"Buzzing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rich flower-beds gleam like beds of jewels in the radiant sunshine. The rookery is almost deserted, a solitary sleepy caw being only heard now and then at long intervals. The singing of birds, and the buzzing of busy insects sound faint, distant, and musical. On a shady seat, among the trees, Mrs. Joyce is just visible, working in the open air. One of her daughters sits reading on the turf at her feet. The other is giving the younger children a ride by turns on the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... came over her a great blackness, and a buzzing in her head like the sound of many bees in the summer time, and she fell upon her face, unconscious of everything. How long she lay thus she did not know, but when she came to herself again there was no light in the room except that made by the dying fire upon the hearth ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... his trance of terror and bewilderment. Miss Anne kept near to him all night, and Stephen lingered about her, making a seat for her upon the grass, and taking care that Martha also should be at hand to wait upon her. There was a great buzzing of people about them, hurrying to and fro; and every now and then they heard different conjectures as to how the fire began. But it was not, generally known that the constables from Longville and Botfield had contrived to arrest Black Thompson ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... walk was taken in complete silence. Florence's head felt as if it were going round. There was a buzzing noise in her ears. Higher and yet higher over her moral nature did the waves of temptation rise. She struggled, but each struggle was feebler than the last. They reached Hilchester, and Bertha looked at ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... his question by saying, "Never." A quiet seemed to creep over the hot landscape. The great chestnut and basswood trees seemed to be taking their noon rest; only the buzzing of myriads of bees filled the air with their sound; a robin settled near us with open mouth and drooping wings; the maple leaves hung limp and silent, showing their silver linings; only the warbling vireo sang her ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... thinking, the poor who dreaded the coming of the tax collector like a visit from the Evil One; imagine the busy dockyard in which she was built—can't you seem to hear the clang of the riveters and the buzzing of the steam saws? Then take that Norwegian boat passing the fort there; think of her birthplace in far Norway, think of the places she has since seen, imagine her masts growing in the forests on the mountain side of lonely fiords, where the silence is so intense that ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... of that throng, if the train of gold left by the Nabob wherever he passed, and marking his royal progress, had not made everything smooth for her. She followed an usher through that labyrinth of corridors, folding doors, empty, echoing rooms, filled with a buzzing noise which circulated through the air in the building and passed out through its walls, as if the very stones were impregnated with that verbosity and added the echoes of bygone days to those of all the voices of to-day. Passing through a corridor, she spied a little dark ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... humble-bee, barred with tawny orange, worked his way up from his hole in the bank, buzzing shrilly in an impatient, stifled manner at finding his dwelling blocked as to its exit by a mountainous bulk. Ralph Peden rose in a hurry. The beast seemed to be inside his coat. He had instinctively hated bees ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... apparently little creature might use such arguments about the effect of distance, and might appeal to such laws of sight and hearing as I, if unlearned in those things, might be unable wholly to reject. But if there were a thousand flies, all buzzing, to appearance, about the great creature; and, to a fly, declaring, each one for himself, that he was bigger than the quadruped; and all giving different and frequently contradictory reasons; and each one despising and opposing the reasons of the others—I should feel quite at ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... another which followed, Frank found that the men of the bodyguard were fully on the alert, and that twice as many sentries as usual were about the place. But all was silent save a low murmur from the far-spreading city—a low, strange buzzing burr as if from some vast hive, suggesting that the whole place was awake and in expectation ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... long day's flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah's garden gave its productions just the very quality which these laborious little wizards wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New England honey. When Clifford heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the heart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful sense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free air in the whole height from earth to heaven. After all, there need be no question why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is very variable—terror, excitement, numbness, tingling, irritability, twitching, a feeling of something passing up from the toes to the head, delusions of sight, smell, taste, or hearing (ringing, or buzzing, etc.), palpitation, throbbing in the head, an impulse to run or spin around—any of these may warn a victim that a fit is at hand. Some patients "lose themselves" and make curious mistakes ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... A far-away and faint buzzing sound came to Perk's ears but instead of adding to his excitement it really seemed to cool his blood, for surely this had nothing whatever to do with snakes of ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... on one side and swung his nose on the other. Certainly those things buzzing about looked like bees, though he never before saw a bees' nest of that shape, or in ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... pleasing diet makes us eat and drink more than ordinary. Why then, instead of fine flour, do not we thicken our broth with coarse bran? And instead of asparagus, why do we not dress nettle-tops and thistles; and leaving this fragrant and pleasant wine, drink sour, harsh liquor that gnats have been buzzing about a long while? Because, perhaps you may reply, wholesome feeding doth not consist in a perfect avoiding of all that is pleasing, but in moderating the appetite in that respect, and making it prefer ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... plane passed ten feet or more above his head. It rose, and climbed steeply, and passed again above the now buzzing, agitated hangars, and climbed above the hills behind the flying field as some men went running and others moved by swifter means toward the shaken, nerve-racked Ribiera, on whose lips ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... prosperous little railway town of Bradin, and drew up at old Doctor Leeds' snug house. A fast express had just thundered shrieking by. A strong, cutting wind racing in from the Northeast was tearing through the sinuous telegraph wires with a buzzing sound, the weird prelude ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... how very soon This silly little fly, Hearing his wily, flattering words, Came slowly flitting by: With buzzing wings she hung aloft, Then near and nearer drew— Thought only of her brilliant eyes And green and purple hue; Thought only of her crested head— Poor foolish thing! At last Up jumped the cunning spider, And fiercely held ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... chance in our favor. Tell me—have you ever heard him complain of vertigo, or of a buzzing in ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... night he was restless and feverish. The next morning brought a new trouble. Once let a fellow get in arrest and all the buzzing contents of Pandora's box will be turned loose upon his unlucky head. He had risen late, could eat no breakfast, and his wound was troubling him. There came a knock at the door, and the orderly with the commanding officer's compliments,—"Was that horse of the lieutenant's ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... little lines appeared in the corners of his mouth. It was as if his nervous vitality were sapped from him in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often at night when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator outside brought him back ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... flashing red lights. Bart was stretched taut all the time, listening for the small codelike buzzers and ticks that warned him of filled tanks, leads in need of servicing, answers ready. Ringg's metal-fatigues testing kit was a bewildering muddle of boxes, meters, rods and earphones, each buzzing and clicking ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... dead men and their horses; and so many blue and green flies rose from them, bred of the moisture of the bodies and the heat of the sun, that when they were up in the air they hid the sun. It was wonderful to hear them buzzing; and where they settled, there they infected the air, and brought the plague with them. Mon petit maistre, I wish you had been there with me, to experience the smells, and make report thereof to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... where the machinery could be heard buzzing. The professor, with Andy and Mark followed. They expected to see the colored man caught in some shaft or belt, but he was nowhere ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... great heat-swollen figure stinking in the sunshine. As I moved forward a swarm of green and black flies, which had been feeding on his face and crawling up his nostrils, went up in a humming, buzzing cloud. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... thick of the great driving purpose of his life is turned aside or stopped by the biting or buzzing of a few insects. If even they can't be brushed aside, let them buzz and bite, but don't let the great passion of a life be affected by them. Indeed, they will be clean forgot, even while they are remembered, by ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... motion of faces: all this filled him with a deep pity for those who had to live their lives under such conditions. Was it to this that our boasted civilisation had brought us? and yet it seemed that the normal taste of ordinary people turned by preference to this humming and buzzing life, rather than to the quiet and lonely life in the green spaces of the country; Hugh had little doubt that the vast majority of those he saw, even the pale, patient workpeople who were peeping, as they toiled, grimy and sweat-stained, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her eyes extraordinarily dark, but nothing to suggest the illness that had been rumored. Rather disappointed, they turned their eyes upon her companion; and then the whispering broke out like the buzzing of a ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the critical social mass for change will exist only when more are outside the System than inside. I suspect when that happens we'll be able to return to direct telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are always blocked." A buzzing sound came out of a small black box on the doctor's desk, startling Connor who in his executive days had received all such signals directly in his head. "Well, I've another patient waiting so this will have to be ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... journeyman labourer. I had come to the right place. A very wonderful city is Peshawar—rather let us say, two cities—the compounds, the fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace as their strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaar humming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours that come up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the camel caravans loaded with merchandise from Afghanistan, Bokhara, and farther. And it is because of this that Peshawar is the Key of India, and a city of Romance that stands at ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... followed by Mr. Crutchley. He would not eat with us, but was chatty and in goodhumour, and as usual, when in spirits, saucily sarcastic. For instance, it is generally half my employment in hot evenings here to rescue some or other poor buzzing idiot of an insect from the flame of a candle. This, accordingly, I was performing with a Harry Longlegs, which, after much trial ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... glory of the passing day. A gentle breeze came up from the south, and the young corn chattered with its multitudinous tongues in the field below. The dog lay at the charcoal-burner's feet, blinking in the sun and snapping lazily at a buzzing fly. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... you so!" lisped the Barn Swallow; and a chorus of ohs and ahs arose that sounded like a strange message buzzing along ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... red with fever and shame; so bewildered that it seemed to her as if the river had left a veil over her eyes, a buzzing in her ears. At last she was ushered into a smaller room, into the presence of a pompous individual, wearing the insignia of the Legion of Honor, Monsieur le Commissaire in person, who was sipping his 'cafe au lait' and reading ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... for teaching the one or two poor useless subjects he can in a sort of way teach, and practically nothing is done to help or equip him to teach anything else. By reason of this uproar, the world is full now of anxious muddled parents, their poor brains buzzing with echoes of Froebel, Tolstoy, Herbert Spencer, Ruskin, Herbart, Colonel Parker, Mr. Harris, Matthew Arnold, and the Morning Post, trying to find something better. They know nothing of what is right, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... winking? Not only the pastor, but all his flock, were in need of wire spectacles now, to keep their vision clear and their foreheads calm. Thicker than flies around the milk-pail, rumours came flitting daily; and even the night—that fair time of thinking—was busy with buzzing multitude. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... very pleasant, and the locust-trees in front of it made the air heavy with perfume. There is no flower like the locust for feeding honey to the sense of smell. Half the bees from William Sebastian's hives were buzzing overhead, when Bobaday and aunt Corinne sat down by Zene on the log steps to unload their troubles. All three were in their Sunday clothes. Zene had even greased his boots, and looked with satisfaction on the moist surfaces which he stretched forth ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... whether to take offence, but decided not to—at least not until she could make the remark which was buzzing in her small mind. It seemed strange, she said, that Mrs. North should come, not only to Old Chester, but right across ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... of a short December afternoon. From the scholars in the little log school-house in the Stillman district rose a buzzing sound as they bent over their desks, intent on books or mischief, as the case might be. The teacher, a good-looking young man of twenty or thereabouts, was busy with a class in arithmetic when a shrill ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... agree in reciprocating that appellation to Dr. Wace himself. I once visited the Hazar Mosque, the great University of Mahommedanism, in Cairo, in ignorance of the fact that I was unprovided with proper authority. A swarm of angry under-graduates, as I suppose I ought to call them, came buzzing about me and my guide; and if I had known Arabic, I suspect that "dog of an infidel" would have been by no means the most "unpleasant" of the epithets showered upon me, before I could explain and apologise for the mistake. If I had had the pleasure of Dr. Wace's ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... watch the door of No. 8, who had spent three months in the house without paying a sou, and was daily suspected of attempting to abscond. All these, and a dozen similar stories, and half the gossip of the town, would come buzzing round Madelon's ears as she sat gravely balancing one card one the top of the other. She heard and comprehended them with such comprehension as was in her; and no doubt they modified in some degree her childish views of ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... he could be hidden under some loose stuff. After that the start was made at exactly eight; and when they sped down the river at a rapid pace the negro from time to time poked his head out from his coverings to look in amazement at the buzzing little motor; and once even ventured to raise it until he could see how ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... the bees dispute, And brought before a wasp the suit. The judge was puzzled to decide, For nothing could be testified Save that around this honey-comb There had been seen, as if at home, Some longish, brownish, buzzing creatures, Much like the bees in wings and features. But what of that? for marks the same, The hornets, too, could truly claim. Between assertion, and denial, The wasp, in doubt, proclaim'd new trial; And, hearing what an ant-hill swore, Could see no ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... man, for all his greatness, has turned out even sooner than himself. For he also has had no candles and no cigars; and he well knows, that before the sun looks into his portals, all his halls will be overflowing and buzzing with the matin susurrus of courtiers—the "mane salutantes."[4] it is as much as his popularity is worth to absent himself, or to keep people waiting. But surely, the reader may think, this poor man he might keep waiting. No, he might ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the Gilded Youth was fine gold. He was called for a wounded man. As he cranked up his car he asked rather too casually, "Have you seen our friend from the boat—the pretty nurse?" We started to answer; the stretcher bearer called again and in an instant he went buzzing away and we returned ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... their contributions. It was a cent contribution, and we found it very difficult, under the contagious influence of the hum from the Amen corner, not to rise and go forward and deposit a cent. If anything could extract the pennies from a reluctant worldling, it would be the buzzing of this tune. It went on and on, until the house appeared to be drained dry of its cash; and we inferred by the stopping of the melody that the preacher's salary was secure for the time being. On inquiring, we ascertained that the pecuniary flood that evening had risen to the height ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing appears to be {catatonic}, but never gets out of catatonia, while a buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. "The program buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into order." ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... window seemed to Hatteras to have more explicit language than the Kru boys' chatterings. He penetrated into the interior of the house, and reckoned up the doors. He opened one of them ever so slightly, and the buzzing came through like the hum of a wheel in a factory, revolving in the collar of a strap. He flung the door open and stood upon the threshold. The atmosphere of the room appalled him; he felt the sweat break cold upon his forehead and a deadly sickness in ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the night disappeared with the clamorous advance of the day. She became in an instant conscious of the grievous pangs of a body which seemed to have been flung back to her in a damaged state. It ached all over. Her head throbbed with a dull buzzing sound, and she was so tired that she could hardly stand. She felt as if she must lie down—in the street, anywhere. And she was tormented by thirst. But she ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... long-bodied man, buttoned up to the throat in a light green coat, which made his body look still longer than it was. He wore, besides, drab breeches and gaiters, a white neckerchief, and a broad-brimmed white hat. Amid all the buzzing noise of the games, and the perpetual passing in and out of the people, he seemed perfectly calm and abstracted, without the smallest particle of excitement in his composition. He exhibited no indication of weariness, nor, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... in a corner of the transept where I could see all and be little seen, I with the rest awaited the coming of the overdue bridegroom. Meanwhile the usual buzzing and bobbing of heads went on amongst the usual little group near the foot of the altar. Now and then one caught a glisten of tears through a widow's veil, and the little bride, dressed quietly in grey, talked with the usual nervous gaiety to her girl friends, and made the usual whispered ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the head cavities is soon perceived by those who are beginning to sing. Sometimes in producing their first high notes young people become nervous and irritated when singing high tones at the curious buzzing in the head and ears. After a short time, however, this sensation is no longer an irritation, and the singer can gauge in a way where his tones are placed by getting a mental idea of where the resonance to each particular tone ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... I was a member of the grand deputation. While I strolled about the waiting room, conversing with M. Villemain about Cracow, the Vienna treaties and the frontier of the Rhine, I could hear the buzzing of the groups around me, and scraps ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Morton, "but that infernal soldier, that's buzzing about her, may one day be the husband of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... town. The warlike hue diffused itself. Horsemen were frequent, and a continual entering of new adherents, men in small or large clusters, marching in from the country, asking the way to the Prince. For all the buzzing and thronging, great order prevailed. Women sat or stood at windows, or passed in and out of dark wynds, or, escorted, picked their way at street crossings. Now and then went by a sedan-chair. Many women showed in their faces a truly religious fervor, a passionate Jacobite ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean strength, and in 1100 it had become "a veritable hornets' nest, buzzing with warriors." ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... she cried; "nobody could!" and she sprang behind the table, making at the same time another slap at the buzzing insect. ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... but at the entry of the drawing-room, where the talk was buzzing like bees in a lime-tree, he put his hand on the switch, and showed the whites of his eyes. "Shall I dare you to switch it off?" he said to Urquhart, who replied, "Don't, or I shall do it." Lancelot and he entered the room; ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... suddenly uplifted with a masculine desire to protect her. She looked so tiny, so frail! He was filled with strength and power, and so glad was his heart that it sang loudly and thumped until he heard a buzzing behind his ears. Suddenly ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... over them, now, that they felt choking sensations, with pain and buzzing in their ears. Then the end must be near. Unconsciousness, at any rate. That loss of the senses would be the end, so far as any ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... searchlights were playing, shrapnel was bursting, and a motor machine gun let off volleys from sheer excitement, the sharp tut-tut-tut adding to the general confusion. In the pauses the elusive Zepp. could be heard buzzing like some gigantic angry bee. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It looked like a fireworks display, and the row was increasing each minute. Every Frenchman in the neighbourhood let ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... includes hissing and buzzing —> 409. [Hissing sounds.] Sibilation. — N. sibilance, sibilation; zip; hiss &c. v.; sternutation; high note &c. 410. [animals that hiss] goose, serpent, snake (animal sounds) 412. [animals that buzz] insect, bug; bee, mosquito, wasp, fly. [inanimate things that hiss] tea kettle, pressure ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... from the fire-place, and was called upon for various entertainments for which he was famous: such as the accurate imitation of a train just starting, in which two pieces of bone were used with considerable effect; as also of a bumble-bee, who (very much out of season) went buzzing about, and was always being caught with a heavy bang on the heads and shoulders of those who least expected it; all which specimens of his talents were received with due applause by his ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The Real Enemy, and, while endorsing all that had been said, asserted that "this enemy is among our own sex." "It is not the anti-suffragist," she said, "she is our unwilling ally, for when there is danger that we might fall asleep she arouses us by buzzing about our ears with her misrepresentations. It is not the indifferent suffragist, she can be galvanized into life. Our real enemy is the dead or dormant suffragist," and then she preached a stirring sermon on the necessity for hard, incessant, faithful work ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... his name being called from the path, but he pressed himself the closer into his hiding place. Here at least he was sheltered from mockery. An oppressive sultriness was in the air, sleepy buzzing drones were creeping about on the ground. A ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... the bottom of the tree, they found themselves, to their great surprise, in a sort of dim twilight, produced by myriads of luminous specks which appeared buzzing confusedly over the surface of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... phrenological Spurzheim ever felt the bumps of a blue-bottle!) then his whimsical vagaries effectually defy repose; now settling with his tickling bandy legs upon your nose, and industriously insinuating his sharp proboscis, and anon abruptly buzzing in your ear—no secret—off he shoots again ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... the rest of the civilised world. From having been the prey of the inexpressible foreigner in his shooting season, it suddenly becomes, and remains during about five months, the happy hunting ground of the silent flea, the buzzing fly and the insinuating mosquito. The streets are, indeed, still full of people, and long lines of carriages may be seen towards sunset in the Villa Borghesa and in the narrow Corso. Rome and the Romans are not easily parted ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... for three hours then waited, blocked. A military motor had stuck deeply in the mud and the wheels were buzzing round uselessly, so we helped to dig her out. Every one's inside cried for breakfast, and when at last we found a swampy plain, Whatmough and Cutting flung themselves upon an old tree trunk and cut it up ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... himself. This other lover of Hector's was Bertha, his wife. For a moment he saw nothing but that; all thought was crushed within him. His temples beat furiously, he heard a dreadful buzzing in his ears, it seemed to him as if the earth were about to swallow him up. He fell into a chair; from purple he became ashy white. Great tears trickled down ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... moments, outside life resumed its sway. Buzzing talk swept out the memory of the music. One song from an opera brought thought back to its usual level. Men and women looked at each other through their opera-glasses, and, bringing distant outside life close to them, fancied themselves in near communion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to my child from his princely Highness, together with the confirmation of the same by his Imperial Majesty, and after that my patent of nobility; and, lastly, began to publish the banns between my child and the young lord. Dear reader, there arose a murmur throughout the church like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. (N.B.-These scripta were burnt in the fire which broke out in the castle a year ago, as I shall hereafter relate, wherefore I cannot insert them ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... sway, One instinct seizes, and transports away. None need a guide, by sure attraction led, And strong impulsive gravity of head; None want a place, for all their centre found, Hung to the goddess, and cohered around. Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are seen The buzzing bees ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... movement of the boy, he pricked his ears in the direction of this miniature stalker of game. The rest of the time he either dozed off, or, suddenly aroused, snapped at a fly with that fierce look in his eyes with which dogs and fly-swatting women view these buzzing pests. ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin. But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... contemplation fed, And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain, The sweet tongu'd Philomel percht ore my head, And chanted forth a most melodious strain, Which rapt me so with wonder and delight, I judg'd my hearing better then my sight, And wisht me wings with her awhile to ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... the Puritan, sitting all this time with open mouth listening to our quarrel, yet scarcely comprehending a word that passed,—"this gay French cockerel would throw us against those eighteen men below, to fight our way from here to the Ohio, as if the Spaniards between were so many buzzing mosquitoes, and you are not greatly averse to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... irresistibly attracted by music, and especially by those musical tones which resemble the buzzing of the female; the males alone are thus attracted. (Nuttall and Shipley, and Sir Hiram Maxim, quoted in Nature, October 31, 1901, p. 655, and in Lancet, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lesser cloud, with silver wreathy sides. In sudden gusts awakes the nightly breeze Across the wood, and rustles thro' the trees; Or whistles on the plain with eddying sweep; Or issues from the glen in wailings deep, Which die away upon the open vale: Whilst in the pauses of the ruffling gale The buzzing night-fly rises from the ground, And wings his flight in many a mazy round; And lonely owls begin their nightly strain, So hateful to the ear of 'nighted swain. Thou do'st the weary trav'ller mislead; Thy voice is roughsome, and uncooth thy weed, O gloomy Night! for black thy shadows be, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service. Mr. Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the buzzing city—he could do nothing. ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... inside, one coming quickly forward before the rest. It was the Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He spoke, but what he said I knew not, for the stark upturned face of Juste Duvarney was there before me, there was a great buzzing in my ears, and I fell back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to sleep soundly, I was awakened by fancying that the doctor was running his lancet into me, and was about to assure him that he was operating by mistake on me instead of on some other patient, when I heard a loud whizzing, buzzing sound. I hadn't been careful enough in closing the curtains, and a big mosquito had got in, and was revelling in my fresh blood. I tried in vain to catch the active creature, who was soon joined by others of his abominable ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... by the labour of my History; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character, in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been entitled. The freedom of my writings has indeed provoked an implacable tribe; but, as I was safe from the stings, I was soon accustomed to the buzzing of the hornets: my nerves are not tremblingly alive, and my literary temper is so happily framed, that I am less sensible of pain than of pleasure. The rational pride of an author may be offended, rather than flattered, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... plunged in a state of annihilation. Take me in my moments of tranquility, I am indolence and timidity itself; a word to speak, the least trifle to perform, appear an intolerable labor; everything alarms and terrifies me; the very buzzing of a fly will make me shudder; I am so subdued by fear and shame, that I would gladly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and Clare sat at a table in the patio, trying to read. The light was bad, for buzzing insects hovered about the lamp, but the house had not cooled down yet and she wanted to distract her troubled thoughts. Footsteps and voices rose from the street outside, where the citizens were passing on their way to the plaza, but the sounds were faint and muffled by the high walls. The ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the hurry is good, Dagaeoga. The white man will not go into the forest with his ax at daybreak, unless the need of haste is great, but it is not a fort they build. Mingled with the fall of the axes I hear another note. It is a humming and a buzzing. It is heard in these forests much less often than the thud of the ax. Ah! I was in doubt at first, but I know it now! It is the sound made by a great saw as ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... assemblage of the manu patia, the wasps brought from abroad, and quite ten thousand were clustered on the church ceiling, while thousands more patrolled the air just over our heads, courting and quarreling, buzzing and alighting on our heads and necks. The preacher in a knee-length Prince Albert of black wool, opened so that I saw he had nothing but an undershirt beneath, recited the ceremony and addressed the couple. He took a ring from his trousers-pocket, unwrapping and opening ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... breathed her bloody steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roared or murmured like a mountain-stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much—and fall the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... bundle and then a bale, and all at once the camel's back had more than it could bear. April was hardly dead before the college world was in a turmoil, by the side of which the Young affair was the mere buzzing ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... God says; and I love you. I wish to save you, and not to destroy you. If God really hated any man, do you suppose that he would endure that man for a moment in his universe? Do you suppose that he would not sweep that man away, as easily and as quickly as we do a buzzing gnat when it torments us? Do you fancy that God lets you, or me, or any man, or any creature live one single instant, except in the hope of saving him, and of making him better than he is; of making him of some use, somewhere, some day or other? Do you suppose, I say, that God endures sinners ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... think," she said repeatedly. And they all told her they thought their plan was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal of every other advocate "Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks—" and "Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises—" and so on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naive and pathetic, egged ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... were after me with red-hot pitchforks, expecting to hear a bullet whistle by every moment. However, nothing happened, and when several hundred yards away, I halted for about ten minutes to listen for the bugle sounding the alarm. It would have been some satisfaction to know that the camp was buzzing like a bee-hive, and all on my account! But, owing to the clever way in which my room mates worked it, my absence was not noticed, and so this pleasure ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... pleasant mood, for he whacked impatiently at such buzzing pests as were still on the wing, and when a perspiring Greek set a plate of soup before him he took umbrage at the presence of the fellow's thumb in the liquid. The argument that followed angered the old man still further, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... moment of the actual robbery had passed there was a general buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitement replacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare bed room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke's wife, having first ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... patching up the holes in the purses of profligates and spendthrifts. I never was a worshipper of money, but I knew its value, and wasn't disposed to make ducks and drakes of it, nor partridges and pheasants either. So the summer flies, after buzzing about me a little, flew off to sunnier spots; all except one. He puzzled me a bit at first, but I blamed myself for having a shadow of suspicion of him. All seemed so open about him, open hands, open eyes, ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... occupations, or by an obstinate refusal to look inwards, and often by plunging once more into the sin which has brought about the sickness. To seek thus for ease from the stings of conscience, is like trying to silence a buzzing in the head by standing beside Niagara thundering in our ears. They used to beat the drums when a martyr died, in order to drown his testimony; and so foolish men seek to silence the voice of conscience by letting passions shout their loudest. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... panting and Jack said, "Here you are, Harry. Shove that on, and jump. Jump to windward." The smack reared up; there was a long crashing rush of the swift water; then Jack saw the liquid darkness over him, and he was just beginning to hear that awful buzzing in the ears when, with a roar, he felt the upper air swoop ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... rustle of whispering grew to restless buzzing. A young man in a bowtie leaped to his feet breaking the no-questions rule in Long's over-size classes. "May the Mentioch Bugle ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks
... being a feeble one in itself and indifferently performed, it left so much the better chance for the Story-Teller. The bar was thronged with customers, the toddy-stick keeping a continual tattoo; while in the hall there was a broad, deep, buzzing sound, with an occasional peal of impatient thunder,—all symptoms of all overflowing house and an eager audience. I drank a glass of wine-and-water, and stood at the side scene conversing with a young person of doubtful ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were buzzing about our ears now, too close to be comfortable, and but for our horses, we must soon have been killed or captured. At any other time I would not have ridden down that mountain side at a foot pace. It was a succession of steep descents, which made one dizzy to look at; and how ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... which her hospitality was noted. She had sent one appealing glance towards Louise, and the girl, taking in the situation in a moment, had come to her aid, with Dr. Brownlee at her side. In a short time the room was buzzing with voices, as the guests entered into the full ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... aspiration valves, ignited the divine spark plugs, and whiz! went their motor-meters in a whirring, buzzing melody. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... breeze was blowing, the surf was roaring so loud as almost to drown human voices, and rolling up in gigantic surges, and to judge from appearances, the rain which was falling in torrents had been falling for some hours. There was much buzzing among the natives regarding our prospects for the day. I shall always think from their tone and manner, and the frequent repetition of the names of the three worst gulches, that the older men tried to dissuade us from going; ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Explain why a bell rung in a vacuum makes no noise; why the clicking of two stones under water sounds louder if your head is under water, than the clicking of the two stones in the air sounds if your head is in the air; why you hear a buzzing sound when a bee or a fly comes near you; how a ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... tavern, till they came to the Vicolo Agnus Dei. It was a thousand pities Matteo was drunk in his bed; he had quattrini enough and would not have missed the treat for the world. Ippolita, whimpering in hers, wondered what the buzzing and sliding of shoes in the street below could be about. She had troubles of her own, poor girl, but she could not stand this. Up she got: a single glance out of window was enough. She shuffled on a shift and a petticoat, snatched a shawl, and tiptoed out. Annina, her bosom ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... some six or seven and twenty years old when I wrote those volumes; revolving within me corporeal fictions, buzzing in the ears of my heart, which I turned, O sweet truth, to thy inward melody, meditating on the "fair and fit," and longing to stand and hearken to Thee, and to rejoice greatly at the Bridegroom's voice, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... the sagacious Mr. Faddy were not received with the best grace in the world. It is true, the old gentleman is too courteous to show any temper to a guest in his own house; but no sooner was he gone, than the indignation of the Squire found vent, at having his poetical cobwebs invaded by this buzzing, bluebottle fly of traffic. In his warmth, he inveighed against the whole race of manufacturers, who, I found, were sore disturbers of his comfort. "Sir," said he, with emotion, "it makes my heart bleed, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... hurried interview Jeneka had been holding a determined thumb against the electric button. The Governor-General, waiting impatiently up the hallway, heard the prolonged buzzing and came to investigate. He found the adorable Jeneka, all trembling with indignation, in the doorway. She saw him and pointed. He looked and saw the distinguished stranger, the man of many titles and unbounded wealth, standing close to the ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... from Mrs. Cameron, spoken as only she could speak it, with a prolonged buzzing sound on the first syllable, and warning the husband that he ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... again, in a low, agonized tone, "Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!" as he looked with distracted eyes at the bloody, half-naked body of his dead comrade and saw in it his own impending fate. The stench, the buzzing flies, the half-dried blood, the groans, and the cries of "O, mi madre!" "O Jesu!" from the half-naked wretches lying in two rows on the bare, muddy ground, came as near making an inferno as anything one ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the tallest hump on the ridge is called, was so lovely that it was hard to believe that I was not just seeing it with Roxanne's eyes. If it was so beautiful, with its orchard smells and blooms and buzzing of bees and soft little winds, to me, I wonder what it did look like to her. And to think that Roxanne was almost in tears before it ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... his forlorn little cousin in the great buzzing vestibule of the hotel whither he had piloted the whole party, and gave her tea, while he plied the boys with questions. But he never noticed that she could not eat, or commented upon her evident weariness. Mademoiselle did both, but he ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell |
