"Strident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the Pere Duchesne, L'Ami du Peuple, the Jean Bart, the Vieux Cordelier. Crowds gathered round Bassett's famous ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... should say that Dicky is an oldish man, who drifted into this ugly quarter some time ago, and took his place in the parlour, which is a room that I now prefer to the bar. I was holding a friendly discussion with a butcher when a strident voice said, "You are absolutely and irredeemably ignorant of the rudiments of your subject." I started. Where had I heard that voice before? The man was clad in an old shooting-jacket; his trousers ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... the Embankment Gardens were nearly stripped of their leaves, and were tossing widely. Shutting the eyes, you could think you heard the sweep of deep-water seas with strident crests. The greater buildings, like St. Paul's, might have been promontories looming in a driving murk. The low sky was dark and riven, and was falling headlong. But I liked the look of it. Here, plainly, was the end of the halcyon days,—good-bye to the sun,—but I felt, for a reason I ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... iron bellows, a sort of arquebuse barrel, turned one end toward the coals, and blew into the other in so unusual a way as to produce a strident whistle. Then ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces—at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command: ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... hold themselves erect and firm, however much old age may try to bend them. She had a sweet face and soft white hair. She looked so mild and gentle that it was surprising to hear her speak with a voice that was as strident and solemn as that of some ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... contributed to the effectiveness; he was placed behind the Countess. Policemen (looking strange without helmets) and their wives, sweethearts, and friends, filled the hall to its fullest; enthusiasm was rife and strident; and there was only one little sign that the untoward had occurred. That little sign was an empty chair in the first row near the Countess. Sir Jee, a prey to a sudden indisposition, had departed. He had somehow faded away, while the personages were climbing the stairs. He had faded away ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the deepening twilight we thoughtfully left the last resting-place of the mighty dead, a platoon of thirty Chinese soldiers approached, drew their swords, dropped upon one knee and shouted. The movement was so unexpected and the shout so startlingly strident that my horse shied in terror and I had visions of immediate massacre. But having learned that politeness is current coin the world over, as soon as I could control my prancing horse, I raised my hat and bowed. Whereupon ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it was there. Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me." Her voice here took the strident form of action. "Knock off work at the shaft, and send your man away at once. Put on your things, catch the next stage to Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... though the woof of heaven were torn, A strident shout rang from some neighbour shrubs Three Nubian soldiers ran upon her with Delighted oily faces. Screaming first Commands to her small son to make for home, She laboured to recross the current as when In nightmares ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... full of vim. She usually talks at the top of a very high and strident voice (I don't know what they did with it at the convent), and I suddenly heard her screaming to the cabinet minister, 'Haven't you heard that? Oh, everybody's quoting it in Fleet Street, aren't they, Mr. Bryan? But I suppose you never go to Fleet Street, Mr. Blank; ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... like the reversed rush of a rocket was cloven with a strident and incessant yelling. Five people rushed into the gate of the mansions as three people rushed out, and for an instant they all deafened each other. The sense of some utterly abrupt horror seemed for a moment to fill half the street with bad news—bad news that was all ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of defence. The crashing of the trees as they fell, the blows of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the women, in answer to this signal, were coming from all directions, carrying buckets in their hands, or copper water-pots on their heads, he unchained the pump-handle. Now for the next two hours the strident cries of the exasperated pump, and the screaming gabble of many tongues, all refreshed by slumber and eager for exercise, made such a diabolic tumult and discord as to throw even the braying of the donkeys into the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... gauzy wings and gleaming bodies. Once a white-necked sea eagle soared screaming high over the traveller's head, and again a flock of brown bustards popped up from among the bracken, and blundered away in their clumsy fashion, half running, half flying, with strident ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... aware now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His body, catching up from behind, drops about him again—and then he knows. It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... stones occupying nine square feet of waste land, to the sale of which she declared her consent had never been given. The matter had been referred to middlemen who decided in our favour; nevertheless, we learned to dread the daily tap, tap, of her stick, and the shrill squawk of her strident voice as she came with fresh deeds (some of them dating back to former dynasties) of which she demanded the examination. She was generally accompanied by friends, all of whom were prepared to ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... and yield a full image of reality. Ethics should be controlled by a physics that perceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is moral. Otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for the matter of that, in Mr. Moore's uncivilised leaning towards the doctrine of retributive punishment, or in Mr. Russell's intolerance of selfishness and patriotism, and in his refusal to entertain any ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... leaning beside him, waited. The sunshine covered them both. The sea wind was fresh in their faces. While the many voices of Naples came up to them confused, strident, continuous, with sometimes a bugle-call, sometimes a clang of hammers, or quick pulse of stringed instruments, or jangle of church-bells, or long-drawn bellow of a steamship clearing for sea, detaching itself from the universal ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... him, and shrank two steps away; but she answered, in a voice which I could hardly recognise as hers, it was so high and strident; "I should call it a chilly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the voice of the guide, its strident tones carrying clearly to Tad, filling him with a feeling as near akin to joy as was ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... strident note. Gwendolyn's mother was circling into sight once more. Fortunately, she was keeping close to the outer edge of the road. The Piper faced in the direction she was speeding, and prepared to race ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in the height of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... where a long row of Kings and Queens, in their full-length portraits, stand like Banquo's descendants. The portraits begin with that of bluff King Hal, very bluff and strident. According to Mr. Hare's account, which he has taken from Holinshed, Henry VIII. got St. James's when it was an hospital for "fourteen maidens that were leprous," and having pensioned off the sisters, "reared a fine mansion and park" in the room of the hospital. The picture of his young ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... The man's was strident, disagreeable, persistent. Its timbre was such as he had heard coming out of the doors of border saloons. The woman's was quiet and resisting, its quality of youth peculiarly emphasized ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... patter of applause, and a young negro came forward, and in a strident, music-hall voice, sung or rather recited with many gestures the ditty. He could n't have been much older than Joe, but already his face was hard with dissipation and foul knowledge. He gave the song with all the rank suggestiveness that could be put into it. Joe looked upon him as ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... weather. There had been every probability of a breeze springing up at sundown, but the great orange globe had slowly rolled down and disappeared in the golden west, amidst the loud barking of the hornbills and the strident shrieks of flocks of parrots, and not a breath of wind was astir. Then came down the night, a purply black darkness spangled with stars overhead and reflected in the water, and with that darkness a hot ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... these cries, accompanied by the strident clank of chains, produces upon me the effect of a galvanic battery, and I am obliged to put forth all that remains to me of moral strength to prevent myself from screaming and moaning like the others. With my feet in blood and my eyes burning with weeping, and the effect ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... had heard on the moon came to them. A sound that was a commingling of the laughter of Dalis, the barking of jackals of the olden times, the humming of a million Beryls revolving at top speed, and a strident buzzing such as neither had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... known by trial. Halleck did not arrive in Washington till near the end of the month, then he seemed for a while in doubt, or to be upon both sides of the question as to whether the army should be advanced or withdrawn; but ultimately, in the contemptuous language of Mr. Swinton, he "added his strident voice in favor of the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula." This settled the matter; for the President had decided to place himself under the guidance of his new military mentor; and, moreover, his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... nearness pleasurable... She often had wondered, looking back on that day, what might have happened if she had gone through with this truant indiscretion. But halfway on the journey her escort had deserted her momentarily to buy a cigar. Left alone upon the upper deck of a ferryboat, crowded with a strident and raucous company, she had felt herself suddenly grow cold, not with fear, but with a certain haughty and disdainful anger. These people were not her kind! She had risen swiftly from her seat and ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... children were marched through the squalid streets, a strident band, to the dingy railway station, a grimy proletariat third-class railway station in which the sign "First Class Waiting Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the waiting train. The wonderful experience of which ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... fed on the sweet green grass. The mellow ploughed earth on the right hand stretched down to the shore-line, and a plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling "My Nannie's awa'." Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its Sylvan shades, and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labors with the ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... his brain; a blind impulse sprang up within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words. Geoffroi would only reply, in his venomous way, "Come to-night to the Valley and see if I lie." And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one straight blow from ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... of whips we started, and it was with satisfaction that I heard the trampling of hoofs bite into the sod and the bright steel edges rip through the matted roots. Soft earth and tangled grasses filled the iron scoop behind, the air vibrated with the strident clang of rails, and the locomotive engineer performed an inspiriting solo upon his whistle, while the rest of our party followed to finish the wake we left with their shovels. Somewhat improved appliances are used in railroad building now, but though it had limitations ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... perceived clearly now that murder had been in his heart. She was not appalled nor desolated. She thought: 'So that is murder, that little thing, that thing over in a minute!' It appeared to her that murder in the concrete was less dreadful than murder in the abstract, far less horrible than the strident sound of the word on the lips of a newsboy, or the look of it in the 'Signal.' She felt dimly that she ought to be shocked, unnerved, terrified, at the prospect of living, eating, and sleeping with a man who had meant to kill. But she could not ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... laughed a strident, nervous laugh, which it was not pleasant to hear, and which revealed the fact that intense suffering was hidden beneath all this banter. "Would you like me to fight a duel then? After twenty years has the idea of ridding yourself of me occurred to you again? I can scarcely believe it. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... not know what he wished. He wished to do right, but he wished more to conciliate, for he knew that he was detested, and feared to be accused to Rome. The other side knew what they wanted, and were resolute. Encouraged by the hesitation of Pilate, they 'cried out all together.' One hears the strident yells from a thousand throats shrieking out the self-revealing and self-destroying choice of Barabbas. He was a popular hero for the very reason that he was a rebel. He had done what his admirers had accused Jesus of doing, and for which they pretended that they had submitted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... completed. The quiet was abruptly shattered by the strident blasting of the plane's ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... noisy city street, I listened to the newsboys' strident cries Of "Extra," as with flying feet, They strove to gain this man or that-their prize. But one there was with neither shout nor stride, And, having bought from him, I stood nearby, Pondering the cruel crutches at ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the airship! Stop them! Stop them!" yelled the strident voice of a man coming pell mell down the ravine path. He was in a frantic state of excitement and ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... churches in the Strand, and dingy blatant taverns, and strident signs and hoardings; and there ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... standeth a notable pirate and one of authority among the rogues, so must he surely die along with Captain Jo—" I saw Resolution's shackled hands clench suddenly, then he laughed, harsh and strident. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. In voice and manner he betrayed the school in which he had been trained. "When I hear gentlemen," he cried in strident tones, "attempting to justify this unrighteous fine upon General Jackson upon the ground of non-compliance with rules of court and mere formalities, I must confess that I cannot appreciate the force ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... and the bird, for it has the body of the lion and the head and talons of the eagle. Then the basilisk, regarded as the king of serpents; it is four feet long, and has a tail as thick as a tree, and spotted with white. Its head bears a tuft in shape like a crown; it has a strident voice, and its eye is murderous, "A look," says the "Romance of Alexander," "so piercing, that it is pestilential and deadly to all beasts, whether venomous or no." Its breath is no less fetid, nor less dangerous, for, "by its breath ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... persecutions of James, and they ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev him?" said Emma in her strident voice. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... grimy street in the November fog, felt that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of the last houses of the town; then, extinguishing the lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a by-road toward Glencorse. There was no sound but that of their own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It was pitch dark; here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glass, when, as if the devil had accepted the challenge, the sentinel's harsh, strident ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... interfere with some reconciling remark when he observed, to his astonishment, that Alice who, as a rule, was bitterly hostile to all strident unconventionality, had ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... thumb be gestured the command, whereupon the Atlantean nodded eagerly and, filling his chest, set horn to lips to blow a long, strident note that rang harshly, boldly out over ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the sounds of execration, as she stood swaying with one hand over her eyes to shut out the horrible glare. She was conscious only of that and the strident noise of the band, and the sensation of choking she had felt once before. The instinct of all animals to hide themselves in the dark when ill, was ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... glee beside me. The vast concourse of people, the lavish colour, the loud, gay, strident music, the sea of faces and clapping hands and waving kerchiefs pleased ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... some accompaniments till her fingers tired, and then she took up a magazine and read a couple of stories, becoming so absorbed in the last one that she hardly heard a clock below striking loudly, though some sense of its strident tones made her start from her chair in dismay lest she should ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... fancy play upon the gold tint of the sea at sunset, and thought how it lapped in coins of gold upon the shingle. Little pleasure boats shoved out into it; the black arm of the pier hoarded it up. The whole city was pink and gold; domed; mist- wreathed; resonant; strident. Banjoes strummed; the parade smelt of tar which stuck to the heels; goats suddenly cantered their carriages through crowds. It was observed how well the Corporation had laid out the flower-beds. Sometimes a straw hat was blown ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... thrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to the Society drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who liked nice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, and the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now must serenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the whitest of maiden lilies bloomed, tall and pure and slender and unharmed, in a raging tempest of fire and steel ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... close beside him. A young girl, he made out, was grumbling because she had got to leave the parsonage, where she had been staying with Mathilde, the parson's daughter, and it was her father who was taking her home. A third voice, sharp and strident, was heard. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the Toll House stands and the road runs through into Lake County, it had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... signs, certain facades, certain audacities of the prevailing hideousness that always amused him in that uproar to the eye which the strident forms and colors made. He was interested in the insolence with which the railway had drawn its erasing line across the Corinthian front of an old theatre, almost grazing its fluted pillars, and flouting ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... quiet and seclusion of the sick room in which he had lived for so many weeks, astonished him. The crowds of suburbanites rushing frantically for trains, elbowing and pushing in their anxiety to get home, the strident hoarse cries of newsboys, the warning shouts of wagon drivers as they drove recklessly here and there at murderous speed, the blowing of auto horns, the ceaseless hum and roar of the big city's heavy traffic—all this bewildered and dazed him. At first he did not remember just in ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... own street into a thin, grey one in which the puddles sprang and danced against isolated milk-cans and a desolate pillar-box. The little bell was now loud and strident, and when they passed into a passage which led into a square, rather grimy yard, Maggie saw that they had arrived. Before her was a hideous building, the colour of beef badly cooked, with grey stone streaks in it here and there and thin, narrow windows ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the captain's table, Mr Butler was expressing his opinion upon various subjects in loud, strident tones, and with a disputatiousness of manner that caused most of those about him mentally to dub him a blatant cad, and to resolve that they would have as little as possible to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... horses carting themselves and their owners home, with entire self-control and good sense; and, anchored in the tide of traffic, the ubiquitous beggar-women, their filthy hands proffering matches, green apples, bootlaces, their strident tongues mastering the noises of the street, their rapacious, humorous eyes observant of all things. All these did Dr. Mangan encounter and circumvent, frustrating their apparent determination to commit suicide by those diverse methods ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... shines on the hill, The will-o'-wisps the forests fill With flashes filched from noon; And witches on their broomsticks spry Speed here and yonder in the sky, And lift their strident voices high Unto the ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... the most familiar sound heard along the banks of the inland rivers. No love or cradle song does he know. Instead of softening and growing sweet, as the voices of most birds do in the nesting season, the endearments uttered by a pair of mated kingfishers are the most strident, rattly shrieks ever heard by lovers it sounds as if they were perpetually quarrelling, yet they ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... composed the student body. At either end above the floor-space was a gallery. One fronted the pulpit, curving widely and arranged with pews for the accommodation of the professors and their families. Opposite this was the choir loft over the preacher's head, a smaller gallery containing the strident old-fashioned reed organ, and seats for the dozen or so who made up the college choir. Places in the choir were much sought after, for a student could stretch his legs and indulge in a comfortable yawn unmolested by the scrutiny of the proctors who kept a sharp watch on their brethren ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the shoulder of the sturdy Turk awoke them to torpid activity. There was surprise and resentment in the creak of grim old hinges, in the moans of rheumatic timbers, in the jangle of lazy chains and locks. The stones on which they trod seemed to snap back in the echo of their footfalls a harsh, strident laugh of derision. Every shadow grinned mockingly at her; the very darkness ahead of the lantern's way seemed to snort angrily at the approach of the intruders. The whole of that rockbound dungeon roared defiance in answer to her timid prayer, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... even for an upper West Side residential quarter. A block over to the east Broadway was strident in the flood of its nocturnal traffic; a like distance to the west Riverside Drive hummed with pleasure cars taking advantage of the first bland night of that belated spring. But here, now that the taxi had wheeled away, there was never a car ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... lady's preference was taken up and echoed on every side. Indeed the majority were ready for any change from Mrs. Chints's strident tones. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... scarred with the wounds of bygone battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned, never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encouragement. At such a distance, and against a target six hundred feet above the sea level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did little more than waste their ammunition. But the shattering detonations of their ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... failed to make us feel what Christ was. But Mary Magdalene knew this, and it was what she said and felt in the Garden that has put Christ upon the throne of the world. Was not her vision after all the true one? Is not a Catherine a better guide to Jesus than a Dominic? When all the strident theologies fall silent, will not the world's whole worship still utter itself ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... youths bound to offices in Calcutta, but still men. I thought it might be her brilliant conversation, but for the last half-hour I have listened,—indeed we have no choice but to listen, the voices are so strident,—and it can't be that, because it isn't brilliant or even amusing, unless to call men names like Pyjamas, or Fatty, or Tubby, and slap them playfully at intervals is amusing. A few minutes ago Mrs. Crawley came to sit with ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... guess freedom 's better 'n befo' d' wah?" hazarded one of his tormentors, a hatchet-faced, yellow stable-boy with a loud, sharp voice. He burst into a strident guffaw. ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Barnes away with a soft answer. His appeals for admission were rising to a strident pitch when his friend opened the ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... of mania in its history. Then in one of the lulls came that sound which between the hours of ten and three is never heard save as the clarion of disaster. The great gong in the president's gallery sent out its strident and metallic voice, and in the dead silence that followed its command an announcement ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain roofs, to locate in a determined chimney, and it is a most amusing sight to see them cluster about a ruined spot and discuss the matter in strident chirpings. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... he said to me in a fierce undertone. "Wait outside and I will see you later!" Still, from the desk, resounded that harsh, strident voice, running on in an ascending scale, pouring forth a foaming torrent ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... she had somehow managed to bring along with her unchanged from a frivolous girlhood, and a quaint old hymnal mouth. Looking up from the rug she took on an expression of pure and undefiled piety and began in the strident, cackling tones ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... of Zenda, and beguiled whole days with my love in the glades of the forest—which made a very pleasant dream. In fact, I was just impressing a fervent kiss on the charming lips of the princess, when I heard (and the voice seemed at first a part of the dream) someone exclaim, in rough strident tones. ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... to worry him, however, and this was so evident to his devoted wife that her laugh was brief,—it was never loud or strident,—and she moved her chair ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... window strident Prussian bugles were blowing a harsh summons; the young officer stepped to the loop-hole and looked out, then hastily removed his helmet and thrust his blond head through the smoky aperture. "March those prisoners in ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... mighty volume of New England air, set the long brazen trumpet to his lips, and blew such a blast that the led horses of the commissioners started and threw up their heads, and the windows of the court house shook with the strident vibration. Then, taking the paper on which the proclamation was written, and holding it up before him, he proceeded to bellow forth its contents in such stentorian wise that the commissioners might have ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... was a quiet, sleepy old town, and had expected to go immediately to bed on our arrival. What then was our amazement at hearing, echoing through the wide street in front of the hotel, the sound of strident ragtime. Investigation disclosed a gaudily striped tent of considerable size set up in the street and illuminated by those flaring naphtha lamps they use in circuses. Going over to the tent, we learned that there was dancing within, whereupon we ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... not seem to her she had been asleep five minutes, and there was only the faintest glimmer of light in her room, when she was awakened by something new. Just under her window there was a strident laugh. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... some of the bells droning and indistinct like the voices of old women, others shrill and high pitched like the chirping of children. From roof to roof—their city quarters—cocks were exchanging strident challenges to battle. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the poulterer didn't come around. No; I can't tell you why he—whoever he is—so leaves us in protracted peace. Perhaps he's fattening us," and the old gray buccaneer cheered the conversation with a laugh as strident ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Just as he left a little puff of wind blew some scraps of tobacco from a cigarette that Dry-Creek Smithers was rolling, into Miss Sally's eyes. While the cook was rubbing at them, with tears flowing, "Phonograph" Davis—so called on account of his strident voice—arose and began ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... "became pawns in the game."* (* The phrase is Professor Egerton's, Cambridge Modern History 9 735.) There was no Imperialism then, with its strident note, its ebullient fervour and flag waving. There was no national sense of pride in colonial Empire, or general appreciation of the great potentialities of oversea possessions. "The final outcome of the great war ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of the bush behind us, came a loud "woof, woof!" "That's a lion," said I, and we all started up to listen. Hardly had we done so, when from the pool, about a hundred yards off, we heard the strident trumpeting of an elephant. "Unkungunklovo! Indlovu!" "Elephant! Elephant!" whispered the Kafirs, and a few minutes afterwards we saw a succession of vast shadowy forms moving slowly from the direction of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... he practiced the strident-voiced delivery of extravagant lies he had learned so well and had so magnificently imitated from the Ventura Boulevard pitch artists. He practiced the leering insinuendo of the barker outside the gambling hall; he gave it the Calsobisidine con come-on; he sold it solid, dripping with sex, twitching ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... the fugitives, and a roar of ironic mirth broke from his lips, resounding high above the strident rasping of the beetle-legs, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... submissive, because Mary V had announced that she would be looking for him. Johnny winced from the thought of Mary V, out on the porch, watching the sky toward Tucson for the black speck that would be his airplane; listening for the high, strident drone that would herald his coming. She would cry ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... like to know is what you do propose to do, then, if you don't accept our offer and come to live with us? Were you expecting to keep on living in this great barn of a house?" Ellen Robinson's voice was loud and strident with a crude kind of pain. She could not understand her sister, in fact, never had. She had thought her proposition that Julia come to live in her home and earn her board by looking after the four children and being useful about the house was most generous. She had ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... world—a house, a shop, a husband, and my best bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the inn, which he had hoped they would have to themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young men and women—school-teachers on a holiday, the landlord told them—and Archer's heart sank at the idea of having ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... avoidance of ordinary customs and manners. Harry's heart beat wildly as he walked down the street; there was no change here; it was as he had left it. He was at home here as he could never be in that new, strident Pendragon with its utter disregard of tradition ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... uniforms, and their jaunty yellow and red forage-caps, showing up bravely in the clear morning light. Above them, on the top of the bank, was ranged the line of donkeys, and the air was full of the clamour of the boys. In shrill strident voices each was crying out the virtues of his own beast, and abusing that ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... two roads is the shorter?" asked the elder of the two travellers in a harsh, strident voice. Though visibly the elder, he was scarcely thirty years ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... "Strike one!" called the strident voice of Blackrock, who, jerking himself back several years into youth again, was umpiring the game with great joy. Nonchalantly Sam snapped the ball back over-hand. Princeman smiled with calm superiority. He ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... as a student and was, besides, a fine girl, had so unpleasant and absurd a voice that her students were in a continual state of amusement and would learn nothing from her. A great many teachers have lost in power because of a poor voice, strident, or lifeless, or husky, or falsetto. A poor enunciation, or words that do not carry, are ineffectual means by which to reach a class, to hold a customer, or to introduce one's self favourably to the interest of others. For ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... to where gulped the mouth of Bonanza, cavernously wide and filled with the purple smoke of many fires. There was the golden valley, silent for centuries, now strident with human cries, vehement with human strife. There was the timbered basin of the Klondike bleakly rising to mountains eloquent of death. It was dominating, appalling, this vastness without end, this unappeasable loneliness. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... leaning against a lamp post. The sight of two gentlemen on foot when all 'buses had stopped running for the night raised fleeting hopes in the cabman's pessimistic breast, and changed the flow of his narrative into a strident appeal for hire, based on the plea, which he called on the policeman to support, that he hadn't turned a wheel that night, and amplified with a profanity which only the friendliest understanding with the policeman could have permitted him to pour ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... men staggered slowly and wanderingly through the gray streets. Gray ghosts! All was gray. A vacant laugh pealed out and a strident curse, and then again the low murmur prevailed. Benton was going to rest. Weary, drunken, spent nature sought oblivion—on disordered beds, on hard floors, and in dusty corners. An immense and hovering shadow held the tents and halls and streets. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... one's eyes good to set 'em on you again. This is Olive Green,—you remember her sister Betsey worked for me when you was one of my boarders." The woman's voice was loud and strident, and filled the room. ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... arisen about that beastly Jennie again. Jennie was his wife's friend, and, by no invitation of Mr. Coombes, she came in every blessed Sunday to dinner, and made a shindy all the afternoon. She was a big, noisy girl, with a taste for loud colours and a strident laugh; and this Sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringing in a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself. And Mr. Coombes, in a starchy, clean collar and his Sunday frock-coat, had sat dumb and wrathful at his own table, while his ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... both quiet for a moment or two; then the strident voice of the Mate rang out, "Boy! Boy! Where the hell have you got to now? Lay aft and ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... any of the other Greek philosophers been more humane in their views on slavery? Then another voice struck in, and compared the ancient idea of slavery with the slave code of the United States. The voice was rather strident, but not unpleasant. It had a great deal to say, and for some minutes seemed likely to take the lecture altogether from the mouth of the lecturer. Henrietta looked in its direction, and saw a small apple-cheeked elderly lady. The voice and the face both set ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... chap; is it so bad as all that?" Peter's somewhat strident voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand affectionately on Lancelot's tumbled hair. "You know I believe in you with all my soul. I never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I know too ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... as far as their appearance and breeding went, but Althea found their manners very bad. They were not strident and they were not arrogant, but so much noisiness and so much innocent assurance might, to unsympathetic eyes, seem so. They were handsome girls, fresh-skinned, athletic, tall and slender. They wore beautifully simple white lawn dresses, and their shining fair hair was ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the strident self-assertion of the newly-constituted little nations in Europe, and the cult of "Nationalism" in South Africa to-day. It is natural for birds of feather to flock together and screech together, and in the same way throughout mankind particular groups ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... of no avail; so long as my ears were open he did not care. He was a very energetic jogger. However, it occurred to me to try another plan: I turned towards him (he would much rather have had my back) and began to talk in the most strident tones I could command. I pointed out to him that the pier was decked like a vessel, that the cliffs were white, that a lady passing had a dark blue dress on, which did not suit with the green sea, not because ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... terrier and the black and tan are excellent dogs for this sort of work. These little hunters are keen for the sport and make their way beneath the brush where a larger dog follows with difficulty. With strident yelps the pack picks up the hot trail, and off they rush, helter skelter, through the sage and chaparral; we circle and cross cut, dash down the draw, traverse the open forest meadow and follow the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the time they had entered the village (Sylvia had her watch in her hand) they were flying back, the car packed with men in overalls and clustered thick with others on the running-board. Back of them the whistle of the factory shrieked a strident announcement of disaster. Women and children ran to the doors to stare up and down, to cry out, to look and with dismayed faces to see the great cloud of gray smoke pouring up from the side of the mountain. There was no soul ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue shirts, with their mess-kits in their hands, running across the ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... flash of her jewels, the soft brilliance of her eyes as she leaned towards him. His voice sounded, even to himself, harsh and strident. ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... coveys, very like the red-legged partridge in their call, though in plumage nearer to its English brother. There, too, the ubiquitous guinea fowl, the spotted "kanga" that has given us so many blessed changes of diet, utters his strident call from the tops of big thorn trees. The black and white meadow lark is here, but the "khoran" or lesser bustard of South Africa, that resembles him so much in plumage on a much larger scale, is absent. The brown bustard, so common in the south, is the ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey |
