"Chirrup" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in a thick shawl, trudging along behind him, stepping in his tracks. They chirrup, "Good-morning, sir!" As far as you can see them you have to watch them, and something rises in your throat. Lord love 'em! Lord ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... I distinctly heard the chirrup of a rat outside, and almost continually the same scratching and pattering I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was filled with the penetrating perfume of the onions. Auguste meantime was preparing some ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... clouds like indigo-sheets, and a tremendous storm of water was falling. The birds looked out from their nests, and saw some monkeys, shivering and starved with the cold, standing under a tree. 'Twit! twit! you Monkeys,' they began to chirrup. 'Listen to us!— ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... besides, she had a dread of jail and its accompanying disgrace. By the time the sad tale was finished, she was worn out with sobs, and sat still, looking straight ahead of her into the fireless stove. But the baby's cries roused her, and she took him in her arms, making a pitiful attempt to chirrup to him. The idiot boy, feeling dimly that something was wrong, came and rubbed his head against her like a faithful dog, whining grievously. She stroked his hair lovingly. "Pore Eddie," she said, "it'd be better if you an' me an' the biby, was with Minnie;" ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... morning, with the fresh air from balmy fields blowing into your window, penetrated still with the afflatus of last night's thoughts and reveries, wouldn't you be cheerful? Wouldn't the unity of all things come to you, and wouldn't you chirrup like a bird, and buzz like a bee, and turn imaginary somersaults and dance and sing, and feel like cutting up "didoes," and talk a little high strung, and be chipper with the lowliest and level with the highest? ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... are dotted about the flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The grasshoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup, A chirrup, a chirrup, ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the story of how rich Athenians wore Golden Grasshoppers (as the schoolmaster calls them) in their hair. These golden ornaments were, of course, no common grasshoppers, but the little Cicadas, whose sharp chirrup seemed delightful music to the Greeks. It is unpleasant to our ears, as Browning found it; but in a multitude of Greek poets, in Alcaeus and Anacreon and all through the whole Anthology, we hear its praise. We have it, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine trouble. With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the sound. It rose again—it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing to a ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... and needle-books, mending her father's clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day, and left ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... you wants anythin' else, Mr. Fitzgerald," she said, going to the door, "you knows your way to the bell as easily as I do to the kitching," and, with a final chirrup, she crackled out of ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... ease and the pleasant conviction that "I the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery, yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content, belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair round belly with good capon ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... dawn is like white ashes,' he said, as he dropped his letters into the box; and he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. The daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... listened with awe To the sigh of the winds as they tremblingly crept Through the trees where the robin so restlessly slept: Where I heard the low, murmurous chirp of the wren, And the katydid listlessly chirrup again, Till my fancies grew faint and were drowsily led Through the maze of the dreams of the ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... from that? Nothing. He is well and has a right to chirrup and ruffle his wings; but I am ill and must die—that's all. It's not worth while to say more about it. And tearful invocations to nature are mortally absurd. Let us get ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... little chirrup of mirth. "Keep your brains whittled up, don't you? Any advice you'd like ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... one he tries to catch it; failing that, he puts a charge of shot into it. Some keepers think nothing of shooting their own ferrets if they will not come when called by the chirrup with the lips, or displease them in other ways. They do not care, because they can have as many as they like. Little John made pets of his: they obeyed him very well ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at 'Johnson's Lives.' Who can ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... snipping and snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his Joachim was someone else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he was to do. He had known it, man and boy, this sixty years, and ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... thought that maybe at last I had caught the rainbow, and that without any imaginings or make-believes she was learning to love plain, rough Jock Calder of West Inch. It was this thought, still at my heart, which had given me that little morning chirrup of joy. And then I remembered that if I hastened I might be in time for her, for it was her custom to go out with ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... felt the holiday-making instinct of the spring, and that instinct has not been affected by the lapse of the centuries. It stirs us even in London, when the impetuous lilacs are bursting into bud, and the sooty sparrows chirrup love-songs, and "a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove"—or, to be more accurate, pigeon—which swells and straddles as if Piccadilly were all his own. The very wallflowers and daffodils which crown the costers' barrows help to weave the spell; and, though pleasure-jaunts are out of the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... grew more lonesome and dreary every mile, and the snow more fine and moist. Would it turn to rain? There were no bells on the horses, and the driver, a surly, silent fellow, had not even an encouraging 'chirrup' for them, while the muffled crunching of the soft snow by the runners seemed to have a somnolent influence upon them, judging from our progress. Occasionally the gentlemen would get out and run up the hills, and once the Englishman fell full length, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rejoinder, and the two smilingly held each other's gaze for the larger part of a minute. Then one by one came in the ladies of the house, and it was kiss and chirrup and ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound, Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping [9] toward his western bower. Then, said she, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Master Maloney. He strolled slowly out, while Billy Windsor, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap his fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente cordiale ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... above of some wrong or sorrow that man, or her own kind, or the immitigable doom of mortal affairs, has inflicted upon her, the complaining, but unresisting sufferer. And now, all of a sudden, we hear the sharp, shrill chirrup of a red squirrel, angry, it seems, with somebody—perhaps with ourselves—for having intruded into what he is pleased to consider his own domain. And hark! terrible to the ear, here is the minute but intense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels, And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions: Here was food for our various ambitions, As on each case, exactly stated— To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup, Or best prayer to St. Hubert on mounting your stirrup— We of the household took thought and debated. Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin {240} His sire was wont to do forest-work in; Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs" And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk-hose; What signified ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... a quick ear, don't you? You see what my temperament is; all sense, all consciousness. My hearing was cultivated, too, by listening for Indians. Well, by and by, I detected a very stealthy movement outside the fort, and then a faint chirrup, such as a young squirrel might make. In an instant the drunken man sprang up; and I covered him with my rifle, cocked. He saw the movement and drew his pistol, but not before I had ordered him to throw down his ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... see her smile, there might have been seen something more than the toss; for while they talked, the long twilight had faded away, the little ripples of the lake by whose side they were sitting had gone to sleep on its quiet bosom. The air was full of the chirrup of innumerable insects; two frogs, creeping up from the water, adding a sonorous bass, and the long, slender pine-leaves chimed into this evening lullaby with ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... Father Lobo and Bruce, he is treated as a myth by Le Vaillant; M. Wiedman makes him cry "Shirt! Shirt! Shirt!" Dr. Sparrman "Tcherr! Tcherr!" Mr. Delegorgue "Chir! Chir! Chir!" His note suggested to me the shrill chirrup of a sparrow, and his appearance that ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... begin running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... help us in the time of the Voice behind the Veil that the Queen talks of. And anything is better than working for Oddities that chirrup about work that they can't do, and waste what we ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... appear at first sight very few indeed. On the plains one sees a little lark with two white feathers in the tail, and in other respects exactly like the English skylark, save that he does not soar, and has only a little chirrup instead of song. There are also paradise ducks, hawks, terns, red-bills, and sand-pipers, seagulls, and occasionally, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... other. I believe I heaved a deep sigh, and dropped my thimble, which "Joey" instantly seized, and with a low chirrup of intense delight, commenced to poke down between the boards of the verandah. It was too bad of us to give such broad hints by looks if not by words. Poor Mr. C. H—— was a bachelor in those days: ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... nothing of two small bipeds of five and seven, who cap all the rest for noise, till I sometimes wish I had the aural afflictions of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me whom I wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me on my return, send out to her "Mithter Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... deep, and hoarse, issuing from a thousand throats in ceaseless continuity of croak. The tree-frog adds her chirping and almost human voice; the kattiedid repeats her own name through the livelong night; the whole tribe of locusts chirp, chirrup, squeak, whiz, and whistle, without allowing one instant of interval to the weary ear; and when to this the mosquito adds her threatening hum, it is wonderful that any degree of fatigue can obtain for the listener the relief of sleep. In fact, it is only in ceasing to listen that this blessing can ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... better chirrup to the dog while he's there, don't you think?" suggested Sam. He felt that a resolute man with legs as long as Bream's might well deposit a cloak on a berth and ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... advice must be in my own interest, though I wish I could find your confidence. I am a poor creature, and do not know how. It is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting somewhere in this room, like a chimney swallow that would fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the thinning boughs, and feel that all nature was becoming idealized. The birds were then mostly silent. They had left their best notes on the hawthorns and among the roses; but the crickets made a cheerful chirrup, and the great brown butterflies displayed their richest velvets, and the gossamer-like insects in the dreamy atmosphere performed dances and undulations full of grace and mystery. And all these marvelous changes imparted to love ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... Lord John leaned forward and told me some interminable story about a buffalo and an Indian rajah which seemed to me to have neither beginning nor end. Professor Summerlee had just begun to chirrup like a canary, and Lord John to get to the climax of his story, when the train drew up at Jarvis Brook, which had been given us as the ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a colour that cannot be rightly named—a transparent, subtle, vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, croaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... that often impairs the charms of the sex in what is called civilized life, grew warm and slightly clamorous. In the midst of this scene, the Delaware caused his friend to stoop, so as completely to conceal himself, and then he made a noise so closely resembling the little chirrup of the smallest species of the American squirrel, that Deerslayer himself, though he had heard the imitation a hundred times, actually thought it came from one of the little animals skipping about over his head. The sound is so familiar in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and she seemed to hear his heart beat through the words. It was almost too much for her even then. But she held herself back, for there was that in her woman's soul that clamoured to be heard—the patter of tiny feet that had never ceased to echo there, the high chirrup of a baby's voice, the vision of a toddling child with ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... are laid there, Safe from harm, till baby-birds Chirrup forth to take their places, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... woman gave a chirrup at the birds, and, to the skipper's utter astonishment, both Port and Starboard chirruped back sociably. Port then remarked: "Pretty Polly!" Starboard chirruped a few cheery bars from "A Sailor's Wife a Sailor's Star Should Be." Then both parrots rapped their beaks genially ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... hand, sat motionless for a long time. Sunlight left the bottom lands and crept up the hills and faded out of the sky. Dusk and dews of twilight fell all around, and the dusk deepened till the stars began to shine out here and there. Sweet summer scents came in on the dew-freshened air; sweet chirrup of insects made their gentle running commentary on the silence; Miss Collins had long ago caused the little bell with which she was wont to notify her employers that their meals were ready, to sound its ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... from a furnace. Along the underside of the great woods, and in the turn of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of the sunshine and large plenty reigning ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... wild-fowl, as they ever and anon desert the pools of water now open in the lake and hurry over the forest-trees, accord well with the shrill cry of the yellow-leg and curlew, and with the general wildness of the scene; while the reviving frogs chirrup gladly in the swamps to see the breaking up of winter and welcome back the spring. This is the spring I write of; and to have a correct idea of the beauties and the sweetness of this spring, you must first spend a winter in ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... like two long spears. He rose, rolled up his mattress, got upon the roll, and put his mouth to one of the griffins' months. He gave a low, just audible whistle, directing it towards the foliage of the tree. Presently there was a slight rustling among the leaves, then one solitary chirrup, and in three minutes a whole chorus of melody burst ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... unite, will all flock together and descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with sermons out of the world—if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope that men ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Come on. Old Nigger knows it; many a time has he trodden its soft and shaking surface. Good old horse!" and she patted the black neck of her charger as she turned his head towards the distant hills and urged him forward with a "chirrup." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... begged pardon;—'If you please, my poor bleeding angel, I am sorry. But do not, I entreat, distract me with petitions of any sort, though I will perform anything earthly to satisfy you. Be a good little boat in the wake of the big ship. I will look over at you, and chirrup now and then to you, my dearest, when I am not engaged in piloting extraordinary.'—Very well; I do not mean to sneer at the unhappy boy, Merthyr; I love him; he was my husband's brother in arms; the sweetest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which scourge tropical lands as well as tropical characters. In a quarter of an hour there was a dead calm. The silence of the night, on those still and star-lit waters, was only broken by a sort of chirrup, that might have been mistaken for a cricket, but which I think was a kiss. Indeed, I was rapidly going off again to sleep, when I was called to give the key of the spirit-locker,—a glorious resource that never failed as a solemn seal ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and there, He never sought to cleave the air, He chirrup'd oft, and, free from care, [iii] Tun'd to her ear his grateful strain. Now having pass'd the gloomy bourn, [iv] From whence he never can return, His death, and Lesbia's grief I mourn, Who sighs, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... obscured, the trees that filled the gulley, bunched at the summit into a thicket, just discernible in foggy outline. The horses had gained the level, Jim Bailey, who knew the road in his sleep, had cheered them with a familiar chirrup, when the leaders stopped, recoiling in a clatter of slackened harness on the wheelers. The stage came to a halt so violent that Jim Bailey lurched forward against the splashboard, the reins jerked out of his hands. He did not know what had happened, could see nothing but the horses' backs, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the Doctor would chirrup at the ample, good-natured Rhoda Kollander who would haunt him during John's periods of political molting, pretending to advise with the Doctor on her husband's political status, "to your society from May until November every ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... smell a flower—flower is not complete without smell—but I don't care if I never smell a bush till I die. Then the birds they laugh and talk like Christians; they make me split my sides, God bless their little hearts; but they won't chirrup. Oh, dear, no, bless you, they leave the Christians to chirrup—they hold conversations and giggle and laugh and play a thing like a fiddle—it is Australia! where everything is inside-out and topsy-turvy. The ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... or animal of any kind is to be seen, and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering; and I don't know any position ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... proceeds, and the feelings of all become wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by the recital of the great deeds done in battle, or gallant sacrifices dared in love, the voices of one or more of the listeners will be sure to break into the strain; the whole audience will join in the cheerful chirrup of hai-hai-cha! or the dirge-like wail of wai-wai-wai! and at the finale some deli-kan, inspired perhaps by the sight of maiden faces cautiously peering in at door or window, will scarcely be able to refrain from firing his pistol up the chimney, or ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... this day—and its apparent peace—must breed happiness, although it was but a respite in the middle of winter. The balmy air, the chirrup of the bird, the far-flung reaches of the valley which she could see from this mounting lane, all delighted the senses and soothed ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of turning ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... idolatrous, bloody people in the world. Wherefore the people that shall be born, that shall live to serve God in these happy days, they shall see Antichrist only in its ruins; they shall, like the sparrows, the little robins, and the wren, sit and sing, and chirrup one to another, while their eyes behold this dead hawk. 'Here [shall they say] did once the lion dwell; and there was once a dragon inhabited: here did they live that were the murderers of the saints; and there another, that did ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... glimmered with a purple bloom, but down between the rows, among the dying leaves, the first bolls were opening. The air was still hot, for at noontime the glare in the sandy road was fierce, but the evening was cool, and from out in the gleaming dew came a sweetly, lonesome chirrup, an alarm in the grass, the picket of the insect army, crying the approach of frost. In the atmosphere was felt the influence of a reviving activity; new cotton pens were built along the borders of the fields, and the sounds of hammer and saw ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... speckled all over with reddish brown and pale lavender, most densely at the large end. This bird has a peculiar habit in the breeding-season of rising suddenly into the air and soaring about, often for a considerable distance, uttering a loud note resembling the words 'chirrup, chirrup-chirrup,' repeated all the time the bird is in the air, and then suddenly descending slowly into the grass with outspread wings, much in the style of Mirafra erythroptera. This bird is so similar in appearance, when flying and hopping about in the long grass, to A. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... twined and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whir ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... hospitable old German signed to the Kaffir to come alongside, and a chirrup brought up the dog ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... if you like, the cricket did chime in with chirrup, chirrup, chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus, with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle (size, you couldn't see it!)—that if it had then and there burst itself, like an overcharged ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees. The air was full of the perfume of newly-cut hay; the leaves sent forth a trembling murmur; the cricket uttered his sharp chirrup in the meadows; the quail's short, flute-like cry was heard, and all in nature harmonized with the beauty of the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... man and dog sat eyeing each other in silence, then the former, moistening his dry lips with his tongue, gave a conciliatory chirrup. Roger responded with a deep growl, and, rising to his feet, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... set them in an open window where they could see the blue sky and feel the kisses of the sunbeams. But the poor little violets drooped for a time, they were so homesick, and whispered to each other, "Let us give up and die!" A beautiful canary in a cage over their heads sang "cheer up! chirrup!" but they would not listen to ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... little Maltby—blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... ever-varying strain. The tiny bark of the squirrel, and the soft cooing of the Carolinian dove, may be heard among other sounds—the latter suggestive of earth's noblest passion, as its utterer is the emblem of devotion itself. At night other sounds are heard, less agreeable to the ear: the shrill "chirrup" of cicadas and tree-toads ringing so incessantly, that only when they cease do you become conscious of their existence; the dull "gluck-gluck" of the great bullfrog; the sharp cries of the heron and qua-bird; and the sepulchral ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... drama. Just as Dogget was supreme in such parts as Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Moliere. No man has ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in Elfie, manliness chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in The Country Girl, was almost tragic in ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... creeper, while many other beautiful blossoms flourished and faded unseen. In that dark dismal place there was an absence of animal life. Sometimes, however, by day we would hear the tuneful wail of the finger-glass bird or an occasional robin would chirrup, while at night great frogs croaked gloomily and the sloth would shriek at ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... little while ago we saved one poor little bird from pussy, and placed it in a cage and fed it, as it was too young to look after itself. The cage was placed in my bedroom, with the window open, and we suppose the chirrup of the little prisoner was heard by its parents, and we were pleased to see one of them fly into the room and carry it food. As they seemed so anxious, and we thought they knew better than we how to feed it, we placed the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... night Tree-Frogs are active and utter various sounds, some a pleasing chirrup (like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... at each other, partly no doubt at the leaping spray from the broken waves on the reef. There was only the delicious sound of the splash and gurgle of waters—the scream of a gull—the breath of the air—the chirrup of a few insects; all was wild stillness and freshness and pureness, except only that little group of four human beings. And then, the puzzled vexation and perplexity in Tom's face, and the impatient disgust in the face of his sister, were too much for Mr. Lenox's sense of the humorous; and the silence ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out, and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... taken that the male parent of the young canary be removed from the nest before the young ones are hatched, or it will be sure to acquire the note of its parent. The male birds of all the feathered creation are the only ones who sing; the females merely utter a sweet chirrup or chirp, so that from the hen canary the bird will run no risk of learning its ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... most admirable contrast imaginable. Monsieur Robineau was short; Madame Robineau was tall. Monsieur Robineau was as plump and rosy as a robin; Madame Robineau was pale and bony to behold. Monsieur Robineau looked the soul of good nature, ready to chirrup over his grog-au-vin, to smoke a pipe with his neighbor, to cut a harmless joke or enjoy a harmless frolic, as cheerfully as any little tailor that ever lived; Madame Robineau, on the contrary, preserved a dreadful dignity, and looked as if she could laugh at nothing on this side ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Chirrup are the nice little couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the softest little voice, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete; Armed cap-a-pie, Full fair to see; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier Sans peur et sans reproche, In sunlight and in shadow, The Bayard ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... alone, the sole mark for the enemy's fire; again that z—st overhead, and a cold chill ran down his back. He shut his teeth, and, with a careless air, strode off for a fresh load. He had not gone twenty yards when another shot ricochetted off a stone, and flew up into the air with a shrill chirrup. Jack winced and shivered. It was no good, however well he might conceal the fact from others—the fear of death was on him; it was impossible to deceive his own heart. A fresh terror now seized him, coupled with a sense of shame. He was the fellow ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... And you will see the dolls dance and the larks and the woodpeckers sing and chirrup; you will see a home filled with happiness up to the roof, for there is no one there waiting for miracles which only happen in fairy tales. You will see a ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... weeping, wringing her hands, and sometimes adding a fourth hand or foot to make the appeal more touching. Grass or leaves she draws around her to make a nest, and resents anyone meddling with her property. She is a most friendly little beast, and came up to me at once, making her chirrup of welcome, smelled my clothing, and held out her hand to be shaken. I slapped her palm without offence, though she winced. She began to untie the cord with which she was afterwards bound, with fingers and thumbs, in quite a systematic way, and on being interfered with ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... because it is so bright and warm.* The roses yonder, too, below in the water, the exact image of ourselves—them also I should like to kiss, and the nice little birds below in their nest. There are some above, too; they stretch out their heads and chirrup quite loud: they have no feathers at all, as their fathers and mothers have. They are good neighbors, those below as well as those ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... Chirrup, mother said We must not go beyond, But only hop and fly about The trees that skirt ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... touch of the snow, the coats of the horses ruffled up, and they stepped sluggishly. Asa had to chirrup constantly to the six ahead, and those behind lagged at their halters. The storm increased and we got on slowly. By four o'clock it had ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... fifty others along St. George's Channel. 'Twould do your heart good to see those our captain has among the Cornish rocks; such comfortable dwellings, where you could stow away twenty people, never to chirrup to the sun again; such hiding-holes, with neat little trains of gunpowder, winding like snakes in summer, so that, to prevent discovery, one crack of a good flint would send the caverns and the cliffs high into the air, to tell stories to the stars of the power of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... chirrup clear and strong, Dispersing all his dream, I thence withdrew, and follow'd long The ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the summit of the hill, he leant slightly forward and gathered up the lines which he had allowed to lie slack upon his horses' backs. A resounding "chirrup" and the weary beasts strained at their neck-yoke. Something moving in amongst the trees attracted their attention. Their snorting nostrils were suddenly thrown up in startled attention. The off-side horse jumped sideways against its companion, and the sleigh ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... bright little twinkling eyes, like a mouse when he ventures out from his hole. It gave me the chills to think of killing him, but I thought of the treasure, and my heart set as hard as a flint within me. When he saw my white face he gave a little chirrup of joy and came running up ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone, the call of the cock-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the girl's voice as she continued speaking appear far ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... walked over to Pat at his first chirrup and climbed up on the hand he held out and ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... torn and sorrowing heart, She flew back to her home, Where Twit and Chirrup trembling ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'Tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law-courts.(2) That is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs(3) and have ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy hair all clean from the Saturday's night bathing, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... swift bliss, why are you torture to remember? Let me not think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me, and as well it might be night. I wound a strange way home. I questioned if it were the dream of a fevered brain; I wondered, would she remember when next she saw me? None met with me that day; I forgot all. With the night ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and Antenor, elders of the people, were seated by the Scaean gates, with Priam, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like cicales that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, "Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake of a woman so marvellously ...
— The Iliad • Homer |
