"Crooning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this poem of the fire worshippers is taken from Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, and runs as follows. Imagine the crooning voice of the old Slav woman singing it ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... dare say a musician would not use that word to the tuneless yet sweet humming of the low worn voice. I found out from the words, far more than from the attempt at the tune, that it was the Old Hundredth she was crooning to herself; but the quiet continuous sound told of content, and gave me a pleasant feeling, as I stood in the street just outside the door, quite in harmony with that soft May morning. I went in. At first she did not catch who it was, and stood up as if to serve me; ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her favourite beast's side, and she was crooning soothingly to it as the white jets ping-panged into the frothing pail, and he stood for a moment watching ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of a night's disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to sleep, while she sat by her sister-in-law's bedside, lulled by the incessant crooning of the invalid's feeble voice, she was startled by a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... rail of the veranda, and Irene took one of the red-painted rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase is. That low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, had a fascination which kept his eye. Her talk was very unliterary, and its effect seemed hardly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pride and delight he refused to touch a mouthful until the job was finished. Several times we urged him to stop long enough for even a bite. He steadily declined, and whetted his knife, his eyes gleaming with delight, his lips crooning one of his weird Monumwezi songs. At eleven o'clock the task was done. Then I presented Memba Sasa with a tall mug of coffee and lots of sugar. He ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing from ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town, bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... the hall the maids mould be spinning, while their dark-haired mistress would be casting swift glances to the doorway, lest it might be filled any moment by the form of her returning lord. Outside in the chequered sunlight of the orchard the child would be playing with his nurse, crooning in childish syllables the chanty his father had taught him. And at the thought of his home a great passion welled up in Atta's heart. It was not regret, but joy and pride and aching love. In his antique island creed the death he was awaiting was not other than a bridal. He was dying for the things ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... wind blew down Providence Road, twisted the branches of the tall maples along the way, tore roughly at the festoons of blooming vines over the gables of the Briars, startled the nestled doves into a sad crooning, whipped mercilessly at the row of tall hollyhocks along the garden fence, flaunted the long spikes of jack-beans and carried their quaint fragrance to pour it over the bed of sober-colored mignonette, mixing it with the pungent zinnia odor and flinging it all over into the clover field across ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had lived and died in that ancient house, and tonight dim shapes seemed to throng its chambers and corridors. Physically fearless, she owned to a feminine dread of the unknown. It would be a relief to get away from this abode of grief and mystery. The fantastic dreaming of the unhappy creature crooning memories of a past life and a lost husband had unnerved her. She resolved to seek the fresh air, and wander through gardens and park until the fever ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was asleep, I should judge, sir. The old hag was rocking to and fro, crooning to herself until one of the two—the live one, I should call him—hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry up or he'd kill her. All a bluff, for he ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... dimly, for some special points distinctly—her child life of three years in Stonebury poorhouse. How her grandmother and an old countrywoman from the same county "at home" sat knitting and crooning together in a sunny corner of the common room in winter, or out under the stoop in summer; how she rolled down the green bank behind the house; and, when she grew big enough to be trusted with a knife, was ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... soothed upon the dark bosom, like a child, by a crooning, babbling sympathy, at last she raised her ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Republic; and justly so, for James Stephens treats his god very much as the African savage treats his fetish. Now it is supplicated, and the next minute the idol is buffeted for an unanswered prayer or a neglected duty, and then a little later our Irish African is crooning sweetly with his idol, arranging its domestic affairs and the marriage of Heaven and Earth. Sometimes our poet essays the pastoral, and in sheer gaiety: flies like any bird under the boughs, and up into the sunlight. There are in his company imps and grotesques, and ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... to a bed in a large room at the back of the house, not far from the nursery, and laid him on a blanket, with his shoulder stanched with soft linen rags. Morton was softly drying his hair and crooning to the child—although he was still unconscious—begging Norah to put the blanket over him lest he catch cold; and Norah was still vigorously drying his feet unmindful of Morton's pleading, when the doctor entered with a trained nurse. The boy lay ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... wistful look Pat was off to the captain, but the guard gathered Cameron up in his arms tenderly and nursed him like a baby, crooning over him in the sleet and dark, till Pat came back with a stretcher and some men who bore him to the dressing ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... strains of Dovenald's harp, and the galley, with ever-increasing speed, sailed out into the mid-bay. When there was a good way on her the work at the oars became easier and the song sank down into a subdued crooning sound that was ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Confucius wept sore for him, but his own death was not far off. It took place on the eleventh day of the fourth month in the same year, B.C. 479 [1]. Early one morning, we are told, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by his door, crooning over,— 'The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man wither away like a plant.' After a little, he entered the house and sat down opposite the door. Tsze-kung had heard his words, and said to himself, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... what the owner of the voice, half laughing, half crooning, tenderly lilting, must be. It seemed that only since the dawn of today had she become a woman having been a child until the dusk of yesterday. The wide grey eyes, looking out upon a gentle aspect of life, were inclined to be merry and musing ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... on her pillow with a sigh; she did not even question the old negress who sat crooning over the fire, as to where she was, or what had befallen her; but accepted this new place as only another misty delirium, and in her secret heart prayed, for the hundredth time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... seemed to the boy that there were no such things as "jelly-pieces" to bother about. He liked his mother to sing to him, for he seemed to get rolled up in her soft, warm voice, and become restful and happy. Gradually the low crooning song grew fainter in his ears, the flicker of the fire danced further and further away, until long streaks of golden thready light seemed to reach out, straight from his eyes to the fireplace, and all the comfort that ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... sleep as sound as if you were in a hammock just off middle watch,' said Harry; and the next moment he had her rolled up in her little blue dressing-gown, nestling on his broad shoulder, while he walked up and down the room, crooning out a nautical song, not in first-rate style, but the effect was perfect; the struggles and sobs were over, and when at the end of a quarter of an hour Harry paused and looked at the little thin sharp face, it ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone was at ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... part iss for those of us who cannot fight but must wear away the long days and mirk nights at home. At the least I am thinking so whatever. The long live day we sit, and can do nothing but wait and wait. After every fight will not some mother be crooning the coronach for her dear son? Every glen will have its wailing wife and its fatherless bairns. And there will be the lovers too for whom there iss the driech wait, forby (besides) that maybe their dearest will be lying ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... for ye. We couldn't go till we'd seen ye; for we've something to tell ye. Come quietly this way, and say not a word, or the spell's broken—come, young gentleman; come, young gentleman;" and the old man went on crooning the words to himself as he led the way with tottering steps round the hedge, and discovered a sort of tent in which sat, with her face half shrouded in a shawl, an old woman who wagged her head incessantly and chattered to herself ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... poetry is nothing more than such modulated sounds; it is not in definite words, and hence, is not capable of translation; it is but the expression of feeling through the voice, as is the wail of the infant, the rippling laughter of youth, the crooning of senility, the groans of pain ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... for it was always her habit to banish a disagreeable thought if she could. One day she went into the garden with her spade and an old tin biscuit-box. She put the box on the ground beside her, with the lid off, and began to dig. By-and-by the kitten came crooning and sidling up to her, and hopped into the box. Beth instantly put on the lid, and the kitten was a corpse which must be buried. She hurriedly dug its grave, put in the box, and covered it up with earth. Just as she ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "I was crooning what came—like the birds, my lady. I couldn't have done it if I had thought anyone ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... went the Three Bears, crooning an old song and joyfully sniffing the air, when suddenly they came upon a sleeping camp, where the tents of the campers formed a big circle. In the center of the circle were the ashes of a campfire, and not far away was a cookstove standing near a ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... lights gleamed only in upper windows of apartments, where sick sufferers tossed, or tender mothers sang soft lullabys to restless babies crooning in their cribs. Now and then a sudden gust of wind shook the yellow berries from the china trees, that bordered the pavements, and very soon the moonshine faded, then flashed fitfully, and finally vanished, as the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that Amy Foster was beginning to find out what sort of man she had married. He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it some harm. Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in the evening. Why? He expected the boy to repeat the prayer aloud after him by-and-by, as he used ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Captain saw something that wrought him up to ecstasy. Zorka was singing a sad Bosnian song in her tender, crooning voice, and dancing with graceful steps round the little bear, who, to tell the truth, also danced more lightly than the heavy Ibrahim, and was very amusing when he lifted his paw to his head as Hungarians do when they are in high spirits and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to a canter, hushing the beat of its feet upon the soft sand as he rode on, seeing no one stirring, and at last, in the deepest despair, feeling as if he dare go no farther. But just at that moment a low crooning sound fell upon his ear, and the reaction was so sudden and so great that Dyke nearly shouted aloud as he pressed on to the door, feeling now that he had been letting his imagination run riot, and that there was nothing whatever ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... had two little feathery arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat; and she kept on crooning an old song to herself, which she learnt when she was a little ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... the other side of the room, and seating herself in a comfortable easy-chair began in a low, crooning voice to sing one of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... in the doors crooning to the babes that clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the cabins, and here and there a youth sang a snatch of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... his shaggy head against her knee, whimpering unhappily, looking up into her face. And when she noticed him he reared up and flung his long body across her lap, thrusting his wet nose into her face. She caught his head in her hands and rubbed her cheek against his rough hair, crooning over him softly. Even the dog was comfort in her loneliness, and they ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, halfway down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... rescuing those poor little children and their father and mother! It makes me feel quite sentimental. Most cooks are sentimental, you know: it's such a—a warm occupation," she added vaguely. "When I'm cooking something that requires particular care I always find myself crooning a love song!" At which Wally collapsed into such a hopeless giggle that Jim and Norah, in little better case themselves, looked at him in horror, expecting to see him annihilated. To their relief, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... lay your listening ear Against the bare and branchless wood. Can you not hear it crooning clear, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... countenance wasn't alarming enough, the ruby lips began to move. Monica's sweet-sultry voice, like the first drippings from a jar of honey, overcame the city sounds, and began crooning the syrupy strains of Love Me Alone. Which happened, by no coincidence, to be the title and theme song ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown—a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the dense black land sensed the cry and heard the bound of answering life within the vast dark breast. All that dark earth heaved in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its birth pains. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... could convey volumes. At all events, Lambert and his companion were unmolested, and arrived in due course before the royal palace. A croaking voice announced that the queen was inside her Arab tent, and she was crooning some Romany song. Chaldea did not open her mouth, but simply snapped her fingers twice or thrice rapidly. The woman within must have had marvellously sharp ears, for she immediately stopped her incantation—the songs sounded like one—and ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... was already back in her corner with the child, hugging it, kissing it, rocking it in her arms, crooning over it, holding it tightly against the lump that hung down on her barren bosom. Long after the baby had ceased to cry she sat crooning and yearning over it. And the mothers watched her, with wonder and ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her father's estate. "She was forced," writes Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania, one of the two translators, "to affect a desire to learn spinning, that she might join the girls at their spinning parties, and so overhear their songs more easily; she hid in the tall maize to hear the reapers crooning them, ... she listened for them by death-beds, by cradles, at the dance, and in the tavern, with inexhaustible patience.... Most of them are improvisations. They usually begin and end ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... song, which Mrs. Burns, the wife of the poet, was fond of crooning to her children, is not yet without some vogue outwith the printed page—though mainly in this verse, the place of which, by the bye, would be difficult to fix in the song ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... girl's beauty, a statue coming to life, or a living being going back into statue—Galatea in one phase or the other. She felt the delight of the girl's successful drawing. She smiled to behold it. Then her smile drooped, for the words of the old song came back crooning ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... dainty ear a fiddle charms, A bagpipe's her delight, But for the crooning o' her wheel She disna care a mite. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Jamie came wandering over the grass towards her. His hands were full of dandelions and he looked not unlike an overgrown one himself with his towsled yellow curls. He leaned across her knee, his curly head hanging down, and swayed to and fro, crooning a little sleepy song. Miss Gordon's thin hand passed lovingly over his silky hair. Her face grew soft and beautiful. At such times the castles in Edinburgh grew ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... but only in silent tears and heart-breaking sighs. These alarming symptoms soon revealed the truth: reason had fled. For hours at a time poor Edmee rocked to and fro, with a bundle of rags clasped tightly to her breast, crooning over it the same lullaby she had been wont to sing over ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... mute and motionless until a crooning lullaby and the unmistakable tapping of rockers on a bare floor brought her to her feet in dismay. With an angry frown she strode across the room, but she stopped short at the sight ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... rib-bone he began to dance. He beat a slow, uneasy measure on the drum. His face grinned hideously. His voice at times rose to a harsh shriek, then suddenly it trailed away until it seemed like the voice of one speaking very far off. In a curious sort of intermittent crooning and shrieking ventriloquism he called down curses upon Ootah. His dance increased; he beat the drum frenziedly. His legs twisted under him, he described short running circles and jumped up and down in accesses ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... and tell me stories—mostly very childish, and often seeming to mean hardly anything. Now and then they would call a general assembly to amuse me. On one such occasion a moody little fellow sang me a strange crooning song, with a refrain so pathetic that, although unintelligible to me, it caused the tears to run down my face. This phenomenon made those who saw it regard me with much perplexity. Then first I bethought myself that I had not once, in that world, looked on water, falling or lying or running. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... of his mistress's voice produced no stirring effect on the temperamental Simon Cameron. Beyond leaving the crotch and edging mincingly downward, a yard or so, the Persian refused to obey the crooning summons. Plastered flat against the tree trunk, some nine feet above the ground, he ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... down in the heather to fill a pipe. All round him stretched the undulating moor, purple in the late summer sunlight. To the southward, low down, a faint haze told where the sea lay. The stream at his feet sang its queer, crooning moor-song as it rambled onward, chuckling to meet a bed of pebbles somewhere out of sight, whispering mysteriously to the rushes that fringed its banks of peat, deepening to a sudden contralto as it poured over granite boulders ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... they fell to praising the dead man, saying how his deed should long be remembered in the Dale and wide about; and they called him a fearless man and of great worth. And the women hearkened, and ceased their crooning and their sobbing, and stood up proudly and raised their heads with gleaming eyes; and as the words of the Burgstead men ended, they lifted up their voices and sang loudly and clearly, standing together in a row, ten of them, on the dais of that poor hall, facing ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... The witch-crooning died away into a murmur; and the Frenchman became conscious of the withdrawal of that presence from the room. No sound came to tell of the reclosing of the door; but the obsession was removed, the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... so sweet and low, These dreams I fain would keep— Then softly crooning, fly away, When I awake ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of a woman with a child in her arms was silhouetted against the white tent wall. She was sitting on some robes, crooning in a low voice to the child, and was unaware ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... that was home again to the farm, with Mother Marshall cuddling and crooning to her: "Oh, my dear pretty child! To think you've really come all this long way to comfort us!" and Father running the old machine at an unheard of rate of speed, slamming along over the road as if he had been sent for in ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and gloomy abode. Tyr knocked at the door; and it was opened by Hymer's wife, a strangely handsome woman, who bade them come in. Inside the hall they saw Hymer's old mother, sitting in the chimney-corner, and crooning over the smouldering fire. She was a horribly ugly old giantess, with nine hundred heads; but every head was blind and deaf and toothless. Ah, me! what a wretched old age ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... not reply. She knew the fight was out of him and picked up the still screaming baby, which she hugged to her breast, crooning over it while Garron got lamely to his feet. Without another word she started back to the hut, Garron following his mate and his ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... upon a box nursing a rag doll, in the sunlight that came in at the side door. She was crooning to herself a weird little song, and rocking back and forth upon the box. Mr. Drugg seemed ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... him, kissing her, crooning over her.] Oh, my dear, my dear! My little one, my love, ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... nine; only the shaman's could be still standing. There! They were at work upon it now. He could hear the shaman grunt as he piled it on the sled. A child whimpered, and a woman soothed it with soft, crooning gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and not overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through the frozen tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did it matter? ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... into Scotch songs. Geraldine, in a full contralto, was singing "Green grow the rashes, O". Betty Blane's chirpy voice proclaimed "I'm ower young to marry yet",—a self-evident proposition, as she was only thirteen. Stuart and Loveday were crooning "Flowers of the Forest" as a kind of soprano dirge, which was drowned by a chorus of juniors roaring ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... table, where he again dumped the contents of the money-pouch, running his fingers through the heap of shining metal; piling the coins into little towers; counting, recounting, and fondling the wealth the while he muttered on and on in a crooning undertone. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her wings that close And open slow, As a butterfly's move, on the breast of a rose Rocked to and fro By a crooning wind. ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... little children about her there was no doubt at all that Charlotte Home had a pleasant face; the care vanished from her eyes as she looked into the innocent eyes of her babies, and as she nursed the seven-months-old infant she began crooning a sweet old song in a true, delicious voice, to which the other ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... arisen with the shadows, and come out of their lurking-places at the twilight summons, seemed to make a deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... with Polly was tenderness itself, and Polly's love for her mother was constantly manifested in a thousand little affectionate acts. She had a little trick of running up to her and half crying, half crooning: ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... first an' foremost, I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell; Tho' rude an' rough— Yet crooning to a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... others. Howbeit it was a pretty sight to see her on a summer afternoon sitting upon a wayside stump, her other children dutifully ranged around her, and the hard, unfeeling head of Misery pressed deep down into her loving little heart as she swayed from side to side, crooning her plaintive lullaby. Small wonder that the bees took up the song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran air—or Heaven knows what—let slip flickering lights and shadows ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dear old darkey, In a cabin far away, Down in the sunny Southland, Where sunbeams dance and play. Yet oft in dreams I hear her crooning, Crooning soft and low: 'Sleep on, baby boy, The sleep ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... and others the Bible. One of the latter, seated at the right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice, the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, ... but every now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the sounds of both, as the growl of the thunder stifles ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... as if the voice had been dyed black. It was a comfort and relief to pass from the funeral gloom to the little pink-ruffled chamber among the cherry-trees, where the birds were singing and the summer breezes blowing, and the pretty Kathleen was crooning her Irish songs, and invoking the holy virgin and all the saints to bless the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the potatoes with little sister in her lap. Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, crooning over the spectacle in their ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... of a leopardess. She drew her body up to her full height and the copper castanets began to tinkle with such challenge in their piercing sound that the whole crowd trembled with emotion. Vivid, slender, supple as a serpent, the damsel whirled rapidly, her nostrils dilated, and a strange cry came crooning from her throat. With each impetuous movement, two dark little breasts held tight by a green silk net, trembled like two ripe fruits in the wind, and their sharp, thickly painted nipples were like rubies, as they protruded from ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... brought with her a curious old instrument, like a lute with many strings, and upon this she struck chords to the song she sang, "The Wronged Love of Great Laird Gregory," the melody of which seems ever to be with me; and yesterday, when I heard Nancy crooning it to herself, I cried aloud as a woman might, for the unfulfilled in all our lives, and my dead youth, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... as, for instance, the striking squeal of a hen, accompanied by the crouching attitude, together indicate the appearance of a hawk as plainly as though it uttered the warning in words. It is obvious, therefore, that all the sounds made by animals, such as cackling, clucking, crooning, purring, crowing, growling, and roaring, as well as modifications of these sounds, impart some meaning which can be distinguished by their kind, and are ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... houses, and its faint mild rays were like a benediction upon us. Then we had turned to the left, and were in the Bois de Boulogne. We stopped the carriage under the trees, which met overhead; the delicatest breeze stirred the branches to a crooning murmur. All around was solitude and a sort of hushed expectation. Suddenly Rosa put her hand into mine, and with a simultaneous impulse we got out of the carriage and strolled ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... one word— With some pang of laughter— Louder than the drowsy bird Crooning 'neath the rafter? Just one bitter word, to shriek Madly at me ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... said. And "Good luck, Harry," they cried. And just before the bugles sounded all ashore I heard a few of them crooning an old ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... and was as the dead who know not. He would awake on the morrow with a headache, perhaps, but with a proud consciousness that he had accomplished the feat of a statesman for himself and for his band. Bigbeam rowed steadily toward home, crooning some barbarous old half-song of her race. She ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... smelly things of old jungles. There is no breeze, no slightest shift of air-particles; yet down the gorge comes this cloud,—a cloud unsensible except to nostrils,—eddying as if swirling around the edges of leaves, riding on the air as gently as the low, distant crooning ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... of the wilderness brook; the little birch knoll, yellow in the evening glow; the mellow voice of the summer night crooning through the pines. But he had the rare tact to ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... where she had spent some weeks during the season, had tired her out, certain it was that when the spring came the life had gone out of her step and the color from her cheeks. Mammy Henny had noticed it and had coddled her the more, crooning and petting her; and her father had noticed it and had begun to be anxious, and at last St. George had stalked in and cried out in that breezy, joyous way ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was too hot for Aurelia to go out of doors till late in the day, when the shadow of the house came over the steps. She was sitting on one, with Amoret nestled in her lap, and was crooning an old German lullaby of Nannerl's, which seemed to have a wonderful effect in calming the child, who at last fell into a doze. Aurelia had let her voice die away, and had begun to think over her strange situation, when ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on, and the others will join. The men have a very pretty custom of singing together very softly when at the end of the day they have retired to their emone, and have lain down to sleep, the singing being very gentle, and producing what I can only describe as a sort of crooning sound, like a lullaby or cradle song. I once heard one of these songs sung by my carriers the last thing at night as they lay beneath the floor of the building in which I was sleeping; and the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... to me from the ocean's breast No crooning lullaby; But the shout of a bleak storm-riven crest As it shoulders up in the sodden West And hurtles ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... glance deflected, alert and apprehensive—his ear had caught a low crooning of song. It came from a small boy who, a little wooden boat in his hand, was advancing up the slope. This was Tito Murano, Junior, Tito's first-born, nine years old, softly footing it home after a joyous hour along ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... dipper was wheeling around the polar star; the great white river, the milky way, was illumining the arch of heaven. She thought of Him who created the gleaming worlds. Beneath her window the fireflies were lighting their lamps, and living their little lives. She could hear the swallows crooning in ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... cooed Elvira, "there's one person out there that isn't hardened and degraded." She looked with reverent eyes at Angel, who was walking at the head of the foremost horse, crooning a psalm; "and, as for me, I still feel myself quite soft, almost pulpy, and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... heard this outburst, but they did not listen. They were absorbed in something else already, for the movements of the reeds were fascinating. They began to imitate them, swaying their heads and bodies to and fro in time, and crooning to themselves in an attempt to copy the sound made by the wind among the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... before long by a peculiar and suggestive cry. We do not hear it yet ourselves, but Stalker, our black cat and familiar, has caught the well-known accents, and with a characteristic crooning noise, and a stiff, perpendicular erection of tail, he sidles towards the door, demanding, as plainly as possible, to be let out. Yes, it is the cats-meat man. 'Ca' me-e-et—me-yet—me-e-yet!' fills the morning air, and arouses exactly thirty responsive feline voices—for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... sing "Hallelujah!" softly, ceasing her swaying, to look into the coals. The fire burned down to rosy embers, in which little blue-tongued flames darted up fitfully,—anon lighting up the room brilliantly, then dying away and leaving it almost in darkness,—while Hagar's crooning died away to a whisper. A little gray light still shone in at the kitchen-window, but it was fast flitting. The roar of the sea became thunder, the wind grew tempestuous. By and by the rain began to fall, sounding strangely soft and still, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... neighbourly, kindly ways brought with it a strange sweetness. And when night fell, and a subdued, scarcely perceptible murmur of life began to creep about the passages of the old house, in general so dead and silent, Mrs. Dixon might have been heard hoarsely crooning an old song to herself as she went to and fro in the kitchen. All the evening she and Dixon were restless, inventing work, when work was finished, running from yard to house and house to yard, calling to each other without reason, and looking ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fine voodoo, with wavery arms and green eyes, and red glows." Watching narrowly its effect he swung off into one of the genuine old crooning voodoo songs, once so common down South, now so rarely heard. No one knows what the words mean—they are generally held to be charm-words only—a magic gibberish. But the Nigger sprang across the fire like lightning, his face altered by terror, to seize ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and in an instant his strong arms closed about the huddled figure, and he held her fast, crooning softly in her ear as a mother might over her babe, until at length the convulsive gasps eased, grew less frequent, ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... by the faint sweet scent of Banksia roses, that clothed the rickety woodwork in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the bass. I remember that I had a particular fondness for the black keys. Always on such evenings, when the music was over, my mother would sit with me in her arms, often for a very long time. She would hold me close, softly crooning some old melody without words, all the while gently stroking her face against my head; many and many a night I thus fell asleep. I can see her now, her great dark eyes looking into the fire, to where? No one knew but her. The memory of that picture has ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... thin buds appeared, and by and by the buds swelled and burst, and then where every bud had been was a flower. And all this time there had been a sound as of falling drops that seemed to be keeping time to a soft little melody the children were crooning. ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... Happy town, Marseilles the Greek, that him doth own! Daughter of Homer, fair to see, Of Virgil's son the mother she. To you I'd say, Hold, children all, Let but your eyes on his work fall; These papers are the sacred nest In which his crooning fancies rest; To-morrow winged to Heaven they'll soar, For new-born verse imprisoned still In manuscript may suffer sore At your small hands and childish will, Without a thought of bad intent, Of cruelty quite innocent. You wound their feet, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... an' foremost, I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell, Tho' rude an' rough, Yet crooning to a body's sel', Does ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Sandford's meditations and mine came near together. I do not know how time went; but then, the one to break silence was the one I had thought might never speak again. Suddenly she began in a low sort of crooning voice, saying over and over ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... nevermore!" That sombre sentence haunted him. He tried to close his ears against it, but to no purpose. It crept up from some inward lurking place in his being, crooning a hundred cadences in spite of all that he could do to change the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... back on the floor of the car with his arm over his eyes. The rain fell endlessly, rattling on the roof of the car, dancing silver in the coffee-coloured puddles of the road. Their boredom fell into the rhythm of crooning self-pity of the old ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... opening and shutting doors with an admirable quiet, and put his hand on the old briarwood. From Anne's room he heard a low crooning. She was awake then, but with mind at ease or she wouldn't sing like that. He could imagine how Lydia had dropped off to sleep, like a burden of sweet fragrances cast on the bosom of the night, an unfinished prayer babbled on her lips. But to think of ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... followed, while both watched the flickering flames and listened to the crooning of the wind outside. When at length they spoke it was on topics of general interest; the outlook at the mining camp, the latest news in the town below, till their talk at last drifted to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... be increasing in many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the country—the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods its low, montonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides. In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and soothing, and of the nature of a lullaby. It sometimes reminded me of the low monotone I have heard from ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose long ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... Prevasa. He would probably know all early in the morning. He reflected that he was too tired to care if there might be a night attack and then wrapped in his blankets he went peacefully to sleep in the grass under a big tree with the crooning of some soldiers around their ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... has his two or three themes: the weird one already described; the little one in triple measure imitating the tap of his hammer, and fiercely mocked in the savage laugh of Alberic at his death; and finally the crooning tune in which he details all his motherly kindnesses to the little foundling Siegfried. Besides this there are all manner of little musical blinkings and shamblings and whinings, the least hint of which from the orchestra at ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... could not talk much, and thought he would think her frightfully stupid; but in spite of this it was all very wonderful—the exquisite moonlit night, the shining sea, the tiny little wavelets swishing on the sand, the cool and freakish wind of night crooning in the stiff grasses on the crest of the dunes, the music sounding faintly and sweetly over ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... snuggled there even the very first time Talithie put her in the crib! Rarely did the child whimper, but this night small Margie was fretful. Talithie gathered her up and came back to the hearth crooning softly as she jolted to and fro in a straight chair. The Tipton household, like most in Crockett's Hollow, owned no such luxury as a rocker. But for all the crooning and jolting small Margie fretted, rubbed her small fists into her eyes, and drew up her legs. "Might be colic," thought ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... to sleep under the giant cedars, the lulling, singing firs, the whispering pines that must now be her lullaby, instead of her mother's voice crooning the child-songs of the Pacific, that tell of baby foxes and gamboling baby wolves and bright-eyed baby birds. Nothing remained to Maarda but an empty little cradle basket, but smoothly-folded silken "blankets," but disused ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... word that not so much as a rumor of the person Mudlow had reached me. My friend expressed surprise. It was now that the black boy Tom came up with the desired hat. Tom made his approach with a queer backward and forward shuffle, crooning to himself the while: ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... clothes at best was limited—especially his shoes—and as the weather continued bad and the streets impassable, he preferred waiting for clearer skies and safer walking. So he spent his nights in his room, crooning over the coke fire with Fred, or all alone if Fred were at the Academy, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... great, rough knees, he fairly fell, crooning incoherently, and by a mighty effort keeping his stiff, cold hands from the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... and stamp, were creeping stealthily to and fro in rubber-heeled whispers. Along the somber fire-escape just below her windowsill, like a covey of snubbed doves, six or eight of her classmates were cooing and crooning together with excessive caution concerning the imminent graduation exercises that were to take place at eight o'clock that very evening. Beyond her dreariest ken of muffled voices, beyond her dingiest vista of slate and brick, on a far faint ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, nestled the island round with its downy plume. For on the distant horizon a deep blue line ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse," On b- oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,—it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,—the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... his gray mare Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind and rain and fire; Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet, While glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... moment upon her son; then dropping upon her knees beside the bed, she slipped one arm underneath the pillows, and gently drew the wounded head upon her own breast, tenderly kissing the brow and cheeks; then taking his hand within her own, she stroked and caressed it, meanwhile crooning over him in low, murmuring tones, as though he had been ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... in her gentle, crooning tone, patting the girl's cheek as she talked. "A quarrel where there is no love is soon forgotten, but a difference when both love may, if not quickly healed, leave a scar ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said the Boy with startling suddenness. "If you make that noise, I'll have to make a worse one. If you cry, Kaviak, I'll have to sing. Hmt, hmt! don't you do it." And as Kaviak, in spite of instructions, began to bawl, the Boy began to do a plantation jig, crooning monotonously: ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... with the novelty of driving our old enemy in harness. So, letting the Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled. The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general quiet—these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The sky was cloudless, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... returned with the coffee the lady looked up from her crooning and met his eyes—all her soul was aglow in hers—while she whispered as he bent over to ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... beloved ones at home; unconsciously they hum a melody, and comfort is restored. The emigrant, forced by various circumstances to leave his native land, where, instead of inheriting food and raiment, he had experienced hunger, nakedness, and cold, endeavours to express his feelings, and is discovered crooning over the tune that correctly interprets his emotions, and thrills his heart with gladness. The poet's song has become incorporated with the poor man's nature. You may see that it fills his eyes with tears; but they are not of sorrow. His cheek is flushed with hope, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... father. The weather still remained cold. When Gudrun dismounted before the house at Holl, there was no one outside to greet her or announce her arrival, and so she entered, going straight into the bastofa. There she found her father sitting on his bed, knitting a seaman's mitten, crooning an old ditty ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... have lashed and poets have pondered, Blood has flowed in the runnels deep, Beacons have broken and faiths been squandered; Through dank forests these songs have wandered Quietly crooning ...
— The Bay and Padie Book - Kiddie Songs • Furnley Maurice
... was ill at ease. Crooning her quaint lullabies to the baby, she would often lift her eyes to heaven and sigh, "De good Lord hab marcy on dem! Dey's all a drinkin' at de little shaller pools dat may dry up any minit. It's all ob de earth; it's ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the fire, silent with fatigue, the scent of the men's tobacco on the air, the girl, with her hands clasping her knees, looking into the flames. In the shadows behind the old servant moved about. They could hear him crooning to the mules, and then catch a glimpse of his gnomelike figure bearing blankets from the wagon to the tent. There came a point where his labors seemed ended, but his activity had merely changed its direction. He came forward ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... drapery from the lines and gathering from the grass others that had been set to bleach in the wind and sun. This done they entered the cottage. The window was small and the light dim. A white-haired old woman was warming her hands and crooning over a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... here all the night,' said Mrs. Bower, 'watching the corp that my hands had streikit. The candles were burning a' about him, the saut lay on his breast, only aefold o' linen covered him. My back was to the window, my face to his feet. I was crooning the auld dirgie; if it does nae guid, it does nae harm.' She recited ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the performance of Andy Callaghan, who, when they turned the corner of the allotment, was discovered seated on the boxes as when they saw him last, and crooning the dismalest melody. But he had, in the meantime, recovered himself sufficiently to gather brushwood, and kindle a fire beside the road; likewise to cook a panful of rashers as the shadows grew longer ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... quite unintelligible to his listener. Then, with gentle touch, Phil began to pass his hand cautiously over his patient's body, searching for possible fractured ribs or some similar injury; but the old man waved him impatiently away, and presently broke forth in a low, crooning sort of chant. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... went on, crooning her complaints to herself and patting Cleopatra's arched neck by way of accompaniment to her thoughts—"Absolute dodging and spying round corners after the style of a police detective. I just hate a lover who makes his love, if it is love, into a kind of whip to flog your poor soul with! ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... lasted that long, he might fill his nostrils once more with the smell of Africa, see the little fires of the safari flickering against the green cane brakes, hear the songs of the march and the crooning of the camp and the voices of the jungle ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... concluded, and it was still early morning when we took our places in the big skin canoe with all our personal belongings under our eyes now; and the Indians having been well fed, pushed off rather sluggishly. But they kept time with their paddles, and soon set up a low, sad, crooning kind of chorus as they carefully avoided the powerful stream by keeping well inshore, where I gazed up in wonder at the magnificent trees which appeared in masses and clumps ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... her—you and that rat-faced devil!" and she thrust her bulky figure between him and the bed. Then with a sudden change of manner, her voice grown soft and caressing, she bent over the fainting girl and slipped a plump arm under her, crooning, over her and endeavouring to restore her to consciousness. She snapped an enquiry at Craven and he explained as best he could, and his explanation brought down on him a wealth of biting sarcasm. The husband of cet ange ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... pins-and-needles in her legs, and as she withdrew, Milly with a sudden motion stretched her body out in the white bed, as straight and still almost as that of the dead. The movement was mechanical, but it gave a momentary check to Tims's triumph. She leaned over her patient and began once more the crooning song. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... as if but yesterday had intervened. The room in which they used to be; the spot in which his cradle stood; he, old and elfin-like in face, but ever dear to her, gazing at her with a wild and vacant eye, and crooning some uncouth song as she sat by and rocked him; every circumstance of his infancy came thronging back, and the most trivial, perhaps, the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... feverishly and all England reading of the arrest of Mareno inquired indignantly, "But who is Kazmah, and where is Mrs. Monte Irvin?" Sin Sin Wa placidly pursued his arrangements for immediate departure to the paddyfields of Ho-Nan, and sometimes in the weird crooning voice with which he addressed the raven he would sing a monotonous chant dealing with the valley of the Yellow River where the opium-poppy grows. Hidden in the cunning vault, the search had passed above him; and watchful on a quay on the Surrey shore whereto his dinghy was fastened, George Martin ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... toward the president of the court, "You will let me go to her, senor? Your Mercy will let me go to her?" He murmured her name over and over, "Maria de la Luz! Maria—Luzita mia!" until the words became a kind of crooning. Then he would break forth again, entreating, commanding, "Your Mercy will let me see her? Senor, you will let me ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the wall the little cooper took a candle and a huge bowl. Then on he went over the moist floor until there rose before them in the candlelight, darker than the gloom about it, a gigantic tun. In a crooning murmur the cooper began to tell of his possessions. He called the vaults his realm, the tuns his dearly loved subjects—for, as the peasant gazed, he saw a long procession of tuns stretching away into the darkness. He shouted with mad delight at the sight, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... old hags were crooning over the pots, surrounded by swarthy children and lazy men, who were watching the preparation ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... happily. Do you think they ever wonder why I never come—why I never dance up and down the garden walks and spend hours with them and the flowers as I did last year? And the sea, Edith—some nights, when the wind is sleeping and not a leaf stirring on the trees, I can hear the waves crooning a low, sweet song as they wash along the wide beach of sand. They also seem to be calling me out into their midst; and I—O Edith, I ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... them—I think I first started the idea in my pamphlet—that the thing is to sleep on a pile of hemlock branches. I think I told them to listen to the wind sowing (you know the word I mean), sowing and crooning in the giant pines. So there they are upside-down, doubled up on a couch of green spikes that would have killed St. Sebastian. They stare up at the sky with blood-shot, restless eyes, waiting for the crooning to begin. And there isn't ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... far as my thought reached, I had not a whim, not a desire unsatisfied. I lay with open eyes, in a state of utter absence of mind. I felt myself charmed away. Moreover, not a sound disturbed me. Soft darkness had hidden the whole world from my sight, and buried me in ideal rest. Only the lonely, crooning voice of silence strikes in monotones on my ear, and the dark monsters out there will draw me to them when night comes, and they will bear me far across the sea, through strange lands where no man dwells, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... was setting; and they floated through waves as rosy as the rosy sky. A fresh wind filled the sail, and ruffled Gulliver's white breast as he sat on the mast-head crooning a cheery song to himself. Dan held the tiller, and Davy lay at his feet, with Nep bolt upright beside him; but the happiest face of all was Moppet's. Kneeling at the bow, she leaned forward, with her lips apart, her fuzzy ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott |
