"Gabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... drill," he said, "learned it like a sulphur-crested cockatoo learns to gabble 'Pretty Polly scratch a poll'; why in the name of Moses you can't make your hands do what your tongue says 'as me beat. You, Donovan, that's Number Three, let me hear you repeat the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... them beholding soon, 50 Comes down to see thir Citie, ere the Tower Obstruct Heav'n Towrs, and in derision sets Upon thir Tongues a various Spirit to rase Quite out thir Native Language, and instead To sow a jangling noise of words unknown: Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud Among the Builders; each to other calls Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage, As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav'n And looking down, to see the hubbub strange 60 And hear the din; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the first stone! There was a tendency also among both monks and nuns to slip out before the end of the service on any good or bad excuse: they had to see after the dinner or the guest-house, their gardens needed weeding, or they did not feel well. But the most common fault of all was to gabble through the services as quickly as they could in order to get them over. They left out the syllables at the beginning and end of words, they omitted the dipsalma or pause between two verses, so that one side ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... discussions, that at the best are very second-rate eloquence, and at the worst are respect destroying, mind destroying gabble, there are various forms of "ethical" teaching, advocated and practised in America and in the elementary schools of this country. For example, a story of an edifying sort is told to the children, and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... your whole being dwarfed yet transfigured; and in the glory of that moment you can even forget the gabble of the lady tourist alongside of you who, after searching her soul for the right words, comes right out and gives the Grand Canon her cordial indorsement. She pronounces it to be just perfectly lovely! But I said at the outset I was not going to undertake to describe the Grand ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good, live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nine minutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines, and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a couple of copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. He may not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of being distracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of the shop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and efficiency. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... strength of his five digits, that he was my equal, and was for ever jabbering at me,—jabbering the most arrant nonsense. One thing about him entertained me a little: he had a fantastic trick of coining new words. He had an idea, I believe, that to gabble about names that meant nothing was the proper use of speech. He called it "Big Thinks" to distinguish it from "Little Thinks," the sane every-day interests of life. If ever I made a remark he did not understand, he would praise it very much, ask me to say it again, learn it by heart, and go ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... reached the party in good time; for draggled, drenched, and with clinging garments, they were so slow in getting on, that it was no delusion that the water was higher, and the rocks lower; and even Gertrude had neither breath nor spirits to gabble when that grave anxious face met her, and a strong careful hand lifted and helped, first her, then Lance, up and down every difficulty; and when she perceived how the newcomer avoided point-blank looking at the bare ancles that had sometimes ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are, if you understand me, technically reverent; they have startled the whole place with their curtsies and crossings in church; but they gabble up to the very porch; and the familiarity with which they discuss High Mass, as they are pleased to call it! I was obliged to silence them, and I must say ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I forewarn you, my son, that they be not over well liked of the Church and the dignitaries thereof. They go about setting men by the ears, bringing down to the minds of the commoner sort high matters that are not meet for such to handle, and inciting them to chatter and gabble over holy things in unseemly wise. Whereso they preach, 'tis said, the very women will leave their distaffs, and begin to talk of sacred matter—most unbecoming and scandalous it is! I avise you, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art was mentioned—reaction from too much gabble. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... villainously rail at the Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm, in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done unto him? Are not these beggarly devils ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... persons go to the theatres; the playbills, however, are not seductive. If you go in, you will find the house nearly empty; the actors gabble their parts with as little action as possible. You see they are bored, and they bore us. Sometimes when some actor, naturally comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... and soft, and after giving him her hand, sat down and waved it to and fro slowly, as he remembered her doing the night they first met. She had no ideas, except such as related intimately to herself, and she had no gabble, like Mela; and she let him talk. It was past the day when she promised herself she would forgive him; but as he talked on she felt all her passion for him revive, and the conflict of desires, the desire ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... look away from that west of vast and burning color to the delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle—the same relief felt in descending from a mountain-top to the valley; in turning from the sweep of the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the sand; in giving over the wisdom of men for the gabble ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... they're varry oft moor decaitful bi th' hauf, an' when aw come to think on it, aw remember he didn't behave just as aw could ha' liked him if he'd just been wed to me, th' first day they wor wed, for he'd hardly a word to say to awr Emma at dinner time, but he could gabble fast enuff to that lass o' Amos's, an' if shoo wor a child o' mine aw'd awther tak' some o' that consait aght on her or else aw'd tak' th' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the first (Lamb himself is, in England, his only important forerunner) to unite and combine criticism of different branches of art. He never has the disgusting technical jargon, or the undisciplined fluency, of the mere art critic, any more than he has the gabble of the mere connoisseur. But it is constantly evident that he has a knowledge of and a feeling for the art of line and colour as well as of words. Nothing can be better than the fragments of criticism which are interspersed in the Scott book; and if his estimate of Hook as a ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... as, without reply, she submitted to the banal boredom of this blustering dame's society gabble. Mrs. Gannette hooked her arm into the girl's and led her to a divan. "It's a great affair, isn't it?" she panted, settling her round, unshapely form out over the seat. "Dear me! I did intend to come in costume. Was coming as a tomato. Ha! ha! Thought ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... down on their knees and began to kow-tow energetically. But they were quickly interrupted by Oahika, who shouted angrily at them, and then, as soon as he had secured their attention, proceeded to gabble to them a long string of what seemed to be instructions, in a language quite unintelligible to me. When he had finished, the occupants of the canoe waved their hands, as if to indicate that they understood, then seized their paddles and began to sweep the canoe's ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... carelessly; we could not follow them. The last was the rubbing on of ashes—she had been a worshipper of Siva—also they covered the closed eyes with ashes and patted them down flat. And all the time the gabble of the women mocked at the silence of death. There was no reverence, no sense of solemnity; the ceremonial so full of symbol to its makers, the thinkers of Vedic times, was to them simply a custom, a set of customs, to be followed and got through as quickly ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... his established custom, Herr Carovius failed to show the slightest interest in her gabble; at least he made no concessions to her. Nor did he fuss and fume; he gazed into space, and seemed to be thinking about many serious things all at the same time. His silence made Philippina raging mad. She jumped up and left without saying good-bye to him, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of this world differ in pathos and pitch as the stars differ, one from another, in glory. There is a style for every taste, a melody for every ear. The gabble of geese is music to the goose; the hoot of the hoot-owl is lovlier to his mate than the nightingale's lay; the concert of Signor "Tomasso Cataleny" and Mademoiselle "Pussy" awakeneth the growling old bachelor from his dreams, and he throweth his boquets ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... all know the futile and petty irascibility of the shallow-minded. Synge was like a mastiff who bites without warning. Irony was the common chord in his composition. He studied life and hated death; hated the gossip of the world, which seemed to him the gabble of fools. Physically he was a sick man, and felt his tether. He thought it frightful that he should have to die, while so many idiots lived long. He never forgave men and women for their folly, and the only reason why he did not forgive God was because he ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... your wife can read it as well as yourself, if read it you must. And, in short, what must that man be made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and balderdash of a ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... ends only when all retire for the night. No privacy, no isolation is allowed. If you take a book and begin to read in a remote corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and the day's gossip. There is no escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want of any ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... seeing the fright and flurry of the hen, sailed up with a noisy gabble, and took the ducklings in charge, and ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... she knew not what to say. Life at Bloomington supplied no parallel to the rapidity of existence in New York that evening. She was aware of statements being made in language which rang familiarly in her ears, but they had no more coherence in her clogged understanding than the gabble of dementia. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... she abominates. She thinks Turner might approve of Suarez in his black and white stripes, but the Guanaco crater reminds her of Gustave Dore, who always exaggerated his tone values. I learn that sort of gabble by heart. Jennie's a good sort, yet ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... "Don't you call that gabble an insult to you, walking along and minding your own business?" His heat was alarming; he shook his fist to indicate ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... their young to pass over, the males could be seen bending down a branch of the opposite tree, so as to bring it nearer, and assist them in crossing. All these movements were performed amidst a constant gabble of conversation, and shouting, and chattering, and the noise of branches springing back to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... this wretched delusion. The chattering of monkeys or parrots is more acceptable than to mock God with a solemn sound upon a thoughtless tongue. Jews gabble Hebrew, and Papists Latin, and, alas! others who NEVER prayed, have been from childhood in the habit of repeating or reading a form of words, called, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... said the Cap'n, eagerly, forgetting for the moment the presence of Constable Nute, "those wimmen might gabble a little at you and make threats and things like that—but—but—there isn't anything they can do, you understand!" He winked at Mr. Parrott. "You know what I ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... of a bell, the sound of feet and the gabble of a phonographic message. The man in ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Christian nations of Europe tolerated at their very doors a tyranny that has steadily grown more murderous and more monstrous, because they feared the upset of the Balance of Power. Now at least such Powers as value national honour, and regard a national promise as something more than a gabble of ink on a scrap of paper, have resolved that they will suffer the tyranny of the Turk over his alien subject peoples to continue no longer. It is the least they can do (and unhappily the most) to redeem the century-long neglect ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... too poor to pay a sacristan. A little later he was in the pulpit catechising the children, and preaching to the older parishioners between whiles. A boy and then a girl would stand up, and in answer to questions put to them would recite in an unintelligible gabble the catechism they had learnt. If one of them lost the thread and suddenly lapsed into a speechless confusion of ideas, the cure pointed the finger of reprobation at the unfortunate little wretch, and made ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... too quick. It's rude to gabble!" she told herself resentfully. "And I know some French meself. 'J'ai, tu as, il a, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont.' Listen at that, now!" She felt a momentary thrill of triumph in her achievement, but it quickly faded away, as further efforts showed how scanty was the knowledge upon which ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... friendship because circumstances happened to have thrown you together fairly frequently—and one of us has a beautiful house and the other an excellent cook—these people press upon my spirit like a strait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of polite sociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called "friends," but we have absolutely nothing in ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... thus busied, her mamma had not been idle. She and her friends, who were so fond of music, had frequently in full gabble joined the con strepito chorus, and quite completed that kind of harmony in which our concert excelled. Add to which there was the rattling of the card tables, placed ready by her order during the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... people have not—whereas you have really less opportunity because your horizon is far more limited because you have only seen it from the inside. You are rather in the position of the valet. No gossip and gabble of yours about braces and sock-suspenders will make your hero less a hero: you will only establish your title to be considered an unperceptive and low-minded creature among the only people whose opinion is ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of voices, the rattle and clash of the dice-box in the distant parlor, reached his ear amidst the laughter and gabble of the common room. The night was a hard one ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Rutherford Street, exactly as I expected he would. Business keeps me in this town, so I write to you to set the matter straight. I inclose with this the pages of feeble scribble-scrabble which the creature Sharpin calls a report. Look them over; and when you have made your way through all the gabble, I think you will agree with me that the conceited booby has looked for the thief in every direction but the right one. You can lay your hand on the guilty person in five minutes, now. Settle the case at once; forward your report to me at this place, and tell Mr. Sharpin that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... close the door and draw the blinds, that God's eye may not look upon the iniquity, nor his finger trace upon the frescoed walls the fateful Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin! Save thy breath, good doctor, to cool thy dainty broth; for, mad with pride, thy master hears nor heeds the gabble of the goose beneath his walls, nor the watchdog's warning. Gnaw thy bone in peace, for the people, schooled to patience and amused with panaceas, will scarce resent the trampling of one more parvenu upon their necks, be she ever so broad of beam. If some ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to do?" he said. "I'm all right for stringing gabble, but I couldn't write anything to save my soul. Now, you could. I'm sure you could. You could write like Robinson Crusoe. Why shouldn't you write the article and I'll tell you what ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... been to Rome; but imagination simply, refused to picture Mrs. Nevill Tyson in Rome. Her presence in the Eternal City seemed something less than her footprint in its dust or her shadow on its walls. Nothing is more irritating than to have your dream of a place destroyed by the light-hearted gabble of some idiot who has seen it; but Mrs. Nevill Tyson spared your dreams. The most delicate ideal would have been undisturbed by the soft sweep of her generalities, or the graceful flight of her fancy ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... dress Of patch'd and piebald languages: 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three laborers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent: And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast and large, For he could coin ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... your French, too,' said Robert, 'for they do gabble it fast. I heard a fellow chattering in the steerage, coming up the river yesterday morning: by the way, he and Andy had struck up a friendship: and such bowing as they had to each other's ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... simple question Kate showed considerable alarm. "Gracious heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out, and then run away as hard as you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... lap—"he tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It was a weird thing, scared me. But he'd sit Rindy down in the sunlight and have her look into it, and Rindy would gabble all sorts of nonsense about little men and ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... arrival of a governess? Was that apparition which had impressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of me—to sit alone with me, and haunt me perpetually with her sinister looks and shrilly gabble? ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... known as "Gabriel's Hounds"; in Devon as the "Wisk," "Yesk," "Yeth," or "Heath Hounds"; in Wales as the "Cwn Annwn" or "Cyn y Wybr"; in Cornwall as the "Devil and his Dandy-Dogs"; and in the neighbourhood of Leeds as the "Gabble Retchets." They are common all over the Continent. In appearance they are usually described as monstrous, human-headed dogs, black, with fiery eyes and teeth, and sprinkled all over with blood. They make a great howling noise, which is very shrill and mournful, and appear ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... improving their home, moving from the little house to the big house; the young man's name begins to creep into lists of directors at the bank, and they are invited out to the big parties, and she goes to all the stand-up and 'gabble-gobble-and-git' receptions. As they grow older, they are asked with the preachers and widows for the first night of a series of parties at a house to get them out of the way and over with before the young folks come ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve in age. They had good play-ground ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... silence. He was eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did not know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it. What Sandusky ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don't pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they don't gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never more ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... confer, confabulate, consult; babble, prattle, prate, chatter, gabble, gibber, blather; expatiate, descant, comment, harp, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a weasel's; his form is square and supple, and he stands more than perpendicular. Ready and sharp is he for a joke, cold and unfeeling in manner, and troublesome as the varlet blackbirds that sit on a tree and gabble and moot, while ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a deep and peculiar interest; very few remarks are made among themselves, and no one puts a single question to me or ventures upon any remarks. All this is in strange contrast to the everlasting gabble and the noisy and persistent importunities of the Persians. The Afghans are plainly full of speculations concerning my mission, who I am, and what I am doing in their country; although they regard the bicycle with great curiosity, the machine is evidently a ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... not. Niver did want to get back when he was away. But, say, Marjie Star-face, Fort Wallace away out on the Plains ain't Rockport; and rich men's homes and all that gabble they was desecratin' the Sabbath with at supper last night—" O'mie broke off and took the girl's trembling hand in his. "Oh! I can look after that rascal's good name, but I don't dare to fix things up for you two, no matter what I know." ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... throw myself down.' 'You ought to be ashamed to talk like that, and you so well cared for.' 'You see, Kaisa, I'm a bad lot.' 'I'm afraid you are.' 'I am likely to do something dreadful, therefore I might better be dead.' 'That's only silly gabble, child.' 'I turned bad as soon as I went to live with those people.' Then, coming quite close to me, with the wildest look in her eyes, she shrieked: 'All they think about is how they can torture me, and I think only of how I can torture them in return.' 'No, no, Brita; they are good people.' ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Under the moon and sun. It's aye the rabble, And I to gabble, And hey! for the tale ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Committee for framing a Constitution actually invited a foreign envoy, Jefferson, to take part with them in their work. Jefferson had sense enough to decline the invitation; but what gleam of sense, political or other, had the blundering tinkers who gave it? The outcome of their gabble was that mob violence destroyed for Paris in the Bastille what London possesses in the Tower, an 'architectural document' of the highest authenticity and importance. To talk of French feudalism as having ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... should be called. You have been moistening your own throat to some purpose, and using it to gabble tunes very suitable to the times, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... fragments of poker gabble as the white-aproned waiters rushed around with their trays ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, 'of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush out into the street, collar the first man of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, and say, "Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I'll be the death of you"? Yet that would ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... conversation is painful in the extreme to any one who wishes to retain a shred of respect for his own species. If you listen long, and then fix your mind so that you can pick out the exact significance of what you have heard, you become confounded. Take the scraps of "bar" gabble. "So I says, 'Lay me fours.' And he winks and says, 'I'll give you seven to two, if you like.' Well, you know, the horse won, and I stood him a bottle out of the three pound ten, so I wasn't much in." "'What!' says I; 'step outside along o' me, and bring your pal with you, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning,[387-96] but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Meanwhile, amid this gabble of 'sects and schisms,' this disputation which makes a simple mind take refuge in the epigram attributed to Swift on Handel and Bononcini,[234] criticism and popular intelligence have been unanimous upon two points, first, in manifesting a general dislike for Italian ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... silk gown flying behind him and rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on the velvet cushion in an attitude of studied grace, remain in silent prostration for a certain time; then mutter over a Collect, and gabble through the Lord's Prayer, rise, draw off one bright lavender glove, to give the congregation the benefit of his sparkling rings, lightly pass his fingers through his well-curled hair, flourish a cambric handkerchief, recite a ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... an Englishman mad. A Boer farmer, sitting on his stoep, large and strong, but absolutely lethargic, is the very incarnation of the spirit of the veldt. At the same time, when one remembers the clatter and gabble of our civilisation, it is impossible to deny him a certain dignity, though it may be only the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... trail-strain and the depressing atmosphere of the Watts ranch, it seemed to Patty she must shriek aloud if the woman persisted in her ceaseless gabble. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... that she intended, she went to work. In her younger days she had worked much at schools, and was really an able and spirited teacher, liking the occupation; and laying hold of the first book in her way, she requested Conrade to read. He obeyed, but in such a detestable gabble that she looked up appealingly to Fanny, who suggested, "My dear, you can read better than that." He read four lines, not badly, but then broke off, "Mamma, are not we to have ponies? Coombe heard of a pony this morning; it is to be seen at the 'Jolly Mariner,' ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forsaken, [102] Mirth and merriment. Hence many a war-spear Cold from the morning shall be clutched in the fingers, Heaved in the hand, no harp-music's sound shall 80 Waken the warriors, but the wan-coated raven Fain over fey ones freely shall gabble, Shall say to the eagle how he sped in the eating, When, the wolf his companion, he plundered the slain." So the high-minded hero was rehearsing these stories 85 Loathsome to hear; he lied ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... to devise some plan by which he and Jack might manage to get across. His plans came to nothing; and, indeed, the Channel where they were was much too wide to be crossed except in a small vessel or in a large boat. Jack was beginning to speak French pretty well, and Bill was able to gabble away with considerable fluency, greatly to the delight of Jeannette, who was his usual instructress. He tried to teach her a little English in return, but she laughed at her own attempts, and declared that she should never be able to pronounce ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... column in the Critique des Arts with a pretty compliment to Alice's executive energy, and added 'that it was one of the rare soirees of the season.' He must have been drunk when he wrote it. I played badly—I never can play when they gabble. It was as garrulous as a fish market in front. Enfin! It was over and we telegraphed his reverence the result; from a money standpoint it ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... refuse! What did you expect? I suppose the man who sent you here thought, because you were an engaging young woman and I an old dotard, I would gabble to you the results of a life's work. Oh, no, no, no; but I am not an old dotard. I have many ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... heart by this cold and grinning kindness as much as by the harshness of Keller or the coarse German banter of Nucingen. The familiarity of the man, and his grotesque gabble excited by champagne, seemed to tarnish the soul of the honest bourgeois as though he came from a house of financial ill-fame. He went down the stairway and found himself in the streets without knowing where he was going. As he walked along the boulevards and reached the Rue Saint-Denis, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... time she had been standing at the fence, her elbows on the top rail, gazing pensively at the light in Kenny's window. A clump of honeysuckle bushes was between her and the unsuspecting servants. At first she had paid little or no attention to the gabble of the darkies, her thoughts being centred on her own serious affairs. She had been considerably shaken and distressed by the unpleasant experience of the early afternoon. Somehow she longed to take her troubles to Kenneth, to rid ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... sometimes be possible to comply with their wishes only by burying them with a quantity of mutton—not to say with the residue of another quadruped than the sheep, which often grazes in churchyards. Science, in short, is hammering into people's heads truths which they have been accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths—that all flesh is indeed grass, or convertible into it; and not only that the human frame does positively turn to dust, but into a great many things besides. Now, I say, that when they become really and truly convinced ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... would they not have gone so much further? But of course I knew they were a difficulty; determined to carry them through in a conversation; approached this (it seems) with cowardly anxiety; and filled it with gabble, sir, gabble. I have left all my facts, but have removed 42 lines. I should not wonder but what I'll end by re-writing it. It is not the technicalities that shocked you, it was my bad art. It is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arrived a few months since in this over-grown metropolis—Modern Babolon I believe they call it—more properly, I should think, Gabble-on, for my head goes round like a whipping-top, being kept in rotatory motion by all the discordant sounds in the 'Enraged Musician.' Having been but a short time in town, I have not had the pleasure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... anti-slavery sentiment of the country. On this measure I addressed the House in a brief speech, the spirit of which was heartily responded to by my constituents and the people of the loyal States generally. They believed in a vigorous prosecution of the war, and were sick of "the never-ending gabble about the sacredness of the Constitution." "It will not be forgotten," I said, "that the red-handed murderers and thieves who set this rebellion on foot went out of the Union yelping for the Constitution which they had conspired to overthrow by the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... stories as these are ript up; that would burthen the strongest memory to bear them: and so much the more, because it is impossible to distinguish one from the t'other, when the men and the women that gabble so one among another. And oft-times they spin such course threads of bawdery in their talk, that are enough to spoil a whole web of linnen. And who can tell but that their tattling would last a whole night, for there's hardly one of them who hath not at the least a hundred in their Budgets; but ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... do, Clementina, my head aches badly!" said Henrietta. She wished to rid herself of this uncalled-for gabble, in order that she might devote herself to her ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... you limb from limb! I've put enough of other people's private lives on the screen! My own stays off! I'm not going to have even a phoney screen-show built around Babs and me for people to gabble about!" ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the beat of women," he muttered. "Gabble, gabble, and an hour right out of a day's work means nothing to 'em. Oh, here you are, Miss. You know that gray alpaca coat of mine you took the letter ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... frogs in the swamp and the shrill trumpeting of the mosquito army attacking his face and hands were not agreeable lullabies. As the darkness deepened, a medley of doleful noises pervaded the horrible wilderness. An unearthly gabble of strange water-fowl broke out suddenly, was kept up for a few seconds only, and then ceased. Only once in the night did Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... grounded on precisely the same argument. At Jedburgh, on the 21st March, 1831, he appeared in the midst of an angry population (who hooted and jeered at him till he turned round fiercely upon them with the defiance, "I regard your gabble no more than the geese on the green,") to urge the very same protest. "We in this district," he said, "are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotchman. It still hangs where he erected it a pretty long time ago. The French heard of our invention, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... commissioner (worthy man) spends his days in doing little else; and when we bear in mind the parallel case of the irreverent curate, we need not be surprised that he took the passage tempo prestissimo, in one roulade of gabble—that I, with the trained attention of an educated man, could gather but a fraction of its import—and the sailors nothing. No profanity in giving orders, no sheath-knives, Midway Island and any other port the master ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to such a senseless jingle-jangle of verse-jargon as to-night! Strange it is that the so-called 'poetical' trick of confusedly heaping words together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was that several Acts should be kept by each undergraduate; for, to keep up the number (as it seemed), each student had to gabble through a ridiculous form "Si quaestiones tuae falsae sint, Cadit Quaestio:—sed quaestiones tuae falsae sunt, Ergo valent Consequentia et Argumentum." I have forgotten time and place ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... between Peel and Stanley. God forbid, however, that we should have two parties established upon the principles of a religious opposition to each other; it would be the worst of evils, and yet the times appear to threaten something of the sort. There is the gabble of 'the Church in danger,' the menacing and sullen disposition of the Dissenters, all armed with new power, and the restless and increasing turbulence of the Catholics, all hating one another, and the elements of discord stirred up first ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... see an' get into the Toon Cooncil some o' thae days," says Sandy to me the ither forenicht. "Me an' some o' the rest o' the chaps have been haein' a bit o' an argeyment i' the washin'-house this nicht or twa back, an' I tell you, I can gabble awa' aboot public questions as weel's some o' them i' the Cooncil. I ga'e them a bit screed on the watter question on Setarday nicht that garred them a' gape; an' Dauvit Kenawee said there an' then that I shud see an' get a haud o' the ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... enough in any pot-house all day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus, train, or street by we know not whom, about we care not what. Yet if a printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this gabble as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it straightway is literature, and in due time ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... strange fellows from Northern Russia. They had everything to sell, bright beads and looking-glasses and little lacquered trays, coloured boxes, red and green and yellow, lace and silk and cloths of every colour, purple and crimson and gold. From all these men there rose a deafening gabble. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... gabble worry you, son. These psi-mediums have real powers, but they can't turn them off and on like a water tap. When they don't get anything, they don't like to admit it, and they invent things. Always generalities like ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... know Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces as we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or no I ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... midday beam; purging and scaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... gibe at, Sybrandt?" remonstrated Catherine more mildly. "Is not our Kate afflicted? and is she not the most content of us all, and singeth like a merle at times between her pains? But I am as bad as thou; prithee read on, lass, and stop our gabble wi' somewhat worth ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... ould banshee is this great while; and plased she 'll be, rale plased and sot up. Sure, that's what goes agin' me, to be so far gratifyin' her, and herself as mischevious, harm-hopin' an ould toad as iver I hated the sight of—Och, bejabers, didn't I tell you so? It's herself comin' gabble-gobblin' up." ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... to him was a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum hearest ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... not so cold As the bright smile he sees me win, Nor the host's oldest wine so old As our poor gabble, sour and thin. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... croakers who were getting into their trowsers would reply with—"Oh, stop your gabble, will you? don't be in such a hurry, now. You feel sweet, don't you?" with other exclamations, some of which ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the walking miracle, although, within the space of a few weeks only, he passed through the regular gradations of crawling, tottering, and toddling, to normal pedestrianism of the most active kind. His progress in other accomplishments was almost parallel with this. From inarticulate gabble he trained his tongue to definite speech; his vocabulary expanded with astonishing rapidity, and, contrary to his previous habit, he made incessant use of it. He was now as remarkable for loquacity as formerly for the opposite characteristic; ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... me by their novelty, filled me with doubt and perplexity, and interrupted that peace which I began to feel from the sincerity of my repentance, without substituting any other support. I listened a while to his impious gabble, but its influence was soon overpowered by natural reason and early education, and the convictions which this new attempt gave me of his baseness completed my abhorrence. I have heard of barbarians, who, when tempests drive ships upon their coast, decoy them to the rocks ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... pleasure. You and me conversing affable here. Not a bit like it was in the old days before I rose to being the chief glory of Calderside. Conversation was one-sided then, and all on your side instead of mine. 'Here again, Martlow,' you'd say, and then they'd gabble the evidence, and you'd say 'fourteen days' or 'twenty-one days,' if you'd got up peevish and that's all there was to our friendly intercourse. This time, I make no doubt you'll be asking me to stay at the Towers ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... shew the folly of involving the nation in a war for a questionable right, and a possession of doubtful advantage; but his invective against his opponents is very coarse; he does not perform the work of dissection neatly: he mangles rather than cuts. When he applies the word "gabble" to the elocution of Chatham, we are tempted to compare him to one of the baser fowl, spoken of by an ancient poet, that clamour ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... against the conception of an English ruler which had grown up under Plantagenet or Tudor. His big head, his slobbering tongue, his quilted clothes, his rickety legs stood out in as grotesque a contrast with all that men recalled of Henry or Elizabeth as his gabble and rhodomontade, his want of personal dignity, his buffoonery, his coarseness of speech, his pedantry, his personal cowardice. Under this ridiculous exterior indeed lay no small amount of moral courage and of intellectual ability. James was a ripe ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Derette herself took scarcely five minutes to her prayers. Why should she require more, when her notion of prayer was not to make request for what she wanted to One who could give it to her, but to gabble over one Creed, six Paternosters, and the doxology, with as much rapidity as she could persuade her lips to utter the words? Then, in another five minutes, after a few rapid motions, Derette drew the woollen rug over her, and very quickly ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Hotel Bellevue there was much running to and fro. Musical managers went upstairs smiling and came down raging; musical managers rushed in raging and fled roaring. Madame Stock drove a hard bargain, and, during the chaffering and gabble about dates and terms, Hilda went out for a long walk. Unter den Linden is hardly a promenade for privacy, but this girl was quite alone as she trod the familiar walk, alone as if she were the last human on the pave. She did not notice that she was being followed; when she turned homeward ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, has awfully imposed silence upon the gabble ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... into half a quarter of it—would be swallowed up like a mouthful, and never seen again! Castle Warlock was twice as old—that was something! but why had not Lady Joan told him hundreds of stories about Cairncarque, instead of letting him gabble on about their little place? But she could not love her castle as he did his, for she had no such father in it! That must be what made the difference! That was why she did not care to talk about it! Was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... time the youngster's monologue became a sort of soothing hum, for which the other was grateful. "I was cross and sleepy and chilly and nervous," Brunner explained, "and the boy's gabble ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and they don't sing," said Rap; "they gabble and squawk and swim in the water, but they can fly as quick as Swallows, for all they look so heavy." "I wish he would begin with this little mite of a thing, that isn't much bigger than a bee," said ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a show of preaching virtue you make them love every vice; you instil these vices by forbidding them. Would you have them pious, you take them to church till they are sick of it; you teach them to gabble prayers until they long for the happy time when they will not have to pray to God. To teach them charity you make them give alms as if you scorned to give yourself. It is not the child, but the master, who ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the vice of the situation," he exclaimed; "at the very mention of divorce his teeth chatter, he gets a spasm of the heart, and he begins to gabble like a sick monk about his soul and his conscience. Believe me, we are dealing with a madman. How can any end be attained in his present state ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... "It is bondmaids' gabble. There is little need to say that a dwarf cursed Eric's sword, to explain how it comes that he has been three times exiled for manslaughter, and driven from Norway to Iceland and from Iceland to Greenland. He quarrelled and slew wherever he settled, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... machinery stuck fast at this point, both at home and abroad. In one of his gossipy, confidential letters Fisher Ames remarked that Hammond was a most "petulant, impudent" man, habitually railing against the conduct of our government "with a gabble that his feelings render doubly unintelligible." But Pinckney, our representative in England, was equally undiplomatic. He was "sour and also Gallican"; although calm in manner, "he had prejudices, and unless a man has a mind above them, he can do ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... home, To scour the stairs and search the bin for flour, To bear the burden of maternity? Is this the wife they wove who framed our law And pillared a bright land on smiling homes? Down all the stretch of street to the last house There is no shape more angular than hers, More tongued with gabble of her neighbours' deeds, More filled with nerve-ache and rheumatic twinge, More fraught with menace of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... come to Mass till ten," he replies. They are talking under their breath, as English folk do in foreign churches, heedless of the loud gabble and resonant results of too much snuff on the part of ecclesiastics off duty. Their own salvation has been cultivated under a list slipper, cocoanut matting, secretive pew-opener policy; and if they are new to it all, they are shocked to see the snuff taken ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... reasonable pretext I ordered him out of the foc'sle. This wasn't as high-handed as it sounds, for Cockney had the gall one afternoon to leave the deck during his watch out, and break into my watch's rest with his obscene gabble. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... That's over. Now, then, I'm going to gabble for five minutes gaily. [Settling herself comfortably in an armchair.] What jolly flowers you've got there! What have you been doing with yourself? Amos took me to the Caffe Quadri yesterday to ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... great prize to Alfred, for he soon grew tired himself; his sister could not spare time to read to him, and if she did, she went mumbling on like a bee in a bottle. Her mother did much the same, and Harold used to stumble and gabble, so that it was horrible to hear him. Such reading as Paul's was a new light to them all, and was a treat to Ellen as she worked as much as to Alfred; and Paul, with hands as clean as Alfred's, was only too happy to get hold of a book, and infinitely enjoyed ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and gabble is built neither house nor stable!" said the Pig. "What can you do to help ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... something was wrong, and chafed at his enforced detention. Nevertheless, Miss Tancred kept him beside her until she exhausted her trickle of small talk. It took all Cargrim's tact and politeness and Christianity to endure patiently her gabble. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... is a sad fault with us all, and especially with women—we don't think enough. The mass of young women trifle a great portion of their life away on the smallest imaginable things. They chatter like birds and gabble like geese, without the trouble of thinking. The things they see and hear every day awaken no consecutive thought. The stars shine above them, and they call them pretty things, but never ask the astronomic story ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... you, I will do so with pleasure if you think it necessary, but I dread, on your account as well as my own, the newspaper talk and gabble that will follow. It might embarrass you with others. With the modern facility of dictating you can converse with me without restraint, and all letters passing between us can be returned to the writer. In conclusion permit me to say, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... man remembered something. He got up quickly on to his knees and, shrinking as though from the cold, nervously thrusting his hands into his sleeves, he muttered in a rapid womanish gabble: ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Bhaer was there, and while he arranged his books, I took a good look at him. A regular German—rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one's ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble. His clothes were rusty, his hands were large, and he hadn't a really handsome feature in his face, except his beautiful teeth, yet I liked him, for he had a fine head, his linen was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, though two buttons were off his coat and there was a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... piled them in that. She sat on, silently regarding him. For a few minutes she honestly believed that he was a genuine specimen of the "little people" who were said to make green Erin their favorite home. But when he began to gabble in a hoarse, excited tone of how he had long been expecting this "find"; how he had watched his opportunity when all the household should be absent that he might disobey and use the explosive that would lessen his labor so greatly, she came back to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... improvement, and too much of the habit of a useful employment of their minds, to sink, in their ordinary daily occupations, into that wretched inanity we were representing; or to consume the free intervals of time in the listlessness, or worthless gabble, or vain sports, of which their neighbors furnished ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... gabble like a pack of old women," laughed Jack, as the friendly argument about the crackling ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... thought the same. But there was one man more difficult to deceive than the whole town put together. The Chevalier de Valois, who had taken refuge on the Sacred Mount of the upper aristocracy, now passed his life at the d'Esgrignons. He listened to the gossip and the gabble, and he thought day and night upon his vengeance. He meant to strike du Bousquier ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... deliberation. These were men seen generally alone, or at most in pairs. They were quiet, waxy pale, dressed always neatly in soft black hat, white shirt, long black coat, and varnished boots. In the face of a general gabble they seemed to remain indifferently silent, self-contained and aloof. To occasional salutations they ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... ses, gabbling as fast as 'e could gabble, 'here's five or six shillings. If the other one comes and won't go away tell 'er I've gone to the Pagoda Music-'all and you'll take 'er to me, keep 'er out all the evening some'ow, if you can, if she comes back too soon ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... no record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo saloon to make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances truly represent him. Would that the will had been destroyed! then there would have been no talk about the “second-best bed” and the like insane gabble. Suppose, by ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway had been preserved. Is it not a moral certainty that they would have been as uninteresting as the letters of Coleridge, of Scott, of Dickens, of Rossetti, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and then wretched election meetings, as of late in New York, where a worn-out FERNANDO WOOD and others like him gabble as much treason as they dare. It is all played out—Mozart, Tammany, and all the trash. Rummy, frowsy candidates, treating Five-Point graduates, and shoulder-hitting bravos yelling at the polls, are beginning to be disgusting and anti-national elements. Their very ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to see you." Ann came suddenly down to earth, and tried to focus her attention on. Miss Caroline's hospitable gabble. "Such a lot of people here this afternoon, too.... I'm so pleased. And a beautiful day, isn't it? Even Mr. Coventry has been tempted out of his shell. He'll be quite a social acquisition to the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, her ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... folk, our brains dulled by the slowly acquired habit of not thinking, do wrong to torture children with these awful themes. Eternity, Heaven, Hell are meaningless words to us. We repeat them, as we gabble our prayers, telling our smug, self-satisfied selves that we are miserable sinners. But to the child, the "intelligent stranger" in the land, seeking to know, they are fearful realities. If you doubt me, Reader, stand by yourself, beneath the stars, one night, and SOLVE this ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Paris the signal to know whether it is day or night, or whether, indeed, they shall laugh or weep! A great people, once the noblest, the cleverest in the world, repeating the same day, at the same hour, in all the salons, and at all the crossways in the empire, the same imbecile gabble engendered the evening before in the mire of the boulevards. I tell you? Monsieur, it is humiliating that all Europe, once jealous of us, should now shrug her shoulders in our faces.—Besides, it is fatal even for Paris, which, permit me to add, drunk with prosperity in its ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet |
