"Chattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door and I went into the drawing-room, where I crouched before a blazing fire with chattering teeth and benumbed feet and hands. I was alone. Doria had taken a faint turn for the better that morning and Barbara had run down to Northlands for the day. It was just as well she had gone, I thought. I should have a few hours to compose ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... you are chattering about, Owen, but you look as if you expected me to ask, "Why?" Anything ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... provided with little ponds are intelligent seals and families of otters, with their elegant fur coats always clean and in order; and down by the shore of the stream and the large lake a loud chattering is made by the numerous web-footed creatures and long-legged waders. Here are ducks from Barbary and the American tropics, wild-geese from every clime, and swimming gracefully and silently in the clear water are swans—black, gray, and white—that glide up to the summer-houses ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... held, except that certain fees thereby find their way into the pocket of the aforesaid coroner, which would otherwise not have done so. In short, such a coroner as I have in my eye may be compared to a great ape squatting on a corpse, furiously chattering and spitting at all around it; and I am glad that it hath at last had wit enough first to shut the door before proceeding to its ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... had not yet reached the rancho. The leaves lay motionless under a dark and ominous calm; but the wild screams of many birds—the shrieks of the swans, the discordant notes of the frightened pea-fowl, the chattering of parrots as they sought the shelter of the thick olives in terrified flight—all betokened the speedy advent of some ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... did not thank her. For when her playing was over he had turned suddenly very cold, seized with a fierce shivering, the reaction from the tense fever of his nerves; and it was with difficulty that he controlled the chattering of his teeth. But before they parted for the night he asked if he might "call" some afternoon; his tone pointing the allusion to the arrangement that permitted this approach, "We can't talk very well here, can we?" ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... women of quality, but not of character, masquerading before the gay world with the most reckless disregard of all the proprieties of life. [Footnote: Cato the Elder, who enjoyed uttering invectives against women, was free in denouncing their chattering, their love of dress, their ungovernable spirit, and condemned the whole sex as plaguy and proud, without whom men would probably be ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... a quaint, elusive sort of fashion, and as I drew the cloak about me, I said through chattering teeth, for I had suffered with the brutal cold, "I am glad to have the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coal merchant, who had laid in a supply of cut wood on his roof to the height of several feet above the irregular parapet. Outside one of the narrow vertical slits, which in ages past had served as vantage point for a vizored knight fitting arrow to bow, hung a parrot cage. "Coco" was chattering ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... banks of the St. Lawrence, where Montreal stands to-day. Fifty grizzled adventurers—wood runners, voyageurs, Indian interpreters—bareheaded, except for the colored handkerchief binding back the lank hair, dressed in fringed buckskin, and chattering with the exuberant nonchalance of boys out of school, had finished gumming the splits of their ninety-foot birch canoes, and now stood in line awaiting the coming of their captain, Sieur Pierre Gaultier de Varennes ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession and looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth his attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, suddenly became fixed on ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and they both jumped to their feet and raced madly into the Hope. The ultra-receiver had come to life and the sounder was chattering insanely—someone was sending with terrific speed, but with perfect definition ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... gloomy enough, even after they boarded the train. But the girls were gay and chattering when they entered their compartment. Ann Hicks was going home with Helen for a brief visit, although she would be unable to go elsewhere with them during the early part of the summer, owing to ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... tremendous lot of energy to make sure the Almighty's wishes don't miscarry. But still I don't understand much about these matters myself. And at present it occurs to me that I ought to be doing a spell at those infernal pumps, instead of chattering here." ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... gossips. He attempted no secrecy; if anything, he rather paraded his subjugation—or his conquest, it was difficult to decide which term to apply. He rode and drove with her; visited her in public and in private (in such privacy as can be hoped for in a house filled with chattering servants, and watched by spying eyes); loaded her with expensive presents, which she wore openly, and papered his smoking den with her photographs. Yet he never allowed himself to appear in the least degree ridiculous; never allowed her to come between ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains, a melancholy nature. The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the Shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. The ground strewn with leaves, brown, yellow, and reddish; the trees half-stripped, some more, some less, and decked in ragged splendors ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... about." "The best of it was that I did. Do you know, I was just getting through what the field had to show And over the wall and into the road, When who should come by, with a democrat-load Of all the young chattering Lorens alive, But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive." "He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?" "He just kept nodding his head up and down. You know how politely he always goes by. But he thought a big thought—I could tell by his eye— Which ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... Flushed with excitement, laughing, chattering like old friends, lady and squire were having the time of their lives. They were, certainly, wonderfully matched. If Jill was a picture, so was the boy. His gravity was gone. The fine, frank face was fairly alight with happiness, the brown eyes dancing, the strong white teeth flashing merriment. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... path must he go who goeth the way of opinion. From such a way of searching {35} restrain thou thy thought, and let not the much-experimenting habit force thee along the path wherein thou must use thine eye, yet being sightless, and the ear with its clamorous buzzings, and the chattering tongue. 'Tis by Reason that thou must in lengthened trial judge what I ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... prelude to a wedding festival. They were all at their wit's end. While the doctor scratched their arms, they discussed the situation, excitedly and with desperation. Jean was the first to stop chattering ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... to complain of, our inarticulate mode of speaking, as we have of theirs—indeed much more—for monkeys speak the same, or nearly the same, language all over the habitable globe, whereas men, ever since the Tower of Babel, have kept chattering, muttering, humming, and hawing, in divers ways and sundry manners, so that one nation is unable to comprehend what another would be at, and the earth groans in vain with vocabularies and dictionaries. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... that, after all, you could not leave the Elysee to enter the debtors' prison at Clichy; that you had in vain had recourse to those little expedients which are provided for by Article 405; that exposure was at hand, that the demagogical press was chattering, that the matter of the gold ingots threatened to become known, that you were bound to respect the name of Napoleon, and that, on my word! having no other alternative, rather than become one of the vulgar swindlers named in the code, you preferred to be one of the great ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... malice. "Form yourselves in groups! form yourselves in groups! Little brown creatures! Poor little brownies! Coo! coo!" So it went on unceasingly, and so will they go on chattering in ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... sweet Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling, Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, 200 And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. All the little boys and girls, With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... sleeves, with a hint of their shoulders showing and with pink ribbons in their hair. Clearly it was a state occasion. The mother beamed at them a moment, and walked around Molly, saying, "I told you that was all right," and tied Ellen's hair ribbon over, while the young people were chattering, and before the boys knew it, she had faded into the dusk of the hall, and the clattering of dishes came to them from the rear of the house. John fancied he felt the heavy step of Buchanan Culpepper, and then he heard: "Don't you talk ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... a hair of her, th' old stoat! Soon as I heard the note of she, the heat bubbled up in I, though 'twas chattering in the cold as I had been but a moment afore. "One of they dirty roadsters—I'll learn you to come disturbing of a wedding party, I will." [Shaking her fist towards the ceiling.] No, you bain't changed, you hardened old sinner—but the words out of the cruel old mouth of you ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the stately action of Kemble, the sarcasm of Cooke, the study of Henderson, the commanding port of Siddons, the fire of Kean, the voice of Young, the tones of O'Neill? When you see them, as the traveller Dampier has it, "dancing from tree to tree over your head," and hear them "chattering, and making a terrible noise," do you not think of Lord Chesterfield, and exclaim, "A well-governed stage is an ornament to society, an encouragement to wit and learning, and a school of virtue, modesty, and good ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and mimics crude attempts to reproduce its varied notes. The blue kingfisher is investigating the tumour made by white ants in the bloodwood wherein the nest is annually excavated, and soon the chattering notes of the pair will be heard. A week ago few signs of the approach of the scene-shifter were discernible. He has come, and plants and birds respond to his genial and becoming presence—plants with richer growth and more abundant ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... in a group with a street-organ, generally played by Le Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton nightcap on his head. Two men carried lanterns. We followed in procession, laughing and chattering like ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... for Scotland and my fellow countrymen. Because they'd been close and near in time of plenty they were able to spend as freely as was needfu' when the time o' famine and sair trouble came. So let's be havin' less chattering o' the meanness o' the Scot, and more thocht o' his prudence and what that last has meant to the Empire ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... peeping out of his hole, with his teeth chattering so fast that it seemed as if they must all drop out ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... are certain to go over the fall; but we won't get drowned, for I won't let you, if you will promise faithfully to give notice the very instant you get back to the house.' Oh, poor thing, didn't she promise! Her very teeth were chattering. She was in a most awful state. Now, we can go over the waterfall to-day if you don't mind. You wouldn't be frightened, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me then, and for a time I could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! It came to me like a revelation, a revelation at once ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... he said never a word. His companion was already chattering on about something else. Peter crossed the hall a few minutes later, to speak to an acquaintance, slipped out to the telephone booth and spoke to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he was often afraid when seeing the Italian performers "chattering in the vehemence of action," that they were calling the audience names and abusing them among themselves. I do not know how to measure the morals and manners of our Italian singers against those of Addison's time, but I do know ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the colored people,"— or that of Senator Mason, "We can take care of ourselves,"—or that of Miles, of South Carolina, "We are impregnable,"—betrays the depth and extent of their fear by the very attempt to conceal it; like timid boys "ejaculating through white lips and chattering teeth," Who's afraid? In the wide-spread panic of 1800, the slaveholders appear to have been excessively puzzled to ascertain what could have induced their slaves to engage in such a conspiracy. They, of ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... maxims were discontinued after a while, either because she could think of no more, or because the rain-soaked, shivering, chattering object towards which they were directed was too abject to inspire further efforts. Leander huddled on the barrel that was farthest from Mrs. Yellett, and wrapped himself in the soaked red bedquilt. The dye smeared his face till he looked ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... made of the butts of their guns, undoubtedly they would have been reached. Both stood with their barrels grasped firmly— now threatening the assailing host, and now punching in the head such of them as sprang within reach—the peccaries all the while uttering their angry grunts, and chattering their teeth, as if a hundred strings of Christmas crackers were being let off ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... settlement was eminently suggestive of peace. The cattle lay sleepily in the shade of the trees; the sea was still calm like glass. Men had ceased from their daily toil; and the only sounds that broke the quiet of the morning were the chattering of the parrots and other birds in the cocoanut groves; and the cries of seafowl, as they circled in the air, or dropt on the surface of the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... arm, and arose in the dark, slipping on her clothes. He gave her the skirt and she donned that over her own dress. Her teeth were chattering with nervous excitement, and when she had covered herself with the great shawl, her hand went out gropingly ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Mrs. Thornburgh looked round hastily. She herself had opened that door into the garden. A garden on a warm summer night offers opportunities no schemer should neglect. Agnes and Rose were chattering and laughing on the gravel path just outside it, their white girlish figures showing temptingly against the dusky background of garden and fell. It somewhat disappointed the vicar's wife to see her tall guest take a chair and draw it beside Catherine—while Adeline Baker awkwardly got up ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Anaitis, he has decided, in spite of all that I could do, to derive Jurgen from jargon, indicating a confused chattering such as birds give forth at sunrise: thus ruthlessly does the Master Philologist convert me into a solar legend. So the affair is settled, and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... become so beautiful that when I went to Moscow I dared not leave her behind me, so I took her in place of a servant. It was delicious to me to hear her chattering in the Venetian dialect I had taught her. On a Saturday I would go with her to the bath where thirty of forty naked men and women were bathing together without the slightest constraint. This absence of shame ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... has sounded the signal for release from the day's toil. The workers in the factory, a small army of men and women, boys and girls, poured forth from the doorways of the huge buildings, swarmed up the street, laughing and chattering, and dispersed to their several homes. The buzz and jarring of the machinery have ceased and silence fills the place. Even the offices are deserted, with the exception of one from which issues the steady click, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... of three sat at a round table on a polished floor of oak. Estelle played hostess and gazed with frank admiration at the chattering visitor. He brought a proposition that made her feel very excited to learn what her ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... bridesmaids were chattering gayly in a low, melodious tone with each other, and with the gentlemen of the party filling the room with a musical hum ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... growing dusk outside. Chickens were going to roost with a great chattering in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... stories were pointless and quite unintelligible. "I know a monstrous good story on that point He! he! he" "I tell you a famous good story about that, you must know. He! he! he!..." "I could have told a capital story, but there was no one to listen to it. He! he! he!" This is the style of his chattering ... "speaking professionally—for anatomy, chemistry, pharmacy, phlebotomy, oxygen, hydrogen, caloric, carbonic, atmospheric, galvanic. Ha! ha! ha! Can tell you a prodigiously laughable story on the subject. Went last summer ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... stood a caterer's wagon, led me to a door which had every appearance of being the one I sought. Pushing it open, I entered without ceremony, and speedily found myself in the midst of twenty or more coloured waiters and chattering housemaids. To one of the former I ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... matches and lamp. Her usual languid manner vanished at a touch of the cold water. Presently, when Alfred knocked on her door and said he was leaving a pitcher of hot water outside, she replied, with chattering teeth, "Th-thank y-you, b-but I d-don't ne-need any now." She found it necessary, however, to warm her numb fingers before she could fasten hooks and buttons. And when she was dressed she marked in the dim mirror that there were tinges of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... rounded shapes of those which abound in so many secondary strata; and then hastened on board the boat; for the sun had already fallen, the purple night set in, and from the woods on shore a chorus of frogs had commenced chattering, quacking, squealing, whistling, not ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... monkey, looking in at every side, put me into such a fright that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me; and, reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although I often shifted place to avoid him, he at length caught hold of the lappet of my coat (which, being made of that country cloth, was very thick and strong), ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... followed, my teeth chattering and the night insects biting me severely. Hugging our precious copper cylinders we waded more than waistdeep in the water, up the Bran Brook, sometimes all but swimming, as we skirted some of the deeper pools. There was no moon and we could see but little by the faint starlight. We had to go ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... all palsied in his fear, Chattering and white, to Paris abed, Flusht in his sleep—told Hector dead, Dead and dishonoured, while he slept. He sighed ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... this, the first funeral of its kind he had ever witnessed. A rowdy-dowdy business, he called it. The music was too lively and blatant for so solemn an occasion; the gorgeous vestments of the clergy, the loud chattering among the mourners, the violent gestures that accompanied Torquemada's well-meant and carefully prepared oration (Don Francesco, a born speaker, would have done it better, but the defunct was no friend or even client of his)—all these things savoured slightly ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... spying you, circle about—just as the pigeons used to do—and then crying out may warn the moose of your presence. Or you may flush a partridge; or a squirrel, taking fright, may rush up a tree and begin chattering about you; or a rabbit may go drumming into a thicket, and the moose, reading these signs of alarm, will surely look about ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... a children's party. Auber came, pretending that he had been invited as one of the children. When he heard them all chattering in French, English, and German, he said, "Cela me fait honte, moi qui ne parle que le francais." He was most delighted to see the children, and seated himself at the piano and played some sweet little old-fashioned polkas and waltzes, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... What a chattering there was, to be sure; and what a crowd was gathered about the Piper at the farther end of the hall! Every once in a while all the children would laugh so loudly that the very ceiling shook. It was such a ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... force of circumstances, as it seemed to me then, Mrs. Falchion's hand was often on my arm; and her voice was always in my ear at meal-times and when I visited Justine Caron to attend to her wound, or joined in the chattering recreations of the music saloon. It was impossible not to feel her influence; and if I did not yield entirely to it, I was more possessed by it than I was aware. I was inquisitive to know beyond doubt that she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... think," said the old gentleman; "show him into the library, Johnson. Polly, my child. Bless me! I don't see how you stand it with these girls chattering around you every minute. Now be off with you," he cried gaily to the group. He was much pleased at the success of his plan to find out about the brakeman, of which he felt quite sure from the appearance so promptly ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see anything but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as, Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pushing, what rustling and hustling! What hissing and twirling, what chattering and bustling! How it shines and sparkles and burns and stinks! A true witch-element, methinks! Keep close! or we are parted in two winks. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... takes a vehement interest in the whole progress of this wild scene. I remember once observing Jacko running backwards and forwards along the after-part of the poop hammock-netting, grinning, screaming, and chattering at such a rate, that, as it was nearly calm, he was heard all ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... to me of the country green and cool— Of redwing blackbirds chattering beside a reedy pool; It brings me soothing fancies of the homestead on the hill, And I hear the thrush's evening song and the robin's morning trill; So I fall to thinking tenderly of those I used to know Where the sassafras and snakeroot and ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... is over, Chrysilla, and ere now the morning cock clarisoning leads on the envious Lady of Morn. Be thou accursed, most envious of birds, who drivest me from my home to the endless chattering of the young men. Thou growest old, Tithonus; else why dost thou chase Dawn thy bedfellow out of her couch while ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... soul is indeed like the wind, and it blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my mind and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild Horse.' And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chattering ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... body slipped away from him; and just then the combatants saw the satisfied grin freeze on the faces of the boys in the water. A step crunched the gravel near them, and in a moment that flashed vividly with rejoicing that the fight was ended, then with abject, chattering terror, Mealy Jones saw his father approaching. Mealy did not run. The uplifted cane and the red, perspiring face of his father transfixed the lad, yet he felt called upon to say something. His voice came from a dry throat, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... at night now was full of chattering and whispering, and Daimur had put up a great many more branches for them ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... The chattering of the peons crowded in the road died away as if at a signal. From the other end of the line rose a ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... her in Glebe Place with that fellow they are all chattering about, but I didn't speak to her. I believe her father was dead then. But I didn't know ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... he is chattering away to his wife, repeating again and again his encomiums on Hiram, till she is really convinced. Why should she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... them wore. The snow stuck to their hats and clung on their shoulders, making streaks there like fleecy epaulets done in the colour of peace, which also is the colour of cowardice and surrender. There was a cold wind which made them all shiver and set the teeth of many of them to chattering; ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... for shame of you, asking questions and chattering," said her mother. "Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold your tongue, do. But," added Mrs. Tulliver, who had her own alarm awakened, "is it so far off as I couldn't ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the word came that the kites had actually arrived. A farm wagon was sent in to fetch the wooden cases, and that wagon, when it drove into town, had every member of the League on board, all excited and chattering like so many magpies. Rex and Lassie, the pair of four-legged members of the League, also came along to give ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... wire—no dear I wasn't hurdling the fence—the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw—it's harder on a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... horizon, and at night staring in at windows with its eye of fire. It was the talk of the people, who pondered over it with a helpless wonder. I recall two Whitefield women as they stood, one morning, bare-armed in a doorway, staring at and chattering about it. One says they "might as well stop work" and "take it easy" while they can. The other thinks the better way is to "keep on a stiddy jog until it comes." They wish they knew "how near it is," and "what the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the door to the hall closing gently behind him. There was not a sound to be heard in the house. Outside the frogs were chattering, and a nearby owl hooted dolefully. David stood still in the center of the room, his gaze fixed on the hall door. He counted the minutes, expecting, in spite of his preparedness, to be startled when the door opened with ghostly ease to admit the lank figure of the "dip." There ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... dark forests that lay between him and the snow-covered peaks of the Cordilleras. Entangled vines and trees of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, huge boas coiling in the branches, ready to spring upon their prey, screaming parrots, chattering and grimacing monkeys, mosquitoes, alligators, prowling savages,—amid such scenes as these he and his band had once more confronted famine and death in the absence of Almagro ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... you'll fool them with a sudden illness, Causing delay; another day, ill omens: You've met a funeral, or broke a mirror, Or dreamed of muddy water. Best of all, They cannot marry you to anyone Without your saying yes. But now, methinks, They mustn't find you chattering together. ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... are chattering," cried Percy, looking at Betty in open admiration. In the old days, Percy had tried hard to win favor in Betty's eyes, but the latter had always treated him with a good-natured indifference not unmixed with contempt ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... were of various styles, idle and chattering, picturesque and sentimental, industrious, commonplace, but the most of them were variations on that last accepted version of the lady artist—the individual girl who aims at being independent and natural ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... solemn motions, the adumbrations of the augustness beyond. We demand lots of personality in our drama; we call it character-drawing. We want to see fellows like ourselves lounging or bustling about, and hear them chattering as we do;—fellows with motives (like our own) all springing from the personality. Human life is what interests us: we desire to drink deep of it, and drink again and again. The music that we wish to hear is the "still, sad music of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... two are looking up to heaven, and sighing, and chattering, and fastening their eyes on the door, I conclude that they must be the gambling-master and the gambler. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... channel. Bare and scrannel The trees droop, where the crows sit in a row With beaks agape. The hot baboon and ape Climb chattering to the bush. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nimbly up and down the tree-trunks for some time and then flitted away with a party of chickadees and nut-hatches. Occasionally a Clarke's crow soared about overhead or clung in any position to the swaying end of a pine branch, chattering and screaming. Flocks of cross-bills, with wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew to a small mineral lick near by, where they scraped the clay ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... lifted her out of the saddle and, half carrying, half leading her, took her into the cabin, and through the big room to her old apartment. How familiar it seemed to Joan! A ground-squirrel frisked along a chink between the logs, chattering welcome. The place was exactly ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and Petruchio is the master, That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long, To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue. ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... black cat perched on the shoulder of an innocent, chattering old gran'ma. The next day a neighbor had a convulsion; and Cotton Mather went forth and exorcised Tabby with a hymn-book, and hanged gran'ma by the neck, high on Gallows Hill, until ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Society, forsooth, the chattering hags and jackanapes—had set themselves up to pass judgment on his flesh and blood! A parcel of old women! He stumped his umbrella on the ground, as though to drive it into the heart of that unfortunate body, which had dared to ostracize his son and his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cause for their being regarded as the wisest of animals. Tahuti is represented as a baboon from the first dynasty down to late times; and four baboons were sacred in his temple at Hermopolis. These four baboons were often portrayed as adoring the sun; this idea is due to their habit of chattering at sunrise. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Dean," was the response of the master; and they exchanged bows as the dean turned into the deanery. "She's three parts a fool, is that Lady Augusta," muttered the master to the cloister-flags as he strode over them. "Chattering magpie!" ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... they were jointed in the wrong place. The dogs were still snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... wearied of our tears. And then you danced with spangled feet, Leading Belshazzar's chattering court A-tinkling through the shadowy street. With mead they came, with chants of shame. DESIRE'S red flag before them flew. And Istar's music moved your mouth And Baal's deep shames ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... next morning my boat had the air of being pillaged. A crowd of laughing, chattering fellows ran off to the house laden with loose articles snatched up at random, loaves of sugar, pots and pans, books, cushions, all helter-skelter. I feared breakages, but all was housed safe and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, and the scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in the Tillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size of these workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... it again and again till it was graven in her memory. The word for a frog particularly pleased her fancy; and it would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in her works. The peasants, who knew nothing of betters and had never so much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering with this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady and far from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age appealed so little ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and then smiled again suddenly. She hoped that the night would fall before they reached their destination. There had been one or two moonlight riding picnics out from Biskra, and the glamour of the desert nights had gone to Diana's head. This riding into the unknown away from the noisy, chattering crowd who had spoiled the perfect stillness of the night would be infinitely more perfect. She gave a little sigh of regret as she thought of it. It was not really practical. Though she would wait nearly another hour to allow ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... after seeing the way they had behaved. Presently they saw us, and one glance was sufficient; for, renewing their shrieks and cries, they sprang up the vines, like sailors swarming up ropes, and quickly disappeared amid the dense foliage. Still, we could hear them chattering away in the distance, and I have no doubt that they were communicating their ideas about us to each other, and all the monkeys ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... "hates Bartley like poison, and Bartley him. The Colonel vows he will have him off the land and out of the bowels of the earth, and he have sent him a lawyer's letter; for everything leaks out in this village, along of the servants' chattering. Bartley he don't value a lawyer's letter no more than that. He defies the Colonel, and they'll go at it hammer and tongs at the 'Sizes, and spend a mint of money in law. That's one side of the question. But there's another. Master Walter is deep ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Boru grinning at him from the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages. As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with bretelles crossing in odd fashion the queer shirts they wore. Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces. I was familiar enough with such ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... in amazement, how many more personalities may there not be hidden in the human frame? Here is simple Madame B., who is not one person but three—first her commonplace self; secondly, the clever, chattering Leonie II., who is bored by B., and who therefore wants to demolish her; and thirdly, the lordly Leonie III., who issues commands that strike terror into Leonie II., and disdains to be identified with either of the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... Some monkeys loped away, chattering, and about a thousand parakeets flew off, shrilling for another roost. But there was no other sign ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... marry," he said. "The trouble has gone too far. I've lost my nerve in the presence of women. I don't like them any more. They come at one—done up in a lot of ridiculous clothes, and chattering about all sorts of things that don't matter...." He surveyed his friend's thoughtful attitude. "I'm getting to hate women, Benham. I'm beginning now to understand the bitterness of spinsters against men. I'm beginning to grasp ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... over their thin and wet clothes seemed intolerable to those who were idle. My child's playmate, Gulab, a lad of about ten years of age, resolutely kept by the side of the palankeen, trotting through the water with his teeth chattering as if he had been in an ague. The rain at last ceased, and the sky in the west cleared up beautifully about half an hour before sunset. Little Gulab threw off his stuffed and quilted vest, and got a good dry English blanket to wrap round him from the palankeen. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... moreover, he feared to move. He had given himself up for dead, but not on any rational grounds. It was simply a cruel and terrifying feeling. Whenever he tried to think what would become of him his teeth would start chattering violently. He was too absorbed in the utter misery of his fear to take notice ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... awfully general is this wretched delusion. The chattering of monkeys or parrots is more acceptable than to mock God with a solemn sound upon a thoughtless tongue. Jews gabble Hebrew, and Papists Latin, and, alas! others who NEVER prayed, have been from childhood in the habit ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground. Indefatigably, audaciously,—endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural strength and nimbleness, these furious iconoclasts clambered up the dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they tore off in triumph the slowly-matured fruit of centuries. In a space of time wonderfully brief, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... big, almost grown-up brother, Baby considers him, for he is nearly seven! Well, one evening lately both these little boys came down to dessert for a great treat, because an auntie had come on a visit, and this was the first night. They were both so pleased. "Brother" was chattering and laughing in what we call his "big man way," and Baby smiling soberly. That is his way when he is pleased, and that reminds me how we did laugh the first night he ever came down! He was so dreadfully solemn and quiet we thought he was ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Twelve o'clock. Bricks, mortar, scoops, shovels were abandoned. The women, in their great clod-hopping shoes, flew chattering to the tiny hut where their lunch boxes were stored. The men followed more slowly, a mere handful of them. Not one of them wore overalls or apron. Out again with their bundles and boxes of food—very small bundles. Very tiny boxes. They ate ravenously the bread and sausage and ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... for we were all taking in with us as much food as we decently could. We were none of us allowed on the bridge until an officer and a few men had come down to meet us on the Russian side. Only little Nina, Vorovskv's daughter, about ten years old, chattering Swedish with the Finns, got leave from them, and shyly, step by step, went down the other side of the bridge and struck up acquaintance with the soldier of the Red Army who stood there, gun in hand, and obligingly bent ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... his eyes, and his face wore a waxen pallor. His hands, joined behind his back, were clenched; and the ring he wore sparkled with their tremulous movement. At intervals he seemed to cease breathing, as he listened to the chattering teeth of ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the sharp and purposeful strokes he realised that such a contention would be laughed out of the philological court. For a mad moment he thought of destroying the miserable bit of iron, but in the first place that was in itself difficult, and then the chattering lady at his side knew that he was in possession of a Runic inscription, probably Lombard. She was widely connected and would certainly babble in the very city where his bitter rival Professor Anlaut had maintained that Lombard was West Germanic. As Hauptmann ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... thinking that way long. So he thought he'd better make the best he could of it, and he took the skin off the ox and started with it to the town to sell it. And as he was going along a magpie perched on the skin and began pecking at it, and all the time chattering, for it had been taught to talk. With that Donald put round his hand and caught the magpie and held ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... swallows have built their adobe houses on the face of the cliffs, on either side of the river. The waters are deep and quiet, but the swallows are swift and noisy enough, sweeping by in their curved paths through the air or chattering from the rocks, while the young ones stretch their little heads on naked necks through the doorways of their mud houses and clamor for food. They are a noisy people. We ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Mutton wants to lie down. Mayn't I kick it up!... DUFF, old chap, your Goose is dragging her anchor again, back her engines a bit, or there'll be a foul.... Miss STELLA, I—I really don't think this Monkey is quite well—his teeth are chattering in such a very.... All right, padre, only his nasty temper—jerk the beggar's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... girl was indignant at being called "baby" but her teeth were chattering from cold and fright, and the hot cocoa Mrs. Clayton presently gave her tasted very good. She went off to sleep after that, wrapped in a warm blanket, and woke to find her clothes dry ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... of the lower sort, blocking up the way, constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and uproar, was the common madhouse; a low, contracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the street, without the smallest screen or court-yard; where chattering mad-men and mad-women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry them, as if they were baited by a pack ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sitting down; but when, in weariness of the obstinate green curtain that would not draw up, but would stare at me with two odd eyes, seen through holes, as in the old tapestry story, I would fain have looked round at the merry chattering people behind me, Miss Pole clutched my arm, and begged me not to turn, for "it was not the thing." What "the thing" was, I never could find out, but it must have been something eminently dull and tiresome. However, we all sat eyes right, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... doctor, after an incredulous stare, began chattering with wrath. "Refused you! Pah! Pooh! That's nothing! That signifies absolutely nothing! It's meaningless! It's a detail. You get well—do you hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you'll see! And if she is an idiot—in the event of her irrational ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of the Mont congregated, as they always congregate about the entrance to a walled town. Rather, the scornful silence which had surrounded him at his work was here deepened into a personal hatred. Within the gate the women, who were chattering over their nets of cockles, shrank away from him, or broke into a contemptuous laugh. Along the narrow street the children fled at the sight of him, and hid behind their mothers, from whose protection they could shout ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... humour—I have had enough solitude at Murglebed to last me the rest of my short lifetime—I went later in the afternoon to Sussex Gardens to call on Mrs. Ellerton. It was her day at home, and the drawing-room was filled with chattering people. I stayed until most of them were gone, and then Maisie dragged me to the inner room, where a table was strewn with the wreckage ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... longest journey has been to the normal school at Athens, and it has not altered his belief that the ikon in the neighbouring monastery was made by St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains by the Devil. On the other side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering irrepressibly in his queer version of the 'American language', and showing you the newspapers which are mailed to him every fortnight from the States. His clean linen collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous upon him, and he will deprecate on ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... (London nightingales) ceased their notes and retired to their beds. The chimney-sweeps (larks of the metropolis) raised their shrill cry as they paced along with chattering teeth. Housemaids and kitchen-maids presented their back views to the early passengers as they washed off the accumulation of the previous day from ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... old sexton was chattering about the six gravestones raised in Portchester churchyard to these six dead infants. He had been sent there to choose a spot in which to lay the mother, and was full of the shock it gave him to see that line of little stones, telling of a past ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... provinces men did not talk daily of Tom Towers but they read The Jupiter, and acknowledged that without The Jupiter life was not worth having. This kind of hidden but still conscious glory suited the nature of the man. He loved to sit silent in a corner of his club and listen to the loud chattering of politicians, and to think how they all were in his power;—how he could smite the loudest of them, were it worth his while to raise his pen for such a purpose. He loved to watch the great men of whom he daily wrote, and flatter himself that he was greater than any of them. Each of them was ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the newspapers that any handsome young man might go to the palace to speak to the princess. The one who spoke most prettily and answered most wisely should be chosen as her husband. What a stir there was! Young men flocked to the palace in crowds, chattering as they came. But when they saw the great staircase, and the soldiers in their silver uniform, and the grand ladies in velvet and lace, they could only talk in whispers. And when they were led before ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Bodge!" shrieked the Colonel, his teeth chattering, squirrel-like, in his passion. "Talk about State Prison to me! I'll have the whole of you put there for bunco-men. You've stolen fifteen thousand dollars from me. Where is that old ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... he had been careful to buy a young one that could not speak, for he knew the Morris boys would not want one chattering foreign gibberish, nor yet one that would swear. He had kept her in his bunk in the ship, and had spent all his leisure time in teaching her to talk. Then he looked at her anxiously, and said, "Show ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... stale. I am just the same as usual, or perhaps worse, because I have become lazy. I don't do anything now but croak like an old raven. My mother, the old magpie, is still chattering about the emancipation of woman, with one eye on her grave and the other on her learned books, in which she is always looking for the dawn ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... a good deal of grinning and chattering going on as the boat neared, especially from one old fisherman who lived inside a huge pair of very stiff trousers, these coming right up to his arm-pits, so that only a very short pair of braces, a scrap of blue shirt, and a woollen night-cap were ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... between two banks of elevators and had climbed up the cage as high as he could go. He was just out of reach of human hands, even had there been any men there with the courage to try to take him alive. A white foam dripped from the chattering lips of the anthropoid. His red-rimmed eyes flashed fire. Bentley noted the little metal ball on top of ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth long tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as from an old woman. "—great job out'n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin' though all time. I was there three days, and then I went an' ask 'im t' lend me a dollar. 'G-g-go ter the devil,' he ses, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... stirring of the water, which caused it to overflow momentarily and trickle down the slope of the approach, nothing happened. Then a troop of small monkeys suddenly approached the cavern, and, seeing its human occupants, bolted, loudly chattering their indignation and fright. Shortly afterward a deer came tripping daintily across the glade, halted suddenly, threw up its head, and after sniffing the air for a few seconds, wheeled smartly round and bounded ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... lianas; a place of things that crawled and climbed and twined and clung. It was filled with weird sounds—the booming of wild pigeons; a nagging, tapping sound as though woodchoppers were at work far off in its depths; and a constant insane chattering sound, as though mad children, hidden all about him, were laughing at him. Dusk brought from their coverts the flying foxes, to utter curious notes as they sailed through the gloaming, and occasionally sharp squeaks as of mortal agony or intense gratification—he ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Good-evening, nurse." And that was all we saw of Joyce's father that day; only an hour later, when the nursery tea was over, and I was undressing the boy by the bedroom fire, while Joyce stood beside me, removing the garments carefully from a favourite doll, and chattering as fast as a purling brook, I saw Mrs. Morton standing in the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... her Aunt Sophia, who was still sitting under the tree, surrounded by a chattering group. She looked tired, and, signalling for Henrietta to approach, she said, 'I'm afraid this is too much for me, dear child. Can you find Rose and ask her to take me home? But I don't want to spoil your pleasure, Henrietta. There is no need for ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the horrible threat, Caius Nepos merely bent his head as if in humble submission to the will of one who was as a god. He felt his teeth chattering against one another, his limbs trembling, his blood frozen within him, and with it all he had the additional horror of knowing that the brutish tyrant was looking him through and through, that he saw the fear in him and was ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... They've come after Bill, and next it'll be my turn. I warned you—I told you he wasn't deep enough. O Lord, have mercy . . . mercy . . . !" He pattered off into a prayer, his voice and teeth chattering. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a feather will flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In extra-session, for high debate; And the lass will slip from ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... old home. These flocks gradually increase; the starling is so prolific that the flocks become immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in southern fields it is common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from the highest bough downwards, and the noise of their chattering can be heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But in the blackest days of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the starlings return to the roof almost every day; they do not whistle much, but have a peculiar chuckling whistle ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... crossed in front of her. The face and eyes were all alive, it seemed to him, with happiness, with the mere pleasure of life. She could not keep herself still for a moment. Either she was sending laughing signals to an elderly man near her, presumably her father, or chattering at top speed with another girl of her own age, or gathering her whole graceful body into a gesture of delight as the familiar Rheingold music passed from one lovely ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... beams of the wall left full in sight, boarded over and painted. Two windows looked out on the street, and another into a sort of court-yard, where three black wenches, each with a broom, pretended to be sweeping, but were, in fact, chattering and laughing, like so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... we drew near the village. The people stared at us as we approached, pointing, and running, and chattering away most vehemently, evidently not knowing what to make of us. My rifle was still covered up, and Bigg carried both our bundles. We advanced boldly, as if we were confident of meeting with a friendly reception. As we drew nearer, Bigg began to shout out all the titles he could think ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... and for a time there was much laughing and chattering in the little loft. By and by Ann came down. Bim hesitated, laughing, above the ladder for a moment, and presently followed in her best blue dress, against which the golden curls of her hair fell gracefully. With red cheeks and bright eyes, she was a glowing picture. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... are not all bred here, being brought from other places. They have also parrots of sundry colours, as green, purple, and other mixt colours, and they are so numerous that the rice fields have to be watched to drive them away. These birds make a wonderful chattering, and are sold so low as a halfpenny each. There are many other kinds of birds different from ours, which every morning and evening make most sweet music, so that the country is like an earthly paradise, the trees, herbs, and flowers being in a continual spring, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... these, but by novelists and dramatists largely retailing filth, journalists largely given to the invention of sensational lies, politicians largely obeying either atheistic demagogues or clerical intriguers; and all together acting like a swarm of obscene, tricky, mangy monkeys chattering, squealing, and tweaking one another's tails in a cage. Some of these monkeys I saw performing their antics in the National Assembly then sitting at Versailles; and it saddened me to see the nobler element in that assemblage ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White |
