"Clatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey to Brazil, magnificently printed in Germany, and all tongues began to clatter, and it became wondrously agreeable; and behind me I heard English well spoken, and this was Mr. Trelawny, and I heard from him a panegyric on the Abbe Edgeworth, whom he knew well, and he was the person who took the first letter and news ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... of muffed drums. From every side of the pale sleeping town it seemed to come, under the moon's cold glamour. It rose, and fell, and rose, with a weird, creepy rhythm, like a groaning of the hopeless and hungry. A hansom cab rattled down the High Street; Hilary strained his ears after the failing clatter of hoofs and bell. They died; there was silence. Creeping nearer, drumming, throbbing, he heard again the beating of that vast heart. It grew and grew. His own heart began thumping. Then, emerging from that sinister dumb groan, he distinguished a crunching sound, and knew that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rose yells and the clatter of galloping horses. Before they could imagine what this meant a little cavalcade swept by at a mad gallop, yelling at the tops of their voices, and charging directly at the Rebels below. In front were Aunt Debby, Bolton and Edwards, riding abreast, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... full, and George, when he entered the public room, heard such a Babel of English voices, and such a clatter of English spoons that he might have fancied himself at the top of the Righi or in a Rhine steamboat. But the subjects under discussion all savoured of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... strike the ear once or twice again—and after minutes, it might seem—with startling distinctness, before being finally lost in the distance, as it is on clear, frosty nights. So with the sounds of horses' hoofs, stumbling on the rough bridle-track through the "saddle", the clatter of hoof-clipped stones and scrape of gravel down the hidden "siding", and the low sound of men's voices, blurred and speaking in monosyllables and at intervals it seemed, and in hushed, awed tones, as though they carried a corpse. To practical eyes, grown used to such a darkness, and ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... the little tenement, the two listened intently. An instant before the thunder of horse's feet upon wooden planking had been plainly audible in the distance, and now the coming clatter could ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter. The old warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and said something reassuring to Keok, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... begged its pardon, floundered into the adjoining bedroom, and dived under the bed. He reappeared with his arms full of human bones, and shot across the room, muttering something like thanks. As he fled down the dark hall, he collided with a piece of furniture, his burden fell, and with a terrific clatter rolled from the top of the stairs to the bottom. John rushed out to help gather up the fallen, and Elizabeth ran across the room and hid her face shudderingly in the folds of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... have been shuffling china plates like cards, from the clatter that could be heard in the Great Court. Jacob's rooms, however, were in Neville's Court; at the top; so that reaching his door one went in a little out of breath; but he wasn't there. Dining in Hall, presumably. It will be ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... gave warning that riders were coming down the steep and dangerous hill beyond the turn. Unity looked up with interest, and Fairfax Cary paused with his hand upon a coral bough. Suddenly there was a change in the beat, then a frightened shout, and a sound of rolling stones and a wild clatter of hoofs. Unity sprang to her feet; Cary came down the bank at a run, tossed her his armful of blossoms, and was in the middle of the road in time to seize by the bridle the riderless horse which came plunging around ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... library door, there was a crash and a clatter, the girl disappeared, and the boy heard his mother's voice asking, "Jack, what in the ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... her last night in the Dresden palace. We do not hear so much as the clatter of the carriage wheels that carried her and "Richard" to her unfrocking as princess of the blood,—in short, our narrator is not prejudiced, on the defensive, or soured by disfranchisement. She had no axes to grind while writing; for her all kings dropped out of the clouds; the lustre ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... village blacksmith. His shop stood on the bank of the river, not far from the dam. The great wheel below the flume rolled all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter. What a palace of wonders to the boys was that grim and sooty shop!—the roar of the fires, as they were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... and most frequented in the town. The eastern side faced the road and the river, and contained the best rooms, in which, on the previous night, the senator had established himself with his wife and servants. The clatter of the quadriga drew Justinus to the window; as soon as he recognized Orion he waved a table-napkin to him, shouting a hearty "Welcome!" and then retired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... West's kitchen, somewhat after ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be off to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, and the clap of an explosion, and the clatter of a sealing-gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval between the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay followed by a woman's choke and scream of terror, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, stood swaying, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... that roused her was the clatter of the dishes in the kitchen. The yellow light of morning filled the room. She wondered to find herself fully dressed and kneeling by the bed instead of sleeping in it. It was late, she had missed the hour of Mass. Her glance ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... It needed a clatter of hoofs and a cloud of dust approaching from the north to draw his mind from its obsessing thoughts. He watched the yellow body of the coach as it came furiously onward, its four horses stretched to the gallop, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... instalment of your Library Edition; viz. Vols. IV.-X. Life of Friedrich; Vols. L-III. Translations from German; one volume General Index; eleven volumes in all,—and now my stately collection is perfect. Perfect too is your Victory. But I clatter my chains with joy, as I did forty years ago, at your earliest gifts. Happy man you should be, to whom the Heaven has allowed such masterly completion. You shall wear your crown at the Pan-Saxon Games with no equal or approaching competitor ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and the horror of it; while I am going about the loathsome grind I try to think—try to have some idea in my head. And something comes to me—something beautiful, perhaps; and then in a few moments, in the clatter and confusion, I lose it; and after that I go about haunted, restless, feeling that I have lost something, that I ought to be doing something. What the thing is, I do not even know—but so it drives ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... though you need not be instructed by me, yet you need be incited. Care not over-much for the world, but make use of good means which you have in your country, for here is a pack of dumb dogs that cannot bark, they tell over a clash of terror, and clatter of comfort without any ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Ranelagh is an injured man. Ask what was said and done at their last dinner here. I can't tell you. I didn't listen and I didn't see what happened, but it was something out of the ordinary. Three broken wineglasses lay on the tablecloth when I went in to clear away. I heard the clatter when they fell and smashed, but I said nothing. I have said nothing since; but I know there was a quarrel, and that Mr. Ranelagh was not in it, for his glass was the only one which remained unbroken. Am I wrong in telling you? I wouldn't if—if it were not for Mr. Ranelagh. He didn't ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of an hour I sat there, living over again the precious minutes under the bridge, when the clatter of hoofs awakened me to the realities of the situation. Peeping cautiously past the edge of the blind, I saw the dragoons—there were six of them—ride up to the gate. Sharp orders rang out, and three of the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a crash, as of some falling body, resounded through the house, followed by a clatter of breaking crockery, and the cries of children. Janetta started up, with changing color, and apologized ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the spark of fire, or whatever it was, grew larger and larger. Col. Zane thought it might be a light carried by a man on horseback. But if this were true where was the clatter of the horse's hoofs? On that rocky blur no horse could run noiselessly. It could not be a horse. Fascinated and troubled by this new mystery which seemed to presage evil to them the watchers waited with that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... hymn with noisy delight. It was a peaceful day. The wind was at rest and the sea was calm. In the ancient town of St. Just it was peculiarly peaceful, for the numerous and untiring "stamps"—which all the week had continued their clang and clatter, morning, noon, and night, without intermission—found rest on that hallowed day, and the great engines ceased to bow their massive heads, with the exception of those that worked the pumps. Even these, however, were required to do as little work as was compatible with the due drainage ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... a smell of many things being cooked, and the rattle of dishes, and of knives, forks and spoons made such a clatter that it sounded as though every one was ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... between the hills, and through this they rushed madly, and with a clatter like a charge of cavalry. Excited by the chase, and emulous each to outrun the other, the colonel threw off his chako, and Briolle his sword, in the ardor of pursuit. We now gained on them rapidly, and though, from a winding in the glen, they had momentarily got out of sight, we ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... from the village scarped around the slope at the back of the house, and he heard the clatter of a waggon passing along it. The noise irritated him sorely—he could not tell why. Soon it ceased, and he wondered why the waggon should have stopped where it did. A few minutes afterwards he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, so he paused in his ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... the tool cuts shavings from the solid metal rotating swiftly in the lathe. As blow follows blow the red-hot 'scale,' driven from the surface of the iron on the anvil by the heavy sledge, flies rattling against the window in a spray of fire. The ring of metal, the clatter, the roaring, and hissing of steam, fill the air, and through it rises now and then the shrill quick calls ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... and left me, and I turned to sleep with that great couplet going over and over in my head like the clatter ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the mountain sides, in long descending diagonals, and suddenly found himself above a farm in the plain. In the backyard, children were playing; a man was sharpening a plowshare at a wheel, and out of the kitchen-shed there came a clatter of dishes and the voice of a woman in song. Seized by a sudden perverse humor, Charles-Norton swooped into the chicken-yard and snatched a hen which, feeling herself rising in his hand, straightway shut her eyes and died ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... shewn that, just as gudgeons will bite at anything when the mud is stirred up at the bottom of their holes, so the ingenuous public will lay out their money with anybody who makes a prodigious noise and clatter about the bargains he has to give. The result of this discovery is, the wholesale daily publication of lies of most enormous calibre, and their circulation, by means which we shall briefly notice, in localities where they are likely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... of a sudden the first thunderclap sounded and reverberated, crashing and roaring, among the worm-eaten rafters of the old, dilapidated house. In the most desperate combination, such as only occurs during storms in the north, a clatter of hail stones now followed, which in less than a minute demolished all the window-panes on the windy side, and immediately after this, indeed in the midst of it, came a downpour of rain which seemed to be the prelude of a new deluge. We children, starting up terrified, ran ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the artery of some capital, through which our carriage drives at a fast trot, making a deafening clatter on the pavement. Electric light everywhere. The shops are closing; ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... phenomenon as the tobacco-smoking, four-in-hand Miss Coventry. Mrs. Lumley showered her long ringlets all over her face with one toss of her pretty little head that I might not see how heartily she was laughing. Lady Scapegrace good-naturedly made an immense clatter with something that was handed to her, to distract attention from my unfortunate self; but I believe I must have got up and left the room had not Cousin John come adroitly to the rescue. He had not been studying ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like the surf of a far-off sea. Away to the side, with a stretch ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... again, sir," said Wildrake, shrugging his shoulders,—"sorry I have no means of showing my gratitude. I am bound over to keep the peace, like Captain Bobadil—Ha, knight, did you hear my bones clatter? that blow came twankingly off—the fellow might inflict the bastinado, were it in presence of the Grand Seignior—he has no taste for music, knight—is no way moved by the 'concord of sweet sounds.' I will warrant ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... no card house of illusion, so it did not come toppling down with dismaying clatter. But all the same he felt as if her kind hands had turned death cold and were wringing his heart. He took them from his shoulders, and, not unpicturesquely, kissed her finger-tips. Then he dropped them ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Such a medley of discordant sounds, such a clatter and clangor, such a rattle of horse-fiddle, such a bellowing of dumb-bull, such a snorting of tin horns, such a ringing of tin pans, such a grinding of skillet-lids! But the house remained quiet. Once Bill Day thought that he heard a laugh ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... fashionable idlers of the town hold high carnival in the Puerto del Sol, day and night. One is half dazed by the whirl of carriages, the rush of pedestrians, the passing of military bands with marching regiments, and the clatter of horses' feet caused by dashing equestrians. This plaza or square is a scene of incessant movement from early morn until midnight. Like Paris and Vienna, Madrid does not seem to thoroughly awaken until evening, the tide of life becoming most active under the glare of gas-light. The ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... are surely mounted, Arima!" said Escombe. "The movement is that of cavalry; and—listen!—unless I am greatly mistaken, I can hear the clatter of hoofs on the stone ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... gratitude in his eyes, followed his guide and friend. They went through the store-room between great piles of blankets, through the wool-room filled with big bales of fleece, and up-stairs into the weaving-room amid the click and clatter and roar of three score busy and intricate looms. Pen was introduced to the foreman, and his duties as bobbin-boy ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... was put to death, but as her innocent spirit ascended to heaven a great storm arose and lightning struck the statue, angrily hurling the scales from the left hand of the figure of Justice. They fell to the pavement with a clatter and in one of the shattered nests was found the pearl necklace. It had been stolen by a magpie who had cunningly woven the string of pearls into the clay wall of her babies' cradle. So the poor girl was proven innocent and the people of that city were taught to be ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view-holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horsehoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... street, with the alarms it made, only cared for that part of Browning which represented the tangle and the clash, and ignored his final melody. But of late it has begun, tired of the restless clatter of intellectual atoms, to desire to hear, if possible, the majestic harmonies in which the discords are resolved. And at this point many at present and many more in the future will find their poetic and religious satisfaction in Browning. At the very ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... A clatter of hoofs down the road! And bent over the window-sill which is my desk, my fingers are not presentable with the splattering of this vile pen in consequence of my position. Two hours yet before sundown, so of course I am not dressed. They come nearer still. Now I see them! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... them; half-armed, yea, and half-naked some of them; strong and stout and lithe and light withal, the wrath of battle and the hope of better times lifting up their hearts till nothing could withstand them. So was all mingled together, and for a minute or two was a confused clamour over which rose a clatter like the riveting of iron plates, or the noise of the street of coppersmiths at Florence; then the throng burst open and the steel-clad sergeants and squires and knights ran huddling and shuffling towards their horses; but some ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... him on the face, but he launched himself forward, and, while the homesteader grabbed at his rifle, fell upon him. He felt the thud of the billet upon something soft, but the next moment it was torn from him, the rifle fell with a clatter, and he and the bushman reeled against the stove together. Then, they fell against the shelves and with a crash they and the crockery went ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... cannot understand," marvelled Glaucon; but while he spoke, he was interrupted by the clatter of hoofs from a party of horsemen spurring furiously and heading from the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... German guard forgot all about the prisoner supposed to be inside and everything else save that he wanted to get at Chester. He dropped his rifle with a clatter and struck at ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... clatter of dishes and spoons. Mrs. Bentley and Mrs. Meade presided over this part ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... change from hay to new grass, danced over the rough ground so that the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would later do duty as a brake on the long grade down from timber line on the side of Spirit Canyon, rattled and banged over the rocks with a clatter that could be heard for half a mile. Lorraine looked after her father enviously. If she were a boy she would be riding on that sack of hay tied to the "hounds" for a seat. But, being a girl, it had never occurred to Brit that she might like to go,—might ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork will see and resent it—perhaps he will chatter his beak savagely, with a noise like the clatter of the lid on an empty cigar-box; but he will continue his sham meditations. "Ah, my friend," he seems to say, "you are empty and frivolous—I cogitate the profounder immensities of esoteric cogibundity." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... again. Then she heard the scraping of wheels against stones and the clatter of hoofs along ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... at his side, and, with a signal to his companions, all three in unison heaved upwards with all their strength. There came one agonizing instant of resistance; then with a wrenching of wood, the clatter of falling stones and a sudden crash, they burst through and straightened upright into the open ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... with raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or another—there would be nothing but mischief among us—Chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places—there would be no such thing as ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... noiselessly about the cool veranda, serving the score of Americans with that perfect impersonal care found nowhere except among Oriental servitors: the subdued clatter of silver against dish and the tinkle of iced drinks was often drowned in outbursts of merriment from one or other of the little tables. Most of the Americans were mere youths, though two were evidently in their forties. Bronner noted Terry's study of a group of three who sat nearby, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the silence of those great deserted rooms, bursts of indistinct exclamations reached him, a sort of nocturnal clatter unusual in such a place. He directed his steps to the place whence this noise proceeded, and found himself in a spacious hall, dimly lighted, which was one of the exits from the House of Lords. He saw a great glass door open, a flight of steps, footmen and links, a square outside, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... come to the incident that drew from Jimmy his extraordinary statement. I was smoking with him in his rooms one evening, when a clatter at his door was followed by a thud on the floor. I knew as well as Jimmy what had happened. In his pre-Saturday days he had no letter-box, only a slit in the door; and through this we used to denounce him on certain occasions when we called and he would not let us in. Lately, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... more people. People were entering all the time and leaving all the time. Scores of waitresses, in pale green and white, moved to and fro like an alien and mercenary population. The heat, the stir, the hum, and the clatter were terrific. And from on high descended thin, strident music in a rapid and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... craft, a most comical character, so vogie of his honours and dignities in the town council that he could not get the knight told often enough what a load aboon the burden he had in keeping a' things douce and in right regulation amang the bailies. But Sir David, fashed at his clatter, and to be quit of him, came across the vessel and began to talk to my grandfather, although, by his apparel, he was no meet companion for one of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... our progress—like the clay that sticks to the feet of the traveller, like the burden of useless things that he carries painfully with him, things which he cannot bring himself to throw away because they might possibly turn out to be useful, and which meanwhile clank and clatter fruitlessly about the laden beast, and weigh him down. What we have rather to do is to disengage ourselves from these things: from the money which we do not need, but which may help us some day; from the luxuries we do not enjoy; from the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... came from somewhere just the last ripple of a mirthful laugh, the hall was empty! Phroso was gone! I flung the pickaxe down with a clatter on the boards, and exclaimed in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... that silence she could hear the beating of her own heart, and her ears strained nervously for the sound of returning footsteps. She had not long to wait. With a clatter, Mollie came scrambling out of the library window, the letters in ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... eagerness. How could I mistake these sounds? The chimney was immediately above us, and it was towards this goal, as I well knew, that the hapless and legless Bubbles was destined fruitlessly to aspire. At last one bound more frantic than the rest, followed by a sudden clatter of displaced tiles, unloosed my tongue, and I ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Some time during the night she was awakened by pistol-shots, and her dream of Jason made her think that she was at home again. But no mountains met her startled eyes through the window. Instead a red glare hung above the woods, there was the clatter of hoofs on the pike, and flames shot above the tops of the trees. Nor could it be a forest fire such as was common at home, for the woods were not thick enough. This land, it seemed, had troubles of its own, as did her mountains, but at least folks did not burn folks' houses ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... shifting view of river and woodland that extended panoramically from her seat in the pavilion. As her eyes fell on the old cottage opposite she was surprised to see a dishpan sail through the open window, to fall with a clatter of broken dishes on the hard ground of the yard. A couple of dish-towels followed, and then a broom and a scrubbing-brush—all tossed out in an angry, energetic way that scattered them in every direction. Then ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... axe in hand, approached the house, his stepfather-in-law, with considerable clatter, was hanging ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Seth, Adam would have done more for Arthur Donnithorne than for any ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street of pretty and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding the outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after all passing vehicles. Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running away, with infinite clatter. All degrees of men, from peers to paupers, betting incessantly. Keepers very watchful, and taking all good chances. An awful family likeness among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell. With some knowledge of expression and some acquaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... just below the quay, which is rather a high one. Not a man would dare to join its ranks. The moment the Angelus rings, darkness is supposed to have fallen. As the last stroke sounds, all the women disrobe and step into the water. Then there is laughing and screaming and a wonderful clatter. The men on the upper quay watch the bathers, straining their eyes, and seeing very little. Yet the white uncertain outlines perceptible against the dark-blue waters of the stream stir the poetic mind, and the possessor of a little fancy finds it not difficult to imagine ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... evening, when the sun was near the horizon, and its slanting rays, falling through the panes, threw rosy squares upon the wall. In the next room there was a clatter of spoons and glasses; he could hear Lialia's merry laugh, and also a man's voice both pleasant and refined which he did not know. At first it seemed to him as if he were still in the railway-carriage and heard the noise of the train, the rattle ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... water with envy. Still scarcely certain whether I was sleeping or waking, I put in my hand and drew out a bag filled with something heavy, and even as I did so the rotten mildewed canvas broke with the strain, and a stream of golden coins descended with a clatter ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... them and caught the Princess Aureline by the hand. "I have come to rescue you!" he cried, and before the King could move or speak he had set her upon the white horse, he had sprung upon the black, and with a clatter of hoofs they were dashing down the steps and ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... got into the booth the waiter had prepared for them, and Whistler sat with his back against the partition dividing it from that in which Blake and his companion sat. Between the clatter of dishes, the waiter's calls to the order man, and the talking of his own friends, Whistler could not hear much at first. But he knew the two men whom he suspected ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... drum's a very quiet fellow When he's left alone; But oh, how he does roar and bellow, Rattle, snap and groan, Clatter, spatter, dash and patter, Rumble, shriek and moan Whene'er I take my sticks in hand And beat him soundly for ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar
... noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp; a metallic clatter, which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds, where tint ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... dinner, at which their appetites were pretty effectually taken away by seeing dishes of snails passed round and eaten like nuts, with large pins to pick out the squirming meat; a night's rest somewhat disturbed by the incessant clatter of sabots in the market-place, and a breakfast rendered merry by being served by a garcon whom Dickens would have immortalised, our travellers went on ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... impudence!" he said. "What do you think has happened to me? I saw a wild boar back there—not a very big one—and he came out into the trail ahead, and I kept straight on, thinking he'd hear me and run. And I'm blessed if the brute didn't whirl around and roughen up, and clatter his tusks until I actually had ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... melancholy which possessed her; but Nelson, pausing in the hail to listen, and exceedingly curious concerning the promised utterance of the Damsel Fair, was to suffer disappointment, as the ballad was broken off abruptly and the songstress closed the piano with a monstrous clatter. Little doubt may be entertained that the noise was designed to disturb Mr. Carewe, who sat upon the veranda consulting a brown Principe, and less that the intended insult was accomplished. For an expression of a vindictive nature was precipitated in that quarter so simultaneously ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... sorrow reveries and smiled. Eddie was still talking. The music of a violin, harp, and piano was playing with a rollicking wistfulness through the clatter and laughter of the cafe. Eddie was saying, "There, that's better. That makes you look like Anna. You were looking like ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... man, and appeared in a force that, of itself, was sufficient to drive Waally's men into the sea. Nevertheless, the last made a show of resistance until the governor fired his six-pounder at them. The shot passed through the wooden pickets, and, though it hurt no one, it made such a clatter, that the chief in command sent out a palm-branch, and submitted. This bloodless conquest caused a revolution at once, in several of the less important islands, and in eight-and-forty hours, Ooroony found himself where he had been when Betts appeared in the Neshamony. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... comfrabble lights gleaming in the houses, and felt the roal of the vessel degreasing, never was two mortials gladder, I warrant, than we were. At length our capting drew up at the key, and our journey was down. But such a bustle and clatter, such jabbering, such shrieking and swaring, such wollies of oafs and axicrations as saluted us on landing, I never knew! We were boarded, in the fust place, by custom-house officers in cock-hats, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... less anxious talk soothed him. Indeed it was he who suggested one last bright draught of air beneath his trees before retiring. Down we went again with some unnecessary clatter. And here were stars between the fruited boughs, silvery Capella and the Twins, and low on the sky's moonlit border Venus ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... and his clatter are away, Where does the little Echo stay? Perched on a rock to watch for him? Or keeping a lookout from some limb? If he were to push his boat to land, Would he find her footprint on the sand? Or would she come to his blithe ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... slept in the building; five of these were Mr. Cartwright's workmen, the other five were soldiers. Hastily they threw on their clothes and seized their arms; but they were scarcely ready when a roar of musketry was heard, mingled with a clatter of falling glass, nearly every pane in the lower windows being smashed by the discharge of ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... head pokes; Twenty others do the same:— Chatter, clatter!—creaks and croaks All the year the same old game!— 'See my spinning!' cries one dame, 'Five long ells of cloth, I trow!' Cries another, 'Mine must go, Drat it, to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... back to Gangoil instead of to the mill. Perhaps he thought that Kate Daly might be a better nurse than his mother, or that the quiet of the sheep station might be better for him than the clatter of his own mill-wheels. It was midnight, and they had a ride of fourteen miles, which was hard enough upon a man with a broken collarbone. The whole party also was thoroughly fatigued. The work ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... Hostel and is a little square, shut-in, cobbled place with tall thin houses closing it in and the Cathedral towers overhanging it. Rooks and bells and the rattle of carts upon the cobbles make a perpetual clatter here, and its atmosphere is stuffy and begrimed. When the Cathedral chimes ring they echo from house to house, from wall to wall, so that it seems as though the bells of a hundred Cathedrals were ringing here. Nevertheless from ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... "Then clatter went the earthen plates— "'Mind Judie,' was the cry; "I could have cop't[Footnote: Thrown] them at their pates; ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... barracks veranda, an inquisitive little group heard first the clang of the door within, and presently the clatter of hoofs coming round from the yard. Stingaree and Howie—a white flash and a bay streak—swept past them as they stood confounded. And the dwindling pair still bobbed in sight, under a full complement of stars, when a fresh outcry from the cell, and a mighty hammering against its locked door, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... watch him, on hearing him rise, go to him and inform him what he is doing; of all which, he tells them, he is quite ignorant, and that they lie. Sometimes they leave neither arms nor sword in his chamber, when he makes such a noise and clatter as if all the devils in hell were there. They therefore think it best to replace the arms, and sometimes he forgets them and remains quietly ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... reached the door, Leneli sat down on the step, and Mother Adolf put the baby in her arms and went at once into the quiet house. Then there was a sound of quick steps about the kitchen, a rattling of the stove, and a clatter of tins which must have pleased the cuckoo, and soon she reappeared in the door with a bowl and spoon ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and again, until he was quite wearied, and so hot (for the weather was very sultry), that he sank back in his chair, almost like to faint. While my mistress went to bring him drink, there was a dreadful earthquake. Part of the roof fell down, and every thing in the house went—clatter, clatter, clatter. Oh I thought the end of all things near at hand; and I was so sore with the flogging, that I scarcely cared whether I lived or died. The earth was groaning and shaking; every thing tumbling about; and my mistress and the slaves were shrieking ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... heard, without any show of pride or trepidation, the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard; the sound of voices below stairs, as Mr. Chilton ushered the physician into the parlor, and the light, careful tread with which he mounted to his wife's apartment. His momentary pause at the entrance, and surprised ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... myself as I wended my lonely way, and I lay awake thinking if I had said anything that would prejudice my chances of winning her, if I had omitted to say anything that might have inclined her to yield. One lies awake at night thinking of the mistakes one has made; thoughts clatter in one's head. Good heavens! how stupid it was of me not to have used a certain argument. Perhaps if I had spoken more tenderly, displayed a more Christian spirit—all that paganism, that talk about nymphs and dryads and satyrs and fauns frightened ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... it. I do believe the sweetness and the thundering outbursts would have inspired me to break into some good old tune myself, if there hadn't been so much rustling and talking and flirting all around me. As it was, there arose a clatter of confusing sounds that gave one's nerves a jerky feeling that I for one haven't got over yet. I do wonder why city people have no better manners. I should just as soon think of speaking out in meeting, as of chattering when others wanted to listen ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... understandings of the neighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable differences of opinion in pint bumpers; and the complaints of the multitude are lost in the clatter of plates and the roaring of loyal catches at every quarter's meeting or mayor's feast. The town-hall reels with an unwieldy sense of self-importance; 'the very stones prate' of processions; the common ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... all the miscreants who dwelt in Acol Court. For this he had glued both eye and ear to draughty keyholes, had lain for hours under cover of prickly thistles in the sunk fence which surrounded the flower garden. For this he now emerged, on that morning of November 2, accompanied by a terrific clatter and a volley of soot from out the depth of the monumental chimney in the hall of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... peeped into one or two of the chambers, of which the windows were open to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously plain, a quaint old chair or two, and little pictures of favorite saints decorating the spotless white walls. The old ladies kept up a quick, cheerful clatter, as they paused to gossip at the gates of their little domiciles; and with a great deal of artifice, and lurking behind walls, and looking at the church as if I intended to design that, I managed to get a sketch ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intervals a solitary but picturesque horseman stood aside and gave them the road. As the coach penetrated deeper into the gorge, signs of human life and activity became fewer. The sun could not send his light into this shadowy tomb of granite. The rattle of the wheels and the clatter of the horses' hoofs sounded like a constant crash of thunder in the ears of the tender traveler, a dainty morsel ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... back for another blow. But the blow remained undelivered. There was a rush of horse's hoofs, a clatter as they ceased, the sound of running feet, and a smashing blow took the torturer on the side of the jaw. He dropped like a log beside his victim. The whole thing was the work of an instant. So swift had come the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... white face of a girl who was cowered back against the further wall. For a fraction of time he hesitated, but the awful anguish of the face and the mute, desperate appeal of the whole pose settled him. With a rough clatter he sprang into the dim passage, rattling his sword and stamping his feet, at the same time giving vent with his lips to the yelp of a hound in pain, and following it with rough curses and vituperation. Then, without another glance at the girl, he re-entered ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... "Stop that clatter there!" shouted Carstens, pointing the end of his pencil toward Ned. "Didn't I tell you to put a stick in his mouth if ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... almost Babylonian, something very splendid in the vast courtyard which formed the centre of what appeared, to Sylvia's fascinated eyes, a grey stone palace. The long rows of high, narrow windows which now encompassed her were all closed, but with the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the huge paving-stones the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the baize ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... window and sat there long quarter hours, watching the electric cars. They announced themselves from a great distance by a low singing on the overhead wire; then with a rush and a rumble the big, lighted things dashed across the void, and rumbled on with a clatter of smashing iron as they took the switches recklessly. The noise soothed her; in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. The night was still and languorous, one of the peaceful nights of large spaces when the heavens brood over the earth like a mother over a fretful child. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... succeeded in attaching the end of this to a cowbell without making any noise to betray his presence. He then made his way safely back to his own trenches and from their shelter vigorously pulled the string. A most ungodly clank and clatter resulted, wrecking the stillness of the night. This aroused the Teutons and led them into a solid hour of furious but futile shooting. The string was similarly pulled on several succeeding occasions and always produced the desired result of ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... paced the floor. Then he came to a sudden pause before the mantel and turned on the light above the painting of Bright Angel trail. Outside the room sounded the clatter of Washington's streets. Enoch did not hear it. Once more a passionate, sullen boy, he was clinging to his mule on the twisting trail. Once more swept over him the horror of the Canyon and of human beings ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... fear, and the avoidance, and the terror that men felt for him should be increased. In no short time the charioteer of Ferdia heard the roar of Cuchulain's approach; the clamour, and the hissing, and the tramp; and the thunder, and the clatter, and the buzz: for he heard the shields that were used as missiles clank together as they touched; and he heard the spears hiss, and the swords clash, and the helmet tinkle, and the armour ring; and the arms sawed one against the other, and the javelins swung, and the ropes strained, and the wheels ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... over Sigurd, and the ruddy rings he sees, And his war-gear's fair adornment, and the God-folk's images; But a voice in the desert ariseth, a sound in the waste has birth, A changing tinkle and clatter, as of gold dragged over the earth: O'er Sigurd widens the day-light, and the sound is drawing close, And speedier than the trample of speedy feet it goes; But ever deemeth Sigurd that the sun brings back the day, For ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... were drawn, the bridge went down with a clatter, and Bertran de Born came out—a fine stout man, all in a pother, with a red, perplexed face, angry eyes, hair and beard cut in blocks, a body too big for his clothes—a man of hot blood, fumes and rages. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... we watched the hurrying trains as they swept by with immense clatter and tumult; and the files of troops, guards to the trains, pressing forward, amid the clouds of dust and the rattle and noise of the wagons. As the sun sunk in the west, we gathered about a green knoll, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... my own face, I dared not look at myself in a mirror. But the skulls continued to turn this way and that, as before.... And with the same clatter as before, the brisk tongues, flashing like red rags from behind the grinning teeth, murmured on, how wonderfully, how incomparably the immortal ... yes, the immortal songstress had executed her ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... yestereve are stale and crumpled. Not until we are well out in the sun, with the second cigarette going good, shall we again become credulous about life and safe to address. It is no meal to linger over. We grimly rise from the wrecked table and clatter out. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... in anticipation. But before he spoke again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks. The clergyman waved to them. If the little dark man was like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen. His hands and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy. He wore no cuffs, but one could see the beginnings ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... preserved his recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even, uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit. "The time of business," said he, "does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess GOD in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at ...
— The Practice of the Presence of God the Best Rule of a Holy Life • Herman Nicholas
... this moment a wild yell sounded forth from without, with sudden and appalling fury. It burst upon their ears, from the stillness of midnight, with terrific violence, chilling the very blood in their veins. Then came the rush of heavy feet, the clatter of swords, the explosion of firearms, the shouts ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... and the girls continued their chatter, and their high-shrieking trebles arose triumphant above all the clatter. It was American girlhood rampant on the shield of their native land. Still there was something about the foolish young faces and the inane chatter and laughter which was sweet and even appealing. They became attractive from their audaciousness ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... all day long and yet have sufficient for a week, that a terrific explosion shook the fortress, a huge German shell having burst almost within it. The far wall of that hall into which Henri had looked, and which faced the bottom of the stairs giving access to their chamber, fell in with a crash and clatter, the semi-darkness existing there being made denser at once by the dust and debris shot out by the explosion. Then figures raced across the hall, the figures of Frenchmen, coming from some point beyond, where Jules and his party had failed to discover ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... kitchen came the rhythmic beating of a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl; a melancholy chant—quite archaic, as Tish said—kept time with the spoon, and later a smell of baking flour and the clatter of dishes told us that our ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Though what you hear now is little more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the money o' children and fools, for the real business is done earlier than this. I've been working within sound o't all day, but I didn't go up—not I. 'Twas ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... came hurrying up with the ax, and I motioned them aside. I swung the ax, and the head of the weapon crashed against the lock. The knob dropped to the floor with a clatter, but the ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... Seacomb;—"that's him," she added, as a loud rattling of the back door was followed in an incredibly short space of time by a similar rattling at the front, after which came the clatter of various sticks ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasioned a great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Never before had she felt like this with Maurice, not even when they were first married. She had loved him too utterly to be shy with him. Maurice was still in the sitting-room, fastening the shutters of the window. She heard the creak of wood, the clatter of the iron bar falling into the fastener. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... which he might have seen would never hold it, and in any case was a queer place for a tray, and stood there with it in his hands, brick-red and glowering at them. She was going to take it from him when he dunted it down on the window-seat with a clatter. "What for can he not go on with his good chop?" thought Ellen. "We're putting on grand company manners for this bit chemist body, surely," and she pulled forward a chair for the stranger and sat down in the corner with her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... over the low kopjes, until by evening we were faced by the more serious line of the Pieter's Hills. The operations had been carried out with a monotony of gallantry. Always the same extended advance, always the same rattle of Mausers and clatter of pom-poms from a ridge, always the same victorious soldiers on the barren crest, with a few crippled Boers before them and many crippled comrades behind. They were expensive triumphs, and yet every one brought ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they would be seated before he opened the door and stepped into the dining-room. The effect was not at all what he had expected. Daisy was the first to see him. She dropped her knife on the plate with a clatter and gave a little scream. Shorty stopped a spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth, as if he were waiting to have a still picture of himself taken. His eyes stared and his jaw fell. Mrs. Seymour, who was bringing a platter from the kitchen, stood stock-still ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... once what had occurred. The candle dropped from his hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest Trenchard should do ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Mr. Smilk, with a great clatter, yanked his remaining foot from the drawer and arose, overturning the swivel-chair ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... his head triumphantly toward a tin pail of eggs on the table. "Seven dollars a clatter, though," he confessed, after another minute ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Farm, and the sound of their horses' feet brought the Kaffirs buzzing from their huts, but the clatter that they made did not penetrate that great and desolate silence. The ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... that once, when Surya Bai was taking water from the well for the old Milkwoman, the Rajah rode by, and as he saw her walking along, he cried, "That is my wife," and rode after her as fast as possible. Surya Bai hearing a great clatter of horses' hoofs, was frightened, and ran home as fast as possible, and hid herself; and when the Rajah reached the place there was only the old Milkwoman to be seen standing at the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar plums danced through their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. The way to the window, I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash; The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow Gave the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... turn we might reasonably predict a domicil of equal fitness and elegance. At least I demand of him as clean and handsome a nest as the King-Bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even than those of the Orchard-Starling or the Baltimore Oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa. There is something courtly and poetical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... quickly to the Captain's side, and taking up the lamp by its chain, he leapt into the air like a clown, and came down on his heels with a thud that shook the chamber. Simultaneously he dropped the lamp with a clatter, and sent a ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... that gang's in the bar! I saw him come up to the door as I was lying in bed!" A bit of information which was instantly followed by a clatter of chairs on ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... There was a clatter of china and glass and a clink of bottles, at the sound of which Bentwood looked around with a sudden spasmodic grin on his face. But Sartoris scowled at him furiously, and he turned his watery gaze in another direction. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... patois) of his pleasure in making my acquaintance, and led me to a strange uneasy easy-chair, much of a piece with the rest of the furniture, which might have taken its place without any anachronism by the side of that in the Hotel Cluny. Then again began the clatter of French voices, which my arrival had for an instant interrupted, and I had leisure to look about me. Opposite to me sat a very sweet-looking lady, who must have been a great beauty in her youth, I should think, and would be charming in old age, from the sweetness of her countenance. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise—it is not clatter, hum, or roar, it is not resolvable; made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels—of haste, and shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous loads; no attention can resolve ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the wooden shoe, and heard its dry, senseless clatter upon the pavement. How suggestive of the cramped and inflexible conditions with which human nature has borne ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... a moment listening to the clatter of dishes from the kitchen, and then with dignity end deliberation seated himself upon the lowest step of the porch, and, pulling his blanket tight around him, resettled his disreputable old sombrero upon his head and stared fixedly at the crimson glow which filled all the west and made even ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... comfort so safe—for respectable people. And we WERE respectable people.... That was the world that made us what we are. That was the sheltering and friendly greenhouse in which we grew. We fitted our minds to that.... And here we are with the greenhouse falling in upon us lump by lump, smash and clatter, the wild winds of heaven tearing ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... and smashed the pier-glass on the mantelpiece to a thousand atoms. Major Stewart being expert in all the devices of warfare, knew what to expect, and drew aside. He was not a moment too soon, for the dark lantern flew through the doorway, hit the opposite wall, and fell with a loud clatter on the stone floor of the lobby. The Badger followed at once, and received a random blow from the major that hurled him head ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... just finished their afternoon meal, cleaned their room, and settled themselves to their evening's work. Nora was spinning gayly, Hannah weaving diligently—the whir of Nora's wheel keeping time to the clatter of Hannah's loom, when the latch was lifted and Herman Brudenell, bringing a brace of hares in his ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... got his bearings and his pony gained solid footing, Sam automatically whipped out his gun, cursing as he saw Sandy slide from the saddle, clutch at the rim of the gap, drop down to the bed of the creek, while Pronto, frantic at the loss of his master, leaped the opening and fled with clatter of hoof and ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... by handing her a large purse full of the coin of the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maid rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse, don't you think it would have been much more natural if you had taken a number of coins from your pocket, and given ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... sort of thing, despite its inconvenience. And sometimes the clatter of the pony-rider swept by in the night, carrying letters at five dollars apiece and making the Overland trip in eight days; just a quick beat of hoofs in the distance, a dash, and a hail from the darkness, the beat of hoofs again, then only the rumble ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... flung open, and clashing heavily against the wall, sent an echo reeling along the corridor; then came a clatter of rushing feet, a voice cried out excitedly: "Come on! come on! He's had to kill the old fool to get it!" and Cleek had just time to tear loose from the shape with which he was battling, and dodge out of the way when the man Merode lurched into the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... clatter of the water she did not hear him drawing nigh, so that he was close to her before she lifted up her face and saw him, and he beheld her, that it was the maiden of the thrice-seen pageant. She reddened when she saw him, and hastily covered up her legs ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... little stones marking every hundred metres until the tenth rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely cultivated land remained to show that it was France; and the little whitewashed ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... discipline. They all rushed to the table at once, and called for half a dozen kinds of food in a voice, which the glum, abstracted father heaped indiscriminately on their plates. There was no sound save the clatter of knives and forks for several minutes, while the interesting family discussed their amply-provided and well-prepared meal. At length Master Garrison Pimble, a lad of a dozen years, declared sister Sukey had got the biggest piece of venison pie. Susan, a little ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... this martial ceremony. Suddenly an unknown young man approached the Imperial gallery, and shouted: "Down with the Emperor! Liberty or death!" This ardent Republican was at once arrested. His voice had been lost in the music and clatter ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Pap was still alive. He could always handle you. Remember the time you sassed him there in ..." Here Marie accidentally dropped her brush into an empty pail, and the clatter drowned out the name of the town so far as Racey was concerned. But Marie caught the name, for she straightened with a start and stared at Bull. "Yeah," continued Bull, "you remember it, huh? I guess you do. That was where Pap ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... 'neath the foam of old lace, A half-languid smile upon each listless face,— A dreaming of roses and rose-leaf shades,— A medley of modern and Grecian maids. Such clatter and clink One scarcely can think Till he spies a shy nook where he lonely can sink,— For how can a bachelor be at his ease With such chatter ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... seemed to me, had David been so long in going to sleep: David, the taciturn David, even talked to me. Never did the people in the house clatter and walk about and talk so late. And what are they talking about now? thought I. Haven't they had time enough since morning? Outdoors, too, the noise kept up very late. A dog would bark with long-protracted howls; then a drunken man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... she casts her eyes to heaven, she vows that Harry knows nothing of the truth and fidelity of women; it is his sex, on the contrary, which proverbially is faithless, and which delights to play with poor female hearts. A scuffle ensues; a clatter is heard among the knives and forks of the dessert; a glass tumbles over and breaks. An "Oh!" escapes from the innocent lips of Maria, The disturbance has been caused by the broad cuff of Mr. Warrington's coat, which has been stretched across the table ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray |
