"Rattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home an' goin' ter de neighbor's house. Dey make me stay dar in de house wid 'em ter tote dere brandy frum de cellar, an' ter make 'em some mint jelup. Well, on de secon' night dar come de wust storm I'se eber seed. De lightnin' flash, de thunder roll, an' de house shook an' rattle lak a earthquake had ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... also. Rough and torn uniforms, bandaged arms and legs; some limping and supported by others, some dragging their muskets after them, others without muskets, others using them as crutches. Variety of uniforms, cavalry, infantry, etc.; flags draggled on the ground, the rattle of near musketry and roar of cannon continue; two or three wounded fugitives drop down beside the hedge. BENSON staggers in and drops upon rock or stump near post. Artillerists, rough, torn and wounded, drag and force ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... in a solemn and majestic manner. We cannot expect such big wheels to hurry themselves. Under the bridge, puffing a little more quickly, then we rattle through Westbourne Park and by Wormwood Scrubs. Puff-puffing much more quickly now, but not quite so loudly, as the driver has pulled the lever back and the steam goes up with less force through the chimney: working quietly. Away, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... shut up!"—was Mr. Simlins' remark in answer to this statement; and flinging down his stick on the kitchen floor with a rattle, he strode to the front door and opened it, having had the precaution to take a candle ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... differently if she had been for him? An indefinite envy rose in Paul Overt's heart as he took his way on foot alone; a feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of the occupants of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle about London with such a girl! How much he should like to go and look ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... of an axe, that one of my companions was near, and called out to him, to let him know what I had fallen upon. He took it very lightly, and as he seemed inclined to laugh at me for being afraid, I determined to keep my place. I knew that so long as I could hear the rattle, I was safe, for these snakes never make a noise when they are in motion. Accordingly, I kept at my work, and the noise which I made with cutting and breaking the trees kept him in alarm; so that I had the rattle to show me his whereabouts. Once ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... store world with a sense of kingly superiority. He listened indulgently to the idle chatter of the shop girls, the rattle of the cash boxes, and smiled at the seriousness with which this business of selling was pressed. What a tremendous ado they made of living, with year after year, month after month, day after day, looming endlessly before them! Not an act which they performed, even to the tying up of a ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... friend proposes a trip on a Bosphorus steamer up as far as the entrance to the Black Sea. The steamers are profusely decorated with gaycolored flags, and at certain hours all war-ships anchored in the Bosphorus, as well as the forts and arsenals, fire salutes, the roar and rattle of the great guns echoing among the hills of Europe and Asia, that here confront each other, with but a thousand yards of dancing blue waters between them. All along either lovely shore villages and splendid country-seats of wealthy pashas and Constantinople ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... air-brakes, the steam heat, the electric lights and annunciators, the vestibuled cars, and other delightful novelties I had just been admiring, almost anything seemed likely in the way of railway conveniences. Accordingly, when the boy proceeded to rattle off a list of the latest novels, I stopped him with the name of one which I had heard favorable mention of, and told him ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... they indulge in fulsome compliment, they whisper soft nonsense which they would be sincerely ashamed to utter in the presence of their own sex, they act as if they were amusing babies, rather than conversing with intelligent human beings. Their own notion seems to be to shake the rattle-box, and awaken a laugh. I am not a baby, nor am I ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over the arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and rattle. Long before then his thoughts had gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the shameful figure heavy on the bed, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... this, where there are words omitted, faults committed, and the devil knows what. As to the dedication, I cut out the parenthesis of Mr.[9], but not another word shall move unless for a better. Mr. Moore has seen, and decidedly preferred the part your Tory bile sickens at. If every syllable were a rattle-snake, or every letter a pestilence, they should not be expunged. Let those who cannot swallow chew the expressions on Ireland; or should even Mr. Croker array himself in all his terrors them, I care for none of you, except Gifford; and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... his ferocious appearance. From a business point of view, the Venetian Bravi were children in his hands; but when they came quite near to him, one on each side, and spoke slowly and clearly in their determined way, the tremendous Markos felt his bravery shrink within him till it seemed to rattle like a dry pea shaken in a steel cuirass, and the amount of money he actually advanced on the ring was considerable; he even consented to let Gambardella seal the six jars of Samos wine, which formed part ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... now decided that the boy was their enemy, and no sooner had he touched the ground than a shower of stones and sticks rained about him. Not one reached his body, however, for the Garment of Repulsion stopped their flight and returned them to rattle with more or less force against those who had thrown them—"like regular ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... fascinating and so fearful, sent the adults, as well as children to bed with blood chilled, every sense alert with fear, ready to see a ghost in every slip of moonshine, and trace to malign origin every sound breaking the stillness—the rattle of a shutter, the creak of a door, the moan of the winds or the cries of the birds and beasts of the night. For more than a century later, the belief in witchcraft kept a strong hold on the popular mind and had a marked influence on ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... few—as may happen to have lingered at the Opera far into the morning of the Sabbath; an excellent contrivance for poising the balance between God and Mammon, and illustrating the ease with which a man's duties to both, may be accommodated and adjusted. How the carriages rattle up, and deposit their richly- dressed burdens beneath the lofty portico! The powdered footmen glide along the aisle, place the richly-bound prayer-books on the pew desks, slam the doors, and hurry away, leaving the fashionable members of the congregation to inspect each ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... then, I'll rattle thee to pieces in a dicebox, Or grind thee in a coffee mill to powder, For thou must sup with Pluto:—so, make ready! Whilst I, with this good smallsword for a lancet, Let thy starved spirit out (for blood thou hast none), And nail thee to the wall, where ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... night they set out, and stealthily crept towards the Federal camp at Cedar Creek. Every care was taken so that no sound should be made. The men were even ordered to leave their canteens behind, lest they should rattle against their rifles. Not a word was spoken as the great column crept onward, climbing up and down steep hillsides, fording streams, pushing through thickly growing brushwood. At length before sunrise, without alarm or hindrance of any kind the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... rocks, now like the surf again, receding, growling, menacing. The cold had become intense, a bitter piercing cold which strained and snapped at joist and beam and turned the slush of yesterday to flint. From the street below every sound broke sharp and metallic—the clatter of sabots, the rattle of shutters or the rare sound of a human voice. The air was heavy, weighted with the black cold as with a pall. To breathe was painful, to ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... aimlessly, hopelessly, without consecutive idea, coherent thought or plan of action; without the faintest inspiration or suggestion of escape from his bewildering torment, without—he had begun to fear—even the power to conceive or the will to execute; when a wild idea flashed upon him with the rattle of his buggy wheels. And even as Demorest disappeared into the hotel, he had conceived his plan and executed it. He crossed the street swiftly, leaped into his buggy, lifted the reins and brought ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... their companions; but, disregarding them, he pressed on in his new enterprise. In wading a small stream, one of the men was carried off by an alligator, and a day or so after, another was bitten and killed by a rattle-snake. Terror seized upon his men, and all their persuasions proving fruitless, they determined to assassinate him and return. They did so, only to find the colony dispersed and nowhere to be found. After many hazardous adventures ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the slight heave of the swell which, stealing along through the blackness, would occasionally take her under the counter and give her a gentle lift that would cause all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it. In the midst of it all there ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... the royal salute, for which each regiment had been prepared. As the last word left the king's lips, every one of the thirty thousand men present in that great place began to rattle his kerry against the surface of his ox-hide shield. At first the sound produced resembled that of the murmur of the sea; but by slow and just degrees it grew louder and ever louder, till the roar of it was like the deepest voice of ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... of an entirely different type. Big, husky, happy-go-lucky—a poor student but a right jolly companion; a fellow who could pitch into any kind of sport and play an uncommonly good game at almost anything. More than that, he could rattle off ragtime untiringly and his nimble fingers could catch up on the piano any tune he heard whistled. What wonder he speedily became the idol of Colversham? He was a born leader, tactfully marshaling at will the boys who were his ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Dales to impart the astounding fact that I was bankrupt. One usually speaks of financial reverses as "crashing about" one's head. My wind-up did not even possess that poor dignity; for there was not enough left even to rattle, let alone crash. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... was, indeed, very popular in Chowringee and around its vicinity, and her Bungalow was a constant lounge for the gallants of all services. Horace was no niggard in his hospitality, but preferred the ease and comfort of his own sanctum to the gay rattle that was continually going on in his pretty little wife's drawing room or verandahs. And Arthur was again, for a fourth time since his arrival in the country, in Calcutta. He had contrived to get ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... pipe to battle, Sword and shield their war-call rattle. Up! brave men, up! the faint heart here Finds courage when the danger's near. Up! brave men, up! with Olaf on! With heart and hand a field is won. One viking cheer!—then, stead of words, We'll ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... of lightning so vivid that it seemed as if a bright day had been created and extinguished in a moment, leaving the darkness ten times more oppressive. It was followed instantaneously by a crash and a prolonged rattle, that sounded as if a universe of solid worlds were rushing into contact overhead and bursting into atoms. The flash was so far useful to the fugitives, that it enabled them to observe a many-stemmed tree with dense and heavy foliage, under which they darted. They were just in time, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... letter to my last flirt. The Portsmouth mail was to start at eight. I had an hour to spare, and sallied into the street. I met an honest-faced old acquaintance as much at a loss as myself to slay the hour. We were driven by a shower into shelter. The rattle of dice was heard within a green-baize-covered door. We could not stay for ever shivering on the outside. Fortune favoured me; in half an hour I was master of a thousand pounds; it would have been obvious folly and ingratitude to check the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... OGNEV remembers how on that August evening he opened the glass door with a rattle and went out on to the verandah. He was wearing a light Inverness cape and a wide-brimmed straw hat, the very one that was lying with his top-boots in the dust under his bed. In one hand he had a big bundle of books and notebooks, in the ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,—the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her anesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... boom off there, nevertheless; sending a sound through all hearts. And the tocsins discourse stern music; and Henriot with his Armed Force has enveloped us! And Section succeeds Section, the livelong day; demanding with Cambyses'-oratory, with the rattle of muskets, That traitors, Twenty-two or more, be punished; that the Commission of Twelve be irrecoverably broken. The heart of the Gironde dies within it; distant are the Seventy-two respectable Departments, this fiery Municipality is near! Barrere is ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... hall came the sharp rattle of ivory balls, and in the bar-room there was a glitter of electric light, cut glass, and French plate mirrors. Out of the door came the merry laughter of the giddy throng, flavored with fragrant Havana smoke and the delicate ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... encouraging shouts and more or less decent jokes of the men idling over the bulwarks. There she sold her wares to those men that spoke so loud and carried themselves so free. There was a throng, a constant coming and going; calls interchanged, orders given and executed with shouts; the rattle of blocks, the flinging about of coils of rope. She sat out of the way under the shade of the awning, with her tray before her, the veil drawn well over her face, feeling shy amongst so many men. She smiled at all buyers, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... feet struck the floor, his ear caught the rattle of gravel on the window. The room was half lighted by a ruddy glow, and looking out he saw Sure ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... him that it was the only way in which he could become fashionable and acquainted with 'the best men.' He knew just enough of the affair not to be ridiculous; and, for the rest, with a great deal of rattle and apparent heedlessness of speech and deed, he was really an extremely selfish and sufficiently shrewd person, who never compromised himself. It is astonishing with what dexterity Guy Flouncey could extricate himself ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... that yere word, Gearge," said he. "There's lots of Mo's, but it bean't among 'em. Here they be. Words of two syllables; M, Ma, Me, Mi; here they be, Mo." And Abel began to rattle off the familiar column at a good rate, George looking earnestly over his shoulder, and following the boy's finger as it moved rapidly down the page. "Mocking, Modern, Mohawk, Molar, Molly, Moment, Money, Moping, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... close to Helene, full of joy at the prospect of not being undressed at once. She was in ecstasies over her embroidered purple gown and green silk petticoat; and she shook her head to rattle the pendants hanging from the long pins thrust through her hair. At last there burst from her lips a rush of hasty words. Despite her seeming demureness, she had seen everything, heard everything, and remembered ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... raizens— Und I buy a leedle drum Dot I vant to hear 'im rattle Ven der Gristmas morning come! Und a leedle shmall tin rooster Dot vould crow so loud und fine Ven he sqveeze 'im in der morning, Dot leedle boy ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... course it wasn't. With the rattle of the first milkcart, which in a modern city has taken the place of the half-awakened bird, he woke up, and if he had been in jail he could not have felt a more choking sense of imprisonment. There was no escape for ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... confidence slip. This steam-calliope age reflects the human-mind struggle for something other than its own unsatisfying ideas. It turns to thrills; it expresses its restlessness and dissatisfaction with itself by futurist and cubist art, so-called; by the rattle and vibration of machinery; by flaring billboards that insult every sense of the artistic; and by the murk and muck of yellow journalism, with its hideous colored supplements and spine-thrilling tales. So much for the reader. But the publisher himself—well, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... guarantee that Evan would not get a furlough and come there too? Mrs. Reverdy's words seemed to have some ultimate design, which they had not indeed declared; they had the air of somewhat different from mere aimless rattle or mischievous gossip. Suppose Evan were to ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... with a strong sense of turning away from the sun, I carried that look in my bosom like a caress. The girl in pink was an arch, ogling person, with a good deal of eyes and teeth, and a great play of shoulders and rattle of conversation. There could be no doubt, from Mr. Ronald's attitude, that he worshipped the very chair she sat on. But I was quite ruthless. I laid my hand on his shoulder, as he was stooping over her like a ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and more enamoured of his work, and of the sweet peace of the countryside, he became more and more averse to visiting London. But he was forced to do this at intervals. One hot summer day he went thus reluctantly to town; the rattle of the train, the heated crowd of passengers, the warm mephitic air that blew into the carriage from the stifling, smoke-grimed tunnel—all these seemed to him insupportably disgusting. But the sight, the sound, the very smell of London ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was at the top of a hundred and seventeen polished wooden steps, and as Betty neared the top flight the sound of talking and laughter came down to her, mixed with the rattle of china and the subdued tinkle of a mandolin. She opened the door—the room seemed full of people, but she only saw two. One was Vernon ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Madame sent for a priest. The priest came, and administered extreme unction. Monsieur made a sign to show that he understood. An hour afterwards he pressed the hand of his sister, Madame Surville. Since eleven o'clock the death rattle has been in his throat, and he can see nothing. He will not last out the night. If you wish it, Monsieur, I will call M. Surville, who has not yet gone ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... weaker as the true humour of the project developed in his mind. He came at last to realise that Medcroft was in earnest, and that the situation was as serious as he pictured it. The Englishman's plea was unusual, but it was not as rattle-brained as it had seemed at the outset. Brock was beginning to see the possibilities that the ruse contained; to say the least, he would be running little or no risk in the event of its miscarriage. In spite of possible unpleasant consequences, there were the elements ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... it is doubtless wisest to have some of their central folds made with movable slats, but they give a charming sense of security and seclusion when the wintry blasts roar around our castle. On the other hand, the light outside blinds, that shake and rattle and bang when the stormy winds "do blow, do blow," are a fair substitute for the cooling shade of forest-trees. You may have learned that life is a succession of compromises. Building in New England certainly is. No sooner ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... importantly delayed invasion of Belgium. And this invasion resulted in producing very promptly not only a situation appalling in its immediate realization, but one of even more terrifying possibilities for the near future. For through the haze of the smoke-clouds from burning towns and above the rattle of the machine guns in Dinant and Louvain could be seen the hovering specter of starvation and heard the wailing of hungry children. And how the specter was to be made to pass and the children to hush their cries was soon the problem ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... to argue against her insanity, I was planning how I could reach something to wrap about her, without quitting my hold of herself (for I could not trust her alone by the gaping lattice), when, to my consternation, I heard the rattle of the door-handle, and Mr. Linton entered. He had only then come from the library; and, in passing through the lobby, had noticed our talking and been attracted by curiosity, or fear, to examine what it ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... silence, broken only by the sound of the dasher thumping against the bottom of the churn, and the rattle of the dishes. ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... you understand, his name was really something else. This Rake was a mean rascal; but he was never punished, because he was careful. See if he doesn't get to be a cardinal, or pope! You ought to hear him quote from the Vulgate. He could rattle away for three hours and never made a ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the wheels squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then with a terrifying expression he gave the steering-gear a final wrench and deposited self and car approximately in front of the Happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death-rattle, followed by a short silence; and then the air was rent by ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a grand rattle among the plates and glasses, "some wine! some water! some ink! an omelette! a writing-pad! a filet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... another from the effects of seasickness. Old Neptune had evidently made up his mind to show us both sides of his character and he shook us about on that return voyage very much as though we were but small particles of shot in a rattle-box. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... was blood in the secret at the very last! He arrived at Fleurieres almost in a state of elation; he had satisfied himself, logically, that in the presence of his threat of exposure they would, as he mentally phrased it, rattle down like unwound buckets. He remembered indeed that he must first catch his hare—first ascertain what there was to expose; but after that, why shouldn't his happiness be as good as new again? Mother and son would drop their lovely victim in terror and take to hiding, and ...
— The American • Henry James
... Agamemnon, Homer and Gladstone before Dr. Schliemann's Troy; the yearlings in the meadow alternately gaze and graze; the guinea-fowl now and then honors the shout over a good shot with its harsh but well-meant rattle; the rifle speaks at measured intervals; the prizes thin off to the remainder gobbler; and so, with the quiet characteristic of rifle-matches, the evening draws toward the dew. The smoke-whitened guns are carefully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... which the rapid scratching of the pen upon the paper, and the vague, ceaseless hum of the great city coming through the open window, only seemed to render apparent; occasionally the clang of a church clock, the sudden rattle of wheels rising like hollow thunder and dying away into remote distance, a far-off cry, and then a silence more profound by contrast. Madelon, sitting in her dark corner, began to recover herself; in truth, it was the greatest possible relief to have Graham in the room with her, bringing ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... beginning to paint the clouds with leprous hues, and the great ring grew wider and wider, he looked at the mainsail, and wished the trouble over. At midnight there came a sigh; then a rattle of blocks, and then a big, silent wave came pouring along. Something was astir somewhere, and before long the Esperanza's crew knew what was the matter. The last glare of wild-fire flushed the sky, and then down came the breeze. The Esperanza was as stiff as ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of their lodgings, accompanied sometimes by their hale and square-built spouses, and saunter stiffly along the Arno, or take their way to the public galleries and museums. Their massive, clean, and brightly-polished carriages also begin to rattle through the streets, setting out on excursions to some part of the environs of Florence—to Fiesole, to the Pratolino, to the Bello Sguardo, to the Poggio Imperiale. Sights of a different kind now present themselves. Sometimes ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... himself failing on the sand, grew alive to the augmented movement of the avalanche. It had begun to slide, to heave and bulge and crack. Dust rose in clouds from all around. The sand appeared to open and let him sink to his knees. The rattle of gravel was drowned in a soft roar. Then he shot down swiftly, holding the lassoes, keeping himself erect, and riding as if in a boat. He felt the successive steps of the slope, and then the long incline below, and then ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... long whistle, louder and harsher this time, and followed by a splintering crash and rattle. The groups in the doorways flicked out of sight; the people in the open half halted and turned to hurry on, or in some cases, without looking round, ran hurriedly to cover. Stones and little fragments of debris ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... no time. A single leap carried him into his saddle and he was off over the sand with a sharp rattle of the beating hoofs. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... begin to rattle and break into pieces as the wind blows against them. Although they keep their greenness, they act like the driest leaves ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings. He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure. He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings there are onions ready peeled—quick!—throw them in the skillet that the whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote—eenie meenie—down goes the shilling—he has bought the book. Tonight he will spread it beneath ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... me. Do as I tell you. That's your business." After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor car ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... assailant were clumsily, assuredly, clambering out of ambush, and he shifted silently into position, rifle set down, both guns ready. There came a strange thrashing sound, a groan of mortal anguish, silence. If this was a trick it was a crude one. Sandy waited. That groan, half sigh, half rattle, could not be mistaken. He half circled the boulder, gliding up a flattened traverse, and saw, lying outspread over a low bough of the withered tree, face to the moon, gun away from the curling ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a rattle. A puzzled expression passed over Johnny's face. The same song was repeated over and over ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... see my little cousin Alice. She is just three years old, and I love her dearly. She has many things to play with. She has a ball, a rattle, and a horse; and she had a nice wax doll given her last Christmas, but as she got the paint off its face by kissing, it is laid by till she is bigger. We played she was my baby, and I dressed her up and took her to walk; after that we played have tea, and then I rocked her to sleep, and she looked ...
— The Tiny Story Book. • Anonymous
... here he was, now, painfully walking beneath the burden of that same Punch's temple, and bearing it bodily upon his shoulders on a sultry day and along a dusty road. In place of enlivening his patron with a constant fire of wit or the cheerful rattle of his quarter-staff on the heads of his relations and acquaintance, here was that beaming Punch utterly devoid of spine, all slack and drooping in a dark box, with his legs doubled up round his neck, and not one of his social ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... where the Sparrow-hawk lay. She was coaling when he discovered her, and knowing that all hands would be busy, he sat down on the black scaffold-like dock and watched from a distance as truck after truck was tilted over, sending its load of coal into the shoot, down which it ran with a rattle on to the ship's deck. The trawler's men, black as niggers, shovelled the coal quickly into the hold. Fortunately the greater portion of the load had been taken aboard before Charlie arrived, and after waiting for about half an hour, he saw the last truck-load shot down. He knew then that ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... out across the oil-lamp footlights upon those hard-faced, bearded men, those gaudily attired women, thus held and controlled by perfectly depleted emotion, the vast audience so silent that the click of the wheel, the rattle of ivory chips in the rooms beyond, became plainly audible. There was inspiration in it likewise, and never before did Beth Norvell more clearly exhibit her native power, her spark of ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... where a fella named Zianow killed his wife by pouring little pieces of hot lead into her ear, and he would have escaped, but he sold the body to the old county hospital for practicin' purposes, and while they was monkeying with the skull they heard something rattle and when they investigated it was several pieces of lead inside rattling around. So they arrested Zianow and got him to confess the whole thing, and he was sent up for life, because it turned out ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... physician, uncoiling and springing his rattle. "How then does it happen that when we remove the symptoms, the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... aggravating all other maladies, the long suffering of a persistent vitality amidst pain and which refuses to succumb, the final death-rattle in a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Dhananjaya shooting his arrows and committing havoc around, picking off heads from bodies with his arrowy showers! Even now I behold the arrowy conflagration, blazing all around, issuing from the Gandiva, consuming in battle the ranks of my sons. Even now it seemeth to me that, struck with panic at the rattle of Savyasachin's car, my vast army consisting of diverse forces is running away in all directions. As a tremendous conflagration, wandering in all directions, of swelling flames and urged by the wind, consumeth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... tinker, with a prolonged rattle in that said Ar-r, which was not without great significance. "But you sees the real gentleman, who han't got his bread to get, can hafford to 'spise his c'racter in the world. A poor tinker must be timbersome and nice ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I began to have a feeling that I must hold on to all my movable possessions, to keep them from getting away. After this unaccountable state of things had existed for a while, there came, one day, a terrible shock, which threatened to crack the moon's skull and rattle its fragments down upon my head. This was followed at intervals by similar or lighter shocks, and it was all so exceedingly unusual that I became very curious to know what was happening. Then all was quiet for ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... hoarse cry of utter terror—a cry more animal-like than human. He heard the cry break off abruptly in something that was like a cough and a whine together, and he heard the sound of a heavy body falling with a loose rattle upon the floor. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... There was a rattle of the dried leaves in the jungle back of the spring. Something very hard hit Nero in the side, ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... the narrow square of the execution yard the members of one of the most powerful and sanguinary of conspiracies; here was the man who for years had passed through the streets of Dublin and the towns of Ireland amid the rattle of cavalcade, as necessary for his protection against popular hate as the troops that protect the person of the Czar in the streets of Poland. Here was, indeed, a man not of words but of deeds; one who spoke not mere phrases coined from the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... struggle, sleeper, and snore me the song of life in the making, Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust, Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man, and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for I am Virile! Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling sleeper, snore! Snore ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... by contraries, child. Oh, fie; what, we must not love one another now. Pshaw, that would be a foolish thing indeed. Fie, fie, you're a woman now, and must think of a new man every morning and forget him every night. No, no, to marry is to be a child again, and play with the same rattle always. Oh, fie, ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... waved his right hand three times towards heaven, each time throwing open his palm outwards and upwards. At the close of the third wafture, a roar as of thunder broke and rolled about the place, making the huge hall tremble, and the windows rattle and shake fearfully. Some thought it was thunder, others thought it more like the consecutive discharge of great guns. It grew darker, and through the dim stained window many saw a dense black smoke rising from the stone-court, at sight of which they trembled yet more, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... on that subject, and we will let it pass" he would say, with a smile, and then he would start some other topic, and rattle on delightfully in his easy, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... of painting there,' replied Arthur, whose modesty forbade him to answer the question directly. 'I saw some lovely landscapes, and there were some babies' frocks,' he added satirically. 'In one of these pictures I saw a rattle ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the street. Again the ranks parted and closed again, this time to admit three carriages driven rapidly. As they came to a stop the muskets all around the square leaped to the "present." So disconcerting was this sudden slap and rattle of arms after the tenseness of the last half hour, that men dodged back as though from a blow. With admirable precision, Olney's men, obeying a series of commands, moved forward from the gun to form a hollow square around the carriages. Only the man with the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... chastening trial with the resignation I have described. But when, two years afterwards, my eye fell by accident upon the name of Sobieski in one of the public papers, I could not withdraw it; my sight was fascinated as if by a rattle-snake. In one column I read how bravely the palatine fell, and in the next the dreadful fate of his daughter. She was revenged!" cried Sir Robert, eagerly grasping the hand of Thaddeus, who could not restrain the groan that burst from his breast. "For nearly three months I was deprived ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling by the name; and that knowledge is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... in the door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs to fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the "Vicomte" for a long, silent, solitary lamp-lit evening by the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such a clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call those evenings solitary in which I gained so many friends. I would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scottish garden, and the winter moonlight brighten ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... embarrassed him, and then the sheath of his sword, which got between his legs as he was running. The sword in his hand itself became too heavy, and he threw it after the sheath. The white horse began to rattle in its throat; D'Artagnan gained upon him. From a trot the exhausted animal sunk to a staggering walk—the foam from his mouth was mixed with blood. D'Artagnan made a desperate effort, sprang towards Fouquet, and seized him by the leg, saying in a broken, breathless voice, "I arrest ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his eyes around that chamber. His search was not in vain. He almost trampled upon the thing that lay at his feet,—a wooden rattle, the toy older than the Egyptian pyramids. He seized it, shook it as a warrior his sword. He scanned it eagerly. Upon the handle were letters carved, but there was a mist before his eyes which took long to pass away. Then he read the rude inscription: ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... to write out this list, and together they pored over the names, crossing out such as were absolutely above suspicion. When they had reached the end of the list, but two names remained uncrossed. One was that of a rattle-pated youth who had come in the wake of a highly reputed connection of theirs, and the other that of an American tourist who gave all the evidences of great wealth and had presented letters to leading men in London which had insured him attentions not usually accorded to foreigners. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... been navigating in a sort of somnambulistic trance in the neighbourhood of the lift, now threw back the cage with a rattle. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... more in my own room—my room, with its cabinets of shells and mosses, that I had collected when a boy in my various trips to the seashore, all religiously left arranged as I had left them, its guns, fishing-rods, stuffed rabbits and birds, its preserved rattle-snakes and cases of insects, all of which had stood for so long a time in their respective places that they had become a part of the room—in the still hush of the night the divine image of my most beautiful stage-coach companion ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... and sewing. Sometimes she hums a little tune which I never confess to hearing, lest I miss some of the unconscious cadences. Let the wind blow outside and the snow drift in piles around the doorway and the blinds rattle—I have before me a whole long ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... he put it all out of mind, and again returned to his problem. He lay beside the brook and pondered, and finally fell asleep in the hot air, which increased in venom, until the rattle of thunder awoke him. It was very dark—a strange, livid darkness. "A thunder-storm," he muttered, and then he thought of his new clothes—what a misfortune it would be to have them soaked. He arose and pushed through the thicket around him into a cart path, and it was then that ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Waiting so anxious, the dark tide's abating! Waiting all breathless, in agonized anguish, Living by heart-throbs that spring up—then languish; Catching each sound that comes back from the battle, Dark shrieks and groans and the lonely death rattle, Imaging visions of feverish thirsting— Hearts in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... long night for Philip, and a restless one. At any other time the swing of the cars would have lulled him to sleep, and the rattle and clank of wheels and rails, the roar of the whirling iron would have only been cheerful reminders of swift and safe travel. Now they were voices of warning and taunting; and instead of going rapidly the train seemed to crawl at a snail's pace. And it not only crawled, but it frequently ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... open. A powerful neck had tossed the bars from their sockets. This was the rattle I had heard, as Death came out of that stall, huge and terrible, to rear above the unconscious ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... which had been fixed slightly open. Mrs Clowes's gaze, penetrating now and then the slit, could see the gleam of her lamp's ray on a horse's flank. The only sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of Mrs Clowes's voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... pleasurable sensations which may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is self-sufficient and finds his ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... of lurid clouds came rolling up, and a crackling, like the rattle of musketry, resounded through the air. This was produced by a series of electrical con- cussions, in which volleys of hailstones were discharged from the cloud-batteries above. In fact, as the storm-sheet came in contact with ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... higher register; but inside conversational limits, if such a term may be used, there is no fiber so delightful, so purely musical. Suppose the word "velvet" applied to a sound. That voice came soothingly and delightfully upon the ear of Donnegan, from which the roar and rattle of the empty freight train had not quite departed. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... and debilitated. It is accompanied with a persistent cough, which in some cases is husky, smothered, or muffled, while in others it is hard and clear. A whitish matter, which may be curdled, is discharged from the nose. If the ear is placed against the chest behind the shoulder blade, the rattle of the air passing through the mucus can ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... stone, man? Why, the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of the man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform, bound, the bell tolling in his ears, and waits for the harsh rattle of the bolt, are as nothing compared to this. I will not read it; I should ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... kitchen, surprising a mouse that had stolen forth domestically. The door being shut and fastened cautiously, the key in Link's pocket, they drifted through the swing door, as air might have circulated, identifying the mouse's scuttle, the rattle of a rat among the loose coal in the cellar bin, the throaty chirp of a cricket outside in the grass, and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... slender rust-eaten nail, had been wrought into a fantastic shape. As they drove through the gateway, a green lizard scampered down from the top of one of the posts, where he had been sunning himself, and a rattlesnake lying in the path lazily uncoiled his motley brown length, and sounding his rattle, wriggled slowly off into the rank grass and weeds that bordered the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... said Mrs. Maynard, cheerfully, and sitting down at the piano, she began to rattle off ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual miscegenation—that's it!—why didn't I think of that phrase before—spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person inferior to him in every point of view—birth, breeding, station, culture, wealth—a person, moreover, who will doubtless be ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... stay longer in the saddle, and had a firmer grip with his knees than any one I ever met, and it was all for mercy's sake. When the reapers in harvest time saw a figure whirling past in a cloud of dust, or the family at the foot of Glen Urtach, gathered round the fire on a winter's night, heard the rattle of a horse's hoofs on the road, or the shepherds, out after the sheep, traced a black speck moving across the snow to the upper glen, they knew it was the doctor, and, without being conscious of it, ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... accepted me, and here I am, eternally tied to this accurst insignia, if I'm to keep my promise! Isn't that a sacrifice, friend H.? There's no course open to me. The poor girl is madly in love. She called me a "rattle!" As a gentleman, I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rocked stationary on that sea of moonbeams, I pondered over that twilight of the heroic world. In the soft rattle of the water on the hull I seemed to hear the rattle of all that armor, of all those swords swinging rusty on the walls, neglected by the degenerate sons of the great champions of old. I had long been in search of a theme which I called the theme of the "Prowess ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... whistle, on his fingers, an invigorating reel, And could imitate a piper on the handles of the wheel; He could play in double octaves, too, all up and down the rail, Or rattle off a rondo on the bottom ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... great noise and rattle as the gangplank was pulled up, and a moment later the great ship began to draw away ever so slowly and majestically, and the great whistle shrieked a blatant blast of farewell to the shouting, cheering, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... does rumble like the dickens. Some of the bass notes make the house buzz like an ocean-steamer blowing off steam." It was a picturesque description, for I had noticed at times that when the organ was being made to shriek fortissimo every bit of panelling in the house seemed to rattle, and if a huge boiler of some sort suffering from internal disturbance had been growling down in the cellar, the result would have ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... extended to the visiting team, and the duties of an umpire are sometimes accompanied by real danger.[14] Several features of the play seem distinctly unsportsmanlike. Thus, it is the regular duty of one of the batting team, when not in himself, to try to "rattle" the pitcher or fielder by yells and shouts just as he is about to "pitch" or "catch" or "touch." It is not considered dishonourable for one of the waiting strikers to pretend to be the player really at a base and run from base to base just outside ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of a great action as any man I ever knew, promised me that he would answer for Brigalier, councillor in the Court of Aids, captain in his quarter, and very powerful among the people, but told me at the same time that he must not know a word of the matter, because he was a mere rattle, not to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... were set and the vessel leaned to starboard, and then the rattle of ropes began again and the crashing of the blocks as she leaned over to port. Such surges, you have no idea, Evelyn, threatening the brig, but slipping under the keel, lifting her to the crest of the wave. Caught by ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... grummets shipping over a single stout pin, instead of in the usual rowlocks, and since much care had been used to render the grummets tight-fitting, while the leathers had been well greased, there was none of the usual rattle of oars in rowlocks,—a sound which in quiet weather may often be heard at an almost incredible distance,—nor, thanks to the greasing of the leathers, was there any creaking or grinding of the oars against the pins; ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... him, fascinated. He had expected words—primitive words, perhaps resembling the click-speech of Earth's stone-age survivals, but words of some sort. Webber hooted. It was a soft reassuring sound, repeated over and over, but it was not a word. The rattle of stones diminished, then stopped. Webber continued to make his hooting call. Presently it was answered. Webber turned and nodded at Paula, smiling. He reached into the plastic container and drew forth a handful ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... away, but, aside from these, all other sounds were the happy noises of families at the end of a day. From every house they floated out to him, the clamor of children, the deep laughter of a man, the loud rattle ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... went at it and once more Tom was struck in the shoulder. Then Lew Flapp aimed for Tom's face, but the latter ducked and, recovering, hit the big boy a heavy blow in the chin that made his teeth rattle and sent him staggering over the side of an upturned boat and flat ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... appreciation of my honourable discomfort, she laughed; and as her cheeks cooled she laughed the more, tossing back her pretty head while her mirth, now uncontrolled, rippled forth till the wild birds, excited, joined in with restless chirping, and a squirrel sprung his elfin rattle overhead. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... directly asking how it was done, he preferred—just like Manabozho—to deceive his grandmother to come at the knowledge he desired, by a trick. "Noko," said he, "while I take my drum and rattle, and sing my war-songs, do you go and try to get me some larger heads, for these you have brought me are all of the same size. Go and see whether the old man is not willing to ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... extravasated blood was gradually increasing in size. A deep sigh broke from her lips. She leaned against one of the columns of the bed, and gazed, through the holes in her mask, upon the harrowing spectacle before her. A hoarse harsh sigh passed like a death rattle through the comte's clenched teeth. The masked lady seized his left hand, which felt as scorching as burning coals. But at the very moment she placed her icy hand upon it, the action of the cold was such that De Guiche opened his eyes, and by a look ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... part of the way downstairs and listened again. The rattle of gold reached his ears. In another moment the light was put out, and again he distinctly heard the breathing of two men, but no sound of a door being opened or shut. The two men went downstairs, the faint sounds growing ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... critters once get loose enough to play they rattle to pieces mighty fast," said the mate. "But this is ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... not try it," protested Mr. Macey. "Just listen to how strong the wind is at this height. I'm afraid you'll be dashed down to the ground. Gracious! Hear the flagstaff rattle." ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... pinning his plaid together at the throat, when the wind came with a sudden howl, rushed down the chimney, and drove the level smoke into the middle of the room. It could not shake the cottage—it was too lowly: neither could it rattle its windows—they were not made to open; but it bellowed over it like a wave over a rock, and as in contempt blew its ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... trivial adventures since leaving the British front. Of France I hope to say more in the future, and so I will pass at a bound to Padua, where it appeared that the Austrian front had politely advanced to meet me, for I was wakened betimes in the morning by the dropping of bombs, the rattle of anti-aircraft guns, and the distant rat-tat-tat of a maxim high up in the air. I heard when I came down later that the intruder had been driven away and that little damage had been done. The work of the Austrian aeroplanes is, however, very aggressive ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shall never forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by intention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... really enchanting To listen and look at the rout; We're all of us puffing, and panting, And raving, and running about; Here Kitty and Adelaide bustle; There Andrew and Anthony bawl; Flutes murmur, chains rattle, robes rustle, In chorus, at ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was dying. That loud, awful death-rattle was his last life- struggle. The valet de chambre in order to prevent her from hearing that awful sound, with his hands closed the ears of his mistress, who, petrified with horror, was looking at ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... air was sweet with the smell of the mown hay, and from the Broad Pasture there came the rattle and throb of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... lake rolling and tumbling from hill to hill, and could outline the forest opposing its rugged weight to the tempest. Under the successive attacks of the gale, the loosened old joints of the house creaked their protests at the blizzard's roughness. The shrieking of the wind, the sharp rattle of the storm-driven snow against the glass, everything in the wild night without, responded to the conflict in ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... ankle which made her long to lie still and rest. She tried to sleep, and after long waiting had just arrived at that happy stage when thoughts grow misty, and a gentle prickling feeling creeps up from the toes to the brain, when a patriotic barrel- organ began to rattle out the strains of "Rule, Britannia" from the end of the road, and the chance was gone. Then Whitey read aloud for an hour, but the book had come to a dull, uneventful stage, ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Many of these were weavers, and in those days the weaver carried on his craft at home. I can see distinctly the little stone cottages in the narrow wynds off South Street, which I was wont to visit; I can recall the whirr and rattle of the loom "ben the house," and picture to myself the grave elderly man who on my entrance would rise from the rickety machine in front of which he was seated, and, after refreshing himself with a pinch of snuff, adjust his horn-rimmed spectacles and stare, with a seriousness which to me was ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... of fate, drew a tenderfoot horse. Tunemah was a big fool gray that was constitutionally rattle-brained. He meant well enough, but he didn't know anything. When he came to a bad place in the trail, he took one good look—and rushed it. Constantly we expected him to come to grief. It wore on the Tenderfoot's nerves. Tunemah was always trying to wander off ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... we thought so. Let us be gay, Richard, and not part like ancient fogies. Where's your fun? You can rattle; why don't you? You haven't seen me in one of my characters—not Sir Julius: wait a couple of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will drop from the trees unripe; whether boils will afflict men; whether wars will prevail, or diseases or plagues among men and cattle; whether good is resolved upon in heaven, or evil; whether blood will flow, and the death-rattle of the slain be heard in the city. And now, Adam, come and give heed unto what I shall tell thee regarding the manner of this book and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... in the cannonading made it possible to distinguish the heavy rattle of rifle and machine gun fire, and it seemed to me to be ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... over his yawl and picked up the shore beyond. Back of the searchlight lifted the red, green, and white triangle of running lights laid dead for him. It sheered a little. The brilliant ray blinked out. He saw a dim bulk, a pale glimmer through cabin windows, heard the murmur of voices and the rattle of anchor chain running through hawse pipe. Then he closed ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... creditable but by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J. Guiteau, approached the President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body. Death followed, after a ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... An occasional shell whizzed by or over, reminding us that we were rapidly approaching the "debatable ground." Soon we began to hear a most ominous sound which we had never before heard, except in the far distance at South Mountain, namely, the rattle of musketry. It had none of the deafening bluster of the cannonading so terrifying to new troops, but to those who had once experienced its effect, it was infinitely more to be dreaded. The fatalities ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... known, that, some time ago, a person with a title[106] was pleased, in two great assemblies, to rattle bitterly somebody without a name, under the injurious appellations of a Tory, a Jacobite, an enemy to King George, and a libeller of the government; which character," the Dean said that, "many people thought was applied to him. But he was unwilling to be of that opinion, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Miss Bawn, for if he was dead the banshee would have cried. And the dead coach would have driven up with a rattle and stopped at our door. It never has, Miss Bawn. What you've heard has never stopped at our doors. To hear wheels in the distance is nothing. As for the cryin' in the shrubbery, that is another story. Some day I may ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... happily styled "the devil's fiddle," or "the chicken-box," whose simplest form is an emptied tomato-can, with a string passed through the end and pulled with the rosined fingers. Now, that a man may be pleased with a rattle, even if it be only a car-rattle, is conceivable, but it is hard to understand how he can retain a relish for the squeal of a locomotive-whistle. The practice of summoning workmen to factories by this shrill monitor, of using it to announce the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... give up, though the grape-shot may rattle, Or the full thunder-cloud over you burst; Stand like a rock, and the storm or the battle Little shall harm you, though doing ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very familiar sound in the next cabin roused him ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... slept on. Gulls mewed overhead; a rattle of cranes sounded from the quays, and a conversation—mostly in hoarse roars—took place between the boatswain in the bows and an elderly man ashore, but he remained undisturbed. Then he sprang up so suddenly that he nearly knocked his chair over, and the captain, turning ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... facing one another in the silent, half-darkened room, Mannering trying to bring himself into accord with half-admitted but repugnant convictions, she watching him hopelessly, the tinkle of a hansom bell sounded outside. The sudden stopping of a horse, the rattle of a latchkey, and she was in the room. Mannering rose to his feet ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... left hand, the caster took the box with the fair dice in it in his right hand, and in the act of shaking it caught the fair dice in his hand, and unperceived shifted the box empty to his left, from which he dropped the false dice into the box, which he began to rattle, called his main seven, and threw. Having won his stake he repeated it as often as he thought proper. He then caught the false dice in the same way, shifted the empty box again, and threw till he threw out, still calling the same main, by which artifice ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... heart was quite gone in despair, and all trouble shrank into a trifle, I heard a loud shout, and the trample of feet, and the rattle of arms, and the clash of horses. Contriving to twist myself a little, I saw that the band of the Doones were mounting a saddle-backed bridge in a deep wooded glen, with a roaring water under them. On the crown of the bridge a vast man stood, such ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... for presently they heard her running down, after which a fresh rattle began at the obstinate bolt. But still the door did not open, and at length Mrs. Worrett put her lips to ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... he proposed that I should rattle round the park with him. I acceded, and we set off in a handsome open carriage, with four greys, ridden by postilions at a rapid pace. As we were whirling along, he observed, "In town we must of course drive but a pair, but in the country ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... be managed, I could get great things done in the matter of fish culture and fish diseases at South Kensington, if poor dear X.'s rattle trappery could be turned to proper account, without in any way interfering with the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a falling-out, like that of a die from the dice-box; and coincidence signifies one falling-out on the top of another, the concurrent happening of two or more chances which resemble or somehow fit into each other. If you rattle six dice in a box and throw them, and they turn up at haphazard—say, two aces, a deuce, two fours, and a six—there is nothing remarkable in this falling out. But if they all turn up sixes, you at once suspect that the dice are cogged; and if that be not so—if there be no sufficient cause behind ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... at last," Jack exclaimed as the rattle of musketry sounded loud and continuous. "I wondered when they ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah—a round, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... showed Tom that the door was unlatched, and with the rain now descending in torrents, he hesitated no longer, but stepped within. There was a rush of wind, a rattle of shutters, a deafening peal of thunder as if close at hand, and with a crash ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... end of an hour you come to Annecy and rattle through its old crooked lanes, built solidly up with curious old houses that are a dream of the Middle Ages, and presently you come to the main object of your trip—Lake Annecy. It is a revelation. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which stood just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, I take a cautious peep out. In the middle of the room in front of my father stands the Sand-man, the bright light of the lamp falling full upon his face. The Sand-man, the terrible Sand-man, is ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... I'm thinkin', ye rattle-pate, to risk y'r precious noodle here to-night," he whispered, coming forward and fussing about me with all the maternal anxiety of a hen ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut |
