to have pushed his way to Buchanan River, one of the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... new-found jangling nerves. She recognised that he was sincere in his efforts to please her, but just now they only seemed an added humiliation. She longed to shout "Go away!" like an angry schoolboy, but she managed to give him the information he wanted, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... that same apostle have any pertinency in our times, then, when he declares that heresies or schisms must arise among us "that they which are proved may be made manifest," we may confidently expect that out of the present discussions and the "jangling of sweet notes out of tune" some broader thought and some nobler conception of divine teachings, revealed to us in Holy Scripture, will assuredly come to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... ends. There is no sound of pleasant wedding bells to close my record with their merry, jangling chorus. Is it not the fate of the innocent to suffer in this life for the sins of the wicked? Lady Eversleigh's widowhood, Douglas Dale's lonely life, are the work of Victor Carrington—a work not to be undone upon this earth. If he has failed in all else, he has succeeded at least in this: ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... experiences in Gotham! I declaimed violently against Tchaikovsky to my acquaintances of the hour, because my dislike to him is deep rooted; but I had still to encounter another modern musician, who sent me home with a headache, with nerves all jangling, a stomach soured, and my whole esthetic system topsy-turveyed and sorely wrenched. I heard for the first time Richard Wagner's Die Walkuere, and ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... sunshine and a crisp air that seemed to bring refreshment in every waft. The leafless trees were penciled against the blue sky like the lines of a fine engraving. The church bells rang out their reverent inspiration, they were harmoniously toned and there was no jangling. Lilian wondered a little—were her parents and the two children at home kneeling in the old church where the Crawfords had worshiped for a hundred years or more? Did they offer a little ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... you'll only avoid that dull enemy, prose. "Adopt, then, my plan, and the very next time, "That in words you fall out, let them fall into rhime; "Thus your sharpest disputes will conclude very soon, "And from jangling to jingling you'll chime into tune. "If my wife were to call me a drunken old sot, "I shou'd merely just ask her, what Butler is not? "And bid her take care that she don't go to pot. "So our squabbles continue a very short season, "If she yields to my rhime—I ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald

... six girls, who had risen on hearing their commander's angry voice, were all tumbled into a heap. Dard surged to his feet, dragging Kyna up along with him; together, they helped the others to rise. The ship was suddenly filled with jangling bells, and the red danger-lights on the ceiling were ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper

... His face was scarlet now. Right next to our carriage—mine and the Bishop's—there was another; not quite so fat and heavy and big, but smart, I tell you, with the silver harness jangling and the horses arching their backs under their blue-cloth jackets monogrammed in leather. All the same, I couldn't see anything to cause a loving father to let go his onliest daughter in such a hurry, till the old lady inside bent forward again and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... breasts and limbs uncovered; women wrapped as ghosts, with just the feet showing and one eye peeping and twinkling, encircled about the middle with many folds of cloth; the medicine or dance man in his costume of rags, crane heads and feathers, with a girdle of jangling tin and bones, his little drum with curved sticks, his dance and music the convulsions and noises of a stupid beggar; and many, very many, blind;—who seem to have no home but the sidewalk, where you see them asleep at any time, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... of keys jangling at her girdle, withdrew to give the necessary directions, and presently returned. Meanwhile Ermengarde proceeded to question her niece more closely. "Is it that thou wilt not, or canst not, tell me to which of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... torrent of harmony the Presto Agitato. Its incomparable effect of the rush and murmur of many waters, through which the still small voice of melody rings clear as a song dropped straight from heaven, leaves little room in a listener's soul for the jangling discords of earth. Into that movement the great deaf musician seems to have flung the essence of his impatient spirit;—that rare mingling of ruggedness and simplicity, of purity and passionate power, which ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... against the leaden monotony of speech that had fallen upon them. "Your mother too was brave," he temporized. He could, he decided, wait no longer. She must, if necessary, be carried away forcibly. It was a desperate chance—the least pressure might result in a permanent, jangling discord. Her waist, torn, he saw, upon her pallid shoulder, was an insufficient covering against the wind and night. Looking about he discovered the muffler, laid out for her father, crumpled on the floor; and, with an arm about her, folded ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... indeterminate chords came to their ears. There followed a jangling disharmony. They waited, but there was nothing more. They ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... steeple above the surface of the flashing, dark red eddies, when we first arrived on the spot, but now only stopped the water with a loud gurgle, the top rising and disappearing as the stream surged past, like, buov jangling in a tideway. The small man still shook his head, but the water now rose so rapidly, that there was scarcely dry standing room for the two poor devils of mules, while the doctor and the skipper had the greatest difficulty in finding a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... Day-Book." It is, perhaps, worthy of note that Mr. Rink was, in fact, a man of rather more thought and general information than one might suppose, if judging him merely by his uncouth grammar, and the clipped coin of his jangling speech:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... enters the college, passes completely out of the atmosphere of the University when he steps on to the pavement. The physical contrast is striking enough, appealing to the ear and the eye. The rattle of the traffic, the jangling of cart bells, the inarticulate babel of voices, suddenly cease when the archway of ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... fantastic wreaths outside, while you draw round the blazing hearth and enjoy the artificial heat and warm in the social converse that he provokes. Your punch is all the better for his threats; by contrast you enjoy the more. Or brave him outside in a flying sledge, careering with jangling bells over white wastes of snow, while the stars, as you go, fly through the naked trees that are glittering with ice-jewels, and your blood tingles with excitement, and your breath is blown like a white incense to the skies. That is the real North. How tame he will look to you, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... little antique shop he slowed, backed, read the name "Karen Lawrence" on the window, and then pulled over to the curb and got out. Crossing the sidewalk, he went up the steps to the door, entering to the jangling of a ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... impressive, not so much from any intrinsic merit in the performance, as the earnestness in which the whole congregation joined in it, "singing praises lustily with a good courage," instead of deputing this branch of religious duty to half a dozen yawning and jangling charity children, assisted by the clerk and parish tailor. I believe it is an observation of Dr. Burney, in his History of Handel's Commemoration, that no sound proceeding from a great multitude can be discordant. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells— Of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— In the clamor and the clangor of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... grown weary of much laughter, From jangling mirth that once seemed over-sweet, From all the mocking ghosts that follow after A man's returning feet; Give me no word of welcome or of greeting Only in silence let me enter in, Only in silence when our eyes are meeting, Absolve ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... a wink at Croyden, subsided, and the hand was finished, as was the next, when Croyden was dummy, without further jangling. But midway in the succeeding ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... of cavalry in blue and yellow, bouncing considerably in their saddles, red faces very dusty under their tightly strapped caps, sabres and canteens jangling like an unexpected avalanche of tin-ware in a ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... recalled your kings and your priests," they replied: "We have nothing to do with those prattlers." And when some one said "People, forget the past, work and obey," they arose from their seats and a dull jangling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched sabre in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then they hastened to add: "Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not seek to harm." Alas! they were content ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... entered the place where the election was to be held, we heard the jangling of bells and the shouts of men. The postillions spared neither whip nor spur; and, as we galloped furiously along the streets, the people came swarming out: the women and children saluting us with their shrill trebles; and, it being dark, the men crowding to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... all that. Old King has sure got it in for the Ragged H—or Bay State, if yuh'd rather call us that; and the Ragged H boys don't sit up nights thinking kind and loving thoughts about him, either. Thirty years ago your father and old King started jangling over water-rights, and I guess they burned powder a-plenty; King goes lame to this day from a bullet your old man ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... consists in this, 'Do often violence to thy desire.' In the Tyrol we have seen whole villages praying together at daybreak before their day's work, singing their Miserere and their Gloria and their Dies Irae, to the sound of crashing organs and jangling bells; appealing in the midst of Nature's splendour to the Spirit which is above Nature, which dwells in darkness rather than light, and loves the yearnings and contentions of our soul more than its summer gladness and peace. Even the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... war which hitherto was but an echo from far Mexico. Now the peaceful pueblo was an armed camp. Volunteers rode in from San Jose, San Juan and other nearby pueblos, asking for a chance to "fight the greasers." All the ranches of the countryside buzzed with a martial ardor. Vaqueros, spurred with jangling silver-mounted harness, toward Francisco Sanchez' stronghold in the Santa Clara hills to battle ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... Baret, is "a jangling fellowe, a babbling attornie. Rabula, ae, mas. gen. [Greek: Dikologos] Vn ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... there rose up a sound like a child calling out an insulting remark. This was followed immediately by the piping of a horn. With a jerk the train started, passed one by one the station lamps, and, with a steady jangling and rattling, drew out into the shrouded country. Domini was in a wretchedly-lit carriage with three Frenchmen, facing the door which opened on to the platform. The man opposite to her was enormously fat, with a coal-black beard growing up to his eyes. He wore black gloves and trousers, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her books; and, best of all, a piano—or was it a harpsichord?—standing on its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk, sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... same manner, and for the same purpose, but of course with more conscious effort than the two stanzas on the preceding leaf,' are dated '16 August, 1805, the day of the Valetta Horse-racing—bells jangling, and stupefying music playing all day'. Afterwards, in 1819, Coleridge maintained that they were written 'between the age ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... escapes asylum care and custody except in its exacerbations; it is the insanity of organism which gives so much of the erratic and unstable to society, in its manifestations of mind and morals; it is the form of unstable mental organism which, like an unstrung instrument jangling out of tune and harsh, when touched in a manner to elicit in men of stable organisms only concord of sweet, harmonious sounds; it is the form of mental organism out of which, by slight exciting causes largely imaginary, the Guiteaus and Joan d'Arcs of history ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... came through the fretwork running round the top. He was hungry again, and again nibbled with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. He could not at all tell the hour. Every time the train stopped and he heard the banging, stamping, shouting, and jangling of chains that went on, his heart seemed to jump up into his mouth. If they should find him out! Sometimes porters came and took away this case and the other, a sack here, a bale there, now a big bag, now a dead ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.—Sir W. Raleigh. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Maggie Cardinal, the only child of the Rev. Charles, sat sewing. She hoard the jangling of the church hell; she heard also, suddenly, with a surprise that made her heart beat for a moment with furious leaps, a tapping on the window-pane. Then directly after that she fancied that there came from her father's room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... Tired as he was, nervous, on edge, whenever he dealt with her, either talking to her, or watching for any little attention she might need, his face was alert with love. But she noticed that when the footman brought in tea, and in arranging the cups let a spoon slip jangling from its saucer, Michael jumped as if a bomb had gone off, and under his breath said to the man, "You clumsy fool!" Little as the incident was, she, knowing Michael's courtesy and politeness, found it significant, as bearing on the evidence of his tired face. Then, next moment his mother said something ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... was re-opened by another speculator; but on such a scale, as merely to attract the working classes of the community. The band was now composed of a set of miserable scrapers, who played in unison, and continually in the key of G sharp; amid the sounds which emanated from their instruments, the jangling of a tambourin, and the shrill notes of a fife were occasionally heard. Thus did things continue until the French Revolution; when, about the time the Executive Directory was formed, the splendid apartments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various

... vessels. Notes from old Goethe in a singularly neat boyish writing inscribed upon little ornamented cards. Here, too, were small inscriptions which had lain upon presents from Carlyle to his wife. It was pleasant among all that jangling of the past to think of the love which had written them, and that other love which had so carefully preserved them. On one was written: 'All good attend my darling through this gulf of time and through the long ocean it is leading to. Amen. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... again the old-fashioned bell whose insistent voice could be heard jangling through the house. At last, when he had rung four times, a wavering light suddenly streaked with yellow the glass crescent above the door. There was a noise of a chair falling, a bolt slipping back, a key turning rustily; and through these ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... were now beginning to throw open their doors and run breathlessly about in various states of undress. The elevator bell was jangling insistently. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... In the middle of Riley's call of "Fifty-two-eight," a jangling bell told that the bottom of the pyrometer carrier ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... moment. The coachman cracked his whip, and the spirited horses went off, at a rate of speed that threatened danger to persons traversing the narrow streets of the town. The cracking of the coachman's whip, and an occasional loud shout and the jangling of the bells, gave, however, sufficient warning ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... orders for the theatre to which he belonged, where, with delight, she would recognise his familiar face as he nodded and smiled at her from the orchestra. He instructed her, too, in music; made her learn her notes, and practise on the jangling old piano, and even, at her particular request, to scrape a little on the violin; but she cared most for singing, and for hearing him play and talk. She never felt shy or timid with him, and one day, at the end of a ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... sound of little bells was heard. A carriage was approaching; one heard the jangling and creaking of its wheels. The Cure's little garden was only separated from the road by a low hedge, in the middle of which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the air, it fully knows, By the twanging and the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; yet the ear distinctly tells In the jangling and the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells— In the clamor and ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... ground, while the regiment followed in mass—a great square block of ungainly brown figures and little horses, hung all over with water-bottles, saddle-bags, picketing-gear, tins of bully-beef, all jolting and jangling together; the polish of peace gone; soldiers without glitter; horsemen without grace; but still a regiment of light cavalry in active operation ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... which makes all they say and do appear natural and therefore necessary. And you will always be the prey or the plaything of the devils and fools in this world, if you expect to see them going about with horns or jangling their bells. ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Board of War. Letter of Washington, June 8, 1781. It is impossible to study any part of the Revolutionary struggle without coming to the conclusion that Washington would have ended it in half the time it actually lasted, had the jangling States and their governments, as well as the Continental Congress, backed him up half as effectively as the Confederate people and government backed up Lee, or as the Northerners and the Washington administration backed up McClellan—still more as they backed up Grant. The whole of our ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... he sat listening to that whining, fluctuating wave. The engineer's thoughts wavered between speculations on the future, fond memories of June and impatience with the dragging hours. Would nothing ever happen? Through the earphones now came a jangling, agonized whine, as if the two antagonistic waves were endowed with life and ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West

... the dim light the monster seemed to assume gigantic proportions. But he lay so still that their jangling nerves became quieted. They even approached him, Locke with automatic in hand in case the iron terror were shamming. But there was no sign of life—or whatever it was that ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... is covered with the usual white turban, set off with a touch of red. His gray spiral puttees generally do not quite reach the bottom of his khaki trousers, thus leaving his knees bare. Hanging from his belt is his club, similar to those carried by American policemen, and jangling in one hand is usually a pair of steel handcuffs. In passing white men he often raises his hand in a formal military salute that would be worthy of a major general. Altogether he is a most impressive personage and, with such examples constantly before them, it would seem incredible ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid! The unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain jangling of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... if thou stir before then, I will seize thee by the feet and dash out thy brains against the wall: so look out for thy life!" Thus far concerning the Hunchback, but as regards Badr al-Din Hasan of Bassorah he left the Gobbo and the Ifrit jangling and wrangling and, going into the house, sat him down in the very middle of the alcove; and behold, in came the bride attended by an old woman who stood at the door and said, "O Father of Uprightness, [FN423] arise and take what God giveth thee." Then the old woman went away and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... element, which diffuses soothing and concord all around them. I dare say we all have known such—perhaps some good woman, without any very shining gifts of intellect, who yet dwelt in such peace of heart herself that conflict and jangling were rebuked in her presence. And there are other people who love peace, and seek after it in the cowardly fashion of letting things alone; whose 'peacemaking' has no nobler source than hatred of trouble, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... pianos that leered at him, sneered at him with screaming dissonances. The din was infernal, the clangor terrific; and as the pianist, hemmed in and riding this whirlwind of splintered sounding-boards, jangling wires and crunching lyres, closed his eyes expecting the last awful plunge into the ghastly abyss, a sudden, piercing tone penetrated the thick of the storm; as if by sorcery, the turmoil faded away, and, looking about him, Mychowski's disordered senses took note of an ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Peking and is said to have negotiated peace on these conditions: That the emperor of China should grant to Hideyoshi the honor of investiture, that the Japanese troops should all leave Korea, and that Japan should engage never to invade Korea again. There was some jangling about the withdrawal of the Japanese soldiers but at last this ...
— Japan • David Murray

... standing on a chair, with his night-gown on for a surplice, had married us. It is over now. I am aware that several persons of different genders have kissed me. I have signed my name. I am walking down the church-yard path, the bells jangling gayly above my head, drowning the sweet thrushes; and the school-children flinging bountiful garden flowers before my feet. It seems to me a sin to tread upon them. It goes to my heart. We reach the house. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... flight. Instantly Barnabas turned in pursuit, then stopped and stood utterly still, his head turned, his eyes wide, glaring back towards the gloom of the stables. For, in that moment, above the sudden harsh jangling of chains from within, above the pattering footsteps of the fugitives without, was an appalling sound rising high and ever higher—shrill, unearthly, and full of horror and torment unspeakable. And now, sudden as it had come, it was gone, but in its place was another sound,—a sound dull ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... long made it an impossibility, but the steam-engine gave man the triumph over geography, and by 1860 an intercolonial railway, though not built, was evidently buildable. In 1864 the exigencies of Canadian party politics forced federation to the front with startling suddenness. Weary of long jangling, resulting in a deadlock which {136} two elections and four governments within three years had failed to break, the nobler spirits of both parties in Canada resolved to find a solution in a wider federation. In the same year Dr Tupper had brought about a conference at Charlottetown, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... in the concerns of his client. David's trial made no sensation. He did not even have the cheap sympathy of the morbid. The court-room was almost empty the dull spring day when the east wind beat against the window, jangling the loose panes all through the reading ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... thing that will help forward her revenge upon me; and will reveal it (if her brother do not) to her uncle Antony; he probably will whisper it to Mrs. Howe; she can keep nothing from her daughter, though they are always jangling. Her daughter will acquaint my beloved with it. And if it will not, or if it will, come to my ears from some of those, you can write it to me, as in confidence, by way of preventing msicheif; which is the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... wrangled desperately in the road, defying perspiration. Once a team went jangling and creaking past, raising a yellow blur of dust before the soft tones of the field and sky. In the long grass of the meadow across the road the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... the fire with her back to him and took off her long soft gloves, her bracelets making a little jangling sound. Then she saw the torn picture and picked it up and shook her head disapprovingly. The overturned box lay nearer the sofa. She picked that up too, and began replacing its contents ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... needed for dissection. In his absence Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of green silk for herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the front door bell summoned her into the shop. The customer was an examination coach who came to complain of the non-delivery of certain frogs asked for the previous day. Mrs. Cave did not approve of this particular ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,—and this vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment of their unpractised hands on earth. The voice is always above the strings.—This I thought in my semi-mesmeric condition, perhaps. I soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said,—There is a telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... the noise short by standing up to play something nobody could sing to a jangling clamor of chords and runs on which he prides himself, that he swears is classical, but of which neither he nor anybody knows the name. Then he drank some beer and sang a comic song or two in English, we ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... poop, driving in a solid mass along her decks from end to end, and causing her to bump again heavily. Then came a terrific shock, accompanied by the heart-stopping sounds of rending and tearing iron, shearing rivets, jangling machinery, and, worse than all, the despairing screams of men who had been caught by the giant comber and swept overboard to death among the rocks which were grinding and tearing their way into the unfortunate ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... cigar and a vermouth. The doves coo and flutter from the dovecot; Hortense is drawing water from the well; and as all the rooms open into the court, you can see the white-capped cook over the furnace in the kitchen, and some idle painter, who has stored his canvases and washed his brushes, jangling a waltz on the crazy, tongue-tied piano in the salle-a- manger. 'Edmond, encore un vermouth,' cries a man in velveteen, adding in a tone of apologetic afterthought, 'un double, s'il vous plait.' 'Where are you working?' asks one in pure ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... twisted its length into the great station, the men about me rose and crowded down the aisle, and I heard the cries of newsboys and hackmen and jangling car-bells, and all the roar and tumult of a ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... There was a jangling sound of a bell on board the steamer, and the pilot in the pilot house was seen to send his wheel spinning over with frantic haste at the same moment that the headway ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... last "mat" in Miss Baker's tooth, when the door of the "Parlors" opened, jangling the bell which he had hung over it, and which was absolutely unnecessary. McTeague turned, one foot on the pedal of his dental engine, the corundum ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... he would try the effect of a cigarette, but the matches were not on the table before him. That obstacle, however, need not be insurmountable, for in a drawer at his elbow he kept a supply, and moving cautiously, for every movement set his nerves jangling, he turned on the couch and opened the drawer to seek the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... control yourself," said the Hermit. "And if you can only learn to stop making that jingling, jangling music perhaps you'll be able to save yourself from a ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... was justified on the instant. The speeding streamlined shape that had flashed up unobserved from below swerved sharply and exploded in a cataclysmic blaze of atomic fire that rocked the ship wildly and flung the three men to the floor in a jangling ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee

... her bewildered. A few moments since and all the joy bells of his life had been a-chime; they were still ringing, but jangling confusedly out of tune, and—now she was asking him to conceal the cause of his joy, that he had found her. He could not understand fully; his mind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... haunted him. But quickly he interpreted her expression as the somber, hunted look of a woman who would bear no more. Under the torn blouse her full breast heaved. She held her hands clenched at her sides. She was' listening, waiting for that jangling, slow step. It came, and with the sound she subtly changed. She was a woman hiding her true feelings. She relaxed, and that strong, dark look of fury seemed to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese about "Nina, innocente!" ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... past, bobbing down the track like a duck sailing over ripples. A local train clanged down to the depot and stood jangling its bell while it disgorged passengers for the last boat to the City whose wall of stars was hidden behind the drizzle and the clinging fog. People came straggling down the sidewalk—not many, for few had business with the front end of the waiting trains. Bud pushed the throttle up a little. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... who had been cowering under the beds, witnessed the terrible scene, and though they were frightened at their father's and mother's jangling, as they thought it would result in the latter being beaten—which was usually the case—at first they kept perfectly still, for fear of what the result might be to themselves if they drew their father's attention. But when he struck their mother with the trowel and ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... be correct in his diagnosis. The headache, backache, stiff neck and muscles with which Mullendore's illness had started were the forerunner of brown blotches, fever and jangling nerves. A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by "Doc" Fussel, who doubted that he ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... absolutely; the matter interested him as scantily—which is to say not at all—as did the fact that an escort of troopers of the State, very well accoutred and disciplined, followed the tonga with a great jangling of steel and ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... Braman around the middle, swung him aloft and hurled him through the window, into the street, the glass, shattered, clashing and jangling around him. He ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... means that it would have been better that Americans should never have achieved their independence, and better that, in 1861, they should have peacefully submitted to seeing their country split into half a dozen jangling confederacies and slavery made perpetual. If unwilling to learn from their own history, let those who think that it is an "illusion" to believe that a war ever benefits a nation look at the difference between China and Japan. China has neither a fleet nor ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... spurs jangling musically on his boots. "I've been thinkin' 'bout that theah road," he announced. "Any other trail ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... gages and oil-can, gave one look up the road and went on with his labors. In a few moments the jangling beat of many bells throbbed on the frosty air. As if answering a challenge, the locomotive's escape valve shot up ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... seemeth to me all the jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the fervour ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Milton, who sate down on the stone Seat, drew Robin between his Knees, stroked his Haire, and askt what we were talking about. Robin sayd I had beene telling them a fairie Story; and Mr. Milton observed that was an infinite Improvement on the jangling, puzzle-headed Prating of Country Justices, and wished I woulde tell it agayn. But I was afrayd. But Robin had no Feares; soe tolde the Tale roundlie; onlie he forgot the End. Soe he found his Way backe to the Middle, and seemed likelie ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... heard! I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have been hearing it constantly ever since. And this house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Antwerp. And it is a week off; and there is the bell still jangling its shadow dance out of Dinorah. An audible shadow you understand, and an invisible sound, but quite distinct; and a ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... vigorously asserts that Baguio has no equal on the globe. Certainly the climate is more nearly perfect than any other of which I have personal knowledge, and the delightful coolness and the bracing air afford heavenly relief to jangling nerves and exhausted bodies, worn out by overwork and by a too ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... was Sunday, a lovely June Sunday. The sunbeams were playing across his face when Job awoke, and the fragrance of roses filled the room as they looked in at the open window. How still and beautiful was all the world! No thumping machinery, no jangling voices, no grimy faces passing the window! Flowers and sunshine and the songs of birds, and—home! Oh, how ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... vicinity, or at least by that classical title are they designated by the Bethlemites over the way; but salt-water Jack and fresh-river Jack give them much simpler names, and like them a great deal better, more's the pity. We have heard the little jangling bells in the church pews, and they will not ring in tune, although they tell the deeds of charity; we have marched staidly home, and joined in Herr Sorgenpfennig's blessing over the midday meal;—Herr ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... from their hangers. Coming at last upon one made of the brown summer skins of reindeer, and trimmed with wolverine, he seemed satisfied, for, tossing the others into a pile, he had drawn off his blouse and was about to throw the parka over his head, when something fell with a jangling rattle to the floor. ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... were at sixes and sevens. A landing was made at the mouth of the Columbia in March 1811, and eight lives were lost in an attempt to head small boats up against the tide-rip of river and sea. After endless jangling about where to {110} land, where to build, how to build, the rude fort which Thompson saw had been knocked together. The Tonquin sailed up the coast of Vancouver Island to trade. On the vessel went Alexander Mackay to help in the trade with the coastal Indians, whom he was supposed ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... charged the descending slings and heaved bales and boxes about in frantic search. Men waved shipping receipts and shouted over the steamer-rails to them. Sometimes two and three identified the same article, and war arose. The "two-circle" and the "circle-and-dot" brands caused endless jangling, while every ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... will repay,' saith the Lord." What passionate utterance was this? The voice that had been musical now rang with jangling discord. The swinging of the foot behind the drapery ceased. ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... was a private in the Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers. He made a good soldier, for not only did he love danger as had his great-grandfather before him, but he had nerves which months of inaction could not set jangling, and a constitution which hardship and privation ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... lower school were rather intricate. The Guinea-pigs were not exactly the enemies of the Tadpoles, but the rivals. They were always jangling among themselves, it was true; and when Stephen, for the second time in one week, had hit Bramble in the eye, there was such jubilation among the Guinea-pigs that any one might have supposed the two clans were at daggers drawn. But it was not so—at least, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... down in front of the house and round the sides, for Dr. Carruthers' house was a corner one with a frontage to three sides. It was a hot summer day, and Jennings wondered disrespectfully what bee the old lady had got in her bonnet. Such a jangling of harness, such a flashing of polished surfaces! Every window that commanded the three sides of Dr. Carruthers' house had an eye at the pane. The tidings flew from one to another that Lady Anne Hamilton was ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... rose out of the black pew, and an insensate jangling of irons rattled against the hollow wood. The ironed man, whose head had been hidden, was writhing in an epileptic fit. The governor began signalling to the jailers, and the whole dismal assembly rose to its feet, and craned to get a sight. The jailers began hurrying ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... knelt, With sackcloth-shirt and iron belt, And eyes with sorrow streaming; Around him, in their stalls of state, The Thistle's knight-companions sate, Their banners o'er them beaming. I too was there, and, sooth to tell, Bedeafened with the jangling knell, Was watching where the sunbeams fell, Through the stained casement gleaming; But, while I marked what next befell, It seemed as I were dreaming. Stepped from the crowd a ghostly wight, In azure gown, with cincture white; His forehead ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... Earl, Mar bade I should purvey them steed, And bring them hitherward with speed. Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, For none shall do them shame or harm.— 'Hear ye his boast?' cried John of Brent, Ever to strife and jangling bent; 'Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, And yet the jealous niggard grudge To pay the forester his fee? I'll have my share howe'er it be, Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee.' Bertram his forward step ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott



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