"Quaver" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last and at least, Uncle Sol must be told,' thought Walter, with a sigh. And as Walter was apprehensive that his voice might perhaps quaver a little, and that his countenance might not be quite as hopeful as he could wish it to be, if he told the old man himself, and saw the first effects of his communication on his wrinkled face, he resolved ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... chance," said Richard, with a quaver of comic regret. "Our civilization has so narrowed the times that murder is inexpressibly inconvenient. One thing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... with a perceptible quaver in his voice. "They were not. The wolf, the zebras, and the asses could swim, and so could the monkeys, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... was to say with a telltale quaver in her subdued voice, "I reckon thet us mountain folks kaint never do worthwhile things, fer all sech take er mighty ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... strings, but both his ear and his voice were not of the best, so that it was well perhaps that there was so small and so unprejudiced an audience to the Norman-French chanson, which he sang in a high reedy voice with great earnestness of feeling, but with many a slip and quaver, waving his yellow head in cadence ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... away over the city toward all four quarters of the sky, and quaver into silence. We come out from the gloom of the staircase into the dazzling light of the balcony which runs around the top of the minaret. For a few moments we can see little; but when the first bewilderment passes, we are conscious that all the charm and wonder of ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... self-consciousness of our own boys and girls? He had been one of the wise men in the spectacle, and he still wore his white beard and turban and his long blue and red robes. Yet he wasn't in the least fussed; he simply made a bow, said what he had to say, made another bow, with never a blush or a quaver or giggle. His mother was there, and she was so happy—she is a widow, and sews in the neighborhood, plain sewing, ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... my own trumpet." "Ay, is it so?" quoth the Governor; "why, then, let us have a relish of thy art." Whereupon the good Antony put his instrument to his lips, and sounded a charge with such a tremendous outset, such a delectable quaver, and such a triumphant cadence, that it was enough to make one's heart leap out of one's mouth only to be within a mile of it. Like as a war-worn charger, grazing in peaceful plains, starts at a strain of martial music, pricks up his ears, and snorts, and paws, and kindles at the noise, so did the ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... I shall be landed. I only want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued as if she had long been baffled of this modest desire. "And one must be good, at any rate, must not one?" she pursued with a dubious quaver—an intimation apparently that what I might say one way or the other would settle it for her. It was difficult for me to be very original in reply, and I'm afraid I repaid her confidence with an ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... said Jessie, with a quaver in her voice; "but I should like to come and talk to you as often as I can." Then presently she added, in a conflicting tone, "I don't know what to call your mother. I don't like to say 'Mrs. Lang,' it seems so— so silly and—stuck-up, and I don't like to call her 'mother,' because, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... said preaching earnestly and almost hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 'object' and 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into 'om-m-ject' and 'sum-m-mject,' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver as he rolled along. [1] No talk in his century or in any other ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... next words would be that I might take myself off now that she had had the amusement of looking on the face of such a monster of indiscretion. Therefore I was all the more surprised when she added, with her soft, venerable quaver, "You may have as many rooms as you like—if you will pay a ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... a moment to arrange their hair, like wood nymphs of the Golden Age, then wound their gorgeous kains about them and vanished amid the trees. From somewhere on the distant hillside came the sweet, shrill quaver of a reed instrument. The driver said it was a native flute, but I knew better. It ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... himself, and Mandy and the children, quite as well as our father did us, if he had wanted to work, for we had the biggest family of the neighbourhood. So we children made fun of him and we had to hold our mouths shut when he got up all tired and teary-like, and began to quaver: ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... house without further words, and Mrs. Forbes called to her son in a voice that had a wrathful quaver. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... Fronsac, in an impassioned quaver, "is that not life? To all of us there is the unattainable—to you, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning nothing, yet far away, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... her handkerchief, showing a white face, whose expression matched the quaver in her voice, as she said breathlessly: "But how if I meet a man and feel I cannot live without him, and he is already—" she brought it out squarely in the sunny peace,—"if he is ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... out?" inquired Marcolina from the window. She had turned round; her face betrayed nothing, but there was a slight quaver in her voice which ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... of mine to quaver in the way it did? Those few words, I was convinced, would tell more against me than the most circumstantial narrative. I clutched hold of the back of a chair near me, and made a desperate effort to steady myself as ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... was something tangible, and the old man proceeded to secrete them in the fallen leaves. Squatted upon the ground, he was too busily engaged to note the sound of approaching footsteps, and started violently when a rough voice accosted him. He mustered courage, however, to quaver:— ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... especial favourites; and he could repeat the "Gosport Tragedy," and the "Babes in the Wood," from beginning to end. Sometimes he stuttered in the notes, and then they lengthened on and on into a never-ending quaver that our first-rate singers might have envied. Sometimes there was a sudden break—Jock had been consulting the pocket in which he stored his bread; but no sooner was his mouth half-cleared than he began again. In middle-life, however, a ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... much cheek, but this was beyond her endowment; she was appalled at the unearthly strangeness of the whole proceeding, and when she spoke there was a skeleton rattle in her words and a quaver of startled ghastliness in her laugh. She had been alarmed for her boy, and when I appeared she thought I was a swell bringing him in under arrest; but when I announced myself in Romany as an accomplice, emotion stifled thought. And I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Bogart were at the window, and Carol saw that they were staring so intently that they answered her wave only with the stiffly raised hands of automatons. In the next block Mrs. Dr. Westlake was gaping from her porch. Carol said with an embarrassed quaver: ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the subject of employing Mr. Rhythm to teach a singing-school was discussed. Mr. Quaver, a tall, slim man, with a long, red nose, had led the choir for many years. He had a loud voice, and twisted his words so badly, that his singing was like the blare of a trumpet. On Sundays, after Rev. Mr. Surplice read the hymn, the people ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... cannot be reproduced. It is F dotted crotchet, F quaver, F quaver, F dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. This bar is ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... the bobolink, Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremulous brink, And 'twixt ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... awfully sorry I ever consented to go into this kind of thing," the K. & Z. man went on, a quaver in his voice. "But it was put up to me, and when I'd taken the first step, I thought I'd ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man's utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal,—and there was very little else to look at,—he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out and the violins began to quaver their long D against the rude figure of the basses, Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband's fingers fluttering on his knee in a rapid tattoo. At the moment when SIEGLINDE entered from the side door, she leaned ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the Mercy of every unskilful Throat to chop and alter, to twist and change, according to their infinitely divers and no less Odd Humours and Fancies. I have myself paused twice in one note to take breath. No two Men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the Ears of a Good Judge like five hundred different Tunes roared out at the same Time, with ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... tell me all this before?" she whispered, after a pause. And methought I caught a quaver in ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... with an eager quaver in his voice. "Gifford, do you think—would you have any objection, Gifford, to permitting me to see your aunt? That is, if she would be so obliging and kind as to step ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... journey over the heath I gave them in a monotonous piece, composed of three tones, quite dissimilar to that composed by Rousseau. My sisters were near despair; but I told them it was not more uninteresting than the heath. Sometimes I made a little flight, a quaver; that was the heath-larks which flew up into the air. The introduction to the gypsy-chorus in 'Preciosa' signified the German gypsy-flock. Then came the thema out of 'Jeannot and Collin'—'O, joyous days of childhood!'—and then thou wast ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... contains more than one beat—for instance, the minim in the first bar—is shown by taking one step forward for the first beat and by a slight bend of the knee for the second beat. The next two crochets are represented by one step for each. A step is also taken for each quaver, but twice as quickly; for the dotted crochet, a step and a slight spring before the last quaver—all this while the arms are beating a steady four. After a short practice of these two bars, the master will glide into yet another rhythm, the pupils still realizing the first one, ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... stood aghast, but under his daughter's eye he collected his wits, and, doing his best to assume an agreeable smile, he executed her commands. "Would it please you to receive instruction in our beautiful language?" he inquired, with an appealing quaver. ...
— The American • Henry James
... over the straps of the rifle-case with unnecessary care, but there was a quaver in his voice that was ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... fact at present the next grade above mendicancy, the element of cheapness has, per force, been studied in the manufacture of the instrument. The barrels of some are so villainously pricked that the time is altogether broken, the ear is assailed with a minim in the place of a quaver, and vice versa—and occasionally, as a matter of convenience, a bar is left out, or even one is repeated, in utter disregard of suffering humanity. But what is worse still, these metal reeds, which are the most untunable things in the whole ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him, he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with the wail of a Highland ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... been looking for something to do, and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast-things neglected, unremoved. "I say, can't I be useful HERE?" he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husband— they washed up my crockery, they put it away. They wandered off into ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... inexhaustible fund of stories. Over most of them he laughed with us himself—a great gusty laugh that made the cheap glass ornaments upon the mantelpiece to tremble; but now and then a recollection came to him that spread a sudden gravity across his jovial face, bringing a curious quaver into ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... with a quaver in my voice, "since you're not able to fill the bill, to be head of this ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... made him go and do that?" she asked, with a fretful quaver in her voice, as if this ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... see the glow of the great camp-fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Someone was singing, a dull, old, droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grew the voice, still fainter, Sinking almost to a whisper, With a hesitating quaver, As the picture came before her Of her disappearing people. Then I rose and piled more branches Of the redwood on the campfire, And the flames and sparks leaped upward, Lighting up the mournful forest, Driving ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... park behind them. And yet further behind lay the hollow with the awful house in its bosom, its dismal haunted lake and its ruined garden. But nothing moved her. She could have walked over every room in that house without a single quaver of the praecordia. Poldie was dead, but was it not well? Even if he had not been in trouble, what should his death matter? She would die soon herself and for ever: what did that or anything else matter? Might she but keep this dulness ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... drawing-room, except the hiss of a light, quick breath and the intake and outgo of a heavier, slower one. And so suddenly, with such smothered intensity, that Norcross started in his seat, Mrs. Markham's voice emitted the first quaver of a musical note. She held it for a moment, before she began to hum over and over three bars of an old tune—"Wild roamed an Indian maid, bright Alfaretta." Thrice she hummed it, still sitting with her hand over her eyes.—"Wild roamed ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... the morning in, I heard the happy children shout In rapture at the toys turned out Of bulging little socks and shoes— A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"— But ere my rising sigh had got To its first quaver at the thought, It broke in laughter, as I heard A little voice ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... that they considered this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to imagine we shall ever be put into any practical difficulty from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a thing to be decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous common-sense. The man who wished to make the ballads of his country coveted a small matter compared to what Richard Greenville accomplished. I wonder how many people have been inspired by this mad story, and how many battles have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should fly from the bowstring like a bird, without quaver or flutter. All depends upon a sharp ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... (fifteen bars) passes by means of broken chords (in imitation of the last bar of the previous section) through various keys, ending in the same fashion as the first section, only, by way probably of intensification at the end, there are seven instead of four quaver chords; the section, of course, ends in F. This movement in the matter of form offers an interesting link between Kuhnau and E. Bach. The second movement is a minuet, with variations; it certainly has a beginning, but seems endless. The 3rd Sonata, in A, resembles ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... slipped out before she saw its significance. She might not have perceived it so quickly even then had it not been for the second of hesitation before Drusilla answered and the quaver in her ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... always low and gentle, with a quaver and hesitancy in the utterance; now it was tender and comforting with the comprehension of one in suffering, the extraordinary tact, which the old of his race nearly all come to possess. "Li'l chicken-wing on piece ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of the cabin wide, after his hosts were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy for a ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... simple as pouring water from one vessel into another. Sometimes the teacher of literature strives to engender appreciation in a pupil by rhapsodizing over some passage. She reads the passage in a frenzy of simulated enthusiasm, with a quaver in her voice and moisture in her eyes, only to find, at the end, that her patient has fallen asleep. Appreciation cannot be generated in such fashion. The boy cannot light his torch of appreciation at a mere phosphorescent glow. There must be heat behind the light ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... you see?" Mildred's well-tutored voice, though modulated and repressed even in her present emotion, nevertheless had a tendency to quaver. "It's true. Frank Dowling was going to see her one evening and he saw Arthur sitting on the stoop with her, and didn't go in. And Ella used to go to school with a girl who lives across the street from ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... old parlor organ with the quaver in its tongue, Seemed to tremble in its fervor as the sacred songs were sung, As we sang the homely anthems, sang the glad revival hymns Of the glory of the story and the light no ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a quaver of laughter, "now who'd have thought it?" and smiled a consciously American smile at himself ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... little quaver in her voice as she dismounted and, going in front of Texas, took his head between her hands. There was no longer any doubt that the horse was sick, and very sick. His eyes closed sleepily, and his head dropped low. Then ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... a boarding-house at Shawnee was the site of another house-wren's nest. While I stood quite close watching the little mother, she fed her bantlings twice without a quaver of fear, the youngsters chirping loudly for more of "that good dinner." At this place barn swallows were describing graceful circles and loops in the air, and a sheeny violet-green swallow squatted ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a Semmy, nor yet a Quaver, an' as for Friers," said he, very deliberately, "why—Frier yourself, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... seldom, and by assisting one another, we could walk erect and more quickly. Bohren the younger, who was one of our porters and the youngest of the company, continued his merry song. In moments of peril his voice acquired a decided quaver, but he never paused in his march or in his cadences, and ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... and there was no longer any quaver in his voice. "That is not the word. I shouldn't be surprised if you were German spies. Get ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... anything than that Geoffrey was badly hurt," he exclaimed with a quaver in his voice. To the Chinaman, who brought the stranger in, he gave the order, "Get him some supper and tell Fontaine ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... going grey, and face—a narrower replica of his father's, with the same large drooping moustache—decidedly worn. He turned pale. This meeting was terrible after all those years, for nothing in the world was so terrible as a scene. They met and crossed hands without a word. Then, with a quaver in his voice, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for them to catch their first breath and send up a roar of applause. But there was no hand-clapping, whistling, cheering—only silence. And instead, clear as a bell and distinct, without the slightest shake or quaver, came George's voice through ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... dream when I heard Bernhardt rise. A moment later I felt his eyes prowling over my body. Then a shadow darkened my face and Bernhardt said with a strange quaver in his voice: ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... charmer away out of his reach, and placed her in a higher sphere. As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the end of the piece where Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with special honours; at least, the saucy little beauty carried her head with a toss of supreme authority, and assumed a touch-me-not ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... quaver much earlier in the story than usual. He was always moved to tears, but as a rule he was able to suppress them until along toward the end of the story. But now he was in distress from the beginning. He choked ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... "fin-de-siecle" guillotine and sat in the chair, and the jubilant patentee told me that it was the quickest scheme for extinguishing life ever invented—patented Anno Christi Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Verily we live in the age of the Push-Button! And as I sat there I heard a laugh that was a quaver, and the sound of a stout cane emphasizing a jest struck against ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become, first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the 'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to earn their keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would be to get ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a rush-light in the other. Its glimmer fell across the bed upon Nick's tousled hair; and when the master-player saw the boy's head upon the pillow he started eagerly, with brightening eyes. "My soul!" he whispered to himself, a little quaver in his tone, "I would have sworn my own desire lied to me, and that he had not come at all! It cannot be—yet, verily, I am not blind. Ma foil it passeth understanding—a freed skylark come back to its cage! I thought we had ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of ages will be at end—the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded of that once ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... and assume all sorts of fantastical shapes. Every now and then, a couplet, or a stanza, came sweeping up. It was evident the lady, whoever she might be, was not singing merely to amuse the child. The notes were sometimes lively, but, in general, sad and plaintive. I listened long after the last quaver had died away; and was rather sulky when Ali came with the persevering joke that "the camel ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... city-builders is most unusual; the males frequently utter the most varied and astonishing cries. They are jarring in the extreme, and are produced in the most leisurely manner, growing louder and louder and finally ending with a slow quaver. At other times, they grunt like small pigs. Hudson says that any quick noise, like the report of a gun, produces a most startling effect among these little animals. As soon as the report is broken on the stillness of the night a perfect furore ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... away and active in procuring his release; but she also perceived how precious her presence was to him; and she did not like to leave him a moment before the time allowed her. His voice had changed to a weak, piping old man's quaver, and between the times of his talking he seemed to relapse into a dreamy state; but through it all he held her hand tight, as though afraid that ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the cortege only to the end of the street. Here the driver broke into a trot, and the old man started to run behind the hearse—sobbing loudly, but with the motion of his running ever and anon causing the sobs to quaver and become broken off. Next he lost his hat, the poor old fellow, yet would not stop to pick it up, even though the rain was beating upon his head, and a wind was rising and the sleet kept stinging and lashing his face. It seemed as though he were impervious to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... old lady leaned toward him with a mist in her eyes and a quaver in her voice, and asked softly, "Got ary friend that could help ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... divinely, this ghostly flageoleteer, and knows his Handel to a demi-semi-quaver," said Count ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... will be the death of me! Tartaglia in the flesh—how old Gozzi would have revelled in him! Those pathetic, oyster-eyes, that round, flabby face, that comic nose, and the bleating voice with the sentimental quaver in it, reeling off the live man's dying speech...." He wiped his brimming eyes. "Since the time when Boer spies hocussed him on guard—you remember that lovely affair?—he's registered a vow to impress me with his gallantry and devotion, or die in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... canna be I sud ever forget yon face ye shawed me i' the coffin, the bonniest, sairest sicht I ever saw," returned Malcolm, with a quaver in his voice. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... that would lose itself in the sea of science. At the same time that she struggled, however, she also surrendered; there was a moment at which she almost dropped the form of stating, of explaining, and threw herself, without violence, only with a supreme pointless quaver that had turned, the next instant, to an intensity of interrogative stillness, upon his general goodwill. His large, settled face, though firm, was not, as she had thought at first, hard; he looked, in the oddest manner, to her fancy, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Uncle Porges!" he nodded, his voice all of a quaver. "It's all right, now,—I've found the fortune I've prayed for,—gold, you know, an' banknotes—in a sack. Everything will be all right again now." And, while he spoke, he rose to his feet, and lifting the sack with an effort, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Marlow. These are the last words he spoke in the hearing of any living human being, sir." At this point the old chap's voice got quite unsteady. "He was afraid the poor brute would jump after him, don't you see?" he pursued with a quaver. "Yes, Captain Marlow. He set the log for me; he—would you believe it?—he put a drop of oil in it too. There was the oil-feeder where he left it near by. The boat-swain's mate got the hose along aft to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... answered, dryly, though with a slight quaver in his voice. "The thief found and departed with the drawings of a most important new device, originated by Benson and his friends and finished by myself. I'd rather lose a large sum of ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... pictures and other significant objects, and especially at the small table set out for tea, to which the servant who had admitted her now returned with a steaming kettle. "Isn't it charming here? Will there be any one else? Where IS Mr. Van? Shall I make tea?" There was just a faint quaver, showing a command of the situation more desired perhaps than achieved, in the very rapid sequence of these ejaculations. The servant meanwhile had placed the hot water above the little silver lamp and ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... close to him and was peering at his face. Even in the darkness he could see her big, dark eyes. Her teeth no longer chattered, but there was a perilous quaver in her low, tense voice. She put out a hand to touch him. He ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... which he later ceases to deserve; but in the case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even when he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin with, so little, and he has a funny, fetching twist or quaver in his voice, indicated by the notes themselves of his rather mean little sing-song melodies. Alberich's nominal reason for indulging his present passion for hurting—he is haling Mime by the ear—is that the latter is overslow ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... a most pathetic quaver in the rendering, and then big Captain Sartell broke down, with a helpless gulp in his voice, and I, who believed myself of too superior and refined a nature to be moved by such tawdry sentiment, was further dismayed to feel the tears gathering ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... with a little quaver in his voice, but looking steadily into her eyes, "because you are the living image of the woman who was once my wife. A little over thirty years ago—by the way, may I ask ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... still I'll shoot," she said, a quaver in her voice despite all her efforts to speak calmly. "I've got this thing aimed at just about where ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... to give me a stroke on the third, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth," she said, with a quaver in her voice. "My golf has fallen off ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment a delicate sound of "Sh-sh!" came from Mrs. Windsor, and the voice of Jimmie Sands, an uncertain treble with a quaver in it, was heard singing Esme Amarinth's catch. He sang it right through before the other ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... never-failing enchantment. Through the pleasant harmonious give-and-take of the other instruments, the voice of his violin vibrated with the throbbing passion of a living thing. His dirty old hand might shake and quaver, but once the neck of the fiddle rested between thumb and forefinger, the seraph who made his odd abiding-place in old Reinhardt's soul sang out in swelling tones and spoke of heavenly things, and of the Paradise where we might live, if we were ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... black soldiers marched into that cold ocean water, dreading it with all their souls but soldiers to the core, without a quaver, eyes to the front, heads up, chests out, unflinchingly, up to their knees, up to their waists, up to their chins, when the captain shouted "As you were!" and such a hilarious, shouting, laughing, splashing, jumping, yelling, fun-filled hour as followed the world never saw. The gleaming of ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... striking the church, to drive its whole force into the building. As a loud crash burst over the village in the midst of his sermon, and showed how frightfully near the storm was, his voice broke into a shrill quaver, as he faltered out, "Yes, my brethren, let us be calm under all circumstances, and ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... said, with a quaver of disappointment, which she vainly strove to hide. "How did ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly line—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and over again in our mind, for we were speechless with pain, the 148th psalm, which we had just chanced to hear sung, in Brady and Tate's version, to a new and somewhat peculiar tune. Oh, how those "dreadful whales" and "glittering scales" did quaver and quiver in our poor head! Lying like a log—for pain neither permitted us to stir nor groan—still rattled on, hard and quick, the rumbling bass and shrill tenor of that most inappropriately jubilant composition—"cherubim and seraphim," "fire, hail, and snow," succeeding each other with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... must be cut exactly on the bias"; and Miss Prissy, hastily finishing her last quaver, caught the silk and the scissors out of Mrs. Scudder's hand, and fell down at once from the Millennium into a discourse on her own particular way of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... scuttling out of sight at my approach. True, in Ohio many individuals also chose out-of-the-way places for habitats, but even then they were not timid, for often they would mount to the top of a bush or a sapling in plain sight and trill sweetly by the hour, with never a quaver of fear. At rare intervals a Kansas sparrow would visit the thicket on the vacant lot near my house, but, my! how shy he was! And as for singing, he would only squeak a ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... While the mob of Constables kept cowering in the bar-room down-stairs, crying out to us to surrender in the King's name,—I believe that one poor creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's Proclamation against the Blacks,—the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid! my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables and settles! Smash went trenchers and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... is a pardonable mistake, if we may judge by the works that have been reprinted. But the statement, which continues to be repeated in standard works of reference, that "he was one of the first of Italians to use the quaver and its subdivisions" is incomprehensible. Quavers were common property in all musical countries quite early in the 16th century, and semiquavers appear in a madrigal of Palestrina published in 1574. The two brothers are probably the latest composers who handled 16th-century ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... then, "what is't that ails thee now? It seems to me I sing as well as thou; For mine's a song that is both true and plain, - Although I cannot quaver so in vain As thou dost in thy throat, I wot ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... had a quaver of earnestness in it that needed no daylight to enforce. The pitchy night made a bobbing blur of him as he rode his quick-stepping little horse at Frances ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... earth is vibrant with life, does it not seem to you, Octavie, that heaven might for once relent and give us back our dead?" He spoke very low, advisedly, and impressively. In his voice was an old quaver which was not habitual and there was agitation in every line of his visage. She gazed at him with eyes that were full of supplication and a certain ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... stripped of some of your old vesture By Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill, And at first you startled me. But I knew you still, Though I missed the minim's waver, And the dotted quaver. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... at the moonlight on the water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason to thank God that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Both of them was sure bad enough. But I reckon Masten's got them both roped an' hog-tied for natural meanness." He turned to Owen. "I reckon I had to do it, old man," he said, a quaver in his voice. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... quaver, and sent forth their melodious whistling, whilst they congregated together on the edge of ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... her voice to do this? A single quaver in her tones would betray her consciousness of their presence to the lurking robbers and prove ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... April. There should be a flageolet, whence the Cigarette, with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice—somewhat thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a natural grace-note—in rich and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sky, but the song went on without a quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty feet ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that," said Aladdin, with a quaver. "Please make me think that if you can, for, God help me, I think I ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... this time. His grandmother did not seem to notice that he was in a forbidden place, but asked, with an anxious quaver in her voice, "Did mother ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them. They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying over the names of ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... to reality with a pitiful break and quaver of the voice, and turned his eyes helplessly toward her. She answered his gaze timidly, as though he could see her. She was searching his eyes for tears. But there was no trace of tears in them. He took the food she handed him from Aunt Purchase's ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... boy, running the words together and speaking with a parrot-like monotony in an unnaturally high-pitched key. Then his voice began to quaver a little till he stopped short with a cry of despair—"I cannot mind the words, I cannot say my prayers. Oh! will nobody say them for me? If mother, as is not in Lon'on, were here, she would do it fast," he ended, flinging out one thin arm and clutching ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the song contained in the way of sense or sentiment it was impossible to discover as the three pages of music appeared to consist of variations upon that one line, ending with a prolonged quaver which flushed the musical brow and left the youth quite breathless when ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Another rails at me, and that I write, Yet would I lie with her, if that I might: Trips she, it likes me well; plods she, what than[253]? She would be nimbler lying with a man. And when one sweetly sings, then straight I long, To quaver on her lips even in her song; Or if one touch the lute with art and cunning, Who would not love those hands[254] for their swift running? And her I like that with a majesty, Folds up her arms, and makes low courtesy. 30 To[255] leave myself, that am in love ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... ceased their song, which, like that of the choristers in the legend of the Witch of Berkley, died away in a quaver of consternation; and, like a flock of chickens disturbed by the presence of the kite, they at first made a movement to disperse and fly in different directions, and then, with despair, rather than hope, huddled themselves around their new Abbot; who, retaining the lofty and undismayed ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... shortened and stiffer version of the side-curls with which she and all 'the sex' captivated the hearts of Charles Dickens and other novelists in their early youth. She has soft and indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also. Gentle and lovable, you will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but for the present this does not show. From the dimly illumined corner behind the lamp her voice comes ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... please, father!" There was more intensity in Dolly's accents than perhaps anybody knew but Mr. Copley; he had the key; and the low quaver in Dolly's voice did not escape him. He answered without letting ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... come,' she said, in her low voice, which of late had begun to quaver with the feebleness of age. 'Mrs. Jarmey brought it here to show me, because she guessed who ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... be dressed in white muslin gowns. They would laugh at some cake that had not come out right. And my great aunts who were Huguenots, rigid but happy, with long chains of gold about their necks, would interpret the revelations of the Prophets to one another. And five and seventy years would quaver in each of their cracked voices. And my maternal grandsire at nineteen, with the green coat of a romantic ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... Adine was seated facing Davy on the footstool. There were lines in her face that Davy had never seen, a near quaver in her voice that he had never heard. The Sir Galahad of the Sawdust Ring had surely found a maiden in dire distress. He wriggled on his ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... lovely?" cried Dodo, "I want to pick everything." She began to fill her hands with dandelions. "Only I wish that mother was here"—and a little quaver shook the merry voice. ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues |
