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More "Prattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel the need of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian? Lord, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... figure in pink muslin: many a one was gazing at Cynthia with intentness besides himself, but no one in anger. Mrs. Gibson was not so fine an observer as to read all this; but here was a gentlemanly and handsome young man, to whom she could prattle, instead of either joining herself on to objectionable people, or sitting all forlorn until the Towers' party came. So she went on with her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have I seen More that I may call men than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I am skill-less of; but, by my modesty,— The jewel in my dower,—I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father's precepts I ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you about it. I have written what you more wished me ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... at the two sovereigns with a gloomy, inquiring glance. But suddenly his face brightened, and a smile played round his lips. "Ah," he cried, "I understand! Your majesties have overheard my prattle, and have sent for me to order me to be silent. But I cannot, your majesties; I cannot! I must give vent to my wrath, my vexation, and grief! I must be allowed to scold, for if I did not I would be obliged to weep, and it ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... jumped the captain, so far relieved, and glided into the dim quadrangle, with its square of smoky sky overhead; and the prattle of children playing on the flags, and the scrape of a violin from a window, were in his ears, but as it were unheard. He was looking up at a window, with a couple of sooty scarlet geraniums in it. This was the court where Dame Dutton dwelt. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... favor; You stand where you have stood before, The old salt hasn't lost its savor. You now can laugh with friends, at foes' Ne'er heeding Mrs. Grundy's tattle; You've dealt and taken sturdy blows, Regardless of the rabble's prattle. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... God to take him, too, until it seemed that Cynthia frowned upon him for his weakness. One mild Sunday afternoon, he took little Cynthia by the hand and led her, toddling, out into the sunny Common, where he used to walk with her mother, and the infant prattle seemed to bring—at last a strange ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... nose and soft radiance swept all his misgivings and prejudices before her. One might as well hold grudges against a flower, he thought. He liked the confiding way she had of suddenly slipping her little hand into his great one. Her prattle amused him, and he was both flattered and worried by the fearlessness with which she followed him everywhere. She seemed to bring a veritable shower of song into this home of long silences. The very chaos made Mrs. Wade's heart beat tumultuously, and once when Martin came upon the little girl ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... fathers had been before them, agriculturists and workers in metals—not fighting men. Also she set herself to learn what she could of their tongue, which she did not find difficult, for Benita had a natural aptitude for languages, and had never forgotten the Dutch and Zulu she used to prattle as a child, which now came back to her very fast. Indeed, she could already talk fairly in either of those languages, especially as she spent her spare hours in studying ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... they had ample opportunities for doing. After the first outburst of joy from the hounds on discovering that there were rabbits in the covert, and after the retirement of the rabbits to their burrows on the companion discovery that there were hounds in it, a silence, broken only by the far-away prattle of the lady bicyclists on the road, fell round Freddy Alexander. He bore it as long as he could, cheering with faltering whoops the invisible and unresponsive pack, and wondering what on earth huntsmen were expected to do on such occasions; then, filled with that horrid conviction which assails ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... sweet prattle of childhood," said Mrs. Francis, clasping her shapely white hands. "How very interesting it must be to watch their young minds unfolding as the flower! Is it nine little ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... heavens, what wasn't there in it! I am positive that it would have reduced to rigidity even a Petersburg audience, let alone ours. Imagine an article that would have filled some thirty pages of print of the most affected, aimless prattle; and to make matters worse, the gentleman read it with a sort of melancholy condescension as though it were a favour, so that it was almost insulting to the audience. The subject.... Who could make it out? It was a sort of description of certain impressions and reminiscences. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... knew her. You knew her at Geneva. She told me so. Well, you knew me at Vevey. That's just as good. So you ought to have come." She asked him no other question than this; she began to prattle about her own affairs. "We've got splendid rooms at the hotel; Eugenio says they're the best rooms in Rome. We are going to stay all winter, if we don't die of the fever; and I guess we'll stay then. It's a great deal nicer than I thought; ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... and decided; she soft and yielding. They had two children or rather, I should say, she had two; for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs. Openshaw's child by Frank Wilson her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who could just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the broadest and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up what he called ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... task of melancholy. [[2]All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity.] His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dear, to call it dear! Why it isn't a horn you buy, but an ear; Only think, you'll find on reflection You're bargaining, Ma'am, for the Voice of Affection; For the language of Wisdom, and Virtue, and Truth, And the sweet little innocent prattle of youth: Not to mention the striking of clocks—, Cackle of hens—crowing of cocks— Lowing of cow, and bull, and ox— Bleating of pretty pastoral flocks— Murmur of waterfall over the rocks— Every sound that Echo mocks— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... only sighed. "The prattle of these little ones softens my hard heart, senors, with a new pleasure; but it saddens me, when I recollect that there may be children of mine now in the world—children who have never known a father's love—never known aught but a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... her voice is very sweet, She does but little more Than simple childish songs repeat, And prattle ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... than at first. He was rich, and she would no longer be obliged to support herself by a degrading occupation. After the first buzz of scandal and excitement at her elopement the world would cease to prattle, or if it did she would be in America and safe from its strictures. The King was too poor in friends to refuse her recognition at his court. And, after all, there need be no scandal. She would go to America in the role of a professional ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... This prattle was interrupted by Rhoda Gale putting her right wrist round Zoe's neck, and laying her forehead on her shoulder with a little sob. So then they both distilled ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... suppose I bandy compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure of. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... she spend the forenoon? Some of her friends would be coming to talk over the party; there would be callers; there was the summer-house, her hammock, her phaeton; there were nooks and seats, cool, fragrant; there were her mother and grandmother to prattle to and caress. "No," she said, "not any of them. One person ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... true womanly love for Pygmalion as the first man on whom her eyes alight. Sentiment of this kind, whether intended by the author or not, would scarcely harmonize with the satirical spirit of the play, and the innocent prattle which Miss Anderson gives us in place of it meets sufficiently well the requirements of the case dramatically, leaving the spectator free to derive pleasure from his sense of the beautiful, here so strikingly appealed to, from the occasionally audacious turns of the dialogue ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... go on from sea to sea, to tell, in the simplest language in my power, of the life that is around me, of the men among whom I toil. I shall not tell you of these fair towns of the Southern Sea, for you have travelled in years gone by. I shall not prattle of the beauties of Nature, for the prattle is at your elbow in books. But I shall—nay, must, for it is my use and habit—tell you about myself and the things in my heart. I shall be, not a hero talking about men, but a man talking about heroes, as well as the astonishing beings who ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... scornful critics, bunched with glistening ribbons, shaking back their cascades of blonde hair, lolling contemptuously on the foremost benches, and "looking big through their curls." There from "Fop's Corner" rises the tipsy laugh, the prattle, and the chatter, as the dukes and lords, the wits and courtiers, practise what Dryden calls "the diving bow," or "the toss and the new French wallow"—the diving bow being ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to enquire what he had bought. It turned out that he had purchased a copy of Comic Cuts. The news was all round Forres in an hour's time, and caused much consternation. "What great men do, the less will prattle of," and it is so difficult for the former to act up to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... chatter, prate, prattle, babble, gabble, jabber, tattle, twaddle, blab, gossip, palaver, parley, converse, mumble, mutter, stammer, stutter.> (With this group compare the Say ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... turn to blush. And this little childish prattle seemed to have removed the barrier of strangership from between the two young people, who exchanged glances of a sort of merry vexation, and seemed to understand each other as if ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... monopolizer of the sex; in short, I have very little relish for any conversation but theirs: I love their sweet prattle beyond all the sense and learning ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen washed there should be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... age, the daughters of our hostess, who herself had a melodious voice, and peculiarly pleasing manners. These little fairies constituted themselves our attendants during our stay at Mauleon, and as they spoke, equally well, French and Basque, we enjoyed their innocent prattle and intelligent remarks extremely. They were very eloquent in praise of a certain English traveller named Francois, who had stayed some time at their inn, and wanted to take them away to England, and they tried hard to persuade us that he must be a relation, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... o'er the couch did I then Turn and tumble, in haste to see the day-light, Hear your prattle again, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... would sing idly or prattle with an imaginary being that had a habit of peeking over the edge of the basket or would shout a greeting to some bird or butterfly and ask ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... upon his fearless face Before they murdered it, in all the grace Of manhood's dawn. Sisters, here's yours! his lips, Over whose bloom the bloody death-foam slips, Lisped house-songs after you, and said your name In loving prattle once. That hand, the same Which lies so cold over the eyelids shut, Was once a small pink baby-fist, and wet With milk ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... his martagon lilies, to decide between Ayrshire Ruga and Fellenberg for the pillar that requires a red rose, to fix the right proportion of sand and leaf-mould to suit his carnations—when 'his only plot' is to plant the bergamot—he resents being fobbed off with prattle:— ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... listener in conversation, a dreamer amid the tumult of business, whose success lay in his industry and caution, and who drew men to him not by what he promised, but by the faith we chattering daws have in the man who looks on and smiles while we prattle. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... sitting one afternoon before the fatal bust which had smiled and whispered away his peace, when the postman brought him a letter. It was from the simple girl to whom he had given his promise. We know how she used to prattle in her harmless way about her innocent feelings, and the trifling matters that were going on in her little village world. But now she wrote in sadness. Something, she did not too clearly explain what, had grieved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... prattle of the child with the women made the house seem pitifully lonesome. Jasper was expressing his sorrow by chopping wood down in the timber. Jasper was an odd sheep in the flock; he was a Sands after Daniel's own heart. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour, letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... look up to meet his gaze, feeling it by intuition. Oh, the demure, modest, shamefaced hypocrite! How silent she is! She can prate enough to me! I would give my promised garter if she would but talk to him. Talk, talk, laugh, prattle, only simper, in God's name, and I shall be happy. But that bashful, blushing silence,—it is insupportable. Thank Heaven, the dance is over! Thank Heaven, again! I have not felt such pains since the last nightmare I had after ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... following simile in Richard the Second is deserving of attention:— As in a theatre the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... leave this enchanted realm. Violet kisses her fondly and clings to her; they have had such a happy day, there has not been a lonely moment in it. The wistful face haunts Grandon through the homeward ride, and he hardly hears Cecil's prattle. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... gray?—that all the impulse of her nature, the quick ebb and flow of youth and hope, was stilled and faded out, and all her thoughts absorbed into a dreadful longing? She could not tell, nor could she tell what ailed her; but she felt that she was changed. She tried to listen to the prattle of the two children—to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... heart, Confirm'd their virtue, and expell'd the fear Of vice in minds so simple and sincere. Here the good pauper, losing all the praise By worthy deeds acquired in better days, Breathes a few months, then, to his chamber led, Expires, while strangers prattle round his bed. The grateful hunter, when his horse is old, Wills not the useless favourite to be sold; He knows his former worth, and gives him place In some fair pasture, till he runs his race: But ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... in the confederacy with her mother, she afterwards kept her secret. For this her motive was commendable, although I will not determine whether she did it well or ill. Two women, who have secrets between them, love to prattle together; this attracted them towards each other, and Theresa, by dividing herself, sometimes let me feel I was alone; for I could no longer consider as a society that which we all ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... great parlours, seemed to have no wants that a black man, coming at the sound of a bell, might not easily supply. Even the children seemed at ease and self-possessed in the midst of the crowd. They troubled no one with noisy play or merry prattle, but sat on chairs with their elders, listening to, or joining in the conversation, with a coolness and appropriateness painfully suggestive of what their future might be. Looking at these embryo merchants and fine ladies, from whose pale little lips "dollar" and "change" fall ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... heard her mother's mortuary prattle with a face from which no impatience of it could be inferred, and Mr. Ferris made no comment on what was oddly various in character and manner, for Mrs. Vervain touched upon the gloomiest facts of her history with a certain impersonal statistical interest. They were rowing across the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions when "his old cap was new." Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives; but all the stark wickedness that actually gives the momentum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age and outlived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party man, he makes you a party man. None of the cursed philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold and unnatural and inhuman! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... feel settled, Kate; the dear old place will again ring with happy voices, old friends will be there," and he whispered low and tenderly, "In time, I trust, an heir will prattle at our knees, how happy would my dear mother be could she see our union ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... grave, had caressed him; where a father had guided his toddling steps; the home to which he had brought his bride in the bloom of a beautiful maidenhood; where Ruth had come to them as the blessing of God to make the house resound with prattle and laughter, and fill it with the sunlight of her presence; make it attractive by her grace and beauty,—the soul beauty that looked out from loving eyes and became, as it were, a benediction. He was to go, she to stay. God above would ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... focused too long on the wrongs of the rural regions to be able to transfer themselves to the sufferings and injustices of the town. He saw the city collectively as the oppressor of the country, and Leverett Whyland, by reason of Clytie's innocent prattle, became the city incarnate in a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... not so when we talk to one another. With your arm about me, and your sweet face close to mine, I can prattle forever. Then my heart overflows at my lips. After hours thus spent, it seems as if there were a thousand things still to be said. Then I can tell you what the book has told me. I can repeat scores of verses by heart, though I ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... "what would have become of me if it had not been for you and Schmucke?" He felt touched by this horrible prattle; the feeling in it seemed to be ingenuous, as it usually is in the speech ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... from the very nature of the undertaking that it was practically limitless; that a bibliomaniac of so many years' experience could prattle on indefinitely concerning his "love affairs," and at the same time be in no danger of repetition. Indeed my brother's plans at the outset were not definitely formed. He would say, when questioned or joked about these amours, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... them, but were polite to her, conversed with her in French, bowed and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"—a term to which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark of affection ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... told the story of Bethlehem; of the babe in the manger, of the shepherds on the hills, of the host of angels and their midnight song. All the people listened, charmed into stillness. But the boy Bernhard, on Irma's knee, folded by her soft arm, grew restless as the story lengthened, and began to prattle softly at ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... and his love to Jenny Lavender. Stay—had he not? What was that faint something, without a name—a sort of vague uneasiness, which had seemed to creep over him whenever he had seen her during those months—a sense of incongruity between her light prattle and his own inmost thoughts and holiest feelings? It was so slight that as yet he had never faced it. He recognised now it was because his heart had refused to face it. And conscience told him, speaking loudly this time, that he must hold ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... loud cough from Mr. Dowden, so abrupt and artificial that his intention to check the flow of my innocent prattle was ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... oath, and never broken." Especially was Towandahoc attached to the Buckingham family, who ever treated him kindly, and to the little girl who played with his bow and arrows, and tried in her artless prattle to pronounce his name. Unbroken peace had hitherto prevailed between the red men and the pale faces, owing to the just and friendly treatment the natives had experienced; but symptoms of another spirit began now to appear. The war waged between England ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... has passed from the dwelling away, And quiet serenity brightens the day: With innocent prattle, her toils to beguile, In the midst of her children, the mother must smile. With matronly cares,—those relentless demands On the strength of her heart and the skill of her hands,— The hours come tenderly, ceaselessly fraught, And leave her small space ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... and arrange parties and receptions and so on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can't imagine anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I came back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whisky-and-soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things he had been doing during the day.... Why, it ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the rest; And should the youngest raise its little voice, The careful mother, ever on the watch, And always pleas'd with what her husband says, Gives it a gentle tap upon the fingers, Or stops its ill tim'd prattle with a kiss. The soldier next, but not unask'd, begins, And tells in better speech what he has seen; Making his simple audience to shrink With tales of war and blood. They gaze upon him, And almost weep to see the man so poor, So bent and feeble, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... shore;—and if he is fond of children, he must be delighted with the numberless pretty and happy little faces—the fair forms of Saxon men and women in miniature—that crowd about him on the green sward;—he must be charmed with their innocent prattle, their quick and graceful movements, and their winning ways, that awaken a tone of tender sentiment in his heart, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... with the duties of a theocratic ministry." Anything which diverted the labors of the clergy from the Church seemed to him an outrage and a degeneracy. How could they reach the state of beatific existence if they were to listen to the prattle of children, or be engrossed with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So he assembled a council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that married priests should not perform any clerical office; that the people ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... tears. Francois, the eldest, then nine years of age, tried to console her. He told her that he was almost a man, able to earn his food and to take care of her and his little brother. She listened to his prattle with a sad smile, kissed him ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Race lure us with passion and dreaming! We are not the losers by it. And if the dream fades and we grow gray despite what has been lived, then it is something to remember that soul and sense have leapt and pulsed. I am thankful that romance has an aftermath, and that old men and women can prattle about days that were robust. I am thankful that the soldiers of life are at the end given a furlough in which to fondle the arms they wielded with clumsiness and with spirit, and in which to pass themselves in review before their pension ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... to climb the opposite bluffs of the lake shore. We pulled well out into the lake and lay on our oars. If anything was said, I do not remember it. I was as one who had just heard words from the dead, and hears as prattle all the sounds of common life. My eyes, my ears, were opened anew to Nature, and it seemed even as if some new sense had been given me. I felt, as I never felt before, the cool gloom of the shadow creep up, ridge after ridge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... alone—the disciples did leave Him alone occasionally. I should paint one little child left with Him. This child has been playing about near Him, and had probably just been telling the Saviour something in its pretty baby prattle. Christ had listened to it, but was now musing—one hand reposing on the child's bright head. His eyes have a far-away expression. Thought, great as the Universe, is in them—His face is sad. The little one leans its elbow upon Christ's knee, and with its cheek resting ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... walk in the neighbourhood of the capital. Here I would loiter for hours looking at the shoals of gold and silver fish which basked on the surface of the green sunny waters, or listening, not to the warbling of birds—for Spain is not the land of feathered choristers—but to the prattle of the narangero or man who sold oranges and water by a little deserted watch tower just opposite the wooden bridge that crosses the canal, which situation he had chosen as favourable for his trade, and there had placed his stall. He was an ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... such a peace have been imposed which will make the shambles in Belgium, Poland, and Serbia an eternal nightmare of the past, never to be repeated in the future. And over the anaemic hearts of the Trevelyans, the Ramsay MacDonalds, the Arthur Ponsonbys, who dare to prattle of a peace that shall not humiliate Germany, I would have this cartoon tattooed, not in indigo, but ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... only thirty-six weeks in the year! Need one wonder that their eyes were tired and their faces lined? Their clothes were shabby, all ambition had been ruthlessly crushed out of them, but no matter. They still stood sunning themselves on the Rialto, listening good naturedly to the youngsters' prattle. Now and then grim tragedy could be detected stalking behind comedy's mask. Haggard faces and shabby clothes spoke eloquently of poverty's pinch. A long summer ahead and nothing saved. Well—what of it? That was nothing unusual. If times were hard and engagements few, that was the price the mummer ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy queens, magicians, monsters—all the familiar personages of those imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird; full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of melodious notes that were not words,—a continuation of the wave of music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a pause—when in the childish mind, the connection ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly their sainted ghosts ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... youth; the flow of feelings and ideas give life and variety to the countenance, and the conversation to which it gives rise arouses and sustains attention, and fixes it continuously on one object. I suppose this is why little girls so soon learn to prattle prettily, and why men enjoy listening to them even before the child can understand them; they are watching for the first ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... rode home in a daze, answering without hearing the prattle of the children. She was appalled at the emotions that possessed her—that the sight of Frank Shirley riding down the street could have affected her so! She forgot Mrs. Armistead, she forgot the whole ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... in a yard joining to it, there was a thriving good humoured child at play, of two or three years old, so near us, that through the grates of the window we could almost touch it with our hands; and if, whilst we took delight in the harmless diversion, and imperfect prattle, of the innocent babe, a nasty overgrown sow should come in upon the child, set it a screaming, and frighten it out of its wits; it is natural to think that this would make us uneasy, and that ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... my deere Father: how features are abroad I am skillesse of; but by my modestie (The iewell in my dower) I would not wish Any Companion in the world but you: Nor can imagination forme a shape Besides your selfe, to like of: but I prattle Something too wildely, and my Fathers ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... she never expressed, became nurse as well as doctor, using what skill he had in every possible office for the sick, working early and late, and many a time the night through. It was not a time to prattle of the sea-maid to either Madame Le Maitre or O'Shea, who both of them worked at his side in the battle against death, and were, Caius verily believed, more heroic and successful combatants than himself. Some solution concerning his lady-love ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... deserve our notice, or excite our sympathy, we should remember that we likewise are lost in the same throng; that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is, to fill a vacant hour with prattle, ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... the city, so frivolous and gay; And, as he heaved a weary sigh, these words he then did say: It's a long way back to Mother's knee, Mother's knee, Mother's knee: It's a long way back to Mother's knee, Where I used to stand and prattle With my teddy-bear and rattle: Oh, those childhood days in Tennessee, They sure look good to me! It's a long, long way, but I'm gonna start to-day! I'm going back, Believe me, oh! I'm going back (I want to go!) I'm going back—back—on the seven-three ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... scene of the second act. To the question of Polonius as to what he is reading, Hamlet replies:—'Words, words, words!' Indeed, Shakspere did not think it fair that 'the satirical rogue' should fill the paper with such remarks (whole Essays of Montaigne consist of similar useless prattle) as 'that old men have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... splendid motion picture actor," declared the younger Miss Stanton, audaciously. "He sticks close to his cues, you see, and won't move till he gets one. He will answer your questions; yes, he has said he would; but you may prattle until doomsday without effect, so far as he is concerned, unless you finish your ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... mention stolen horses, nor thieves, nor airplanes, nor anything that could possibly lead his thoughts to those taboo subjects. Under that heavy handicap conversation lagged. There seemed to be so little that she dared mention! She would sit and prattle of school and shows and such things, and tell him about the girls she knew; and half the time she knew perfectly well that Johnny was not listening. But she could not bear his moody silences, and he sat out on the porch a good deal of the time, so she had to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... himself with," replied Percy, "save his wage from my Lord Oxford, and that were but a drop in the sea for us. His old grandmother can do but little for him—so much have I picked out of his prattle. But, surely, Mr Catesby, you would not think to take into our number a green lad such as he, and a simpleton, and a ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... now," said the captain; "or was so very late for, but a month ago, I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what great ones do, the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother, who shortly after died also; and for the love of this dear brother, they say, she has abjured the sight and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... never saw me. I knew her favorite path across the mountains,—it led past a rocky chasm. On the edge of that chasm there was a broad, flat stone, and there she would sit often, reading, or watching the fishing-boats on the Fjord, and listening to the prattle of her child. I used to dream of that stone, and wonder if I could loosen it! It was strongly imbedded in the earth—but each day I went to it—each day I moved it! Little by little I worked—till a mere touch would have set it hurling downwards,—yet it looked ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphick of easy prattle, innocent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... was next to theirs, and as she sat sewing she could hear the children's talk, for they soon forgot to whisper. At first she smiled, then she looked sober, and when the prattle ceased she said to herself, as she glanced about her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... those who doubt its qualities. In it we will drown our adversities, and in its fire consume our sorrows. Whoever has once seen the blissful chalice, will scorn the wine-cup. Glorious drink! thy color is the seal of purity, and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence, and regard not the prattle of fools, who ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... both the little girls in her lap, and seemed to enjoy hearing their childish prattle. Patty glanced at the gay rings on the lady's fingers, and at the pictures on the walls, and wondered why it wasn't a happy home, and what made Mrs. Chase's eyes so red. Then all at once she remembered what Siller Noonin had said: "O, yes, Mrs. Chase has everything heart ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... and you shall hear it. That man's father is an outlaw. He is a fugitive from justice. All this prattle about him being dead ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... is that I never suffer my children to join in the conversation of grown people, or foolishly imagine themselves on an equality with them, because they are permitted to prattle. I would have them give a short and modest answer when they are spoken to, but never to speak of their own head, or ask impertinent questions of persons so much older than themselves, to whom they ought ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... little shoes! How proud she was of these! Can you forget how, sitting on your knees, She used to prattle volubly, and raise Her tiny feet to ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... on whatever befall, the good do not prattle, longing for pleasure; whether touched by happiness or sorrow wise people never appear ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... recovered girl most cordially. Every word of censure was carefully avoided; the more so, indeed, as even Undine, forgetting her waywardness, almost overwhelmed her foster-parents with caresses and the prattle ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the flowers in the glass of water beside her plate, and gave her attention to the prattle of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... to. While they still stood bending over the well, straining both eyes and ears to the utmost, little Cora's voice came again. It seemed close to them; they could not distinguish any words, but the tones were those of her usual pretty baby prattle. Was that voice from the spirit land? They could see nothing but the gray stone walls of the dungeon, the dark, open well and some large, loose stones, which had heavy iron chains with rings attached to them, and which had in former years been fastened to the ankles ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features,—and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to marry, his relations were ever clustering about him, paying the grossest adulation to a man, who, disgusted with mankind, received them with scorn, or bitter sarcasms. Something in my countenance pleased him, when I began to prattle. Since his return, he appeared dead to affection; but I soon, by showing him innocent fondness, became a favourite; and endeavouring to enlarge and strengthen my mind, I grew dear to him in proportion as I imbibed his sentiments. He had a forcible manner of speaking, rendered ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... surprise. Yerba broke the silence by suddenly turning to Milly. "Certainly, you remember how greatly interested we were in the conversation of a party of gentlemen who were there when we came in. I am afraid our foolish prattle must have disturbed YOU. I know that we were struck with the intelligent and eloquent ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... "Howel's Letters" are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don't heed them. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mabel to keep her secrets. When her papa came home at night, she always climbed upon his knee to tell him every thing that had happened in her little world during the day; and her papa always listened to her prattle with a ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... yourself, and you remember what your mother used to say to you. I believe that the younger one is, the better one understands the young. I am very much afraid that a woman of thirty, who doesn't know what it is to be a mother, will find it hard to learn to prattle ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... must have rung in the poet's ears like a sad refrain. The Digentia lost its charm; he could not see its crystal waters for the shadows of Charon's rueful stream. The prattle of his loved Bandusian spring could not wean his thoughts from the vision of his other self wandering unaccompanied along that "last sad road." We may fancy that Horace was thenceforth little seen in his accustomed haunts. He who had so often soothed ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, the silly chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid correctness of the governesses equally annoyed her; and she had no soft maternal heart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the younger children, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have soothed and interested her; but she lived among them two years, and not one was sorry that she went away. The gentle tender-hearted Amelia ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... such a tribute to the lively Peace on the previous day, her teacher would merely have raised her eyebrows doubtfully; but with the memory of that flushed, joyous face still so vividly before her, and with the sound of the eager, childish prattle still ringing in her ears, she nodded her head in assent, and turned back to the day's duties with a heaviness of heart that was overwhelming. With that restless, active figure gone from its accustomed corner, ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... young person of the opposite sex. He had an engaging habit of appearing at the door of Sara's sitting-room with an ingratiating: "I say, may I come in for a yarn?" And, upon receiving permission, he would establish himself on the hearth-rug at her feet and proceed to prattle to her about his own affairs, much as a brother might have done to a favourite sister, and with an equal assurance that his confidences would be met ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... literary arrogance? Well; there is nothing to be said about them. They are all alike. They grew up to be all very respectable, comfortable, and commonplace. They were well-meaning people. What they had formerly said and thought was only—CHILDREN'S PRATTLE. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... why this mock grimace? Go, silly thing, and hide that simp'ring face. Thy lisping prattle, and thy mincing gait, All thy false mimic fooleries I hate; For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she Who is right foolish hath the better plea; Nature's true idiot ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... alone rather dismally, and now I shall imagine that I receive a visit from a young lady about twenty-three years of age, who enlivens me by her prattle. Is it her or her angel? But I believe that she is an angel, pale, volatile and like Laodamia in Wordsworth, ready to disappear at a moment's notice. I could write a description of her, but am not sure that ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... But never cry, And lips, but never prattle; You've fingers ten, Like brother Ben, But never shake ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... passes in front of his regiments (8,000 men) drawn up for action, and says, "My friends, my good friends, you see what is going on. How horrible! Alas! these are your papers, your titles and those of your parents." The soldiers smile at this sentimental prattle.] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... he longed more than either to get away from Aunt Deborah, the storm of whose vituperation seemed ringing in his ears so long as he continued within sight of her dwelling. One would think the clack of the mill and the prattle of his pretty cousin Cicely might have drowned it, but it did not. Nothing short of leaving the spinster fifty miles behind, and setting the great city between him and her, could efface ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... had told me first something about herself: that she was a petted and somewhat spoiled only daughter; something of an heiress, too, if one might judge from her prattle about charming and costly costumes and a rather reckless expenditure of pin-money; and that she was betrothed to Gerald Trent, of the great Boston firm of Trent and Sons, with the full consent and approval of all concerned. What life could be more ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... she is only idle, as she always is idle. But love throws a new glory and a new interest around her indolence. The endless little notes with which she worries the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred and mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers. Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of two hearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours. Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it new earnestness or a fresh ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... love was re-born, and that he would spend the future in atoning for the wrongs he had inflicted upon her in the past. Then he dropped to the sheer babble of affection and poured out his heart to her—all the babydom of love, the foolish prattle, the tender nonsense. What matter that he was Governor now, and the first man in the island? He forgot all about it. What matter that he was writing to a fallen woman in prison? He only remembered it ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... certainly in 'Robert,' the City waiter of Punch. But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, what ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor did she hear Miss Taylor say, "Zora!" She heard and saw none of this. She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the Silver Fleece ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cried, laughing. "You can be quick enough when you choose, Master Malapert. But you are more fit to speak of high and weary matters with my sister Mary. She will have none of the prattle and courtesy of Sir George, and yet I love them well. But tell me, Nigel, why do you come to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... man can apologize for talking business to a woman. I've been in England for years, you know, and the women over there are doing all the men's work and getting better wages at it than the men ever did. After the war they'll never go back to their tatting and prattle. I'm going to your shipyard and have a look-in, but not the way a pink debutante follows a naval officer over a battle-ship, staring at him and not at the works. I'm going on business, and if I like ship-building, I may take ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... it was the gill of comforting port, but at any rate I was soon enough convinced that there was no reason for speaking harshly to Doctor Chord. It served no purpose; it accomplished nothing. The little old villain was really as innocent as a lamb. He had no dream of wronging people. His prattle was the prattle of an unsophisticated maiden lady. He did not know what he was talking. These direful intelligences ran as easily off his tongue as water runs off the falling wheel. When I had indirectly ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... sleekit, cowrin' tim'rous beastie. Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou needna start awa' sae hasty. Wi' bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, Wi murd'ing prattle! ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... tears, and laughter and careless prattle with my mother, and roundabout questions from her to know if I had never lost my heart in the Bush; and evasive answers from me, to punish her for not letting out that Blanche was so charming. "I fancied Blanche had grown the image of her father, who ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... learning to climb chimneys. Up to the age of seventeen, as I have shown, I had a great contempt for the female race, and when age brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was I?—I could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young bear could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches carrying off young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in waltzes, whispering between their glossy curls in quadrilles, simpering with perfect equanimity, and cutting pas in that abominable ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but the language of passion had been so many beautiful words, neither vibrating nor lingering in her consciousness. But the rude expression of the miserable woman at her feet, whose sobs grew more uncontrollable every moment, made it forever impossible that she should prattle again as she had to Santiago and Rezanov in the last day and night; and although she felt as if straining her eyes in the dark, her cheeks burned once more, and she rose uneasily ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... resorted for the purpose of obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels deserves especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the highest sense of the word, was the slave of any woman whose person excited his desires, and whose airs and prattle amused his leisure. Indeed a husband would be justly derided who should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all unknown to Greek and Roman song, The paler hyson and the dark souchong, Tho' black nor green the warbled praises share Of knightly troubadour or gay trouvere, Yet deem not thou, an alien quite to numbers, That friend to prattle and that foe to slumbers, Which Kian-Long, imperial poet, praised So high that, cent per cent, its price was raised; Which Pope himself would sometimes condescend To place commodious at a couplet's end; Which the sweet Bard of Olney did not spurn, Who loved the music of the "hissing ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... Long Wharf, when the sailing-vessel came in from the harbor,—the day he was engaged to marry his Abby. Old Mrs. Bowdoin stood beside, rubbing her spectacles; and then the old man set the child upon his lap, and told her soon she should see her grandfather. And the child began to prattle to him in a good English that had yet a color of something French or Spanish; and she wore ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... was moving up the steps toward the entrance, hesitating between the desire to snub her interlocutor and to avoid the appearance of fright. The man, meanwhile, moved easily beside her, courteously distant, discourteously insistent in his prattle. But the motor-car was now ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... of the hacienda that Miss Keene gazed thoughtfully on the night, unable to compose herself to sleep. An antique guest-chamber had been assigned to her in deference to her wish to be alone, for which she had declined the couch and vivacious prattle of her new friend, Dona Isabel. The events of the day had impressed her more deeply than they had her companions, partly from her peculiar inexperience of the world, and partly from her singular sensitiveness ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... affections suited ill with the duties of a theocratic ministry." Anything which diverted the labors of the clergy from the Church seemed to him an outrage and a degeneracy. How could they reach the state of beatific existence if they were to listen to the prattle of children, or be engrossed with the joys of conjugal or parental love? So he assembled a council, and caused it to pass canons to the effect that married priests should not perform any clerical office; that the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... and stood over the little lady, and looked down on her with faces of pity, which seemed blent with a serene and half-amused indulgence. It was a heavenly amusement, such as that with which mothers listen to the foolish-wise prattle of children ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as to its springs, but still a barouche—with four white horses to draw it, and draped with silken flags, both barouche and steeds? Since these things were not for me, I flew to your side to dissemble my spleen under the licensed prattle of a cousin." ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... seated themselves on a bench in the doorway to rest. After a little while they noticed a number of swallows collected together under the eaves of the roof, and as these birds are such chatter-boxes, they began to prattle with one another. Having learned the language of birds, the children knew what the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... "How can you prattle in that mischievous way—after what Lady Strickland said, too? You do not know what harm you ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her infant prodigy, Clarence, in our care for a little while that she might not be distracted by his innocent prattle while selecting the material for ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of a small pale prattle about the people she had seen at Ouchy, as to whom she had the minute statistical information of a gazetteer, without any apparent sense of personal differences. She said to Darrow: "They tell me things are very much changed in America...Of course in my youth there WAS a Society"...She ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned—Where are we?" Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... went those pretty babes, Rejoycing at that tide, Rejoycing with a merry mind, They should on cock-horse ride. They prate and prattle pleasantly, As they rode on the way, To those that should their butchers be, And work their ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... his donkey's vice, Got off and pushed it down the precipice; For who would lose his temper and his breath To keep a brute alive that's bent on death? Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach In some suburban school the parts of speech, And, maundering over grammar day by day, Lisp, prattle, drawl, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... was wounded, my conscience absolved. And, after all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any motive for tracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen nor heard of him more. I took the child to Coblentz. Madame Surville was charmed with its prettiness and prattle,—charmed still more when I rebuked the poor infant for calling me 'Maman,' and said, 'Thy real mother is here.' Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof I had quitted, and shortly after became ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kissed back the sunny smiles and listened to the playful prattle which fell from the bright lips. Then he thought ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... reason for going beyond this world order to postulate a particular being as its cause. Whoever ascribes personality and consciousness to this particular being makes it finite; consciousness belongs only to the individual, limited ego. And it is allowable to state this frankly and to beat down the prattle of the schools, in order that the true religion of joyous well-doing ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... leather, he laid o'er Mistress Kilspinnie's knees as he threw himself back against the pillar of the bed, the better to observe and converse with my grandfather; and she, like another Delilah, began to prattle it with her fingers, casting at the same time glances, unseen by her papistical paramour, towards my grandfather, who, as I have said, was a comely ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and there he lies. Who would think that that uncombed hair was once toyed with by a father's fingers? Who would think that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mother's lips? Would you guess that that thick tongue once made a household glad with its innocent prattle? Utter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up. Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush the dust from that coat that once covered a generous heart. Show him the way to the home that once rejoiced at the sound of his footstep, and with gentle words tell his children to stand ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would find a good wife for Harry Esmond: and so on, with a hundred pretty prospects told by fireside evenings, in fond prattle, as the children played about the hall. All these plans were overthrown now. Thomas Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, announcing that his patroness had conferred upon him the living his reverend father ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mr. Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; they were the names ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Fromm's, the delicate attention of little Miss Pugnose was indeed burdensome. She would prattle all kinds of nonsense. She asked of what the fine dinner consisted; whether it was true that the daughter of the "consiliarius" had a doll that danced, played the guitar, and nodded its head. Ridiculous! As if people of such an age as Melanie and I interested ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... us ever really disappointed or melancholy in a hay-field? Did we ever lie fairly back on a haycock and look up into the blue sky and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of scythes and the laughing prattle of women and children, and think evil thoughts of the world and of or our brethren? Not we! Or if we have so done, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out of town again ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... on the shore the daughters of the land, No thought had man or maid of rest or home, While many a languid eye and thrilling hand Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand, Or gently prest, returned the pressure still: Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band, Let sage or cynic prattle as he will, These hours, and only these, redeem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... what we have been to each other in days past, I hope you are not their—that you don't realize they are making you a——But I can't say it! I want proof from you now by word o' mouth! I don't want any more prattle of business! I want you to show me that you are talking for yourself. Lana Corson, say to me some word from your own heart—something for me alone—something from old times—to prove that you are what I want you ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... wish to make any suggestion as to what you, gentlemen, may be in a position to pay—but I know what I am willing to accept and what not. I've no use for more child's prattle about the mine. My price ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... be in the furthermost parts of a wilderness. Perhaps you have snatched enough time from guarding the kiddies from a premature end in Como to read a headline or so in the home papers. If by some wonderful chance, between baby prattle, bumps and measles, they have given you a moment's respite, then you know that the Government has grown decidedly restless for fear the energetic and enterprising bubonic or pneumonic germ might take passage on some of the ships from the Orient. So it is fortifying ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... children that they were, eager for love and liberty, sped, with generous fervour, athwart the sordid intrigues of the Macquarts and the Rougons. At intervals the trumpet-voice of the people rose and drowned the prattle of the yellow drawing-room and the hateful discourses of uncle Antoine. And vulgar, ignoble farce was turned ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... about bronze bucklers dare prattle— Make alliance with the Spartans—people I for one Like very hungry wolves would always most sincere shun.... Some dirty game is up their sleeve, I believe. A Tyranny, no doubt... but they won't catch ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... agency, which would involve the loss of home, of competence, and of the power of breeding up her darling Eugene according to his birth. She did not even know what her father had written, and could only go about her daily occupations like one under a weight, listening to her sisters' prattle about their little plans with a strange sense that everything was coming to an end, and constantly weighing the comparative evils of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this prattle, asked himself, for the third or fourth time, what he ought to think of the virtue of Miss Dimpleton. Sometimes the frankness of the grisette, and the remembrance of the large bolt, made him almost believe that she loved her neighbors ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... said about them. They are all alike. They grew up to be all very respectable, comfortable, and commonplace. They were well-meaning people. What they had formerly said and thought was only—CHILDREN'S PRATTLE. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... way, whilst we are on the subject, who is this MILLS? The illustrated papers have shown us THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR, the thousand-and-one sole and only inventors of Tinribs the Tank; their prattle-pages are crammed daily with portraits of war-worn flag-sellers, heroic O.B.E.'s, and so on; but what of our other benefactors, the names of whom are far more familiar to the average Atkins than are those of the Twelve Apostles or his own Generals? I confess, to a great desire to behold the features ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... beauty, shake her head knowingly whenever her city connections were alluded to; and therefore it was no wonder that in a short time the child forgot the friends she had loved, grew ashamed of the parents she had honoured, learnt to prattle on subjects of which she knew nothing, and to affect all the premature airs of a woman, with more than the usual ignorance of a child, as children ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... and lamps were now lighted in Granny's handsome sitting-room, and a huge turf fire burned on the hearth, for it was a wintry evening. The tea-table had been placed to one side, near Granny's chair, and as Madam laughed heartily at Terencia's prattle no one could have suggested that the coming of this bright little creature had been as a nightmare to the old lady for many ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... the pack-horse road by the side of the mere, and time after time she would scud down to the water's edge to pluck the bracken that grew there, or to test the thin ice with her foot. She would laugh and then be silent, and then break out into laughter again. She would prattle to herself unconsciously and then laugh once more. All the world seemed made anew ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... and dumb? About as much as we are, I judge. Why, he is talking incessantly, only we can't make anything out of his prattle, as we do not understand the language," said ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... found herself no match for them when it came right down to business. She had no idea of their purpose,—she only knew that she and Gene were always on opposite sides of the room, the young man grinning savagely at the twins' merry prattle, and she and the professor trying to keep quiet enough to hear every word from the other corner. And if they walked, Gene was dragged off by the firm slender fingers of the friendly twins, and Fairy and the professor walked drearily along in the rear, talking inanely about the weather,—and wondering ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... and never failed to express the hope that I wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I employed my time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and so on entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new experience among strange men and strange sensations. She expressed no opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in the gallery of my intimate memories, fixed there by a short and fleeting episode. One day, after putting me down at the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipped To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams, broke in wrack, Spilt shattered gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,— Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake On the leafage overbowed,— Often the King and his love-lass Let the delicious hours pass. All the outer world could see Graved and sawn amazingly Their love's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... started Oceans wide have parted: Some are broken-hearted, Some lie in the clay; Those I once heard prattle, For whom I shook the rattle, Engaged in life's vain battle, Push ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... breakfast-room at Mr. Beaufort's, the mother and son were seated; the former at work, the latter lounging by the window: they were not alone. In a large elbow-chair sat a middle-aged man, listening, or appearing to listen, to the prattle of a beautiful little girl—Arthur Beaufort's sister. This man was not handsome, but there was a certain elegance in his air, and a certain intelligence in his countenance, which made his appearance pleasing. He had that kind of eye which is often seen with ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enriched with fine features; but he is too fond of them: for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full, ample, almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and smacks a little of scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in him, that of so many souls and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he judges, he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were utterly extinct in the world: and of all the actions, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hero at head, and a nation Well gagged and well drilled and well cowed, And a gospel of war and damnation, Has not empire a right to be proud? Fools prattle and tattle Of freedom, reason, right, The beauty of duty, The loveliness ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... bit thus he took up his life and we talked together of the time when he ran about the sitting-room and the court in his little child's frock, until the time when he went to school, to the seminary, to Rodenstein.... The sun had set when with our prattle we had come to the place where we were, at Weissenhofen. 'That's the end,' I said, 'and there remains nothing else to tell.'—'Yes, yes,' said my brother reflectively, 'that's the end, and there remains nothing ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... adversities, and in its fire consume our sorrows. Whoever has once seen the blissful chalice, will scorn the wine-cup. Glorious drink! thy color is the seal of purity, and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence, and regard not the prattle of fools, who condemn ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... He lit a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From the mantelpiece Jill's photograph smiled down, but he did not look at it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had had a trying evening. What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and his friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed his feet from the mantelpiece, and wriggled himself sideways, so that he could see Derek's face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his admiration ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Love teaches his Scholars to prattle.— But hear ye, fair Mrs. Celinda, you have forgot to what end and purpose you came to Town; not to marry Mr. Bellmour, as I take it—but Sir Timothy Tawdrey, that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... rate I was soon enough convinced that there was no reason for speaking harshly to Doctor Chord. It served no purpose; it accomplished nothing. The little old villain was really as innocent as a lamb. He had no dream of wronging people. His prattle was the prattle of an unsophisticated maiden lady. He did not know what he was talking. These direful intelligences ran as easily off his tongue as water runs off the falling wheel. When I had indirectly ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... let him observe that, notwithstanding her prattle, she was very near partaking his agitation, hastened to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... walk on whatever befall, the good do not prattle, longing for pleasure; whether touched by happiness or sorrow wise people never appear elated ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... gelebt und geliebet.' That the little blackbird, as they used to call her, should have been on the verge of running away with her own husband was a half understood, amusing mystery discussed in exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs discussing the ghastly tidings of massacres in other cities, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Jerusalem', by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you about it. I have written what you more wished me to write, all ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... who can tell but that their tattling would last a whole night, for there's hardly one of them who hath not at the least a hundred in their Budgets; but because it is high time that either the Dry or Wet-Nurse must go to swathe the child, they begin to break off and shorten their prittle-prattle. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... and as generally happens, when least expected, for protesting he would not be impatient any more, he amused himself by setting little Lord Lyle on his knee, and was so amused by the child's playful prattle and joyous laugh, that he forgot to watch at the window, which was his general post. Ellen was busily engaged in nursing Caroline's babe, now ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic Cable, whose first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a continent, gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It has since been copied by Mr. Prescott in his valuable hand-book of the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... waiter of Punch. But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, what ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... lady missionaries either at Hwochow or in her own house, and when they were joined by a lady who had no previous knowledge of the Chinese language, Mrs. Fan was asked if little "One too many" might come and live with the missionary so that her childish prattle should help the newcomer in recognising the difficult sounds and tones. She was now eight years old and permission was readily granted, so to Hwochow she went and became an inmate of the Christian household there, her name being altered to the now appropriate one of "greatly ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... of her countrymen and countrywomen are, in that lightness which distinguishes the French or the Italians, and would have enabled her, had she been so fortunately endowed with it, to sit by the fire and prattle innocently to her husband, whatever he might be doing. When she came to her new abode and was turning out the corners, she discovered upstairs in a cupboard a number of brown-looking old books, which had not been touched for many a long day. Amongst them were Rollin's Ancient ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... should remember that we likewise are lost in the same throng; that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is, to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... In the lifetime of the late King it was his habit to pass very much of his time here; thus, this was really His Majesty's audience chamber. Here he would have his little daughter of whom he was passionately fond—taking a great delight in listening to her merry prattle, and her amusing remarks on whatever attracted her attention. The windows of the room look out on to the Dam, a large square, which is quite the busiest part of the city. The view from these windows ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... enraptured while listening to her prattle. He revelled in the beautiful ring of her voice, which had an extremely penetrating, prolonged charm; and he must have been peculiarly sensitive to this human music, for the caressing inflection on certain ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... a sailor creep stealthily up the field behind them on the other side of the hedge, and crouch down near enough to hear all that they said. Certainly that sailor was never more at sea in his life than he was while he listened to their innocent prattle. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert, Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on a straight track: 'I bet ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Sir Charles in spite of himself, and the astonishment in his voice woke the old gentleman from his prattle. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... foreign gentleman dropping down like a god from the skies, picking her up, and triumphantly carrying her off. Her only grief will be separation from me, but this is to be assuaged by my going and staying with her for long months at a time. This simple prattle is very sweet to me, my dear sister, but I cannot help feeling sad at the occasion of it. In the nature of things it is obvious that I shall never be to you again what I hitherto have been: your guide, counsellor, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Huff informed regarding the happenings in the quarters, but their silence could be bought with a few shin plasters. This "hush" money and that made from running errands were enough to keep the children supplied with spending change. Often, when their childish prattle had caused some adult to be punished, Mrs. Huff would keep them in the house for a night to escape the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... between Ayrshire Ruga and Fellenberg for the pillar that requires a red rose, to fix the right proportion of sand and leaf-mould to suit his carnations—when 'his only plot' is to plant the bergamot—he resents being fobbed off with prattle:— ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they hear not," may be said of all the world. Tragedies and comedies go on continually before us which we neither see nor hear; cries of distress and prattle of infants, songs of love and screams of war, alike fall upon deaf ears, while we calmly discuss the last book or the news from Borriboo-lah-Gha, as completely oblivious as if all this stirring life ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... back, or as we sat at supper, the rest of us telling of the day's doings, but the Maid speechless, save when she bent her head to answer some eager question of little Charlotte's, or to smile at her childish prattle. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... your empty prattle; And vow and swear 'tis true, There's more in one child's rattle, Than twenty ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... girl with a red parasol crosses the Ponte del Paradiso, making a brilliant silhouette against the blue sky. She stops to prattle with the man at the bell-shop just at the corner of the little calle. There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... afterwards dared so much as shew me a book. My boyhood was therefore passed as it should be, in horsemanship, and hunting, and learning to fight. What is the good of a gentleman's poring all day over a book? Prowess to the knight, and prattle to the clergyman. That is ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious. 1895 SHAKS.: Richard II., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... engaged in talk with his Emily; she before him; he standing in an easy genteel attitude, leaning against the wainscot, listening, smiling, to her prattle, with looks of indulgent love, as a father might do to a child he was fond of; while she looked back every now and then towards me, so proud, poor dear! of being singled out ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... Don't suppose I bandy compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure of. But ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... home in failing health. She thought of the sad weeks, so melancholy in the impossibility of making an impression, or of leading poor Louisa from her frivolities, she recalled the sorrow of hearing her build on future schemes of pleasure, the dead blank when her prattle on them failed, the tedium of deeper subjects, and yet the bewitching sweetness overpowering all vexation at her exceeding silliness. Though full one-and-twenty years had passed, still the tears thrilled warm into Mrs. Ponsonby's eyes at the thought ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... But we managed someha, to pool throo'; An what we wor short we ne'er heeded, For that child fun us plenty to do. But we'd health, an we loved one another, Soa things breetened up after a while; An nah, that young lad an his mother, Cheer mi on wi' ther prattle an smile. ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... tell me, Master Peter," answered Becky. "But what's in the wind that makes you say that? You know I am not a woman to go and prattle about other people's affairs, but I should just like to know, that I ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the prattle of the dear girl, and the matronly lady who had her in charge could not forbear giving her a kiss, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... then go on with work again. The day before the first performance of "Don Giovanni," when the final rehearsal already had been held, the overture still remained unwritten. It had to be written overnight, and it was she who sat by him and relieved the rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It is said that, among other things, she read to him the story of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp." Be that as it may;—she rubbed the lamp, and the overture ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... wandered in ages long since, For ever to rule over Desmond and Erin as martyr and prince, Lived Paolo, the young Campanaro,[95] the pride of his own little vale— Hope changed the hot breath of his furnace as into a sea-wafted gale; Peace, the child of Employment, was with him, with prattle so soothing and sweet, And Love, while revealing the future, strewed the sweet roses ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... and illustrations that in spite of the moonlight, her nerves, her interest, and her forebodings, Bessie began to yield to the overpowering influence of sleep. The little comrade, listened to no longer, ceased her prattle and napped off too. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... my conduct witness bears, In throwing off that gown which Francis[178] wears. What creature's that, so very pert and prim, So very full of foppery, and whim, So gentle, yet so brisk; so wondrous sweet, So fit to prattle at a lady's feet; 360 Who looks as he the Lord's rich vineyard trod, And by his garb appears a man of God? Trust not to looks, nor credit outward show; The villain lurks beneath the cassock'd beau; That's an informer; what avails ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... children," smiled Francisco on the evening before their departure. He was writing a novel, in addition to the other work for Carmony and Pixley. Sometimes it was hard work amid this unusual prattle by his usually sedate and silent parents. He tried to imagine the house without them; his life, without their familiar and cherished companionship.... It would be lonely. Probably he would rent the place, when his novel was finished ... take ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... home and her friends; all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger,—Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all this ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy,—nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child. But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... entirely exempted from the usual fears of children. My father's bargains and sales brought me continually acquainted with strange faces. He was vain of me, fond of having me with him, and, as he called it, of case-hardening me. I became full of prattle, inquisitive, had an incessant flow of spirits, and often put interrogatories so whimsical, or so uncommon, as to make ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... with him, as he worked, and told me odd tales and seemed to enjoy my prattle. I often saw him stand with rough fingers stirring his beard, just beginning to show a sprinkle of white, while he looked down at me as if struck with wonder ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of duck-shooting, and found the trout of the Yellowstone too easy a prey. Hallett Phillips himself, who managed the party loved to play Indian hunter without hunting so much as a fieldmouse; Iddings the geologist was reduced to shooting only for the table, and the guileless prattle of Billy Hofer alone taught the simple life. Compared with the Rockies of 1871, the sense of wildness had vanished; one saw no possible adventures except to break one's neck as in chasing an aniseed fox. Only the more intelligent ponies scented an occasional ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... home. In a short time their prospects for the future grew brighter, his wife began to smile again; and his children, instead of fleeing from his approach as they had formerly done, now met him upon his return with loving caresses and lively prattle. Some six months after this happy change, Mrs. Harland one evening noticed that her husband seemed very much downcast and dejected. After tea, she tried vainly to interest him ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... it is to an affectionate mind, even in a way of nature, to walk through the fields, and lead a little child by the hand, enjoying its infantine prattle, and striving to improve the time by some kind word of instruction! I wish that every Christian pilgrim in the way of grace, as he walks through the Lord's pastures, would try to lead at least one little child by the hand; and perhaps, whilst he is endeavouring to ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... meet us on the return from their bath, with dancing eyes and flushed cheeks and hair streaming over their shoulders. What a hero the group finds in the urchin who never cries! With what envy they regard the big sister who never wants to come out of the water! It is pleasant to listen to their prattle as they stroll over the sands with a fresh life running through every vein, to hear their confession of fright at the first dip, their dislike of putting their head under water, their chaff of the delicate little sister who "will only bathe with mamma." Mammas ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... at dinner with little Daniel, feasting his eyes on the fresh beauty of the boy, whose prattle had made the last two days delightful. Daniel had been greatly exercised to find that his great big uncle could not talk Dutch, and that he must talk Portuguese—which was still kept up in families—to be understood. He had hitherto imagined that grown-up people knew everything. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... could have wept when I heard her prattle on thus. It is so terribly unnatural, almost dreadful indeed, to listen to a full grown woman who talks in the accents and expresses the thoughts of a child. However, under all the circumstances I recognised that her calamity was merciful, and remembering ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... blows the surly North and chills throughout The stiffening regions, while by stronger charms Than Circe e'er or fell Medea brewed, Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, Nor moves the withered reeds ... The surges baited by the fierce North-east, Tossing with fretful spleen their angry heads, E'en in the foam of all their madness struck To ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... glad to talk and take our turns to prattle, when so rarely we get back to the stronghold of our ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, {240} Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must hold ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... he has gone a little out of his way to tell you these things? The Primitives tell us nothing of that sort; they stick to their business of creating significant form. Whatever of their personalities may reach us has passed through the transmuting fires of art: they never prattle. The Primitives are always distinguished; whereas occasionally the douanier is as much the reverse as the more successful painters to ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... sigh, Adelaide resigned her book, soon after her husband came in, and commenced preparations for the evening meal. This was soon ready, and despatched in silence, except so far as the aimless prattle of their little girl interrupted it. Tea over, Mrs. Fenwick put Anna to bed, much against her will, and then drew up to the table ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... left a smutch upon the fingers. His clothes were sifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the "bronzed Indian fighters." The city was under martial law. He read also the bickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities and the federal government, and interviews ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 've two bonnie little bairns, Full of prattle and of glee, And our little dwelling rings With their laughter, wild and free. Of the greenwoods, all the day, I 've a little bird that sings; It reminds me of my youth, And the age ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... invited him to balance the probabilities of war and peace. He told me that war requires courage, and negociation judgment, and that the time will come when it will be seen, whether our skill in treaty is equal to our bravery in battle. To this general prattle he will appeal hereafter, and will demand to have his foresight applauded, whoever shall at last ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... little fellow ran on with his pretty prattle, I was diligently pursuing the lady and child of the specimens through the sketches. On every leaf I encountered them, ever changing, yet always the same. Here was the child by my side,—unquestionably the same; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Ernest." And the dove-like eyes filled brimful; and all her innocent prattle was put an ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... before the fatal bust which had smiled and whispered away his peace, when the postman brought him a letter. It was from the simple girl to whom he had given his promise. We know how she used to prattle in her harmless way about her innocent feelings, and the trifling matters that were going on in her little village world. But now she wrote in sadness. Something, she did not too clearly explain what, had grieved her, and she gave free expression to her feelings. "I have no one that loves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... is not warlike sells except Macaulay? Don't suppose I bandy compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... and to bring together those two fronts looking now so strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice and supported by common sense. Setting class against class! That is the very parrot prattle that we have so long heard. Try its justice by the following example:- A respectable gentleman had a large establishment, and a great number of servants, who were good for nothing, who, when he asked them to give his children bread, gave them stones; who, when they were told ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... wisest clerks have miss'd the mark Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. —Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; Coral redder than those lips Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infants' glee, Whistle never tuned for thee; Though thou want'st ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... romantic elements above described, we have here also that page-prattle which is so characteristic of all Lyly's plays. These urchins, full of mischief and delighting in quips, were probably borrowed from Edwardes, but Lyly made them all his own; and one can understand how naturally their parts would be played ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... of "nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these notes." Swift says that when he wrote plainly, he felt as if they were no longer alone, but "a bad scrawl is so snug it looks like a PMD." In writing his fond and playful prattle, he made up his mouth "just as ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... hostess, who herself had a melodious voice, and peculiarly pleasing manners. These little fairies constituted themselves our attendants during our stay at Mauleon, and as they spoke, equally well, French and Basque, we enjoyed their innocent prattle and intelligent remarks extremely. They were very eloquent in praise of a certain English traveller named Francois, who had stayed some time at their inn, and wanted to take them away to England, and they tried ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the associations of the grim old citadel, amused and pleaded by little Vernon's prattle as he trotted about holding his sister's hand, Ida forgot to be unhappy upon that particular afternoon. The whole history of her marriage was a misery to her; the marriage itself was a mistake; but there are hours of respite in the saddest life, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Preface to his Franciade, owns that their Alexandrine Lines have too much prattle (ils ont trop de caquet) and that it is a Fault in their Poetry that one Line does not run into another, and therefore he wrote his Franciade in Verses of ten Syllables, and broke the Measure. The Author of the History of French Poetry confesses, ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... hear her prattle words, I think that girls should not be birds, Nor like them waste their time so dear, In chattering ...
— Spring Blossoms • Anonymous
... world as personified by the city of cities, the unparagoned London; and he longed more than either to get away from Aunt Deborah, the storm of whose vituperation seemed ringing in his ears so long as he continued within sight of her dwelling. One would think the clack of the mill and the prattle of his pretty cousin Cicely might have drowned it, but it did not. Nothing short of leaving the spinster fifty miles behind, and setting the great city between him and her, could ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... find her ere yet it was too late. He would discover that her better nature had already prevailed and that she had started back without being sent for. They would kneel side by side, hand in hand, at the bedside of the little one, who would recover and smile and prattle, and together they would face ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... arms, and laughed silently. She did not fear to confront these guests. Who then? She dreaded the flash of her own mother's eye. Yes, indeed, her pretty mamma had ceased to love her, banished her more and more from her presence, made sharp or dry responses to her prattle. Cecilia sighed inaudibly as she crouched there. Hark! The visitors approached the window; she could touch one by extending her arm from her hiding-place. Who were they? Oh, some of her mamma's gentlemen ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... obtuse Who Progress impede with crude cackle, Predestinate duffers of prattle profuse, Who the biggest world-problems would tackle; State-quacks, shouting Emperors, queer School-Board cranks, We'll give you our best benediction, And speed you at parting with heartiest thanks, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... mediaeval gloom and modern din, another spirit breathed upon him,—a spirit of green woods and blue waters, the freshness of May mornings, the prattle of tender infancy, the gambols of young lambs on the hill-side. From his childhood, Poetry walked hand in hand with Painting, and beguiled his loneliness with wild, sweet harmonies. Bred up amid the stately, measured, melodious platitudes of the eighteenth century, that Golden Age ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... happy. The pretty needlewoman guessed that her new friend had been long weaned from tenderness and love, and no longer believed in the devotion of woman. Finally, some unexpected sally in Caroline's light prattle lifted the last veil that concealed the real youth and genuine character of the Stranger's physiognomy; he seemed to bid farewell to the ideas that haunted him, and showed the natural liveliness that lay beneath the ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... islets have been formed on these shoals, and this seems to be a general circumstance in the China Sea; the sea close outside the reefs is very deep; several of them have a lagoon-like structure; or separate islets (PRATTLE, ROBERT, DRUMMOND, etc.) are so arranged round a moderately shallow space, as to appear as if they had once formed one large atoll.— BOMBAY SHOAL (one of the Paracells) has the form of an annular reef, and is "apparently deep within;" it seems to have an entrance ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... shadow of the western ridge began to climb the opposite bluffs of the lake shore. We pulled well out into the lake and lay on our oars. If anything was said, I do not remember it. I was as one who had just heard words from the dead, and hears as prattle all the sounds of common life. My eyes, my ears, were opened anew to Nature, and it seemed even as if some new sense had been given me. I felt, as I never felt before, the cool gloom of the shadow creep up, ridge after ridge, towards the solitary peak, irresistibly and triumphantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... affectionate nature, "That he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything the gentleman would tell him." That day he so pleased the gentlemen by his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... others who allow screaming,—"the more the better,"—in order to produce power and expression in the voice, and to make it serviceable for public performances. They may, indeed, require the singing of solfeggio, and prattle about the requisite equality of the tones; and they consequently make the pupil practise diligently and strongly on the two-lined a, b flat, b, where kind Nature does not at first place the voice, because she has reserved for herself the slow and careful development of it. As ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... but they hear not," may be said of all the world. Tragedies and comedies go on continually before us which we neither see nor hear; cries of distress and prattle of infants, songs of love and screams of war, alike fall upon deaf ears, while we calmly discuss the last book or the news from Borriboo-lah-Gha, as completely oblivious as if all this stirring ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... many and many a time, though she never saw me. I knew her favorite path across the mountains,—it led past a rocky chasm. On the edge of that chasm there was a broad, flat stone, and there she would sit often, reading, or watching the fishing-boats on the Fjord, and listening to the prattle of her child. I used to dream of that stone, and wonder if I could loosen it! It was strongly imbedded in the earth—but each day I went to it—each day I moved it! Little by little I worked—till a mere touch would have ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... was a regular oration! Good heavens, what wasn't there in it! I am positive that it would have reduced to rigidity even a Petersburg audience, let alone ours. Imagine an article that would have filled some thirty pages of print of the most affected, aimless prattle; and to make matters worse, the gentleman read it with a sort of melancholy condescension as though it were a favour, so that it was almost insulting to the audience. The subject.... Who could make it out? ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by the door. He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair. He looked through my heart to the mud that was there. Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke: "When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke Singing of peace. Railing at battle. Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle. All the millions of earth have voted for fight. You are voting for talk, with hands lily white." He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high, Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye: The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... should have at least three more to make him at all bearable, and he said there would be no living with him he would be so charming and agreeable, and so the talk ran on, the battledoor and shuttlecock kind of talk—the same prattle that we have all listened to dozens of times, or should have listened to, to have kept our hearts young. And yet not a talk at all; a play, rather, in which words count for little and the action is everything: ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... years ago, I can tell you. There he stands the same; and yet a stranger in the place of his birth, in a new order of things, joyless, busy, transformed Chapelizod, listening, as it seems to me, always to the unchanged song and prattle of the river, with his reveries and affections far away among by-gone times and a buried race. Thou hast a story, too, to tell, thou slighted and solitary sage, if only the winds would steal it musically forth, like the secret of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious. Richard II., ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... passed from the dwelling away, And quiet serenity brightens the day: With innocent prattle, her toils to beguile, In the midst of her children, the mother must smile. With matronly cares,—those relentless demands On the strength of her heart and the skill of her hands,— The hours come tenderly, ceaselessly fraught, And leave her small ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... fourth was never more heard of. In a few days after, the husband and father returned from Winchester (where he had been for salt) and instead of the welcome greeting of an affectionate wife, and the pleasing prattle of his innocent children, was saluted with the melancholy intelligence of their fate. It was enough to make him curse the authors of the outrage, and swear eternal enmity to the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the truth, and you shall hear it. That man's father is an outlaw. He is a fugitive from justice. All this prattle about him being ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... philologer: the botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard: the lawyer scarcely hears the name of a physician without contempt; and he that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle, wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... time she would scud down to the water's edge to pluck the bracken that grew there, or to test the thin ice with her foot. She would laugh and then be silent, and then break out into laughter again. She would prattle to herself unconsciously and then laugh once more. All the world seemed made anew to this happy ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... little wife, who will fill my glass while I am tranquilly smoking my pipe before a blazing fire, may have as many charms as the best brig in which one may sometimes perish with hunger and thirst. Right or wrong, I imagine to myself again that the prattle of two or three little monkeys around me, may be as agreeable as the sound of the wind howling through the masts, or of Spanish balls whistling about one's ears. All this, Kate, signifies that I mean to marry; and who do you suppose has put this pretty whim into my ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... while old Robert proceeded to consult his fly-book. Neither of them seemed in a very talkative mood; indeed, when you are in front of a Highland river, with its swift-glancing lights, its changing glooms and gleams, its continual murmur and prattle, what need is there of any talk? Talk only distracts the attention. And this part of the stream was especially beautiful. They could hardly quarrel with the sunlight when, underneath the clear water, it sent interlacing lines ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... tavern or playhouse is left undetermined. The assembled company, I am assured, included not merely Edward Alleyn the actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. Together these celebrated men are said to have discussed a passage in the new play of Hamlet. The reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained intercourse with professional associates, no biographer deserves pardon for overlooking the revelation, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... fatally deficient, as so many of her countrymen and countrywomen are, in that lightness which distinguishes the French or the Italians, and would have enabled her, had she been so fortunately endowed with it, to sit by the fire and prattle innocently to her husband, whatever he might be doing. When she came to her new abode and was turning out the corners, she discovered upstairs in a cupboard a number of brown-looking old books, which had not been touched for many a long ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... in this way? Were I to go up to him he would show me no kind of mercy; he would kill me then and there as easily as though I were a woman, when I had off my armour. There is no parleying with him from some rock or oak tree as young men and maidens prattle with one another. Better fight him at once, and learn to which of us Jove ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... polonaise, quite a lady of fashion en miniature, stopped in front of him and stared at him in shy wonder. He had always been fond of children, and often rejoiced in their affectionate ways and confidential prattle, and now it suddenly touched him with a warm sense of human fellowship to have this little daintily befrilled and crisply starched beauty single him out for notice among the hundreds who reclined in the arbors, or sauntered to and fro ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... head, and a nation Well gagged and well drilled and well cowed, And a gospel of war and damnation, Has not empire a right to be proud? Fools prattle and tattle Of freedom, reason, right, The beauty of duty, ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... heard with patience thiss so silly prattle of a rich young girl—" he began. "Now it is a poor man who speaks to you out of a heart full of bitterness against this law and order which you ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... R. Woods had been before her marriage one of the beautiful Anstruther sisters, who, as certain New Yorkers still remember—those grizzled, portly, rosy-gilled fellows who prattle on provocation of Jenny Lind and Castle Garden, and remember everything—created a pronounced furor at their debut in the days of crinoline and the Grecian bend; and Margaret Anstruther, as they will tell you, was married to Thomas Hugonin, then a gallant cavalry officer ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... by the cunning of the pen, and the devotion of the unknown great men, his friends of the brotherhood. Dialogue, closely packed, nervous, pregnant, terse, and full of the spirit of the age, replaced his conversations, which seemed poor and pointless prattle in comparison. His characters, a little uncertain in the drawing, now stood out in vigorous contrast of color and relief; physiological observations, due no doubt to Horace Bianchon, supplied links of interpretations between human character and the curious phenomena of human life—subtle ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... we so glad to talk and take our turns to prattle, when so rarely we get back to the stronghold of our silence ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... demand aside as though it were the irresponsible prattle of a child, ignored it utterly. He was conscious of only one thing—that she had barred herself away from him, humiliated him, dealt their mutual love a blow beneath which ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... course, and her full stomacke fed, When consumation of fewe months expired, Shee husbandlesse, a mayde was brought to bed, Of that rare Merlin that the world admired: This to be honest, all her friends did doubt it, Much prittle prattle was ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... something like the charm of meadows and fields in your sweet prattle, and you should never desert it for the thickets of psychological speculations.—Come on, child. These people want ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the thought of the children, for the childish prattle had so soon been hushed, the eager little feet had been so quickly stilled. Alden was the first-born son, with an older daughter, who had been named Virginia, for her mother. Virginia would have been thirty-two now, and probably married, with children of her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels deserves especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the highest sense of the word, was the slave of any woman whose person excited his desires, and whose airs and prattle amused his leisure. Indeed a husband would be justly derided who should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eagerly to pick up a little gilt-edged book from the table in the inner room. He followed her mechanically, hardly heeding her happy prattle. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... said the captain; "or was so very late for, but a month ago, I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what great ones do, the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother, who shortly after died also; and for the love of this dear brother, they say, she has abjured the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... more amiable and accessible than Undine's conception of a Duchess, and displayed a curiosity as great as her daughter's, and much more puerile, concerning her new friend's history and habits. But through her mild prattle, and in spite of her limited perceptions. Undine felt in her the same clear impenetrable barrier that she ran against occasionally in the Princess; and she was beginning to understand that this barrier represented a number of things about which she ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... rest or home, While many a languid eye and thrilling hand Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand, Or gently pressed, returned the pressure still: Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band, Let sage or cynic prattle as he will, These hours, and only these, redeemed Life's years ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... were now lighted in Granny's handsome sitting-room, and a huge turf fire burned on the hearth, for it was a wintry evening. The tea-table had been placed to one side, near Granny's chair, and as Madam laughed heartily at Terencia's prattle no one could have suggested that the coming of this bright little creature had been as a nightmare to the old lady for ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... uselessness. I could point to my desk and say, "There lie the proofs of my erudition—the highest prizes of my college class." But of what use they? The dry theories I had been taught had no application to the purposes of real life. My logic was the prattle of the parrot. My classic lore lay upon my mind like lumber; and I was altogether about as well prepared to struggle with life—to benefit either my fellow-man or myself—as if I had graduated in ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... and shores were firmer— The blue sea over the bright sand roll'd; Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur, Sheen of silver and glamour of gold— And the sunset bath'd in the gulf to lend her A garland of pinks and of purples tender, A tinge of the sun-god's rosy splendour, A tithe of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... friend, And my deere Father: how features are abroad I am skillesse of; but by my modestie (The iewell in my dower) I would not wish Any Companion in the world but you: Nor can imagination forme a shape Besides your selfe, to like of: but I prattle Something too wildely, and my Fathers precepts I therein ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my left hand, between Deloraine and me, and it was clear she was discontented with her position. Her eyes wandered down the table to Vennard, who had taken in an American duchess, and seemed to be amused at her prattle. She looked with disfavour at Deloraine, and turned to me as the lesser ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... could not withstand such prattle. The blacksmith turned in some beans, the boys from Manchester divided their scanty store of flour and bacon, I brought some salt, some sugar, and some oatmeal, and as the small man put it away he chirped and chuckled like a cricket. His thanks were mere words, his voice was calm. He accepted ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... she in the manger lay, Beside the stalled cattle, A throng of shepherds entered in To hear the childish prattle. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... services so pompously proffered. So long as he stays in Quito he will not lose sight of the contrast between big promise and beggarly performance. This outward civility, however, is not hypocritical; it is mere mechanical prattle; the speaker does not expect to be taken at his word. The love of superlatives and the want of good faith may be considered as prominent characteristics. "The readiness with which they break a promise or an agreement (wrote ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... rest; And should the youngest raise its little voice, The careful mother, ever on the watch, And always pleas'd with what her husband says, Gives it a gentle tap upon the fingers, Or stops its ill tim'd prattle with a kiss. The soldier next, but not unask'd, begins, And tells in better speech what he has seen; Making his simple audience to shrink With tales of war and blood. They gaze upon him, And almost weep to see the man so poor, So bent and ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... much damning evidence against it. It would not listen. It was too greedy. It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the toil of children and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering and misery of mankind to continue and to increase, in short, the capitalist class failed to take advantage ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... or other the idea of quitting the country in his company seemed less repulsive to her than at first. He was rich, and she would no longer be obliged to support herself by a degrading occupation. After the first buzz of scandal and excitement at her elopement the world would cease to prattle, or if it did she would be in America and safe from its strictures. The King was too poor in friends to refuse her recognition at his court. And, after all, there need be no scandal. She would go to America in the role of a professional beauty and Jawkins should be her manager. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks idle prattle and settles ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... of Cerinthus the heretic, who in the apostolic age already attempted to prove from Moses the existence of but one God, which he assigned as reason that our Lord Jesus cannot be true God on account of the impossibility of God and man being united in one being. Thus he gave us the prattle of his reason, which he made the sole standard for heaven ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... and our delightful conversation turned upon no other topic than our mutual felicity. If it had not been for the uneasiness of the poor captain, which at last struck us, we should never have put a stop either to the dinner or to, our charming prattle. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thine insolence, fellow," said the armed rider, breaking in on his prattle with a high and stern voice, "and tell us, if thou canst, the road to—How call'd ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... them, filling it out with his clear, happy voice, and that tender pantomime that comes so naturally to a man who not merely loves children—for who is there that does not?—but one born with the instinct for intercourse with them. To those not so born it is as difficult to enter into the life and prattle of birds. I have once or twice crept outside the bedroom door when neither children nor George thought of eavesdroppers, and the following little songs are impressions from memory of his. You must imagine them chanted by a voice full of the infinite tenderness ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... business to a woman. I've been in England for years, you know, and the women over there are doing all the men's work and getting better wages at it than the men ever did. After the war they'll never go back to their tatting and prattle. I'm going to your shipyard and have a look-in, but not the way a pink debutante follows a naval officer over a battle-ship, staring at him and not at the works. I'm going on business, and if I like ship-building, I may ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Brownings, but, at one time, Lowell, who was not, however, a very good Florentine. "As for pictures," I find him writing, in 1874, on a later visit, "I am tired to death of 'em,... and then most of them are so bad. I like best the earlier ones, that say so much in their half-unconscious prattle, and talk nature to me instead of high art." But "the older streets," he says, "have a noble mediaeval distance and reserve for me—a frown I was going to call it, not of hostility, but of haughty doubt. These grim palace fronts meet you with an aristocratic start that puts ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Lavender. Stay—had he not? What was that faint something, without a name—a sort of vague uneasiness, which had seemed to creep over him whenever he had seen her during those months—a sense of incongruity between her light prattle and his own inmost thoughts and holiest feelings? It was so slight that as yet he had never faced it. He recognised now it was because his heart had refused to face it. And conscience told him, speaking loudly this time, that he must hold back ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... miracle! Music transformed To morphine, and the drowsy god invoked By the poor prattle of a maiden's tongue! A moment more, and we should all have gone Down into dreamland with the babe! Ah, well! There ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... she said, "come talk to me, for I know not what to do with my lone self today. Time hangs heavily in this gloomy house. I do verily think this Red Room has an evil influence over me. See if your childish prattle can drive away the ghosts that riot in these dark old corners—ghosts of a ruined and shamed life! Nay, shrink not—do I talk wildly? I mean not all I say—my brain seems on fire, little Beatrice. Come; it may be you know some grim old legend of this ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... But the road wound around to get out of a low marshy place, a pond in the rainy season, and some rocks that seemed tumbled up on end. They struck a bit of the old Boston Post Road, and that caused the little girl to stop her prattle and think of the old ladies they had never visited. She must "jog" her father's memory. That was what her mother always said when ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... world. A woman's voice floated up from the pastures of an old farm-house, below where I sat, calling the cattle home. The barking of dogs sounded clear in different parts of the vale, and about scattered hamlets, on the hill sides. I could hear the far-off prattle of a company of girls, mingled with the lazy joltings of a cart, the occasional crack of a whip, and the surly call of a driver to his horses, upon the high road, half a mile below me. From a wooded slope, on the opposite side of the valley, ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... exclaimed Tai-y; "they're purely and simply the prattle of a mean mouth and vile tongue! They're enough to evoke ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... o'er his shoulder hung the Cordon Bleu. Up-rose the QUEEN.—"My favourite Prince, she cried, To me and to my House so near allied, To you I shall resign no common care: Beneath your wing I place a favourite Fair. Regardless of her Children's growing years, Deaf to their prattle, heedless of their tears; Tir'd of her native land, and pleasant home, On foreign shores she languishes to roam; In foreign Courts to play coquettish arts, And dart her lightnings into foreign hearts. Yours is the ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... time had been debating in his mind whether this silly prattle was the result of real ignorance, snobbishness, or kindness of heart. He gave her the benefit of the doubt, however, and, wishing to show her that she might put her mind at rest as to his ability to overcome any embarrassment that he might have had, said ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Evaleen had readily fallen into sympathetic relations. Days of chattering on deck, and nights of prattle before falling asleep on the same couch, left few girlish secrets unexchanged. The scant experience of Lucrece's isolated life had brought her only a small stock of personal doings or feelings to disclose. Yet, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... very little. She was already reaching out tentacles to the wider world, where schoolgirl criticisms would be mere prattle; and it was far more serious to her to wonder what Brother Dudley would think of her having an actress for ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... is odd!—the more I try to talk Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic To prattle of myself! I'll try to balk Its waywardness and be more altruistic. So let us speak of others—how they sin, And what a devil of a state they ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... rural regions to be able to transfer themselves to the sufferings and injustices of the town. He saw the city collectively as the oppressor of the country, and Leverett Whyland, by reason of Clytie's innocent prattle, became the city incarnate in ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Desmond and Erin as martyr and prince, Lived Paolo, the young Campanaro,[95] the pride of his own little vale— Hope changed the hot breath of his furnace as into a sea-wafted gale; Peace, the child of Employment, was with him, with prattle so soothing and sweet, And Love, while revealing the future, strewed the sweet roses ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... was it a day gloomy and dark, a day of clouds and of thick darkness with Mansoul. Now they saw that they had been foolish, and began to perceive what the company and prattle of Mr. Carnal- Security had done, and what desperate damage his swaggering words had brought poor Mansoul into. But what further it was likely to cost them they were ignorant of. Now Mr. Godly-Fear began again to be in repute with the men of the town; yea, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... hand, before the wood fire. The sunlight and warmth of years gone by, coined into stick and fagots from the forest, were released again in glow and warmth, making playful lights and warning shadows. The golden minutes passed by. The prattle of lovers and the sober wisdom of experience blended. Then, night's oblivion. Again, the cheerful morning meal and the merry company, the incense of worship, and the separation of each and all to ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... a-wandering into the desert, and did not take a moment's rest. Next day I said to him, "What condition was that?" He replied, "I remarked the nightingales that they had come to carol in the groves, the pheasants to prattle on the mountains, the frogs to croak in the pools, and the wild beasts to roar in the forests, and thought with myself, saying, It cannot be generous that all are awake in God's praise and I am wrapt up in the sleep of forgetfulness!—Last night a bird was carolling towards the morning; ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was anaemic, especially at slaughtering time? From them and the animals there and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... to make sufficient penitence impossible. 'Tis true that in a few weeks the delirium was at an end. Oh, what were my sensations when the mist dispersed before my eyes? I called for my husband, but in vain!—I listened for the prattle of my children, ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... whole existence, while a man's love is only part of his—which is true, and only natural and reasonable, all things considered. But women never consider as a rule. A man can't go on talking lovey-dovey talk for ever, and listening to his young wife's prattle when he's got to think about making a living, and nursing her and answering her childish questions and telling her he loves his little ownest every minute in the day, while the bills are ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... language is, as usual, plain and simple, yet, in the ears of men generally, it is unusual and unintelligible. The world estimates it as similar to the prattle of children or fools. What, according to the world's construction, is implied by the statement, "Whatsoever is begotten [born] of God overcometh the world?" Overcoming the world, the unconverted would understand to mean bringing into subjection to oneself every earthly thing and assuming ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... development. And young man—young woman, you who have left behind the days of knee trousers and short dresses, and with them have laid aside the doll and the pet, think it not weakness when you find yourself irresistibly drawn by the sweet smile of an innocent babe or by the childish prattle of one a little farther on. Be not ashamed when, under such influence, you picture yourself the center of a home, and in this connection think of him or her whom you would like to have share it with you. It is the sweetest influence that can ever come ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... "The First Part" (which is so trivial that one wonders why he ever troubled to accumulate so much insignificant material), but after quoting them he does not hesitate to call their ideas "pedantial" (p. 24) and to refer to their statements as grammarian's "prattle" (p. 11). And, though at times it seems that his curiosity and industry impaired his judgment, Rapin does draw significant ideas from such scholars and critics as Quintilian, Vives, Scaliger, Donatus, Vossius, Servius, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... after night in my mother-in-law's "budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when he cut all those superfluous teeth ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... and wrote her a long letter, pouring out his whole soul, hoping somehow that she, his guardian angel, though dead, might see it. A year later he wrote a friend: "There is a sensation of loss which nothing alleviates—a solitude which no society interrupts. Amid the smiles and prattle of children, and the kindness of sympathizing friends, I am alone; Roxana is not here. She partakes in none of my joys, and bears with me none of my sorrows. I do not murmur; I only feel daily, constantly, and with deepening impression, how much I have ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... caricatures, and certainly in 'Robert,' the City waiter of Punch. But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession of whom is her boast, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... been conveyed into the sea—For this reason therefore the Egyptians look upon children as endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in a sacred place), forming omens and presages from it—Isis, during this interval, having been informed that Osiris, deceived by her sister Nepthys who was in love with him, had unwittingly united ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once said to her husband, "Michael, how about our lodging? You know we may have trouble in getting it if ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... lies. Who would think that that uncombed hair was once toyed with by a father's fingers? Who would think that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mother's lips? Would you guess that that thick tongue once made a household glad with its innocent prattle? Utter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up. Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush the dust from that coat that once covered a generous heart. Show him the way to the home that once rejoiced at the sound of his footstep, and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... at the table. Little Joey was as bright as Hugh had ever known him to be, and fairly captivated the aged pair with his prattle. The old lady in particular hung upon his every word, as though in an ecstacy of delight. She anticipated his childish wants, and, really, little Joey could never have sat down to such a bountiful feast ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... unaccountable creature of her sex. To hear her talk seraphics, and run over Norris,[327] and More,[328] and Milton,[329] and the whole set of intellectual triflers, torments me heartily; for to a lover who understands metaphors, all this pretty prattle of ideas gives very fine views of pleasure, which only the dear declaimer prevents, by understanding them literally. Why should she wish to be a cherubim, when it is flesh and blood that makes her adorable? If I speak to her, that ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... much to Wilhelmina, as she tells us; [ Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur d Frederic-le-Grand (London, 1812), i. 5.] and would amuse himself whole days with the pranks and prattle of the little child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt, brightened up into unusual vitality at sight of this invaluable little Brother of hers; through whom he can look once more into the waste dim future with a flicker of new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back half-broken by a careless ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... quaintly barred windows of the hacienda that Miss Keene gazed thoughtfully on the night, unable to compose herself to sleep. An antique guest-chamber had been assigned to her in deference to her wish to be alone, for which she had declined the couch and vivacious prattle of her new friend, Dona Isabel. The events of the day had impressed her more deeply than they had her companions, partly from her peculiar inexperience of the world, and partly from her singular sensitiveness to external causes. The whole quaint story of the forgotten ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,—a gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends, perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,—of the dances round the great walnut-tree ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... all, there now lay that great gulf. 'Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.' That the little blackbird, as they used to call her, should have been on the verge of running away with her own husband was a half understood, amusing mystery discussed in exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs discussing the ghastly tidings of massacres in other ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Academy does not take alarm at my name (as has indeed been the case in other places, owing to the foolish prattle of the critics), they might try the "Prometheus" choruses there by-and-by. They are to be given almost directly (at the end of October) at Zwickau, and probably later on in Leipzig, where I shall then also ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... in five minutes that her ancient lover was a ninny, and have left him with scorn; but she was under the charm of old recollections, and the sound of that silly voice was to her magical. As for Mr. Billings, he allowed his Excellency to continue his prattle; only frowning, yawning, cursing occasionally, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bandy compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure of. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... joke whenever we meet, Clara and I; Prattle and laughter, and kisses sweet, Clara and I. Were I but twenty, and not two score, Clara and I would laugh still more, With plenty of hopeful years in store For Clara and I, Clara and I; With plenty of hopeful years in store For ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... lost in gloomy reverie, sits apart gazing at a mysterious picture on the wall, the portrait of a pale man clad in black, the hero of the mysterious legend of the Flying Dutchman. The girls rally Senta upon her abstraction, and as a reply to their idle prattle she sings them the ballad of the doomed mariner. Throughout the song her enthusiasm has been waxing, and at its close, like one inspired, she cries aloud that she will be the woman to save him, that through her the accursed wretch shall find eternal peace. Erik, her betrothed lover, who enters ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... that I wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I employed my time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots and so on entertained Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable woman could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new experience among strange men and strange sensations. She expressed no opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in the gallery of my intimate memories, fixed ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... customary, and though rustical, most gracious proffer, of the kissed hand, and they withhold neither their hands in turn nor their acquaintance in an honest way. Seeing which I vexed myself that Denys was not with us to prattle with them; he is so fond of women." ("Are you fond of women, Denys?") And the reader opened two great violet eyes upon him ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... speech, faculty of speech; locution, talk, parlance, verbal intercourse, prolation^, oral communication, word of mouth, parole, palaver, prattle; effusion. oration, recitation, delivery, say, speech, lecture, harangue, sermon, tirade, formal speech, peroration; speechifying; soliloquy &c 589; allocution &c 586; conversation &c 588; salutatory : screed: valedictory [U.S.]. oratory; elocution, eloquence; rhetoric, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... child, "do all the people praise and call on him; why do the birds sing of the king; and why do the brooks always prattle his name, as they dance from the hills to ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think, however, that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of religion and the specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were mixed up with childish prattle, was much more decorous or appropriate than what it was ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "The prattle of these little ones softens my hard heart, senors, with a new pleasure; but it saddens me, when I recollect that there may be children of mine now in the world—children who have never known a father's love—never known ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... were always love confidences: "I have seen her to-day; she wore a blue dress trimmed with gray fur, and she had a lark's wing on her turban, etc."—For we had chosen sweethearts who became the subject of our very poetical prattle. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... lugubrious light upon rows of gentlemen and ladies who had to stand there on duty, watching her as the mourners watched the King, though her lying-in-state was not always as silent; for though, there was much time spent in slumber, Catherine sometimes would indulge in a good deal of subdued prattle with her mother, or her more confidential attendants. But at other times, chiefly when first awaking, or else when anything had crossed her will, she would fall into agonies of passionate grief—weeping, shrieking, and rending her hair with almost a frenzy ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... His clothes were sifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the "bronzed Indian fighters." The city was under martial law. He read also the bickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... little dolefully, that he would probably be a very poor business man, that is, if business depended on caution and a lack of confidence in his fellow-beings. But, bent on cheering himself, even if Horace should break faith with him and prattle to the limit—and Horace's limit was a long one, the blue canopy of heaven, when it came to gossip—what possible harm could it do? In fact, it might serve Hayden immeasurably, for the talk might reach the ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... up the steps toward the entrance, hesitating between the desire to snub her interlocutor and to avoid the appearance of fright. The man, meanwhile, moved easily beside her, courteously distant, discourteously insistent in his prattle. But the motor-car ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... pretty landscape, or questioning her very ignorant companions about the dwellers in Etterick. She was full of praises for the house when it came in view; it was "quaint," it was "charming," it was everything inappropriate. But the amiable woman's prattle deserted her when she found herself in the cold stone hall with the great portraits and the lack of all modern frippery. It was so plainly a man's house, so clearly a place of tradition, that her pert modern speech seemed for one ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... man then kissed back the sunny smiles and listened to the playful prattle which fell from the bright lips. Then he thought ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... door, which opened, and the mother of the children appeared. You should have seen her in her dumb terror, with her face as white as chalk, her mouth half open, and her eyes fixed in a horrified stare. But the youngest boy nodded to her in great glee, and called out in his infantile prattle, 'We're playing at soldiers.' And then the bear leader ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... charm, that once gave him ecstatic delight and solid joy, is vanished from his sight; and all, that once was fair and lovely, wears the frown of darkness and indignation. He gazes upon little children, and hears their artless and innocent prattle, reflects what he once was, and every joy, that sparkles in their eyes, sends a dagger to his heart. The rustling of a leaf strikes him with terror and alarm, and every passing breeze bears to his tormented soul the groans of the dying man, and conscience forces him to listen to the heart-rending ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... Schifanoia. Meantime a coiled ladder watched out the sun from a myrtle thicket, of which and its works came their happy nights. Then, as she lay in his arms, the Maid of Honour vanished in the child who was so lovely because she so loved; she could prattle, in the soft Venetian brogue, of boundless faith in her little lord, of her simple admiration of him and all he did, of her wonder and delight to be loved. She could tell him of what she could do, and of how much she could never do, to please him and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... heaven against their hearts and wills, and the love that they had to their sins, yet that God was far from infusing any thing into their souls, that should in the least hinder, weaken, obstruct, or let them in seeking the welfare of their souls. Now, men will tattle and prattle at a mad rate about election and reprobation, and conclude that because all are not elected, therefore God is to blame that any are damned. But then they will see that they are not damned because they were not elected, but because they sinned; ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... for Mabel to keep her secrets. When her papa came home at night, she always climbed upon his knee to tell him every thing that had happened in her little world during the day; and her papa always listened to her prattle with a ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... were nearly of a size, though the nephew was a month or two older than his uncle, a relationship that was early impressed on their young minds, and caused those who heard their prattle ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... herself had a melodious voice, and peculiarly pleasing manners. These little fairies constituted themselves our attendants during our stay at Mauleon, and as they spoke, equally well, French and Basque, we enjoyed their innocent prattle and intelligent remarks extremely. They were very eloquent in praise of a certain English traveller named Francois, who had stayed some time at their inn, and wanted to take them away to England, and they tried hard to persuade us that he ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... children; and one would suppose that he could live in the beautiful cottage the elector had given him, independent of the favorite. But no; deprived of his old instrument all else was lost to him. For hours would he sit before his humble door, heedless of his wife's entreaties or the childish prattle of Franz and Nanette; his eye riveted on the old cathedral, and his hands playing nervously, as though cheating himself with the idea he was still at the organ. Then roused by a sudden inspiration, he ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... at length, and as generally happens, when least expected, for protesting he would not be impatient any more, he amused himself by setting little Lord Lyle on his knee, and was so amused by the child's playful prattle and joyous laugh, that he forgot to watch at the window, which was his general post. Ellen was busily engaged in nursing Caroline's babe, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... meditated an heroic poem on the 'Siege of Jerusalem,' by Titus. This is the pride and the stronghold of my hope, but I never think of it except in my best moods. The work to which I dedicate the ensuing years of my life, is one which highly pleased Leslie, in prospective, and my paper will not let me prattle to you about it. I have written what you more wished me ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... turned to the savage, but not having the advantage of the glass, she could not see him, and continued her pleasant prattle. Like a dark, noiseless shadow, the Indian advanced, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... foolish children. 'Twould better become thee to prattle of frocks and fixings for my Lady Penwick. Your Lordship will see to it at once?" It was a happy suggestion. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... resolv'd, sweet friends and followers! These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: But, since they measure our deserts so mean, That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, They shall be kept our forced followers Till with their ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... that the Cabinet Order is not the outcome of religious feeling? By describing the Cabinet Order everywhere as an outcome of religious feeling. Is an insight into social movements to be expected from such an illogical mind? Listen to his prattle about the relation of German society to the Labour movement and to social ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... loveliest colors Blossom as brightly as wink, and bees come and suck 'em. Water-wagtails come tiltin',—and, look! there's the geese o' the village! All are a-comin' to see you, and all want to give you a welcome; Yes, and you're kind o' heart, and you prattle to all of 'em kindly; "Come, you well-behaved creeturs, eat and drink what I bring you,— I must be off and away: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... daughters of France, the fairest, the most ill-starred; I had fought and conquered shoulder to shoulder with her sons. A soldier, a noble, of the proudest and bravest race in Europe, it had been left to the prattle of a hobbledehoy lackey in an English chaise to recall me to the consciousness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could hear the childish prattle of the children and the crooning of Naudin as she hushed, with swaying body, her ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... only part of his—which is true, and only natural and reasonable, all things considered. But women never consider as a rule. A man can't go on talking lovey-dovey talk for ever, and listening to his young wife's prattle when he's got to think about making a living, and nursing her and answering her childish questions and telling her he loves his little ownest every minute in the day, while the bills are running up, and rent mornings ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... prince, Lived Paolo, the young Campanaro,[95] the pride of his own little vale— Hope changed the hot breath of his furnace as into a sea-wafted gale; Peace, the child of Employment, was with him, with prattle so soothing and sweet, And Love, while revealing the future, strewed the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the lifetime of the late King it was his habit to pass very much of his time here; thus, this was really His Majesty's audience chamber. Here he would have his little daughter of whom he was passionately fond—taking a great delight in listening to her merry prattle, and her amusing remarks on whatever attracted her attention. The windows of the room look out on to the Dam, a large square, which is quite the busiest part of the city. The view from these windows is a never-ending source of interest to the little Princess, and here she is wont to station herself, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... leg, which was naked, though on the foot was a slipper of Spanish leather, he laid o'er Mistress Kilspinnie's knees as he threw himself back against the pillar of the bed, the better to observe and converse with my grandfather; and she, like another Delilah, began to prattle it with her fingers, casting at the same time glances, unseen by her papistical paramour, towards my grandfather, who, as I have said, was a comely and well-favoured ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... I must not wed One who is poor, so hold your prattle; My lips on love have ne'er been fed, With poverty I cannot battle. My choice is made—I know I'm right— Who wed for love starvation suffer; So I will study day and night To please and win ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... surrounded by productive fishing grounds and potentially large oil reserves. In 1932, French Indochina annexed the islands and set up a weather station on Prattle Island; maintenance was continued by its successor Vietnam. China has occupied the Paracel Islands since 1974, when its troops captured a South Vietnamese garrison occupying the western islands. However, the islands are still claimed by Vietnam ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... me see. Come and appear, little letter! Here I am, says he, and what say you to Stella this morning fresh and fasting? And can Stella read this writing without hurting her dear eyes?" he goes on, after more kind prattle and fond whispering. The dear eyes shine clearly upon him then—the good angel of his life is with him and blessing him. Ah, it was a hard fate that wrung from them so many tears, and stabbed pitilessly that pure and tender bosom. A hard fate: but would she have changed ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... infant prodigy, Clarence, in our care for a little while that she might not be distracted by his innocent prattle while selecting the material for ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... regiments (8,000 men) drawn up for action, and says, "My friends, my good friends, you see what is going on. How horrible! Alas! these are your papers, your titles and those of your parents." The soldiers smile at this sentimental prattle.] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... soon became the husband of a fair-haired wife,—the daughter of a countryman who, like himself, had established commercial relations at Para. In a few years after, several sweet children called him "father,"—only two of whom survived to prattle in his ears this endearing appellation, alas! no longer to be pronounced in the ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... told his sympathetic professor, the learned Thibaut, author of the treatise "On the Purity of Music," in a characteristic manner. He went to the piano and played Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," commenting on the different passages: "Now she speaks—that's the love prattle; now he speaks—that's the man's earnest voice; now both the lovers speak together "; concluding with the remark, "Isn't all that better far than anything that jurisprudence can utter?" The young student ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Yellowstone too easy a prey. Hallett Phillips himself, who managed the party loved to play Indian hunter without hunting so much as a fieldmouse; Iddings the geologist was reduced to shooting only for the table, and the guileless prattle of Billy Hofer alone taught the simple life. Compared with the Rockies of 1871, the sense of wildness had vanished; one saw no possible adventures except to break one's neck as in chasing an aniseed fox. Only the more intelligent ponies scented an occasional ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and that of him who would woo you, is more fully developed. Surely, if this ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... is waning is the disrespect we feel for great subjects. We only mention them, or hint at them; and this cannot lead to very brilliant talk. Tho prattle and persiflage have their place in conversation, talkers of the highest order tire of continually encouraging chit-chat. "What a piece of business; monstrous! I have not read it; impossible to get a box at the opera for another ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... (to keep only to great examples), who was so righteously anxious to see men, women and children—emphatically the children, too—of the abominable French nation massacred off the face of the earth? This illustration of the new war- temper is artlessly revealed in the prattle of the amiable Busch, the Chancellor's pet "reptile" of the Press. And this was supposed to be a war for an idea! Too much, however, should not be made of that good wife's and mother's sentiments any more than of the good First Emperor William's tears, shed so abundantly after every ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and in listening to her prattle. Life, henceforth, appeared to him to be full of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loved him. He ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... notice of Agassiz. And the minister's daughter, a little chubby girl of three summers, taking part in the general entertainment, strove to make her Gaelic sound as like English as she could, in my especial behalf. I remembered, as I listened to the unintelligible prattle of the little thing, unprovided with a word of English, that just eighteen years before, her father had had no Gaelic; and wondered what he would have thought, could he have been told, when he first sat down to study ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Shining Ones came and stood over the little lady, and looked down on her with faces of pity, which seemed blent with a serene and half-amused indulgence. It was a heavenly amusement, such as that with which mothers listen to the foolish-wise prattle of children just learning ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Because my face is torn and twisted makes me no different from you. I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate as you. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to mislead the men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindliness and sympathy ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... all, though, Indian-like, listening with respectful attention whenever his companion seemed to be addressing him in particular. But, as if reserving all his regrets for the parting moment, Bushie—now mounted on Burl's shoulder, now walking hand in hand with Kumshakah—kept up a lively prattle which never ceased, and to which the others listened with pleased ears. Sometimes, while riding aloft, he would amuse himself by catching at the slender, pliant branches of the trees brought within his reach, which he would draw after ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a cigar, and stared silently at the fire. From the mantelpiece Jill's photograph smiled down, but he did not look at it. Presently his attitude began to weigh upon Freddie. Freddie had had a trying evening. What he wanted just now was merry prattle, and his friend did not seem disposed to contribute his share. He removed his feet from the mantelpiece, and wriggled himself sideways, so that he could see Derek's face. Its gloom touched him. Apart from his admiration for Derek, he was a warm-hearted young ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... were a few days after put into a fine coach, and with them the two inhuman butchers, who were soon to end their joyful prattle, and turn their smiles to tears. One of them served as coachman, and the other sat between ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Legal Member, and to hear him mention The Submontane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment. Tods had heard the bazaar talking of a new plan for the Ryotwari, as bazaars talk when there is no white man to overhear. Tods began to prattle, and the Legal Member began to listen, till he soon realised that there was only one drawback to the beautiful Bill. The beautiful Bill, in short, was altogether wrong, more especially in the Council's pet ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... himself, his pursuits, and his affairs. The question which Barter's nerves were always finding in Philip's eyes was, as a matter of fact, not often absent from his mind. 'Now, how did you steal those notes?' was the one active query of his intelligence as he listened to Barter's candid prattle. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... second act, speak of her in her own hearing as a wit and a beauty, shake her head knowingly whenever her city connections were alluded to; and therefore it was no wonder that in a short time the child forgot the friends she had loved, grew ashamed of the parents she had honoured, learnt to prattle on subjects of which she knew nothing, and to affect all the premature airs of a woman, with more than the usual ignorance of a child, as children are ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... July Fourth could cast a gleam— As now, when I behold him play the host, With all the dignity which red men boast— With all the courtesy the whites have lost;— Assume the very hue of savage mind, Yet in rude accents show the thought refined:— Assume the naivete of infant age, And in such prattle seem still more a sage; The golden mean with tact unerring seized, A courtly critic shone, a simple savage pleased; The stoic of the woods his skill confessed, As all the Father answered in his breast, To the sure mark the silver arrow sped, The man without a tear a tear has shed; And ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the precipice; For who would lose his temper and his breath To keep a brute alive that's bent on death? Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach In some suburban school the parts of speech, And, maundering over grammar day by day, Lisp, prattle, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... just as plain, and I begun to see that when I did open up and prattle after Kink was safe, nobody wouldn't believe my little story. I had sized the Colonel up as a dead stringy old proposition, too. He was one of these big-chopped fellers with a mouth set more'n half way up from his chin and little thin lips like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Uncle Paul, with a soft chuckle. "None of your artfulness! You are trying to lead me on to prattle about Bony, so as to avoid my lecture upon the fresh-water polypes I have taken to-day. Get out, you transparent young scrub! In with you, and fetch down the case, and light the two candles on the parlour table. Nice innocent way of doing it. Think ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... has neglected his personal appearance during his malady, his first wish is for a barber, who is speedily sent to him by Bostana.—This old worthy Abul Hassan Ali Ebe Bekar the barber makes him desperate by his vain prattle. Having solemnly saluted to Nurredin, he warns him not to {20} leave the house to-day, as his horoscope tells him that his life is in danger. The young man not heeding him, Abul Hassan begins to enumerate all his talents as astrologer, philologer, philosopher, &c., in short he is everything ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... thus flew swiftly by while I listened to her lively prattle, which, like the lark's singing, had scarcely a pause in it, her attempt at being still and moonlight having ended in a perfect fiasco. At length, pouting her pretty lips and complaining of her hard lot, she said it was time ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Coffee-House daily bestows! To read and hear how the World merrily goes; To laugh, sing and prattle of This, That, and T' other; And be flatter'd and ogl'd and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... so glad to talk and take our turns to prattle, when so rarely we get back to the stronghold of our silence with ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Bernhard, on Irma's knee, folded in her soft arms, grew restless as the story lengthened, and began to prattle softly ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... contempt by M'Alister Indre, who mocked and laughed at the malicious prattle of a woman's tongue. But time proved only too truly how persistently the curse of the bereaved woman clung to the race of her oppressors, and, as Sir Bernard Burke remarks, it was in the reign of Queen Anne that the hopes of the house ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... dogs and lambs, and little wooden houses, toys which must be associated in the parents' minds with those who made their homes glad, but who have gone into the grave before them. One cannot but think of the bright eyes dim, the merry laugh and infantine prattle silent, the little hands, once so active in playful mischief, stiff and cold; all brought so to mind by the sight of those toys. There is a fearful amount of mortality among children at New York, and in several instances four or five buried in one grave told with mournful suggestiveness of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... went their regular rounds, which was always at stated hours. When the wind raged without, and the rain, hail, or snow sought entrance through the casement, while sitting near a comfortable fire, listening to female prattle and gossip, narratives of incidents of real life, discussions on disputed points in politics, philosophy, or religion between my friend with the crutches and the tall corporal of dragoons, who were both as fond of controversy as Mr. Shandy himself; or drinking in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... friendliest way possible in giving her a clear field with her Sir Launcelot. Allen humored her, finding a real relief in this childish game which his little friend took so seriously. The one drawback was the amount of intimate information which she conveyed through the medium of her innocent prattle. Allen could not know what was coming next, and so was powerless to head off conversation upon subjects into which he knew he had no right to enter, for Patricia possessed the faculty of keeping herself well informed as ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... in as stately a manner as they had when Hazel cried, 'I'll never be a woman!' They listened like grown-ups to the prattle of a child. And the stars, like gods in silver armour sitting afar in halls of black marble, seemed to hear and disdain the little gnat-like voice, as they heard Vessons' defiant 'Never will I!' and Mrs. Marston's woolly prayers, and Reddin's hoof-beats. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I am skilless of; but, by my modesty, The jewel in my dower, I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; 55 Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father's precepts I ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... latter, sitting in Daddy's lap, a little later began to prattle about his "black snowman," and so the story ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... me like a bayonet, for I knew too well how deadly true they were. I didn't try to contradict him, or talk about "hoping for the best"; for prattle of that sort seemed too futile. I only said, "Let's take this chance, then. I've plenty of time—hours yet. Stretch yourself out in the chaise longue and rest while we talk. I'll sit here by you ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "That he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything the gentleman would tell him." That day he so pleased the gentlemen by his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have gone insane. In the face of the insoluble problem his mind might have retreated into a shadow world of its own, perhaps to prattle happily the last few hours away. But there was something else there. The pre-flight school psychiatrist had recognized it, Johnny himself probably wouldn't have and it wasn't their policy to tell him. It saved him. The labored heart pounding and ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... agriculturists and workers in metals—not fighting men. Also she set herself to learn what she could of their tongue, which she did not find difficult, for Benita had a natural aptitude for languages, and had never forgotten the Dutch and Zulu she used to prattle as a child, which now came back to her very fast. Indeed, she could already talk fairly in either of those languages, especially as she spent her spare hours in studying their grammar, and ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... and fruit, or of Thomas Neal, concerning pet heifers, and new milk and butter and cheese, became tedious; the jokes and laughter of the farm-hands and dairymaids she heard with irritation; nor could the prattle and play of her romping boys divert her mind from the one absorbing theme—the descent of the Mississippi, the conquest of Mexico, the creation of a New World. In close daily communion with Theodosia, she dwelt not in a white frame house ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... and golden broom and crimson gladiolus waved and glowed in the shifting beams of the sunlight. Also there was in this little spot what forms the charm of Italian gardens always,—the sweet song and prattle of waters. A clear mountain-spring burst through the rock on one side of the little cottage, and fell with a lulling noise into a quaint moss-grown water-trough, which had been in former times the sarcophagus of some old Roman sepulchre. Its sides were richly sculptured with figures and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... she responded to his mood, but she could not shake off the burden of doubt and foreboding that oppressed her. She felt as if the long, bitter journey had in some fashion aged her. Jerry's gaiety was as the prattle of a child to her now. They had been children together till that day, but she felt that they could never be so again. Never before had she stopped in her headlong course to look ahead, to count the cost! Now, for the first time, ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in his arms had opened her eyes, and was looking about in wonder, he checked himself to say a word or two of foolish prattle in her ear, and stand her on the ground beside him. Then slowly winding one of her long tresses round and round his rough forefinger like a ring, while she hung about his dusty leg, he said ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... offended, and with reason, at the freedom of his speech; yet, his manner, was so much beyond anything I had been accustomed to for ease and pleasantness, that I soon forgave him, and when he encouraged me, began to prattle about my affairs, being only, with all my conceit, the silly lassie my mistress ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... again; I cannot be driven in a royal curricle to wells and waters: I can't make love now to my contemporary Charlotte Dives; I cannot quit Mufti and my parroquet for Sir William Irby,(112) and the prattle of a drawing-room, nor Mrs. Clive for Aelia Lalia Chudleigh; in short, I could give up nothing but an Earldom of EglingtOn; and yet I foresee, that this phantom of the reversion of a reversion will make me plagued; I shall have Lord Egmont whisper ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... must be made to go to Barport. A few days with Dora at the seaside, with some astute person there to manage the affair, would settle the fate of Mr. Ralph Haverley. At this thought her eyes sparkled, and she began to feel hungry. At this important moment she did not wish to occupy her mind with prattle and chat, and therefore departed from her usual custom of lunching with a friend or acquaintance. Hitching her roan mare in front of a confectionery shop, she entered ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... heard similar wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his own history? In these humble essaykins I have taken leave to egotize. I cry out about the shoes which pinch me, and, as I fancy, more naturally and pathetically than if my neighbour's corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about the dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard yesterday—about Brown's absurd airs—Jones's ridiculous elation when he thinks he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is that Jones will read this, ...
— English Satires • Various
... last, lulled by the tenderly crooned promises of the Koran, and the drowsy, intermittent prattle of the monkeys among the varnished leaves above. The night was intensely hot; not a breath of air could stir within our living-cabin, and the cooling moisture which always comes with nightfall on the equator ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... and philological, may satisfy the biologists and the philologists; they certainly satisfy nobody else. All those pseudo-scientific facts belong to the realm of fiction. Serious thinkers have ceased to prattle about the application of biology to ethics since Huxley delivered his Romanes lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." The encroachments of scientific materialism have failed as signally in the political sciences as ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... by the discipline of Providence, in the fulness of love which had been rising so long within the barriers of hope deferred, she bent prayerfully over the very slumbers of that fair boy, and taught him the precious name of God with the first prattle of his infant lips. How proudly she watched the unfolding of this bud of promise! When, in the pastimes of childhood, he played before the tent door, or, with a shout of gladness, ran to meet Abraham returning from the folds, her calm and glowing eye marked his footsteps, and her grateful aspirations ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... produced such an effect on others, that nobody ever afterwards dared so much as shew me a book. My boyhood was therefore passed as it should be, in horsemanship, and hunting, and learning to fight. What is the good of a gentleman's poring all day over a book? Prowess to the knight, and prattle to the clergyman. That ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... to restrain the prattle of girls, in the same manner as we should that of boys, with that severe question, 'To what purpose are you talking?' but by another, which is no less difficult to answer, 'How will your discourse be received?' In infancy, while ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... never before felt this mysterious uneasiness so strongly as on that evening when it had been his good fortune to make Mrs Anthony laugh a little by his artless prattle. Standing out of the way, he had watched his captain walk the weather-side of the poop, he took full cognizance of his liking for that inexplicably strange man and saw him swerve towards the companion and go down below with sympathetic ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... gewgaws, and the spirit of gracefulness had vanished. Their unmodulated voices grated on his ear, in contrast with the liquid softness of Rosabella's tones, and the merry, musical tinkling of Floracita's prattle. All they could tell him was, that they heard the quadroons who used to be kept there by the gentleman that owned the house had gone to the North somewhere. A pang shot through his soul as he asked himself whether they remembered his offer of assistance, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... until evening all around and about the cottage, and out of doors whithersoever I bent my steps, from the masses of deep green foliage, sounded the perpetual airy prattle of these delightful birds. One had the idea that the concealed vocalists were continually meeting each other at little social gatherings, where they exchanged pretty loving greetings, and indulged in a leafy gossip, interspersed with occasional fragments of music, vocal and ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... speaking, each dreaming her own dream, seeing it fade away, and beginning it over again. The old servant, Marguerite, was the only domestic mamma had brought with her, and she used to accompany us. Gay and daring, she always knew how to make the men laugh with her prattle, the sense and crudeness of which I did not understand until much later. She was the life of the party always. As she had been with us from the time we were born, she was very familiar, and sometimes objectionably so; but I would not let ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... almost before we could ask for rooms, were shown into a suite of magnificent apartments. I had a glimpse of a garden in the rear,—flowers and plants, and a balcony up which I suppose Romeo climbed to hold that immortal love-prattle with the lovesick Juliet. Boy began to light the candles. Asked in English the price of such fine rooms. Reply in Italian. Asked in German. Reply in Italian. Asked in French, with the same result. Other servants appeared, each with a piece of baggage. Other candles were lighted. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... money, and literary arrogance? Well; there is nothing to be said about them. They are all alike. They grew up to be all very respectable, comfortable, and commonplace. They were well-meaning people. What they had formerly said and thought was only—CHILDREN'S PRATTLE. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... though I believe them not, Who say you meddle in affairs of state: That you presume to prattle like a busy-body, Give your advice, and teach the lords o' the council What fits ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... from the skies, picking her up, and triumphantly carrying her off. Her only grief will be separation from me, but this is to be assuaged by my going and staying with her for long months at a time. This simple prattle is very sweet to me, my dear sister, but I cannot help feeling sad at the occasion of it. In the nature of things it is obvious that I shall never be to you again what I hitherto have been: your guide, counsellor, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... stayed her hour and then obediently went away, in spite of Jed's urgent invitation to stay longer. She had asked a good many questions and talked almost continuously, but Mr. Winslow, instead of being bored by her prattle, was surprised to find how empty and uninteresting the shop seemed ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on, as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed face of the gipsy as he studied ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... addition to their usual squalid and uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of mourning. The boats were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day was fine, and the season favourable, the chant, which is used by the fishers when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the children, and the shrill song of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the door. A few of the neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an expression of mournful sympathy with ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... slice of fresh air was nearly eaten—turned with eagerness to watch this new source of amusement. Innocent laughter and childish prattle were strange to them. Some smiled, and nodded with interest in the varying fortunes of the game. One young lad could hardly restrain himself from applauding. It was as though, out of the sultry heat which brooded over the ship, a cool ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wanted to see you, so I came. In these emancipated days ladies call upon their men friends if they like. It's archaic to prattle ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious. 1895 SHAKS.: Richard ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... in a tongue strange to the little boy, who consequently understood not a word of what was said, but went on with his innocent prattle and laughter. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... turned into a chemical laboratory, and the daylight is allowed to pour unobscured into all its murky recesses. Through the dim and lofty passage-ways resounds the laughter of children; on the scenes of so many hoary crimes the prattle of innocent girls is heard; a multitude of scientific instruments labor to demonstrate the laws of nature, and to simplify the problem of existence which the crimes of the Kurts had tended to complicate. Thomas Rendalen, profoundly impressed as he is with his responsibility as the last descendant ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the world and ask no favor; You stand where you have stood before, The old salt hasn't lost its savor. You now can laugh with friends, at foes' Ne'er heeding Mrs. Grundy's tattle; You've dealt and taken sturdy blows, Regardless of the rabble's prattle. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... banquet; and they deserved to be under the thraldom of such a task. When they were yet in flesh and blood, and ate the fruits of the earth, they were of that equivocal kind, who seem the friends of all men and yet are the friends of none; whose tongues continually prattle of the noble precepts of virtue, which they feel not in their hearts; who only abstain from evil because it is accompanied by danger, and from doing good because it requires courage and self-denial; who traffic with religion, and, like avaricious Jews, lay ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... of children," smiled Francisco on the evening before their departure. He was writing a novel, in addition to the other work for Carmony and Pixley. Sometimes it was hard work amid this unusual prattle by his usually sedate and silent parents. He tried to imagine the house without them; his life, without their familiar and cherished companionship.... It would be lonely. Probably he would rent the place, when his novel was finished ... take ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... "it must appear dull in description, for who can describe the pleasures which the morning air gives to one in perfect health; the flow of spirits which springs up from exercise; the delights which parents feel from the prattle and innocent follies of their children; the joy with which the tender smile of a wife inspires a husband; or lastly, the chearful, solid comfort which a fond couple enjoy in each other's conversation?—All these pleasures and every other of which our situation ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... left hand, between Deloraine and me, and it was clear she was discontented with her position. Her eyes wandered down the table to Vennard, who had taken in an American duchess, and seemed to be amused at her prattle. She looked with disfavour at Deloraine, and turned to me as ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Robin in a similar flood of meaningless prattle, while Ann and Tempest sauntered ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... she could not suppress her tears. Francois, the eldest, then nine years of age, tried to console her. He told her that he was almost a man, able to earn his food and to take care of her and his little brother. She listened to his prattle with a sad smile, kissed ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... folk prattle, Are sweetly spoken and subtle enough: German girls are good at tattle, And Prussians make their boast thereof; Take Egypt for the next remove, Or that waste land the Tartar harries, Spain or Greece, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... part, I never care For those lips that tongue-tied are: Tell-tales I would have them be Of my mistress and of me. Let them prattle how that I Sometimes freeze and sometimes fry: Let them tell how she doth move Fore or backward in her love: Let them speak by gentle tones, One and th' other's passions: How we watch, and seldom sleep; How by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... clever, and Fairy found herself no match for them when it came right down to business. She had no idea of their purpose,—she only knew that she and Gene were always on opposite sides of the room, the young man grinning savagely at the twins' merry prattle, and she and the professor trying to keep quiet enough to hear every word from the other corner. And if they walked, Gene was dragged off by the firm slender fingers of the friendly twins, and Fairy and the professor walked drearily along in the ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in vain—the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever going to get rid of her?" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was anaemic, especially at slaughtering time? ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Affectation, why this mock grimace? Go, silly thing, and hide that simp'ring face. Thy lisping prattle, and thy mincing gait, All thy false mimic fooleries I hate; For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she Who is right foolish hath the better plea; Nature's true ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... We prattle of the dead past, and use to fancy that peace must dwell there, if nothing else. Only in the past, say we, is security from jostle, danger, and disturbance; who would live at his ease must number his days ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Marcus had taken a great fancy to her prattle and her songs during the voyage—no nightingale can sing more clearly—and when she begged and prayed him he gave way at once, and said: he would take her in his boat. But the brave child declared that she would jump into the sea before she would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... growth and development. And young man—young woman, you who have left behind the days of knee trousers and short dresses, and with them have laid aside the doll and the pet, think it not weakness when you find yourself irresistibly drawn by the sweet smile of an innocent babe or by the childish prattle of one a little farther on. Be not ashamed when, under such influence, you picture yourself the center of a home, and in this connection think of him or her whom you would like to have share it with you. It is the sweetest influence that can ever come into your life. Rightly regarded ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... heavily on her hands; but it appeared to her now that these interminable days of vacation would never come to an end. She passed one of them with Edith and Rufus Malcome, and this was by far the most insupportable of any. "She loved Edith dearly," she said; "but could not endure the childish prattle ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... his pleasure.) That (jovially) so Greek he takes the guard of, That he's the merriest Greek that ere was heard of; For he as 'twere his Mothers twittle twattle, (That's Mother-tongue) the Greek can prittle prattle. Nay, of that Tongue he so hath got the Body, That he sports with it at Ruffe, Gleek or ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... Keene gazed thoughtfully on the night, unable to compose herself to sleep. An antique guest-chamber had been assigned to her in deference to her wish to be alone, for which she had declined the couch and vivacious prattle of her new friend, Dona Isabel. The events of the day had impressed her more deeply than they had her companions, partly from her peculiar inexperience of the world, and partly from her singular sensitiveness to external causes. The ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... aspects of life through sympathy often arrive at the admirable result of apprehending the sufferings of the shy without seeming to observe them. Such a woman, in talking to a shy man, will not seem to see him; she will prattle on about herself, or tell some funny anecdote of how she was tumbled out into the snow, or how she spilled her glass of claret at dinner, or how she got just too late to the lecture; and while she is thus absorbed in her ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the mountains,—it led past a rocky chasm. On the edge of that chasm there was a broad, flat stone, and there she would sit often, reading, or watching the fishing-boats on the Fjord, and listening to the prattle of her child. I used to dream of that stone, and wonder if I could loosen it! It was strongly imbedded in the earth—but each day I went to it—each day I moved it! Little by little I worked—till ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... had seen her little neighbour watching her, and once or twice had nodded to her, and so a sort of acquaintance had sprung up between them; indeed, on several occasions they had met, and the child's prattle had ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... penny to bless himself with," replied Percy, "save his wage from my Lord Oxford, and that were but a drop in the sea for us. His old grandmother can do but little for him—so much have I picked out of his prattle. But, surely, Mr Catesby, you would not think to take into our number a green lad such as he, and a simpleton, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of war, when nothing that is not warlike sells except Macaulay? Don't suppose I bandy compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... elector had given him, independent of the favorite. But no; deprived of his old instrument all else was lost to him. For hours would he sit before his humble door, heedless of his wife's entreaties or the childish prattle of Franz and Nanette; his eye riveted on the old cathedral, and his hands playing nervously, as though cheating himself with the idea he was still at the organ. Then roused by a sudden inspiration, he ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity.] His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loath to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... at the head of my table. I can't imagine anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I came back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whisky-and-soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things he had been doing during the day.... ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... evening to be sitting on the knee of the Legal Member, and to hear him mention The Submontane Tracts Ryotwari Revised Enactment. Tods had heard the bazaar talking of a new plan for the Ryotwari, as bazaars talk when there is no white man to overhear. Tods began to prattle, and the Legal Member began to listen, till he soon realised that there was only one drawback to the beautiful Bill. The beautiful Bill, in short, was altogether wrong, more especially in the Council's pet clause which so clearly "safeguarded the interests of the tenant." It therefore ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... say, little Nina bore her hardships more bravely than any of them. Flitting about, coaxing one to eat, another to drink, rousing Pablo as often as he seemed yielding to the common languor, the child became the life of the party. Her merry prattle enlivened the gloom of the grim cavern like the sweet notes of a bird; her gay Italian songs broke the monotony of the depressing silence; and almost unconscious as the half-dormant population of Gallia were of her influence, they still would have missed her bright presence sorely. The months ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Lucian, would you find in them and their ways? None; they are quite unaltered. Still our Peregrinus, and our Peregrina too, come to us from the East, or, if from the West, they take India on their way—India, that secular home of drivelling creeds, and of religion in its sacerdotage. Still they prattle of Brahmins and Buddhism; though, unlike Peregrinus, they do not publicly burn themselves on pyres, at Epsom Downs, after the Derby. We are not so fortunate in the demise of our Theosophists; and our police, less wise than the Hellenodicae, would probably not ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... 'Twould better become thee to prattle of frocks and fixings for my Lady Penwick. Your Lordship will see to it at once?" It was a happy ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and Caius, under the compelling force of the orders which Madame Le Maitre never gave and the wishes she never expressed, became nurse as well as doctor, using what skill he had in every possible office for the sick, working early and late, and many a time the night through. It was not a time to prattle of the sea-maid to either Madame Le Maitre or O'Shea, who both of them worked at his side in the battle against death, and were, Caius verily believed, more heroic and successful combatants than himself. Some solution concerning his lady-love ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Ones came and stood over the little lady, and looked down on her with faces of pity, which seemed blent with a serene and half-amused indulgence. It was a heavenly amusement, such as that with which mothers listen to the foolish-wise prattle of ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the children. We talk of Love as the Lord of Life: it is but the Minister. Our novels end where Nature's tale begins. The drama that our curtain falls upon, is but the prologue to her play. How the ancient Dame must laugh as she listens to the prattle of her children. "Is Marriage a Failure?" "Is Life worth Living?" "The New Woman versus the Old." So, perhaps, the waves of the Atlantic discuss vehemently whether they ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... eternally different from the voice of prattle. The crowd huddled back to either sidewalk, forced by the opening lines of the escort backed against it, till the long, shelled wagon-way gleamed white and bare. Oh, Heaven! oh, home! oh, love! oh, war! For hundreds, hundreds—beat Anna's heart—the awful hour had come, had come! ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... makes a great stir with printed prattle, falsehood and fury. Madness is the characteristic of the true poet. All those who express themselves, with clearness, precision and simplicity are deemed unworthy of ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... alternate; On the vine-tangled islands the flowers peep timidly out at the white men; In the dark-winding eddy the loon sits warily, watching and voiceless, And the wild goose, in reedy lagoon, stills the prattle and play of her children. The does and their sleek, dappled fawns prick their ears and peer out from the thickets, And the bison-calves play on the lawns, and gambol like colts in the clover. Up the still flowing Wkpa Wakn's winding path through the groves ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks idle prattle and settles a ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... while I could hear the childish prattle of the children and the crooning of Naudin as she hushed, with swaying body, her baby ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... prove that the Cabinet Order is not the outcome of religious feeling? By describing the Cabinet Order everywhere as an outcome of religious feeling. Is an insight into social movements to be expected from such an illogical mind? Listen to his prattle about the relation of German society to the Labour movement and to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... strewing over her little one's grave, the fallen leaves of autumn. She-nin-jee, her Indian husband once more became a father. Together they gladly embraced a son. Their lonely cabin after this was enlivened and cheered by his childish prattle; nothing now remained to interrupt the joy of the mother, but the absence of the father, whom the season of hunting, took far away from his cherished home. Yet with returning spring these toils are forgotten, as he is surrounded once more with the charms of the domestic ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... his head. "It isn't at all what I mean. Now cut out the artless prattle and let me find some sense in this history stuff—if there ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... every minute that he spent in Betsy Butterfly's company. And if at times she found his prattle a bit tiresome, she was ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... time, became my wife; and Mr Micklan, loved and respected by the whole of the community, lived to hear the prattle of his great-grandchildren. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... length, and as generally happens, when least expected, for protesting he would not be impatient any more, he amused himself by setting little Lord Lyle on his knee, and was so amused by the child's playful prattle and joyous laugh, that he forgot to watch at the window, which was his general post. Ellen was busily engaged in nursing Caroline's babe, now ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... of Knights is turned into a chemical laboratory, and the daylight is allowed to pour unobscured into all its murky recesses. Through the dim and lofty passage-ways resounds the laughter of children; on the scenes of so many hoary crimes the prattle of innocent girls is heard; a multitude of scientific instruments labor to demonstrate the laws of nature, and to simplify the problem of existence which the crimes of the Kurts had tended to complicate. Thomas Rendalen, profoundly impressed as ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... well, straining both eyes and ears to the utmost, little Cora's voice came again. It seemed close to them; they could not distinguish any words, but the tones were those of her usual pretty baby prattle. Was that voice from the spirit land? They could see nothing but the gray stone walls of the dungeon, the dark, open well and some large, loose stones, which had heavy iron chains with rings attached to them, and which had in former years been fastened to ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... I would as soon have thought of learning to dance as of learning to climb chimneys. Up to the age of seventeen, as I have shown, I had a great contempt for the female race, and when age brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was I?—I could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young bear could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches carrying off young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in waltzes, whispering between their glossy curls in quadrilles, simpering with perfect ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... familiarized to a variety of countenances, as soon to be entirely exempted from the usual fears of children. My father's bargains and sales brought me continually acquainted with strange faces. He was vain of me, fond of having me with him, and, as he called it, of case-hardening me. I became full of prattle, inquisitive, had an incessant flow of spirits, and often put interrogatories so whimsical, or so uncommon, as to make ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... not neglecting any work; she is only idle, as she always is idle. But love throws a new glory and a new interest around her indolence. The endless little notes with which she worries the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred and mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers. Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of two hearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours. Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it new earnestness or a fresh direction; but it ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... back again into that cold clay the divine spark of which his red hand had robbed it. Useless, useless! The dead can not arise. The murdered man can remain to accuse, but he can not arise again in life, He can not again hear the songs of birds. He can not again hear the prattle of his babes. He can not again take a friend by the hand. He can not come to life. The heavens do not open fo' that ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... with a fear gnawing like a serpent into her breast; and children, yes, perhaps children from whose innocent lips the sacred word of grandfather can never fall without wakening a blush on the cheeks of their parents, which all their lovesome prattle will be ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... indefatigable of this class, is my old friend Leviculus, whom I have never known for thirty years without some matrimonial project of advantage. Leviculus was bred under a merchant, and by the graces of his person, the sprightliness of his prattle, and the neatness of his dress, so much enamoured his master's second daughter, a girl of sixteen, that she declared her resolution to have no other husband. Her father, after having chidden her for undutifulness, consented to the match, not much to the satisfaction of Leviculus, who was sufficiently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... little company fell into groups—some out of doors beneath the apple-trees, others near the piano at which Virginia was playing Mendelssohn. Monica ran about among them with her five-year-old prattle, ever watched by her father, who lounged in a canvas chair against the sunny ivied wall, pipe in mouth. Dr. Madden was thinking how happy they made him, these kind, gentle girls; how his love for them seemed to ripen with every summer; ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... The Spirit-ball had disappeared, but it had first placed them beyond the reach of danger. A few suns, and our fathers once more stood upon the banks of their own pleasant river, the Nansemond, and listened to the joyous prattle of their children, and looked into the bright eyes of their ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... The young man gave a tender embrace to his companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child's prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage along the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and Fairy found herself no match for them when it came right down to business. She had no idea of their purpose,—she only knew that she and Gene were always on opposite sides of the room, the young man grinning savagely at the twins' merry prattle, and she and the professor trying to keep quiet enough to hear every word from the other corner. And if they walked, Gene was dragged off by the firm slender fingers of the friendly twins, and Fairy and the professor walked drearily along in the rear, talking ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... woods these awful confidences poured from her like childish prattle, interrupted only by little ripples of laughter, half shy, half silly, and altogether horrible to hear. I hung back, divided between the impulse to tear myself away and the fearful fascination of listening—between ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... beauty with the subtle charm and fatal fascination of a devil most lovely, made it appear that of course Gerome Meadows had never loved me—why should he? He cowardly held his peace and let them prattle; he was kneeling low before the shrine of his own selection; he was in open rebellion against his irate mother, who did not approve ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... the Queen. In the lifetime of the late King it was his habit to pass very much of his time here; thus, this was really His Majesty's audience chamber. Here he would have his little daughter of whom he was passionately fond—taking a great delight in listening to her merry prattle, and her amusing remarks on whatever attracted her attention. The windows of the room look out on to the Dam, a large square, which is quite the busiest part of the city. The view from these windows is a never-ending source of interest to the little Princess, and here she is wont to station herself, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... setting—a great empty church at the end of springtime, crowds passing outside, a desolate man behind a closed door, and a little child, with the face of an angel, sitting alone in a carven pew. He could hear her answer him in her childish prattle, could feel her cool little hand slip into his as she asked about the lonely man within. Then he remembered the kiss. The floods dried up. Mark's sorrow was beyond the ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... parrat's dead and he supplies the prattle: ith' spring and fall he will save me charge of phisick in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... slight ones will not carrie it. They will say, came you off with so little? And great ones I dare not giue, wherefore what's the instance. Tongue, I must put you into a Butter-womans mouth, and buy my selfe another of Baiazeths Mule, if you prattle mee into these perilles ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of a fair-haired wife,—the daughter of a countryman who, like himself, had established commercial relations at Para. In a few years after, several sweet children called him "father,"—only two of whom survived to prattle in his ears this endearing appellation, alas! no longer to be pronounced in the presence ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... clothes, contrary to the habit of other nations. The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation. They do not speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only with the tongue." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is surrounded by productive fishing grounds and potentially large oil reserves. In 1932, French Indochina annexed the islands and set up a weather station on Prattle Island; maintenance was continued by its successor Vietnam. China has occupied the Paracel Islands since 1974, when its troops captured a South Vietnamese garrison occupying the western islands. However, the islands are still claimed by Vietnam ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... with the same magisterial authority the talking dynasty pretended to. The sturdy old moralist felt grand enough, no doubt, when he said, "He that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war or peace." Benjamin Franklin was one of these idlers who were electrifying bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling prattle about war and peace going on in those times. The talking Doctor hits him very hard in "Taxation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all," she said, returning to the boy's prattle. "Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do. When you grow up your mother will talk as I ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen washed there should be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Master Fromm's, the delicate attention of little Miss Pugnose was indeed burdensome. She would prattle all kinds of nonsense. She asked of what the fine dinner consisted; whether it was true that the daughter of the "consiliarius" had a doll that danced, played the guitar, and nodded its head. Ridiculous! As if people ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... I love their pretty prattle. It makes me think of 'eavens an' Gawd's angels," said Mrs Gowler. Then, as Mavis did not make any remark, she added: "Six was ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Danced on the shore the daughters of the land, No thought had man or maid of rest or home, While many a languid eye and thrilling hand Exchanged the look few bosoms may withstand, Or gently prest, returned the pressure still: Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band, Let sage or cynic prattle as he will, These hours, and only these, redeem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... along, listening with half an ear to the lieutenant's prattle and the loud explanations of the deputy-commandant, when I pitchforked into what might have been the end of my business. We were going through a sort of convalescent room, where people were sitting who ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Mother Prittle-Prattle jumped out of bed, And out of the window she popped her head, "John! John! John! the grey goose is gone, And the fox ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... voice; it is not that voice itself, vibrating as it is with every emotion of the human heart, of pleasure, excitement, careless gayety, shame that has ceased to care, lust whispering its appeal, modesty's shocked sigh, innocence's happy prattle, kind laughter, friendly chat, unexpected hearty greetings; it is the vast, shifting, jostling, loitering, idle crowd, the multitude of a huge cosmopolitan city that is the spectacle, and that to a man who knows his town is more dramatic, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... notice, or excite our sympathy, we should remember that we likewise are lost in the same throng; that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is, to fill a vacant hour with prattle, ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... in the yard in the warm July weather and were seized with the singular fancy of acting over in their play the scenes of the sick chamber above, while their father watched them from the window of his room and wrote down their prattle. Hawthorne was attached to his mother, and had been a good son, but there was something now that startled his nature, perhaps in the unusual nearness in which he found himself to her life, and he was hardly prepared for the distress of the circumstances. His wife wrote, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... before felt this mysterious uneasiness so strongly as on that evening when it had been his good fortune to make Mrs Anthony laugh a little by his artless prattle. Standing out of the way, he had watched his captain walk the weather-side of the poop, he took full cognizance of his liking for that inexplicably strange man and saw him swerve towards the companion and go down below with sympathetic if utterly ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... a blue polonaise, quite a lady of fashion en miniature, stopped in front of him and stared at him in shy wonder. He had always been fond of children, and often rejoiced in their affectionate ways and confidential prattle, and now it suddenly touched him with a warm sense of human fellowship to have this little daintily befrilled and crisply starched beauty single him out for notice among the hundreds who reclined in the arbors, or sauntered to and fro under ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with a precision which Bob himself could not surpass; and in a very short time she could steer as well as either of us, which was an immense advantage when shortening or making sail. Add to all this the amusement we derived from her incessant lively prattle, and the additional cheerfulness thus infused into our daily life, and the reader will agree with me, I think, that it was a lucky day for us when we first fell in with little ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... duck-shooting, and found the trout of the Yellowstone too easy a prey. Hallett Phillips himself, who managed the party loved to play Indian hunter without hunting so much as a fieldmouse; Iddings the geologist was reduced to shooting only for the table, and the guileless prattle of Billy Hofer alone taught the simple life. Compared with the Rockies of 1871, the sense of wildness had vanished; one saw no possible adventures except to break one's neck as in chasing an aniseed fox. Only the more intelligent ponies ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... and a divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... lifted her over and there we sat, side by side, she laughing and talking and I hearkening to her childish prattle with marvellous great pleasure. Presently I ventured to touch her soft cheek, to stroke her curls, and finding she took this not amiss, summoned courage to stoop and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... which man has control! On the one hand the air is vocal with the mingled tumult of a vast and prosperous population. Every hillside smiles with an abundant harvest, every valley shelters a thriving village, the click of a busy mill drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the multitudinous sounds of business denote happy activity in every ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Many examples might be given; but I can find room for only one. John Sim, a dear little boy, was carried away by consumption. His child-heart seemed to be filled with joy about seeing Jesus. His simple prattle, mingled with deep questionings, arrested not only his young companions, but pierced the hearts of some careless sinners who heard him, and greatly refreshed the faith of God's dear people. It was the very pathos ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... dropped his daughter's hand, and now held out each of his to the little fellows. Phillis and I followed, and listened to the prattle which the minister's companions now poured out to him, and which he was evidently enjoying. At a certain point, there was a sudden burst of the tawny, ruddy-evening landscape. The minister turned round and quoted a line or two ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ladies who had to stand there on duty, watching her as the mourners watched the King, though her lying-in-state was not always as silent; for though, there was much time spent in slumber, Catherine sometimes would indulge in a good deal of subdued prattle with her mother, or her more confidential attendants. But at other times, chiefly when first awaking, or else when anything had crossed her will, she would fall into agonies of passionate grief—weeping, shrieking, and rending her hair with almost ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gloomy reverie, sits apart gazing at a mysterious picture on the wall, the portrait of a pale man clad in black, the hero of the mysterious legend of the Flying Dutchman. The girls rally Senta upon her abstraction, and as a reply to their idle prattle she sings them the ballad of the doomed mariner. Throughout the song her enthusiasm has been waxing, and at its close, like one inspired, she cries aloud that she will be the woman to save him, that through her ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... brutalizing environment, but more directly to the attitude of the three hardened attendants who mistook his consideration for cowardice and taunted him for it. Just to prove his mettle he began to assault patients, and one day knocked me down simply for refusing to stop my prattle at his command. That the environment in some institutions is brutalizing, was strikingly shown in the testimony of an attendant at a public investigation in Kentucky, who said, "When I came here, if anyone had told me I would be guilty of striking patients I would ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... took him for a drive in the afternoon, after having vainly urged him to rest, and while he told me about his horses, and his regiment, and his brother officers, in what at last grew to be a decidedly intermittent prattle, I amused myself by wondering what he would say if I suddenly began to hold forth on the themes I love best, and insist that he should note the beauty of the trees as they stood that afternoon expectant, with all their little buds only waiting for the one warm shower ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... hour, hand in hand, before the wood fire. The sunlight and warmth of years gone by, coined into stick and fagots from the forest, were released again in glow and warmth, making playful lights and warning shadows. The golden minutes passed by. The prattle of lovers and the sober wisdom of experience blended. Then, night's oblivion. Again, the cheerful morning meal and the merry company, the incense of worship, and the separation of each and all to the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... occasion was herself a lady of no ordinary birth, being the daughter of Stuart, our greatest portrait painter. I have passed many quiet hours in the quaint studio (the same her father had used), hearing her prattle—as she loved to do if she found a sympathetic listener—of her father, of Washington and his pompous ways, and the many celebrities who had in turn posed before Stuart's easel. She had been her father's ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... jerk and scanned the smoking peak, from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child. When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, but followed me into the boat. As I pushed off and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... forsaken of the junior Crotchet, whom we left an inmate of a solitary farm, in one of the deep valleys under the cloud-capt summits of Meirion, comforting her wounded spirit with air and exercise, rustic cheer, music, painting, and poetry, and the prattle ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... it! I am positive that it would have reduced to rigidity even a Petersburg audience, let alone ours. Imagine an article that would have filled some thirty pages of print of the most affected, aimless prattle; and to make matters worse, the gentleman read it with a sort of melancholy condescension as though it were a favour, so that it was almost insulting to the audience. The subject.... Who could make ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... being the only one who showed conversational powers of any note. With the notebook already partly filled he felt certain of a niche in the Pantheon of Fame, and he could not resist a desire to prattle childishly about the sensation which his discoveries would cause. It's a terrible thing for a man to get the applause craving in its worst form. It is liable to make him do things which no craving for treasure would allow him to do, no matter how ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... opposing purposes and desires. She wished to be reconciled, and she wished to be revenged, and she recurred to either wish for the time as vehemently as if the other did not exist. She took Flavia on her knee, and began to prattle to her of seeing papa to-morrow, and presently she turned to Olive, and said: "I know he will find us both a great deal changed. Flavia looks so much older,—and so do I. But I shall soon show him that I can look young again. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Abraham: but I am a poor weak old man, and owe you an explanation for this outburst; some day—some day, not now. O, if you could guess how I have nursed that pretty babe when alone in distant lands; how I have doated on her little winning ways, and been gladdened by the music of her prattle; how I have exulted to behold her loveliness gradually expanding, as she was ever at my side, in peril as in peace, in camp as in quarters, in sickness as in health, still—still, the blessed angel of a bad man's life—a wicked, hard old ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... two sovereigns with a gloomy, inquiring glance. But suddenly his face brightened, and a smile played round his lips. "Ah," he cried, "I understand! Your majesties have overheard my prattle, and have sent for me to order me to be silent. But I cannot, your majesties; I cannot! I must give vent to my wrath, my vexation, and grief! I must be allowed to scold, for if I did not I would be obliged to weep, and it would be a disgrace for Blucher to act like ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... night it was that impression of elusiveness that stopped Harvey's amiable prattle about the weather and took him to her with ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... creep stealthily up the field behind them on the other side of the hedge, and crouch down near enough to hear all that they said. Certainly that sailor was never more at sea in his life than he was while he listened to their innocent prattle. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to this prattle, asked himself, for the third or fourth time, what he ought to think of the virtue of Miss Dimpleton. Sometimes the frankness of the grisette, and the remembrance of the large bolt, made him almost believe that she loved her neighbors merely ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound In deep brahminical philosophy. She chews the cud of sweetest revery Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry, Oblivious of all ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... conversation turned upon no other topic than our mutual felicity. If it had not been for the uneasiness of the poor captain, which at last struck us, we should never have put a stop either to the dinner or to, our charming prattle. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquillity is the old man's milk. I go to enjoy it in a few days, and to exchange the roar and tumult of bulls and bears, for the prattle of my grand-children and senile rest. Be these yours, my dear friend, through long years, with every other blessing, and the attachment of friends as warm ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... table if you have nothing else." Despite a certain stiffness of manner and speech, he was a man of kindly heart and simple, unworldly nature. After the first ice was broken, the most unintellectual person might prattle away to him at ease, for his sympathies were of the broadest. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson had a deep affection for him, and "no matter who else was there, the evenings ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... long remember as one of the most interesting I ever spent at any place of popular amusement. The weather was charming—neither too warm nor too cold, but of that peculiarly soft and dreamy temperature which predisposes one for the enjoyment of music, flowers, the prattle of children, the fascinations of female loveliness, the luxuries of idleness. In such an atmosphere no man of sentiment can rack his brain with troublesome problems. These witching hours, when the sun lingers dreamily on the horizon; when the long twilight weaves a web of purple and gold that covers ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... scandal, should the vapours Distress our fair ones—let them read the papers; Their powerful mixtures such disorders hit; Crave what you will—there's quantum sufficit. "Lord!" cries my Lady Wormwood (who loves tattle, And puts much salt and pepper in her prattle), Just risen at noon, all night at cards when threshing Strong tea and scandal—"Bless me, how refreshing! Give me the papers, Lisp—how bold and free! [Sips.] LAST NIGHT LORD L. [Sips] WAS CAUGHT WITH LADY D. For aching heads what charming sal volatile! [Sips.] IF ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... sunshine—strengthened by fresh winds and aromatic odors,—where under fluttering forest-leaves her little face caught its first gleams of thought and tender meanings, like their glinting lights and flying shades, and her little voice seemed intoned by their silvery murmurs, the love-notes of birds and prattle of streams. In remembrance of the sweet spring in the glen, and the shady resting-places on the hill,—of the grand old oaks, and of ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... out the sun from a myrtle thicket, of which and its works came their happy nights. Then, as she lay in his arms, the Maid of Honour vanished in the child who was so lovely because she so loved; she could prattle, in the soft Venetian brogue, of boundless faith in her little lord, of her simple admiration of him and all he did, of her wonder and delight to be loved. She could tell him of what she could do, and of how much she could never do, to please him and pay him honour. And Angioletto would nod ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
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