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More "Buzz" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silence—they had expected him to answer her, but he stood staring angrily as one rebuffed—followed her cue and reseated themselves. He, too, dropped back in his chair, leaned forward for the decanter, and poured himself more wine. The buzz of talk revived, at first a word or two here and there, tentative after the check, then more confidently. Within a minute the voices were ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the temperatoor of the water. The fire is onder the personal charge of a faithful old nigger named Ben. When one of them stones is red hot, Ben takes two sticks for tongs an' drops it into the trough. Thar's a bile an' a buzz an' a geyser of steam, an' now an' then the rock explodes a lot an' sends the water spoutin' to the eaves. It's all plenty thrillin', you can bet! "My father, as I states, is pervadin' about, so clothed with dignity, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... His expression was solemn; it was evident that he was rather pleased at finding himself for once in the unusual position of having something to say and saying it. There was a buzz of whispered conversation round the table, then a sudden hush—the chairman was addressing ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... eying the unruffled Brazilian much as an Andulusian bull might glare at a picador. A buzz of angry whispering came from the crew. Even Iris flashed a disdainful glance at the man who uttered this atrocious sentiment. De Sylva raised his hand. He permitted himself the luxury ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... dead man's hand sticking up through the sand; the blankets soaked each morning by the heavy dew; the incessant rattle of a machine-gun behind Pear-tree Gully; the distant ridges of the Sari Bahir range shimmering in the heat of noon-day; the angry "buzz" of the green and black flies disturbed from a jam-pot lid; the grit of sand in the mouth with every bite of food; the sullen dullness of the overworked, death-wearied troops; the hoarse dried-up and everlasting question: "Any water?"; the silence of the Hindus of the Pack-mule Corps; the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... were very cruel, dear Buzz," said little Hum; "let us take him to our Queen, and she will tell us how to show our anger for the wicked deeds he did. See how bitterly he weeps; be kind to him, he will not ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... an addition to our forces. So 'ere's to you, though 'tis true that at El Teb you cut and ran; You're improvin' from a scuttler to a first-class fighting man; You can 'old your own at present when the bullets hiss and buzz, And in time you may be equal to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... number of cushions and rugs for the comfort of their passengers. Cricket dragged reluctant Hilda, who dearly loved her morning snooze, out of bed almost as early, though Eunice and Edna lazily turned over for another scrap of a nap. Still, they were not long able to withstand the general buzz of excitement, and long before seven they also were up and about, gathering together their various belongings. Cook had the generous luncheon-baskets all packed, with provision sufficient for a small regiment. Before breakfast ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... a buzz in the dining-hall which grew into a roar as the door closed. The boys, who had sat down to breakfast rather wanting in appetite—from the fact that their consciences were not very clear regarding studies in English and French or certain algebraic solutions or arrangements in angles ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... a sort of general gasp of low-voiced interjections and a little buzz of whisperings that sounded like emotion taking its breath. He called on my father to speak. The First Councillor rose to make a statesmanlike review of the crisis; and I understood that with his usual diplomacy he was putting aside from him the authority of leadership until he ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... Still, when the buzz of greetings had subsided, and at length "morning tea"—that time-honoured institution of Australia—had a chance to appear, it was of a nature to make the new arrivals gasp. The last four years in England had fairly broken ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... who was used to an occasional rebuff, and regarded a gruff word from his principal no more than he did the buzz of a beetle, "I know all that very well; but you, robust fellows, with millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and delicate influences which sometimes, notwithstanding, carry mischief with them, than we poor, sensitive valetudinarians, without a guinea in our ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Roy. Yesterday there had been a buzz of curiosity over the belated arrival of a new boy—an Indian—weedy-looking and noticeably dark, with a sullen mouth and shifty eyes. Roy, though keenly interested, had not felt drawn to him; and a new self-protective shrinking had withheld him from ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the eighth was longer, and, twisted into five knots, represented the five books of the Law. The right hand on the left breast, they saluted their host, and placing in turn a hand under his beard, they kissed it. A buzz of inquiries followed, interrupted by the coming and embracing of newer guests, the unloosing of sandals, the washing ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... you. Should your appetite fail, moreover, it will be my duty to revive it by pricking your eyes with the point of a knife until it returns. Also after each meal I shall wash your face, your hands and your feet with milk and honey, lest the flies that buzz about them should suffer hunger, and to preserve your skin from burning by the sun. Thus slowly you will grow weaker and at length fall asleep. The last one who went into the boat—he, unlucky man, had by accident wandered into the court of ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... working it had not troubled him, but beside the black shadows thrown by those hoary stones it had the effect almost of a presence. It was with a sense of relief that he contemplated returning to his machine and starting up his engine. It would whir and buzz and give back to him a comfortable feeling of life and security. He would walk round the stones just once and then be off. It was wonderful how they had defied old Time. As they had been placed there, quite possibly ten thousand ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... had arrived; when the buzz of talk ceased after repeated efforts on the part of M. de Bargeton, who, obedient to his wife, went round the room much as the beadle makes the circle of the church, tapping the pavement with his wand; when silence, in fact, was ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... found in the track of admiring social gatherings except by the deepest scheming. In her first English letters my mother had written: "It is said that there is nothing in Liverpool but dinners. Alas for it!" The buzz of greeting was constant. It must have been delightful in certain respects. She sent home one odd letter as a specimen of hundreds of similar ones which came to my father from admirers. Yet very soon individuals ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... to the end," she declared. "Oh, there he is now! There is his yellow jacket," she added, as the buzz grew louder about them, and glasses were levelled at the horses as they filed by spirited and springy on their way to the starting-point some furlongs down the course. No one else appeared to be looking at ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... go down to certain defeat before this relentless enemy within. These blood-thirsty villains began to probe eyelids, ears; in fact there was no part of one's anatomy where they did not alight; and unlike other members of their tribe that dwell farther north, who advance, buzz, sting and retreat these "Jersey Skeeters" knew no retreat. Hurriedly gaining the highway and cautiously proceeding there was seen broad grins on the faces of a detachment of soldiers in motor trucks drawn up ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... There was a little buzz through the church. All the occupants of the pews rose; all heads were turned towards the door. In the excitement of the moment the Beatricites clasped the Hartites by the hands, Mrs. Bell's fat fingers rested ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... instance, where a single tiny insect of the Zebra species nearly drove me out of my senses when suffering from fever. Probably, however, the mosquito only visits Cannes in the summer, though my wife declared she heard a buzz, and experienced a bite. It was certainly consolatory to think that I was no longer considered tempting enough, by these ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... the nineteenth century it is as well to say as little as possible about ancestors who possessed our vices without our amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were bred, no matter how, like flies by summer heat, out of that everlasting midden which men call the world, to buzz and sting their foolish day, and leave behind them a fresh race which knows them not, and could win no honour by owning them, and which owes them no more than if it had been produced, as midden-flies were said to be of old, by ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... your voice buzz like that, it tickles my ears,' it said rather crossly. 'You can always get back to Regent's Park in time if you keep fast hold of the ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the head of the stairs, ostensibly to be nearer a light, and took out his purse. While counting out the bills, he cast frequent glances down into the lower hall. The buzz of conversation came up ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... lazily in front of him. Presently, leaving his cigarette to smoulder, he began to buzz through his teeth, in the bucolic manner, an air of Offenbach. He was, in a word, entirely agricultural, and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... never left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies' buzz or the slight movement of some wounded ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... at the rate of thirty miles an hour along the broad waters of the nineteenth century. None of your pendulum machines for me! I should, to be sure, turn away my head if I should hear you tick, and mark the quarters of hours; but the buzz and whiz of a good large life-endangerer would be music to mine ears. Oh, no! sure there is no danger of your requiring to be set down quite on a level, kept in a still place, and wound up every eight days. Oh no, no! you are not one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mount ceased to move, and undoing his leathern belt with a jerk, he struck the camel a smart blow on the shoulder. There was the protesting buzz of a large fly and an angry, disabled blundering on the sand, silenced by the stamp of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... a much rarer type in Chicago of the early nineties—or in any American city—than he would be to-day. Milly's experience of the world had never brought her into close touch with Art. And Art has a fatal fascination for most women. They buzz around its white arc-light, or tallow dip, like heedless moths bent on their own destruction. Art in the person of a handsome, sophisticated youth like Jack Bragdon, who had seen a little of drawing-rooms ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... died away when the aeronauts landed on the estate of the Prince of Conde, who welcomed them with more heartiness than his ancestors were wont to bestow on visitors from the King. Mingling with the buzz of delight which accompanied these experiments, was an ever-growing rumour that certain Englishmen had made up their minds to cross the Channel in a balloon. It would never do to let them be first in performing such a feat, so Pilatre de Rozier lost no time in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... thou for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature; they hum and buzz there, on graceful film-wings:—searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill for honey; untamable as flies!—The ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... else can I be quiet? Now there's an end Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind, When I stood in the midst of those bare women, All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me: Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell-mell, Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. I beat them down; and now I cannot tell For certain what ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... silences which tinkle or buzz in the ears, causing them to ache with stress and strain; silences dull and sad as a wad of wool; silences as searching as the odour of musk—as soothing as the perfume of violets. The crisp silence of the seashore when absolute calm prevails is as different from ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Hence the buzz of talk rose loud, and the criticism stung the wife. She determined herself to learn the truth of these tales. Hitherto they were but the scandalous talk of people. Wife of the karo[u], naturally ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him with the near approach of the journey's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... appeared, and soon the streets were full of scurrying pedestrians. Most of them followed the direction taken by the mob. The listeners in the doorway could hear now, from far away, the sound of shouts and cheering. And from all around them came the buzz and hum of busy streets. The city ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... amid general consternation. As the dazed wag led his purchase away, he trembled as though from a first stroke of paralysis. The marketplace began to buzz, to hum, and then to shout, "A stranger sells horses for a penny, cash on delivery!" They laughed and crowded nearer. Merchants forgot their dignity, and came running from the streets of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... rapidly until in three separate lines appeared, "Has not seen him yet" (here came an exclamation of surprise from Lydia and Miriam, who knew how true it was, and even Gibbes looked astonished). "Captain, in Virginia. Captain Charles Lewis."[18] A perfect buzz of comments followed; every one asked every one else if they knew any one by that name, and every one said no. Gibbes was decidedly more interested than I. That odd "Has not seen him yet," expressing so exactly the fact that I pride myself upon, carried conviction in the truth of Spirits, almost. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... to buzz and hum with activities, not alone of lessons and lectures, but of sports and the rumors of sports. There were also whispers of hazings to come, and the luckless Freshmen cowered in their rooms, and trembled at the sound of a knock ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... of flies becomes of vast moment to a Pharaoh, whose ears are dinned with the buzz of myriad winged plagues, mingled with angry cries from malcontent and fly-pestered subjects; or to the summer traveller in northern lands, where they oppose a stronger barrier to his explorations than the loftiest mountains or the broadest streams; or to the African pioneer, whose ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... had happened in the ground-floor bargain square. The wasps' nest had suddenly turned into a beehive. The buzz of rage had lulled to the hum of industry. Fred Thorpe, the "aisle manager," was blessed with the tact which only some secret sympathy or great natural kindness can put into a man; and it had kept him at a distance from Miss ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... subscriptions back in the house, if you'll act treasurer and wheedle Antonio. Fairy Godmothers, Limited! It's a brainy notion. When shall you ask those kids? You bet they'll buzz in like bees." ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... his many happy excursions you will close the book with a feeling that it has done you good to have known him, lazy and blundering though he is, for he is indeed the best natured fellow, and he is so anxious to buzz into everything that attracts his attention that you find you have learned a great many things you never before dreamed of about the ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she - "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? I'LL tell you when it is time to swarm!" ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... don't worry so much through the day, but at night—at night, when one with infinite care has examined the inside of the mosquito-curtains to make sure none are lurking, and then, satisfied, has dived into bed and tucked the curtain carefully round, and is just going off to sleep—buzz-z-z sounds the hateful thing, and all hope of a quiet night is gone. The other night I woke and found G. springing all over her bed like a kangaroo. At first I thought she had gone mad, dog-like, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Whir! buzz! swosh! came something through the window into the lamp, and down squirming into the ink-bottle. Keturah jumped. If you have half the horror of those great June beetles that she has, you will know how she jumped. She emptied the entire contents of the ink-bottle out of the window, closed ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... anger it becomes high, harsh, and unpleasant; in love low, soft, and melodious—the variations are as limitless as they are fascinating to observe. Visit a theatrical hotel in a large city, and listen to the buzz-saw voices of the chorus girls from some burlesque "attraction." The explanation is simple—buzz-saw lives. Emerson said: "When a man lives with God his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook or the rustle of the corn." It is impossible ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... nothing less than physical force suffices to remove an Egyptian fly, who sticketh closer than his English brother. No shake or puff will induce him to stir an eyelid, and yet he is quick on the wing and you rarely get him, sleepy as he appears! He doesn't buzz, and there generally appears to be only one of him, but if, by the aid of a fly-whisk, you get rid of him, another ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the like equivocal sayings, were followed by a vague buzz, which was traceable to no individual author, but seemed to rise on all sides, like a dark mist, and envelop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... a sound of life. The twittering of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings, noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the heated air across the field cause a sense of motion ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... they that now thwart right, In wars will yield to wrong:[613] the gods are with us; 350 Neither spoil nor kingdom seek we by these arms, But Rome, at thraldom's feet, to rid from tyrants." This spoke, none answer'd, but a murmuring buzz Th' unstable people made: their household-gods And love to Rome (though slaughter steel'd their hearts, And minds were prone) restrain'd them; but war's love And Caesar's awe dash'd all. Then Laelius,[614] The chief centurion, crown'd with oaken leaves For saving of ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... swimming ease of the acting, on the stage, where virtue had its reward in three easy acts, perhaps it was the excessive light of the house, or the music, or the buzz of the excited talk between acts, perhaps it was youth which believed everything, but for some reason while Philip was at the theatre he had the utmost confidence in life and his ready ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... for him and them and to answer every call from along Providence Road. Thus it is that the motive power for the great cycles that turn and turn out in the wide spaces between time and eternity, regardless of the wheels of men that whirl and buzz on broken cog with shattered rim, is poured through the natures of women of such a mold for the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... little vestibule which was part of the woodshed. He passed an ash barrel and the odour of drying wood, hung cap and coat On a peg in the closet, lifted the latch of a pine door, and came into the schoolroom. If before nine, it would be noisy with shout and laughter, the buzz of tongues, the tread of running feet. Big girls, in neat aprons, would be gossiping at the stove hearth; small boys would be chasing each other up and down aisles and leaping the whittled desks of pine; little girls, in checked flannel, or homespun, would be circling ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... rushes before him, and shot along the blast, uttering a booming sound, so loud and stunning that he stood riveted to the earth. The noise resembled that which sometimes proceeds from a humming-top, if a person could suppose one made upon such a gigantic scale as to produce the deep and hollow buzz which this being emitted. Nothing could now convince him that he was not surrounded by spirits, and he felt confident that the voice of undiscovered murder was groaning on the blast—shrieking, as it were, for vengeance ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and noisy. Here the company were of both sexes, and of every grade and condition of rank, from the highest noble of the once court, to the humblest peasant of La Vendee. If the sounds of mirth and levity were less frequent, the buzz of conversation was, to the full, as loud as in the lower hall, where, from difference of condition in life, the scenes passing presented stranger and more curious contrasts. In one corner a group of peasants were gathered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... customers attends. Anon, With squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,—and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the Boat-Club out? Do the Pierian minstrels meet to-night? Or chime the bells of Boston, or the Port? Nearer ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... into stacks high above their heads, seizing one end of a log with their trunk, placing it on the pile of timber, and then taking the other end of the log and pushing it forward, finally placing it on their heads, and sending it into its place. They work undisturbed amid the buzz of circular saws and machinery, where it would seem almost impossible for animals of such huge proportions to escape injury. They carry their intelligence to the point of rigidly enforcing the rights of labour. Nothing will persuade an elephant to do a stroke of work, after he has heard ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... supple to thwart him openly; with her light fluttering nature she did not attack obstacles in front. When she wished to obtain something from her husband, or drive him the way she thought best, she would buzz round him in her grasshopper fashion, stinging him on all sides, and returning to the charge a hundred times until he yielded almost unconsciously. He felt, moreover, that she was shrewder than he, and tolerated her advice fairly patiently. Felicite, more ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly, Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs, Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly grim philosophers, With all your theories that sound so high: Hark to the buzz a moment, my ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... that his own preparations for escape had been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had already assembled, and only by complicated signs and countersigns could he pass through the outer guard and inner guard who close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and welcome greeted him as he entered. The long room was crowded, and through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the Bodymaster, the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face of Harraway, the secretary, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... given, the men piled their arms and seated themselves on the short turf. Presently Ralph heard a sudden exclamation of surprise and satisfaction as one of the men tasted the contents of his water-bottle, and in a minute there was a buzz of talk. Before scarce a word had been spoken; the men had been marching in a sort of sulky silence, disgusted at being taken from their beds for work they disliked, and at their long march through the damp night air; but ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Grodman had been honored with a seat on the platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M. P.'s of varying politics, a number of other Parliamentary satellites of the great man, three ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... of Welbury, when this piece of news was fairly in circulation in the town, could be compared to nothing but the buzz of a beehive at swarming time. A letter which was received by the Littles, a few days later, from Dr. Williams himself, did not at first allay the buzzing. He wrote, simply: "You will be much surprised at the slip which I enclose" (it was the newspaper announcement of his marriage). "You ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... office to interfere with his pleasures. He was planning a little trip to the Polo Grounds, in which Mr. Pett, his father, and a number of pop bottles were to be his companions, when his reverie was interrupted by a sudden cessation of the buzz of talk. He looked up from his plate, to find the entire company regarding Willie Partridge open-mouthed. Willie, with gleaming eyes, was gazing at a small test-tube which he had produced from his pocket and placed beside ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... our very selves not so long since, on a hot Saturday afternoon, sat at the auctioneer's table, and made nearly a clean sweep of a library of old English plays, where the maximum bid was eighteen pence, and there was a buzz through the room when one, no better than the rest, was ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... crowd began to buzz like murmuring hornets around a nest that has been tapped, when they pour out and cannot find the disturber. It was a rather helpless milling around the wounded man, and Nelly Lebrun was the one who worked her way through the crowd and came to Andy Lewis. She did not like Andy. She had been known ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... crowded with sails, the town not less incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. People walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. At night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at Mayence but the murmurings of the Rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water mills, which are fixt to the piles of the bridge ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... "The Times" of January 14th. On the same day, Gordon's name began once more to buzz along the wires in secret questions and answers to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... court is now adjourned until ten o'clock to-morrow morning," cried the bailiff in a singsong voice. The judge left the bench, the jury filed out of the box, and a buzz of conversation filled the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... conversation rose from the court. Presently the light began to fade, and the buzz faded with it; then some lights were turned on, and there was a crescendo of voices. It was possible to see more clearly the multitude of faces, all of them hot, nearly all of them excited and expressive. A great many people were standing, packed closely together and looking ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when the man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the marquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it. Besides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about—at the benches—at the table supported by trestles—at his basket of tools—at the stove where the furmity had been boiled—at the empty basins—at some shed grains of wheat—at the corks which dotted the grassy floor. Among the odds and ends he ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and sheep not in tonight, mosquitoes bad here indeed. Last night was certainly the most infernal night I ever passed, never slept. The mosquitoes were fearful although fires were lighted all round us, each man having his private bonfire, yet the mosquitoes were not to be frightened, they would buzz and bite; rolled our heads up in our blankets and oilskins but in a second or two the little brutes were under and buzzing away. The air also seemed impregnated with the little tormentors. Camped on claypan with little and bad water. Bullocks not up nor sheep. ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... great and striking, and difficult for those who have not observed it to comprehend. All the forenoon, screams, and cries, and croaks, and grunts, and whistles, ring out through the woods incessantly; while, if you listen attentively, you hear the low, deep, and never-ending buzz and hum of millions upon millions of insects, that dance in the air and creep on every leaf and blade upon the ground. About noon all this is hushed. The hot rays of the sun beat perpendicularly down upon what seems a vast untenanted ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... beautiful saddle horse—his gait a natural single foot—and I sometimes ride him, but most of my outings are on the electric cars. I might as well be on them, since I have to hear their buzz and clang both day and night from our rooms here in the hotel. The other morning, as I was returning from a ride across the river to Council Bluffs, I heard the shrill notes of a calliope that reminded me that Forepaugh's ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... so many springs of Action. These springs he enumerates in elaborate tables; and glancing over them this morning before getting up, I began with Charity, All-embracing Benevolence, Love of Knowledge, Laudable Ambition, Godly Zeal. Then I waited, but there was no sign or buzz of any wheel beginning to move in my inner mechanism. I looked again: I saw Arrogance, Ostentation, Vainglory, Abomination, Rage, Fury, Revenge, and I was about to leap from my bed in a paroxysm of passions, when fortunately my eye fell on another set of motives, Love ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... between the hedges of the tree tops the stars clustered forth; like mortals beneath, they seemed to shift and swarm and whisper. Then on the terrace the buzz broke out once more, and Dartie thought: 'Ah! he's a poor, hungry-looking devil, that Bosinney!' and again he pressed himself ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... two or three hundred rounds of ammunition; and these had just been placed in the car when the Chinamen arrived with the petrol. He implored the torchbearers to stand back while the inflammable fluid was put on board. This was done amid a buzz of excitement, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... found that we could not wait for the morrow. We did it all over again that afternoon, and that second time I was able in a measure to detach myself from the hum and buzz and the dizzying effect of foreign faces, and I began to locate impressions. My first distinct recollections are of the great numbers of high hats on the men, the ill-hanging skirts and big feet of the women, the unsteadying effect of all those thousands of cabs, carriages, and carts all going ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... from his lips. The girl had fallen on her knees, and buried her head in the bed-clothes, to deaden the sound of her sobs. Soubise and I were completely upset. Ah! those stifled sobs, those deadened groans seemed to buzz in my ears, and I felt everything giving way under me. I stretched my hands out into ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... filled Mme. Ricard's own rooms. However, this first evening I could hardly see how the rooms looked, for the lining of humanity which ran round all the walls. There was a shimmer as of every colour in the rainbow; and a buzz that could only come from a hive full. I, who had lived all my life where people spoke softly, and where many ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to rove about the river, Spying out long-buried treasures. But the Baron found you out soon, And will stop your bold proceedings. Now you'll get it, when he treats you, From his amply-furnished stores, to Some of his well-seasoned curses. Like a top your head will spin then, And your ears buzz like a beehive. But this will concern you solely. If he keep you in a dungeon Of your horse I'll take possession; It will well ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... inhabitants of our shanty. The peculiar delight of a mosquito is to arrive just at the moment when you are falling off to sleep, properly fatigued with your day's work. You hear a long, threatening boom, which finally ends with a sharp jerk, like buzz-z-z-z-z-z-zup. Then you wait in anxious expectancy for what you well know will come next. It does come, a sharp prick on some part where you least expected it. You slap angrily at the place, and hurt yourself, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... meadow, but my field,' says the querulous farmer, 'only holds the world together.' I quote another man's saying; unluckily that other withdraws himself in the same way, and quotes me. 'Tis the trick of nature thus to degrade to-day; a good deal of buzz, and somewhere a result slipped magically in. Every roof is agreeable to the eye until it is lifted; then we find tragedy and moaning women and hard-eyed husbands and deluges of lethe, and the men ask, 'What's the news?' as if the old were so bad. How many individuals ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Literary Man from London, when next he met Zora. Nunsmere was in a swarm of excitement and the alien bee had, perforce, to buzz with ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city: the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horned herd buzz in the exchange at two. Wives and husbands will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice, that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may ten to one dirty his ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... might be wearisome and inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an alchemist at the moment of success, a general in the hour of victory, or a financier with a gigantic scheme of swindling well on the market being annoyed by the buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very terrible brute with a hideous mouth and hairy tiger-like claws when seen through the microscope; but Lucian had taken away the microscope from his eyes. He could now walk the streets ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter and buzz of conversation in all parts of the House; general aspect more like appearance at theatre on Boxing Night, when audience waits for curtain to rise on new pantomime. Only the Speaker grave, even solemn; his voice occasionally rising above the merry din with stern cry ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... said the soldier, in reply. "Never tell me that a young lady can live in a buzz of admiration without knowing something about it. Ah, well, Miss Everdene, you are—pardon my blunt way—you are rather an injury to our race ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... in behavior, yet he is charged and overflowing with life and energy. One thinks of him as a bundle of steel wires and needles and coiled springs, all electrically charged. One of his sounds or calls is like the buzz of a reel or the whirr of an alarm-clock. Something seems to touch a spring there in the old apple-tree, and out leaps this strident sound as of spinning ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... plunges forth upon the January wind. Now when Mark was ringing the Sanctus-bell, it was with a sense of his place in the scheme of worship. If one listens to the twitter of a single linnet in open country or to the buzz of a solitary fly upon a window pane, how incredible it is that myriads of them twittering and buzzing together should be the song of April, the murmur of June. And this Sanctus-bell that tinkled so inadequately, almost so frivolously when sounded by a server in Meade Cantorum church, was yet part ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that such interference is bound to bring on anybody who attempts it. I didn't know, and therefore I should have thrown up the job as soon as I began to get wound in it. You have heard that gentle hum of the buzz-saw? You have seen how still it runs and how its feathery edge seems calm during the lull in the sawmill? You also noticed that no one who understands the sawmill business ever goes near it to give it a friendly tap just when it is looking that way? It is the same with the other fellow's ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... lances and spears reflecting the rays of the setting sun. The green of the foliage was relieved by banners of every hue, in bright contrast against the darker verdure, the tramp of war horses, the thunder of armed heels, the buzz of a myriad voices. And now the royal guard descends the gentle slope which rises just above the castle to the north, ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... amazing part of the story. The doors to the offices on both sides were open at the time. There were lots of people in each office. There was the usual click of typewriters, and the buzz of the ticker, and the hum of conversation. We have any number of witnesses of the whole affair, but as far as any of them knows no shot was fired, no smoke was seen, no noise was heard, nor was any weapon found. Yet here ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... gig was rather a new experience. The way was still, starlight, and lonely, until they came out into the neighbourhood of the mills. When the lights were visible, and a certain confused buzz of still distant voices gave token of the lively state of the population in the Hollow, Hazel and her faithful attendant left the gig and went forward ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Guido put up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings, disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee—buzz-zz! the bee was so alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he should not be stung if he did not move. He knew, too, that humble-bees ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... amiss, were she a devil. Yet have I gold flies from another coast. I dare not say, from the rich cardinal And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk, Yet I do find it so; for, to be plain, They, knowing Dame Eleanor's aspiring humour, Have hired me to undermine the duchess And buzz these conjurations in her brain. They say ' A crafty knave does need no broker;' Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... must have staged the whole thing pretty well—Carlis and Paddington and their crew—for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless space. That was all I knew until I woke up in ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... the first week. Alvina had a post-card from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent suggestions. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark, Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at an evening masque: So morning insects that in muck begun, Shine, buzz, and ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... laid his hands on the right one of the numerous bottles floatin' in the atmosphere about him he'd hold it a yard off, give a snort like a buzz-saw striking a knot, and after a minute's silence roar, 'Ain't that nice, b-y-y-y GOSH!' and ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... again faced Hsiao Hung. "My dear girl," she smiled, "what a trouble you've been put to! But you speak decently, and unlike the others who keep on buzz-buzz-buzz, like mosquitoes! You're not aware, sister-in-law, that I actually dread uttering a word to any of the girls outside the few servant-girls and matrons in my own immediate service; for they invariably ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... being taken rapidly by members about to dine; silent-footed waiters were hurrying to and fro, carrying out their various duties, while intermittently the sound of opening champagne bottles mingled with the buzz of conversation and the ripple ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... has a better set of guests than in the Golden Lamb. The place is full. The great Dr. Hammond sees his patients there, and it is all one buzz of the wits. It was because of that that my Lord Sunderland made interest, and got me ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... covered all over with little creatures with wings, and, as my fancy suggested, with stings,—the black eagles of Austria. How was I to carry in my pocket such a cage of imps? How was I to sleep at night in their company? Should they take it into their head to creep out of my book, and buzz round my bed, would it not give me unpleasant dreams? And yet part with them I could not. These black, impish creatures must be my ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... very closely the buzz of a bee, by forcing the breath through my nearly-touching teeth. A mimic can imitate the natural sounds of many animals, and other sounds heard in Nature. This mere imitation is what Lingual Scholars have dignified by the high-sounding and rather repulsive technicality, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in reveries. My sympathies drooped towards the ground like an untrained honeysuckle—and but for one, in my own house—but of this I cannot speak. It was a lonely life, growing green like the grass around it. Books and dreams were what I lived in—and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like the bees about the grass. And so time passed, and passed—and afterwards, when my illness came and I seemed to stand at the edge of the world with all done, and no prospect (as appeared ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... early in the afternoon, and I was trying to decide what would be the best time to visit the Armat house. The monkeys had not ceased to worry me dreadfully, and I had begun to think that when bees buzz around their hives they must certainly say something interesting to each other. Then a note was brought to me from Mary. I tore it open ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... the buzz of the car. Link appeared driving up the slope. He made a short, sliding turn and stopped before the porch. Link had tied two long, heavy planks upon the car, one on each side, and in every available space he had strapped extra tires. A huge cask occupied ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... connection. Roger went out to talk with Warner, while Aubrey fumed in the back office. He could not sit still, and paced the little room in a fidget of impatience, tearing his watch out of his pocket every few minutes. He felt dull and sick with vague fear. To his mind recurred the spiteful buzz of that voice over the wire—"Gissing Street is not healthy for you." He remembered the scuffle on the Bridge, the whispering in the alley, and the sinister face of the druggist at his prescription counter. The whole series of events seemed a grossly ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... day there was a grand talolo, or ceremony of gift giving. My mother, as guest of honor, sat just inside the guest house, on a pile of mats, with the rest of us in a semi-circle around her, all facing the sea. There was a hum and buzz of excitement in the village, and we could catch glimpses of fine headdresses and old women scurrying about with mats and flowers. Soon the procession appeared, led by the manaia in full costume, dancing and twirling his head knife, and accompanied by several young men. After them came others ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires. He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ceased, for from behind came a loud crashing noise, caused by some floor falling, and a buzz of wonder and admiration arose as the glowing windows suddenly belched forth flame, spark, and glowing flakes of fire, in so many eddying, whirling columns, which rose up and up to mingle and gild the lower surface of the cloud of smoke which glowed with orange and purple and red, while sparks flashed ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... thirty miles an hour along the broad waters of the nineteenth century. None of your pendulum machines for me! I should, to be sure, turn away my head if I should hear you tick, and mark the quarters of hours; but the buzz and whiz of a good large life-endangerer would be music to mine ears. Oh, no! sure there is no danger of your requiring to be set down quite on a level, kept in a still place, and wound up every eight days. Oh no, no! you are not one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as he stood at the Bar. Members, at first disposed to regard the whole matter as a joke, cheered Maclure when he came in at a half-trot; laughed when the Bar pulled out, difficulty arose about making both ends meet . . . Bursts of laughter and buzz of conversation in all parts of the House; general aspect more like appearance at theatre on Boxing Night, when audience waits for curtain to rise on new pantomime. Only the Speaker grave, even solemn; his ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... pale and trembling a little, but she said that she had been too anxious about me, in my absence, to think of herself, which was perhaps a good thing. I noticed, when I joined them in the garden, after the roar had changed again to a buzz, that Dierdre stood close to Brian, and that his hand was on her shoulder, her hand on Sirius's beautiful head. Yet I felt too strangely happy to be jealous. I suppose it must have been through my prayer—or the answer ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... A buzz of comment rose from all sides. "Is that all that you made of such a chance as that?"—"Certainly the gods waste their favors on such as Biorn Herjulfsson."—"Is he a coward, or what does he lack?" "He is as dull as ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... pay they had been getting from Government and private speculators, saying, "What's thirty cents a day in these times for a man who has to maintain himself and his family?" (Great sensation among negroes, and a buzz, with mutterings of "that's so," etc.). Then a paymaster made a spread-eagle speech. Then Colonel Ellwell was called out by Mr. French. Then Judge Smith mounted the pulpit and explained to the negroes the meaning of preemption, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... by such episodes and divertisements. By the time the clock in the steeple strikes twelve the church is well filled. The music of the organist, who has now reached Mendelssohn's Spring Song for the third and last time, is accompanied by a huge buzz of whispers, and there is much craning of necks and long-distance nodding and smiling. Here and there an unusually gorgeous hat is the target of many converging glances, and of as many more or less satirical criticisms. To the damp funeral smell of the ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... The buzz of groggy conversation was suddenly impinged on by the notes of a peal of bells from the tower hard by. Almost at the same instant the door of the room opened, and there entered the landlord of the little inn at Sleeping-Green. Drawing his supply of cordials from this superior house, to which he ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... weary movement which the first moment of death brings to man, before its chill severity comes. The sun was already low, bathing the mute figure in ruddy light, a gentle zephyr stirred a gray tuft of hair on the pale temple, and the big fly flew back again with a buzz past the white nose, motionless now. Round about, the ripe fruit fell heavily upon the turf, making the whir of the field-crickets cease for a moment. But yonder under the pear-tree sat Billy, looking into the evening sun with feverishly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... behind him. In this vehicle were pent up, first, the stately figure of Mr. Oldbuck himself; secondly, the scarce less portly person of the Reverend Mr. Blattergowl, minister of Trotcosey, the parish in which Monkbarns and Knockwinnock were both situated. The reverend gentleman was equipped in a buzz wig, upon the top of which was an equilateral cocked hat. This was the paragon of the three yet remaining wigs of the parish, which differed, as Monkbarns used to remark, like the three degrees of comparisonSir Arthur's ramilies ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the meaning of his conduct, said quietly to him, "I am not come here to-day to hinder or make game, but to ask pardon." The other looked at him in amazement, and for a moment knew not what to say. Then, while there arose a strange buzz of surprise and excitement among the bystanders, Walter asked, "May I stand in your place for a minute, and say a few words to these people?" The good man was clearly taken quite aback by this request, and looked hard at him who had made it. Was this a scheme for turning the preacher and ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... quickest to discern, Had known divine Sarpedon, from his head To his foot-sole with mingled blood and dust Polluted, and o'erwhelm'd with weapons. They Around the body swarm'd. As hovel-flies 780 In spring-time buzz around the brimming pails With milk bedew'd, so they around the dead. Nor Jove averted once his glorious eyes From that dread contest, but with watchful note Marked all, the future death in battle deep 785 Pondering of Patroclus, whether him Hector should even now slay on divine Sarpedon, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... thirst which now oppressed me soon became insupportable. As in daylight the blacks might be passing, I was afraid of attracting their attention by crying out, so that I was unable to ascertain how it fared with the poor dominie. When the sun rose, the heat became oppressive, and the insects began to buzz about my face, while I had no ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... about: What? you must knock down all that's in your way, Because you're posting to Maecenas, eh?" This pleases me, I own; but when I get To black Esquiliae, trouble waits me yet: For other people's matters in a swarm Buzz round my head and take my ears by storm. "Sir, Roscius would be glad if you'd arrange By eight a. m. to be with him on 'Change." "Quintus, the scribes entreat you to attend A meeting of importance, as their friend." "Just get Maecenas' seal attached to these." ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... anger. Deeply moved, he hid his emotion behind his opera-glass, fixing his attention on the least details of the stage arrangements, giving a three-quarters view of his back to the house, but unable to escape the scandalous observation of which he was the victim and which made his ears buzz, his temples beat, the dulled lenses of his opera-glass become full of those whirling multi-coloured circles which are the first ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... had of foreign plots, With foreign names one's ear to buzz in— From Russia chefs and ofs in lots, From ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... by thousands need not, in themselves, bring lines of worry to any foreman's brow; but there is the sting of being cheated, the possibility of the losses going higher unless a sharp lesson be given upon the folly of fooling with a very keen and active buzz-saw,—and it was the determination of the outfit of the Bar-20 to teach that lesson, and as quickly as circumstances ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... formed by grief. A stifled groan burst from his lips. The girl had fallen on her knees, and buried her head in the bed-clothes, to deaden the sound of her sobs. Soubise and I were completely upset. Ah! those stifled sobs, those deadened groans seemed to buzz in my ears, and I felt everything giving way under me. I stretched my hands out into space ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... delighted. God bless you both.' Then he made me tell him how it all happened, and listened without a word. I thought I'd faint. He pulled some gag about Daniel and the lion; then his voice got far away and the blamed wire began to buzz, so I hung up and beat it back ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... found it, and I'm gwine to give it up; and you have got no right to jeppardy my life, if you are fool enough to resk your own stiff neck. Gim'me that hank'cher! Fantods is played out. I would ruther play leap frog over a buzz-saw than—than—pester and rile Marse Alfred, and have the cunstable ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and hurried up to his friend's room. In a minute the wireless was buzzing and presently, back came the answering buzz. Georgie sat up ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... an American theatre, attracted very general observation, and gave rise to an indefinite movement, or buzz, among the audience, which for a moment filled me with confusion, but produced no visible effect upon the countenance ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... chemist, repudiated the notion of his being "a genius," attributing everything which he had accomplished to simple industry and accumulation. John Hunter said of himself, "My mind is like a beehive; but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, it is yet full of order and regularity, and food collected with incessant industry from the choicest stores of nature." We have, indeed, but to glance at the biographies of great men to find that ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... begin as near the Fountain Head as possible, I first of all called in at St James's, where I found the whole outward Room in a Buzz of Politics. The Speculations were but very indifferent towards the Door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the Room, and were so very much improved by a Knot of Theorists, who sat in the inner Room, within the Steams of the Coffee-Pot, that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... seem the passengers that buzz on her decks, while, from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Fine promenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidential passages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes, and out-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the one which should turn him around, and the blue button, which should make him walk into the living room. She heard the little buzz of mechanical life as Pascal began to move. But he did not go into the other room! He was holding a chair for her, and she sat down rather heavily. A sudden rush of pleasure reddened her cheeks. Not ...
— Weak on Square Roots • Russell Burton
... a whiz and a buzz behind her, as if all the bees in the world were humming, and the little old man cries out, 'There go your bees a-swarming and a-going off with ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of bees, as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she - "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? I'LL tell you when it is time to swarm!" Buzz, buzz, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... buzz of greetings had subsided, and at length "morning tea"—that time-honoured institution of Australia—had a chance to appear, it was of a nature to make the new arrivals gasp. The last four years in England had fairly broken people in to plain living; ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... 'that I have never attached the smallest weight to any of the insinuations which it seems people have thought worth while to launch at some member or members of your government with respect to my mission.' Though Mr. Gladstone was never by any means unconscious of the hum and buzz of paltriness and malice that often surrounds conspicuous public men, nobody was ever more regally indifferent. Graham predicted that though Gladstone would always be the first man in the House of Commons, he would not again be what he was before the Ionian business. They all thought that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... an altitude of one or two and one half miles for three hours and a half, stayed there until the silence became intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have been music to our ears. Here was absolute silence, the silence of the grave and death, a silence never to be experienced by living man ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... made might be retrieved by their energetic wills. He heard the bands of music playing in the distance. The merry chimes floated over the water, and bade him good speed. He thought that he could even discern the buzz of enjoyment, and the shout of anticipated triumph. He took out the last letter which Marguerite had written to him, and pressed it to his heart; that day, he thought, was to see them united never to be ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... ever I sat at. Not a health drank, scarce a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table. Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... were dying in hundreds, in their attempt to escape through the closed windows. There were plenty of apertures in the church through which they could have escaped, if they had had any idea of exploration. But they were content to buzz feebly up and down the panes, till strength failed them, and they dropped down on to the sill among the bodies of their brothers. An old man who was digging in the churchyard told Hugh that the same thing ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him through four acts. I'll imitate his walk. I'll cultivate his voice. We'll have the first act a tank act, and drop the hero into the tank. The second act can be in a saw-mill, and we can cut his hair off on a buzz- saw. The third act can introduce a spile-driver with which to drive his hat over his eyes and knock his brains down into his lungs. The fourth act can be at Niagara Falls, and we'll send him over the falls; and for a grand climax we can have him guillotined just after he has swallowed a quart ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... quiet again. The trout had stopped rising, in one of their sudden moods. A vast silence brooded over the place, unbroken by any buzz of my noisy reel, and the twilight shadows were growing deeper and longer, when the soft, gliding, questioning chatter of partridges came floating out of the alders. The leader was there, in the thickest tangle—I ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... with others more reckless still. No, she never said a word; she never stopped singing. But she altered her voice and began singing on such a mocking note that Frederic reddened to his very ears. Then his little head began to buzz with many thoughts. He learned that we must dread shame even more than danger. And he was afraid ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... speech were over. On the seventh the Court opened amid the buzz of excitement and alarm. The chief defendant in the suit was not present, and had sent—so counsel whispered to each other—a hurried note to the judge to the effect that he should be absent through the whole remainder of the trial owing to "urgent ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... past midnight, when he reached the long cross street that led to the lane of the cottage, and the buzz of the passing cars no longer disturbed the hoarse chorus of frogs. Sommers crept up the lane stealthily to the dark cottage, afraid for what he might find, chilled by the forbidding aspect of the place. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... facts leaked out, and a buzz of talk and comment ran through the waiting synagogue. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... all the midges that buzz about a man there happened to be an artist-midge with exceeding sensitiveness of soul, one which was able to recognise a fundamental identity of life between it and the man, one which was able to recognise samenesses of feelings ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the reliable motor took up its refrain, while the buzz of the spinning propellers announced that the plane was once more being shot through space by ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Among them, in the centre of the room, stood a samovar or tea-urn, humming and emitting clouds of steam. On the walls hung all sorts of coats and cloaks, among which there were even some with beaver collars or velvet facings. Beyond, the buzz of conversation was audible, and became clear and loud when the servant came out with a trayful of empty glasses, cream-jugs, and sugar-bowls. It was evident that the officials had arrived long before, and had already finished their first glass ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... were making their way across the room to pay their respects to the duke and the duchess, a buzz of admiration could be heard on every hand, and Mary whispered to ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... dancing-place. John lay quite still from ten till twelve at night. At last it struck twelve. Immediately there was a ringing and a singing in the hills, and then a whispering and a lisping, and a whiz and a buzz all about him, for the little people were now, some whirling round and round in the dance, and others sporting and tumbling about in the moonshine, and playing a thousand merry pranks and tricks. He felt a secret dread come over him at this whispering ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,—and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the Boat-Club out? Do the Pierian minstrels meet to-night? ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... eery combat. We swayed, shoving, kicking, wrestling. His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz rang in my ears to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my tiny Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great leap came ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... had been taken or were needed, for even in February the heat upon the shores of the Red Sea is very great; and as the evening went on the buzz of talk and laughter died out, and the troops lay down and ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... scheme secured the approbation of the Lady de Tilly, who had, in truth, contributed part of it. Le Gardeur said he was a poor fly whom they were resolved to catch and pin to the wall of a chateau en Espagne, but he would enter the web without a buzz of opposition on condition that Pierre would join him. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... an angry buzz in the room. Just as Uncle Denny started upon the platform, a tall lank farmer whom the man next him had been ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... 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 on at the same uniform growl, Edwards in an unvaried buzz. When I first landed in England, I was struck with the much greater variety of tone one hears in ordinary conversation. Your women, especially, seemed to me always just going to sing. And I fancied the address ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... palace of our kings. It is that St James's, where they dwelt till nobler buildings rose with the improving times. See here, Charles—there is less ruin here. This opener space was park and garden; and time has been that I have heard the buzz of men filling all this place, when the sovereigns came to hold their courts in that building. I think that this dreadful fire must have taken place before life was quite extinct; for see, there are heaps of bones here, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... any one subject for any considerable length of time. At the end of these reflections I fell back, wondering, again asking if I were really destined to watch by my mother's death-bed. That day I seemed to become a sheer mentality, a sort of buzz of thought, and I could think of myself only as of a fly climbing a glass dome. It seemed to me that I was like a fly climbing and falling back, buzzing, and climbing again. "Never," I said to myself, "have ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... November, 1880, while working in a sawmill, a piece of board was thrown from a buzz saw and struck him in the groin, causing a wound from which he ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... against the screen, in a voice soft and low he told her in a steady stream, as he swayed her back and forth, what each sound of the night was, and how and why it was made all the way from the rumbling buzz of the June bug to the screech of the owl and the splash of the bass in the lake. All of it, as it appealed to him, was the story of steady evolution, the natural processes of reproduction, the joy of life and its battles, and the conquest of the strong in nature. At his hands ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... track of admiring social gatherings except by the deepest scheming. In her first English letters my mother had written: "It is said that there is nothing in Liverpool but dinners. Alas for it!" The buzz of greeting was constant. It must have been delightful in certain respects. She sent home one odd letter as a specimen of hundreds of similar ones which came to my father from admirers. Yet very soon individuals make a crowd, and the person who attracts their attention is more nearly suffocated ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... luck," said her brother. "It's a chap I met last night; he's just out of a convalescent home, and a bit down on his luck." His voice died away in a complicated jumble of whir and buzz, the bell rang frantically, and Norah, like thousands of other people, murmured her opinion of the telephone and all ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... thing he knew was the call of a bugle, tense and shrill as the buzz of a mosquito close to his ear. And he laughed aloud to think how so small a thing had managed to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... There was another buzz, a click and an ungodly howl which was followed by the voice of Operator Ni-yun saying: "We are connecting you. There will be a slight ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... certainly had a common parentage. They all had pale eyes and narrow, loose-lipped faces. Subnormal and probably psychopathic, I thought. Jack-High Abe had his left arm in a sling and his left shoulder in a plaster cast. The buzz of conversation among the spectators altered its tone subtly and took on a note of hostility as they entered ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... Lady Cecilia's arrangements usually did. Helen heard the eternal buzz of conversation and the clang of instruments, and then the harmony of music, all as in a dream, or as at the theatre, when the thoughts are absent or the feelings preoccupied; and in this dreamy state she performed the operation of putting in the harp-strings ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... technique whereby a man can produce the illusion that he is striving hopelessly to utter something which, really, he could say with perfect ease. Thus he forfeits the sympathy of the House. Members stroll listlessly out. There is a buzz of conversation along the benches—perhaps the horrific refrain ''Vide, 'Vide, 'Vide.' But the time will come when they shall hear him. Years hence—a beacon to show the heights that can be sealed by perseverance—he shall stand fumbling and floundering ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Austin could only console himself with the thought that the real Mr Buskin was, no doubt, a most virtuous and respectable person who never gave Mrs Buskin—if there was one—any grounds for jealousy. Then the first act came to an end, the lights went up, and a subdued buzz of conversation broke out all over the theatre. The second act was even more exciting, as Sardanapalus, having previously confessed himself unable to go on multiplying empires, was forced to interfere in a scuffle between his brother-in-law and Arbaces—who was by way of being a traitor; ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... ruby-throat darted towards it, and attacked it like a little fury. Both came out of the flower together, carrying on their miniature battle as they flew; but, after a short contest, the bee turned tail, and flew off with an angry-like buzz,—no doubt, occasioned by the plying of his ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who had never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to be eaten by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... angry God Produced thee to the world, thou wicked sex, To be to man a plague, a chastening rod; Happy, wert thou not present to perplex. So serpent creeps along the grassy sod; So bear and ravening wolf the forest vex; Wasp, fly, and gad-fly buzz in liquid air, And the rich grain lies ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... torture. In the market-place of Loudun in 1643 this terrible sentence was carried into execution, and together with his book, Contra Caelibatum Clericorum, poor Grandier was committed to the flames. When he ascended his funeral pile, a fly was observed to buzz around his head. A monk who was standing near declared that, as Beelzebub was the god of flies, the devil was present with Grandier in his dying hour and wished to bear away his soul to the infernal regions. An account of this strange ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Come with me into the room behind, our cool little parlor, Where no sunbeam e'er shines, and no sultry breath ever enters Through its thickness of wall. There mother will bring us a flagon Of our old eighty-three, with which we may banish our fancies. Here 'tis not cosey to drink: the flies so buzz round the glasses." Thither adjourned they then, and all rejoiced ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... old dragon, all were still as mice, so that you might have heard the flies buzz about the inkstand. I then stood up, wretched as I was, and stretched out my arms over my amazed and faint-hearted people, and spake: "Can ye thus crucify me together with my poor child? have I deserved this at your hands? Speak, then; alas, will ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... eternal. No country could stand half an hour without law!! The very honest would turn thieves if not protected, and there would be a go. Besides, this great crime is like a trunk railway, other little crimes run into it and out of it; lies buzz about it like these Australian flies—drat you! Drunkenness precedes and follows it, and perjury ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... refuse tea and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast, Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that her appearance was highly creditable; ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... nineteenth century it is as well to say as little as possible about ancestors who possessed our vices without our amenities, our ignorance without our science; who were bred, no matter how, like flies by summer heat, out of that everlasting midden which men call the world, to buzz and sting their foolish day, and leave behind them a fresh race which knows them not, and could win no honour by owning them, and which owes them no more than if it had been produced, as midden-flies were said to be of old, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... the little town of S——, when Jacob returned from Boston, and told his singular story, may well be imagined. The whole community was in a buzz. ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... of customs began a tirade against Nogales, its climate, institutions, and citizens collectively and singly. The proprietor awoke to argument. Their talk grew loud. The assistant collector thumped the bar with his fist, and ceased talking suddenly. A subdued buzz came from the corner where the rurales sat, and ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... chilly anger. Of course this coldness exasperated me still more. I was so much excited, that I no longer recognized my own voice, raised to an extraordinary pitch, and the last words I screamed at him—I can't remember what unjust and mad remark it was—seemed to buzz indistinctly in my ears. For a moment, I thought Monsieur Petitbry's assault with violence was an accomplished fact. Pallid, with set teeth Henri made two steps ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... the side door of the Hallett home, the buzz of voices in the parlor was distinctly audible. Lulie heard the door open and met them in the dining room. She was looking anxious and disturbed. Martha drew her aside and questioned her concerning ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Trocadero. Carlotta loves the band and the buzz of Babel and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and the glare of light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter hostelry where the footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless and the walls in quiet shadow, where there was nothing but the mellow talk of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... signata,—as large as a hornet, is particularly useful in carrying off the teasing flies, the bloodthirsty motucas, which buzz round the voyager on the Amazon when at anchor near a sand-bank. Bates was rather startled by seeing one fly directly at his face, on which it had espied a motuca, and which it carried off, holding ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... I owe you one for that box of matches, Beany—er—Mr.—and it would be rather asinine for you or your pugilistic partner to begin monkeying with our buzz-saw. I happened, you see, to overhear part of your talk with J. Pinkney Hare just now. How others might view it I know not, but to me it seemed only fair to warn you that that interesting young man must be shunned by the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... another nest of wasps about my ears. The French fops, here, all buzz and swarm around her; each making love to her, with all the shrugs, grimaces, and ready made raptures of which he is master; and to which I am obliged patiently to listen, or shew myself an ass. These fellows submit to every kind of monopoly, except of woman; and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Never has there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that honored name into a public court,—to have my reputation worried at the bar by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... of two months, and have settled down to an unexhilarating but salutary routine. Each dawn we "stand to arms," and peer morosely over the parapet, watching the grey grass turn slowly to green, while snipers' bullets buzz over our heads. Each forenoon we cleanse our dew-rusted weapons, and build up with sandbags what the persevering Teuton has thrown down. Each afternoon we creep unostentatiously into subterranean burrows, while our respective gunners, from a safe position in the rear, indulge ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause, As man was slaughtered by his fellow-man. And wherefore slaughtered? wherefore, but because Such were the bloody circus' genial laws, And the imperial pleasure.—Wherefore not? ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... skirmishes, wherein all the chances are with the alert and light-armed enemy. Any personage who goes to war with boys is bound to be beaten, for he may threaten and attack, but he can hardly ever hurt them, and never possibly can conquer them; and they will buzz round him like wasps, will sting him and then be off, will put him to shame before the public, will tease him on his most sensitive side, will lie in wait for him in unexpected places with an ingenuity and a perseverance and a mercilessness which are born of the Devil, who in such matters is the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... finished speaking, and arrangements were being made in the usual manner for the drawing, a buzz of excitement arose among the Sisters. Suspense was written on every face, but no one showed any fear. Custom and habit, which govern so completely the feelings of people, prevented the Sisters from feeling wounded or alarmed at being disposed ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... to a small temple across the road, its outer court filled full of coffins, whether occupied or not, I could not say. A nice old priest promptly found me out, and taking me into an inner room made me comfortable with cups of tea. The buzz of voices told that a school was in session near by, and at the request of the teacher, a good-looking young man, I paid it a visit. Some twenty boys were hard at work on the classics and mathematics, undisturbed by the weird-looking gods around them. They seemed wide awake, and showed ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... begin to hear them talking about him," she went on with a chuckle. "He's coming into fashion, he's to be the new man for a while. You London people love a new man just as you do a new craze. You're fine talkers too. I like your buzz. It's a great hum, hum, buzz, buzz. It turns some men's heads, but it only sharpens others' wits; it won't turn ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... differed widely from the great modern schools, with their separate class-rooms and lecture-rooms. Discipline was not very strict. When a master was hearing one of the forms under him the other was supposed to be preparing its next lessons, but a buzz of quiet talk went on steadily. Occasionally, once or twice a week perhaps, a boy would be seen to go up from one of the lower forms with a note in his hand to the head-master; then there was an ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... flurry of meeting, the swift buzz of talk. Then Hope led the way into the great, airy parlor which she had not entered ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... on Harry Endicott's arm, in the full bravery of a well-chosen toilet, caused a buzz of admiration which followed them through the rooms; but Rose was nothing to the illuminated eyes of Mrs. Follingsbee compared with the portly form of Mrs. Van Astrachan entering beside her, and spreading over her the wings of motherly protection. That much-desired matron, serene in her point lace ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... been a monstrous flying thing like a giant blue-bottle fly that he had been battling in his sleep. Memory of the thing's high-pitched, droning buzz still rang in his ears. Then abruptly he realized that the peculiar buzzing was no mere echo of a nightmare. It was an actual sound that still vibrated from ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... never looking at a book at all. Likewise, although they were the sort of men to whom, in their more intimate movements, their wives would very naturally address such nicknames as "Toby Jug," "Marmot," "Fatty," "Pot Belly," "Smutty," "Kiki," and "Buzz-Buzz," they were men also of good heart, and very ready to extend their hospitality and their friendship when once a guest had eaten of their bread and salt, or spent an evening in their company. Particularly, therefore, did Chichikov earn these good folk's approval with his taking ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... direction. Most of them had got there ahead of us, and the galleries were all jammed. The Rue Royale, from the Palace around the park to the Parliament building, was packed with people, held in check by the Garde Civique. There was a buzz as of a thousand bees and every face was ablaze—the look of a people who have been trampled on for hundreds of years and have not learned to submit. The Garde Civique had two bands in front of the Senate, and they tried to play the Brabanconne in unison. Neither of them could play the air in ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... mysteries of the multiplication table, his vagrant gaze was always on the open window near which he sat. He could never study when a fly buzzed on the window-pane; he was always standing on the toes of his bare feet, trying to locate and understand the buzz that puzzled him. The book was a mute, soulless thing that had no relation to his inner world of thought and feeling. He turned ever from the dead seven-times-six to the mystery of ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... witnessed the swarming of bees? Have you ever heard the hum and buzz of them? So looked and sounded the bazaars that night. At every intersection of streets and passages there were groups, buzzing and gesticulating. In the gutters the cocoanut oil lamps flickered, throwing weird shadows upon the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... about the bee that is perhaps the most important of all," said Grandma thoughtfully. "It does wonderful things for those who listen to its buzz; but those who refuse to listen are sure to be sorry afterward. It is called Bee Prayerful." The children were eager to hear the story, so Grandma began ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... the study—that great, old room of mine, where I read and work. I was reading, curiously enough, the Bible. I have begun, in these later days, to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book. Suddenly, a distinct tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and distant, whirring buzz, that grew rapidly into a far, muffled screaming. It reminded me, in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock makes, when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down. The sound appeared to come from some remote height—somewhere up in the night. There was no repetition of the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... nature. Possibly, had he stopped to think, he might have weakened and fled. But the excitement of the chase still dominated him, and he had given himself no time for consideration before plunging in. Now, the buzz of talk and laughter sounded all about him; somebody slapped him on the back with a laugh of astonishment, and he began to realize what an impossible sort of thing ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... there, and had he not said that it was a good thing for him to sleep? It seemed to him that he had heard a buzz of voices; but he was sure that he was well now, only furiously hungry and thirsty, and when he raised himself he felt giddy. But that passed off by degrees, when he had eaten some of the food which had been left there. He drank out of the water-jug- ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... all over the modern world. We have already examined, in 'The Bull-Roarer,' a very similar example. We saw that there is a magical instrument—a small fish-shaped piece of thin flat wood tied to a thong—which, when whirled in the air, produces a strange noise, a compound of roar and buzz. This instrument is sacred among the natives of Australia, where it is used to call together the men, and to frighten away the women from the religious mysteries of the males. The same instrument is employed for similar purposes in New Mexico, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... sufficient wrongs, but the fact still remains that in some way Floyd is likely to make a great fortune for Violet, while the rest will gain nothing. More than all, Marcia has a good deal of the wasp in her nature, and loves to make a great buzz, as well as ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The Busy "B" is dead, No more we'll hear him buzz a-wing, Nor picture with a smiling dread The pungent terrors of his sting. As Io's gadfly was this "B" To Sentiment and to Pretence. Oh, Property! Ah, Liberty! Fallen in your supreme defence! Gone is the friend that in a phrase The ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... object, with apparently two horns and a wheel, rested inert at the foot of the sign-post; two negroes were wiping their foreheads beside it. That resolved itself into a man slumbering in a wheelbarrow, his white face turned up to the moon. A sort of buzz of voices came from above; then a man in European clothes was silhouetted against the light in the doorway. He held a full glass very carefully and started to descend. Suddenly he stopped emotionally. Then he turned half-right ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... lay there in my bag, the very happiest fellow in the wide world, the sound of my mirth was as the buzz of the wings of a fly to the mighty storm. Roar ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... from his distressing habit of allowing the office to interfere with his pleasures. He was planning a little trip to the Polo Grounds, in which Mr. Pett, his father, and a number of pop bottles were to be his companions, when his reverie was interrupted by a sudden cessation of the buzz of talk. He looked up from his plate, to find the entire company regarding Willie Partridge open-mouthed. Willie, with gleaming eyes, was gazing at a small test-tube which he had produced from his pocket and placed beside ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of wasps about my ears. The French fops, here, all buzz and swarm around her; each making love to her, with all the shrugs, grimaces, and ready made raptures of which he is master; and to which I am obliged patiently to listen, or shew myself an ass. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... soft Its evening psalms, when fragrant lilies Pointed up the way her Christ had gone, God called the wife and mother home, And bade him wait. Oh! why is it so hard for Man to wait? to sit with folded hands, Apart, amid the busy throng, And hear the buzz and hum of toil around; To see men reap and bind the golden sheaves Of earthly fruits, while he looks idly on, And knows he may not join, But only wait till God has said, "Enough!" And calls ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... if you don't hop round and git me my collars and ciffs and other clothes what I left here, I'll be durned if I don't flop you in about a minnit, I will by chowder. Wall that critter he commenced hoppin around and a talkin faster 'n a buzz saw could turn, and all I could make out wuz—mee song lay tang moo me oo lay ung yong wo say mee tickee. Wall I seen jist as plain as could be that he wuz a tryin' to swindle me outen my clothes, ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... confusion of preparing for the last and most elaborate feature of the day, Percival's enlistment was not discovered. It was not until the contestants ranged themselves in front of the judges' table that a buzz of fresh interest and amazement swept the deck. First came the Scot, lean, wiry, and deadly determined; then came Andy, plump and pink, with his fair hair ruffled, and a laughing retort on his lips for every sally that was sent in his direction. Last came ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... was a furious buzz of tongues, and, in the midst of it Mr. Raby disappeared, and the sword-dancers returned to the kitchen, talking over this ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... could he and his little bride proclaim their secret that would not do violence to their own taste or set a buzz of gossip going? That the horrid lips of gossip should so much as breathe the name of his Virginia—that Mrs. Grundy should dare shrug her decorous shoulders, if ever so slightly, at mention of that sacred name—. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... will do well to sit down," said she. "It may be that the baggage do not come immediatement." With this she bustled away to the Louise rabbit warren, wherever it was, leaving me to the tender mercies of fellow "B's," who began to swarm round me and buzz distractedly. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... mews and sometimes growls or "spits," and often purrs, especially when you tickle her ears. And a lion always growls when he talks. When he is angry he roars—that's the difference. And, I almost forgot, lions can purr, too, only it sounds like a buzz saw instead of the way your cat purrs. But then a lion's throat is very big, and so his purr ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... years ago, the Chaldean lover was carried. It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.[3] Significant form stands charged with the power to provoke aesthetic emotion in anyone capable of feeling it. The ideas of men go buzz and die like gnats; men change their institutions and their customs as they change their coats; the intellectual triumphs of one age are the follies of another; only great art remains stable and unobscure. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... to arrive about nine o'clock, the ladies in large numbers, and the room was soon abreeze with a buzz of conversation and the rustle of gayly- colored dresses and ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... own jewelry and the thrill of their wasted money that they were climbing into New York society—these and other curious types rubbed elbows in this melting pot of folly. The tinkle of glasses, the increasing buzz of conversation, the empty laughter of too many emptied cocktail glasses mingled with the droning music of an Hawaiian string quartette ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... all this, could not sleep all night long, even when it grew so still that one might have heard a fly buzz; he waited for daylight with the ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... force suffices to remove an Egyptian fly, who sticketh closer than his English brother. No shake or puff will induce him to stir an eyelid, and yet he is quick on the wing and you rarely get him, sleepy as he appears! He doesn't buzz, and there generally appears to be only one of him, but if, by the aid of a fly-whisk, you get rid of him, another takes ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... bees within a chrystal flowerbell rocked Hum a lovelay to the westwind at noontide. Both alike, they buzz together, Both alike, they hum together Through and through the ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the town Opera House was crowded to its capacity. There was a buzz and whispering as Joe and his party entered and made their way to their reserved seats near the center of the house, for Riverside regarded the famous pitcher as one of its greatest assets. He had ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... floor below came a breezy buzz of voices, laughter, the snap of ivory fans spreading, the whisk and rustle of petticoats. I leaned a moment over the rail which circled the stair-gallery and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... hero by her side, said they would make a noble pair. She had long been distinguished by his attentions, and he had come brilliantly out of the episode of the Frenchman, who had been his only real rival. Wherever they went, there arose a buzz of pleasing gossip and adulation. Mr. Nash, seeing them near him, came forward with greetings. A word on the side passed between the ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... each day seemed to drag itself out to the length of a month—until the darkness came; and then, with the realisation of the fact that I was so much nearer to a hideous fate, the hours seemed suddenly to have sped with lightning swiftness. The excited buzz and bustle of preparation pervaded the town all day, and every day, while night again became a pandemonium of barbarous sounds—for the tom-tom and flageolet concerts had been resumed with tenfold virulence since ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... am writing, as usual, by my window, the moonlight brighter in its whiteness than my mean little yellow-shining lamp. From the mysterious greyness, the olive groves and lanes beneath my terrace, rises a confused quaver of frogs, and buzz and whirr of insects: something, in sound, like the vague trails of countless stars, the galaxies on galaxies blurred into mere blue shimmer by the moon, which rides slowly across the highest heaven. The olive twigs glisten in the rays: the flowers of the pomegranate and oleander are only ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the ground-floor bargain square. The wasps' nest had suddenly turned into a beehive. The buzz of rage had lulled to the hum of industry. Fred Thorpe, the "aisle manager," was blessed with the tact which only some secret sympathy or great natural kindness can put into a man; and it had kept him at a distance from Miss Stein that morning. He knew the inner history of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... tree, where the branches that were still green sheltered him a bit, and there was a thick shadow from the nearest fir tree, whose boughs interwove with those of the maple. Here the bees didn't seem to notice him. He kept very still, listening to their angry buzz till it had somewhat quieted down. Then, instead of going about it with a noisy dash, as he had done before, he worked his way up stealthily and slowly till he could crawl into the crotch of the first branch. You see, that bear ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... first needs are animal. Stumbling over prostrate forms, cannoning against piles of heterogeneous gear, we make the buffet. A flood of light, the buzz of voices, and the hum of myriads of disturbed flies, and we live again. Filthy cloths, stained senna-colour with the spilt food and drink of months, an atmosphere reeking like a "fish-snack" shop, a dozen to twenty dishevelled and dirty men ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... to certain defeat before this relentless enemy within. These blood-thirsty villains began to probe eyelids, ears; in fact there was no part of one's anatomy where they did not alight; and unlike other members of their tribe that dwell farther north, who advance, buzz, sting and retreat these "Jersey Skeeters" knew no retreat. Hurriedly gaining the highway and cautiously proceeding there was seen broad grins on the faces of a detachment of soldiers in motor trucks drawn up beside the road. These boys seemed to thoroughly enjoy witnessing this ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... as bees about a thistle! And I'm to set the peelers on my son? If he'd gone with Peter, they'd have tracked his hobnails ... It snowed that night ... The snowflakes buzz like bees About the prickling thistles in my head— Big bumblebees ... I never felt ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she is! A great lady, of a type we're not familiar with, that's all. A relic of feudalism. I give you fair warning—don't monkey with the buzz-saw!" ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... but beside the black shadows thrown by those hoary stones it had the effect almost of a presence. It was with a sense of relief that he contemplated returning to his machine and starting up his engine. It would whir and buzz and give back to him a comfortable feeling of life and security. He would walk round the stones just once and then be off. It was wonderful how they had defied old Time. As they had been placed there, quite possibly ten thousand years ago, so ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a faint buzz in the assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... not buzz about over the flower, But come here and play with me, do: The Sparrow won't come and stay with me an hour But stay, pretty Bee—will ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... swarm by with buzz and boom, And in the field and garden a thousand blossoms bloom. Within the farmer's meadow a brown-eyed daisy blows, And down at the edge of the hollow a red and thorny rose. But Polly!—Polly!—The cows are in the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... whiz and a buzz behind her, as if all the bees in the world were humming, and the little old man cries out, 'There go your bees a-swarming and a-going off ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... weak, and there was such a pain in my head as I began to remember it all once more, that I could not ask any more questions. Presently my head began to buzz and the pain in it to get worse, and then for a week I had a fever that came near to taking me off. But I pulled through"—he squeezed his wife's hand, that again had been laid in his—"and in three weeks I was back with the regiment again. It was all ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... more regular. All the roads we caught sight of in the country seemed to be bearing their load of men and of machines. Here and there a horse which had succumbed at its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. A subdued roar rose to the ear, made up of trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the buzz of motors, and of a multitude talking ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... city, or kingdom, is in the best condition, when there is the least noise or buzz in it."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 171. "When a direct address is made, the noun, or pronoun, is in the nominative case independent."—Ingersoll's Gram., p. 88. "The verbs love and teach, make loved, and taught, in the imperfect and participle."—Ib., p. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the few Servians in high office who retains his old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds one of the Farnese Hercules. Then what a medley of languages—Servian, German, Russian, Turkish, and French, all in full buzz! We proceeded to the dining-room, where the cuisine was in every respect in the German manner. When the dessert appeared, the Prince rose with a creaming glass of champagne in his hand, and proposed the health of the Sultan, acknowledged by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... fates flung him another chance—a chance that for the moment looked like no chance; looked, indeed, like a certainty of sudden death. A soft, whistling hiss sounded in the air above them, a note different from the shrill whine and buzz of bullets, the harsh rush and shriek of the shells. The next instant a dark object fell with a swoosh and thump in the bottom of the trench, rolled a little and lay still, spitting a jet of fizzing sparks and ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning. In America, on the other hand, the society of your husband, the fond cares for the children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements of the grounds, fill every moment with a healthy and an useful activity. Every ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... city, and saw from afar its long streets, its brick warehouses, its white cottages, and its overshadowing trees,—all peaceful and undisturbed by flames,—it seemed, in the men's favorite phrase, "too much good," and all discipline was merged, for the moment, in a buzz ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... With a self-control that was unlike her, an unnatural product of her unnatural state, she locked her jaws together that she might not scream this once. And in the eery stillness that followed the effort, which had made her ears buzz and her temples throb, she heard quite sanely Florence's denial of some charge her twin ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... with one final round of cheers and clapping, and then, as the curtains fell together once more and the orchestra slid unobtrusively into the entr'acte music, a buzz ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... assaulted him. That journalist is still in jail. In Brussels a German officer tried to blue-pencil a cable Gibson was sending to the State Department. Those who witnessed the incident say it was like a buzz-saw cutting soft pine. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Welbury, when this piece of news was fairly in circulation in the town, could be compared to nothing but the buzz of a bee hive at swarming time. A letter which was received by the Littles, a few days later, from Dr. Williams himself, did not at first allay the buzzing. He wrote, simply: "You will be much surprised at the slip which I enclose" (it was the newspaper announcement of his ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... Seemed like I saw the march o' regiments o' children, Marching to the robin's fife and cricket's rat-ta-tat! Lily-banners overhead, with the dew upon 'em, On flashed the little army, as with sword and flame; Like the buzz o' bumble-wings, with the honey on 'em, Came an eerie, cheery chant, ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... had of foreign plots, With foreign names, one's ear to buzz in! From Russia, shefs and ofs in lots, From Poland, owskis ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hundred and forty-six supernumerary officers were brushed off in one day, who had long been sucking the vital blood and spirit of the nation. Was it to be wondered at, if this swarm should raise a buzz about him?" Gerry fought on almost singlehanded, but he could not refute the evidence that he had invited. He lost his temper and resorted to sarcasm. If a single head of the Treasury was so desirable, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... and buzz of congratulations. He smiled, because he had to smile, and grasped outstretched hands because he had to grasp them. The moment it was possible to get away, he walked blindly and hurriedly to the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... whom they may devour, and adding to the instinct of the brute the intellect of man, and the genius of woman. I can understand that those little spiders, Mademoiselle de Belor, Mademoiselle de Trans, and others, after working so long at their webs without catching a fly, without so much as hearing a buzz, should be furious; I can even forgive their spiteful speeches. But that you, who can marry your daughter when you please, you, who are rich and titled, you who have nothing of the provincial about ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... that the Socialist party represented the real opinion of the people. After several days of discussion all factional differences were patched up and the Socialists were ready to present a solid front when the fight came in the Reichstag on September 28th. On the 27th, Berlin hotels began to buzz with excitement over the possibilities of overthrowing the Chancellor. The fight was led by the National Liberals and Centre Party groups. It was proposed by Dr. Coerting, an industrial leader from ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the reaction of those about her when once she was dead, and they were quite out of her reach. There is always a reaction when feebler personalities have to fill the space left by a tyrant. He could realise the buzz of gossip, and the sense of courage with which servants and tradesmen would make wild, impossible stories of her wicked life. He came back from these thoughts with a certain shock when he found ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... into the market, conscious of a buzz which rose to a loud hum. The bellowing of beasts, the cries of vendors, the scuffling of many feet, all blended into one great sound—the voice of ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... to the rescue. He won Mrs. Bullsom's eternal gratitude by diverting Mrs. Seventon's attention from her, and thereby allowing her a moment or two to recover herself. Somehow or other a buzz of conversation was kept up until the solemn announcement of dinner. And when she was finally seated in her place, and saw a couple of nimble waiters, with the greengrocer in the back, looking cool and capable, she felt that the ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... just ending when Ibarra arrived. His presence occasioned a buzz of conversation. The attention of everybody was fixed on him and ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... deeply. He regarded the various articles, held fascinated as by something evil but irresistible. He watched Bill as he replaced them on the bunk beside him. Then, for a few seconds, the sounds of activity outside, and the buzz of the swarming flies alone broke ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... eyes toward the azure And called down curses on my bloody head... "You buzz about," his peroration ran, "Like a bluebottle in a sugar-bowl. Thank God we have a Navy!" and my feet, Turned outward, as they had been drilled to turn, At forty-five degrees or thereabouts, Itched to join issue with his swollen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... Street of Ink, O Street of Ink, Where printers and machinsts swink Amid the buzz and hum and clink; By night one cannot sleep a wink, There is no time to stop or think, One half forgets to eat or drink, One's brains are knotted in a kink, One always lives upon the brink Of "happenings" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... the Literary Man from London, when next he met Zora. Nunsmere was in a swarm of excitement and the alien bee had, perforce, to buzz with the rest. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... a-strikin' Chris'mas-gif now. Come 'long, go ter bed, honey. You needs a res', but I ain' gwine sleep none, 'caze all dis heah news what you been a-tellin' me, hit's gwine ter run roun' in my head all night, same as a buzz-saw." ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... opening stages. Break the ice and all that sort of thing. Nothing like collecting a gang, you know. Moments when a feller needs a friend and so forth. Say the word, and I'll buzz along and ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His guilt is clear, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... there are some who regret this, who associate national greatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of factories and with large dividends; and others, again, who wish that our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom of our neighbours. But I raise the standard of idealism, to try everything by it, every custom, every thought before ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... have you been hiding yourself? I've been hunting you some time. A little cut, I suppose: never mind, my boy, you'll be better presently. Here's glorious sport on foot; don't you hear the war-cry?" At this moment a buzz of distant voices broke upon the ear like the mingled shouts of an election tumult. "There they are, old fellow: come, buckle on your armour—we must try your mettle to-night. All the university are out—a glorious row—come along, no shirking—-the togati ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... was satisfied, then began the buzz of conversation to arise, then the gleemen tuned their harps to sing the praises of Norman warriors; nor did the toasts linger, nor was the drinking of many ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... him. He thought to escape their vicious attacks by paddling faster, but it was no use; they had come to stay. Trailing after him a long uneven stream, they seemed to take turns in tormenting him, and as the leaders became satiated, they fell back, allowing the rear rankers to buzz forward and renew the attack. Piang longed for a certain kind of moss that grows at the roots of trees, but his keen eyes could not ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... distance. But in a wait that was longer than usual, he was awakened to his surroundings: a stir ran over the audience, like a gust of wind over still water; the heads in the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded; there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... figure of Lester, and the trembling and veiled forms that clung to him, arrested all eyes. They at length gained their seats, and it was not long before a bustle in the court drew off attention from them. A buzz, a murmur, a movement, a dread pause! Houseman was first arraigned on his former indictment, acquitted, and admitted evidence against Aram, who was thereupon arraigned. The prisoner stood at the bar! Madeline gasped for ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to hear the language of nature here, with the buzz of empty tongues and the echo of unmeaning laughs in the ear; where, if a word of sentiment were over-heard, it would be bandied from lip to lip with hollow mockery? Come with me into the garden, where the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ethics was deplorable, and Austin could only console himself with the thought that the real Mr Buskin was, no doubt, a most virtuous and respectable person who never gave Mrs Buskin—if there was one—any grounds for jealousy. Then the first act came to an end, the lights went up, and a subdued buzz of conversation broke out all over the theatre. The second act was even more exciting, as Sardanapalus, having previously confessed himself unable to go on multiplying empires, was forced to interfere ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... be here at this hour. Excuse me for a moment," and before Handy could say another word Fogg was half-way down the first flight of stairs. The noise of the opening and closing of the street door was heard, and then succeeded a buzz of female voices accompanied by a patter of feet on the stairs. Before Handy had time to prepare to receive visitors, the door opened and Fogg, his face lighted up with the broadest kind of a smile, made his appearance, and ushered in the committee, which ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... extreme end of the canyon below the Cat's Paw came the crash of a track-torpedo, answered almost instantly by a second, above the break. It was the warning signal to get into the clear. There was a buzz of rapid movement among the laborers. In twos and threes and dozens, a ragged procession of lanterns and torches, they retreated, foremen urging the laggards, until only a single man at each end of the broken track kept within sight of the tiny red lantern on the ledge. Again it swung ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... going I heard a loud buzz above my head, and something hit me in the face. It was a beetle, whirring about in the air, and as I turned to leave poor Robin the beetle sat down on him, on the middle of his red breast, and by still hearing the buzzing, I found that another ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... out comes electricity. You pipe this through copper wire to whatever devices you have, and they can't be very many. You say you talk across the country. I'll bet you don't talk at all but send little clicks, dots and dashes.... I'm right aren't I?" The foot shuffling and rising buzz from the adepts was a sure sign that he was hitting close. "I have an idea for you, I think I'll invent the telephone. Instead of the old clikkety-clack how would you like to really talk across the country? ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the clouds, a radiant stream, Tips with etherial dew the mountain's brim. Th' unfolding roses, and the op'ning flow'rs Imbibe the dew, and strew the varied bow'rs, Diffuse nectarious sweets around, and glow With all the colours of the show'ry bow The industrious bees their balmy toil renew, Buzz o'er the field, and sip the rosy dew. But yonder comes th'illustrious God of day, Invests the east, and gilds the etherial way; The groves rejoice, the feather'd nations sing, Echo the mountains and the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Mis' Middleton, when you speak of her, with your voice like a buzz-saw, and it ain't because you're high and mighty with me, 'cause you ain't. You're like a sister to me, and I ain't once thought of up and leavin' sence you come as I did frequent before. And besides, when you talk of himself, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Commons blossomed to-night like a rose-garden. Yesterday, and for days before, empty benches and a fagged remnant wrestling with routine votes. To-night House crowded, and buzz of excitement filled chamber. GLADSTONE going to move hostile Resolution on Government proposal to proclaim Land League. Every Member in town early in his place. Members from afar arrived post haste. Even RANDOLPH, temporarily returns. Old Morality smiles ghastly smile ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... again You touch! 'tis o'er—that plaintive strain, That mournful buzz, that struggle vain, Proclaim your doom: Up to the murderous den you're ta'en, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... four; but there came no answering call. Only the buzz and snap of the ever-increasing ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... also marked a great difference in the manner of the people in the streets. The buzz of talking and laughing was hushed, as they approached. People turned away, as if desirous of avoiding the sight of them. The priests regarded them with an insolent air. On one or two occasions they were roughly jostled, and on arriving at the end of a street ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Danvers stepped back to his seat amid a buzz of blended approval and hisses, which came to his brain as the sound of swarming bees. He felt sick and weak. His appeal seemed hopelessly futile. But he sat erect, with no sign of discouragement, and looked fixedly at Senator Blair in the hope of seeing some inkling ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... through the crowd like a pile-driver, and Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk. The tenderfeet watched them reverently, for to them they were as Northland divinities. The buzz of conversation rose again. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... at first; but when I looked again there he was still, with a kind of question in his eyes, as if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to see him. I wonder I didn't drop. I know that everything was turning round, and the words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee in my ear. I didn't know what to do. Should I stop the service and make a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... gave quite a start at sight of it, and very hastily went up the hall to the high table, and bending his knee so as just to touch in passing the fifth step and the tenth, or last, presented it to the prior with comments. Instantly a dozen knowing eyes were fixed on it, and a buzz of voices was heard; and soon Gerard saw the prior point more than once, and the monk came back, looking as proud as Punch, with a savoury crustade ryal, or game pie gravied and spiced, for Gerard, and a silver grace cup ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... We—will we not assail it, bleed it in the gallant days to come? we two!' The picture of his bride and him drinking the sun down after a day of savage toil was in the shout—a burst unnoticed in the incessantly verbalizing buzz of a continental supper-table. Clotilde acquiesced: she chimed to it like a fair boonfellow of the rollicking faun. She was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was to give him a dinner at which all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the outside, and gossip ran ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sleepit whan he was at the castle?" he inquired across the buzz and whiz and hum of the wheel. Through the low window, betwixt the leaves of the many plants that shaded it, he could see the sun shining hot upon the bare street; but inside was soft ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... for the railroad to be built an' all the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance. "We're the real goods, Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on a buzz-wagon an' ask you." ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... fire had come from behind the cabin, and another bullet, finding one of the gaping cracks, passed between them with a sound like the buzz of a monster bee. With a sudden cry he caught her in his arms and held her tight, as if in his embrace ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... last waltz was just o'er. The chaperons and dancers were all in a flutter. A crowd block'd the door: and a buzz and a mutter Went about in the room as a young man, whose face Lord Alfred had seen ere he enter'd that place, But a few hours ago, through the perfumed and warm Flowery porch, with a lady that lean'd on ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Florus' lot; To wander through the shops for drink, Or, into foolish dreaming sink In a cook-shop, where sticky flies Buzz round him till he shuts his eyes Is Florus' taste—I'd ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... My head's all of a buzz. Who ran? What have you been doing to my neck?" continued the lad, passing his left hand across his throat. "Something seemed to jerk across me just ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile. "And if they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I really did remarry? But the worst of it is"—and Rachael reaching for The Way of All Flesh sighed wearily—"the ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... and the loud, ceaseless buzz of the myriads of flies darting here and there over the sand and lighting again and again upon the superheated walls, when they were not torturing horse, camel and man, fell strangely upon Frank's ears as he grew more calm, and his doubts and fears died out now ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... there was a drift here and there in a corner of pasture wall in the valley; but the springtime green was beginning to hover over the wet places in the fields; the catkins silvered the golden tracery of the willow branches by the brook; there was a buzz of bees about them, and about the maples, blackened by the earlier flow of sap through the holes in the bark made by the woodpeckers' bills. Now and then the tremolo of a bluebird shook in the tender ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the booming of the gong followed a sound of many footsteps and a buzz of subdued conversation. Keeping well back in the welcome shadow I watched, with bated breath, the opening of the door ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... amiable personage, was interested in her thirst for knowledge of railway affairs, and answered her innumerable questions in patient detail until his head began to buzz and he began to feel as though he were attached to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... glistened against the dark mahogany. Slips of white napery ran down on either side, on which the glasses, silver and cutlery lay. They took their places, the presidential hammer tapped, and the Chaplain, rising, offered brief thanks. Immediately after a buzz of conversation ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... I be quiet? Now there's an end Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind, When I stood in the midst of those bare women, All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me: Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell-mell, Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. I beat them down; and now I cannot tell For certain what they were. I can call up Naught ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... masked by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces. I did not touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by the warm silence about me. There was no sound but the high, singsong buzz of wild bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I peeped over the edge of the bank to see the little stream that made the noise; it flowed along perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut off from the muddy main current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the hall I found a number of the shipwrecked sailors, looking all the better for their night's repose, who set up a buzz of pleasure and ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gold flies from another coast. I dare not say, from the rich cardinal And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk, Yet I do find it so; for, to be plain, They, knowing Dame Eleanor's aspiring humour, Have hired me to undermine the duchess And buzz these conjurations in her brain. They say ' A crafty knave does need no broker;' Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. Well, so its stands; and thus, I ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... sat idly wondering thus, with the sleepy buzz of summer insects and melodious twittering of birds soothing her senses like a lullaby, the old gate groaned upon its rusty hinges, and a middle-aged woman in a black gown and a white cap appeared—a female who recognised Captain ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... traitor!' Latimer's urgings came across the sea of heads. 'Here sitteth his Majesty's council——' At these words went up a little buzz of question, but sufficient from all that great crowd to send as it were a wind that blew away the Bishop's words. For the style 'his Majesty' was so new to the land that people were questioning what new council this might be, or what lord's whose ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... character in early youth, that he felt dislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, without previously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he looked about in order to select the person with whom he would most willingly hold communication, the buzz around saved him in some degree the trouble of interrogatories. The names of Lochiel, Clanronald, Glengarry, and other distinguished Highland Chiefs, among whom Vich Ian Vohr was repeatedly mentioned, were as familiar ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on early arrival. The female sits apparently motionless, while the little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes. Suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others immediately disappear. In these cases the males do not fight or struggle in any ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half moon, was telling them to be silent ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... with sails, the town not less incumbered with bales, nor more free from bustle, than formerly. People walk, squeak, push, sell, buy, sing, and cry; in fact in all the quarters of the town, in every house, life seems to predominate. At night the buzz and noise cease, and nothing is heard at Mayence but the murmurings of the Rhine, and the everlasting noise of seventeen water mills, which are fixt to the piles ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... An angry buzz sounded from the log and the bees began crawling out at the end. Hinpoha fled through the woods with Sahwah close at her heels. By the time they reached camp Hinpoha's hand was swelled all out of shape. It was all she could do to repress a cry of pain. Nyoda ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Limps after in base imitation. Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity,— So it be new there's no respect how vile,— That is not quickly buzz'd into his ears? Then all too late comes counsel to be heard, Where will doth mutiny with wit's regard. Direct not him whose way himself will choose: 'Tis breath thou lack'st, and ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... allotted to strangers of a certain rank. The House was crowded, and every countenance was pictured with interest and solemn anxiety. Grey, Sheridan, and other distinguished names of party, had already taken their seats; but the great heads of Government and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz among the crowd who filled the floor,—and the name of Fox repeated in every tone of congratulation, announced the pre-eminent orator of England. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struck with the incomparable similitude of all that I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... "Buzz, buzz, buzz," grumbled Bumble the Bee. "Can't, for I have to get a sack of honey," and off he hurried to ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... sound Under the boughs. The tinkle of the brook is there, And cow-bells wandering through the fern, And silver calls From waterfalls, And echoes floating through the air From happiness I know not where, And hum and drone where'er I turn Of little lives that buzz and die; And sudden lucent melodies, Like hidden strings among the trees ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... thinking, if a man had the art of the second sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by observing the different shapes, sizes, and colors of those swarms of lies which buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horses' ears in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... reached and their advice or explanations heard. This presumably brilliant assemblage of the financial weight and intelligence of the city appeared as solemn as owls under the pressure of a rumored impending financial crisis. Before Arneel's appearance there was a perfect buzz of minor financial gossip, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and the dim buzz of the wire sounded emptily back to her anxious ear. At last she gave it up, and went out to the street to look up and down. If she only knew which way was Park Avenue! She could hear the engine now, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... meet us, beating tom-toms and howling and screaming. On seeing me they redoubled their yells and assumed a threatening attitude, which was instantly quelled by a few words shouted by my escort. A buzz of wonder succeeded the war-cries and yells of the moment before, and the whole dense mass proceeded down the broad central street of the town, having my escort and myself in ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are so very insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of the one or free from the other is to make yourself doubly ridiculous. Littleness is their element, and they give a character of meanness to whatever they touch. They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush than to catch these troublesome insects; and when they are in your power your self-respect spares them. The race is almost extinct:—one or two of them are sometimes seen crawling over the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... necessary number of cushions and rugs for the comfort of their passengers. Cricket dragged reluctant Hilda, who dearly loved her morning snooze, out of bed almost as early, though Eunice and Edna lazily turned over for another scrap of a nap. Still, they were not long able to withstand the general buzz of excitement, and long before seven they also were up and about, gathering together their various belongings. Cook had the generous luncheon-baskets all packed, with provision sufficient for a small regiment. Before breakfast everything was on board, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... at one another. A great many more, too, poured out every second from the forecastle, made curious by the noise. Maclean grasped the crank firmly and gave them every scrap of his attention. There woke an increasing buzz of shouts and cries astern. It culminated presently in the crack of a revolver, a shriek of pain, and a wild British cheer. Then all over the din a loud, insistent whistle shrilled. The sailors forward rushed for their stacked arms, and formed in ranks with ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... manifestation of rage, disappointment, and despair in the losing players, reckons without his host. Winners or losers seldom speak above a whisper; and the only sound that is heard above the suppressed buzz of conversation, the muffled jingle of the money on the green cloth, the "sweep" of the croupiers' rakes, and the ticking of the very ornate French clocks on the mantel-pieces, is the impassibly metallic voice ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... this, the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... resenting bitterly the supposed sneers that were flung at him. He suspected that the whispering and the giggling were directed towards himself, and burned to draw his sword and let these popinjays know for once what a man could do. As a matter of fact it was a buzz of admiration at his stature which went up when he entered, but the Count had so little of self-conceit in his soul that he never ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz above her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and tell this old, kind friend ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... respectable monkey, or on the other from a bishop of the English church who would stoop to such misrepresentations and sophisms as the audience had lately listened to, he would declare in favor of the monkey!... It is curious to read that in the ensuing buzz of excitement a lady fainted, and had to be carried from the room; but the audience were in general quite alive to the bishop's blunder in manners and tactics, and, with the genuine English love of fair play, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the ground, afraid to move or turn your eyes, lest you miss what you are waiting for, while the sun moves steadily on till his hottest rays pour through some opening directly upon you; while mosquitoes sing about your ears (would that they sang only!), and flies buzz noisily before your face; while birds flit past, and strange notes sound from behind; while rustling in the dead leaves at your feet suggests snakes, and a crawling on your neck proclaims spiders? If you have not, you can never appreciate the enthusiasms ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... flew on, and uncle saw little of the outside because of his interest in the strange machinery that was propelling them forward. The engineer pulled a lever and then there was a buzz and a whirr; another lever was turned, and the car would come to a standstill at some station. It was amazing to see such simple movements by one man control such unseen energy. From the farm to the Exposition grounds was ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... they discussing there?' I wondered. 'Surely it can't be my horse!' I squatted down beside the fence and proceeded to play the eavesdropper, trying not to let slip a single word. At times the noise of songs and the buzz of voices, escaping from the hut, drowned the conversation which I ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... from the day's toil. The workers in the factory, a small army of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from the doorways of the huge buildings, swarmed up the street, laughing and chattering, and dispersed to their several homes. The buzz and jarring of the machinery have ceased and silence fills the place. Even the offices are deserted, with the exception of one from which issues the steady ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... must be near. Then we were washed into a quiet backwater, in a corner, and from here I determined never to issue till the Last Banjo should indeed sound. Here I sidled vaguely about for a long time, hoping that I looked like a man preparing for some vast culminating feat, a side-step or a buzz or a double-Jazz-spin or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd downward in ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... must be a steam-engine, and move some majestic fabric at the rate of thirty miles an hour along the broad waters of the nineteenth century. None of your pendulum machines for me! I should, to be sure, turn away my head if I should hear you tick, and mark the quarters of hours; but the buzz and whiz of a good large life-endangerer would be music to mine ears. Oh, no! sure there is no danger of your requiring to be set down quite on a level, kept in a still place, and wound up every eight days. Oh no, no! you are not one ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and protesting to everybody. Amid the hum and buzz of voices, I catch what he is saying. It is, "My dear Sir, Dr. MCSIMMUM is here. I've seen him. He dined alone. He said he preferred it, as he had so much to do to-morrow." Then several exclaim, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... (on some wager I hazard), in spite of scared squawking and mutter, after the fashion that lean-faced Rajah dealt with trapped heroes, once, in Calcutta. Dared you break the crust and bullyrag 'em—hot, fierce and angry, what wide beaks buzz plain Saxon as ever spoke Witenagemot! Yet, singing, they sing as no white bird does (where none rears phoenix) as near perfection as nature gets, or, if scowls bar platitude, notes for which there is no rejection in banks ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... morning she chose to do in her room rather than in her favorite spot in the garden. She closed the shutters on the sunny side and sat down by the window nearest the garden, peculiarly sensible of the soft light and cool spaciousness of an inner world. The occasional buzz of a bee, the flutter of the leaves of the poplar, might have been the voice of the outer world in Southern Spain or Southern Italy, or anywhere else where the air ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... no magic about credit. It is a powerful agency for good in the hands of those who know how to use it. So is a buzz saw. They are about equally dangerous in the hands of those who do not understand them. ... Many a farmer would be better off to-day if he had never had a chance to borrow money at all, or go into debt for the things which he bought. However, there ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... I know," grumbled Gedge; "but 'tain't fair: they get all the best o' everything. Here, I say, look out, laddies. We're getting among the wild bees, ain't us? Hear 'em buzz?" ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... morning with the little ones. When Granny called her, she would give all the toys away, dividing them with a careful justice. And, yet, whenever children bought things of her in the shop, she always expected them to pay the whole price. You can see how the neighborhood would fairly buzz ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... the spectators settled down to wait for the verdict. The buzz of conversation was on every hand, and the air grew thick and heavy with tobacco smoke, while relaxed and at ease the crowd with its many pairs of eyes kept eager watch on the door before which Brockett kept guard. No man in the ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the dial again, and this time the screen flickered and cleared, and they were looking into the Convocation Chamber from the extreme rear, above the double doors. Far away, in front, Olvir Nikkolon was rising behind the gold and onyx bench, and from the speaker the call bell tolled slowly, and the buzz of over two thousand whispering voices diminished. Nikkolon began ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... a bright fall morning when this particular call came through. I hadn't heard the phone ring, nor did I hear Mr. Spardleton answer it in response to Susan's buzz. But some sixth sense brought me upright in my chair when I heard Mr. Spardleton say, "Well, how are things out in ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... not be so very tough in Chippewa, Wisconsin. But Buzz Werner managed magnificently with the limited means at hand. Before he was nineteen mothers were warning their sons against him, and brothers their sisters. Buzz Werner not only was tough—he looked tough. When he spoke—which was often—his speech ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... creatures of night hummed against the screen, in a voice soft and low he told her in a steady stream, as he swayed her back and forth, what each sound of the night was, and how and why it was made all the way from the rumbling buzz of the June bug to the screech of the owl and the splash of the bass in the lake. All of it, as it appealed to him, was the story of steady evolution, the natural processes of reproduction, the joy of life and its battles, and ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... bees, as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she - "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? I'LL tell you when it is time to swarm!" Buzz, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a full survey of the merry company, seated at small tables, with huge foam-crowned mugs of beer before them. Suddenly a voice, somewhat louder than the rest, disentangled itself from the vague, inarticulate buzz, which filled the air about us. Swift as a flash my eyes darted in the direction from which the voice came. There, within a few dozen steps from us, sat Dannevig between two gaudily attired women; another man was seated at the opposite ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... monotonous, that the geishas perform as a rapid pizzicato on the highest strings, very sharply struck. It sounds like the very quintessence, the paraphrase, the exasperation, if I may so call it, of the eternal buzz of insects, which issues from the trees, old roofs, old walls, from everything in fact, and which is the foundation of all ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... that misfortune followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces. There was the trampling of myriad feet, and the low buzz of voices. A great copper-breasted pheasant came beating ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... with its rattling typewriters, its buzz of clerks and salesmen we went. Cummings was a little ahead of me, when he checked a moment to bow to some one over at a desk. I followed his glance. The girl he had spoken to turned her back almost instantly after she had returned his greeting; ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... speaker sat a grey-haired man in spectacles, and Lemuel knew that he was in the court-room, and that this must be the judge. He could not see much of the room over the top of the railing, but there was a buzz of voices and a stir of feet beyond, that made him think the place was full. But full or empty, it was the same to him; his shame could not be greater or less. He waited apathetically while the clerk ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... left his, watching, wistful, patient. And at last the boy bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face in both hands. Time ebbed away in silence; there was no sound in the ward save the blue flies' buzz or the slight movement of some wounded man easing his ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... instrument began to buzz and rattle and amidst a discharge of little electric sparks the strip of white paper began to move out slowly from beneath ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... windows. At the same instant his ear caught a sort of indistinct sound on the stairs, followed by the measured tread of soldiery, with the clanking of swords and military accoutrements; then came a hum and buzz as of many voices, so as to deaden even the noisy mirth of the bridal party, among whom a vague feeling of curiosity and apprehension quelled every disposition to talk, and almost instantaneously the most deathlike ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... brother he looked on all around. The very memory of war seemed to vanish before his presence, for all there was love and gentleness. Helen drew a quick sigh, and closing her eyes, dropped against the arras. She now heard the buzz of many voices, the rolling peal of acclamations, but she distinguished nothing; her senses were in tumults; and had not Lady Ruthven seen her disorder, she would have fallen motionless to the floor. The good matron was not so ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... hate to name a snake after, that crawls around in the dark and lets cheap rough-necks do all his dirty work. I've saw dogs sneak up and grab a man behind, but most always they let out a growl or two first. And even a rattler is square enough to buzz at yuh and give yuh a chanc't to side-step him. Honest to grandma, I don't hardly know what kinda reptyle y'are. I hate to insult any of 'em, by cripes, by namin' yuh after 'em. But don't, for Lordy's sake, ever call ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... in happy New England, neglected no chance to display their extraordinary power of language. And such a jabbering, such a confusion of tongues, as I listened to that Sunday morning in the market-place of Demarara, overwhelmed me with wonder, and days elapsed before I could get the buzz out ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... another, and a more successful special train than Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... flew over the fence and flew straight to the first goat and began to buzz in his ear. The first goat lifted up his head and said: "Ho! What is this?" and he looked all around him, but could see nothing from which ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... horns and a wheel, rested inert at the foot of the sign-post; two negroes were wiping their foreheads beside it. That resolved itself into a man slumbering in a wheelbarrow, his white face turned up to the moon. A sort of buzz of voices came from above; then a man in European clothes was silhouetted against the light in the doorway. He held a full glass very carefully and started to descend. Suddenly he stopped emotionally. Then he turned half-right and called back, "Sir Charles! Sir Charles! ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... there were myriads of them—added to the enjoyment of my ease. With my ear so close to the ground the grass seemed fairly to buzz with them. Everywhere there were crazily busy ants, and I, patently a sluggard and therefore one of those for whom the ancient warning was intended, considered them lazily. How they plunged about, weaving in and out, rushing here and there, helter-skelter, like bargain-hunting women ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... myriads of insects, whose hum and buzz make a good part of the noise and stir of a summer afternoon, are all gone. No whirring wings rush past; there is no sound of "dragon-fly, or painted moth, or musical winged bee" to break the stillness; all the insect-world seems dead, or flown south ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... is dead, No more we'll hear him buzz a-wing, Nor picture with a smiling dread The pungent terrors of his sting. As Io's gadfly was this "B" To Sentiment and to Pretence. Oh, Property! Ah, Liberty! Fallen in your supreme defence! Gone is the friend that in a phrase The "Common Sense" of things could settle, That with a stroke ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... There was a buzz of talk, many whisperings, and some one spoke aloud. It sounded like Danny Rugg, but poor Bert was so confused at his own plight that ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... that. After an opera my head goes round like a buzz-saw, and the motives spring about inside like demons. If that is all, Velasco, you are not ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... white as her frock. Parson Babbage kept picking up the heavy Prayer-book, opening it, and laying it down impatiently. Occasionally, as one of the congregation scraped an impatient foot, a metallic sound made itself heard, and the buzz of conversation would sink for a ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... [U.S.], guzzler, tavern haunter. V. get drunk, be drunk &c. adj.; see double; take a drop too much, take a glass too much; drink; tipple, tope, booze, bouse[Fr], guzzle, swill*, soak*, sot, bum* [U.S.], besot, have a jag on, have a buzz on, lush*, bib, swig, carouse; sacrifice at the shrine of Bacchus[obs3]; take to drinking; drink hard, drink deep, drink like a fish; have one's swill*, drain the cup, splice the main brace, take a hair of the dog that ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pleased, tired things at peace and the subdued songs of roosting birds. He could hear shouts from the labourers in the distant hayfields and, now and then, the slow rattle of a country cart as it moved clumsily along the uneven roads that led from the fields to the farmyards. There was a drowsy buzz of insects that mingled oddly with the burble of the stream and the lowing of the cattle.... He lay there and listened to a lark as it flew up from the ground with a queer, agitated flutter of wings, watching it as it ascended high and higher until it became ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... taste of a terrestrial couch again our seafarers went to bed early—it was still insufferably hot, and the buzz of the mosquitoes at the open windows might have passed for an audible crepitation of the temperature. "We can't stand this, you know," the young Englishmen said to each other; and they tossed about all night more boisterously than they had tossed upon the Atlantic billows. On the morrow, ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of animals which roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects which buzz among them:'—Then the Psalmist would have answered him, I believe,—'If you cannot, my friend, I can. And you must not make your power of thought and conception the measure of the universe, or even of other men's intellects; or say—"Because I cannot conceive a thing, therefore no man can conceive ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... from his classic dreams the student steals Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, To muse unnoticed, while around him press The meteor-forms of equipage and dress; Alone in wonder lost, he seems to stand A very stranger ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... bids, at close of day. Here, at the dawn, the kindling landscape glows; There noon-day levees call from faint repose. Here the flush'd wave flings back the parting light; There glimmering lamps anticipate the night. When from his classic dreams the student steals, [Footnote 3] Amid the buzz of crowds, the whirl of wheels, To muse unnotic'd—while around him press The meteor-forms of equipage and dress; Alone, in wonder lost, he seems to stand A very stranger in his native land! And (tho' perchance of current coin possest, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... theory that McClellan's judgment was trustworthy; then suddenly the stress became more severe, and it seemed that in the bottom of his mind the President did not thus implicitly respect the general's wisdom. Yet he did not displace him, but only opened his ears to other counsels; whereupon the buzz of contradictory, excited, and alarming suggestions which came to him were more than enough to unsettle any human judgment. General Webb speaks well and with authority to this matter: "The dilemma lay here,—whose ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... I was at eight o'clock of a Wednesday evening in a restaurant full of the usual lights and buzz and glitter, among women in soft-hued gowns, and men in their hideous substitute for the same. Across the table sat my one-time guardian, dear old Peter Dunstan,—Dunny to me since the night when I first came to him, a very tearful, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... upstairs, and they're welcome to my share of it. As for the drink, it's negus and cherry-water; nothing else, and if the flow of soul is not better than such stuff, they may have my share of that also. No music, no dancing, nothing but buzz, buzz, buzz. ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... red Consecration wine!' repeated the synagogue in a happy buzz, and from the women's gallery came the same glad murmur of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean. The chance visitor, or he who looks now ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... sudden commotion in their midst, one after another springing from her chair with a little startled cry and trying to dodge what, from the sound, seemed to be an enormous bumble bee circling round and round their heads and in and out among them. "Buzz! buzz! buzz!" surely never bumble bee ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... more naughty still, shooting paper bullets at old Hobby's wooden leg as he eat dozing behind his high desk of a drowsy summer afternoon,—our George, with his hands to his ears to keep out the schoolroom buzz, would be studying with all his might; nor would he once raise his eyes from his book till every word of his lesson was ready to drop from his tongue's end of its own accord. So well did he apply himself, and so attentive was he to every thing taught him, that, by the time he was ten years old, he ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... ever stood near a bee-hive when something unusual was going on inside? When a swarm was meditated, or you had cut off the communication with a super which you meant to take? Just such a buzz and murmur as then arises might have been heard in Weston court-yard when the boys poured out from the schools, only increased so much in volume as the human vocal organs are more powerful than the apiarian. And surely not without cause, for the scene which had just been ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... down in the sack, turning round and round, and now his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Again were eyes fastened upon the point of fascination which had held them so long. But now a buzz of talk hummed ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to turn round in. But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats, beetles, wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and insignificants, may flit in and out and between; may hum, and buzz, and jar; may shrill their tiny pipes, and wind their puny horns, unchastised and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of larger size and prouder show must beware, how they place themselves within its sweep. Much less may they presume to lay hands on the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this fact is becoming generally recognised. You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this subject—nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now dares to say that education ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to torment a miserly old landlord, who, the day before, had turned a poor widow, with two little children, out of his tenement house, because she was not quite ready with the rent. I put a great fly on his nose, and a great flea in his ear, and ordered them to stay there, and buzz, and bite him, till he went nearly ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... got downstairs it was evident there was a great spread. Two red-plushed footmen stood on guard in the entrance, helping the arrivers out of their wraps, while a buzz of conversation sounded through the partially opened drawing-room door, as Mr. Plummey stood, handle in hand, to announce the names of the guests. Our friends, having the entree, of course passed in as at home, and mingled with the comers and stayers. Guest after guest quickly ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... indeed. Last night was certainly the most infernal night I ever passed, never slept. The mosquitoes were fearful although fires were lighted all round us, each man having his private bonfire, yet the mosquitoes were not to be frightened, they would buzz and bite; rolled our heads up in our blankets and oilskins but in a second or two the little brutes were under and buzzing away. The air also seemed impregnated with the little tormentors. Camped on claypan with little and ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... finished, and now, in the few moments before the curtain would rise, the buzz of voices whispered ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... intending purchasers were arriving; they came on horse, and afoot, and in conveyances of every sort and kind, and the tread of their feet, and the buzz of their voices awoke unwonted echoes in the old place. And still they came, from far and near, until some hundred odd people were crowded into ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... if not one of the proprietors, at least one of the managers of L'Abbaye, appeared in the clear space at the center of the room between the tables and waved his hands. He was either much excited or wished to seem so. He shouted something in French which I could not understand. There was a buzz of interest all about me; then the place grew still—or stiller. Something was going to happen, that was evident. I leaned toward my voluble neighbor, the French gentleman who had ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... whether I did or not; but, now that I am here, I say it anyway; and I say a whole lot more—don't be a bally fool and buck into a buzz-saw! Why don't you take the Senator's offer? Holy Smoke! What are you gaining stuck up here in a hole of a shack that's snowed ten feet deep all winter? What's the use of fighting the Smelter thieves, and the Timber thieves, and the Dummy homesteaders, and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... loops and festoons with a rapidity that fairly made my head whirl. At one place several of them grew very bold, dashing at me or wheeling around my head, coming so close that I could hear the susurrus of their wings as well as the sharp, challenging buzz ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... old cannon. The walls trembled, the floors shook, window panes and curtains palpitated, and a few moments later a noise was heard in the street, growing gradually louder; it was the sound of a hurrying flock, the dragging of thousands of feet, the buzz of conversations carried on in a low voice along the closed and silent buildings. It was the Spanish day laborers arriving from La Linea ready for week at the arsenal; the farmhands from San Roque and Algeciras ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pushed the tiny switch that brought his filament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure so far underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tiny glass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit of increasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium and vacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increased almost beyond imagination, followed one after another. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the room I was aware of another buzz of talk. Apparently here, too, were plenty of people who knew me as the famous swordsman. The Earl ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... instant all was buzz and bustle, and the news on every lip. Napoleon had crossed the frontier the day before, had pushed the Prussians before him, and was already deep in the country to the east of us with a hundred and fifty thousand men. Away we scuttled to gather our things together and have ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... again there were those who called him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the fence surrounding old Trinity's churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either hand he stared at the crumbling headstones ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... interesting bustle, a buzz of comment, a craning of necks—flattery accepted by the young women with ostensible unconcern, a cliche of their caste. As they had entered in a humour keyed to the highest pitch of gaiety consistent with good breeding, so with more half-stifled laughter they settled into chairs well apart from ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... prophet's death came about, and I can tell you; for when my disease came on, and the doctor told me 'twas fatal, I started to go up to Nauvoo to ask the prophet to lay his hands upon me and heal me. But when I got there the city was all in a buzz, for the cause that some of the elders had got out a paper accusing the prophet of having a lot of ladies for wives. Well now, I can tell you how that came about. When our prophet first got the charter for the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... when he wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires. He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good family, when he married secretly the daughter of a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... and went into the building, pausing for an instant between two monitor pillars. There was no warning buzz and he continued on his ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... the time the clock in the steeple strikes twelve the church is well filled. The music of the organist, who has now reached Mendelssohn's Spring Song for the third and last time, is accompanied by a huge buzz of whispers, and there is much craning of necks and long-distance nodding and smiling. Here and there an unusually gorgeous hat is the target of many converging glances, and of as many more or less satirical criticisms. To ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... look askance at the party as it passes, cursing the idiosyncrasies of each fire bay. The instrument is connected with the end of the wire, and all hold their breath in order to hear the answering buzz which tells them that they are through to the battery. Several futile buzzes may be made by the telephonist, and then, no response being forthcoming, a linesman is sent down the wire towards the first relay station. A break in the wire is discovered and speedily mended, the ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... corner of the curtain they could see the audience arriving, and behind in the make-up room there was a buzz of voices and a general feeling of excitement which ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... but prematurely arrested, monologues upon art and morals. I remember a mild shock of surprise when I discovered that one could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not expect it to be cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days, to the advancement of our national religion. Through this instrument, in fewer words than usual, and with a comparative economy of epigram, I ordered a taxi-cab to take me to the railway station. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... than usual, he was awakened to his surroundings: a stir ran over the audience, like a gust of wind over still water; the heads in the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded; there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... people of his own rank in life. It did seem most singular that he should seek to place the child with her. Mrs. Walsham was not given to thinking what her neighbours would say, but she thought of the buzz of comment and astonishment which her taking the charge of this child would excite. She had been particular in keeping her little school to some extent select, and as it was now as large as she could manage unaided, she ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... as she communed thus with herself, the white-clad maiden and the other occupants of the box became indistinct and shadowy. The buzz of conversation in the theatre had ceased; so had the strains of the orchestra. The lights had been turned low and the curtain had risen upon the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a "Not a pace more! You go to the devil!" from some man staggering up the accommodation-ladder—a dark figure, with a long bag poised on the shoulder. In the forecastle ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... ceiling onto the bed, and "buzz— buzz—buzz" sounded about my head. It was a huge fly which had been sleeping in a corner of my room and had been roused by the heat of the stove. It flew about in great circles, now around the bed, now in all ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... himself together with a sharp effort and entered into the conversation that had begun again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers—there were perhaps a dozen of them in the little room—treated him with a charm of manner that speedily made him feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very subtle delight to him. He felt that ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"; the chairs ground on the floor as they were pushed back; the ladies rushed toward the bride and a buzz of congratulations, shouted over the heads of the company, and of noisy efforts to be the first to reach her, drowned out the vibration of the strings and the heavy blast of the brasses. Monsignor, whose importance disappeared as soon as the ceremony was over, made his way with his attendants ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I reckon you kin call this home too an' jes' buzz aroun' all you'se a min' ter," ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... of the cooler heads were going over the stock with him, while the others clustered on the broad porch in front and waited for developments, keeping up a constant buzz of questions and conjectures. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... cellar to garret. The long, dim, gloomy dining-room was first closed by outside blinds, and then by impenetrable paper curtains, notwithstanding which it swarmed and buzzed like a beehive. You found where the cake plate was by the buzz which your hand made, if you chanced to reach in that direction. It was disagreeable, because in the darkness flies could not always be distinguished from huckleberries; and I couldn't help wishing, that, since we must have the flies, we might at last have the light and air to console us ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick—with a snap of his wings, disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee—buzz-zz! the bee was so alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he should not be stung if he did not move. He knew, too, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... addition to our forces. So 'ere's to you, though 'tis true that at El Teb you cut and ran; You're improvin' from a scuttler to a first-class fighting man; You can 'old your own at present when the bullets hiss and buzz, And in time you may be equal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... of responsibility for the crime. "I'll see that Neeldink is informed. The more you do for these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you get your vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where you machine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'll have moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels' taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'd heard ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... parties which modern fashion gathers, are not so much groups of friends, drawn together for rational and affectionate communion, as they are jabbering herds, among whom all individuality and docile earnestness are lost in the general buzz and clack of ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of heat and cold, and luxurious in the matter of lighting, and he had a fine nose for plumbing. If he had not occupied himself so much with these details, he was the sort of man to have thought Mrs. Pasmer, with her buzz of activities and pretences, rather a tedious little woman. He had some delicate tastes, if not refined interests, and was expensively fond of certain sorts of bric-a-brac: he spent a great deal of time ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... very much as if it were his own funeral. But he did not speak. He couldn't. The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... . . . I have looked up to you as the best and straightest man I know. You must be. Yet why have you done this? Why didn't you tell me she was married? Why didn't she tell me? I can't write properly, my head is all on a buzz. The beastly papers say you were living with her in Algiers—but you weren't, were you? It would be too horrible. In fact, you say you weren't. But, all the same, you have stolen her from me. It wasn't like you. . . . And this awful murder. My God! you don't ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers—the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... blood buzz in his ears, and a hot choking clutch at his throat. He took his stand by the mantelpiece, and began to turn a little glass ornament round and round. Fate had spoken. On the instant, all his College life was far ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... flying thing like a giant blue-bottle fly that he had been battling in his sleep. Memory of the thing's high-pitched, droning buzz still rang in his ears. Then abruptly he realized that the peculiar buzzing was no mere echo of a nightmare. It was an actual sound that still vibrated from ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... he sat in his place, he lost consciousness of the crowding, rough-hatted, intent men and the monotonous calls of the dealers. The click of balls, the buzz of low-toned comment died out of his ears—he was back in Troy, looking for his father, whom he had not seen or written to in twenty years. He saw himself, with a dainty little woman on his arm, taking ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... while the sun went down, And the bright seven-colored arch stood forth, Against the opposite dull gray. There was A beauty in the mingled storm and peace, Beyond clear sunshine, as the vast, green fields Basked in soft light, though glistening yet with rain. The roar of all the town was now a buzz Less than the insects' drowsy murmuring That whirred their gauzy wings around his head. The breeze that follows on the sunsetting Was blowing whiffs of bruised and dripping grass Into the heated city. But he stood, Disconsolate with thoughts ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... The loudest buzz of commercialism is to be heard on the east shores, where fertile valleys and sightly plateaus checkered with farms and gardens stretch away to the foot hills of the Cascade Mountains, comprising five of the most densely populated counties in the state. Here, ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... the elevator and on around the end, and then, with an exclamation, he hurried forward; for there was the same idle crowd about the tracks that had been there during the trouble with the section boss—the same buzz of talk, and the idle laughter and shouting. As he ran, his foot struck a timber-end, and he sprawled forward for nearly a rod before recovering his balance; then he stopped and looked along the ground. A long line of timbers lay end to end, the timber hooks across them or near by on the ground, ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... sworn," commanded the alcalde, the moment the buzz of the excitement caused by the words of the man with the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... room was in one buzz of chatter and fun; and everybody beamed on everybody else; and nobody knew what they said, till Mrs. Pepper called, "Hush! ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... A whisper and buzz went around the courtroom when Howkan finished interpreting the affair of the canoe, and one man's voice spoke up: "That was the lost '91 mail, Peter James and Delaney bringing it in and last spoken at Le Barge by Matthews going out." The clerk scratched steadily away, and another ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... Stakes. Their habits have not changed; their 'social' relations are the same; they have not called in the aid of machinery to enlarge their liquid, wealth, or to increase the facility of collecting it. There is a low murmur rather than a buzz along the hedgerow; but over it the hot summer breeze brings the thumping, rattling, booming sound of hollow metal striking against the ground or in contact with other metal. These ringing noises, which so little accord with the sweet-scented ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... if people did not make me so, whether I will or not.- My not replying to them, I hope, is a proof I do not seek to make myself the topic of conversation. How very foolish are the squabbles of authors! They buzz and are troublesome, to-day, and then repose for ever on some shelf in a college' library, close by their antagonists, like Henry VI. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... The church was packed; pastor and people were at their best; and an expectant hush fell over the little audience when Mr. Strong took his seat after reading the weekly announcements. The organ began to play softly, necks were craned to catch a glimpse of the singer, and then a buzz of surprise filled the room. Peace, dressed all in white, and looking like a rosy cherub, had mounted to the organ loft where Faith was playing, and at the proper moment, she began to whistle a beautiful bird ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... were soon quiet again. The trout had stopped rising, in one of their sudden moods. A vast silence brooded over the place, unbroken by any buzz of my noisy reel, and the twilight shadows were growing deeper and longer, when the soft, gliding, questioning chatter of partridges came floating out of the alders. The leader was there, in the thickest tangle—I had learned in an hour to recognize his peculiar Prut, prut—and from ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... "The program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into order." See {spin}; see also {grovel}. 2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail a buzz test. 3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to each element. "This loop buzzes through the tz array looking ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... "flies! Two nice, silly, appetising flies. Pretend to fall into my web, Rita, and begin to buzz ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... I'm not sticking up for him. I'm only saying he's right from how he looks at it and it's no good saying he's wrong.'... Ha! Funny days.... Jolly nice chap, though, old Puzzlehead was.... Yes, I met him.... Fact, I run into him occasionally. We do a mild amount of business with his firm. I buzz down there about once a year. Tidborough. He's changed, of course. So have you, you know. That Vandyke beard, what? Ha! Old Sabre's not done anything outrageous like that. Real thing I seemed to notice about him when I bumped into him yesterday ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... sea of clouds as far as the eye could reach. But no! That was a circular spot against the brilliant white of the clouds, and it was rapidly coming closer. In a few minutes it resolved itself into the Comet, fast relief ship of the Terrestial, Inranian, Genidian, and Zydian Lines, Inc. With a low buzz of her repulsion motors she drew alongside. Hooks were attached and ports opened. A petty officer and a crew of roustabouts ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... heaviest Muse the swiftest course has gone, As clocks run fastest when most lead is on.[249] What though no bees around your cradle flew, Nor on your lips distill'd their golden dew; Yet have we oft discover'd in their stead, A swarm of drones that buzz'd about your head. When you, like Orpheus, strike the warbling lyre, Attentive blocks stand round you, and admire. Wit past through thee no longer is the same, As meat digested takes a different name;[250] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... says 't seein' 's she has more eggs 'n carpets, she jus' beats her carpets with the egg end 'n' don't fuss to change ever. Mrs. Fisher says what puts her out is 't the ring 's you slide up to close the whisks for killin' flies won't stay up, 'n the flies don't get killed but jus' get hit so they buzz without stoppin' from then on. Mrs. Jilkins says right out 's she considers the whole thing a swindle, 'n' 'f Mr. Kimball was n't rentin' his store o' her brother she sh'd tell him so to his face. She says the three-inch measure on the handle 's too short to be o' any real service on a farm, 'n' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... consciousness amid a buzz of voices. Uncle Loveday was bending over me, his every button glistening with sympathy, and his face full of kindly anxiety. What had happened, or how I came to be lying thus upon the sand, I could not at first remember, until my gaze, wandering over my uncle's shoulder, met the Captain's eyes ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... without encountering any vehicle or animal to give them a tow. The first hope had been to stagger on to Manzanares (which originally they had meant to pass) with a broken spring; but the bee in the motor's bonnet could not be made to buzz, and in despair, Carmona had been about to send his chauffeur on foot, in search of some conveyance for the ladies and their luggage. More hours must have passed, at best, before the man could have returned to the rescue, and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his way through the crowd like a pile-driver, and Frona followed easily in the lee of his bulk. The tenderfeet watched them reverently, for to them they were as Northland divinities. The buzz of ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... been taken or were needed, for even in February the heat upon the shores of the Red Sea is very great; and as the evening went on the buzz of talk and laughter died out, and the troops lay down and slept under ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... approved of the plan, we might elect our officers at once, and appoint a committee to draw up the constitution and by-laws. I am going to ask you to talk it over among yourselves for ten minutes, while Miss Dean and I prepare some balloting slips," she concluded, and at once a loud buzz of eager ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... sent a paper on some abstruse point of sociology to the Quarterly last spring, and it had aroused quite a little buzz of criticism. His mother had regarded it very much as the Duchess of Kent did the crown when it was set upon her little girl's head. She always had known that her child was born to reign, but it was satisfactory to see ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... listening to the night sounds, found them far more distracting than any the day could produce. Above the breathing of the three children sleeping near her in the big room, the buzz of a moth-beetle against the ceiling, and the far-off howling of jackals, she could hear something out in the garden sighing with faint, whistling sighs. More disquieting still was a gentle, intermittent tapping on the closed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... way back to Bath I had a day at Bristol. It was cattle-market day, and what with the bellowings, barkings, and shoutings, added to the buzz and clang of innumerable electric tramcars and the usual din of street traffic, one got the idea that the Bristolians had adopted a sort of Salvation Army theory, and were endeavouring to conquer earth (it is not heaven in this case) ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... mind—one for irrigation and one for power, I would not, of course, unless I happened to be a public service corporation engaged in producing and selling electric power, consider for a moment wasting my time monkeying with the hydro-electric buzz-saw. Indeed, I would have to sell it, for with the juice developed here I could not hope to compete in a limited field with the established power companies. I would proceed to negotiate the sale of this by-product to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color'd sea-rocks, and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... August, though one did not see, one heard about, the gangs of men trudging off at night for the Sussex harvest. In September the days went very silently in the valley, because the cottages were shut up and the people were all away at the hop-picking; and then, in the gathering dusk, one heard the buzz and rumour of manifold homecomings—tired children squalling, women talking and perhaps scolding, as the little chattering groups came near and passed out of earshot to their several cottages; while, down the hollows, hovering in ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the place of honour to the Whig resort as providing the most reliable information. "That I might be as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of all called at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics. The speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room, and were so very much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner room, within ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the Londoners buzz continually with false alarms. It was thought that the fleet might arrive on any day; but I understand that the fishing-boats say that nothing as yet been seen. By the end of the month, I daresay, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... she sometimes thought she heard a distressed sound in the hall. The buzz of tongues covered it up,—then again she heard it,—and she was sure at last that it was the voice of a dog. Never came an appeal in vain from any four-footed creature to Fleda's heart. All the rest being busy with their own affairs, she quietly got ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... up, to a distant buzz. There were cops coming. Two black paragrav-boats whirred along the translucent underside of Newyork's anti-missile ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea
... of the bloody dagger marked with the youth's initials—the feeling of sympathy very perceptibly underwent a change. The people, proverbially fickle, and, in the present instance justifiably so, veered round to the opposite extreme of opinion, and a confused buzz around, sometimes made sufficiently audible to all senses, indicated the unfavorable character of the change. The witnesses were closely examined, and the story was complete and admirably coherent. The presumptions, as they were coupled together, were conclusive; and, when it ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... blooms, which turn their faces to the sunlight above the canopy of green. Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal—a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan. (I might mention, parenthetically, that orang-utan means, in the Malay language, "man of the forest," while orang-outang, the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... of these things. He had eaten his meal at a table with half a dozen other men. In the saloon probably two score others applied themselves, with more diligence than refinement, to their food. There was a leavening of women in this male mass of loggers, fishermen, and what-not. A buzz of conversation filled the place. But Hollister was not a participant. He observed casual, covert glances at his disfigured face, that disarrangement of his features and marring of his flesh which made men ill at ease in his presence. He felt a recurrence of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to the head of the stairs, ostensibly to be nearer a light, and took out his purse. While counting out the bills, he cast frequent glances down into the lower hall. The buzz of conversation came ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... but I was conscious as I entered of a buzz of innumerable voices, which hushed into silence as I loudly proclaimed my mission. Some great meeting was being held then—a meeting which, as my instincts told me, was to decide this very question of war and peace. It was possible that I might still be in time to turn the scale for the Emperor ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have I gold flies from another coast. I dare not say, from the rich cardinal And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk, Yet I do find it so; for, to be plain, They, knowing Dame Eleanor's aspiring humour, Have hired me to undermine the duchess And buzz these conjurations in her brain. They say ' A crafty knave does need no broker;' Yet am I Suffolk and the cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves. Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last Hume's knavery will be the duchess' ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... time to spare, what with the racing and the general bustle of the day. The miners gave a sort of buzz of admiration as Bella and Maddie and the others came up the aisle. They looked very well, there's no manner of doubt. They were both tallish girls, slight, but well put together, and had straight features and big bright eyes, with plenty of fun and meaning in 'em. All they wanted was a little ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... me, and I buzzed back to them. I had learned to buzz, I believe, with some grace and facility, certainly with an almost entire detachment of my inner mind; it would be intolerable for the real man to be engrossed in such performances. Looking over the head of the President ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... foolishly weak, and there was such a pain in my head as I began to remember it all once more, that I could not ask any more questions. Presently my head began to buzz and the pain in it to get worse, and then for a week I had a fever that came near to taking me off. But I pulled through"—he squeezed his wife's hand, that again had been laid in his—"and in three weeks I was back with the regiment again. It was all ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... accompanied neither by the incessant wing-beat of the bat, the jump of the locust, nor the buzz of the wasp, but carries it easily in any direction. It has the further merit of a music neither sullen as with the gnat kind, deep as with the bee, nor grim and threatening as with the wasp; it is as much more tuneful than they as the flute is ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... all! I'm coming in," answered Rose, pulling herself through a little farther. But at that moment the door opened: there stood Miss Jane! She had caught the buzz of voices, as she passed in the hall, and had entered to see what ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... friendships) is usually apt to be acrid and watery and sour in its judgment and creeds—it has the quality of any other unripe fruit: it is middle age that is just and tolerant, that has found room enough in the world for itself and all human flies to buzz out their lives good-humoredly together. It is youth who can see a tangible devil at work in every party or sect opposed to its own, whose enemy is always a villain, and who finds treachery and falsehood in the friend who is occasionally bored or indifferent: it is middle age that has ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... that such folly was shameful in a girl of her age; but any anger would be better than this dreadful loneliness. She screamed louder and louder; and she grew half frightened, half relieved, when she heard his step, and a buzz of voices on the stairs; and then there he was, standing by her, and saying gravely, "What ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quick leaps. So abrupt and automatic in his movements, so stiff and angular in behavior, yet he is charged and overflowing with life and energy. One thinks of him as a bundle of steel wires and needles and coiled springs, all electrically charged. One of his sounds or calls is like the buzz of a reel or the whirr of an alarm-clock. Something seems to touch a spring there in the old apple-tree, and out leaps this strident sound as of spinning ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the prophet, with entire simplicity, "which has lately made a practice of joining us at family worship." It did not appear the thing was visible, and, like other spirits raised nearer home in these degenerate days, it was rudely ignorant, at first could only buzz, and had only learned of late to bear a part correctly in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Under the rose! Bee mustn't buzz, Whoop—but he knows. Kiss me, little one, Nobody near! Grasshopper, grasshopper, Whoop—you can hear. Kiss in the bower, Tit on the tree! Bird mustn't tell, Whoop—he ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... raised another nest of wasps about my ears. The French fops, here, all buzz and swarm around her; each making love to her, with all the shrugs, grimaces, and ready made raptures of which he is master; and to which I am obliged patiently to listen, or shew myself an ass. These fellows submit to every kind of monopoly, except of woman; and to pretend ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... still. There was no Rosamond at the door—nor in the hall—nor in the parlor—nor on the stairs; but from her chamber came the buzz of voices, and he entered unannounced, recoiling backward when he saw the face upon the pillow, and knew that it was Rosamond's. Every particle of color had left it; there were dark circles beneath the eyes, and a look about the mouth as if the concentrated agony of years had fallen ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... jewelry and the thrill of their wasted money that they were climbing into New York society—these and other curious types rubbed elbows in this melting pot of folly. The tinkle of glasses, the increasing buzz of conversation, the empty laughter of too many emptied cocktail glasses mingled with the droning music of an Hawaiian string quartette in the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... tumbled bricks on the top step. After you've gone through the front door you come into the hall where the wounded are as thick as flies. You go through the hall and turn to the left. There's a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid place always dirty and stifling. Then there's the operating-room, then another room for beds, then the kitchen. Outside to the right there's the garden, dry ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... then said seriously, under the cover of a loud buzz of talk, 'He's wasting his time, dear lady—there's ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its obscene embrace. Raw terror tore another scream from her throat. Behind her on the projector a needle slammed into the red zone. Beyond the hundreds of long rows of couches a warning light flashed on the control console of Mezzanine F and its persistent buzz snared the attention of one of the ushers. He glanced at the light's location number and ran along one of the aisles till he came to the girl. He saw that the projector had shut off the feature feelie and was running the emergency tranquil strip. She had stopped ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... weaning him from his distressing habit of allowing the office to interfere with his pleasures. He was planning a little trip to the Polo Grounds, in which Mr. Pett, his father, and a number of pop bottles were to be his companions, when his reverie was interrupted by a sudden cessation of the buzz of talk. He looked up from his plate, to find the entire company regarding Willie Partridge open-mouthed. Willie, with gleaming eyes, was gazing at a small test-tube which he had produced from his pocket and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a word said until the cloth was taken away. Then the President, filling a glass of wine, with great formality drank to the health of every individual by name around the table. Everybody imitated him and changed glasses and such a buzz of 'health, sir,' and 'health, madam,' and 'thank you, sir,' and 'thank you, madam' never had I heard before.... The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about; but there was a dead silence almost. Mrs. Washington at last withdrew with ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long pent stream of life Dash'd downward in ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... set to the flower-show, which was held under a large tent in a field. Laura heard the hum and buzz about her; the jolly wives of the various gardeners and florists admiring their husbands' prizes; the band of the militia playing outside; Brandon's delightful voice—how she wished that Joseph's was like it!—all affected her imagination; together with the strong scent of flowers and strawberries ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... as the miserable wailing ended. "If you hadn't surrendered it would have been our painful duty to buzz books at you for singin' out ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... a loud whirr of wheels, a buzz of internal mechanism, and all the little figures would stop dead with arms outstretched, whilst the beheaded doll rolled off the board and was lost to view, no doubt preparatory to going through ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... consolation in that, anyhow," grunted Bob. "If a fellow has to go up against the buzz-saw, the sooner ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... clatter of dishes and a buzz of conversation, abounding in rough jests and repartee. The boys took their part in frank, good fellowship and were hearty in their praises of the hard riding they had seen that morning. The ranchmen deprecated this as only "part of the day's work," but were pleased none ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... a pause in the buzz of conversation, and into it fell straightway the voice of the apostle like a brick ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... near the Fountain Head as possible, I first of all called in at St James's, where I found the whole outward Room in a Buzz of Politics. The Speculations were but very indifferent towards the Door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the Room, and were so very much improved by a Knot of Theorists, who sat in the inner Room, within the Steams of the Coffee-Pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and the town Opera House was crowded to its capacity. There was a buzz and whispering as Joe and his party entered and made their way to their reserved seats near the center of the house, for Riverside regarded the famous pitcher as one of its greatest assets. He had given the quiet little village a fame that it would never have had ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... of Ink, O Street of Ink, Where printers and machinsts swink Amid the buzz and hum and clink; By night one cannot sleep a wink, There is no time to stop or think, One half forgets to eat or drink, One's brains are knotted in a kink, One always lives upon the brink Of "happenings" that strike one pink. One day the dollars gaily chink, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... We swayed, shoving, kicking, wrestling. His hold around my middle shut off the Erentz circulation; the warning buzz rang in my ears to mingle with the rasp of his curses. I flung him off, and my tiny Erentz motors recovered. He staggered away, but in a great leap came at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of Madame Alboni, under a delusion of her being sugar, and not "plaster of parish," as Mrs. Brown afterwards said it was. The little fellows soon get very mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's felt-hat and polonaise, as "La Vivandiere," thumping upon an ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Jobson, and all their escort, save they who escaped to tell the tale, had been cut to pieces at the head of the avenue by a whole regiment of wild Highlanders. When we reached the mansion, therefore, we heard such a buzz as arises when bees are alarmed, and mustering in their hives. Mr. Jobson, however, who had now in some measure come to his senses, found voice enough to make himself known. He was the more anxious to be released ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in the tonneau. "I said 'old man'. Singular case, and that lets Siddons out rather neatly. Hum. I'll bet a cookie he knows more about flying than I do—or anyone else, for that matter. Well, we'll see. I wonder what sort of outfit Buzz drew." ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... scolding myself, condoling with myself, vowing the whole problem a plague and a cheat. This idle wandering might have lasted until dawn, had it not been for my neighbour in the room to my left, who began to talk with a low buzz as of a night-insect humming in a bed-curtain. The surging of the voice amused me; I lay quite still and listened to it. Now it rose loud—I gleaned a word, and was pleased; now it fell—and I fretted; but anon another voice ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... metallic voices in which you may hear the sound of the wheels of machinery and the buzz of business, they tell us that should the Lord suddenly come it would paralyze all industry, put an end to commerce and to trade, overthrow all progress, make worthless every high endeavour for the betterment of man, shut the doors of school, of college and university, render useless the architect's ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... miles from Trapani) I had to start the next morning at 4 a.m. to see the ruins of Selinunte, and slept lightly with my window open. About two o'clock I began to hear a buzz of conversation in the piazza outside and it kept me awake, so I got up to shut the window and see what it was. I found it came from a long knot of men standing about, two deep, but not strictly marshalled. When I got up at half-past three, it was ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... hated to think of it. Then little by little the first taint crept in, the innate vice stirred in him, the brute began to make itself felt, and a multitude of perverse and vicious ideas commenced to buzz about him like ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... great meeting. They stood for a moment and surveyed the assembly with a Gladstonian aquiline eye. Their wives blushed with pride in their property if their husbands were recognised and raised a buzz.... Lady Butcher, with her son, occupied one stage-box, and on the opposite side were Lady Bracebridge, her daughter, and, through a nice calculation on his part, Lord Verschoyle.... There were many Jews, some authors, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... warn a man not a special friend, and proved the loyal strain in his nature. Possibly, had he stopped to think, he might have weakened and fled. But the excitement of the chase still dominated him, and he had given himself no time for consideration before plunging in. Now, the buzz of talk and laughter sounded all about him; somebody slapped him on the back with a laugh of astonishment, and he began to realize what an impossible sort of thing he ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... he looked steadfastly in the eyes of the Mahdi. It became so quiet that only the buzz of flies could be heard. But at the same time something extraordinary had happened. The Mahdi became confused, and for the nonce did not know what reply to make. The smile vanished from his face, on which was reflected perplexity and displeasure. He stretched out his hand, took ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... them with regular rolls of thunderous noise interrupted by sudden and terrific shocks, which shattered into one's brain and shook one's body with a kind of disintegrating tumult. High above this deep-toned concussion came the cry of the shells—that long carrying buzz—like a monstrous, angry bee rushing away from a burning hive—which rises into a shrill singing note before ending and bursting into the final ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... had finished speaking, and arrangements were being made in the usual manner for the drawing, a buzz of excitement arose among the Sisters. Suspense was written on every face, but no one showed any fear. Custom and habit, which govern so completely the feelings of people, prevented the Sisters from feeling wounded or alarmed ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... won't stay on. That day a woman couldn't coax him off. He's on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys. Everything goes the same without me there. You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw Caterwaul to the hills around the village As they both bite the wood. It's all our music. One ought as a good villager to like it. No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound, And it's our life." ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... drained the Barter fly at a single orgie, and would have left him to wither on the lines. As things were, he came back to him with a constant gusto of appetite, tasting him on Monday, despatching him to buzz among his fellows until Saturday, and then tasting him again, the Barter fly seeming for a while—for quite a considerable time in fact—lusty and active and able-bodied, and looking as though this kind of thing might go on for ever without much damage to ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... up," "to pull the wool over your eyes," "to talk through your hat," "to fire out," "to go back on," "to make yourself solid with," "to have a jag on," "to be loaded," "to freeze on to," "to bark up the wrong tree," "don't monkey with the buzz-saw," and "in the soup." Most slang had a bad origin. The greater part originated in the cant of thieves' Latin, but it broke away from this cant of malefactors in time and gradually evolved itself from ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... He held in his hand a folded paper. Coleman and the others looked at him expectantly. "It is my great misfortune to report that James King of William is dead," said Doane. There was a buzz of comment, almost instantly stilled by Coleman's gavel. "Damn!" said the gambler under ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of House of Commons blossomed to-night like a rose-garden. Yesterday, and for days before, empty benches and a fagged remnant wrestling with routine votes. To-night House crowded, and buzz of excitement filled chamber. GLADSTONE going to move hostile Resolution on Government proposal to proclaim Land League. Every Member in town early in his place. Members from afar arrived post haste. Even RANDOLPH, temporarily returns. Old Morality smiles ghastly smile of welcome, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... fearless of gendarmes and soldiers, he lies down, in the blazing German afternoon, upon the shaly soil; and watches the bright-eyed lizards hunt flies along the roasting-walls, and the great locusts buzz and pitch and leap; green locusts with red wings, and grey locusts with blue wings; he notes the species, for he is tired and lazy, and has so many thoughts within his head, that he is glad to toss them all away, and give up his ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... may be modified: [The honey bees buzz in the clover]; one may be modified and the other unmodified: [Bees buzz in ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Madeline heard the buzz of the car. Link appeared driving up the slope. He made a short, sliding turn and stopped before the porch. Link had tied two long, heavy planks upon the car, one on each side, and in every available space he had strapped extra tires. A huge cask occupied ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... feel themselves aggrieved by his arrangements, never entered into the veteran's calculations; he returned from the South with his purchase made, and his mind filled with anticipations of the joy the unlading of this precious honey would occasion in the domestic hive, and when he was met by the angry buzz of discontent instead of the gentle hum of applause, his surprise was great, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... vast wilderness, full of snares and dangers, behold many of them I have cut off, and thrust out of my heart, as Thou hast given me, O God of my salvation. And yet when dare I say, since so many things of this kind buzz on all sides about our daily life- when dare I say that nothing of this sort engages my attention, or causes in me an idle interest? True, the theatres do not now carry me away, nor care I to know the courses of ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... hear; but I was so very sleepy that I could not recollect enough French to answer him. While he continued talking to madame, I dropped off asleep in my chair, and for long in my dreams I heard the buzz of their voices. When I was at last awoke, by feeling a hand placed on my shoulder, the ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... species of moths the males 'assemble' around the freshly emerged female, but no special advantage appears to attend on early arrival. The female sits apparently motionless, while the little crowd of suitors buzz around her for several minutes. Suddenly, and, as far as one can see, without any sign from the female, one of the males pairs with her and all the others immediately disappear. In these cases the males do not fight or struggle in any way, and as one watches the ceremony the wonder arises ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... editor make the experiment and tell afterward what happened to him hot on the heels of his article. He may not be able to enlighten the public but the associated press dispatch will give the grim facts relating to the end of that editor, who undertook to monkey with the buzz saw of the freedom of the press in a ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Judge, and he went on with "Pop goes the weasel." This news caused a buzz of excitement. Everyone was astounded that the Kangaroo, who had the heaviest grievances of all, wouldn't appear ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... there was a buzz of excitement when, with the decks cleared, the chairman of the meeting called upon the spokesman of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... company, and then there was a buzz of secular talk, general rapture being expressed at the stolidness of Ezekiel's demeanor. Cups of tea were passed round by the lovely Leah, and the secrets of the paper bags were brought to light. Ephraim Phillips talked horses with Sam Levine, and old Hyams quarrelled with Malka over the disposal ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Produced thee to the world, thou wicked sex, To be to man a plague, a chastening rod; Happy, wert thou not present to perplex. So serpent creeps along the grassy sod; So bear and ravening wolf the forest vex; Wasp, fly, and gad-fly buzz in liquid air, And the rich grain ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... big man stepped from the room, a gasp of astonishment escaped from the company, and the two jokers, with frightened faces, broke into a shrill, nervous laughter. Then a buzz of talk went round; the fiddlers struck up again; the callers shouted; the dancers stamped, and bowed, and swung their partners as ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... friend Captain Keymis admitted a private interview between Cobham and Raleigh during Count Aremberg's stay in London, were then read. In the discussion on these documents the court and the prisoner fell to actual wrangling; in the buzz of voices it was hard to tell what was said, until a certain impression was at last made by Coke, who screamed out that Raleigh 'had a Spanish heart and was a spider of hell.' This produced a lull, and thereupon followed an ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... people still lingered spell-bound, and then arose that buzz which shows that the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... entrance into the passage the dance terminated, and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room. A buzz of conversation arose. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... either side of you go on as it will. The voices are very loud, but if we go up high enough on the hill-top, to the secret place of the Most High, we shall look down and see, but not hear, the bustle and the buzz; and in the great silence Christ will whisper to us, 'Well done! good and faithful servant.' That praise is worth getting, and one way to get it is to put aside the hindrance of anxious seeking to conciliate the good opinion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... with surprise and some consternation that the others realized where they were as they rode into the courthouse square and halted. A buzz of excited whispers ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... have mistaken the building they bombed for anything else but a hospital. There were flags with a red cross flying, and lights were turned on them so that they would show prominently. And the windows were brilliantly lighted. Those inside heard the buzz of the advancing airplanes, but did ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... seated on a bank overhanging the river, which, being shallow at this spot, brawled loudly over its pebbly bed, some parts of which were dry. It was at such a distance from the city, that all the noises common to its streets were united into one buzz or hum, and the whole scene was well adapted to suggest meditations upon private matters, or the affairs of the world in general. Yet Bruin did not seem influenced by any such reflections: if one might venture a guess from the ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... norther, the perilous pull ashore, the arrival at the Tassara place, and the people he had met there. He recalled also something about silver coffee-urns and Moorish warriors, but the next thing, he was out upon the floor, and his head seemed to buzz like a beehive with inquiries concerning his ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... Luella May Spain looked pained at her father's gay new red suspenders, and I could see that Mr. Todd's striped shirt was hurting the feelings of Sadie Todd dreadfully, and she and Luella May returned Billy's gallant salute with the greatest embarrassment. And in all the buzz I found myself looking anxiously for Martha Ensley's pale face and dark eyes, but failed to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hold on. I can convince you—[a loud buzz-uzz-uzz]. Engaged! Who is she calling up now? [Represses the button and calls] The Chief Secretary. Say I want to see him again, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... thousands of reputable Romans must remember seeing us at the same glance. Before long the majority will be ready to recall, if the subject is broached, that they have habitually seen him wherever they saw me. Some one will start the talk and presently all Rome will buzz with the gossip that we are continually seen together. A charming state of affairs for me if some busybody or some enemy of mine raises the question of my fitness for my holy duties! I have protested. I've had Vocco go to Almo and urge all these considerations ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was packed; pastor and people were at their best; and an expectant hush fell over the little audience when Mr. Strong took his seat after reading the weekly announcements. The organ began to play softly, necks were craned to catch a glimpse of the singer, and then a buzz of surprise filled the room. Peace, dressed all in white, and looking like a rosy cherub, had mounted to the organ loft where Faith was playing, and at the proper moment, she began to whistle a beautiful bird melody which surprised even those who ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... while his instructions were hastily carried out, then laid the suitcase on the table, drew up a chair and sat down. The buzz of excited conversation among the students hushed. They stared at him in anticipatory silence. It appeared that the evening's surprises were not yet over—and they were ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... taken or were needed, for even in February the heat upon the shores of the Red Sea is very great; and as the evening went on the buzz of talk and laughter died out, and the troops lay down and ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... Their buzz bomb, a low-altitude semi-guided missile, was just the beginning. Even the devastating V-2, which soared high into the stratosphere before falling on England, was just a step in their tremendous space program. If the Nazis could have hung on a year or two more, the war ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... seizure had created quite a sensation in Weymouth, not only because two or three Weymouth men were among the prisoners, but because, owing to the fight that had taken place, the matter was very much more serious than a mere capture of contraband goods. There was a general buzz of conversation until three magistrates came in and took their places, and there was a little murmur of satisfaction as Colonel Chambers, the chairman, took his seat; for, had he not been present, Mr. Faulkner, who was next in seniority, would have taken the chair. A minute later, twelve prisoners ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... but a buzz of excitement arose outside. Many persons tried to enter the vestry, but were ordered away, and when Tosh joined his fellow-elders the people were collecting in animated groups in the square, or scattering ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... ring upon anvils, through logs the saw screams, Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive home the beams:— It is songs such as these that she croons to the din Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and year in, While from earth's farthest corner there comes not a breeze But wafts her the buzz of her gold-gleaning bees: 1500 What though those horn hands have as yet found small time For painting and sculpture and music and rhyme? These will come in due order; the need that pressed sorest Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the forest, To bridle and harness the rivers, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... back flitted the bevy of girls again into the study, until the small room was full to overflowing. It was like seeing a company of fat bumble-bees, their portly bodies resplendent in black and gold, buzz heavily out of a room, and a gay flight of pale-blue and lemon butterflies flit back in their places. All the daughters fell upon their father, Margaret, Bridget, Isabel, Sarah, Mary, and Susanna; there they all were! tugging off his heavy riding-boots ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... grumbled Bumble the Bee. "I've got to make a sack of honey, and as if that isn't enough, old Mother Nature has ordered me to carry a sack of gold from each flower I visit to the next flower I visit. If I don't I can get no honey. Buzz-buzz-buzz," ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the street the wanderer had heard the dull buzz and roar which now met his ear as a loud medley of noises and voices, rising from hundreds of men who were encamped in the wide space before him—in groups or singly, sleeping and snoring, or quarrelling, eating, talking and singing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Spavey, however, never forgot. "You kin call yourself Abbie if you choose," he used to say, "and 'tain't none o' my business, but I was in the meetin'-house and heard Zeke let drive, and b'gosh it sounded just like a buzz-saw strikin' the butt-end of a log. 'Abijah! Abijah! he hollered. Shet Parson Simmons up same's a steel trap. ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Old Faithful Geyser lets loose. Yu' see, one batch o' tourists pulls out right after breakfast for Norris Basin, leavin' things empty and yawnin'. By noon the whole hotel outfit has been slumberin' in its chairs steady for three hours. Maybe yu' might hear a fly buzz, but maybe not. Everything's liable to be restin', barrin' the kid. He's a-watchin' out. Then he sees the dust, and he says 'Stage!' and it touches the folks off like a hot pokeh. The Syndicate manager he lopes to a lookin'glass, and then organizes himself behind ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... when the buzz of talk ceased after repeated efforts on the part of M. de Bargeton, who, obedient to his wife, went round the room much as the beadle makes the circle of the church, tapping the pavement with his ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Fanny,—Set me down as a wretch, but hear me. I have been ill again, in the first place; then as weak as a rag in consequence, and then with business accumulated on impotent hands; proofs to see to, and the like. You may have heard in the buzz of newspapers of certain presentation swords, subscribed for by twenty thousand Romans, at a franc each, and presented in homage and gratitude to Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel. Castellani[72] of course was the artist, and the whole business ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the mare go,'" quotes the Finance Minister, taking another look out of the window at the War Cloud. "'Money comes from the Soil,'" and he push-buttons a buzz-bell over ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... one buzz of chatter and fun; and everybody beamed on everybody else; and nobody knew what they said, till Mrs. Pepper called, "Hush! Santa Claus ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... life to pass in retrospect before him several times before they reached the light. The light proved to be in the saloon whose locality had provoked the quarrel. The saloon was full, the door was open, and there was a buzz of astonishment, which culminated in a volley of ejaculations, in which strength predominated over elegance, as a large man, followed closely by a small man with a cocked pistol, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... manner behind their books; or, more naughty still, shooting paper bullets at old Hobby's wooden leg as he eat dozing behind his high desk of a drowsy summer afternoon,—our George, with his hands to his ears to keep out the schoolroom buzz, would be studying with all his might; nor would he once raise his eyes from his book till every word of his lesson was ready to drop from his tongue's end of its own accord. So well did he apply himself, and so attentive was he to every thing taught him, that, by the time he ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... was succeeded by a buzz, a murmur, suppressed almost as soon as heard. Tom Channing's face turned scarlet, then became deadly white. It was a cruel blow. Huntley, with an impetuous step, advanced a few paces, and spoke up ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the machine is right, then the material with which it is fed must be defective. If the material is right, then the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... course of the day, gallop from Versailles, where Lomenie waits palpitating; and gallop back again, not with the best news. In the outer Courts of the Palais, huge buzz of expectation reigns; it is whispered the Chief Minister has lost six votes overnight. And from within, resounds nothing but forensic eloquence, pathetic and even indignant; heartrending appeals to the royal clemency, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... thousand laid away. I want to see at least five thousand dollars' worth of new scenery before I shuffle off this mortal coil. The scenery around here palls on me. My throat and eyes are always full of sand. I am off to Europe. Some day, perhaps, the bee will buzz again; and when it does, I'll have you ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts published, headed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... After a fortnight's rest in this prison this 'nymph' will gnaw her way out and swim through the water on her back, by means of that fringed tail and paddles, till she reaches the bank and the upper air. There, under the genial light of day, her skin will burst, and a four-winged fly emerge, to buzz over the water as a fawn-coloured Caperer— deadliest of trout flies; if she be not snapped up beforehand under water by some spotted monarch in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Mrs. Kane doesn't mind if we make a good deal of noise. Come upstairs to my room and take off your wraps. Then we'll join the crowd." A little later they followed their hostess downstairs to the big living room, that seemed fairly overflowing with girls. The buzz of conversation ceased as they entered. Gertrude introduced them one after another to the assembled crowd of young women, who received them with ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... as November, 1878, a Nottingham newspaper correspondent, on visiting Welbeck, was impressed with its appearance as that of the premises of "some great contractor who had an order for the building of a big village." There was the buzz of machinery, large areas were covered with bricklayers', masons' and joiners' sheds, wherein any new mechanical contrivance was put to the test. For more than eighteen years the vicinity of the house resembled a builder's ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... the skirts of his blue coat will drop like a pent[388]-house! O, that I could see, and not be seen; how he would spaniel it, and shake himself, when he comes out of the pond! But I'll be gone; for now he'll fight with a fly, if he but buzz[389] in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... and Grace Sherwood whispered behind their napkins, and got to laughing till they both choked. Johnnie's cross feelings came back; she felt as if the party was being spoiled, and she wanted to cry. A low buzz of whispers, broken by titters, went round the table, and through it all Miss Inches' voice sounded solemn and distinct, as she slowly read one passage after another, pausing between each to let the meaning sink ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... passed all control. He began to buzz as loud as he could, hoping to drown Buster Bumblebee's buzzing, so that Buster could no longer talk to ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... done their work there was a little pause, succeeded by the slight buzz that spoke of expectation. "Miss Pynsent is going to play," Mrs. Murray said to Sydney, putting up her long-handled eyeglass and looking expectantly towards the grand piano. "Oh, now, we shall ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... present," said Hope, more at sea than ever. "If you don't mind giving me details, old chap, my head would buzz less." ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... 'ere's wishing of you luck! Wich you're proving an addition to our forces. So 'ere's to you, though 'tis true that at El Teb you cut and ran; You're improvin' from a scuttler to a first-class fighting man; You can 'old your own at present when the bullets hiss and buzz, And in time you may be equal to a round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... called Le Comte d'Aubigne, lacked neither charm nor grace. He even assumed, when he wished, an excellent manner; but this cavalier, his own master from his childhood, knew no other law but his own pleasures and desires. He had made people talk about him in his earliest youth; he awoke the same buzz of scandal now that he was fifty. Madame de Maintenon, hoping to reform him, and wishing to constrain him to beget them an heir, made him consent to the bonds of marriage. She had just discovered a very pretty heiress of very good ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sins must have met with such fair Irrationals; fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snappish fancies; distinguished in the higher circles, in Fashion, even in Literature; they hum and buzz there, on graceful film-wings:—searching, nevertheless, with the wonderfullest skill for honey; untamable ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... delightful little beings. The mosquitos would blow a shrill blast on their trumpets, the orchestra would strike up, and then the festivities would begin in earnest. How the bumblebees would drone, how the wasps would buzz, and how the mosquitos would blare! It was a delightful harmony of weird sounds. The strange little dancers floated hither and thither over my master's baby face, as light as thistledowns, and as graceful as the slender plumes they wore in their hats and bonnets. Presently they would weary of dancing, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... had been a close and almost breathless attention. As he concluded a buzz of agitation pervaded the group; not a word was spoken for a little while until Pilkington exclaimed, slowly passing one hand over ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... may, the lilacs and laburnums were in full bloom, the sun made golden paths everywhere. The warm air was full of fragrance, and alive with all the buzz and chirp ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... premises, and hear the buzz of machinery, we feel the complete prosaicization of rustic life. The farmhouse scenes of my own childhood in Suffolk, the idyllic descriptions of George Eliot, no more resemble actualities than the poetic spinning-wheel of olden times the loom ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... be moe wasps that buzz about his nose Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinal Campeius Is stolen away to Rome; hath ta'en no leave; He's left the cause o' the King unhandled, and Is posted, as the agent of our Cardinal, To second all his plot. I do assure you The ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... conversed with Stojan Simitch, the president of the senate, one of the few Servians in high office who retains his old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds one of the Farnese Hercules. Then what a medley of languages—Servian, German, Russian, Turkish, and French, all in full buzz! We proceeded to the dining-room, where the cuisine was in every respect in the German manner. When the dessert appeared, the Prince rose with a creaming glass of champagne in his hand, and proposed the health of the Sultan, acknowledged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... play with much success as a solo performer at the concerts of her sister Maria. Her voice had also developed remarkable quality during the time when she was devoting her energies in another direction, and her proud father was wont to say, whenever a buzz of ecstatic pleasure over the singing of Mme. Malibran met his ear, "There is a younger sister who is a greater genius than she." It is more than probable that Pauline Garcia, as a singer, owed an inestimable debt to Pauline Garcia as a player, and ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... A minute later the stock leaped to 61, on large buying. Then it went three-eighths more. A buzz of excitement ran through the office, and the old-timers sat up in their seats. The stock went ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... adverse bayonets and the muzzles of hostile cannon, were expressed in the now rigid lines of his brow. His ruffled right hand was clutched by his side, as if grasping a cutlass. He paced the room as if advancing upon a fortification. Meantime a confused buzz of discussion came from the neighboring chamber. All else was profound midnight tranquillity. Presently, passing the large mirror over the mantel, Paul caught a glimpse of his person. He paused, grimly regarding it, while a dash of pleased coxcombry ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... motor to fairly buzz, and the Terror shot ahead along the road with the velocity of ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... Tips with etherial dew the mountain's brim. Th' unfolding roses, and the op'ning flow'rs Imbibe the dew, and strew the varied bow'rs, Diffuse nectarious sweets around, and glow With all the colours of the show'ry bow The industrious bees their balmy toil renew, Buzz o'er the field, and sip the rosy dew. But yonder comes th'illustrious God of day, Invests the east, and gilds the etherial way; The groves rejoice, the feather'd nations sing, Echo the mountains and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the place abounded with rattlesnakes—the rattlesnake's nest, it might have been named. Wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed at the intrusion. The rattle has a legendary credit; it is said to be awe-inspiring, and, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Budd, Hicks and Thorneycroft here crowded themselves into the room and, on seeing what had happened, added to the general buzz of excited exclamations; but Holmes took command of the situation, like the old hand that he was, entirely used to such gruesome sights, and stepped to the telephone on a small table in one corner of ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... days such books 'swarm and buzz about one:' 'flap them away,' says Chesterfield, 'they have no sting.' The earl directed the whole force of his mind to oratory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... known that fleas can be trained to do (upon a small scale) many things usually done by human beings; and why may not the very largest of the mosquitoes be educated to manage the daily newspapers? How beautifully would they buzz! how venomously would they bite! how remorselessly would POTT, (of The Independent,) let loose his insect champions upon ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... "There was a whirry buzz from above, a breeze of swift motion, a tremor of my perch, and beside me sat a gorgeous little knight, dressed even ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... about the buzzing was that calves that were out for the first time, and had never made the acquaintance of a gad-fly, instantly set off running, with tail erect, when they heard its angry buzz. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and its ornaments stowed away to be safe from possible desecration. The altar rail was left, however, and Weldon sat leaning against it, his eyes vaguely turned upwards to the organ in the farther end of the church. From the open floor between, the buzz of many voices and the smoke of many pipes rose to the roof; from the vestry room behind him, he heard the cleaner-cut accent of the officers. Outside, above the light spatter of rain on the windows, he could hear the horses stamping contentedly in the leafy ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... to an end, as every thing does in this world. The dean retired, leaving the house, as it seemed, empty, and very soon there remained of the alcalde's wife only an echo, like the buzz which remains in the air after a storm has passed away. The judge also deprived the company of his presence, and at last Don Inocencio gave his nephew the signal ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... time reached the wicket gate, where he turned a moment to catch Emmet's friendly wave of the hand. A few steps more, and the woods enclosed him like a wall. He heard the diminishing buzz of the returning car with a sense of relief and escape, for he was pleased that his invitation had not been accepted. In his mind lingered a feeling that he and Emmet had not been able to meet this afternoon quite as before, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the first to awaken. He listened, but could hear no sound except the buzz of insects, and he knew, by the light which came in from the upper part of the entrance, that the sun ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... There was a pleasant buzz of voices at the close of the meeting and nobody seemed to be going. Doctor Schoolman was shaking hands with Mr. Carew. Doors were opened into the parlor and there was the fragrant odor of a collation prepared. For the benevolences of New Laodicea were ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... hedge broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd, The fire shot up, the martin flew, The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd, The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and clackt, And all the long-pent stream of life Dash'd ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... said her brother. "It's a chap I met last night; he's just out of a convalescent home, and a bit down on his luck." His voice died away in a complicated jumble of whir and buzz, the bell rang frantically, and Norah, like thousands of other people, murmured her opinion of the telephone and ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... cooler heads were going over the stock with him, while the others clustered on the broad porch in front and waited for developments, keeping up a constant buzz of questions and conjectures. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
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