"Chirp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... owne Father without loving and blessing you. Let Mr. Powell come and see us happie; it may tend to make him soe. Let him and his abide with us, at the leaste, till the Spring; his Lads will studdy and play with mine, your Mother will help you in your Housewiferie, the two olde Men will chirp together beside the Christmasse Hearth; and, if I find thy Weeklie Bills the heavier 'twill be but to write another Book, and make a better Bargain for it than I did for the last. We will use Hospitalitie ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the clear, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... made their home; the rustling of the leaves and twigs commingled with the chirp and joyous noise of the birds; in the eaves of the house the doves had built their nests, and the place was filled with their speech, cooing and calling to each other, entreating and discussing as is customary between doves, these noisy ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... on the far unconquered plains of Kansas, with the moon shining down upon them, these two, so full of hope and courage, planned their future. In the cottonwood trees by the river sands a night bird twittered sleepily to its mate; the chirp of many crickets in the short grass below the sunflowers had dwindled to a mere note at intervals. The soft breeze caressed the two young faces, then wandered far and far across the lonely land, and in its long low-breathed ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... luxuriously on his father's money and his wife's, and, being after his natural term of days laid away in a tomb at Mt. Auburn, ends his existence without making any more impression upon the world's history than a falling rose leaf, or an August cricket's faintest chirp." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... variations from the previous one. The allusions to "little Robert"—evidently William Roscoe's son—do not occur in the former, and many slight improvements, tending to make the verses more rhythmical and flowing, are introduced. The whole passage, "Then close on his haunches" (p. 7) to "Chirp his own praises the rest of the night," &c. (p. 10), is an interpolation in this later edition. It is, I believe, certain that the verses were written by Roscoe for his children on the occasion of the birthday of his son Robert, who was nearly the youngest ...
— The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast • Mr. Roscoe
... sit near my poker and tongs, And I dream in the firelight's glow, And sometimes I quaver forgotten old songs That I listened to long ago. Then out of the cinders there cometh a chirp Like an echoing, answering cry,— Little we care for the outside world, My friend the cricket, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... me unmeet; [4] Here, for neither Babe nor [5] me, Other play-mate can I see. Of the countless living things, 45 That with stir of feet and wings (In the sun or under shade, Upon bough or grassy blade) And with busy revellings, Chirp and song, and murmurings, 50 Made this orchard's narrow space, And this vale so blithe a place; Multitudes are swept away Never more to breathe the day: Some are sleeping; some in bands 55 Travelled into distant lands; Others slunk to moor and wood, Far from human neighbourhood; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... lieutenant, Delisle, and I had charge of the three boats. Our ears were more likely to serve us than our eyes, considering the thick darkness with which we were surrounded. My boat was the headmost—that is, farther up the river than the rest. Grampus was with me. "Hist, sir, didn't you hear the chirp of a block?" said he in a whisper. "The lubbers should have taken care to use more grease if they wanted to surprise us." I fancied I had heard the same sound. We listened breathlessly while the crew lay on their oars. It came from up the river, directly ahead of us. "Ah! there ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... New-England beauty, quaint and trim and delicate as the slaty-gray snow-bird, with its white breast, and soft, bright eyes, that haunts the dusky fir-trees and dazzling hill-side slopes when no other bird dare show itself,—a quiet, shy creature, full of innocent trust and endurance, its chirp and low repetition dearer than the gay song of lark or robin, because a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sounds had ceased; and there came from the orchards, with their mulberry-trees glistening in the moonlight, and their black swaying cypress-plumes, nothing save the confused hum, the monotonous chirp, of the crickets. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... once slept now they seemed wide-awake. Keen eyes saw every moving thing, from the bees in the bluebells to the slow fishing-boats far out at sea; sharp ears that were cocked like a collie's heard every chirp and trill and rustle, and a nose that understood everything was holding up every vagrant breeze and searching it for its message. For the cubs were coming out for the first time to play in the big world, and no wild mother ever lets that happen ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... morn while the grass yet glittered with pearls of water, and as the birds began to chirp, Belton was led forth to die. Little did those birds know that they were chirping the funeral march of the world's noblest hero. Little did they dream that they were ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the showers of their terrible clouds; I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile; I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada; I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule; I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque; I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches—I hear the responsive bass and soprano; I hear the wail of utter despair of the white-haired ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... and shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, Chee, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... suffocation in the air that is difficult to explain; but I've felt something like it on a sultry summer day when the sky is black with slowly advancing clouds, when the birds have become too awed to chirp and every leaf in the trees hangs motionless. It is in these suspenses of unpleasant expectation, when at any moment the heavens will open with a hissing smash of fire and nature be turned to fury, that one breathes heavily. There is no other feeling like it, except ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... porch, and have reared several broods there for two years past, their nest being never disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides; they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are made upon where they have been, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... undertaken by a courtier. As this went on, the darkness of night began to diminish, and the hues of the flowers in the garden, and the countenance of each of the party, became gradually visible, while the birds themselves began to chirp in the trees. It was a pleasant dawn. Several presents were made to the company by the Imperial-mother, and to the Lord-Lieutenant a robe was given in addition, as an acknowledgment of his services as judge in the competition. And so the party broke ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... grew stiller and stiller; here and there fell a dry leaf which had been driven from its old dwelling place by a fresh one; here and there a young bird gave a soft chirp when its mother squeezed it in the nest; and from time to time a gnat hummed for a minute or two in the curtain, till a spider crept on tip-toe along its web, and gave him such a gripe in the wind-pipe as soon ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... passed, thick with recollections and regrets, deepening into a horror of loss and darkness, and then slowly brightening into the calm prelude of a day of farewell. The birds began to chirp and twitter in the ivy; the thrush uttered her long-drawn notes, sweetly repeated and sustained in the dusky bushes. That sound was much connected in my mind with Aveley. To be awakened thus in the summer dawn, to ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Not seeing her at all to stir, Brought leaves and moss to cover her; But while he perking there did pry About the arch of either eye, The lid began to let out day, At which poor robin flew away, And seeing her not dead, but all disleav'd, He chirp'd for joy to see ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one's naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds - To live, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... those little black minstrels of the night, chirp under the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and over again "Katy's" wonderful achievement, though just what this amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover. The cicadas ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... necessity of a sunshade—the advantage of having a great lady to complain of, instead of chewing the stems of roses bought for fivepence apiece of Mme. Prevost, after the manner of the callow youngsters that chirp and cackle in the lobbies of the Opera, like chickens in a coop. In short, he resolved to centre his ideas, his sentiments, his affections upon a woman, one ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I remember the sensation it gave me, as I struggled ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... while some were two or three hundred yards across, but all were clothed with the most beautiful green foliage and shrubbery. As the pale yellow of the eastern sky began to grow red, ducks and gulls bestirred themselves. Early risers among them first began to chirp, and scream, and whistle their morning song,—for there are lazy ones among the birds, just as there are among men. Sometimes, when the canoe rounded a point of rocks a flock of geese were found floating peacefully among the sedges, sound asleep, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... little mother. Don't be afraid," whispered the child; and, as if it understood, the bird settled down on her nest with a comfortable chirp, while its mate hopped up to give her a nice plump ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sounds very distinctly. I heard what resembled the pattering of little feet, as of the rat running over the lid of an empty box; and once or twice I clearly distinguished the short, shrill cricket-like "chirp" that rats are wont to utter. I can think of no more disagreeable sound than the voice of a rat, and at that time it sounded doubly disagreeable. You may smile at my simple fears, but I could not help them. I could not help a presentiment that somehow or other my life ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... away up a little river, plagued by mosquitoes and gnats. The dark shades of the heavy forests were seldom brightened by a ray of sun. The stream was full of alligators, that lay lazily on the banks all day, and bellowed dismally all night. The chirp of a bird was rarely heard. In its place were the discordant screams of cranes, or hisses of the moccasins or cotton-mouths. When at last the carpenters' clatter had ceased, and the ram, ready for action, lay in the little river, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a tree, Up went Pussy-cat, and down went he; Down came Pussy-cat, and away Robin ran; Says little Robin Redbreast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Redbreast flew upon a wall, Pussy-cat jumped after him, and almost got a fall; Little Robin chirp'd and sang, and what did Pussy say? Pussy-cat said ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... effort, lingers on all crackled and smoke-dried till the following season, when it repeats the same process; and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirp in its branches." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... seeking sweet repose Within itself when wearied with the throes Of its life-struggle. The low sounds that strike Upon the ear in wafts of melody, Are cruel mockeries, O snail, of thee. The cricket's chirp, the grasshopper's shrill tone, The locust's jarring cry, all mock thy lone And dumb-like presence. May this heart of mine, When tried, put on a resignation such ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... insects whispered in his ear mysterious words. Here a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue; further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange sound, a rapid note, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive— My business was hardly with them, I trow, 35 But with empty cells of the human hive— With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle, or nave, Its crypt, one fingers ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... chorusing together—feet clattered, passages echoed—it was a very Babel of noise and confusion. What strange beings we are! Not two hours before, I had said and felt that laughing was catching; now, although the merry chirp of youth mingled with it, I wished the whole party at the residence of an old gentleman whose name I care not to mention. May we not truly say of ourselves what the housemaid says of the missing article—"Really, sir, I don't know nothing ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a very sweaty Jake before the sky was reddening with the dawn; before even the earliest of little brown birds were a-chirp or a rooster had lifted his ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... mind!" shrieked Bel, snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however much one may want ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... know the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,—yet ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... night, guided on my way by the shining stars of heaven alone. The next morning just before the break of day, I came right to a large plantation, about which I secreted myself, until the darkness of the next night began to disappear. The morning larks commenced to chirp and sing merrily—pretty soon I heard the whip crack, and the voice of the ploughman driving in the corn field. About breakfast time, I heard the sound of a horn; saw a number of slaves in the field with a white man, who I supposed to be their overseer. He started to the house before the slaves, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... sashes! The witch-grass round the hazel spring May sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters As beverage meet for Satan's daughters; No more their mimic tones be heard, The mew of cat, the chirp of bird, Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter Of the fell demon following after! The cautious goodman nails no more A horseshoe on his outer door, Lest some unseemly hag should fit To his own mouth her bridle-bit; The goodwife's churn no more refuses Its wonted culinary uses ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... sometimes with a long steady rush, like the breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at band, the branches move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you may hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. From time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by; and from time to time ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voices of the night: somewhere a child was crying fretfully, across the way the faint tinkle of a piano, the far-off rattle of the elevated, a muffled laugh from a window, above, the rat-tat of a cab-horse, the breeze in the ivy clinging to the walls of the church next door, the quarrelsome chirp of the sleepy sparrows; and then, recurrence. Only the poet or the man in pain opens ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... though uno avulso thus comes every day Non deficit alter is also in play: For the vacant parts are, one and all, Soon taken by puppets just as small; Who chirp, chirp, chirp, with a grasshopper's glee, We're the lamps of the Universe, We! We! We! But Time, whose speech is never long,— He hasn't time for it—stops the song And says—Lilliput lamps! leave the twopenny boxes, And shine ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... a very poetical nature; but I think the scene by which we were surrounded aroused what little I had. The birds were finding their way to the hedgerows to seek rest for the night, ever and anon giving a faint chirp of content. The beetles went humming heedlessly by, the bees laden with honey returned to their hives, and all nature seemed to be at peace. The honeysuckle and the hedge flowers that grew in wild confusion perfumed the lane in which we walked; the ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... is because the crickets are then full-grown, and have large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings, and so of course, we could not see them chirp. ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... Suspicion, in those lands, in those days. If poor famishing men shall, prior to death, gather in groups and crowds, as the poor fieldfares and plovers do in bitter weather, were it but that they may chirp mournfully together, and misery look in the eyes of misery; if famishing men (what famishing fieldfares cannot do) should discover, once congregated, that they need not die while food is in the land, since they are many, and with empty wallets have right hands: in all this, what need were there ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... red fields of sarasson, hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns. The sun shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous buzzing of bees and chirp of birds. ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... And the veery, Answer each other. I hear the voices Of happy children And the baying of hounds Float up from the valley; The chirp of the cricket At my feet, and, ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill, But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill, Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... yesterday, was again seen to-day. I remember shooting the same species at elevations of 8,000 feet in Bootan, in oak forests. It has the habits of Merops, with its voice or chirp, and is very gregarious, so that one part of the flock will not separate from the rest. It perches in a very erect manner making swoops and sallies after insects precisely as Merops. Plumage sombre, general ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... ceased, the garden became deserted. The light that had loitered in the corners crept upward to the roofs, cast its last rays upon the highest windowpanes, followed by the birds, the swallows, which saluted the close of day with a farewell chirp from the gutter where they ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Somewhere near a bird sang; its note was clear and bold. Its silvery trill seemed to melt into the air that was full of the soft, caressing splash of the waves. The silence that followed was broken by the nervous chirp of ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... tell me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is here! ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... musical note, and soon you forget to hear it. By night each noise is individual, and leaves its impress on the mind. Whoever remembers the quality of noises he hears by day in the city, however great the uproar? Who can forget the soothing chirp of crickets in the grass at his ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the delight in her blue eyes matching that in Uncle Tucker's pair of mystic gray. "I'll come just as soon as I get the skimming done. We'll want some corn meal and millet seed for the chirp-babies, but the others we can leave to the maternal ministrations. I'm so full of welcome I don't see how I'm going to keep it from ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... occasionally written poems that won a good deal of praise from friends, but brought no widespread notice. From his very earliest years he could feel very keenly and remember the melody of verse. "The low, soft chirp of the little bird heard in the nest, while his mother is brooding over him," he has written, "lives in his memory, I doubt not, through all the noisy carols of the singing season; so I remember the little songs my mother sang to me when I was old enough to run about, and had not outgrown ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... soughing of the wind in the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are heard and fall soothingly upon ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... again. Nothing improves one so much as friendly correspondence. Write again—and if there is anything in this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to hear you chirp. 'Very truly, etc., "'MARK TWAIN, 'For James W. N——-, U. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and sky in her ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Evidently he had contracted to deliver just so many warnings per diem; and invariably he got so busy chasing insects, enjoying the sun, gossiping with a friend and generally footling about that the late afternoon caught him unawares with never a chirp accomplished. So he sat in a bush and said his say over and over just as fast as he could without pause for breath or recreation. It was really quite a feat. Just at dusk, after two hours of gabbling, he would reach the end of his contracted number. With final ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... their soft feathers is scarcely distinguishable from the ground which they have selected as a table for their morning meal. Nicasio is in advance of me, tracking a company of guinea-fowls, whose melodious chirp has caught his accustomed ear. They are not yet visible, but my sporting friend has halted behind a bush, and thrown away his white tell-tale panama. This means mischief. The dark-grey clothes and sun-burnt face of my ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... with which a human being can be made to look like a magnified toad—all which feats yielded high delight and satisfaction to the assembled spectators. After which, the voice of Mrs. Pott was heard to chirp faintly forth, something which courtesy interpreted into a song, which was all very classical, and strictly in character, because Apollo was himself a composer, and composers can very seldom sing ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was to be there. For the first time Fern's gentle nature felt jarred and out of tune. The bright little fire had burned hollow; there was a faint clinging mist from the fog outside; the cricket had ceased to chirp. Fern glanced round her disconsolately; how poor and shabby it must look to him, she thought, after the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a "shuttle"? What does the word still mean here? Who are the "elfin clan"? By whom is the sheaf tenanted? What is a reveille? Does the grasshopper chirp at night? Why is ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... barn, the runaway was again in the open air. Everything looked gloomy and sad to him, and the scene was as solemn as a funeral. There were no sounds to be heard but the monotonous chirp of the cricket, and the dismal piping of the frogs in the meadow. Even the owl and the whip-poor-will had ceased their nocturnal notes, and the stars looked more gloomy than he had ever ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... creation blest, Sweet insect, that delight'st to rest Upon the wild wood's leafy tops, To drink the dew that morning drops, And chirp thy song with such a glee, That happiest kings may envy thee. Whatever decks the velvet field, Whate'er the circling seasons yield, Whatever buds, whatever blows, For thee it buds, for thee it grows. Nor yet art thou the peasant's fear, To him thy friendly notes are dear; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... at them, she heard the mother bird chirp, as if she said, "Do not touch my children, little girl, for I ...
— McGuffey's First Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition • William Holmes McGuffey
... age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... in contrast to the milder colorings. Blackbirds and bluebirds chatter and chipmunks chirp. The gold so hard to find in the mines glares from the skies. The hills cuddle in banks of snowy clouds, and above all a pure clear blue sky sweeps. The lakes and streams abound with rainbow trout, the gamest of any fresh water fish. It ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... peculiar chirp, not very fierce, but bantering and confident. They quickly come to blows, but it is a very fantastic battle, and, as it would seem, indulged in more to satisfy their sense of honor than to hurt each other, for neither party gets the better of the other, and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... from his bed before the Countess had turned in hers; and long before the Abbot could get alone with Dom Galors he was sighing for his breakfast. He had, indeed, seen the dawn come in, caught the first shiver of the trees, the first tentative chirp of the birds, watched the slow filling of the shadowy pools and creeks with the grey tide of light. From brake to brake he struggled, out of the shade into the dark, thence into what seemed a broad lake of daylight. He met no living thing; or ever the sun kissed the tree-tops he was hungry. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... violence forced the door that communicated with the pantry back upon its hinges. Scarcely had this accident come to pass, than Jacko, whom I had not seen for some days, taking advantage of it, ran into the main cabin and, with the curious chirp of the ring-tail monkey, jumped on the restless table. Perceiving with the quickness of a man, that all was not right, the little animal looked into my face for inquiry, and then scratched his side, not from any particular reason, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... and fresh and still; Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... down; there was still water at the bottom of the well. Here, plunged in the darkness, Angelot sat on the edge of the well and waited. There were odd little sounds about him, the squeaking of young animals, the sleepy chirp of easily disturbed birds; a frog dived with a splash into the well, and then in a few unearthly croaks told his story to his mates down there. The bracken smelt warm and dry; it was not a bad place to spend a summer ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... in a tall tree overhead; and the sweet, clear notes of one of them delighted Master Sunshine until he heard the mate answering back with a harsh, scraping noise not unlike a dull saw making its way through a log of knotted wood. A robin gave a mellow chirp; and the Peabody bird was filling the air ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... very heavy; but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming life of the tropical wilderness, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... it within with wood and clay, And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue; And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... a year since I've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems like ten. How are you feeling, Hal? You look chirp ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Pauline followed the flight of his thought with difficulty. After the third phrase anything read aloud made her feel drowsy, and the affairs of her household took on an absurd importance; one might say that the voice of the reader made them chirp like birds in a cage. It was in vain that she tried to follow on Clerambault's lips, and even to imitate with her own, the words whose meaning she no longer understood; her eye mechanically noted a hole ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister) that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make love to every pretty girl ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... Saturday, however, came a clear day. The sun shone, the drenched trees shook themselves, and the wind came and blew softly and warmly through their branches to dry the tender foliage. The birds popped out of their hiding-places and began to sing and chirp as though they never could be glad enough for ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... silent in among the trees, whose great trunks towered up so high, and though we could hear a chirp now and then far above us in the leaves, all was as still as possible, not so much as a beetle or fly breaking the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... are well trained. (Good children run in the family.) I record, pridefully, that the sunny head of the least of the band has never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was distinct in the general plea for, "More—to-morrow night?" with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... this from his wife, said, for that he was an old man and maybe therefore somewhat cross-grained, 'What nightingale is this to whose song she would sleep? I will yet make her sleep to the chirp of the crickets.' Caterina, coming to know this, more of despite than for the heat, not only slept not that night, but suffered not her mother to sleep, still complaining of the great heat. Accordingly, next morning, the latter repaired to her husband and said to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... father said he was more comfortable than downstairs, as I did not mind his pipe, and Tom has hung my linnet there,' pointing to the window, 'and if you open the cage, miss, you will see him hop all over the bedclothes, and chirp in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I love to hear them chirp," commented Miss Katie, turning a sweet glance toward us, and then the party moved to go and we saw the six hats loaded with their mournful freight file off to the house. We followed the retreating hats with sad eyes till they were ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... be more generous, more joyous, than these natural meadows in summer. The flash and ripple and glimmer of the tall sunflowers, the myriad voices of gleeful bobolinks, the chirp and gurgle of red-winged blackbirds swaying on the willows, the meadow-larks piping from grassy bogs, the peep of the prairie chick and the wailing call of plover on the flowery green slopes of the uplands made it all an ecstatic ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... solemnity about the Roman villa as soon as Marcus was left alone. All seemed to have grown painfully still. It was fancy, no doubt, but, to the boy, the birds had ceased to sing and chirp among the trees, the sounds from the farm were distant, and though more than once Marcus listened intently he did not hear Serge go to or from his room, nor his ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... the forest, changing its direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example; lories and parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and bark, and the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their morning song. As I lie listening to these interesting sounds, I realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for months together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped rather than expected ever to visit. I think how ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and fresh, and still; Alone the chirp of flitting birds And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never understood the words, but the music ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Iago at the stage door with a brick You have missed the moral of the play. He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife. They will chirp together and be gay. But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust: Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust. And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.) Yet I chase the thing he stands for with ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... and we sometimes sat long in comical and uncomfortable silence because neither of us would "scare the angel that was passing over the house." When the first notes of the organ stirred the swallows in the church eaves to chirp aloud, I believed with Mrs. Bundle that they were joining in the Te Deum. And when sunshine fell on me through the church windows during service, I regarded ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was famine and frost; Not a morsel of fruit or of grain; And the bird gave a piteous chirp, And tapped with his beak at ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... fair, lovely June flowers were sleeping, fanned by the wings of the tiny zephyrs floating past. A spell of enchantment was upon every thing, for a deep stillness reigned around; the little brown cricket had ceased to chirp; the katydid no longer quarrelled in shrill tones with her neighbor; the wail of the sad whippoorwill was hushed; the rugged sides of old Crow Nest were rounded and softened in the silvery moonbeams, adown which the little brooklet sprang this night with a more lightsome ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... The thousands of frogs that fill the swamps of America whistle or chirp so exactly like little birds, that many people, upon hearing them for the first time, have mistaken them for the feathered songsters of the groves. Their only fault is that ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Musick went with us both all the Wood thro', The Lark, Linnet, Throstle, and Nightingale too; Winds over us whisper'd, Flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the Grasshopper under our Feet. But now she is absent, tho' still they sing on, The Woods are but lonely, the Melody's gone: Her Voice in the Consort, as now I have found, Gave ev'ry ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... On the hills near by the coyotes kept up ventriloquistic clamor, and from far off the bawling of great bulls and the bleating of the calves brought news of a huge herd of cattle, but these sounds only made his solitary vigil the more impressive. The sleepy chirp of the crickets and the sound of his horse nipping the grass, calmly careless of the wolves, were the only aids to sleep; all else had the effect to keep his tense nerves vibrating. As the cold intensified, the crickets ceased to cry, and ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... by the brookside, I wandered by the mill; I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still, There was no burr of grasshopper No chirp of any bird, But the beating of my own heart Was all the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... well— Only that little lonesome cell, Where never romping playmates come, Nor bashful sweethearts, cunning-dumb— An April burst of girls and boys, Their rainbowed cloud of glooms and joys Born with their songs, gone with their toys; Nor ever is its stillness stirred By purr of cat, or chirp of bird, Or mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... scarcely had he uttered the words when the cricket in the chimney corner chirped loudly, and his shrill notes seemed to say: "The king—the king." Rodolph could hardly believe his ears. How had the cricket learned to chirp these words? It was beyond all understanding. But still the cricket chirped, and still his musical monotone seemed to say, "The king—the king," until, with an angry frown, Rodolph strode from his house, leaving the child to hear the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... medals away from him, "that's the answer, You for the Burbs! You for the chateau up the track! Henceforth, you for the cage in the country where the daffydowndillys sing in the treetops and buttercups chirp ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... without, crying and moaning; but I could not join in. I was going I knew not where; it was impossible to take my bird, for even if I could carry him, he would starve. So I took him out of his cage, kissed his little yellow head, and tossed him up. He gave one feeble little chirp as if to ascertain where to go, and then for the first and last time I cried, laying my head against the gate-post, and with my eyes too dim to see him. Oh, how it hurt me to lose my little bird, one Jimmy had given ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... along the quiet country road, only the chirp of many locusts, the rumble of the wheels, and the sound of their own voices to break the stillness. Ferry leaned forward. Constance was at the farther end of the wagon, between ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... seem to amount to much when you are up, like this, on a mountain, near the sky, with the world spread out below and not missing you; and a boy's voice, or a man's, is about the size of a cricket's chirp. The silence is one of the best things you find. So we sat and ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... taxes, poll-money, and tribute, but with respect to thy present command thou art only Nebuchadnezzar. Therein thou and the dog are alike unto us. Bark like a dog, inflate thyself like a water-bottle, and chirp like a ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the really arid white walls, when the brothers led us down a wide staircase to the vaulted space beneath the basement, we came upon some hundreds of small bird-cages, containing each a miserable linnet, titmouse, or finch, condemned to chirp out its wretched existence in this airless underground region. In reply to our pitying exclamation, we were told that the bachelors' friend who occupied the corner apartment on the ground-floor was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... their heads high, let the following legend tell: Few men could shuffle along more inoffensively or cry "Old Clo'" with a meeker twitter than Sleepy Sol. The old man crawled one day, bowed with humility and clo'-bag, into a military mews and uttered his tremulous chirp. To him came one of the hostlers ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... waits, in the mild sunlight of the autumn morning. Suddenly, great excitement in the cages. The Chaffinches chirp their rallying-cry: ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... in castle world. People can come and live there for years, they say, without the duke ever knowing they've arrived. Well, so could whole families of birds live in these elms without the leading robin hearing an alien chirp. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... he got only a mouthful of burnt tail-feathers. Whitebird was safe, safe in the narrow passage where the dragon could not follow. Up and up and up and up he feebly fluttered into the light of the dear outside world, and then he gave a chirp of joy to find that he really had escaped. But oh, how tired ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... eternal-springing hope in his little flat chest he trots down to the graveyard corner every day, and every day Uncle Robert says, with a cheery chirp in italics, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... you from your nest, And cannot find your nest again; To hear you chirp a little while I wrung your mother's heart ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... at being disturbed. They are fond of bathing, and after a rain may be seen in crowds fluttering and splashing in the pools of water in the street. The cold winter does not molest them. They continue as plump and jolly and independent as ever, and chirp and hop about as merrily on a snowy day ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen. The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under the piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated it for its cheer, and started ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... time, however, these pleasures began to grow familiar to his friend Nancy. Her papa, one day, presented her with a book of prints, with which she was so much delighted, that Cherry began to lose at least one half of her attention. As usual, he would chirp the moment he saw her, let her be at what distance she would; but Nancy began to take no notice of him, and almost a week had passed, without his receiving either a bit of biscuit, or a fresh supply of chick-weed. He repeated the sweetest and most harmonious notes ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... flight—their boughs are brandishing their foliage as a dog worries a fleece, and littering the black soil with leaves among which runs a constant querulous hissing and rustling. Also, storks are uttering their snapping cry, sleek rooks cawing, steppe grasshoppers maintaining their tireless chirp, sturdy, well-grown husbandmen uttering shouts like words of command, the threshing-floors of the rolling steppe diffusing a rain of golden chaff, and eddying whirlwinds catching up stray poultry feathers, dried-onion strips, and leaves yellowed with ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... teacupful and greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty. Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing at "Kings" . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and then, like the tearing of a veil, the opening grew larger and the beautiful azure sky, clear and fathomless, spread over the world. A fresh and gentle breeze passed over the earth like a happy sigh, and as they passed beside gardens or woods they heard occasionally the bright chirp of a bird as he ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... horse of mighty pow'r, Compact in frame, and strong of limb; Went with a chirp from hour to hour; Whip-cord! 'twas ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... it be the boisterous revel of the forst geister, that meets his ear? or is it but the chirp of insects, replying from ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... ghost-like, round the seductive light of my lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the house, attracts me by its domestic chirp back into my bedroom, and is there my social companion, while, in a happy dreaming state, I await the coming day, kept half awake by the buzz of the mosquites, the kettle-drum croak of the bull-frog, or the complaining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... with her tiny foot. The paper caught fire, and as soon as the blaze had died away thousands of little sparks were seen chasing one another about. The fairy watched these sparks with a curious eye; then, as the last one was about to go out, she blew upon the cinders, when, lo! the chirp of a bird was heard, and a swallow rose, which fluttered, terrified, about the room and ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... ill-natured. Carlin, old woman. Cates, dainties. Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, catch up. Clinkin, smartly. Clinkumbell, the bell-ringer. Clymmynge, noisy. Cockernony, woman's hair gathered up with a band. Cofte, bought. Cog, basin. Cood, cud. Coost, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the bobolink along the meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Senator from Kentucky had concluded his remarks. They did so and no word of complaint reached my ears. Hour after hour during the long summer day the speech drew itself along. At length as the shadows were lengthening and the crickets began to chirp, the speech ended and the Senator took his seat. I promptly replaced my pistols and motioned the visitors to move out. They did so on excellent time. As the last man was passing out, he quietly remarked to me, 'Mister, that was all right, no fault to find, but if ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... with much docility. Truesdale was profoundly impressed by his sister's aspect under these novel conditions; Bertie Patterson seemed to find in her the incarnation of all the town's philanthropy; even Aunt Lydia was almost too deeply affected to chirp and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Achatinella, are to be found in the mountains of Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls first to one side and then to the other of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... buzz and hum of millions upon millions of insects, that dance in the air and creep on every leaf and blade upon the ground. About noon all this is hushed. The hot rays of the sun beat perpendicularly down upon what seems a vast untenanted solitude, and not a single chirp breaks the death-like stillness of the great forest, with the solitary exception of the metallic note of the uruponga, or bell-bird, which seems to mount guard when all the rest of the world has gone to sleep. As the afternoon approaches they all wake up, refreshed by their siesta, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... waited there those few breathless moments, Ray examined his rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to represent something sublime in its petty indifference. He was stationed on the extreme left; near him the tumult of the torrent drowned much discordant noise, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... as he stood in the lee of a block of granite, sheltered from the cold night wind, found the pipe, and raised it to his lips to blow through the stem, but stopped short with every sense on the alert, for from below to his left he heard a light chirp such as might have been given by a bird, but which he argued certainly was not, for he knew of no bird likely to utter such a note at that time of the evening, when the flood of darkness had risen and risen till it had filled up everything high above the highest kopje that dotted ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... he began. "Here's our choir-leader sick, and the rest won't chirp without him. I can't sing any more than I can dance. You can—sing, I mean—both, for that matter. I'd give the best cast of a fly I ever had to take you out in a reel. Well, here's the trouble. It's nearly meeting-time, and what's a meeting without ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... other birds. Sometimes I warble and chirp at the same time. Then it sounds like two birds singing. My tongue is short and thick, and this helps me to talk. But I have been talking too much. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... we got into the automobile, I gave another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... promptly, with a jerk as if to throw off her irresolution, and a certain consternation. "Yes, I s'pose I do," said she, in a voice like a shrill high chirp. "It's Mis' Maxwell, ain't it—Edward's wife? How do you do, Esther? I hadn't seen you for so long, I wasn't quite sure, but I see who you are ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... waiting almost impatiently for the light to come so that he could rise to another day. He learned all the sounds of the late night and early morning, and how they had different voices in the dark; the faint whisper of the maple-branches, the occasional stir and muffled chirp of a bird, the hushed, secret murmur of the little brook which ran between his garden and the Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the Necronsett River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The Notch. He could almost tell, without opening his eyes, when the sky grew light over ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... being shut and fastened cautiously, the key in Link's pocket, they drifted through the swing door, as air might have circulated, identifying the mouse's scuttle, the rattle of a rat among the loose coal in the cellar bin, the throaty chirp of a cricket outside in the grass, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... warm feathers, and the fish has scales, overlapping each other as the slates on the roof of a house do, thus making a perfectly waterproof coat for its whole body; the bird has legs and wings, and the fish has neither; the bird can chirp and sing, while fishes ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... necessity to a superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; the birds chirp, the tree branches sway, the noise of wheels is forgotten; he writes with his soul in his pen—and he sells it to the Sun ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... rocking-chair was heard, regular as the ticking of a clock. The night breeze stirred in the great woods, and the sound of a brook that went falling down the hillside grew louder and louder. Now and then one could hear the plaintive chirp of a bird. The moon glittered with whiteness like a winter moon, and shone upon the low-roofed house until its small window-panes gleamed like silver, and one could almost see the colors of a blooming bush of lilac that grew in a sheltered angle ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Poor old E. G. W. S.! We all turned away from him, out of pity. He had the expression of a man that's fell down a hundred-foot prospect hole and been struck by lightning before he touched bottom. He grabbed aholt of the minister and swallered and swallered, unable to chirp. ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... glimpses through the willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... thousand little scraping noises broke the quiet air, chill and dank. Leaves pattered against each other, twigs rubbed faintly, brittle things broke under the lightest foot. Still hardly a wing unfolded ever so little, not a distressful chirp heralded the slaughter that threatened. Gradually, to eyes growing used to the gloom, differing shades of darkness became apparent; it was faintly marked by them as the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... pile of boulders near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Peter Kenny's door, his diffident fingers evoked from the bell but a single chirp—a sound that would by no means have gained him admission had Peter not been sitting up in bed, reading to while away the ache ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... His dried lips tried to laugh. "Ef it ain't the dicky-bird!" The bird looked at him. "Ef that doesn't beat—" but he could not think what it "beat." The bird cocked its head. "Ain't ye afeard o' me?" It gave a feeble chirp. "Well, I'm damned!" said the man, and after this mild expression of his feelings, forgot to curse again. He even began to eye the island with a vague questioning wonder, as if asking himself what means might be thought of that would enable ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today." Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... outcropping rock. He stood silent a few minutes—quite motionless—as if he were listening to the forest and the night. But there was utter stillness. There was not even a breeze to stir a leaf, or a half-wakened bird to sleepily chirp. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... many sparrows which have also made their homes. In the morning, before the sun has arisen, and at the time when the dawn is making the city gray and leaden in color instead of somber and black, these sparrows begin to chatter and chirp and sing in discordant notes, and by this I know the day has come. Upon this morning it seemed to me the sparrows chattered with an unusual commotion; and as I listened I heard from another window near mine the voice of grief and lamentation. Then I knew ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... chicken, And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken. The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison; So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen. The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep, The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep. The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty, The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high But both do not enjoy the self-same plight; The soul is safe, the chick now ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebular in the darkened void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of planets and the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London |
