"Crooning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... folk kindly and humbly, and again they fell to praising the dead man, saying how his deed should long be remembered in the Dale and wide about; and they called him a fearless man and of great worth. And the women hearkened, and ceased their crooning and their sobbing, and stood up proudly and raised their heads with gleaming eyes; and as the words of the Burgstead men ended, they lifted up their voices and sang loudly and clearly, standing together ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Blood matted with dust stained his coat, making him almost as red and white as the Range stud. Drew holstered the Colt and went to his horse, crooning softly as he caught one of the chewed ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... settler's wife were soon concluded, and it was still early morning when we took our places in the big skin canoe with all our personal belongings under our eyes now; and the Indians having been well fed, pushed off rather sluggishly. But they kept time with their paddles, and soon set up a low, sad, crooning kind of chorus as they carefully avoided the powerful stream by keeping well inshore, where I gazed up in wonder at the magnificent trees which appeared in masses and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, and then threw more, getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each time; at last she actually took a piece from ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... dreadfully. But you do not do it. It is still too comfortable where you are. You may move a little, and have a vague idea that it might be rather nice outside. But you do not go to see; you only take the other paw into your mouth, and, still crooning to ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... firm with his signature in any shape or form, and that we in consequence had some trouble in inducing him to sign his will. I have seen him sitting over my fire in my room at that office for hours, half asleep, and crooning out Romany songs while waiting for ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Cape St. Vincent now. We went within about 400 yards of the cliffs and lighthouse in a calm moonlight, with porpoises springing from the sea, the men crooning long ballads as they lay idle on the forecastle, and the sails flapping uncertain on the yards. As we passed, there came a sudden breeze from land, hot and heavy-scented; and now as I write its warm rich flavour contrasts strongly with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guest the old man continued to mutter as he turned back to the table, where he again dumped the contents of the money-pouch, running his fingers through the heap of shining metal; piling the coins into little towers; counting, recounting, and fondling the wealth the while he muttered on and on in a crooning undertone. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heard an old woman crooning it to a child in a solitary cottage on the shore of Stroma, near the Swalchie whirlpool, and that was the tune she sang it to, if singing it could ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... ones, and they were cosily 'tucked in,' then came 'father's turn,' which consisted of his sitting by their bedside—Owen and Geoffrey on one hand, and little queen Phyllis, maidenlike in solitary cot, on the other—and crooning to them a little evening song. In the dark, too, I should say, for it was one of his wise provisions that they should be saved from ever fearing that; and that, whenever they awoke to find it ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... dropped noiselessly from a perch somewhere above them and, filling a gourd at the olla, bent and disappeared in the narrow crevice back of the curtain of firs. The low song ceased gradually, softly, as a mother ceases her crooning lullaby, lest the very lack of the love-notes stir the drowsing baby ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... grey mare Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on through dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glowering round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. By this time he was 'cross ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was in the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat which had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... crooning incoherent things. He wiped her face and hands, combed her hair, and pushed the table against the bed. He broke toast in a glass and poured milk over it. Then he cooked the egg and gave her that, keeping only half the milk and one slice of bread. He made ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stiff little bow, and hurried away without so much as one look behind him. But as he passed the next house, and heard a voice near some upper window crooning a lullaby, he smiled ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... more than such modulated sounds; it is not in definite words, and hence, is not capable of translation; it is but the expression of feeling through the voice, as is the wail of the infant, the rippling laughter of youth, the crooning of senility, the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... Privates Anstruther and Vernon that the reason why they couldn't find their bedroom was because they had filled it with their motor-cars. But it is wonderful how people can settle down to anything; an hour later I found the twenty-five of them comfortably tucked in for the night, crooning unanimously, "There's no place like home!" To-day they have chalked up on the wall, "The Ritz Private Boarding Establishment; well-aired beds; bring your own straw. Excellent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... just know he needed killing. There, there—" she had her mother's head on her breast now, fondling it, crooning over it as if it were Mag's baby. "Look—you've made her cry!" She stamped a furious foot at her sister. "What are you staring at with your cold, wicked eyes? You told me she was a bad woman—my mother! If she ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... blind Moone, his fiddle scattered flowers along the street; Into the dust of Brookfield Fair Carried a shining primrose air, Crooning like a poor mad maid, O, very low and sweet, Drew us close, and held us bound, Then—to the tune of Pedlar's Pound, Caught us up, and whirled us round, a thousand ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... back on her pillow with a sigh; she did not even question the old negress who sat crooning over the fire, as to where she was, or what had befallen her; but accepted this new place as only another misty delirium, and in her secret heart prayed, for the hundredth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... one of the numerous progeny of the French trappers and explorers who had married among the Sioux, was hushing the burly little son and heir to sleep in his Indian cradle, crooning some song about the fireflies and and Heecha, the big-eyed owl, and the mother stooped to press her lips upon the rounded cheek and to flick away a tear-drop, for Hal 2d had roared lustily when ordered to his noonday nap. Away to the northward ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... the fire carefully, then lighted his pipe, sang a little crooning song about the "home spirits," which we call "household gods," walked around the shanty, offering the pipestem to each of the four winds in turn, then entering lighted the fire from his pipe, threw some tobacco and deer ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was slightly ajar, and the sound of a singularly sweet voice crooning out a lullaby was plainly audible. Malcolm, who was about to knock, changed his mind and peeped in through the aperture; then he beckoned to Anna to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the town, All night long, all night long, The trolls go up and the trolls go down, Bearing their packs and crooning a song; And this is the song the hill-folk croon, As they trudge in the light of the misty moon,— This is ever their dolorous tune: "Gold, gold! ever more gold,— Bright red gold ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... Skipper did not awake and a fine spray of rain, almost as thin as mist, made Jerry curl up and press closely into the angle formed by Skipper's head and shoulder. This did awake him, for he uttered "Jerry" in a low, crooning voice, and Jerry responded with a touch of his cold damp nose to the other's cheek. And then Skipper went to sleep again. But not Jerry. He lifted the edge of the blanket with his nose and crawled across the shoulder until he was altogether ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of a night's disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to sleep, while she sat by her sister-in-law's bedside, lulled by the incessant crooning of the invalid's feeble voice, she was startled by a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... suddenly I heard a sound which of a truth did make my heart stop its beating. It was a quaint and prolonged laugh which I once thought I would never hear again on this earth. It came from the corner of the barouche next to where Mme. la Marquise was so tenderly and gaily crooning to her child. And a kindly ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... down, and waited. After half an hour he drew himself to his feet, moved on, then stopped, returned, approached, and listened to the crooning of the delirious man. Suddenly satisfied, he flung both arms into the air in frenzied triumph, turned, staggered, and reeled away, while back over the desert came the grotesque, hideous ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... where he was for a short space of time. But all was silent save for the maid crooning the hymn, and the occasional inquiring bark of the dog on the next place, who probably got a strange scent coming down the wind. As there was nothing more to be hoped for there, he shifted his position to the other side. And as he came in range ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Mother is crooning and babies list. Hist, hist! The dewdrop lies in the flower's cup, Mother snuggles the babies up. Birdie in the tree-top, Do not spill the dewdrop. Cat be still, and dog be dumb; Sleep to babies' ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... but not so early that Vanna was not in her shop-door sewing and crooning to the baby on her lap. She heard his step the moment he rounded the bottom corner of the street, blushed prettily from neck to temples, caught up the child, and went out to meet her lord. Standing before him in her cool cotton gown, there was no ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the attic. The baby lay asleep on the bed, and Tim, perched on his window seat, was crooning over a little doll. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Mrs. Burns, the wife of the poet, was fond of crooning to her children, is not yet without some vogue outwith the printed page—though mainly in this verse, the place of which, by the bye, would be difficult to fix in the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... difficult to come into intimate relations with appropriated waters; like very busy people they have no time to reveal themselves. One needs to have known an irrigating ditch when it was a brook, and to have lived by it, to mark the morning and evening tone of its crooning, rising and falling to the excess of snow water; to have watched far across the valley, south to the Eclipse and north to the Twisted Dyke, the shining wall of the village water gate; to see still blue herons stalking the ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... down, Russ," Dunbar said in a kind of dreadful crooning whisper. "You calm down now. You younger fellows—you don't look at things the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. People trapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Meanings of the tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains. Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed,— Hapless sire to hapless son,— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... upper room of one of the two towers that flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two, with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which littered their prison; but the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... lonely unvisited places, and communed more with things of earth than the hearts of men. In the flutes and bassoons seemed to him to dwell the voices of airs that murmured in the thickets, the soft gliding of streams, the crooning of serene birds, the peace of noonday, the welling of clear springs, the beauty of little waves, the bright thoughts of stars. Sometimes in certain modes, they could be sad, but it was the sadness of lonely homeless things, old dreaming spirits of wind ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gentleman, we've waited for ye. We couldn't go till we'd seen ye; for we've something to tell ye. Come quietly this way, and say not a word, or the spell's broken—come, young gentleman; come, young gentleman;" and the old man went on crooning the words to himself as he led the way with tottering steps round the hedge, and discovered a sort of tent in which sat, with her face half shrouded in a shawl, an old woman who wagged her head incessantly and chattered to herself ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... expected group emerged from the prison door and was greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws, ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was busy compounding a black paste, from various preparations which she found among the vials on the shelf and under one corner of the heap of rags which she called her bed—crooning all the while a dismal attempt at a tune which made even the not-over-sensitive lawyer shudder, and putting the mixture at last into his hands with a "Lor' bress you, honey!" which might have made any one shudder if he had understood the connection. Fifteen minutes later, the Tombs lawyer ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... rush or the low crooning of water, and over every wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro orgy, here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the roofs like a palm, and from its balcony the little white figure ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... pleasant break in the monotony, and also signalized my release from the office of stableman. We were off again at six; an exquisite night it was, a big moon in the zenith, the evening star burning steadily over the dim, receding island. We finished with a sing-song on deck, a crooning, desultory performance, with sleepy choruses, and a homely beer-bottle passing ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... with the novelty of driving our old enemy in harness. So, letting the Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled. The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general quiet—these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The sky was cloudless, and the moon ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... but it was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... on his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet; Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet; Whiles glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... instantly. "His teeth have been worrying him rather to-day. Ayah is with him. I left her crooning him to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... asleep, I should judge, sir. The old hag was rocking to and fro, crooning to herself until one of the two—the live one, I should call him—hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry up or he'd kill her. All a bluff, for he ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... listens to the summer rain Against the roof when all the night is still, Save for the wind beneath the window-sill, Crooning its homely, comforting refrain,— And listening feels that neither joy nor pain Can trouble now—only the faint sweet thrill Of drowsiness and peace and rest until The barque glides ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... at ease. Crooning her quaint lullabies to the baby, she would often lift her eyes to heaven and sigh, "De good Lord hab marcy on dem! Dey's all a drinkin' at de little shaller pools dat may dry up any minit. It's all ob de earth; ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in, And the water crooning cool-like in my veins. Who could smell the white azalea thinking then of sin, Or look on laurel buds a-caring for her pains? It's just my heart breaks open and the wild flood rains. O beauty of the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... her son; then dropping upon her knees beside the bed, she slipped one arm underneath the pillows, and gently drew the wounded head upon her own breast, tenderly kissing the brow and cheeks; then taking his hand within her own, she stroked and caressed it, meanwhile crooning over him in low, murmuring tones, as though ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... beard which he had grown since the first frost as a protection against cold. He picked up the mitten and laid it to dry on the slab mantel, and when he returned, Lovin Child was sitting in the pan, rocking back and forth and crooning "'Ock-a-by! 'Ock-a-by!" with the impish ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... singing woman Sat crooning in her need At the time of the winter weather; Friendless, fireless, She sang this song: "Life, thou'rt too long!" And there ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Government)[211] begins by telling how two old people were childless for a long time. At last the husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it, crooning the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... they entered Junior Mansions. It was an old Negro melody, and the crooning notes were ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... cast away as useless by some former owner, himself squalid. These she managed to keep on by tying the tops with wrapping-cord. A more unlovely human being it would have been hard to find in all the great city. There she sat, crooning a ballad to herself in a high, cracked voice. It sounded like ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... it had been an angel he had seen in the high air, it would have been the Act—or the banshee, and her crooning and keening by the riverside, with her white cloak, her red, burnished hair.... But it was an island he had seen, a dancing town, with his own hard wee Scots-Irish eyes. And that was not an Act of God; it was ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... and listen, and look after them. She was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after them until they reached the top of the staircase—not without halting to rest by the way—and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sitting, some conning the Talmud and others the Bible. One of the latter, seated at the right of the teacher, was reading aloud, in a sing-song voice, the section of the Pentateuch assigned for the following Sabbath in the synagogue, and his cantillation blended with the crooning of the teacher's wife as she sat by her baby's bed, ... but every now and then the master's voice rose and drowned the sounds of both, as the growl of the thunder stifles the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... watch it, and the great cloud-heads as they looked down between the parting summits, and the three tall pines, standing about a young bird's flight from each other by the shore and mingling their fitful crooning with the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Lage Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... clothed the rickety woodwork in a fairy garment of green and ivory-white. Each least sound was crystal clear in the rarefied air; the quarrelling of two sparrows, the high-pitched chatter from the compound behind the cottages, the crooning of ring-doves among the pines. Butterflies, like detached flowers, fluttered in and out. A faint breeze stirred the roses, so that an occasional creamy petal fell ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... recalling the music of the poets. Perhaps you fall into step with the quiver and beat of our British Homer's rushing rhymes, and Marmion thunders over the brown hills of the Border, or Clara lingers where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying. Perhaps the wilful brain persists in crooning over the "Belle Dame Sans Merci;" your mood flutters and changes with every minute, and you derive equal satisfaction from the organ-roll of Milton or the silvery flageolet tones of Thomas Moore. If culture consists in learning the grammar an etymologies of a poet's song, then no cultured man ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... mass down on the beach or by climbing up the hill to fling stones at the door of the tower, the hermit rested on his mattress until late in the morning, listening to the music of the sea, the great crooning mother; watching the mysterious light, a mixture of golden sun and blue waters filtering through the cracks and trembling on the white walls; hearing the gulls scream outside, as they passed before the windows in joyous flight, flinging swift ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed to call all things to rest and not to labor; it was asleep itself on the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... girl, of whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... her for a refuge where they could talk, finding it in a rough shelter designed for the protection of nurses watching children playing on the sands. It was empty for the moment, except for a tiny, bare-legged girl of three or four crooning over a big doll. Edith led the way. "Come over here." They sat down on a bench hacked with initials and cleanly dirty with sand. The little girl at the other end of the bench rolled her big eyes toward them with indifference, continuing to croon ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... her face. And when she noticed him he reared up and flung his long body across her lap, thrusting his wet nose into her face. She caught his head in her hands and rubbed her cheek against his rough hair, crooning over him softly. Even the dog was comfort in her loneliness, and they both ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... or Prevasa. He would probably know all early in the morning. He reflected that he was too tired to care if there might be a night attack and then wrapped in his blankets he went peacefully to sleep in the grass under a big tree with the crooning of some soldiers around their ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the girl crossed the space, and fell on her knees beside the inert form, crooning over it pitifully. In the same moment, the gust of anger in Zeke ended. He stood motionless, except for his quickened breathing, with eyes fast on the girl. Remorse stabbed him as he realized her distress, for which he was responsible. He went toward her hesitatingly, forgetful of bag ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... feverishly and all England reading of the arrest of Mareno inquired indignantly, "But who is Kazmah, and where is Mrs. Monte Irvin?" Sin Sin Wa placidly pursued his arrangements for immediate departure to the paddyfields of Ho-Nan, and sometimes in the weird crooning voice with which he addressed the raven he would sing a monotonous chant dealing with the valley of the Yellow River where the opium-poppy grows. Hidden in the cunning vault, the search had passed above him; and watchful on a quay on the Surrey shore whereto his ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... in the past, and she was reliving the years that were gone. Gazing into the expiring embers, she saw the forms of long ago; and talking first to herself, and then to her son and his wife, she continued, in a crooning voice: ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... never shone in greater beauty. He spoke of the heat of the sun, of his throbbing head. The women bathed his forehead with lavender-water, touching him with their own soft hands. Roxana sang again to him, a low, crooning song of the fragrant Nile, the lotus bells, the nodding palms, the perfumed breeze from the desert. Whilst he watched her through half-closed eyes, the visions of that day of battles left him. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... to break out and sing. All the world yearned one way; the stars leaned out of their courses and looked, not at him, but south; the north wind went by him, crooning, hurrying, and the moon sailed southward past the ragged clouds. All his soul went out with them, and his body ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... while its mother was drinking. It would dash a few paces into the stream and then look back to see if its mother approved. Evidently she did not, for she would stop her drinking and call the fawn back to her side with a soft, crooning noise. Suddenly she raised her head, the long ears shot up, and she seemed to sniff the air. She waded through the deeper water to get round a rocky bluff which ran out into the creek. Then she turned ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... left an order with the telephone company to run a wire to Medicine Woods the first thing in the morning, and drove to the depot to arrange for the ticket and check. In less than an hour he was holding the Girl's hands and crooning over her. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... the little flat, music made part of every day's programme. Pixie, seated on the hearthrug, would sing Irish ballads in a voice of crooning sweetness, she and Pat would join in duets, occasionally Stephen was persuaded to join in a trio, and presently, as the performers became "worked up" to their task, they would recall one by one performances of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... rosier every moment. Little Jamie came wandering over the grass towards her. His hands were full of dandelions and he looked not unlike an overgrown one himself with his towsled yellow curls. He leaned across her knee, his curly head hanging down, and swayed to and fro, crooning a little sleepy song. Miss Gordon's thin hand passed lovingly over his silky hair. Her face grew soft and beautiful. At such times the castles in Edinburgh grew dim and ceased ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... and in an instant his strong arms closed about the huddled figure, and he held her fast, crooning softly in her ear as a mother might over her babe, until at length the convulsive gasps eased, grew less ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... when she heard a voice crooning a witch song, and, peering round the edge of a rock, she espied her sister seated beside a cauldron, beneath which was a freezing fire fed with blocks ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... And here was Christmas come again! Day gone beyond the last waving pines in a cold flush of red and gold: Christmas Eve here at last. Pattie Batch's soft arms were still wanting; there were a thousand kisses waiting on her tender lips for giving; her voice was all attuned to crooning sweetest lullabys; but her heart was empty—save for a child of mist and wishes. It was dark, now; but though the wind was still rollicking down there was no snow blowing, and the shy stars were winking wide-eyed upon the busy world ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel hastened to the outer door. As he passed the inner one, leading into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel went out, she was singing the first ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in the air, a little crooning cry which pulled at his heart. Without any conscious thought, Shann held out his hands, whistling on two notes a call which his lips appeared to remember more quickly than his mind. The shape which winged through the fog came straight to his waiting hold, tore at long-walled-away ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... dismounting, put my motor-cycle under the cover of an arch and reported to the general. He was sitting at a table in the stuffy room of a particularly dirty tavern. At the far end a fat and frightened woman was crooning to her child. Beside her sat a wrinkled, leathery old man with bandaged head. He had wandered into the street, and he had been cut about by shrapnel. The few wits he had ever possessed were gone, and he gave every few seconds little croaks of hate. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Pani was crooning over a handful of fire. The May sunshine had not penetrated all the houses, and her old blood had lost ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... mothers sat in the doors crooning to the babes that clutched at the sunbeams, dogs slept in the cool shadows of the cabins, and here and there a youth sang a ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... brilliant lights, and the dancers' feet were tingling to begin. Michael Walsh, who always played at the Wankelo dances, sat down at the piano and struck two loud arresting bars, then gently caressed from the keys the crooning melody of the Wisteria Waltz. Two by two, the dancers drew into the maze of music and movement, and became part of a ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... push them aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morning, as often as not, he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket. All day long, one or other of the tribe would sit by his side, staring out at the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... out and climbed on the vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap. Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, crooning over the spectacle in ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... indents the sea as well as the vast plain that stretches out from river to river. And it must suggest the toiler at his task, the employer at his desk, the man of leisure in his home, the voyager on the ocean, the soldier in the ranks, the child at his lessons, and the mother crooning her baby ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... would sit and tell me stories—mostly very childish, and often seeming to mean hardly anything. Now and then they would call a general assembly to amuse me. On one such occasion a moody little fellow sang me a strange crooning song, with a refrain so pathetic that, although unintelligible to me, it caused the tears to run down my face. This phenomenon made those who saw it regard me with much perplexity. Then first I bethought myself that I had not once, in that world, looked on water, falling or lying or running. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Don't you see that I am mad, and why I am mad? Must I tell you before her? Dick—" She staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a woman, and raised the other woman from the ground with crooning words of encouragement such as mothers use, and led her to the inner room. "Do not go," she said, turning to Dick; "I shall be ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... you are like the summer dusk to me, The summer dusk when all the world seems still; When purple shadows creep along the hill, And birds are softly crooning in each tree. You are the gentle-cool-eyed mystery Of twilight hours. Sometime I think you will Melt from me out into the dark, until You turn to star-shine, ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... by the doorway. The moon was filling the sky with its radiance. A chorus of crickets sang joyously in the short brown grass about the sunflowers. The cottonwoods along the river course gleamed like alabaster in the white night-splendor, and the prairie breeze sang its low crooning song of evening as it flowed gently over the land. "How beautiful the world is," Virginia said, as she caught the full radiance of the light ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... pitched in and sang, such a song I warrant as my lords and ladies had never bent their ears to hear before, a crooning death incantation of the Choctaws, which fell as naturally from my lips as my ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... she turned and began crooning: "You poor little rabbit! Did Toby hurt you? Don't be frightened now. I won't let him have you again. I'll buy you if it takes all my Christmas ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... amazement and ecstasy, I perceived a large dome-shaped fabric blocking up the entire back garden. Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a full-grown sperm whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass, and further evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but pathetic crooning, as of an immature chimaera booming in the void. The truth flashed upon me in a moment. The Second Crinoline had ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... millions of years before man, and had not changed. It was one of the oldest forms of present life, better fitted to survive than the breed of Plato, Shakespere, or Washington. Its insect kind was the most dangerous enemy man had: the only form of life he had not conquered, and would be crooning cradle-songs when humanity, perhaps through its agency, or perhaps through the sun growing cold, had passed from the earth. Not impossibly, insects would render extinct all other beings, and then the cockroach could proclaim that creation had its ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... night, the steamship Nome was more than a thing of wood and steel. It was a living, pulsating being, throbbing with the very heart-beat of Alaska. The purr of the mighty engines was a human intelligence crooning a song of joy. For him the crowded passenger list held a significance that was almost epic, and its names represented more than mere men and women. They were the vital fiber of the land he loved, its heart's blood, its very element—"giving ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume on 'The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet. In all Greek lyrics, even in the choral odes, music was the handmaid of verse.... The poet himself composed the accompaniment. Euripides was censured ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... genuine kind, not orating in Cooper Union in the name of every child in New York, but crooning low and tenderly, soothing one little child to sleep, one of the five she herself had borne, in agony, without complaint. How Edith had slaved and sacrificed, how bravely she had rallied after the death of her husband. He remembered her a few hours ago on the bed upstairs, spent and in anguish, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... stable, and in the dull light he saw the Hussar officer standing in the stall by the mare, crooning some endearing words, while the beast, in her delight, rubbed her face against his clothes and whinnied her plea to be taken for a gallop ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... none to care, but just one friend. I'm going out, and it's good I'm going. I would always have held you back, always have been a drag to your name—for ye'll make a name! It's in you, as it was in her." He stopped speaking, but after a little space began, with a crooning, the glorious "Ah, Patria Mia," and it seemed to Katrine as though her heart would stop beating in her sorrow, for she knew it was her unknown mother of ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... fir-wood walling high our red roof Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river, Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly. Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... knew the fight was out of him and picked up the still screaming baby, which she hugged to her breast, crooning over it while Garron got lamely to his feet. Without another word she started back to the hut, Garron following his mate and his ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... herself backwards and forwards, hugging her pot of coals and crooning the words of an ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... this occasion was not a little crisp. The rays of the sun, with their promise of warmth, lingered provokingly far up on the battlements and turrets of the great piles about, down from which fell the crooning of pigeons and the whir of the flocks ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Confucius wept sore for him, but his own death was not far off. It took place on the eleventh day of the fourth month in the same year, B.C. 479 [1]. Early one morning, we are told, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by his door, crooning over,— 'The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man wither away like a plant.' After a little, he entered the house and sat down opposite the door. Tsze-kung had heard his words, and said to ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... is yours. Evelyn never saw it. The morning and the evening sun shoot across it, and the front windows look on the great green crown of Mount Peak. You know it. There is not such a place in the world to hear the low and peaceful murmur of the river, all night long, rushing, tumbling, crooning, I used to think when I was a little girl and dreamed of things unseen, and still going on when the birds begin to sing in the dawn. And with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... remains of many villages, or rather towns with large market-places. Now, however, these were burned with fire, or deserted, or occupied only by a few old bodies who got a living from the overgrown gardens. These poor people, who sat desolate and crooning in the sun, or perhaps worked feebly at the once fertile fields, would fly screaming at our approach, for to them men armed with guns must of necessity ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... holding his hot hand in her cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and yet soft, like a song,—not a song of romance or passion, but like the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least like his mother, but there was something in her expression that first youth cannot have—something comforting, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... downwards across the body of his friend, and was crooning into his ear the great chorus from the third act of Helen in Leuce. He said that nobody but Spinky understood it. And Spinky couldn't understand it if ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... sweetness of the rippling, crooning song, and before the verse was half done, joined unconsciously in with the others, forgetting the need of words in the melody of ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... been dyed black. It was a comfort and relief to pass from the funeral gloom to the little pink-ruffled chamber among the cherry-trees, where the birds were singing and the summer breezes blowing, and the pretty Kathleen was crooning her Irish songs, and invoking the holy virgin and all the saints to bless the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Mona Lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming in occasionally with bars of melodious bass. I felt guilty for being about to break in upon such a sentimental little scene, and was going to retreat, but Enrico and Mona Lisa spied me and both gave a little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... With a sigh of unutterable content she made her way back into the extreme stern of the bateau, lugging the tempestuous basket with her. Sitting down flat, she took the basket in her lap and loosened the cover, crooning softly as she did so. Instantly a whiskered, brown snub-nose, sniffing and twitching with interrogation, appeared at the edge. A round brown head, with little round ears and fearless bright dark eyes, immediately popped over the edge. With ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... controversy than was my worthy father and Janet Geddes, concerning the enormities that would of a necessity ensue from the papistical pretensions and unrighteous usurpation of King Charles; and they sat crooning and lamenting together all the Saturday afternoon and night about the woes of idolatry that were darkening again ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... formed a background for his gloomy thoughts. And, while he rested, he fell to talking as though Ralph were living, and merely rested with him. He talked and answered himself, and, later, leaned over his dead, crooning like some woman over her child. The time passed. Again he rose, and once more shouldering the body, now ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... believed the tale. Yet now I saw this thing with mine own eyes, a fair sight and a marvellous, so beautiful she looked, with head unhelmeted, and the wild fowl and tame flitting about her and above her, the doves crooning sweetly in their soft voices. Then her lips ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... mother shields from all alarms The tired child she gathers to her breast, The brunette Night doth fold me in her arms, And hushes me to perfect peace and rest. Her eyes of stars shine on me, and I hear Her voice of winds low crooning on my ear. O Night, O Night, how beautiful thou art! Come, fold me closer to thy ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... houses looked like fragments of dreams, with here and there a lamp in a distant window. The slow wind wandered through pines and hemlocks, as if some fairy Puck had laid his finger to his lips, saying to crooning insects, "Hush, hush!" A night to dream as one ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... adders quivering in their tresses, tormenting me for the spoils of victory. What does it mean? Why are they in white? As we came hither in the dreadful vessel, they were huddled together at the prow, and their long black raiment hung overboard and touched the brine. They were mumbling and crooning hate-songs, and pointing with skinny fingers to the portents in the sky. What is it that has changed their mood? What is it that can have turned the robes of the Eumenides white, and enamelled ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... began to weave, crooning the mystic weaving-song meanwhile, so that the magic of its words might sink into every part of the Cloak, and make its power certain. He feared not to weave it under the eyes of him who should receive it, for he knew well that he who wears ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... merely to hold him. I looked out, to make sure he was all right, for a few days before Olga had nearly given me heart failure by balancing my boy on one huge hand, as though he were a mutton-chop, so that the adoring Olie might see him kick. As I stood watching Olga crooning above Buddy Boy, Percy rode up. Then he came over and joined Olga, who carefully lifted up the veil covering Dinky-Dink's face, and showed him off to the somewhat intimidated Percy. Percy poked a finger at him, and made absurd ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... one fine, frosty, moonlight night—the sky was without a cloud, and the stars all blinking that it would delight anybody's heart to look at them, when Jack was crassing a bog that lay a few fields beyant his own cabin. He was just crooning the 'Humors of Glynn' to himself and thinking that it was a very hard case that he couldn't save anything at all, at all, to help him to the wife, when, on coming down a bank in the middle of the bog, he saw a dark-looking man leaning ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... seemed to the boy that there were no such things as "jelly-pieces" to bother about. He liked his mother to sing to him, for he seemed to get rolled up in her soft, warm voice, and become restful and happy. Gradually the low crooning song grew fainter in his ears, the flicker of the fire danced further and further away, until long streaks of golden thready light seemed to reach out, straight from his eyes to the fireplace, and all the comfort that it ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... with commissions delivered by word of mouth—so busy, perhaps considerately, that the girl found little time to waste in futile fretting, but was ever conscious, when now and again her thoughts did inevitably revert to the status of her personal affairs, of contentment crooning in her heart like the soft refrain ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... the little roadways that converge upon the market-place something was astir. It was a dim phantom of willowy outline, swaying capriciously to and fro, like a black feather tossed by the wind. Miss Wilberforce! She fluttered down a doorstep and began crooning a vulgar song about "Billy had a letter for to go on board a ship." Denis moved to the other side of the narrow path, hoping to escape unobserved. The ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... apartment in the village of Cawsand Bay an aged man stood, supported by an elderly man, at a window, gazing seaward with an expression of intense expectation, while a very aged woman sat crooning over the fire, holding the hand of a fair girl ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... into an antechamber lit by a single lamp, leaving Stephanus still occupied with his bolts and chains. Here with a sudden motion Nehushta threw off her cloak and tore the veil from her brow. In another instant, uttering a low, crooning cry, she flung her long arms about Miriam and began to kiss her again ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... ocean, crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... of the winding-sheet, and have listened with aching heart to the aimless babbling of the dying, in which home and friends were blended, until the tired voice, grown aweary with the weight of utterance, died out like the crooning of a lisping child, as the soul slipped through the golden gateway that leads to the glory beyond the grave. I have watched them pile the earth above the last home of Cambria's sons, the gallant children of the old Welsh hills. I have seen them laid to sleep, as harvest ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... was written by a pious monk of the Benedictines." (Padraig the scribe would have hooted at this.) "It is a most wise and diverting entertainment, master, I do assure you." The jester seemed not to be listening very attentively. He twirled the stem of the wine-cup in his hand, crooning, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... her pillows exhausted by her emotion, while in a low, crooning voice the name she loved to utter broke from her longing lips ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll and crooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the spring rocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... to where processions of rosy globes hung floating in the blue night. The mild breeze trembled to the silver patterings of a harp, to the sweet, barbaric chirping of plucked strings of violin and 'cello—and swooned among the maple leaves to the rhythmic crooning of a flute. And, all the while, from the platform came the sounds of little cries in girlish voices, and the cadenced shuffling of young feet, where the witching dancemusic had its way, as ever and forever, with ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... in two with a crooning song, With a soft and soothing number; For the day has no right to be so long And keep my baby from slumber. Then rock-a-by, rock, may white dreams flock Like angels over you; Baby's gone, and the deed is done, We've broken the ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... entirely. His lips grew firm, his eyes were like points of steel. Mrs. Henson was pacing the dusty floor, muttering and crooning to herself. Henson touched her arm, at the same time holding some glittering object before her eyes. It was a massive ruby ring with four black ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... the young gamekeeper, wasn't it?" asked another man— the husband of the lady who was still crooning over her recovered diamonds. "You thought he had been led away by smart London thieves, but this seems as if he had taken a leading part. Looks, too, as if there may have been only himself ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... would fly up stairs and passages, knock at the bedroom door, run down the steps to the queer little dressing-room where the roof nearly came on your head, and down more steps again to the sitting-room. Then when the door was shut, and she was crooning over the fire with her friend, she was entirely happy. The tiny room was built on the edge of the terrace, the ground fell rapidly below it, and the west window commanded a broad expanse of tame arable country, of square fields and hedges, and scattered wood. Marcella, looking back upon that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the crew, who had been for some time lying on his breast on the weather cat-head, crooning over some interminable "love-song about murder," suddenly surceased his singing, raised himself up, and cast an eager and hurried glance ahead of the ship, shouted "Fish ho!" at the very top of his lungs, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... hammer;—Boys round—Old Clem! With a thump and a sound—Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout—Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire—Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem! One day I was crooning this ditty as I pushed Miss Havisham about. It happened to catch her fancy and she took it up in a low brooding voice. After that it became customary with us to sing it as we moved about, and often Estella joined in, though the whole strain was so subdued that it made less noise in the grim ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that, crooning to itself, Comes down a tireless rover, Flows calmly to the rocky shelf, And ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... That sombre sentence haunted him. He tried to close his ears against it, but to no purpose. It crept up from some inward lurking place in his being, crooning a hundred cadences in spite of all that he could do to change the order of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... women carried him to a bed in a large room at the back of the house, not far from the nursery, and laid him on a blanket, with his shoulder stanched with soft linen rags. Morton was softly drying his hair and crooning to the child—although he was still unconscious—begging Norah to put the blanket over him lest he catch cold; and Norah was still vigorously drying his feet unmindful of Morton's pleading, when the doctor entered with a trained nurse. The boy lay ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... and bellowed, and there was madness on the broken green waters; but to Finn and his people it was a call in the morning and a sleepy time at night to be listening to the roaring and the crooning that was ever and always about the sides of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... creature who has sought refuge with me from her persecutors," said Beniah, turning to the prince, while the old woman fell to crooning a wild song in a low voice, accompanying the music—if such it may be called—by a swaying motion of her body ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... as the song, was the crooning wailing tune that the wise woman sung. At the first note almost, you would have thought she wanted to frighten the princess; and so indeed she did. For when people WILL be naughty, they have to be frightened, and they are not expected to like it. The princess grew angry, pulled her hand ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... bright Sits the mother crooning low; Ah! an arrow's silver gleam, Flashes of a golden bow! Soft she sways a dimpled child Winged with down, and innocent; "Hush thee, Eros,—sleep, my son," Sings her voice in ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... Daisy, now quite warm and dry, lay down, and after tucking the afghan over her, Patty went to the piano. She played a few soft chords, and then sang, softly, a crooning lullaby. It is not surprising that under the influence of the soothing music, the warm fire, and her own fatigue, Daisy ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... remember that I had a particular fondness for the black keys. Always on such evenings, when the music was over, my mother would sit with me in her arms, often for a very long time. She would hold me close, softly crooning some old melody without words, all the while gently stroking her face against my head; many and many a night I thus fell asleep. I can see her now, her great dark eyes looking into the fire, to where? No one knew ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... known as the "bleeding-tooth shell," the gory stains about the base of the tooth being highly significant. The local example of the whimsicality of Nature owes its excellence to absolute purity. No fond mother crooning to her first-born ever looked on budding teeth more delightful in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... more whisky, and was as the dead who know not. He would awake on the morrow with a headache, perhaps, but with a proud consciousness that he had accomplished the feat of a statesman for himself and for his band. Bigbeam rowed steadily toward home, crooning some barbarous old half-song of her race. She was ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... was pressed into her favourite beast's side, and she was crooning soothingly to it as the white jets ping-panged into the frothing pail, and he stood for a ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... woman with a child in her arms was silhouetted against the white tent wall. She was sitting on some robes, crooning in a low voice to the child, and was unaware ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... she knew he was grateful, for she suited him better than anyone else. If she was late, he was impatient; when she had to go, he seemed forlorn; and when the tired head ached worst, she could always soothe him to sleep, crooning the old songs ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... wee thing, blinking and smiling in the arms of her Madonna-faced mother, on a bench in Our Square, and the mother (who could not wait for the promised return—she has lain in God's Acre these three years) crooning to her ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "Marching Through Georgia" until all the "happy hills of hay" were to the fervid eye of a boy's imagination full of tramping soldiers. Oh, I shall never forget the joys of those hours in the hay-barn, nor the music of that secret tin whistle! I can hear yet the crooning of the pigeons in the eaves, and the slatey sound of their wings as they flew across the open spaces in the great barn; I can smell yet the odour of ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... midst of them, the shame, the hooting and the stunning of her last day at distant High March, Maulfry, Galors, leering Falve—all these grim apparitions sank back into the green woodland vistas; all the shocks and alarums of her timid little soul were subdued by the rustling boughs and the crooning voices of the doves. She saw bright country in her dreams. Prosper was abroad on a spurred horse; his helmet gleamed in the sun; his enemies fell at his onset. The deer browsed about her, from the branches a squirrel peeped down, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in many places in England. Its absence from so promising a locality seemed strange. Another species, also said to be increasing in the country—the turtledove, was extremely abundant. In the tall beech woods its low, montonous crooning note was heard all day long from all sides. In shady places, where the loud, shrill bird-voices are few, one prefers this sound to the set song of the woodpigeon, being more continuous and soothing, and of the nature ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Reserve they were met by Chief Trotting Wolf himself and, without more than a single word of greeting, were led to the tent in which the sick boy lay. Beside him sat the old squaw in a corner of the tent, crooning a weird song as she swayed to and fro. The sick boy lay on a couch of skins, his eyes shining with fever, his foot festering and in a state of indescribable filth and his whole condition one of unspeakable wretchedness. Cameron ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... with dim look, Sat crooning by the roadside of the year, So, Autumn, in thy strangeness, thou art here To read dark fortunes for us from the book Of fate; thou flingest in the crinkled brook The trembling maple's gold, and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley |
