"Tinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got out of the field, for every time he chased the sheep away they followed him up again; and it was all the fault of one great, black-faced, chuckle-headed wether, who was so stupid that he couldn't keep quiet, and of course all the sheep kept following him, for he had a tinkling copper bell attached to his neck, which seemed to be an especial abhorrence to Dick, from the way he barked at it. But at last the dog heard a summons that he could not disobey, namely, a long whistle from his young masters; so making one ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... she would only go away!" she found herself murmuring, over and over. Even the thought of Bob waiting in Hyde Park in the chill east wind became dim beside that horrible piano, banging and tinkling in her ear. She dusted mechanically, picking up one cheap ornament after another—leaving the collection upon the piano until the last, in the hope that by the time she reached it the thirst for music would have departed from the performer. But Mrs. Rainham's tea appointment was not yet; she ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... widow proposed to blindfold him with a handkerchief, and marry him to whichever he succeeded in catching. But, with the bandage tied over his eyes, Pa-chieh only found himself groping in darkness. "The tinkling sound of female trinkets was all around him, the odour of musk was in his nostrils; like fairy forms they fluttered about him, but he could no more grasp one than he could a shadow. One way and another he ran till he was too giddy ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... this pride is discovered by mincing words, a made carriage, and an affecting the toys and baubles that Satan, and every lightheaded fool bringeth into the world. As God speaketh of the daughters of Zion, 'they walk with stretched forth necks, and wanton eyes, mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet' (Isa 3:16). A very unhandsome carriage for a people that profess godliness, and that use to come before God to confess their sins, and to bemoan themselves for what they have done. How can a sense of thy own baseness, of the vileness of thy heart, and of the holiness of God, stand ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... adversaries, with the mark of a toad on it, and pointed like a toad's head? [47] Cased in variegated sheath of tiger-skin, whose is this large sword of excellent blade and variegated with gold and furnished with tinkling bells? Whose is this handsome scimitar of polished blade and golden hilt? Manufactured in the country of the Nishadas, irresistible, incapable of being broken, whose is this sword of polished blade in a scabbard of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... variance with his patronymic. The only public demonstration of principle that we have seen is an emblematic bell drawn upon a wagon by a single horse, with a man to lead him, and a boy to make a nuisance of the tinkling symbol as it moves along. Are all the figures in this melancholy procession equally emblematic? If so, which of the two candidates is typified in the unfortunate who leads the horse?—for we believe the only hope of the party is to get one of them elected by some hocus-pocus in the House of Representatives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... understand me when I tell you that I heard sights and saw sounds. No language can make this comprehensible, of course, and I can only say, for instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a visible picture in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially the colours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... in winter; visualised the tall, shy, overgrown girl who danced with him and made no complaint when her slim foot was trodden on. And again he remembered the sleigh and the sleighbells clashing and tinkling under the moon; the light from her doorway, and how she stood looking back at him; and how, on the mischievous impulse of the moment, he had gone ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... general, that Devereux would be better where one unlucky misadventure would not sully his reputation for life. Besides, she thought Chapelizod was not safe ground for a young fellow so eccentric, perverse, and impetuous, where pretty faces were plentier than good fortunes, and at every tinkling harpsichord there smiled a possible mesalliance. In the town of Chapelizod itself, indeed, the young gentleman did not stand quite so high in estimation as with his aunt, who thought nothing was good or high enough for her handsome nephew, with his good blood and his fine possibilities. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Authentic Sanscrit to—Telegraphese, And make the Muse a moon-faced Japanese. Leaderesque love of gentle gush and "Caps.," Is blent in him with fondness for the Japs. "Wah! wah! futtee!—wah! wah, gooroo!" he cried, And twanged his tinkling orient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... like a grotesque pantomime with no directing head. Nautch girls tripped along laughing and chatting, bracelets jingling, and tiny bells at their ankles tinkling musically. It depressed him; it was such a terrible juxtaposition of frivolity and the gloomed shadow of idol worship that lay just the bridge's span of the sullen Narbudda: the gloomy, broken scraps of the long since deserted forts that cut with ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... an added boon—arrayed in it she was best able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart she could be most merry—tinkling out her laughing little lines just as martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... dramatically, but, after all, they are the only great realities. Everything else is mimetic, phantasmal, tinkling. Deeply do the masters of the drama move us; but the Gospel cleaves, inworks, regenerates. In the theatre, the leading characters go off in death and despair, or with empty conceits and a forced frivolity; in the Gospel, tranquilly, grandly, they are dismissed to a serener life and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... back in memory to that dull March afternoon, I had passed in quiet reflection before the library fire. How vividly it all rose up before me. My sudden awakening from a stupid slumber, my firm conviction that some one else was in the room, my timid whispering question, the tinkling sound of something falling upon the floor, and my subsequent surprise on finding this queer, unfamiliar trinket lying at my feet. Now that it was proven to be Ernest Dalton's, the mystery was thicker than ever. How had it come there? I asked myself this perplexing question over and over again. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Fisher, except the past. It was astonishing, it was simply amazing, the superiority of the past to the present. Those friends of hers in London, solid persons of her own age, knew the same past that she knew, could talk about it with her, could compare it as she did with the tinkling present, and in remembering great men forget for a moment the trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed to litter the world in such numbers. She had not come away from these ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... devise means for obtaining notice of the approach of their great enemy the Cat. Among the many plans devised, the one that found most favor was the proposal to tie a bell to the neck of the Cat, that the Mice, being warned by the sound of the tinkling, might run away and hide themselves in their holes at his approach. But when the Mice further debated who among them should thus "bell the Cat," there was no ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... each other at little social gatherings, where they exchanged pretty loving greetings, and indulged in a leafy gossip, interspersed with occasional fragments of music, vocal and instrumental; now a long trill—a trilling, a tinkling, a sweeping of one minute finger-tip over metal strings as fine as gossamer threads—describe it how you will, you cannot describe it; then the long, low, inflected scream, like a lark's throat-note drawn out and inflected; little chirps and chirruping ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... as had been surmised, they were among the bunch-grass surrounding the mesa. Striking such a spot after their long wanderings on the hot desert, was delightful, indeed. Presently, too, came to their ears the tinkling sound of flowing water. ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... came to her ears the sound of the double whistle for a hansom. She stood silently there listening to the driving up of the vehicle—she even heard the sound of the closing of the apron and then the tinkling of the horse's bells ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... of the plodding hoofs! O creaking wheels, O tinkling pots and pans, had I but possessed the wisdom to understand your oft-repeated message, how much of doubt, of grief and pain I might have ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... passed before she felt equal to talking about Davenant again. This time it was to the tinkling silver, as she and Drusilla Fane sorted spoons and forks at the sideboard in the dismantled dining-room. Olivia was moved to speak in the desperate hope that one stab from Drusilla—who might be in a position to deliver it—would free her from the ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal." ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... enormous bouquet, the perfume of which intoxicated me. She yielded to my encircling arms as does the Indian liana, with a gentleness so sweet and so sympathetic that I seemed surrounded with a perfumed veil of silk. At each turn there could be heard a light tinkling from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought I beheld a beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to vanish from human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance seemed to come from her lips, while her head, covered with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... with different voices, these cities of men—from the Maxim-gun-like rattle of New York, with its chorus of strenuous steamers calling from the water, on over the gamut of different capitals to Tokio, where the city voice is the tinkling of stilted wooden shoes; not "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," but "Tinkle, tinkle, little feet," go the small wooden shoes on the ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... as she lay, she heard a tinkling. She took it for sheep-bells, and started up once more, and once more cried to Mr. Coventry; and this time he heard her, and shook off his deadly lethargy, and tried ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... still. The train, already sinking into distance, carried away with it the noise of crowds and cities and the last suggestions of the stressful life behind me, and from the little station on the moorland I stepped at once into the world of silent, growing things, tinkling sheep-bells, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... along into our happy sensoria? Then it was that the Chambertin or the Clos Vougeot came in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one among you,—do you remember how he would have a bit of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the deep- breathing kine came home at twilight from the huckleberry pasture, in the old home a thousand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... thousand and one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut my book ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... new scowling of foes' faces, and new curses unknown yet. Lo, they dight the feast in Godhome, and fair are the tables spread, Late come, but well-beloved is every war-worn head, And the God-folk and the Fathers, as these cross the tinkling bridge, Crowd round and crave for stories of the ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... our stay began in country quiet. In fact we did not wake up until eight; everything was snowbound, and even the occasional horse cars that pass the front of the house had ceased their primitive tinkling. The milkman did not come, neither did the long crispy French rolls, a New York breakfast institution for which the commuters confessedly have no substitute, and it was after nine before breakfast ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Allie glowed with happiness as she listened to the commendation of her father. Praise from any other lips would be but as "sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" when compared with his; for her love for him, under every circumstance, through evil as well as good report, was so great that she would have died for him; and his praise of her singing ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the wooden shutter and leaned out. He heard the roar of the many camps, blending into one vast undercurrent of sound; he caught the red gleam of fires half hidden behind intervening houses; now and then a bellowed chorus reached him. Also there were sweet tinkling sounds, of a kind which he had never heard before, which thrilled him strangely. Sudden desire took him to be out in the midst of this new stirring life; to see the crowded places, the mingling of many men. Preparations ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... he came in she went over to the table and began making tea with nervous hands. She was apparently in the highest spirits, and while she fumbled noisily with the cups and saucers she rambled on in her expressionless voice with tinkling interludes of her shrill, falsetto laughter. As he watched her in shamed silence he remembered with astonishment that it had taken him almost ten years to find out that Connie was vulgar. Now at last his eyes were opened—he had achieved ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... toil, Let the grave sceptre slip his lazy hold; And, careless, saw his rule become the spoil Of a loose Female and her minion bold. But peace was on the cottage and the fold, From Court intrigue, from bickering faction far; Beneath the chestnut-tree Love's tale was told, And to the tinkling of the light guitar, Sweet stooped the western sun, sweet rose the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the heaven, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,— From the jingling and the tinkling ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... could see some Kurdish women plodding along under heavy burdens of pine-branches like those that were now fumigating our eyes and nostrils. Across the hills the Kurdish shepherds were driving home their herds and flocks to the tinkling of bells. All this, to us, was deeply impressive. Such peaceful scenes, we thought, could never be the haunt of warlike robbers. The flocks at last came home; the shouts of the shepherds ceased; darkness fell; and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... the Caliph!) one of the betrayed vii. 129. Make thy game by guile for thou'rt born in a time, iii. 141. Man is known among men as his deeds attest, ix. 164. Man wills his wish to him accorded be, iv. Many whose ankle rings are dumb have tinkling belts, iii. 302. Masrur joys life made fair by all delight of days, nil. 234. May Allah never make you parting dree, May coins thou makest joy in heart instil, ix. 69. May God deny me boon of troth if I, viii. 34. May that Monarch's life span a mighty span, ii.75. Mazed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Rippling and blue, with long grass up to its edge, a spot of dancing light set in the miles of rustling wheat, it retains even in July, on an afternoon of glare and brazen locusts, the freshness of a spring morning. A thousand slews, a hundred lakes bordered with rippling barley or tinkling bells of the flax, Claire passed. She had left the occasional groves of oak and poplar and silver birch, and come out on ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... formerly, when he had lived by himself. The necessity of ringing the bell irritated him again, and he felt a nervous shock of unwillingness as he pulled the brass knob. He set his teeth against the tinkling and jangling that followed, and his eyelids quivered. Everything hurt him. He did not feel sure of his hands when he wanted to use them. He was inclined to strike the silent and respectful man-servant who opened the door, merely because he was silent and respectful. ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... "God save the King." Like a real prayer, solemn and soul-felt, arose a responsive, "God save the King." Then deliberately, that the glasses might never be profaned with a less loyal toast, the guests snapped the fragile stems between their fingers and cast the dainty bowls to the floor in tinkling fragments. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... and cool, and crystal, the ruggedness of the rocks softened by the wealth of foliage. A very limpid spring, high up and out of sight among the leaves, sent its waters tinkling down the face of the cliff, ever filling a crystal-clear lakelet at the foot, which yet was never full. Velvety and beautiful as was the moss surrounding this pond, it was nevertheless too damp to form an acceptable couch for ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... filled with young orange-trees and creeping plants of a tropical kind, which were watered by a stone fountain in the centre of the court. This fountain also served to replenish a marble bath, to cool the sultry air, and to make pleasant tinkling music. Of course the nose was not forgotten in this luxurious assemblage of things that were gratifying to ear and eye. Flowers of many kinds were scattered around, and sweet-scented plants perfumed ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... purpose. "My dear host, and you, signora," said Albert, in Italian, "excuse my apparent stupidity. I am quite bewildered, and it is natural that it should be so. Here I am in the heart of Paris; but a moment ago I heard the rumbling of the omnibuses and the tinkling of the bells of the lemonade-sellers, and now I feel as if I were suddenly transported to the East; not such as I have seen it, but such as my dreams have painted it. Oh, signora, if I could but speak Greek, your conversation, added to the fairy-scene ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... give you of their conclusions. There is no God, they say, since a self-respecting God would not tolerate the strife and babble carried on in his name to the discredit of his laws. Religion, if not a deceit, is but the tinkling of brazen cymbals. A priest is a professor eking out an allowance of fine clothes and bread and wine; with respect to the multitude, he is a belled donkey leading a string of submissive camels. Of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... friend, Acro-Corinthus. The plain within the hills is sprinkled with thriving farmsteads, green vineyards, darker olive groves. The stony hill-slopes are painted red by countless poppies. One hears the tinkling of the bells of roving goats. Thus the more distant view; while at the very foot of the hill of vision rises a temple with proud columns and pediments,—the fane of Demeter the "Earth Mother" and the seat of her Mysteries, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the path, close by him, walketh she, Bright as the blossom of hibiscus tree, And fair her face; and when around they flit, Her girdle gems a tinkling sound emit. Among the Keang she has distinguished place, For virtuous fame renowned, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... summer in the flowering limes Had laid her down at ease, Lulled by soft, sportive winds, whose tinkling chimes Summoned the wandering bees To feast, and dance, and hold high carnival Within that vast and ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... He was a fine old man according to the statement of those who had the happiness to gaze upon his face, to which Socrates and Aristophanes, formerly enemies, but then become friends, contributed their features. Hearing his last hours tinkling in his ears he determined to go and pay his respects to the king of France, because he was having just at that time arrived in his castle of Tournelles, the good man's house being situated in the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... schools and academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions, lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of self-contemplating and self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism which is surfeiting the land with those literary sandwiches,—thin slices of tinkling sentimentality between two covers looking like hard-baked gilt gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advice! They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like his—or her—own verses, and ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fellow-creatures. The chief ingredient in this particular house-wall is the common brick, burnt earth, and but one step from the handfuls of clay of the ancestral mud hut, small in size and permeable to damp. Slowly, day by day, the walls grew tediously up, to a melody of tinkling trowels. These bricks are joined by mortar, which is mixed in small quantities, and must vary very greatly in its quality and properties throughout the house. In order to prevent the obvious evils of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... This last feature of degradation had developed itself in Isaiah's day; and he attacks it with a strange combination of humour and moral indignation: "Because the daughters of Jerusalem are haughty, and walk with outstretched neck and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a tinkling with their feet, therefore ... the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls and their round tires like the moon, the chains and the bracelets and the mufflers, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... back East," he began, "and in the country, just about this time of year. We would wait until the afternoon—why! just about this time, when the sun is getting low. We would push through the bushes at the edge of the woods where the little tinkling birds sing in the fence corners, and would enter the deep high woods where the trees are tall and still. The moss is thick and soft in there, and there are little pools lying calm and dark, and there is a kind ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... off in horror, for there flashed past him, as silent as the wind and swifter, a dark, bent figure, with flying cloak, under which, as the moonlight struck him, there whirled a web of glittering tissue whereon he seemed to ride. That uncanny tinkling floated back from this strange vision, confirming to the ear what otherwise might have appeared a mere trick ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to get away, and comes into the room before daybreak, bidding him rise and put on the clothes which he has brought. 'I followed him out of the house before anybody else was awake, and he took me across the fields towards the high road. At this place we waited till we heard the tinkling of the bells of a team of horses. "Here comes the waggon," said he, "in which you are to go. So fare you well, Jervas. I shall hear how you go on; and I only hope you will serve your next master, whoever he may be, as faithfully as you have served me." "I shall never find so good a master," ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... thus the quiet-colored eve Smiles to leave To their folding all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the mountain. The horses had been unsaddled, and were picketed in an open glade at a little distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their grazing on the scanty grass came to the ear; all else was silence save the tinkling of a mountain rill,—a keen detached appoggiatura rising occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,—and the melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the latest ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... soldiers of Caesar's legions; and twenty miles south of Rome, in the sacred grove of Dodona,—where the motions of oak boughs were auguries, and the flappings of the wings of white doves were divine messages, and the tinkling of bells in the foliage had divine meanings,—in this grove the virgins of Latium, as the Greek girls of Ephesus, were once a year appointed to undergo similar rites. To the south Pompeii, with its night laughter and song sounding far out toward the softly lapping Mediterranean and up the slopes ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... I can talk (if desired) about Sainte-Beuve, and Merimee, and Felicien Rops; I could rhyme "Ballades" when they were "in," and knew what a "pantoom" was.... And yet I have not culture. My works are but tinkling brass because I have not culture. For culture has got into new regions where I cannot enter, and, what is perhaps worse, I find myself delighting in a great many things which are under the ban ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... it seemed, there came the roll of a distant gong, and instantly there burst into life a score of jangling bells, clanging and tinkling over one's very head in a manner calculated to destroy the strongest nerves. Rhoda felt an agonised certainty that the Chase was on fire, and springing up was confronted by the blue walls of her little cubicle. Memory came back then, and with a pang of regret she lay back in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... strings, which seemed to be a matter of luck. His eyes gazed distantly at the wall above my head. The performance bewildered and impressed me; I wondered if this was what they had carried me off for. It was like being mad. He made a decrescendo tinkling, and his lofty features ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the where)—comes the sound of music, soft, rhymical, and sweet. Perhaps it is from one of the rooms outside—dimly seen through the green foliage—where the lights are more brilliant, and forms are moving. But just in here there is no music save the tinkling drip, drip of the little fountain that plays ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a few yards from the mound, ran a babbling brook, which divided our farm from the next. Those of my readers whose ears are open to the music of Nature, must have observed how different are the songs sung by different brooks. Some are a mere tinkling, others are sweet as silver bells, with a tone besides which no bell ever had. Some sing in a careless, defiant tone. This one sung in a veiled voice, a contralto muffled in the hollows of overhanging banks, with a low, deep, musical gurgle in some of the stony eddies, in which a ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... irreverent tricks with the pages of Bibles, and proof could still be brought forward that he would stop deliberately in the aisle to lift up a piece of paper, say, that had floated there. After the first psalm had been sung it was Hendry's part to lift up the plate and carry its tinkling contents to the session-house. On the greatest occasions he remained so calm, so indifferent, so expressionless, that he might have been present the night ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... on exploring, down to a tinkling, chilly brook, that had worn the snow away in little scoops, and ran dark between. They saw a robin glance its bright eyes and burst scarlet and grey into the hedge, then some pertly-marked blue-tits scuffled. Meanwhile the brook slid on ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... through the place in the dusk, we could dimly discern the inhabitants sitting in their thatched verandahs, in the thinnest of white dresses, gossipping, smoking, and love-making, tinkling guitars, and singing seguidillas. It was quite a Spanish American scene out of a romance. There was no romance about the mosquitos, however. The air was alive with them. When I was new to Cuba, I used to go ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... New Army were learning the lessons of war in dugouts and ditches under the range of German guns, back again to the little white chateau at Tatinghem, with a sweet scent of flowers from the fields, and nightingales singing in the woods and a bell tinkling for Benediction in the old ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... this congregational outburst. It was all so jolly that if the organist had suddenly turned round like an Italian organ-grinder and kissed his fingers to the congregation, his action would have seemed perfectly appropriate. Even during the Magnificat, when the altar was being censed, the tinkling of the thurible reminded Mark of a tambourine; and the lighting and extinction of the candles was done with as much suppressed excitement as if the candles were going to shoot red and green stars or go leaping and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... question; and now that it was no longer so, he, being a clergyman, had not been obliged, like most of his lay Tory companions, to read his recantation. He could therefore be regarded as a supporter of the immaculate fifty-three, and was on this account a favourite with Mr Thorne. The little bell was tinkling, and the rural population were standing about the lane, leaning on the church stile, and against the walls of the old court, anxious to get a look at their new minister as he passed from the house to the rectory. The archdeacon's servant ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... rising to foreheads of steel-like grey. The autumn blue faded in the far sky-line to white, and lent distance to the farther peaks. The hush of the wilderness, which is far different from the hush of death, brooded over the scene, and like faint music came the sound of a distant scytheswing, and the tinkling whisper which is the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... popular belief, can never be effaced. Finding we listened to him with easy faith, he added, that there was often heard at night, in the Court of Lions, a low, confused sound, resembling the murmuring of a multitude; with now and then a faint tinkling, like the distant clank of chains. These noises are probably produced by the bubbling currents and tinkling falls of water, conducted under the pavement, through pipes and channels, to supply the fountains; but, according to the legend of the son of the Alhambra, they are made ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... nowhere in particular, and his voice was the tinkling of a silver bell. It would have taken a score of him to ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife- box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp packed for travelling. Everything became a nick-nack in this curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest possible ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... of the Cathedral the lights of the great gay city twinkled and danced and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer. The sound of clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels, of tinkling guitars and gay roundelays, rose out of that obscure distance, seeming far off and plaintive like the dream of a life that is past. The great church seemed a vast world; the long aisles of statued pinnacles with their pure floorings of white marble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... those who were asleep, and the tinkling sound of pouring vodki was heard . . . The Deacon was murmuring something. The clouds swam low, so low that it seemed as if they would touch the roof of the house and would knock it over ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... sunshine; and, but seldom heard, The sweet bird's song become a hollow sound; And the gale murmuring indivisibly, Reserved its solemn murmur, more distinct From many a note of many a waterbreak, And the brook's chatter; on whose islet stones The dingy kidling, with its tinkling bell, Leapt frolicksome, or old romantic goat Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on With low and languid thought, for I had found That grandest scenes have but imperfect charms Where the eye vainly wanders, nor beholds One spot with which the heart ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... like her, within, to be an earnest admirer, and perhaps he suspected the clouds. He, being deep and surly and always uncomfortably in earnest, of course preferred the lively Katrinka, whose nature was made of a hundred tinkling bells. She was a coquette in her infancy, a coquette in her childhood, and now a coquette in her school days. Without a thought of harm she coquetted with her studies, her duties, even her little ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... their wives and children. Of all the gems that adorn the priestly diadem, none is so precious and indispensable in the eyes of the people as the peerless jewel of chastity. Without this pearl the voice of a Hyacinthe "becomes as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal;" with it, the humblest missioner gains ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... stony nullah, hard by a clump of crooked saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo's gate, some jackals brought to light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe of Thuggee. But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... little older, I should imagine. I set off with good hopes, but soon found that nobody wanted educated people—they were a complete drug. At last I obtained a situation as waiter, at a posting-house on the road, where I ran along all day long to the tinkling of bells, with hot brandy-and-water ever under my nose; I answered all the bells, but the head-waiter took all the money. However, I made acquaintances there; and at last obtained a situation as clerk to a corn-chandler, where I kept the books; but he failed, and then ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of this retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess's Place; and in Princess's Place was Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, and much resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess's Arms, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... though we had neither the caustic humor nor poetical melancholy of Jacques, nor the brilliant wit and despotical fancifulness of the princess shepherd-boy duly given, we had the warbling of birds, and sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, to comfort us. I hope it is not profanation to say, "These should ye have done, and not have left the others undone." Nevertheless, and in spite of all, the enchantment of Shakespeare's inventions is such to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... poetical sinews in them. For proof whereof, let but most of the verses be put in prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of words, with a tinkling sound of ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... the swart ploughman, sowing summer grain, And tinkling sheep-bell on the distant plain, And pastures ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... the best Sunday of all. In May not only is the whole valley knee-deep in grass and ferns and flowers and bluebells. There is something still better! In May the burial-ground is all singing and tinkling silently with fairy spires of columbines. Garden flowers in most other places, they are quite wild here. Purple and deep-blue and pale-pink columbines are growing up everywhere; each flower with its own ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... house him, winter-proof: All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined[18] his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars 185 As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt.[19] 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... As his own shadow and that of his steed were lengthened out on the grass, the smoke of his friend's hut, curling up among the gum trees, appeared before him. He called out as he rode up to the door, but no voice answered; the distant sound, however, of tinkling sheep bells told him that the flock of the station was being driven into a pen for the night, where the new-born lambs could be better protected from the dingoes and hawks, their chief enemies, than if left on the open. Unsaddling ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... trees to the brook-side and stood listening to the tinkling of the cowbells in the wood lot beyond. The light faded early on these September evenings, and the smoky mist had begun to rise from the water when they turned back again. The kitchen windows were already growing yellow, and through them the faithful Millicent could be seen bustling about ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that would not be unbecoming to a duchess. Leonora is treacherous, but as an elf is permitted to be. As for Jasper and Mrs. Petulengro, they are as radiant as Mercutio and Rosalind. They have all the sweetness of unimprisoned air: they would prefer, like Borrow, "the sound of the leaves and the tinkling of the waters" to the parson and the church; and the smell of the stable, which is strong in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," to the smell of ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... to make all Christianity consist in giving up money, time, and talents, unless they are the expressions of love to the Lord, and flow from a desire to meet His mind and promote his glory, they are but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Yet surely, they are the natural external expressions of internal love; and although they be insincerely assumed by Hypocrisy, it is her homage to truth; and although the self-righteous Pharisee may present the semblance of devotion, as a vain ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... little, changed her embroidery hoop from her right hand to her left, laid her fingers in his palm, blushed when his hand closed upon them eagerly, and laughed again when her gold thimble slipped and rolled tinkling down the steps. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... ceased their tinkling, and the long covered van, with its four horses, drew up in front of our "House of Many Gables," in Lake City. Watty, then a tall lad of eighteen, over-coated, fur-capped, and gloved, went quickly out, banging the front door after him, while ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... he went to the park to watch the first procession. It was a very pretty sight, for the hoops had been decorated with bright ribbons, and with bells which made a merry tinkling sound. Ned was the captain, as he was the oldest and could manage his hoop most skilfully. He led the children through the park, stopping now and then for breath. Whenever anyone dropped his hoop, he had to ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... this attitudinizing was very pretty, the bangles tinkling on their round arms, while the sarong half-revealed, half-concealed the curves of their figures. Most of them danced with their heads turned away, but whenever the evolutions of their measured step brought them face to face with us, they would hold up the sarong so that ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... know, while thus the quiet-colored eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... noisy, smelly, picturesque city it was! The cries of the hawkers, the importunities of the guides, the venders and cabmen, the whining beggars; the clatter of horses and carriages and carts; strolling singers, goats with tinkling bells, the barking of outcast dogs, and the brawling and bawling of children, hundreds upon hundreds of children! Merrihew grew dizzy trying to absorb the whole canvas at once. How the sturdy little campagna ponies ran up and down the narrow winding streets! ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... knew her, and he knew The awful symbols borne in either hand; The golden urn that laves Demeter's dew, The handles wreathed with asps, the mystic wand; The shaken seistron's music, tinkling through The temples ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his folly—that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... criticism along the river. Bright crimson carpet usually covered the floor of the long, tunnel-like cabin. Down the center were ranged the tables, about which, thrice a day, the hungry passengers gathered to be fed, while from the ceiling depended chandeliers, from which hung prismatic pendants, tinkling pleasantly as the boat vibrated with the throb of her engines. At one end of the main saloon was the ladies' cabin, discreetly cut off by crimson curtains; at the other, the bar, which, in a period when copious ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... by the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of sparkling oratory, may command a hearing, may succeed in breathing a new life into this modern Mohammedanism, and make the name of the martyred Joseph ring as loud, and stir the souls of men as much, as the mighty name ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "ours is a much paler yellow," and then there was a great tinkling of china, and passing of dishes, and talking and laughing, and no one noticed that I was not in my usual place in the hall. I could not get over my dread of the green creature, and I had crept under ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... delights; I would revel in being. And if, at the end of the hour, it should please God to tell me, 'I take thee into my service forever,' the furthest limit of desire would be passed; after which the attainable ambitions of life, and its joys of whatever kind, would not be so much as the tinkling of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... squatting up close to Renny on the lawn, and her arm is twisted round Pauline's waist. She's big, and dressed awful grand. She has gold bangles on her arms, and tinkling gold things round her neck, and she's here, and I thought course you ought for to know. I thought so 'cos I love you. Aren't you pleased? Aren't I the sort of little girl you could perhaps give ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... bronze-coloured waists of these well-shaped Women were boldly presented to any one's examination and reflected the lights of the room. Their beautiful arms and their ankles were covered with bracelets. At the least of their movements they all set up a tinkling silvery sound, and the little sister-in-law, who might easily be mistaken for an automaton doll, could hardly move under her load of ornaments. The young grandmother, our hostess, had a ring in her left nostril, which reached to the lower part of the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... mentioned: yet there is not a half-witted prater in the House but can divide with every new minister on his side, except Lyttelton, whenever he pleases. They actually do every day bring in popular bills, and on the first tinkling of the brass, all the new bees swarm back to the Tory side of the House. The other day, on the Flanders army, Mr. Pitt came down to prevent this: he was very ill, but made a very strong and much admired speech ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... cure's sabots was the response that answered to the bell we pulled, a bell attached to a diminutive brick house lying at the foot of the churchyard. The tinkling of the cracked-voiced bell had hardly ceased when ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I heard the tinkling of the parlor pianoforte. Music has soothing charms for me, though I have not a savage breast. I drew near, and found Miss Tarlingford trifling with the keys,—those keys which lock together so many chains of human sympathy. She rose, and gave out demonstrations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... valley below Calistoga, we turned sharply to the south and plunged into the thick of the wood. A rude trail rapidly mounting; a little stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on all sides a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the early season, where thimble-berry played the part ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wake. Musical cries came echoing as the saeter-girls chid on the cattle, that moved slowly up to the northern heights, with lowings and tinkling of bells. But Peer lay still where he was—and presently the dairy-maid at the saeter caught sight of what seemed an empty boat drifting on the lake, and was afraid ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen in profile, the moon, glared upon the helpless place with something of a cat's nocturnal stare of glassy vision for a stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve tinkling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things almost unto death, and still the light shone luridly through the window-curtains of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, and still the lonely musician sat stiffly at a dinner-table spread for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... mile from home, measuring by a straight line through the intervening hill; in time they were two hours away. San Pietro had climbed gallantly, with little silvery bells tinkling at his ears, to the summit of the mountain, and had descended, with conviction and with accuracy, planting firm little hard hoofs in the slippery path where the dark soil bore a coating of green grass and moss. For all their hard morning's work they were still on the confines of the Villa Gianelli, ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... bell went on tinkling as she walked across the fields. It had various rates of movement to indicate to distant worshippers the progress of the time, and she gave a careful ear to its warnings, so regulating her steps as only to enter the ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... fell on the roof with a gentle murmur, tinkling merrily as though it were pleased to hear the happy laughter of the children playing in the garret of Michael Gratz's house in Philadelphia. Six children romped there that Saturday afternoon in early springtime, ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... a while. Soon he heard sleigh-bells tinkling past the window, then far down the road. Father had hitched Teddy, the buckskin horse, to the big sleigh and ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... the will to gather data concerning Reddy's too-oft maligned Titian locks, Hippy began a lively warbling which had nothing in common with the tinkling melody of the mandolin. As a result the patient instrument immediately ceased its complaining tinkle. Hippy, however, lilted on, undisturbed, for a matter of five seconds, when a chorus of threatening protests warned him ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... caps, and a small black spot in the middle of the brownish breast. One white wing bar is a distinguishing characteristic, and a better one is the difference in color of the two mandibles; the upper one is black and the lower one yellow. The tinkling notes of the tree sparrows sound like the music a pipe organist makes when he uses the sweet organ and the ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... time we go, breath o' bee, Heliotrope. All the house is lit for me; Here's the room where we may dwell, Filled with guests delectable. Hark! I hear the silver bell Ever tinkling at her throat. I have thought it was a boat, By the Graces put afloat, On the billows of her heart. I have thought it was a boat With a bird in it, whose part Was a solitary note. Now I know 'tis Heliotrope That the moonlight, bursting ope, Changed to silver on her throat. ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... Rabbit, as he and the little squirrel hurried down the Old Cow Path to the Shady Forest. Just then they met Mrs. Cow. She was wagging her head back and forth to brush off the flies and the little bell on her leather collar made a pretty tinkling sound. ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... help thinking, as he sat there and sent streams of milk tinkling down upon the bottom of the tin pail, what a fine scheme it would be to build a hoop big enough for the Muley Cow to jump through. It ought to be easy to teach her. For everybody knew that she was a famous jumper. She made more trouble, jumping the fence, than ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the entrance of the court. They heard the remote tinkling of the front door bell. Jenkins passed through. The cold air invading the hall and the dining room told them he had opened the door. His sharp exclamation recalled Howells's report which, at their direction, he had failed to mail. Had his exclamation been drawn by an accuser? Bobby started to rise. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... treacherous hedge led me nowhere but to a horsepond; and when I had struggled out of the adjacent mire, and attained a rising ground, I could only see about four yards square of bare down, all the rest being grey fog. Altogether, the scene was worth something. I heard what I thought the tinkling of a sheep bell through the cloud, which dulled the sound like cotton wool; I pursued the call, when anon, the veil began to grow thin, and revealed, looking just like a transparency, a glimpse ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shouting with revelry, and glorying in her triumph, treading down in their career those precious pearls, the saints and martyrs, into the mire beneath their swinish feet. "Before her you may behold Wantonness playing the tinkling cymbal, Insolence beating the drum, and Pride blowing the trumpet. Every vice is there with his emblems; and the seller of pardons, with his crucifix and triple crown, is distributing his largess of perdition. The voices ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... of the Golden Key there issued forth a tinkling sound, so merry and good-humored that it suggested the idea of some one working blithely, and made quite pleasant music. Tink, tink, tink—clear as a silver bell, and audible at every pause of the streets' harsher noises, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... got adrift, that I had made my fanciful and disastrous cruise. All this was simple, straightforward matter of fact, and threatened to demolish all the cobweb romance I had been spinning, when fortunately I again heard the tinkling of a harp. I raised ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... squirrels bark and shake the branches as they jumped from tree to tree. I heard the katydid sing, and the whip-poor-will, and the deep basso-profundo of the bullfrog on the bank of the pond. I heard the drumming of a pheasant and the hoot of a wise old owl away over in "Sleepy Hollow." I heard the tinkling of bells on the distant hills, sweetly mingling with the happy chorus of the song birds in their evening serenade. Every living creature seemed to be chanting a hymn of praise to its God; and as I sat there and listened to the weird, wild harmonies, a vision of the past opened before ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... these are mingled With the breeze that drifts away, Filled with thin petals of cherry blossom, Like tinkling laughter ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... at sounds, at the hiss of the flame in the grate, the fall of the ashes on the hearth, the tinkling of ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... charming companion, and her dancing and laughter—for she laughed at times like the tinkling of a silver bell—did much to enliven their ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... left—one of which is occasionally opened just far enough to permit a very diminutive call-boy to be squeezed through—seem to lead to unexplored regions. But stranger than even the clerk, or the undefined but yet perfectly tangible weirdness of the doors is the tinkling of a sepulchral bell, and the responsive tramp of a heavy-heeled boot. And strangest of all is a huge black board whereon are marked the figures from one to twenty, over some of which the word 'Out' is written; and the visitor notices with ever-increasing wonder that the tinkling ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
