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More "Staccato" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before her the hand armed with the poison, the mysterious hand above the pillow of her poor invalid, her dear, rigorous tyrant; she told them about the preceding night and all her terrors, and from her lips, by her voluble staccato utterance that ominous recital had grotesque emphasis. Finally she told all that she had done, she and the little Frenchman, in order not to betray their suspicions to The Other, in order to take finally in their own trap all those who for so many ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... know. He was always queer." This was spoken in a staccato, snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived all one's life with a snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did not mind. She was curious to know what was the matter with her uncle, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... whistle shrieked its high, staccato note from the engine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at the head of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Bill stared coldly down the table, and appeared ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... roar of the surf was as distinct as if it came from the pebbled beach below; yet, modulated by distance, it formed the base, sustained and rythmic, into which there fell harmoniously that legato treble of murmur which makes us seem to hear the stillness, and that staccato note of some accidental sound softened to accord with the mood of the night. She needed the peace that she felt in the air, for her cheeks were wet with passionate tears and her lips still trembled. She could give utterance to her trouble now, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... in the silence shuffling and staccato footsteps were heard, announcing the approach of a youthful art class and their teacher. "Jade," said the voice of the lady, "one of the hardest of known substances, has yet been beautifully worked ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... five o'clock. There were no ladies present except Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded like Speranski—was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a strange ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Chair fetched a long, deep sigh. Sigh one must call the sound, but it was rather like that soft complaint of the woody fibres in a table which disembodied spirits are about to visit, and which continues to exhale from it till their peculiar vocabulary utters itself in a staccato of muffled taps. No one who has heard that sound can mistake it for another, and the unreal editor knew at once that he confronted in the Easy Chair an ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... save confusion, we called him from the first by the pretty Scotch equivalent of Evan's first name) is of a wholly masculine mould, and like his father in light hair, gray eyes, and determination. His very speech is quick and staccato, his tendency is to overcome, to fight rather than assuage, though he is the champion of everything he loves. From the time he could form distinct sounds he has called me Barbara, and no amount of reasoning will make him do otherwise, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... earlier than usual from the office, had found, on the hall-table, a note which, since morning, had been under his mother's observation. The envelope, fashionable in tint and texture, was addressed in a rapid staccato hand which seemed the very imprint of Miss Verney's utterance. Mrs. Peyton did not know the girl's writing; but such notes had of late lain often enough on the hall-table to make their attribution easy. This communication Dick, as his mother poured his tea, looked over ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... from now, it will be possible for students of it to imagine in detail the salient features of the art of Coquelin. It will be evident to them that the actor made love luringly and died effectively, that he was capable of lyric reading and staccato gasconade, that he had a burly humor and that touch of sentiment that trembles into tears. Similarly we know to-day, from the fact that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet, that he must have had a voice that was full and resonant and deep. So from ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... of the Big Thing at the mill. She listened, and a wave of disappointment swept over her baby face; for, listening closely, she found it was an unoiled separator, that peeped in a bluebird way now and then, above the staccato ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... cried Robin in delighted staccato. "It's just made for what we want. Look—a fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Garston and not Ursula Garston,' I said, with rapid staccato. 'Poor Ursula! I am fond of her, but I would not change places with her for the world. She has known such a lot of trouble in her life, more than most girls, I believe; she has lost her lovely home,—such a sweet old place,—and her mother and father and Charlie, all her nearest and her most beloved, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the officer was then called whom we afterward knew as inspector-general. He certainly was a most indefatigable fellow, and went at his work with an enthusiasm that made him very useful for a time. It was worth something to see a man who worked with a kind of dash,—with a prompt, staccato movement that infused spirit and energy into all around him. He would drill all day, and then spend half the night trying to catch sentinels and officers of the guard at fault in their duty. My first impression was that I had got hold of a most ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... media the noises of the reef are isolated. furtive, echoless—staccato accidentals and dull dissonances out of tune with the soothing theme of the sea. Hence, when, as I wandered absorbed in an inspection of minor details, and a mellow whistle, constant but varying in volume, broke in upon my musings, it was vain to repress the thrill of excitement. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... you who I am! I won't! I won't!" she swore and reswore in a dozen different staccato accents. The whole daring passion of the Orient that costumed her seemed to have permeated every ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... at point-blank range from behind. In an instant the surrounding air became full of innumerable tiny, brilliant flames, passing me at an incredible speed like minute streaks of lightning, each one giving forth a curious staccato whistling crack as it plunged through or beside the tormented machine, leaving in its wake a thin curling line of blue smoke. I was in the middle of a relentless storm of burning tracer bullets, vying one with ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... drowse forever; and the mongrel lifted his head, blinked at them, hopelessly wishing they would alight near him, scratched his ear with the manner of one who has neglected such matters overlong; reversed his position; slept again. The young corn, deep green in the bottomland, moved with a staccato flurry, and the dust ghost of a mad whirling dervish sped up the main road to vanish at the bridge in a climax of lunacy. The stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... black waters. An old chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a flood of light ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... breeze come the concerted yells of a bayonet class, practising frightfulness further down the valley; also the staccato chatter of Lewis guns punching holes in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... reacted upon the girl with a curious exhilarating effect. She felt stirred and excited, expectant of new experiences, perhaps adventures. The wild barley brushed about the wheels with a silky rustle; the beat of hoofs rang in a sharp staccato through the deep silence; and the touch of the faint night wind brought warmth ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... the dry, staccato tone of one who repeats a French exercise, and I knew that as far as Millie McKillop was concerned, Wumples was ...
— Reginald • Saki
... thank you," he said in a dry, staccato voice; "all the humanity that is lacking from the hearts of those rude wretches, the crew of the Trondhjem, must have ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... silently, without the usual sharp staccato rattle of the exhaust. Behind it there was no evil-smelling trail of gasoline and oil smoke. The car glided as silently as a summer breeze on its wire-wheels, like those of a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... brought the staccato music of the circus band to the foster-mother's ears. The music completed her moral decay, for she was thinking, if Brother Baker would only look after his own children as carefully as he looked after those of other people, the world would be better. Then she said: "Now, Henry, if I let ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... no response. The long gleaming folds of the portieres hung motionless. Still, a sharp and staccato clatter of hoofs that had risen in the street, might have ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Staccato, hurried, nervous, brisk, Cascading, intermittent, choppy, The brittle voice of Mrs. Fiske Shall serve me now as copy. Assist me, O my Muse, what time I pen a ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... and if Hamilton stood for corruption in government, the hand on the dial undoubtedly points to him. At this moment a young man and woman come to a settee near me. The young woman asks her companion: "Who is that monument to?" "Douglas," he answers in staccato. "Who was Douglas?" "A Senator or something from Illinois. But why change the subject? You have kept putting this off, and I have six hundred dollars saved now, and prospects are good. I would like to be ..." the rest is borne ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... was cauliflower. Now, I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey—one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C, and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it. "Oh," he said reproachfully, "you ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... in queer staccato sentences. "Shouldn't have much difficulty, though; responsibility lies between two men. Here all last night. Nobody else. Callahan and O'Brien holdin' 'em. One 's Page's private secretary; fellow named Burke—Alexander Stilwell Burke. Peach of a monicker, ain't it? Has ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... sound of her own wild scream. There came back to her a stronger shout, and the bark of a dog. She had a blurred consciousness of a whole troupe of men scrambling down the choked ravine, of glad questions and joyous answers, of a delirious dog leaping on board and yelping staccato assurances that everything was all right in a most wonderful world. Then she found herself in Courtenay's arms, and heard him say in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... is a mode of musical execution known as the staccato, appropriate to energetic passages—to passages expressive of exhilaration, of resolution, of confidence. The action of the vocal muscles which produces this staccato style is analogous to the muscular action which produces the sharp decisive, energetic movements of body indicating these states of mind; and therefore it is that the staccato style has the meaning we ascribe to it. Conversely, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... little, and at first he took no notice whatever of young Kerrigan's cornet. But the continual repetition of the tune gradually beat it into his brain. He found his pencil moving across the paper in a series of short staccato bounds every time young Kerrigan got to "Never, never, never." He became by degrees vaguely uneasy. The tune was one which he had certainly heard before. He could not remember where he had heard it. He could not remember what it was. But he became more ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... roused, ECAIAC didn't want to give up so easily. There came a staccato series of minor explosions—defiant gesture, thought Beardsley!—before silence engulfed the room together with a drift ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... finding myself in the Emperor's presence that I forgot my part and remained staring in stupefaction at the apparition. The other was seemingly too busy with his thoughts to notice my forgetfulness, for he spoke at once, imperiously, in the harsh staccato of ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Trio are over. This loveliest of idylls is turned into a veritable monstrosity by the passage in triplets for the violoncello; which, if taken at the usual quick pace, is the despair of violoncellists, who are worried with the hasty staccato across the strings and back again, and find it impossible to produce anything but a painful series of scratches. Naturally, this difficulty disappears as soon as the delicate melody of the horns and clarinets is taken at the proper tempo; these instruments are thus relieved from ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... flashed by her out of nowhere, tottered, was edged sideways, and of a sudden disappeared helplessly out through the open window with a frightened, fragmentary cry that died staccato on the bosom of the clamor. By the faint light streaming from the building backing on the area Edith had a quick impression that it had been the tall soldier with ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that figure when behind us there goes up a mighty flare, and simultaneously all along the line ten miles to north and south of us, other flares light up the countryside. At the same instant there breaks out the boom of our heavy guns, the sharp staccato of sixty-pounders, the dull roar of howitzers, and the ear-splitting clamour of whizz-bangs—a bedlam of noise. Shells whistle and whine overhead; they cannot be distinguished one from another, but merge into ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... their seats, Joe ran his engine a bit, to satisfy himself that she was producing just the right music. The other five triplanes had been waiting. When Joe had satisfied himself that his machine was in perfect condition the word was given for the start. A series of staccato pops announced that the whole fleet was getting under way and they were soon circling the hangars and climbing off in the direction of the trenches. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... aim directly at the foeman as he rushed toward him. Then he pressed the release hard, and instantly the rapid-fire gun commenced its staccato barking, as it spit out ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... sometimes used for bunting-up a sail, but more usually for 'sweating-up.' Although I have allowed the last note its full musical value, it was not prolonged in this manner aboard ship. As it coincided with the pull, it usually sounded more like a staccato grunt. ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... The thin, staccato voice broke off abruptly, and three out of the five other men present being the Master's pupils, remained silent, knowing he had not finished. But Mr. Toovey, a young don overflowing with ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... premonitory noises had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... shoes and put on sandals. Instead of sitting down on chairs we took any position we could on the floor mats that were placed at our disposal. At the first sound from the throat of a famous singer in a staccato "E-E-E-E," we all sprang to our feet thinking she was possibly going into some sort of a fit. With a twang on the strings of the flattened out little instrument, we subsided, concluding that the concert had begun. Then when the others joined in, the ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... the Herrick house on Pacific Avenue much too early upon the afternoon of Miss Herrick's tea. As he made, his way up the canvased stairs he was aware of a terrifying array of millinery and a disquieting staccato chatter of feminine voices in the parlors and reception-rooms on either side of the hallway. A single high hat in the room that had been set apart for the men's use confirmed him ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... up his officers. Coleman rode silently toward the entrance of the docks. Very soon a bugle sounded. There were staccato orders; then a tramp ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... camp in the arroyo when Jimsy, who had been stationed with a rifle on a butte overlooking the desert maze, gave a sudden shout. The next instant his rifle was at his shoulder and he began shooting into the air as fast as he could. As the rapid staccato volley of sound rattled forth all became excitement ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the staccato notes of "Assembly" rang across the terrace as Polly sounded the call upon her bugle. The girls came hurrying from every direction and the ensuing hour and a half, usually free for recreation, was cheerfully given over to study. Dinner ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... separated the final words brought a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach, and the discomfort of a fencer, dueling in the dark—a swordsman who recognizes that his cleverness is outmatched. His question came with a staccato abruptness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... doorway. The tableau persisted but for an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat—there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the great door, the wind rushed all at once against the house, with a tremendous bellow, that threatened to drive the windows into the room. An immediate lull followed, through which as instantly came strange sounds, as of a distant staccato thunder. The moment the laird heard the douf thuds, he started to his feet, and made for the door, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... were prostrated by the storm, while the dry channels on the mountain-side became raging, foaming torrents. Suddenly the winds changed, a chilling blast swept across the plateau, and to the rush of the wind, the roar of the thunder, and the crash of falling timber was added the sharp staccato of swiftly descending hail. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... all was close packed about a swarthy young chap whose bushy hair waved in response to the violence of his oratory. He, too, was perspiring with his ideas. He had a marvellous staccato method of question and answer. He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet at the heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, both clenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any one could answer his bullet-like ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... once from the thicket of currant bushes, and, from the remarks which Stanley barked out in yelping staccato, he punctured that gentleman's person in several places with the fine shot of which the charge consisted. He would have fired again if the recoil had not thrown him quite off his balance, and it is possible that someone would have been ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... the road floated the staccato note of a staff beating its surface, and the clanking tinkle of an iron ring against ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Mozart's style. Beethoven, who gave Czerny some lessons on the piano, made him pay particular attention to the legato, "of which," says Czerny, "he was so unrivalled a master, but which at that time—the Mozart period, when the short staccato touch was in fashion—all other pianists thought impossible. Beethoven told me afterwards," he continues, "that he had often heard Mozart, whose style from his use of the clavecin, the pianoforte being in his time in its ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... his artillery—that custom "more honored in the breach than in the observance." From such fancy the mind passed easily enough to the memory of that astonishing composition of Grieg's, "In the Hall of the Mountain King," and, once recalled, the stately yet staccato rhythm ran in one's ears continually. For if we had many days of cloud and smother of vapor that blotted out everything, when a fine day came how brilliant beyond all that lower levels know it was! From our perch ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... waltz-tune, and ends conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the tonic major; it is a jollificational air, dancing from the first violins with a bright use of harmonics. Two periods ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... just come from the excellent violinist Slavik. With the exception of Paganini, I never heard a violin-player like him. Ninety-six staccato notes in one bow! It is almost incredible! When I heard him I felt inclined to return to my lodgings and sketch variations on an Adagio [which they had previously agreed to take for ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... heard the rail car leave for Camagey: there had been a series of short explosions, first scattered and then blending in a regular pulsation soon lost over the vanishing tracks. The interminable clip- clip of horses, dreary staccato voices, rose and fell, advanced and retreated, outside. But, through all his attentiveness to Savina, his crowding thoughts, he listened for the return of the car with the doctor. What was his name? Foster, Faucett—no, it was Fancett. An American, evidently. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... invoked, and, under cover of doing honor to an immortal composer, a chorus of young people assemble for periodical flirtation. On the whole, it is wise not to attempt too much. Miss Quaver, with her staccato notes and semi-professional minauderies, is not exactly a queen of song. Nor does it give one any exquisite delight to hear Sir Raucisonous Trombone give tongue in a French romance. The talented band of the Piccadilly Troubadours, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the point of waving his flag when the staccato rush of a motor-cycle sounded hideously outside ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... near one's eyes, and has an indescribable effect upon the singers, whose excitable feelings it sometimes works up almost to the pitch of frenzy. The dancing tunes of the Kamchadals are of course entirely different in character, being generally very lively, and made up of energetic staccato passages, repeated many times in succession, without variation. Nearly all the natives accompany themselves upon a three-cornered guitar with two strings, called a ballalaika (bahl-lah-lai'-kah), and some of them play quite well upon rude home-made violins. All are passionately ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... passed into a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. "This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... nothing. For a few seconds, indeed, in sheer desperation he succeeded in withstanding his heavier and more powerful foe. With hind feet braced far back, haunches strained, flank heaving and quivering, the two held steady, staccato grunts and snorts attesting the ferocity of their efforts. Then the hind foot of the younger bull slipped a little. With a convulsive wrench he recovered his footing; and again the struggle hung at poise. But it was only for a few moments. Suddenly, as if he had felt his opportunity ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... over Clee as it did so, and in the midst of it he felt a series of sharp, staccato thoughts—thoughts which did not seem to be composed of words, and yet were clear ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... this dance, Quentin," she said, pronouncing the name with a pretty staccato. "You must be lonely not dancing, so I will sit with you. What ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a high priority and a penalty ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... with his reedy staccato voice, that gave polish and relief to every syllable, tried to come to her aid by questioning her affably about her family and the friends she had made in New York. But the caryatid-parent, who exists simply as a filial prop, is not a fruitful theme, and Undine, called on for ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Her voice was a staccato note of agony. Between the fingers which were pressed to her face he could see the slow, painful flushing of ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blocks from the mills a patrol wagon filled with officers careened past him, its gong emitting a staccato, exciting alarm. Here was reality. Bonbright quickened his step; began to run. Presently he entered the street that lay before the face of the factory—a street lighted by arc lamps so that the scene was adequately visible. As far as the main gates into the factory ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... from all that his father held to be sacred necessities. Jeremy, like most of the older shipmasters, was a bitter Federalist, an upholder of a strongly centralized autocratic government. He left, grumbling, and the staccato commands of the military evolutions on the Common rang through the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. There was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the East—sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... and the man stepped forward to give the big blades a final turn that would start the motor. There was a muffled roar and then a steady staccato blending of explosions. Tom raced the motor while his men held the machine in place, and then, satisfied that all was well, the young inventor gave the word, and the craft raced over the ground, to soar aloft ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... dangerous? Has it any designs upon me?" But my appearance seems to awaken other feelings in the red squirrel. He pauses on the fence or on the rail before me, and goes through a series of antics and poses and hilarious gestures, giving out the while a stream of snickering, staccato sounds that suggest unmistakably that I am a source of mirth and ridicule to him. His gestures and attitudes are all those of mingled mirth, curiosity, defiance, and contempt—seldom those of fear. He comes spinning along on the stone wall in front of me, with ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... glasses, saw a herd of cows and calves scattered and feeding contentedly upon the young grass a mile or so away. Two men on horseback loitered upon the outer fringe of the herd. From a distance hilltop came the staccato sound of hammers where an other shack was going up. Cloud shadows slid silently over the land, with bright sunlight chasing after. Of the other horsemen who had come up the bluff with the cattle, he saw not a sign. So the man yawned and went ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... about in his chair like a tiger. His hand dropped to his pocket, so swiftly that my eyes did not follow it. And as it dropped, a single staccato shot split the darkness of the room. The scientist slumped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... poop; he had a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harris appeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for the deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But we saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flung next instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn, fired without effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Next instant a smooth black cane was raining ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... and parting her lips gave voice to a long- drawn note of ecstasy, ending in a little staccato trill and the same upflinging ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... that led through it and became a noisy jumble in the little square at its centre, a disordered mass of camions, artillery, heavy supply wagons, field kitchens, ambulances, with motorcycles at its edges like excited terriers, lending a staccato vivacity to its uproar. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... me? Are you asleep? . . . Uncle!" Her voice shrilled on to a sharp staccato note, then cracked ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the author's sympathy is with her main subject, but her conscience is too much for her. I find myself increasingly exercised over this conscience of Miss BOWEN'S. She seems to me to be deliberately committing herself to what I can only describe as a staccato method. This was notably the case with The Burning Glass, her last novel. Her narratives no longer seem to flow. She will give you catalogues of furniture and raiment, with short scenes interspersed, for all the world ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... the same as he had said to me before lunch, with, perhaps, a little more shamefacedness. Were it not for reiteration upon reiteration of the same things in talk, life would be a stark silence broken only by staccato announcement of facts. At last Barbara's eyes grew uncomfortably moist. Impulsively she flew to Jaffery and put her arms round his vast shoulders—he was sitting, otherwise she could not have ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... elicited an amusement more to his mind than the long-drawn, pathetic cadences which the violinist so much affected. For in sudden changes of mood and in effective contrast the tones came showering forth in keen, quick staccato, every one as round and distinct as a globule, but as unindividualized in the swift exuberance of the whole as a drop in a summer's rain; the bow was but a glancing line of light in its rapidity, and the bounding movement of the theme set many a foot astir marking time. At last one young fellow, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Her staccato warning deflected his mind from the course toward which it might have turned. He held up his head, listening. The slap of footsteps on a board walk could be plainly heard. A voice lifted itself in question into the night. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... the machine upright while Blake vaulted to the forward saddle and began to work the pedals to start the motor. The cylinders were still hot from the recent run, and at the first revolution the staccato explosions began. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... monumental, or beautiful, what is it? I should say, with much fear of contradiction and scornful laughter, that it was pretty, that it was endearingly nooky, cornery, curvy, with the enchantment of trees and flowers everywhere mixed with its civic turmoil, and the song of birds heard through the staccato of cabs, and the muffled bellow of omnibuses. You may not like London, but you cannot help loving it. The monuments, if I may keep coming back to them, are plain things, often, with no attempt upon the beholder's emotions. In the process of time, I suspect that the Albert ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... supercilious contempt—no sense of isolation or separation; not even the consciousness of toleration toward him. Toward Celia, with her delicious commonplace of rather superficial yet naive worldly wisdom, her half-conscious selfishness, her baby-worship, and her inimitable "staccato," she is more than tolerant. She looks up to her as in many respects a superior, even though her own far higher instincts and aims of life cannot accept her as an aid and guidance toward the realisation of these. Even at old ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... a deep stentorian one and a sharp staccato one, came from the two Bags already hanging to the wall of the Cavern, from whence subsequently protruded the round ruddy form of the North and the pinched figure of the East Wind. "Ho! ho! ho!" chortled the North Wind, chokingly. "Who says I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... tokens of prevailing sighs As furnace-ovens sweat giant pores. And other things perturb each crypt, Each vulture's brood and figent owls: A belching mountain in the South Hurls boulders thro' the fearful night: A demon-quire rants from script, Led by staccato raspings, howls; A meteor vaults a Cauldron's mouth; A sombre maid doth long for light. Bleak wintry winds engulf us all— Hosannah! cry the fretful mobs; White-heated storms assail all heads— Triumphal paeons shake the air! Unnumbered gawks roam thro' each hall— Where Typhon sits, a maiden ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... larghetto, andante, andantino^; alla capella [It]; maestoso^, moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso^, vivace^, veloce^; presto, prestissimo^; con brio; capriccioso^; scherzo, scherzando^; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando^, affettuoso^; obbligato; pizzicato; desto^. Phr. in notes by distance made more sweet [Collins]; like the faint exquisite music of a dream [Moore]; music arose with its voluptuous swell [Byron]; music is the universal language of mankind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the platform, amid the enthusiastic applause of the audience, and performed his solo. Then Blind Tom sat down and played it after him so accurately, with the same staccato, old-fashioned touch of Auber, that no one could have told whether Auber was still at the piano. Auber returned and bowed to the wildly excited public and to us. He said, "This is my first appearance as ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... a feeble yelp. With his boot the gambler threw Tintoretto six feet away, where he landed on his feet and turned about growling and barking in puppywise questioning of this sudden manoeuvre. With a few more staccato yelps, the shivering black-and-tan retreated behind the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... you read," she said, at last. "You do read abominably. First you go along in staccato jerks, then you drone in a monotone. Philip is a fine reader. I love to hear Philip read. I wish he'd come in to-day. I wonder why he doesn't? Probably because you're here. He must have taken a violent dislike to ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... thus, peering out into the darkness of the cloud-enshrouded night, there came to him from across the water, like a slap in the face, so sudden and unexpected was it, the sharp staccato of an exchange of shots and then the ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... (Buoyantly, almost exuberantly). MacDowell threw an irresistible joyous excitement into this piece (as he did later in the superb The Joy of Autumn, from New England Idyls, Op. 62). In Autumn opens with a brisk staccato theme, followed by little chromatic runs which seem to suggest the whistling of the wind through the tree-tops. A middle section brings a complete change of mood, as if questioning the elements. A mysterious and fanciful little passage leads to a resumption ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... the windows, leaning out that we might miss nothing. Through the half mile of people that stretched between us and the music a shudder of excitement was running. Then came cheers—the deep-throated babel of men's voices and the shrill staccato of women's. "They're coming," some one cried; then I ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... faces, red faces, pale faces! One countenance in the last class made itself a trifle more insistent than the others. Its possessor had watched with interest his progress, interrupted with entanglements, and had listened to the music of his march, the canine fantasia, staccato, affettuoso! Mr. Heatherbloom's halting footsteps in the park generally led him to the heights; it wasn't a very high point, but it was the highest he could find, and he could look off on something—a lake, or reservoir of water, he didn't know just ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... moment they were on the deck, where three dark-bearded figures, eagerly chattering together, in a strange staccato tongue looked over the side into Chelkash's boat. The fourth clad in a long gown, went up to him and pressed his hand without speaking, then looked suspiciously ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Turtle forcibly arrested his chattering teeth. He calmed his vocal organs and answered the Wildcat, but when he became articulate his feet assumed the staccato movement. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... off. It coasted. Presently the horizon tilted and all the dazzling ground below turned sedately beneath them. There came staccato instructions from a voice-speaker, which the engineer obeyed. The landing boat swung low—below the tips of giant mauve mountains with a sand plateau beyond them—and its ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... eighty years of age, conducts the singing; other Indians compose the choir; yet they have the Gregorian music at their finger ends, and pronounce the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they sang. The pronunciation was odd and nasal, the singing hurried and staccato. "In saecula saeculo-hohorum," they went, with a vigorous aspirate to every additional syllable. I have never seen faces more vividly lit up with joy than the faces of these Indian singers. It was to them not only the worship of God, nor an act by which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while I memorandize. I almost fancy he knows me. Three days later.—My second kingfisher is here with his (or her) mate. I saw the two together flying and whirling around. I had heard, in the distance, what I thought was the clear rasping staccato of the birds several times already—but I couldn't be sure the notes came from both until I saw them together. To-day at noon they appear'd, but apparently either on business, or for a little limited ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... subject, in spite of her sulkiness, and he grew absorbed in his work, and painted away, with Miss Snell at his elbow making little staccato remarks of admiration as the sketch progressed. Suddenly he jumped up, realizing how long he had ...
— Different Girls • Various
... The staccato cheers of Princeton rocketed along the other side of the field, and the eleven from Old Nassau ran briskly over the turf and wheeled into line for a last rehearsal of their machine- like tactics. Henry Seeley was finding it hard to breathe, just ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... one gathering other than, perhaps, a wholesale debutante tea crush. A Friday afternoon ticket is as impossible of attainment for one not a subscriber as a seat in heaven for a sinner. Saturday night's audience is staider, more masculine, less staccato. Gallery, balcony, parquet, it represents the city's best. Its men prefer Beethoven to Berlin. Its women could wear pearl necklaces, and don't. Between the audience and the solemn black-and-white rows on the platform there exists an entente cordiale. The Konzert-Meister bows to his friend ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... in quick staccato beats, she mounted the steps of the tenement. Little dark-eyed children moved away from her, apparently on every side, but somehow she scarcely noticed them. The doorway yawned, like an open mouth, in front of ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... rat was captured. A jerk of the long head and there was proof of Bobby's prowess to lay at his good friend's feet. Made much of, and in a position to ask fresh favors, the little dog was off to the door with cheerful, staccato barks. His reasoning was as plain as print: "I hae done ye a service, noo tak' me back to ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, afraid to ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... leaned back, half closed his eyes; again pain, fatigue seemed creeping over him. Outside sounded the clicking and clinking of glasses, a staccato of guffaws, tones vivace. "The harm's been done so far as you are concerned; you, as a factor, have disappeared ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... see!" exclaimed Mr. Day in staccato fashion, and evidently very much relieved. "Mrs. Watkins is looking for ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... properly, he would dance a hornpipe, whistling his own music in sharp staccato notes, as from a piccolo. He could likewise "present arms" with a little straw musket which I had provided for him; besides feigning to be dead, and allowing you to take him up by the legs, his head hanging ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eye, which had been badly mauled by the irate cabman. All things righted themselves, however, and the merry party left the "Golden Cross" on the coach for their journey to Rochester, to the accompaniment of Mr. Jingle's staccato tones as they drove through the archway, warning the company to take ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... every time a cannon banged. In that hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could hear the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to be so; indeed, it seems as if one could easily do the same, and this is real talent. He has a very fine round tone, not a note wanting, and everything distinct and well accentuated. He has also a beautiful staccato in bowing, both up and down, and I never heard such a double shake as his. In short, though in my opinion no WIZARD, he is a very solid violin-player.—I do wish I could conquer my confounded habit ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... The sharp staccato of revolver shots heard in the rue Montmartre on the night of July 31 caused a shudder to pass through the city, as though they were the signal for a criminal plot which might destroy France by dividing it while the enemy ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of the rifle fire was broken by the staccato explosions of a machine-gun. It opened on the left of the position taken up by Jimmy and his chums, and in an instant had mowed down ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... round the house and came in view of the stoep she emitted a staccato whistle of dismay. Tethered out upon the vagabondish grass was—not one motor-car, but three! An opulent thing of blinking brass and crimson leather arrogated to itself the exclusive shade of the largest tree; a long grey torpedo affair of two seats occupied the pasturage of the Kerry cow; ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... tiny lights of ships on the river and the staccato exhaust of a tugboat, the river flowed with nothing to remind one of the two tragedies of only a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... responses to the almost staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and "I will" without really being aware of the fact, and all the time he was gazing blankly at her, trying ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... be understood that P. Sybarite entertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the institution into which he had stumbled. He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audible from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... long story of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired head, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and significantly staccato toward a pause. The composition might undoubtedly have issued from a merchant's office, and would have done no discredit to the establishment. When the pause came, Braintop, half for an opinion, and to encourage progress, said, "Yes, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lateral curve of his person when he talked about art which would alone have carried conviction, even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect of epigrammatic and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... mourner. But Long's sheer, precipitous face and the lofty cliffs around me formed a vast amphitheater about which echoes raced, crossing and recrossing, intermingling. For a full minute the coyote howled, his sharp staccato notes rising higher and higher, the echoes returning from all directions, first sharply, then blurred, faint, fainter. The higher the sounds climbed the gorge the longer were the intervals between echoes, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... crash repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon. There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the sharp staccato of pounding hoofs. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... were installed in tents. That huge canvas erection was a mining exchange; that great log barn a dance-hall. Dwarfish log cabins impudently nestled up to pretentious three-story hotels. The effect was oddly staccato. All was grotesque, makeshift, haphazard. Back of the main street lay the red-light quarter, and behind it again a swamp of niggerheads, the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... beneath which she had paused a moment in advancing. She was simply one particular facet of the solid, glittering impenetrable body which he had thought to turn in his hands and look through like a crystal; and when she said, in her clear staccato English, "Perhaps you will like to see the other rooms," he felt like crying out in his blindness: "If I could only be sure of seeing anything here!" Was she conscious of his blindness, and was he ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... staccato speech by lifting his hand for silence. And, in the instant's hush could be heard the distant ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the side of an ant-heap had been ripped away. Inside the domed building hundreds of Rogans ran this way and that on their elongated legs, squealing in their staccato, high-pitched tongue. ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... had fled from flames and might be ignored for some moments, anyhow. But a blast-bolt struck the ship's metal hull only feet from Calhoun, and he whipped around to the other side and let loose a staccato rat-tat-tat of fire which emptied the ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... drowned out her words, a woman's voice ranging swiftly the staccato gamut of terror and cracking discordantly on ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... went from the Aurora miner to Orion are humanly documentary. They are likely to be staccato in their movement; they show nervous haste in their composition, eagerness, and suppressed excitement; they are not always coherent; they are seldom humorous, except in a savage way; they are often profane; they are likely to be violent. Even the handwriting has a terse ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... into space. HETTY, however, looks at HARRIET, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of MARGARET and MAGGIE. The voices of the cultured women are affected and lingering, the voices of the primitive impulsive and more or less staccato. When the curtain rises HARRIET is seated right of tea table, busying herself ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... a quick tune, at all events,—for the first ten or fifteen minutes Jerry dashed along to his heart's content, and his driver even urged him on,—then with other sleighs left far behind and a hill before him, Jerry brought the tune to a staccato, and Mr. Linden spoke. But the words were not very relevant to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... discoursing to Mrs. Nesbit, who was sewing and paid little heed to his animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on. Here are a few bars of it transcribed ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the second changin'-station, Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato, Played on either pony's saddle by the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... any doctors," the woman said, in tones crisp and staccato with pain and irritation. "Go away. Good night. We don't ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... ladies turned into the cloak-room to remove their wraps. The air of vivacity pervading the place, or possibly it was her daughter's staccato liveliness, entered the blood of Mrs. Heth: she was imperious with the ladies' maid who assisted with the unwrapping. Carlisle, strolling about as she unbuttoned her gloves, came to the elaborate screen which sheltered the doorway and glanced out. Directly opposite, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... heated where questions of morality were concerned, and was proceeding to give chapter and verse for what promised to become a somewhat dull discussion when the Bluestocking firmly interposed in her small staccato pipe: ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Buddy, hastily looping the latigo. Just then the sharp staccato of rifle-shots mingled with the whooping of the Indians. Buddy was reaching for the saddle horn when the brown horse ducked and jerked loose. Before Buddy realized what was happening the brown horse, the herd and all the riders were pounding away down the valley, ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... the rolling notes of this bloody battle. High in the air, bursting shells with white puffs light up the clouds of musketry smoke. Charging yells are borne down the wind, with ringing answering cheers. The staccato notes of the snapping ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... and "My Gawd!" reached my ears frequently. But they were less representative than were short, sharp bursts of laughter, harsh and staccato, like a dog's bark, and, it may be, half-hysterical. And, piercing these snaps of laughter, one heard the curious, contradictory yapping of such sentences as: "I sye; 'ow about them 'ot sossiges?" "'Taint true, Bill, is it?" "Disgraceful ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... talks to her but rather thinks aloud looking into space. HETTY, however, looks at HARRIET, talks intently and shadows her continually. The same is true of MARGARET and MAGGIE. The voices of the cultured women are affected and lingering, the voices of the primitive impulsive and more or less staccato. When the curtain rises HARRIET is seated right of tea table, busying ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... am Jocelyn Garston and not Ursula Garston,' I said, with rapid staccato. 'Poor Ursula! I am fond of her, but I would not change places with her for the world. She has known such a lot of trouble in her life, more than most girls, I believe; she has lost her lovely home,—such ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... whose pipings tingle In staccato notes that mingle Musically with the jingle- Haunted winds that lightly fan Mellow twilights, crimson-tinted By the sun, and picture-printed Like a book that sweetly ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... had allotted were past, Matthews made a great show of putting away his watch and took a last pull at the whisky flask. The bottle disposed of, he walked down the drift to the warped door and rapped a staccato. No answer was returned. Again, he rapped, and more imperatively than before. Again, no answer. He pushed back his hat and applied an ear to the hole through which had hung the lifting-string of the latch. Then he heard long, unfrequent sobs, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... shooting right and left. Glass fell like hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices shrieked concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at intervals by the /staccato/ of the Terror's guns, and was drowned periodically by the brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The occasions of Calliope's low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand. All along the main street in advance ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... pushed the portiere aside with a curved hand and gracefully separated fingers; it was a staccato movement, and her body followed it after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward, eyes inquiring, and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... contest as to which could drown the other's instrument, and the snapping time grew faster, until the dancers gasped, and men with long boots encouraged them with cries and stamped a staccato accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was savage, rasping music, but one player infused into it the ebullient verve of France, and the other was from the misty land where the fiddler learns the witchery of the clanging reel and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... abolished. Electrocute the composer and banish the music-critic. Then let there be elected a supervisory board of trusty guardians, men absolutely above the reproach of having played the concertina or plunked staccato tunes on a banjo. Entrust to their care all beautiful music and poetry and prohibit the profane, vulgar, the curious, gaping herd from even so much as a glance at these treasures. For the few, the previous elect, the quintessential in ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... at a number of tongues of smoky red flame leaping up above the houses in front of them against the hot, blue sky. The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of waggons, and the staccato of hoofs. The lane came round sharply not fifty yards ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... a staccato conversation, I remained politely silent, inviting her by my attitude ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... repeated in diminuendo farther down in the canyon. There was no longer the rattle of the wagon coming down the trail, the sharp staccato of ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... it on without a glance at the mirror and flung herself into her coat. "I better go quick!" She was still whispering. "I better go quick!" She ran out of the room. Jane heard her on the stairs, then the slam of the front door and the sharp staccato of her ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... bespoken. Polly Sparkes throughout her leisurely toilet was moved to irritation and curiosity by the sound of frequent laughter on the other side of the party wall—uproarious peals, long chucklings in a falsetto key, staccato ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... vibratory media the noises of the reef are isolated. furtive, echoless—staccato accidentals and dull dissonances out of tune with the soothing theme of the sea. Hence, when, as I wandered absorbed in an inspection of minor details, and a mellow whistle, constant but varying ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... code. Like Snap, I had never had occasion to learn it. The words were a strange sounding staccato gibberish. He ended, "I will send them, Grantline. Very well, I'll tell them to locate him. At once, yes." He ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the query. Why don't the doctors begin a crusade about ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... He finished his staccato speech by lifting his hand for silence. And, in the instant's hush could be heard the distant roar ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ear ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... back and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked about art, which would alone have carried conviction even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effect of epigrammatic and sententious French. One of the ladies said that you always thought of him as having spoken French after it was over, and accused herself of wrong in not being able to feel afraid of him. None of the ladies was afraid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at the second changin'-station, Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, doublehand staccato, Played on either pony's saddle by ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... walked his heels clicked sharply on the concrete with the forceful firm tread of the type which does things quickly and decisively. The intense stillness of the early morning hours carried the sound in little staccato beats that could be heard blocks away. A few yards behind him, moving furtively and noiselessly, almost as if he had been shod with rubber, crept another figure, that of a stocky, broad-shouldered man, who despite his bulk and weight moved silently and ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... double-bass!" cried Andy; and the whole orchestra, except the first violin of the leader, burst into a boisterous rendering of a popular street song, in which Just sawed forth the leading part, while the others kept up a rattling staccato accompaniment. Evelyn and Lucy became breathless with laughter, and Mr. and Mrs. Birch, who had just slipped into the room, joined in ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked "Midnight Frolic" and "Justine Johnson's Little Club," he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll's wired ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... view of the whole neighborhood, and sing or call by the hour, in a loud, drawling, and rather plaintive tone, somewhat resembling the wood pewee's, though more animated in delivery. I found that the two notes which syllabled themselves to my ear as "see-e he-e-re!" were prefaced by a low, staccato utterance like "quick!" and all were on the same note of the musical scale. Occasionally, but not often, he made a dash into the air, flycatcher fashion, and once I saw him attempt to drive away a golden-winged woodpecker ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... slender gray legs, as regularly intervaled as the teeth of a giant comb. Company by company, the regiment fell into the cadence of full-step. Midway, the standards of the Republic and Alleghenia rippled side by side. And so, with blare of brass and sharp staccato of snare-drums, with sheen of rifles and accoutrements, with flash of slender swords, raised in salute,—above all and always, with that magnificent unanimity, that mighty pulse of the thunderous advance, the Ninth swept past its Governor and ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... dignified surprise a fine piece of wireless telegraphy between husband and wife. It appeared that Mr. Negget sent off a humorous message with his left eye, the right being for some reason closed, to which Mrs. Negget replied with a series of frowns and staccato shakes of the head, which her husband found easily translatable. Under the austere stare of Mr. Bodfish their faces at once regained their wonted calm, and the ex-constable in a somewhat ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... I ought to have seen to things, but you don't know what it is, mavourneen, to do all your own work and care for a baby. It makes everything you do so staccato! And, oh, Kate, I do get so tired! My feet ache as if they'd come off, and sometimes my back aches so I just lie on the floor and roll and groan. Of course, George doesn't know. He'd insist on our having a servant, and we can't begin to afford that. It isn't the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and forth, shrieking their staccato war cries. Following the erratic dashes of their flight formation, Shann decided that whatever they railed against was on the lower level, out of his sight from that point. Should he simply withdraw, since the disturbance was not near him? Prudence ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... variations in C, from the Sonata in G, opus 14, are easy and pleasing. The theme itself affords a very pretty contrast between the staccato of the first period and the close legato of the second period. Then the sweetness of it is relieved by the strong syncopations which break it up, toward the end (measures 17 and 18). The first variation has the melody in the tenor, ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... seemed to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... matter who, was to be ripped and trampled therefore. He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red, his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going fast. For a space he could hear the ponderous paces in pursuit ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the swearing of the witnesses. The kissing of the book struck her as particularly odd, and then the policemen gave their evidence in staccato ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... his Political Americanisms (New York, 1890), informs us that "the peculiar staccato cheer, 'rah, rah, rah!'" was probably invented at Harvard in 1864. In the Blaine campaign of 1884 it was introduced into political meetings and processions together with "the custom, also borrowed from the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. But from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of which he is naturally ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... moaning, the deep-toned whistle poured forth its warning on the night, and before the long blast had died away, up from the depths of the dense fog bank ahead arose an echo, accentuated with sharp, staccato shrieks. Then came a sudden, startling cry at the bow; then deep down in the bowels of the ship the clang of the engine gong; then, shouts, and rushings to and fro at the hidden forecastle; and Loring started to his feet only to be ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... bore her beyond the water, inwardly exulting and blessing that thin ice. His decision was coming with the passing seconds; indeed, it had come. Returning to the sleigh he drove slowly forward, his horse making a terrible crunching and splashing, Lottie meanwhile keeping up a staccato ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... the muddy village street. "We've got thirteen minutes before tattoo.... My name's Walters, what's yours?" He spoke in a low voice in short staccato phrases. ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... to reflections on the respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps, but interesting. It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine, delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, it might be discovered that he does not admire his style so ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... Birkenhead, England, it had been the custom to obtain or regulate the pressure of wind supplied to the pipes by means of loading the bellows with weights. Owing to its inertia, no heavy bellows weight can be set into motion rapidly. When, therefore, a staccato chord was struck on one of these earlier organs, with all its stops drawn, little or no response was obtained from the pipes, because the wind-chest was instantly exhausted and no time was allowed for the inert bellows weights to fall and so force a fresh ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... field we could hear now the quick staccato chug-chug of the engine. Slowly Norton's aeroplane, this time really equipped with the gyroscope, rose from the field and circled over toward us. Craig frantically signalled to him to come down, but of course Norton could not have ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... he made the responses to the almost staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... occasional indications that the terms were misunderstood. 'Presto' signifies 'turn over,' 'Lento' 'with style.' 'Staccato' was said to mean 'stick on the notes,' or 'notes ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Bess's staccato sentences furnished a sufficiently emphatic clue. "You poor, abused dear! Whenever are you coming home? If I had an aeroplane I'd fly up and carry you off. You must be nearly crazy! Those letters you wrote were the most TRAGIC things! I shouldn't have been a bit surprised any time to ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... backing toward the doorway. The tableau persisted but for an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat—there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... John Steele leaned back, half closed his eyes; again pain, fatigue seemed creeping over him. Outside sounded the clicking and clinking of glasses, a staccato of guffaws, tones vivace. "The harm's been done so far as you are concerned; you, as a factor, have disappeared ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... the Prince. "See! I'm not afraid of 'em. Look at this one." He held up a wriggler and she fled to the rock. She happened to glance at Truxton's averted face and was conscious of a broad grin; whereupon she laughed in the quick staccato of embarrassment. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... chunks of ice overboard, and as none among the natives had ever seen ice before, their amazement may well be imagined. The first boy to pick up a piece of the glittering whiteness let it drop with a howl, and when he caught his breath again warned the others in shrill staccato tones that he had been burned, that it was hot, muy caliente, wringing his hands as if, indeed, they had been scorched. Presently, finding that the burn left no mark and had stopped hurting, he shamefacedly ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... let out a feeble yelp. With his boot the gambler threw Tintoretto six feet away, where he landed on his feet and turned about growling and barking in puppywise questioning of this sudden manoeuvre. With a few more staccato yelps, the shivering black-and-tan retreated behind the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a long, deep sigh. Sigh one must call the sound, but it was rather like that soft complaint of the woody fibres in a table which disembodied spirits are about to visit, and which continues to exhale from it till their peculiar vocabulary utters itself in a staccato of muffled taps. No one who has heard that sound can mistake it for another, and the unreal editor knew at once that he confronted in the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... and shout. I read and re-read it, repeating it, with noiseless lips. The tune it went to seemed inadequate, the more so as in our church tunes were always dragged to the limit of non-conformist dolorousness. The stanza seemed to me, even then, happy, hopeful, staccato, jubilant. I wonder what I should have thought had I known its author was a Methodist? Could good come out of Nazareth, after all? Instead, I fell to wondering about the after life in the sky. Heaven I pictured as a city builded on a cloud. If, on a very clear day, the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... took the coachman by surprise, and their downward plunge dragged him headlong from the box. Instantly there was a panic among the mob. It melted away from the clatter of frenzied hoofs as though a live shell had burst in the locality. Two staccato syllables from the officer in command stopped the music and brought the Guards to a halt. The horses dashed madly forward, barely missing the color and its escort. A ready-witted sergeant grabbed at the loose reins flapping in the air, but they eluded him with a snake-like ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the man. "I'll give you a free chance, I will! Now, listen to me. Tell me what I say." He pursed his lips and whistled a series of staccato dots and dashes. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... looked down into the valley before her, across to the mountains, and, smiling, with half-shut eyes of supreme satisfaction, she said under her breath: "It's Beethoven—just the blessedness of Beethoven! The valley is a legato passage, quiet and flowing; those far, up-pricking hills, staccato; and the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... slouched warily round the house and came in view of the stoep she emitted a staccato whistle of dismay. Tethered out upon the vagabondish grass was—not one motor-car, but three! An opulent thing of blinking brass and crimson leather arrogated to itself the exclusive shade of the largest tree; a long grey torpedo affair of two seats occupied ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. "This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Sol! Do!" he sang in staccato notes, nodding the sparse gray foretop jerkily with each note as bass, alto, tenor, soprano took up their pitch. Thereupon he seized the pointer, a long switch kept conveniently near in the corner, and indicated the first note ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... on horseback was seen pushing his way through the crowd. He rode directly up to the jail door, on which he rapped thrice with the handle of his riding whip. Against the silence these taps, but gently delivered, sounded sharp and staccato. After a moment the wicket opened. The rider, without dismounting, handed through it a note; then, with a superb display of the old-fashioned horsemanship, backed his horse half the length of the square where he, too, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, "The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... brokenhearted mourner. But Long's sheer, precipitous face and the lofty cliffs around me formed a vast amphitheater about which echoes raced, crossing and recrossing, intermingling. For a full minute the coyote howled, his sharp staccato notes rising higher and higher, the echoes returning from all directions, first sharply, then blurred, faint, fainter. The higher the sounds climbed the gorge the longer were the intervals between ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... and lives gangasrotogati [Footnote: Like the river Ganges: presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise—namely, kurmagati [Footnote: Like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati [Footnote: Like the frog: staccato.] (I do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)—and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. As regards "the good friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust. He could visualize the scene on the floor of the Exchange, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... said that it suggested the biting realism of Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the absurd,—a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection, trustfully ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... lyric, operatic; harmonious &c 413; Wagnerian. Adv. adagio; largo, larghetto, andante, andantino^; alla capella [It]; maestoso^, moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso^, vivace^, veloce^; presto, prestissimo^; con brio; capriccioso^; scherzo, scherzando^; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando^, affettuoso^; obbligato; pizzicato; desto^. Phr. in notes by distance made more sweet [Collins]; like the faint exquisite music of a dream [Moore]; music arose with its voluptuous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of "'Ware fire!" he sprang back and laid his match to the touch-hole. There was a spurt of flame as the long nine roared above the staccato bark of the musketry. Then they saw a section of the pirate's upper rail leap clear of her deck and fall overside. "Too high," said Job shortly, though Ghent and Curtis had cheered at the shot, for the distance ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... was barking in staccato volleys. There was another sound, a faint shout, unmistakably; human. The men looked at each ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... herself a cup of cold coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking, nondescript fluid, and continued her set glare, her breast rising and falling with staccato, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... a good book against the wall, in the court where they lay in the shade to rest, prone, with their faces hidden in their arms, or with knees huddled up and eyes fixed in a stare. They talked to each other in the hoarse, tearful staccato of Spain, which, beginning low, seems to gather force and volume as it runs, until, like a beck in flood, it carries speaker and listener over the bar and into tossing waves of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... larghetto, andante, andantino[obs3]; alla capella[It][obs3]; maestoso[obs3], moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso[obs3], vivace[obs3], veloce[obs3]; presto, prestissimo[obs3]; con brio; capriccioso[obs3]; scherzo, scherzando[obs3]; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando[obs3], affettuoso[obs3]; obbligato; pizzicato; desto[obs3]. Phr. " in notes by distance made more sweet " [Collins]; " like the faint exquisite music of a dream " [Moore]; " music arose with its voluptuous swell " [Byron]; " music is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... no longer showing itself an and waste of heat and untracked wilderness, lay soft under a thin veil of many ethereal tints. Away off to the northeast they heard the thin, vague clamor of a band of sheep and the staccato barking of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... Breede, in staccato explosions, "that the 'quipment is nes'ry part of road, without which road would be tot'ly crippled, you will note these first moggige 'quipment bonds take pri'rty over first-moggige bonds, an' gov'n ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... out her words, a woman's voice ranging swiftly the staccato gamut of terror and cracking discordantly on its ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... little heed to his animadversions; it was a soliloquy rather than a conversation—a soliloquy accompanied by an obligate of general mental disagreement from the wife of his bosom, who expressed herself in sniffs and snorts and scornful staccato interjections as the soliloquy ran on. Here are a few bars ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... stillness—a stillness sharply broken. From afar off came a strange call, the long-drawn howl of a coyote. It was not alone. Instantly from a point dead ahead rose another, grooving into the echo of the first in a staccato yelp. Then the first opened up with a choking whine that lifted steadily into an ecstatic mating-call, and Pat saw a black something, blacker even than the night, leap against the far, faint skyline, dangle seemingly a trembling ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... move across the film. I should say the author's sympathy is with her main subject, but her conscience is too much for her. I find myself increasingly exercised over this conscience of Miss BOWEN'S. She seems to me to be deliberately committing herself to what I can only describe as a staccato method. This was notably the case with The Burning Glass, her last novel. Her narratives no longer seem to flow. She will give you catalogues of furniture and raiment, with short scenes interspersed, for all the world as if she were transcribing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... the hounds with "Here Tige," "Here Jack," "Here Spot," "Here Bob-tail," interspersed with the tooting of a horn, long musical whistles and the banjo striking soft staccato chords. He mustered the men, he raced the horses with excited calls of "Git up thar," and gave clever imitation of fleeing hoofs, "to-bucket, to-bucket, to-bucket," in a rapid, low, chanting song. Then the leading ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... clatter at point-blank range from behind. In an instant the surrounding air became full of innumerable tiny, brilliant flames, passing me at an incredible speed like minute streaks of lightning, each one giving forth a curious staccato whistling crack as it plunged through or beside the tormented machine, leaving in its wake a thin curling line of blue smoke. I was in the middle of a relentless storm of burning tracer bullets, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... Robin in delighted staccato. "It's just made for what we want. Look—a fireplace!" To be sure, it was nothing more than a gap in the wall. "And these darling windows. We can put a seat way across, all comfy." She promptly saw, in her mind, Susy curled upon it with a beautiful picture book ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... God!" he screamed, and at the same instant a sharp staccato note rang out above the silent, spell-bound multitude. There was a screaming whistle in the air and Jad-ben-Otho crumpled forward across the body of his intended victim. Again the same alarming noise and Lu-don fell, ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... crosses on the German's wings stand out clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from under ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... I see!" exclaimed Mr. Day in staccato fashion, and evidently very much relieved. "Mrs. Watkins is looking for ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... speck on the water was fast assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... knoll where Carley had camped with Glenn and the Hutters. Carley watched the golden rosy sunset, and as the day ended she breathed deeply as if in unutterable relief. Supper found her with appetite she had long since lost. Twilight brought cold wind, the staccato bark of coyotes, the flicker of camp fires through the cedars. She tried to embrace all her sensations, but they were so rapid and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... of a piano broke the thread of the sweetest, maddest discourse Harrow had ever listened to; the girl's cheeks flushed and she turned expectantly toward the curtained stage. Again the lone note, thumped vigorously, sounded a staccato monotone. ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... not appear to be so; indeed, it seems as if one could easily do the same, and this is real talent. He has a very fine round tone, not a note wanting, and everything distinct and well accentuated. He has also a beautiful staccato in bowing, both up and down, and I never heard such a double shake as his. In short, though in my opinion no WIZARD, he is a very solid violin-player.—I do wish I could conquer my confounded habit of ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... masses of wall, and with broadly contrasting masses of light and shade. It does not depend for its effect upon intellectual quality beyond a rigorous sense of simplicity, or upon refinement of conception or detail, but rather upon size, picturesque mass, and staccato light and shade. The proportion of capital to column in quantity of surface was very slight. The proportion of voussoirs to arches naturally depended upon the size of the arch,—large voussoirs to large ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... rather harsh at first, then softened to a mourn, wild, lonely, haunting. A pack of coyotes barked in angry answer, a sharp, staccato, yelping chorus, the more piercing notes biting on the cold night air. These mountain mourns and yelps were music to Columbine. She rode on down the trail in the gathering darkness, less afraid of the night and its wild denizens than of ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... heard strange wild yelps, staccato, piercing, somehow infinitely lonely. They made ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... but sweet and crisp in the white that Southern girls wear most. There was a constraint over us for the reckoning that we knew was coming. Each felt guilty toward the other and the result was a formal politeness. So it was a relief when, just at the last bit of toast, Anne burst in, all staccato notes of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... conventional as possible, and while he nervously adjusted it he could not help recognizing that it was exceedingly becoming. He tore a tie and destroyed two collars, however, before the result satisfied him, and his nerves were at leaping pitch when staccato chords upon the piano announced that the concert had begun. He found a seat in the farthest corner of the saloon, and waited, penciling feverish circles upon the green-topped table to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... approached the lonely hut, and tapped thrice—sharp staccato knocks—at the door. The third one was answered. The door swung back, and a ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... hands were of exceptional size and strength, and enabled him to execute the most difficult double stops and stretches with the greatest facility. Even in quick passages he preserved a broad, full tone, and his staccato was brilliant and effective. He disliked the use of the "springing bow," which came with the modern style ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... seemed more than an hour, though in fact it was but the ten minutes agreed on with Bohannan, off behind them toward the coast a sudden staccato popping of revolvers began to puncture the night. Up and down the Legionaries' trench it ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... swelling throats, liquid and bubbling, As if the plaintive notes thrilled struggling through The stagnant waters and the waving reeds. Monotonous the melancholy strain, Save when the bull-frog, from some slimy depth Profound, sends up his deep "Poo-toob!" "Poo-toob!" Like a staccato note of double bass Marking the cadence. The unwearied crickets Fill up the harmony; and the whippoorwill His mournful solo sings among the willows. The tree-toad's pleasant trilling croak proclaims ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... hirelings who drew a handsome salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a high priority ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... visited the night previous, on the opposite corner of the same block. There was quite an excitement here when we came in. Two men and two girls were playing on native instruments—one of the men on a sort of fiddle, and the other on a rude guitar; the girls, one striking, in sharp staccato fashion, a wooden perforated bowl inverted on a standard or post, and the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight girls here. There was a piece of unpainted ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... cases these oo-o-ah exercises are insufficient because the throatiness of tone is partly brought about by a stiffening of the throat in general. The oo-o-ah must then be preceded by staccato exercises upon the syllable Koo, which have the effect not only of throwing the tone forward, but also of making the throat supple. Make the experiment before a mirror and ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Piet's voice pitched so low that she could not catch a word. Then came Jerry's in sharp, staccato tones. He seemed to be surprised at something, surprised and indignant. Twice she heard him fling out an emphatic denial. And, while she still listened with a panting heart, there came the tread of their feet upon the stairs, and she ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... police is the surest way to get caught when they've got you trapped," he answered in quick, staccato tones. "They've got every door watched—sure. Anyhow—Listen! Hear those steps? They haven't trusted you, Matilda; they've followed. Angelica, down with your face to the wall, and be sick! And while you're ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... laughed harder than ever, still without making a sound, and held his sides as though he had laughed so hard that they ached. He emitted one short, little staccato laugh and stopped suddenly, as if he were waiting to see if Jerry liked the ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... desk, endeavouring to balance the firm's accounts from a paying-in book and a cheque-book, the counterfoils of which were only occasionally filled in, heard the staccato "Swindle! ... Swindle!" and knew that Bones had reached the pages whereon were displayed the prospectuses of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... the Nashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a moment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement and higher in pitch than the first. I speak of it as in two parts, though when my companions came to hear it, as they did the next day, they reported it as in three. We visited ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... kilometres, just going into Swakopmund. The mist from the coast had rolled inland; through it after dawn came miles of horsemen and wagons, guns, limbers, lorries, ambulances. Every human unit in that column was covered in white dust, and every horse was weary. And except for the staccato "click-click" of bits and an occasional deep hum from a passing motor the army moved in perfect silence ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... puzzled utterly by the intensity of Lady Knollys' protest. I looked at her, expecting an explanation of her meaning; but she was silent, looking steadfastly on the jewels on her right-hand fingers, with which she was drumming a staccato march on the table, very pale, with gleaming eyes, evidently thinking deeply. I began to think she had a ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... remembered was the sound of her own wild scream. There came back to her a stronger shout, and the bark of a dog. She had a blurred consciousness of a whole troupe of men scrambling down the choked ravine, of glad questions and joyous answers, of a delirious dog leaping on board and yelping staccato assurances that everything was all right in a most wonderful world. Then she found herself in Courtenay's arms, and heard him say in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... of structural workers was putting up the steel frame-work for one of the new buildings. Nearby the brick-layers were busy with mortar and trowels. Carpenters were swarming over a roof, their hammers beating staccato. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... they started up the stairs. Since then the little man had spoken not one word. Of the unsteadiness, the blinking, the rocking to and fro, nothing remained. He had marched to his place with a formal precision. There was the same manner, a correctness exact and staccato, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... in shrill staccato Daisy Shaw; and there had been a dull nod of the head, a feeble pull at the dragging robe, then it had ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... her as yet unsounded. The days for such singing are, alas! long gone. The noble rhythm, the stately movement, the continuous curving stream of melody, that once marked the praise service of the old Scottish church, have given place to the light, staccato tinkle of the revival chorus, or the shorn and mutilated skeleton of the ancient ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Apart from his difficult staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults. He uses words that are not only odd, but vicious in construction; he is not always grammatically correct; he is sometimes oblique, and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after epigrams ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... while they were thus engaged, and chatting, that the staccato exhaust of a motor-boat drew their attention to the Island of Pipes. From the other side, a boat was poking around into the passage ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... few minutes the biplane hummed on and on in long rising and falling slants, like a swallow skimming the surface of a lake. The even staccato of the exhaust, echoless in that height and vacancy, rippled with cadences like a monster mowing-machine. And Stern was beginning to consider himself as good as in Boston already—was beginning to wonder where the best place might be ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... "no," "what?" "ah!" "bah!" and other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style of feuilleton, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself, like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate applause. Across the channel ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... carries him across the threshold of her bower, that she may be able to say that his foot had never been there. The story of the sleeping twain—the excuses for their sin; the reason why ruth should turn aside vengeance—is told, in staccato sentences, by the brothers as they stand by the bedside of their 'ae sister,' ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Scores of staccato war-whoops reminded us that the Boche gunners wanted our scalp. I don't know how V. felt about it, but I well know that I was in a state of acute fear. Half-way to Pozieres I abandoned checking the ground by the map, and judged the final photographs by counting the seconds between each—"one, ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... construction of the above-named organ at Birkenhead, England, it had been the custom to obtain or regulate the pressure of wind supplied to the pipes by means of loading the bellows with weights. Owing to its inertia, no heavy bellows weight can be set into motion rapidly. When, therefore, a staccato chord was struck on one of these earlier organs, with all its stops drawn, little or no response was obtained from the pipes, because the wind-chest was instantly exhausted and no time was allowed for the inert bellows ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... names of Goncourt and Degas. To us they are too often unwisely bracketed. The style of the painter has been judged as analogous to the novelist's; yet, apart from a preference for the same subjects for the "modernity" of Paris, there is not much in Degas that recalls Goncourt's staccato, febrile, sparkling, "decomposed", impressionistic prose. Both men are brilliant, though not in the same way. Pyrotechnics are abhorrent to Degas. He has the serenity, sobriety, and impersonality of the great classic painters. He is ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... assuming the proportions of a motor-launch. He noticed too that the approaching craft was coming at a high rate of speed and was swerving shoreward. Tugging harder at the nets, he worked doggedly on, listening to the staccato bark of the speed-craft as Mascola drew close. They were hauling at the last string when he came within ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... that it was roused, ECAIAC didn't want to give up so easily. There came a staccato series of minor explosions—defiant gesture, thought Beardsley!—before silence engulfed the room together with a drift of ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... what she could do, she told herself, to have eggs if she wanted them. At the table opposite her sat a man and his wife and little boy—Thea classified them as being "from the East." They spoke in that quick, sure staccato, which Thea, like Ray Kennedy, pretended to scorn and secretly admired. People who could use words in that confident way, and who spoke them elegantly, had a great advantage in life, she reflected. There were so many words which she ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... singing; other Indians compose the choir; yet they have the Gregorian music at their finger ends, and pronounce the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they sang. The pronunciation was odd and nasal, the singing hurried and staccato. "In saecula saeculoho-horum," they went, with a vigorous aspirate to every additional syllable. I have never seen faces more vividly lit up with joy than the faces of these Indian singers. It was to them not only the worship of God, nor an act by which ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that had outgrown the need for them, as perhaps she did. Shyness, coyness, and emphasized reserve formed no part of her equipment; but, on the other hand, she was clear—clear with a kind of crystalline clearness, in eyes, in complexion, and in the staccato quality ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... of the associations which go with them. Similarly the symmetry of the colonnades of a temple, the multiplicity and variety of Gothic architecture, even so simple a form as a circle, provoke a great or slight characteristic emotional reaction. Likewise, a staccato or a fluent rhythm in music, a march, or a dance movement, have, even apart from their unconscious or intentional expressiveness, specific emotional values. In literature, also, where the value of the words themselves might be expected to give place entirely to the emotions or ideas of which ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... shout, and the bark of a dog. She had a blurred consciousness of a whole troupe of men scrambling down the choked ravine, of glad questions and joyous answers, of a delirious dog leaping on board and yelping staccato assurances that everything was all right in a most wonderful world. Then she found herself in Courtenay's arms, and heard him say in a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... it was successful. In a month you could not have startled Calico with a pound of dynamite. He would placidly munch his oats within three feet of the spot where a stake-gang swung the heavy sledges in staccato time. He cared no more for flapping canvas than for the wagging of a mule's ears. As for noises, when one has associated with a steam calliope one ceases to mind anything in that line. Old Ajax, it was true, remained a terror to Calico for weeks, but in the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... ragged and black at the edge of black waters. An old chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a flood of ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... friends. He seated himself, maintaining the same habitual erect posture, which made it seem impossible that he could ever lounge or slouch, and that made Hawthorne speak of him as "cast-iron," and immediately he began to talk in the strain so familiar to his friends. It was a staccato style of speech, every word coming separately and distinctly, as if preserving the same cool isolation in the sentence that the speaker did in society; but the words were singularly apt and choice, and Thoreau had always something to say. His knowledge was original. He was a Fine-ear and a Sharp-eye ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... turn, and she now came forward with a smile that extended her mouth from ear to ear, and in a gushing manner said, in staccato sentences: ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... out of the shadow of the nearest box-car, spring to the platform of the Nadia and kick lustily at the locked door. The door was opened immediately by some one within, and the fugitive plunged to cover—but not before the Mexican's revolver had barked five times with the rapid staccato of ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... girls wear most. There was a constraint over us for the reckoning that we knew was coming. Each felt guilty toward the other and the result was a formal politeness. So it was a relief when, just at the last bit of toast, Anne burst in, all staccato notes of suppressed excitement. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... simile [Transcriber's Note: Corrected error "similie"] (sometimes segue) indicates that a certain effect previously begun is to be continued, as e.g., staccato playing, pedalling, style of bowing in violin music, etc. The word segue is also occasionally used to show that an accompaniment figure (especially in orchestral ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... to become possessed of—and glared at his comrades through that pair of big-rimmed spectacles which so completely altered his appearance. Then he talked to them—cross-questioned his friends in the gruff, staccato accents one might have expected from such an individual as he ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... a mighty flare, and simultaneously all along the line ten miles to north and south of us, other flares light up the countryside. At the same instant there breaks out the boom of our heavy guns, the sharp staccato of sixty-pounders, the dull roar of howitzers, and the ear-splitting clamour of whizz-bangs—a bedlam of noise. Shells whistle and whine overhead; they cannot be distinguished one from another, but merge into a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... mountains of brick like drops of rain falling into a hidden pool. He followed an air, but it swam mistily into a swirling current of improvisation. You could cull out the trill of mountain brooks, the staccato of green rushes shivering above chilly lagoons, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... thousands, with all at stake, listen to the rolling notes of this bloody battle. High in the air, bursting shells with white puffs light up the clouds of musketry smoke. Charging yells are borne down the wind, with ringing answering cheers. The staccato notes of the snapping Parrotts accentuate ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... up, and rendered the prima donna quite as effectively, interjecting "The Last Rose of Summer" as an aria in a manner that would have been encored in San Francisco. He responded with a few staccato notes, and the scene ended by their rushing into each other's arms and waltzing down the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the Good Stockbroker heatedly. He was always heated where questions of morality were concerned, and was proceeding to give chapter and verse for what promised to become a somewhat dull discussion when the Bluestocking firmly interposed in her small staccato pipe: ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... got—the only index to the effect her labors had produced—was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. But was it by the completeness of her success ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with a shout of "'Ware fire!" he sprang back and laid his match to the touch-hole. There was a spurt of flame as the long nine roared above the staccato bark of the musketry. Then they saw a section of the pirate's upper rail leap clear of her deck and fall overside. "Too high," said Job shortly, though Ghent and Curtis had cheered at the shot, for the distance was a good half-mile. Job worked feverishly ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... not wait. She began to wave—no short, staccato, pump-handle wave, but a sweep indicative of breadth, like the horizon line. Raven, while they were jingling up to the house, took one more look at it, recognizing, with a surprise that was almost poignant, how much it meant to him. He might not ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... swept over Clee as it did so, and in the midst of it he felt a series of sharp, staccato thoughts—thoughts which did not seem to be composed of words, and yet ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... to jump to any conclusions about anybody," Brain was saying in his staccato style. "But we should like to know a little more about Mr. Crane. Nobody seems to know much about him, or where he comes from. And it seems a sort of coincidence that yesterday he actually crossed ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... to stare at the dark cellar doorway, when we heard it yet again—a wild staccato ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... knelt and rose, pressed their hands to their bosom or voluptuously outspread their arms, which seemed to flutter as the wings of Iris or Nephthys, dragged their limbs, bent the knee, displayed their swift feet with little staccato movements, and followed every undulation of the music. The maids, standing against the wall to leave free space for the evolutions of the dancers, marked the rhythm by snapping their fingers or clapping their hands together. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... warehouses who found their buildings useless, once the overtopping elevator went up alongside—from small buyers who found themselves being driven out of the market with the flat warehouses. But these voices were drowned in the swish of grain in the chutes and the staccato of the elevator engines—lost in the larger exigencies of the wheat. The railway company held to their promises and the tall grain boxes reared their castor tops against ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was in the open, half-way to Wolfbatch. She sat down on the step of a stile, and sighed with relief at the ease it gave her foot. Then, far off she heard the sharp miniature sound, very neat and staccato, of a horse galloping. She held her breath to hear if it would turn down a by-road, but it came on. It came on, and grew in volume and in meaning, became almost ominous in the frozen silence. Hazel rose ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... strain on his eyeballs, which ached fiercely. His pony, having worked off its excess of spirit, settled down into a tireless pace that tested the picked mounts the planters had selected as their best, and the miles passed in silence save for staccato pounding of hoofs on hard packed earth and the swish of underbrush that ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... grew almost intolerable and his lassitude more intense. For a while he had no idea what was going on; and then a hoarse cry, which seemed one of alarm, rang out sharply. There was a patter of running feet, a thud of hoofs on the soft soil, and, breaking through these sounds, a rhythmic staccato drumming. Somebody was riding hard across ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... acute intellects engaged in the same pursuit as myself, and with the advantage of instruments a thousand times more powerful than mine. The names of Leeuwenhoek, Williamson, Spencer, Ehrenberg, Schmaltz, Dujardin, Staccato, and Schlseiden were then entirely unknown to me, or if known, I was ignorant of their patient and wonderful researches. In every fresh specimen of cryptogamic which I placed beneath my instrument I believed that I discovered wonders of which the world was as yet ignorant. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... rousing all the sleepy heads with sharp interrogative whistles before there is the least paling of the Eastern sky. He scents the sun as the ghost of Hamlet's father the morning air. His version of "Sleepers, wake," echoes in the silence in sharp, staccato notes. Seldom heard during the heat of the day, they are oft repeated at dusk and late in the evening. Of all the birds of the day his voice is the last as well as the first, and from that the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... continued Breede, in staccato explosions, "that the 'quipment is nes'ry part of road, without which road would be tot'ly crippled, you will note these first moggige 'quipment bonds take pri'rty over first-moggige bonds, an' gov'n y'sef ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... pony beer, paying for it carelessly out of his nightly earnings of $42.85-5/7. He nodded amiably but coldly at the long line of Mike's patrons and strolled past them into the rear room of the cafe. For he heard in there sounds pertaining to his own art—the light, stirring staccato of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... settled suddenly upon her—an agonizing sense of youth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, the quick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes of laughter—she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of the oncoming years—gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on, through unloved ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... game at once, you young monkey!" struck in the sharp staccato of a semi-excited voice. "Interfering with young ladies, eh? Let's have a look at you. Don't be afraid, Miss Lorne—nobody's ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... seven, three staccato rings would come at the front-door bell. At her sewing or what not, Mrs. Becker would glance up with ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... last smoke-puff had quite slid through the open window, Madame Mauer, who was perpetually in mourning, literally darkened my doorway. Seeing Follet she became nervous—he did affect women, as I have said. What with her squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted out her staccato statement. Doctor Mauer was away with a patient on the other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands unintelligibly on the Mauers' porch. She—Madame Mauer—couldn't make ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled somewhere faintly. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... largo, larghetto, andante, andantino^; alla capella [It]; maestoso^, moderato; allegro, allegretto; spiritoso^, vivace^, veloce^; presto, prestissimo^; con brio; capriccioso^; scherzo, scherzando^; legato, staccato, crescendo, diminuendo, rallentando^, affettuoso^; obbligato; pizzicato; desto^. Phr. in notes by distance made more sweet [Collins]; like the faint exquisite music of a dream [Moore]; music arose with its voluptuous swell [Byron]; music is the universal language of mankind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... chief was talking in that staccato, querulous fashion of old age, and his white audience was waiting for ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the query. Why don't the doctors begin ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... were celebrating the Mohammedan feast of Ramadhan. During the feast, which lasts a month, night is turned into day. No food is allowed, in theory, from sunrise to sunset. Drums beat, dogs howl, cocks crow and the revellers shout and wail and clap their hands in long, rhythmic, staccato periods, and explosions of powder occur under the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... his chattering teeth. He calmed his vocal organs and answered the Wildcat, but when he became articulate his feet assumed the staccato movement. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... two dragging the stretcher could move in a last desperate rush for safety, before they could rise from their prone position, they heard the rattle of fire increase swiftly to a trembling staccato roar. But, miraculously, no bullets came near them, no whistling was about their ears, no ping and smack of impacting lead hailed about them—except, yes, just the fire of one rifle or two that sent aimed bullet after bullet hissing over them. ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... was very windless, and the river lay like a sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that none but the acute ear could ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... machine, squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and discolored. A piece of equipment that had taken a bad beating of some kind. But it was functioning. As he stared, intermittent bursts of clicking noises rose from it, like the staccato of irregular gunfire. ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... his side. The sleeper awoke, and after washing his lips at the tank, sounded the soldiers' clarion call, the "Reveille." Instantly the whole bivouac was alive, but scarcely had the bugle notes died away when the telephone buzzer began to give forth a series of sharp, staccato sounds. The Czech operator gave a sharp ejaculation, like "Dar! Dar! Dar!" looking more serious as the sounds proceeded. He then calmly hung up the speaking-tube on the tree that supported our home and began to explain ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the term Ode for a lyrical poem, in English: Soothern in 1584, and Daniel in 1592 had preceded him; but he was the first to give the name popularity in England, and to lift the kind as Ronsard had lifted it in France; and till the time of Cowper no other English poet showed mastery of the short, staccato measure of the Anacreontic as distinct from the Pindaric Ode. In the Odes Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line of the Sacrifice to Apollo; and ascends from the smooth and melodious ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... chuckles, a deep stentorian one and a sharp staccato one, came from the two Bags already hanging to the wall of the Cavern, from whence subsequently protruded the round ruddy form of the North and the pinched figure of the East Wind. "Ho! ho! ho!" chortled the North Wind, chokingly. "Who says I do ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... supposed to be concentrated into a few brief words. The classic example is Ferdinand's "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young," in The Duchess of Malfy. Charles Lamb celebrated the virtues of this pregnant, staccato style with somewhat immoderate admiration, and thus helped to set a fashion of spasmodic pithiness in dialogue, which too often resulted in dense obscurity. Not many plays composed under this influence have reached ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... were incessant now. With each one the landlady downstairs screamed. As they came closer, cries and French adjectives came up the staircase beside me in a nerve-destroying staccato of terror. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his board, reading instruments and keying controls. So he was back on the job. Mannion sat, head bent, monitoring his recorder. The room was filled with the keening staccato of ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... saw Cora upon the sidewalk in front of the house. She wore a new and elaborate motoring costume, charmingly becoming, and was in the act of mounting to a seat beside Valentine Corliss in a long, powerful-looking, white "roadster" automobile. The engine burst into staccato thunder, sobered down; the wheels began to move both Cora and Corliss were laughing and there was an air of triumph about them—Cora's veil streamed and fluttered: and in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... morn hung heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!' They stopped. The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart: She held, she ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking, nondescript fluid, and continued her set glare, her breast rising and falling with staccato, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... him in the way she would have him go. Michael found himself suddenly and inexplicably understanding this; her finger, by its pressure or its light tapping, seemed to him to speak in a language that he found himself familiar with, and he slowed down stroking the notes, or quickened with staccato touch, as she wordlessly ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... his head, and in the silence shuffling and staccato footsteps were heard, announcing the approach of a youthful art class and their teacher. "Jade," said the voice of the lady, "one of the hardest of known substances, has yet been beautifully worked ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... their wings amorously, upon the broad, gray string-course running along the house front just beneath. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, a small, neat, gray and black figure, was beside Katherine, and, now and again, he heard the pretty staccato of her foreign speech. Then Richard Calmady rode onward, turning half round in the saddle, looking up for a moment at the woman he loved. His horse broke into a canter, bearing him swiftly in and out of the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the mills a patrol wagon filled with officers careened past him, its gong emitting a staccato, exciting alarm. Here was reality. Bonbright quickened his step; began to run. Presently he entered the street that lay before the face of the factory—a street lighted by arc lamps so that the scene was adequately visible. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... he would dance a hornpipe, whistling his own music in sharp staccato notes, as from a piccolo. He could likewise "present arms" with a little straw musket which I had provided for him; besides feigning to be dead, and allowing you to take him up by the legs, his head hanging down, apparently lifeless, the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was what Patsy might have termed "fit." The dogs of the village were on hand; that self-appointed escort of all doubtful characters barked them down the street with a lusty chorus of growls and snarls and sharp, staccato yaps. There were the children, too, of course; the older ones followed hot-foot after the dogs; the smaller ones came, a stumbling vanguard, sucking speculative thumbs or forefingers, as the choice might be. The hurly-burly brought the grown-ups ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... swung to that side," Steinmetz admitted in his rather affected staccato. "At all events he's out of my beat." His beat was the respiratory tract and his treatment the last word in vaccines ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... no gentle humor, and his cheeks reddened as he felt the calm scrutiny of the woman's searching glances. He was now determined to take the whip hand, and to keep it. His accents were staccato as he said, "Tell me now who you are, and what you wish of me!" A clock, hung high over them on the dreary, drab walls, ticked away brusquely, as the angered woman ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... be all right after a cup of tea." And Sally, after an intricate movement with a safety-pin, an openwork lace cuff that has lost a button, and a white wrist, goes down three accelerandos of stair-lengths, with landing pauses, and ends with a dining-room door staccato. But she isn't long gone, for in two minutes the door reopens, and she comes upstairs as fast, nearly, as she went down. In her hand she carries, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Sharply at four the staccato notes of "Assembly" rang across the terrace as Polly sounded the call upon her bugle. The girls came hurrying from every direction and the ensuing hour and a half, usually free for recreation, was cheerfully given over to study. Dinner was served ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of three." Swift, staccato sentences, like the rapid crossing of swords, the first preliminary interchange of strokes before the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... little staccato cry of her sex. But when she had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and halted for a moment—at least six feet from this prostrate monster—with her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither sound nor motion came ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... clearly. You think of him as some sort of big bug. Then you hear the rapid tut-tut-tut of his machine gun. The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... the air, in spite of the sharp wind which blew from the river, had a curiously stagnant quality; and the rumble of the elevated road, at the opposite side of the house, reached her in a vibrating undercurrent which was punctuated now and then by the staccato cries of the street. The house, which had been built in a benighted and spacious period, stood now as an enduring refuge for the poor in purse but proud in spirit. A few studios on the roof were still occupied by artists, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... you seem to be—sneaking off the stage when nobody's looking." Lady Dauntrey laughed a staccato laugh at her own rather ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of uniforms. Gleaming pearl-white, translucent in the mass, were the bare shoulders of women; and from far off came the plaintive whine of an orchestra, a pulsing sense rather than a living sound, of music, pointed here and there by the staccato cry of a flute. A zephyr, perfumed with the clean, fresh odor of lilacs, stirred the draperies of the archway which led into the conservatory and rustled the bending branches ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... give emphasis and expression, as my music teacher says I must be careful of when playing. There is never going to be any crescendo or diminuendo business about Billy's love-making, and I might as well make up my mind to that in the beginning. It's going to be pure staccato with him—short and quick and soon over. But it will last forever, Billy's will. He isn't going to stand for foolishness about it when he starts, either. He has two more years at college and then he is going in his ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... quick, staccato jerks, "if I told you what I'd seen and heard in the last fortnight, I couldn't make you believe it. Proofs! Proofs! I've wasted thirty years. I might have had her—the best part of her—all this time. ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... go as far as to say he used to be a Boche pilot in that fuss across the big water," continued Perk, reflectively, as though certain memories of the long-ago had awakened in his brain—recollections that breathed of action, staccato machine-gun fire, exploding shells, and the terrible odor of gas that had poisoned so many of his ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... a contest as to which could drown the other's instrument, and the snapping time grew faster, until the dancers gasped, and men with long boots encouraged them with cries and stamped a staccato accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was savage, rasping music, but one player infused into it the ebullient verve of France, and the other was from the misty land where the fiddler learns the witchery ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... bit!" said Ottensen, "I'll ride a little way with you." He asked Senior-lieutenant Frommelt politely for permission, and sent his men back in charge of a sergeant. Then he joined the battery, chattering away gaily in his droll, staccato fashion, and making his horse leap the ditch from time to time. He sat his magnificent steed splendidly, and with his slender, neatly-made figure, looked the perfect ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey—one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C, and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it. "Oh," he said reproachfully, "you ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... show his delight sufficiently when he was out of the crate. He capered about them, licking the girl's shoes, tumbling down in his haste and weakness, and uttering his funny little bark in excited staccato. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... reached my ears frequently. But they were less representative than were short, sharp bursts of laughter, harsh and staccato, like a dog's bark, and, it may be, half-hysterical. And, piercing these snaps of laughter, one heard the curious, contradictory yapping of such sentences as: "I sye; 'ow about them 'ot sossiges?" "'Taint ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... greatest short stories. In the other tales that go to make up the volume are wild, exotic glimpses of Latin-America. I doubt whether the color and spirit of that region have been better rendered than in Stephen Crane's curious, distorted, staccato sentences. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts, jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat. Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady in the middle of a sawmill working on an order ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... woman you meant?" said the General, turning to Boris. He spoke as if he were on the parade-ground, every word sharp, caustic, staccato. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... whipped about in his chair like a tiger. His hand dropped to his pocket, so swiftly that my eyes did not follow it. And as it dropped, a single staccato shot split the darkness of the room. The scientist slumped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... uproar of the crowd could be heard the sharp staccato click of the telegraph wires. Special trains were coming from Omaha, came the news. The police force had tried to keep the crowds from smothering each other, but they had torn down the gate of the station and rushed through, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the intensity of Lady Knollys' protest. I looked at her, expecting an explanation of her meaning; but she was silent, looking steadfastly on the jewels on her right-hand fingers, with which she was drumming a staccato march on the table, very pale, with gleaming eyes, evidently thinking deeply. I began to think she had a prejudice against ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... with half-shut eyes of supreme satisfaction, she said under her breath: "It's Beethoven—just the blessedness of Beethoven! The valley is a legato passage, quiet and flowing; those far, up-pricking hills, staccato; and the mountains here, the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of God!" he screamed, and at the same instant a sharp staccato note rang out above the silent, spell-bound multitude. There was a screaming whistle in the air and Jad-ben-Otho crumpled forward across the body of his intended victim. Again the same alarming noise and Lu-don fell, ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and at once," said the captain. "In fact, ever since Erwin used that searchlight to show me the way down, I haven't felt that we were safe here. Therefore I say all aboard just as soon as we can be loaded in — what is that?" as a sharp staccato of shocks rose from Brodno's machine, the result of his tinkering with his air-exhaust. Even as he made haste to stop them, time being all important, Byers was placing the two women in his ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, "The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... before the slip, the plane turned and went away, making a complete circle, then coming to rest. To the surprise of every one, the rapid staccato bark of the Lewis gun broke the silence. Kennedy was evidently firing, but at what? There was nothing ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... they are difficult, but imagines that one could do the same thing at once; that is true art. He also has a beautiful, round tone,—not a note is missing, one hears everything; everything is well marked. He has a fine staccato bow, up as well as down; and I have never heard so good a double shake as his. In a word, though he is no wizard he is a ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... instant's pause, and Cordova had begun Lucia's song again at the beginning, and her marvellous trills and staccato notes, and trills again, trills upon trills without end, filled the vast darkness and stopped those four thousand men and women, spellbound and silent, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... up the river and touched the leaves and grass to life. The young corn, deep green in the bottom-land, moved with a [v]staccato flurry; the stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets on the long slope of rising ground beyond the bottom-land, and empurpled the blue ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... own horses breathing heavily, O'Rourke's especially; the guns thundering along behind them and the advance-guard clattering in front, and their attention distracted every other minute by the noise of volleys on ahead and the occasional staccato rattle of independent firing. The whole sky was now alight with the reflection of the burning barracks and they could see the ragged outlines of the cracking walls silhouetted against the blazing red ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... reported only fleeting glimpses of Huns, but could guess pretty well the spots at which they were congregating, and issued his orders accordingly. Young Eames, the officer passing the orders to the gunners, stood very upright, close to the battery telephonist, and let his voice ring out in crisp staccato tones that would have won him full marks at Larkhill or Shoeburyness: "Aiming point top of tower. All guns ... Four 0 degrees Right.... Concentrate Two 0 minutes on Number One.... Corrector 152.... Why didn't you shout out your Fuze Number 3?... Three Two-fifty—Two Nine-fifty.... Will you ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... sing; far in the night the monotonous staccato of the guitar went on, accompanying plaintive murmurs, outbursts of anger and cries of pain, the tremulous moans of sorrow. My nerves vibrated, I broke my nails on the rock, and seemed to hear once ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... coming in our direction we hurried to the bottom of the gorge and began the sharp ascent on the other side. It was almost straight up and before we had gone a hundred feet we were all gasping for breath and my legs seemed like bars of lead, but the staccato yelps of the dogs sounding closer and ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... uneasily for a little while, then she knocked. No response. She knocked again. Still no attention. Her curiosity could be controlled no longer. "Dodo!" she called in staccato tones as she knocked once again. "'Tain't ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... A little staccato cry of pain; a cry which seemed to spring into life from a tortured heart, broke from her lips. Aynesworth heard it, and, at that moment, he hated his employer. Wingrave paused for a moment politely, and ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... provocation. That laugh of his was eminently characteristic of the man. There was nothing smothered or furtive about it; there was not even the vestige of a chuckle in it. Its deep "Ah! hah! hah!" came with a staccato, quacking sound from somewhere low down in the chest, and set his huge shoulders moving in unison with its peals. The whole closed with a long breath of purest enjoyment—a kind of final licking of the lips after ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... as I saw the company pass me gaily down the road, preceded by the hounds, trotting with a staccato step and their noses in ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... to this refuge the familiar sound of the office penetrated—the whirr which usually sounded as a homogeneous murmur, but which, in her acute sensitiveness, she now analyzed into the voices of different typewriters—one flat, rapid, staccato; one a steady, dull rattle. The "zzzzz" of typewriter-carriages being shoved back. The roll of closing elevator doors, and the rumble of the ascending elevator. The long burr of an unanswered telephone at a desk, again and again; and at last an angry "Well! Hello? ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... a coat of paint, and was indistinctly regretful of remote royal visits and processions gone for ever. Then we passed shuddering by many vacant booths that had once resounded with the revelry of ninepenny teas and the gingerbeer cork's staccato, and their forms were piled together and their trestles overturned. And the wind ravened, and no human beings were to be seen. So up the hill to the left, and along the road leading by devious windings between the black hedges and through ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... block. There was quite an excitement here when we came in. Two men and two girls were playing on native instruments—one of the men on a sort of fiddle, and the other on a rude guitar; the girls, one striking, in sharp staccato fashion, a wooden perforated bowl inverted on a standard or post, and the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight girls here. There was a piece of unpainted tin or zinc, about eight by twelve ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... perfect self-restraint, said a few things a trifle staccato, defining Man, his dual destiny, his hope of heaven, and all the great business in which he himself had fought hard. But from a fine military tradition, he said nothing of his actions, nor even of his shrine in Normandy, of which he is naturally extremely ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... stamp-mill came to his ears in a ceaseless diapason, but the sound was so much a matter of course that Lockwood no longer heard it. The millions of pines and redwoods that covered the flanks of the mountains were absolutely still. No wind was stirring in their needles. But the chorus of tree-toads, dry, staccato, was as incessant as the pounding of the mill. Far-off—thousands of miles, it seemed—an owl was hooting, three velvet-soft notes at exact intervals. A cow in the stable near at hand lay down with a long breath, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... the grade geldings and fillies and the registered stock that he kept close to home in fenced pastures; loved the broom-tail bronks that ranged far afield and came in a dust cloud moiling up from their staccato hoof beats, circled by hoarse, shouting riders ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... too, was riding, but at a pace which took no heed of a horse's endurance, riding a gallant brute that stretched out its neck, nostrils flaring, hammering hoofs beating out the very staccato of urgent speed upon the flying sands. Already his revolver was tight clinched in a lifted hand. Already he had swerved a little from the distant lights of San Juan. He was taking the shortest line which led ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... there is too much salt—rather too much sugar. Every one's mouth seems full of it, with "I" turned to "ah" and every staccato a drawl. But the voices are full of sweetness and music unknown north ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... never no trouble for me to do nawthin', an' even if 'twas I'd do it!" He sang each word in an argumentative staccato, and in high passages you could see his wisdom teeth. Between stanzas he spoke stimulating exhortations: "Louder, brethren and sisters, louder; the fate of immortal souls may be a-hangin' on the amount ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... loveliest of idylls is turned into a veritable monstrosity by the passage in triplets for the violoncello; which, if taken at the usual quick pace, is the despair of violoncellists, who are worried with the hasty staccato across the strings and back again, and find it impossible to produce anything but a painful series of scratches. Naturally, this difficulty disappears as soon as the delicate melody of the horns and clarinets is taken at the proper ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... the door, sniffing eagerly. A muffled sound of voices became audible, and Irvin, following a moment of hesitation, crossed and opened the door. The dog ran out, yapping in his irritating staccato fashion, and an expression of hope faded from Irvin's face as he saw a tall fair girl standing in the hallway talking to Hinkes, the butler. She wore soiled Burberry, high-legged tan boots, and a peaked cap of distinctly military appearance. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... she cried, in high-pitched staccato tones. "It's a box, an express box. Oh, it's a perfect monster, a mammoth! Vi, this must be your dresses. Hurrah! we'll have a ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... had run across the shivering surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of cavalry ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... or the precise wording of it, Caleb could never remember. But the staccato sentence or two had the effect of instantly electrifying Mr. Dyckman. Certainly; whatever Mr. Thomas desired should be done. He—Dyckman—had had no notice of the change in the plans of the company, and Mr. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... idea firmly fixed in her mind, she exerted herself to please him; and her little laugh made artificial music in his ears, her fixed smile wore upon his nerves, her staccato questions irritated him. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... spruce as ever, but with an added air of tested capability that inspired all beholders. Only their German musicians still seemed fresh from the mint, and oh! in what unlucky taste, considering the ecclesiastics, the song they brayed forth in jaunty staccato. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... nineteen. Whereas the fairy maiden did not put herself out to pretend she troubled her head about the young men whom she fascinated with the rhythm of her movements or the radiation of her loveliness, was rather inclined to be short in her manner, a little staccato in her observations, too accustomed to admiration to attract worshippers to herself by courting them, too undeveloped and impersonal to consciously assert herself—this other girl was of quite another sort. She had no innate irresistibility, but was a shrewd and adaptable ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... there were sounds of movement, the low staccato chatter of typers, occasional bits of conversation, and ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Bill Sanderson since I was born," the unseen lips informed him truculently, even as the unseen fingers continued their fiercely staccato typing. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... loud, rather harsh at first, then softened to a mourn, wild, lonely, haunting. A pack of coyotes barked in angry answer, a sharp, staccato, yelping chorus, the more piercing notes biting on the cold night air. These mountain mourns and yelps were music to Columbine. She rode on down the trail in the gathering darkness, less afraid of the night and its wild denizens than of what awaited ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... can too," exclaimed Armande and a moment later the sharp staccato of a hand-grenade bursting nearby warned them that some of the enemy at least were ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
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