"Hum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been dead an' berried a week when I got there, and aunt was so mad she wouldn't write, nor scurcely speak tew me fer a consider'ble spell. I didn't blame her a mite, and felt jest the wust kind; so I give in every way, and fetched her raound. Yeou see I hed a cousin who'd kind er took my place tew hum while I was off, an' the old man hed left him a good slice er his money, an' me the farm, hopin' to keep me there. He'd never liked the lumberin' bizness, an' hankered arfter me a sight, I faound. Waal, seein' haow 'twas, I tried tew please him, late as it was; but ef there ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... your man did take plain Nature for God, an' he did talk fulishness 'bout finding Him in the scent o' flowers, the hum o' bees an' sichlike. Mayhap Nature's a gude working God for a selfish man but she ed'n wan for a maid, as you knaws by now. Then your faither—his God do sit everlastingly alongside hell-mouth, an' do laugh an' girn to see ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... this waste; no sign of life was visible; no flutter of wing, no hum of insect, no flash of lizard or reptile; even the shrill song of the cricket, that lover of burning solitudes, was unheard. The soil was formed of a micaceous, brilliant dust like ground sandstone, and here and there rose ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... after dinner. There was something delightful in the place, too, with its windows opening on the tree-tops of the Square, and the air of a warm autumn evening bringing in the sound of a woebegone brass band from afar, mixed with the endless hum of wheels with hoof-beats in the heart of it, like currants in a cake. The air was all the sweeter that a whiff of chimney-smoke broke into it now and again, and emphasized its quality. When the band left off the "Bohemian Girl" and rested, and imagination was picturing ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... marble which apparently surrounded this mighty city, and which rose immediately from the dark blue waters. As the navigator drew nearer, he observed that in most parts the quays were crowded with beings who, he trusted, were human, and already the hum of multitudes broke upon his inexperienced ear: to him a sound far more mysterious and far more exciting than the most poetical of winds to the most wind of poets. On the right of this vast city rose ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... memory Fitch and Stevens, and Bell and Fulton; thousands of locomotives, crossing the continents, will perpetuate the thought of the Stephensons and their colleagues in the introduction of the railway; the hum of millions of spindles and the music of the electric wire will tell of the work of Corliss and his contemporaries and successors who made these things possible, and all kingdoms and races, all nations, will revere the name of James Watt, the genius to whom the world is most indebted for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... would go mad with joy. I have had strength to endure misfortunes, but perhaps the rapture of freedom may be fatal. My God! my God! if I should lose my senses! if the light of the sun should scorch my brain! if the hum of the busy ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Century, are to be heard. What has become of Semiramide, La Cenerentola, and the others? There are no singers to sing them and so they have been dropped from the repertory without being missed. Can any of our young misses hum Di Tanti Palpiti? You know they cannot. I doubt if you can find two girls in New York (and I mean girls with a musical education) who can tell you in what opera the air belongs and yet in the early Twenties this tune was as popular as Un Bel ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... graduated lengths that they constituted the Negro's peculiar music Scale. The music intervals though approximating those of the Caucasian scale were not the same. At times, when in a reminiscent humor, I hum to myself some little songs of my childhood. On occasions, afterwards, I have "picked out" some of the same tunes on the piano. When I have done this I have always felt like giving its production on the piano ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... the sun, with the activity and hum of the morning, had made no great change in the relative positions of things within and without the bay. The people of le Feu-Follet had breakfasted, had got everything on board their little craft in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... printed, so they say, in all the tongues of Christendom, and sold to the extent of fifty millions of copies. This tune occupied a warm place in my Sunday-schoolboy heart, along with other singable airs of the Moody and Sankey type, but as I hum it over in memory now, it tastes sweetish and thin. Its popularity is appalling, musically at least. Converse has written many other hymn-tunes, which have taken their place among ecclesiastical soporifics. Besides, he has recently ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... hopes of converting into customers by their eloquence. If this were resented by any act of violence, the inmates of each shop were ready to pour forth in succour; and in the words of an old song which Dr. Johnson was used to hum,— ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... cricket-ground and noisy eight, At Bagley, where the rustling bluebells come Almost before the blackbird finds a mate And overstay the swallow, and the hum Of many murmuring bees flits through the leaves, Have I lain poring on the dreamy ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... "Hum—I thought Yale men went into something commercial; law or banking or railroads. 'Leave hope of fortune behind, ye who enter here' is over the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... first giving thanks to the Giver of all. When not busied with other duties, the housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she twilled the web she was weaving; and as the shades of evening descended the sonorous hum of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young man on courtship intent that the daughter of the house was at home. From the kitchen a door opened into the best room, a cheerless sort of place only thrown open on special occasions, and not to compare ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... spray of foam that broke into sight upon the nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained invisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance passed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissing kettle. Out yonder—in the Forest further out—the thing that was ever roaring at the ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... arrived she was led to the punch-bowl. When the last one had been taught the way to that cool nook, there was a pleasant hum of voices in the room. There was still an undercurrent of difference as to the punch's merit—other than mere coolness; though Miss Eubanks now agreed with Aunt Delia that it possessed virtues not to be discerned in the first careless draught. The conversation continued to be general, to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... over it? I wonder whether they get up in the night as the moonlight shines into the blank vacant old room, and play there solemnly with little ghostly horses, and the spirits of dolls, and tops that turn and turn but don't hum. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Pete, plaintively, "I stick to hum so much o' the time I never git to talk to nobody nor hear the noos. But seems to me I did hear onct about him. Yes, sir, somebody sez as how Don Fernandez lives in a palace in that wilderness jest like a king of old, with armed ree-strainers or whatever ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... few moments, there was a busy and earnest, but indistinct hum of the two children's voices, as Violet and Peony wrought together with one happy consent. Violet still seemed to be the guiding spirit, while Peony acted rather as a labourer, and brought her the snow from far and near. And ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... remember undoing the straps with benumbed and aching fingers. He did not remember the befogged and stumbling "walk" into the Control Room. Dimly, as if viewing himself and the room from a distant world, he switched on the dying hum of the radio and tried futilely to ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... telegraph; and an excitement was produced such as is seen among bees when their hive has received a sudden shock. The mountain pathways became immediately alive with human beings, and noises arose like the hum of a city heard at a distance during the busiest hours of the day. In the villages immediately adjoining the place of resort, the excitement was wholly confined to youngsters and idlers, who are ever ready to seize upon novelty and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... this visit led me first to the boys' school, for Hatiheu is the university of the north islands. The hum of the lesson came out to meet us. Close by the door, where the draught blew coolest, sat the lay brother; around him, in a packed half-circle, some sixty high-coloured faces set with staring eyes; and in the background ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sidewalks and seemed to bend beneath the weight of sunlight upon their heads and shoulders. A truck ploughed a furrow through push-carts that rolled back to the curb like a wave crested with crude yellow, red, green, and orange merchandise. She caught the hum of voices, many tongues mingling, while the odours of vegetables and fruit and human beings came faintly to her nostrils. She was looking down upon one of the busiest streets of the city that people ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... by numerous wherries, gliding pleasurably on the rippling wave; some shooting under the arches of the elegant Waterloo, and others under the spacious span of the lofty iron bridge of Southwark,—while on either side the river, Labour was on the alert, and the busy and ceaseless hum of Industry resounded far ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... camp, scrambling among the rocks with a haste that was born of nervous tension. She did not see the men again—it was needful to pick a path down the steep descent very carefully—and when she came, breathless, upon the clump of birches among which the tents were pitched it was evident from the hum of voices that the strangers had already arrived. Pushing in among the trees, she stopped, with her heart beating unpleasantly fast, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... "Hum! Well, we might put them in our middy blouses, only we take a chance of losing them in squirming back through that tunnel," ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, maid composed, 15 To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... fears to Lin and that worthy was quite ingenious in quizzing the boy. She questioned Alfred as to his intentions. "I tole yer mother ye wouldn't run off with thet ole show while yer pap wus away from hum. Mary sed 'They mout coax ye off.' Did they coax ye? Did they offer to gin ye a job?" And she looked at Alfred very ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... she, as the men came into the yard, 'I want ye t' look at this boy. Did ye ever see such a cunnin' little critter? Jes' look at them bright eyes!' and then she held me to her breast and nearly smothered me and began to hum a ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... warm drops;— while this lovely rain was washing all the air clean from the motes, and the bad odors, and the poison-seeds that had escaped from their prisons during the long drought;—while it fell, splashing and sparkling, with a hum, and a rush, and a soft clashing—but stop! I am stealing, I find, and not that only, but with clumsy ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... the straps that bound them to their machines, the army aviators leaped lightly from their seats. The big propellers, from which the power had been cut off, as the birdmen started to volplane to the ground, ceased revolving, and the hum and roar of the powerful ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... and, to speak my mind plainly, I believe that you are an arrant, bamboozling hum-bug!" cried Tom. "No ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... wife ... and a daughter ... very beautiful daughter ... hum—hum. Many men wanted her ... wouldn't have them ... can't take her by force ... very strong. Thought of taking her to wife myself ... hum—hum. But she is too strong for ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... noises had died away in the direction of the mill; there was no leisure for stags to bray, as they crouched now far away in the bracken, listening large-eyed and trumpet-eared for the sounds of pursuit; only the hum of insect life in the hot evening sunshine filled the air; and Ralph began to fall asleep, his back against ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... chattering gayly in a low, melodious tone with each other, and with the gentlemen of the party filling the room with a musical hum of many happy voices. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... I ever tell 'ee, bor, about t' new squoire o' these parts—him wot cum hum yesterday from furren lands? Gaffer ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... a trumpet, little Micky got a drum, Matsy got a spinning top, you ought to hear it hum, Clarissa got a candy cane, oh, won't we have the fun, When ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... the mere neck of a bottle and the glass of a bird-cage. At the period just named, however, it found everything so exquisitely charming. It was again among flowers and verdure, again surrounded by joy and festivity; it again heard singing and musical instruments, and the hum and buzz of a crowd of people, especially from that part of the gardens which were most brilliantly illuminated. It had a good situation itself, and stood there useful and happy, bearing its appointed light. During such a pleasant time it forgot the twenty ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... which runs out from the heart of the city to string these towns together, is paved with brick, and its traffic, for the most part, is the great tin-tired dump-carts of the quarries and steel interurban electric cars, which hum so heavily that even the windows of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... gloomily approached the door of the room in which he had spent last evening, he heard a little rustle and commotion not quite consistent with his expectations—a hum of voices and soft stir such as youthful womankind only makes. Then a voice entirely strange to him uttered an exclamation. Involuntarily he started and changed his aspect. He did not know the voice, but it was young, sweet, peculiar. The cloud lightened ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a few lines in the press of business to tell you I am well, but very lonely, with a view out over the green, in this dull, rainy weather, while the bumble-bees hum and the sparrows twitter. Grand audience tomorrow. It's vexatious that I have to buy linen, towels, table-cloths, and sheets. * * * Farewell. Hearty love, and write! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... of a few soldiers traversing the square drew the eyes of all in their direction, and caused a brief pause in the hum of conversation. Our friends, the captives, were in the midst of these soldiers, and beside them marched the negro interpreter whom they had first met with ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... loved to creep from amid the Roman pikes to lie beneath this great vine, and see the smiling and serene shapes go by, woven from the finest fibres of all the elements. I knew not why, at that time,—but I loved to get away from the hum of the forum, and the mailed clang of Roman speech, to these shifting shows of nature, these Gods and Nymphs born of the sunbeam, the wave, the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... forms the principal attraction: if it serve to call a crowd together, that is sufficient for their purpose; and it is for this reason, we imagine, that the effect of the whole is contrived to resemble, as it very closely does, the hum and jangle of Greenwich Fair when heard of an Easter Monday from the summit of the Observatory Hill. No, the main attraction is essentially dramatic. In front of the great chest of heterogeneous sounds there is a stage about five or six feet in width, four in height, and perhaps eighteen ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... beside the hill; A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook, that turns a mill, With many ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... two princes to think about, and poor Cinderella, on that occasion, had not even one. Fanny did n't seem inclined to talk much, and Tom would go on in such a ridiculous manner that Polly told him she would n't listen and began to hum bits of the opera. But she heard every word, nevertheless, and resolved to pay him for his impertinence as soon as possible by showing him ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... sun like a white cloud, and when they swoop downwards to the ground the air vibrates with the hum of whirling wings. They have a trick of sitting along the coping tiles of the roof in single file like a company of soldiers drawn up in line, and on one occasion I saw some hundreds resting so closely together in this fashion that there was not room for a sparrow between them the whole length ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... moon, Jupiter and Venus. The sound of the sea distinctly heard on the tops of the hills, which we could never hear in summer. We attribute this partly to the bareness of the trees, but chiefly to the absence of the singing birds, the hum of insects, that noiseless noise which lives in the summer air. The villages marked out by beautiful beds of smoke. The turf ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... panegyrists and bards, the king proceeded towards the city called after the elephant. The progress, O mighty-armed one, of king Yudhishthira, became so beautiful that its like had never been on earth. Teeming with healthy and cheerful men, the busy hum of innumerable voices was heard there. During the progress of Pritha's son, the city and its streets were adorned with gay citizens (all of whom had come out for honouring the king). The spot through which the king passed had been decked with festoons ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... "Hum," murmured he, "in spite of pallor and attenuation, there are yet traces of great beauty. I am sure if well nourished and well clothed she may yet allure the heart which must be ever touched with pity for her mournful ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... can we drink in the sense of such solitude and immensity; realizing to the full what indeed these words may mean, he may wander for hours without encountering a soul, very few birds are heard by the way, but the hum of the insect world, that dreamy go-between, hardly silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps us perpetual company, and our eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green and gold lizard flashes across a bit ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and the rattle of a steamer's winch. The sounds appealed to him. They suggested organized activity, the stir of busy life; and it was pleasant to hear them after the silence of the bush. The gleam of snowy linen, dainty glass and silver caught his eye; and the hum of careless voices and the light laughter ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... nearer to the city, see its flashing lights, and hear its hum of voices, other and less doleful ideas come uppermost, leading ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... called in a loud voice; there was a hum of excitement, then a silence of expectation, and the plaintiff's counsel rose to address ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... was not for him to mix with these outsiders, these curiosity seekers. He crossed the lawn to the house, and mounted the steps. In the doorway was big Steve, while groups of men stood about in the hall, the hum of busy purposeless talk pervading the place. The judge frowned. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the natural instincts of my ladyhood; and pale and trembling to a degree I would not have wished seen by either of these two mysterious men, I sat in a dream of suspense, hearing and not hearing the low hum of their voices as they reasoned with or consoled the mother, now fast drifting away ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... hate new-fashioned toys Began to look extremely glum; They said that rattles were made for boys, And vowed that his buzzing was all a hum. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... A low hum in the theatre awakened the queen from her reveries; she raised herself up and leaned forward, to see what was going on. Her glance, which was directed to the stage, fell upon the singer Clairval, who was just then beginning to give, with his ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Normandy. Madame herself remained almost entirely invisible, shut up in the sanctity of her own rooms; and so the whole house had a sense of stillness that seemed only heightened by the glory of the autumn sunshine, and the hum of bees and rustle of leaves that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... his long, thin hands together, he looked round the deserted supper-room, whence even the last flunkey had retired in order to join his friends in the hall below. All was silence in the dimly-lighted room, whilst the sound of the gavotte, the hum of distant talk and laughter, and the rumble of an occasional coach outside, only seemed to reach this palace of the Sleeping Beauty as the murmur of ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... it, and then it seemed to him that everything was alive and watching him in the same intent way—the passion-flowers, the green leaves, the grass, the trees, the wide sky, the great shining sun. He listened, and there was no sound in the wood, not even the hum of a fly or wild bee, and it was so still that not a leaf moved. Finally he moved away from that spot, but treading very softly, and holding his breath to listen, for it seemed to him that the forest had something to tell him, and that if he listened he would hear ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... to your hill and dale, Yet take in your hand from me A staff when your footsteps fail, A weapon if need there be; 'Twill hum in your ear when the foeman's near, athirst for ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... away Far from the ocean's pebbly shore, Still loves to hum the choral lay, The whispering mermaid ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... midsummer, and the quiet, little town of Overton drowsed gently, not to awaken until the sounds of girl laughter and the passing of light feet through its sleepy streets roused it to the realization that it was Overton College that made its hum-drum ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... reflected in the mirrors between the deep windows, and the moths and June-bugs tilting at the lights. We sat at a little mahogany table eating porridge and cream from round blue bowls, with Mammy to wait on us. Sometimes there floated in upon us the hum of revelry from the great drawing-room where Madame had her company. Often the good Mr. Mason would come in to us (he cared little for the parties), and talk to us of our day's doings. Nick had his lessons from the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Graced the once sequestered hillside. By and by the streets were fashioned From the model of McAdam, And adorned the youthful city. Richmond, Mulberry, and Paulding, Danville, Lexington, and Water, Stanford, Campbell, and Crab Orchard, Were the windings of the city. And the noisy hum of traffic, And the roll of cart and carriage, Told of barter and of bargain, Told of human gains and losses, Scared away the beasts and birdlings, Locked and dammed and bridged the rivers, Chained the rolling streams and rivers. Schools were opened, where the people ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... smiled at the generosity of his introduction. He greeted us all cordially and cheerfully, and the light fading rapidly, we rowed on in the early starlight. The gondolas slid side by side, and there was a constant hum ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... hum! And why the governess had obeyed it so swiftly. The light-colored cage with the loose cover was nothing else than the old linen-hamper! As ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... a phantom army come, With never a sound of fife or drum, But keeping time to a throbbing hum Of wailing and lamentation: The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill, Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, The men whose wasted figures fill The patriot ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest with us. Thou hast made ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... more hostile. More than a few ears were tingling; at every turn there were scowls and sullen eyes and ugly smiles. The matrons' cheeks were burning; their eyes flashed; every now and again one of their voices shrilled defiantly above the hoarse hum of the crowd. The young Irish girls were laughing, enjoying the excitement, and admiring the young men flaunting their banknotes with the swing of their father's shillalahs. The young German girls curled their lips and whispered together. There was a significant herding of the contending ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... light, And day's last vestige takes its silent flight. No more is heard the woodman's measured stroke, Which with the dawn from yonder dingle broke; No more, hoarse clamouring o'er the uplifted head, The crows assembling seek their wind-rock'd bed; Still'd is the village hum—the woodland sounds Have ceased to echo o'er the dewy grounds, And general silence reigns, save when below The murmuring Trent is scarcely heard to flow; And save when, swung by 'nighted rustic late, Oft, on its hinge, rebounds the jarring gate; Or when the sheep-bell, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... "Hum!" returned Peterkin; "suppose a salamander was to propose to you 'only to keep still,' and he would carry you through a blazing fire in a few seconds, what ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... circles ... perhaps not accustomed ... bit rough in speech, but heart of gold ... give you the shirt right off her back ... hum ... manner of speaking ... know what ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... all very different, strikingly different, from his forecastings. A young woman was at the piano, with a young man whose clothes fitted him and who was in nowise conscious of them, turning the music for her. There was a pleasant hum of conversation; the lights were not glaring; the furnishings were not in bad taste—on the contrary, they were in exceedingly good taste. Griswold smiled when he remembered that he had been looking forward ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... yield of our harvest are the two poles upon which revolves the credit of our country abroad. But the growing value of the West to the economic and national life of Canada is a mere shadow of its increasing importance in the religious world. Above the hum of the binders and loud clatter of the threshing machines, above the sharp voice of the shrieking steel rail, counting, as it were, one by one, the freighted cars on their way to the Eastern ports, above the clamor of commerce and ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... Bug," said the Goblin, calmly. "When a cab-horse on a vacation talks about eating you, a Hum Bug is a pretty good thing to take the conceit out of him. They're loaded, you see, and they go booming along as innocently as you please; but if you touch 'em—why, 'There you aren't!' ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... "Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements." Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... masses of infantry lay waiting their turn to cross. The guns of batteries gleamed in the sun, endless wagon-trains and ambulances moved or were at rest. Here and there the wind of morning fluttered the flags and guidons with flashes of colour. The hum of a great army, the multitudinous murmurs of men talking, the crack of whips, the sharp rattle of wagons and of moving artillery, made a strange orchestra. Over all rose the warning shrieks of the gun-boat signals. Far or near on the fertile meadows the ripened corn ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... her soft cheek unrebuked, and followed my father through the dark with a happy heart Mechanically, rather than from either devotion or defiance, I began to hum "Chantez de Dieu," when my father's warning hand plucked my sleeve, and, at the same instant, a rough voice beside me said, "Hold your peace! Have you not heard of the arret?" ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... There was an agreeable hum of chatter from these early comers when I found myself welcoming Mrs. Judge Ballard and half a dozen members of the Onwards and Upwards Club, all of them wearing what I made out to be a baffled look. From these I presently managed ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... me was empty, and the man on my right had fallen forwards, his hand pressed to his side, his face curiously livid, patchy with streaks of dark colour, his eyes bulbous. Waiters still hurried to and fro, the hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came—a cry of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony—a cry, it seemed, of death. The waiters stopped in their places to gaze breathlessly at the spot from which the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... we could hear the sound of Tim Curtin's fiddle, and the hum of voices coming from the interior of the building. Our fear was that any of the inmates of the neighbouring dens might be awake, and, catching sight of us, might give the alarm, and allow the men time to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... humming habit either to cover their confusion, or as a sign of light-heartedness and contentment. Prominent amongst these are Pecksniff, who, like Morfin, hums melodiously, and Micawber, who can both sing and hum. Nor must we omit to mention Miss Petowker, who 'hummed a tune' as her contribution to the entertainment at Mrs. Kenwigs' party. Many of the characters resort to humming to conceal their temporary discomfiture, and ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... is told how the herdsman with Cypris—Get thee to Ida, get thee to Anchises! There are oak trees—here only galingale blows, here sweetly hum the bees ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... ye a piece: ye'll aiblins un'erstan' that!" said Donal, as he turned to leave the corn for the grass, where Hornie was eating with the rest like the most innocent of hum'le (hornless) animals. Gibbie obeyed, and followed, as, with slow step and downbent face, Donal led the way. For he had tucked his club under his arm, and already his greedy eyes were fixed on the book he had carried all the time, nor did he take them from it until, followed in full and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... low in the grate and he did not renew it. He looked past it toward the darkened windows and heard the hum of motor cars along the boulevard below. Again he was the boy of Caxton hungrily seeking an end in life. The flushed face of the woman in the theatre danced before his eyes. He remembered with shame how he had, a few days ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... In the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the Whirling Unbelief. I speak for these men—for all of us. We are not cogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men can ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... pink cording swung gently in the open windows. From the work-room came the distant hum of a sewing-machine and the sound of voices. Harriet sat with her hands in her lap and listened while Tillie poured out her story. The gates were down now. She told it all, consistently and with unconscious pathos: her little room under the roof at Mrs. McKee's, and the house in the country; ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nine o'clock when the deputy sheriff again appeared to escort him into court, and as they entered the room North saw that it was packed to the doors. His appearance won a moment of oppressive silence, then came the shuffling of feet and the hum ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... was folks, most, but I don't care. It's somethin' or other warm enough to-day, an' I'll go home. I can set in the barn an' sort apples. That won't be a heatin' job, an' 'll give me a chance to have an eye on things. Oh, hum! I wish Monty would happen along. Strange! how I miss that worthless, stutterin', big-hearted little shaver! I wouldn't offer to take him fishin' more'n once without bein' took ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... too proud to walk, flit past noiselessly in rubber-tyred rickshaws—which are not, as many believe, an ancient and typical Oriental conveyance, but the modern invention of an English missionary called Robinson. The hum of the city is dominated by the screech of the tramcars in the principal streets and by the patter of the wooden clogs, an incessant, irritating sound like rain. But these were now ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Then my lace-pillow;" her busy hands had stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at the name; "it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and that's not work. Why, you yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And so ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... Groves which thy youth has known thine age shall know; Here, as of old, Hyblaean bees shall twine Their mazy murmur into dreams of thine,— Still from the hedge's willow-bloom shall come Through summer silences a slumberous hum,— Still from the crag shall lingering winds prolong The half-heard cadence of the woodman's song,— While evermore the doves, thy love and care, Fill the tall elms with sighing ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... just a repetition of yesterday's, with the stumps and the mud holes rather worse. The 'Corner' with its single sawmill and store, offered no inducement for a halt; and a tedious two miles farther brought them to 'hum.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... days in the week Geneva presents a cheerful and animated appearance. On every hand are heard the sounds of honest toil and the hum of busy trade. Farmers from the surrounding country come in numbers into the village to purchase their necessary supplies and to listen to the news and gossip of the day, and the numerous stores transact a thriving business and reap a handsome ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... than the noise of mowing-machine hum, as the machines which make it are more delicate and more curious. Madam How is a very skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and clearer than all microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to see what makes that "Midsummer ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... approaching the end; they had been at their work for near three hours, the 5,040 changes were almost finished. Westray went down from the organ-loft, and as he walked through the church the very last change was rung. Before the hum and mutter had died out of the air, and while the red-faced ringers in the belfry were quaffing their tankards, the architect had made his way to the scaffolding, and stood face to face with the zigzag crack. He looked at it carefully, as a doctor might examine ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... quadrupeds are yet in existence, and the silent forests are enlivened only by the stirring of the breeze among the trees or the occasional hum of monstrous insects. But upon the margin of yonder stream a huge four-footed creature creeps slowly along. He looks much like a gigantic salamander, and his broad, soft feet make deep impressions in ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin |
