"Jabbering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Tonio threw up a hand from across the stony chasm, signalled to his friends to cease, sprang over a low barrier of rock, disappeared one moment from view, then a few yards farther signalled "Come on." And on they went and came presently upon an excited, jabbering group at a little cleft in the hillside. A mule lay kicking in death agony down the slope. Another lay dead among the bowlders. An Apache warrior, face downward in a pool of blood, was sprawled in front of the cleft, and presently, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... I have heard about the risks of business. I knew some people whose fathers failed, and they went away, I don't know where, to suffer as we have perhaps, and yet girls are not taught to do a single thing by which they can earn a penny if they need to. If anybody will pay me for jabbering a little bad French and Italian, and strumming a few operatic airs on the piano, I am at their service. I think I also understand dressing, flirting, and receiving compliments very well. I had a taste for these ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... landed on the most extraordinary place, which looked as if trees and houses had sprouted on a dyke, all consecutive ideas were ground out of our heads in the mill of confusing sights and sounds. Friends were meeting each other, and jabbering something which sounded at a distance like Glasgow-English, and like no known language when you were close enough to catch the words. Porters surged round us, urging the claims of rival hotels; men in indigo cotton blouses pleaded ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... turned round. The tide was rising fast, and in a minute or so would be upon us. Catching Colliver by the shoulder, I pointed and tried to make him understand; but the maniac had again fallen to playing with the jewels. I shook him; he did not stir, only sat there jabbering and singing. And now wave after wave came splashing over us, soaking us through, and hissing in ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came the missionary. That missionary! What a Guy! Gummy! It was in the afternoon, and I was sitting in state in my outer temple place, sitting on that old black stone of theirs, when he came. I heard a row outside and jabbering, and then his voice speaking to an interpreter. 'They worship stocks and stones,' he said, and I knew what was up, in a flash. I had one of my windows out for comfort, and I sang out straight away on the spur of the moment. 'Stocks and stones!' I says. 'You come inside,' I says, 'and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... house sheltered from six to a dozen families, according to the number of fires. Two families shared each fire, and around the fire in winter clustered children, dogs, youths, gaily decorated maidens, jabbering squaws, and toothless, smoke-blinded old men. Privacy there was none. Along the sides of the cabin, about four feet from the ground, extended raised platforms, on or under which, according to the season or the inclination of the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering before every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual spectacle on the Place de la Revolution. The men had paused at the various drinking booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn of these Amazons next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... predisposed towards sadness, and I could with difficulty extract from any of them more than a very faint sort of a smile. They turned and twisted the coins in their hands, and compared them among one another, jabbering and apparently content. The jealous man kept his head turned away from them determinedly, pretending not to see what was going on, and, resting his chin on his hand, he began to sing a weird, melancholy, guttural song, assuming ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... phenomenon—life, and individuality, after death. They are more noteworthy than the cowled and desiccated monks of Italy or Sicily, or at least differently so; undraped, for the most part, though some of them may be seen, mere skin-covered heads, peering with dismal coyness out of a brown sack. And the jabbering teeth.... We dream as children of night-terrors, of goblins and phantoms that start out of the gloom and flit about with hideous grimaces. They are gone, while yet we shudder at that momentary flash of grizzliness; intangibilities, whose image is not easily detained. To see spectral visions embodied, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... has an oracle in it, who speaks with an air of authority. He is a great talker, and a great smoker, and he chats so skilfully, that he enjoys his pipe at the same time, and manages it so as not to interrupt his jabbering. He can smoke, talk, and row at once. He don't smoke fast, for that puts his pipe out by consuming his tobacco; nor row fast, for it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... like a stab to Chloe. She dropped half a needleful of stitches in her knitting, and told Tom she wished he'd hold his tongue, for he kept up such a jabbering that he made all her stitches run down. Tom, thus silenced, soon fell asleep. She glanced at him as he sat snoring by her side, and contrasted him with the genteel figure and handsome features that had been so indelibly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... it's lonesome, and if anybody does come in it's too damn sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting in and jabbering at you. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... threshold, Dorothea hesitated between stopping her ears and rubbing her eyes. The place was a Babel. Frenchmen in white paper caps and stained linen blouses were laughing, plying their brushes, mixing paints, shifting ladders, and jabbering all the while at the pitch of their voices. For a moment the din bewildered her; the ferment had no more meaning, no more method, than a schoolboy's game. But her eyes, passing over the chaos of paint-pots, brushes, and step-ladders, told her the place ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... twenty-four years before I had been born, but those years were simply existence. Now I was living. I had a secret. I had hinted at it to young Colonel. Had he stayed, I would have told him more, but like a fool he had gone jabbering off through the bushes, cutting a ludicrous figure, too, I thought, for his body had not yet grown up to his feet and ears, and he carried them off a bit clumsily. Had he stayed I might have told him all, and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... it was so in a sense though it contained a naked fact, about as naked and ugly as a fact can well be. The whole waterside talked of nothing else. First thing in the morning as I was dressing in my state-room, I would hear through the bulkhead my Parsee Dubash jabbering about the Patna with the steward, while he drank a cup of tea, by favour, in the pantry. No sooner on shore I would meet some acquaintance, and the first remark would be, "Did you ever hear of anything to beat this?" and according to his kind the man would smile cynically, or look sad, or let ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... word of universal use and power. In every human soul there lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright and glorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, the wild men of the forest, the jabbering Ajetas, the South Sea Islanders, the wall-girt Chinamen, the sable Ethiopians, the cultured Christians, all cherish the thought of heaven—another home, a final resting-place from all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodness had implanted this thought in ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... fellow jabbering about?" exclaimed the Alderman, whose mouth fell nearly to the degree that rendered the countenance of the valet so singularly expressive of distress. "Where is my niece, Sir?—and what means this allusion ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... did some! But Mrs. Crump was jabbering to him most of the time. Haven't you ever been out here before? Why, I thought you had!—How d' y' ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... passengers showed what a motley company we were. Every now and then a countryman would burst into tears; a French voice would be heard to say, 'O mon Dieu!—mon Dieu!' a couple more of the same nation were jabbering oaths and chattering incessantly; and a certain allusion to his own and everybody else's eyes, which came from a stalwart figure at the far corner, told me that there was certainly an Englishman ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hear the flocks of birds flying in the air and feel the stamping feet below as herds of animals ran in every direction. We heard the vibrant jabber of monkeys from tree-tops, and each time a new tree fell there was more jabbering and more leaping away from tree ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... Laughing, jabbering patois, a dozen young imps forced their audacious attentions on the unprotected azure beauty. What was I, that I could defend her, left there as helpless as she, while her great heart throbbed ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in a row, the monk opened the door. He gave an exclamation when he saw my uniform when I entered, and would have slammed the door in my face; but I pushed in. Then he gave a shout, and five or six other monks came running up and set up a jabbering, and stood staring at me as if I had been a wild beast. Then they wanted to turn me out; but I wouldn't budge, and as I had my sword still in my hand they ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... resolute, which his discovery had evoked, faded, giving way to one of half-interested curiosity, as he saw that the potential enemies—more or less redoubtable assailants—were merely a few small boys, wandering along the reed-fringed bank, jabbering light-heartedly as they strolled. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... combatants, and said to the sailor, "I am your Consul's wife, and they are trying to make you understand that these are the Austrian Admiral's apples, and you must not eat them." The sailor apologized, said he did not know he had done any wrong, and did not understand what they were all jabbering about; and he saluted and went. Then Isabel explained to the sentry, and generally poured oil on the troubled waters. The sailor told the story to his comrades, and thus she became very popular among them. The sailors ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... to myself, 'what in natur is all this hubbub about? Can this here confounded old house be harnted? Is them spirits that's jabbering gibberish there, or is I wide awake or no?' So I sets right up on my hind legs in bed, rubs my eyes, opens my ears and listens agin, when whop went every shutter agin, with a dead heavy sound, like somethin' or another thrown agin 'em, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that her leddyship giv'd to me back. But it would ha split the seven sides of you wid the laffin' to behould, jist then all at once, the consated behavior of Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns. The likes o' sich a jabbering, and a smirking, and a parley-wouing as he begin'd wid her leddyship, niver was known before upon arth; and divil may burn me if it wasn't me own very two peepers that cotch'd him tipping her the wink out of one eye. Och, hon! if it wasn't mesilf thin that was mad ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... really most ingenious and subtle guns. Suppose instead of our turning them and our valuable selves in a fool's quarrel against the ingenious and subtle guns of other men akin to ourselves, we use them in the cause of the higher sanity, and clear that jabbering war tumult out of the streets."... There may be no dramatic moment for the expression of this idea, no moment when the new Cromwellism and the new Ironsides will come visibly face to face with talk and baubles, flags and patriotic dinner bells; but, with or without dramatic moments, the idea will ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... eunuch came a shriek and moan and incoherent jabbering. The captain cursed and stayed ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... decrepitude and squalor, crowded round to beg for scraps—indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest relatives; jabbering, half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in their mouths and philosophical acceptance on ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Once they were frightened almost uncontrollably by a group approaching with strange sounds—Italian laborers, cheerful and unintelligible when Dosia intrepidly questioned them. They passed on, still jabbering; two bedraggled women and a baby were no novelty to them. Then there was more long, high fencing, and moonlight, and silence, and shadows, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... another Indian religious service—this time of Christians—and compared it with what I had seen in the morning? Instead of a money-hunting priest sitting beside a butcher's block and exacting a prescribed fee from each pushing, jabbering, suppliant of a bloodthirsty goddess, herself only one of the many jealous gods and goddesses to be favored and propitiated—instead of this there was a converted Indian minister who told his fellows of one God whose characteristic is love, and whose worship is of the spirit. And instead ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... maliciously; "he's got something a whole lot better to attend to than just jabbering with his two chums over the lines ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa, and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and jabbering unintelligible dialects ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sets foot here dies!" came from a third voice. "This is the burial place of the great Hupa hupa! Back, if you value your life!" And then followed a jabbering nobody could understand, and white arms were waved ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... they heard a pattering of bare feet coming down the road. The stranger hailed in Hindustani, and the natives stopped and began an excited jabbering all together, which the stranger ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... them all jabbering together, and they finally agreed to report to the king that the time had arrived when the princess should marry, so that she should be able to go away to a new land, amid other people ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... distance elephants and wild boars were to be found. Birds of all sizes, some of the most gorgeous plumage, flashed here and there in the sunlight. Monkeys and baboons appeared scrambling among the rocks, or leaping from tree to tree, jabbering at ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the fiddlers put up their fiddles and the children went home; fairies and shepherdesses and pages and princesses all jabbering gleefully about the splendid ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... they handled, for the first time in their lives probably, some strings of blue, red, and green glass beads. They had two rough pots, made of bark, in the boat, which they also sold, after which they reluctantly departed, quite naked but very happy, shouting and jabbering away in the most inarticulate language imaginable. It was with great difficulty we could make them let go the rope, when we went ahead, and I was quite afraid they would be upset. They were all fat and healthy-looking, and, though not handsome, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... expected," he said. "But you must be quiet now. I was horrified when I came by and heard such a jabbering going on. Let's ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... hour ago? eh, lass?" queried the old man, grasping her hand. "But 'tis all one, Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you. There is a young spark with him,—ay, came even as you left, lass,—a likely young gallant; and he and the count are jabbering away in their own lingo, a kind ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... no more to be heard: we forgot to mention that she had, before Helen's return from Llansillen, departed, dismissed in disgrace; and happy was it for Lady Cecilia and Helen to be relieved from her jabbering, and not exposed to her spying and reporting. Nevertheless, the gloom that hung over the world above could not but be observed by the world below; it was, however, naturally accounted for by Lady Davenant's state of health, and by the anxiety which Lady Cecilia must feel for the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... peered at the Indians, who now were jabbering among themselves and making lamenting sounds as they glanced about at the ruins of the ancient village. There were eighteen of them. They were clad in nothing more than a curious cloth of some kind run between their legs and up and over a cord about ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... Johnson with ten-year-old Betsy Johnson holding to her hand. There were twelve women and sixteen boys and girls. To see them, nobody would have thought that they feared. Not a foot stumbled, not a figure wavered. Sudden silence fell upon the clearing and the forest. The jabbering Indians in the open stared. Stern faces blanched, peering through the port-holes of the fort; and in the timber beyond the spring the painted visages of the three hundred Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingos and their likewise painted white brothers glared, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... metaphor; All else were contrast,—save that contrast's wall Is down, and all opposed things flow together Into a vast monotony, where night And day, and frost and thaw, and death and life, Are synonyms. What now—what now to me Are all the jabbering birds and foolish flowers That clutter up the world? You were my song! Now, let discord scream! You were my flower! Now let the world grow weeds! For I shall not Plant things above your grave—(the common balm Of the conventional woe for its own wound!) Amid sensations rendered negative ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex—not even Briggs—when she began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fortune they require a certain time to slacken their speed or come to a full stop. And then, too, that thief of a Paganetti, to guard against accidents, had put everything in his wife's name. Perhaps that is why that jabbering Italian has taken a vow of affection for him which nothing can weaken. He is a fugitive, he is in hiding; but she is fully convinced that her husband is a little St. John in guilelessness, a victim of his kindness of heart and credulity. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... train, and once in a while Peter hovered near, as if he longed for a chance to say something. But Pat could not or would not talk, either to him or me. She had a headache, and sat with her eyes shut, looking pitifully pale. Larry, on the contrary, was all excitement, and never stopped jabbering with one person or another till the end of the journey. I could ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... nods to me. I nod back; and why shouldn't I? Nature has familiarly introduced us. Squirrel munches under his tail canopy till I am out of sight, jabbering all the while. What sage little fellows go on four feet! I believe an animal has all the instincts of Adam. He should never be tamed, however, lest he lose his identity. Civilization rubs down the points in our character. As the surf rounds ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Harvard and asked Florian what his university had been; an old girl whose name Florian never did learn; and two others of Jessie Heath's age and general style. Florian found himself as bewildered by their talk and views as though they had been jabbering a foreign language. Every now and then, though, one of them would turn to him for a bit of technical advice. If it happened to concern equipment Florian could answer it readily enough. Ten years on the fifth floor ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... human being and another; or if there is, I should think that part of them the most valuable who cultivate the ground, and provide necessaries for all the rest; not those who understand nothing but dress, walking with their toes out, staring modest people out of countenance, and jabbering a few ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... dreadful emblems of idolatry, so far as their bearers were able still to raise them. Drunken women, ragged boys mounted on men's shoulders, ruffians and bullies, savage-looking Getulians, half-human monsters from the Atlas, monkeys and curs jabbering and howling, mummers, bacchanals, satyrs, and gesticulators, formed the staple of the procession. Midway between the hill which he was descending and the city lay the ravine, of which we have several times spoken, widening out into the plain or Campus Martius, which reached round to the steep cliffs ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... three thousand dollars each. Although we would have committed any crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde, who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had something—anything—which we would buy. They called upon Allah ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Esther. I don't want to wake her, I'm sure. I was up here just now, and couldn't make out a word she was jabbering." ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... came a third shot, smashing a second boat with fearful execution. Followed again a moment of awful silence, then among those Spanish pirates all was gibbering and jabbering and splashing of oars, as they attempted to pull in every direction at once. Some were for going ashore, others for heading straight to the vessel and there discovering what might be amiss. That something was very gravely amiss ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... jabbering. It was good to hear Earth-people talk, even if it was French, which he didn't understand. As soon as the front door closed after the girls he tiptoed across the hall and tried the doorknob. It was locked. He opened it with his ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... the fireplace, then to the corner where Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to Cleek, and—she ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength to keep silent and climb ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... was saying to another, pointing to a Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to keep up with him. There ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... on his own account—a temptation he could not resist—by walking, or rather shuffling, into the guard-room, where his own peculiar crab-like sinuosities were particularly available. A number of soldiers were jabbering some unintelligible jargon, too much occupied with their own ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... but what cared we! The steel rails which gleamed and glistened in the signal lights led to Woodvale. We entered the room and waited patiently until the operator looked up from the jabbering receiver. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... my departure my bungalow was besieged by a mob of blackguards. The Native judge came with them. After a most prodigious quantity of jabbering, of which I could not understand one word, I called the judge, who spoke tolerable English, into my room, and learned from him the nature of the case. I was, and still am, in doubt as to the truth of the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the others, and stood with them upon the deck of the Salvador. The sailors that steadied El Nacional shoved her off. The jabbering Caribs hauled away at the rigging; the sloop ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... about and in the post as Red Dog and Bigbeam lugged their bale of furs up the bank and into the big room. There was jabbering among the bucks, while the squaws stood silently about, and among the most violent of the jabberers was Little Peter, who had already talked with the factor and by magnificent lying had almost convinced him that his own territory was the best for a new post. Unfortunately, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... his company, and in that way the fun would commence. My scheme worked to perfection, because some of the men of G Company, (mine was D) had seen me stick it up and had come post haste to read. I started the ball rolling in my own company and in about a minute there were fifty men around me all jabbering like magpies as to the result of this awful massacre. Of course, the regiment would be hurried north forthwith—no other regiment could do the work of annihilation so well as the 18th. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... sake," growled Edgarton from his table, "how do you people think I'm going to do any work with all this jabbering ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... went back into the cabin, to hold a council, apparently, from the way the jabbering broke forth. The Reindeer was very deep in the water, and her movements had grown quite loggy. In a rough sea she would have inevitably swamped; but the wind, when it did blow, was off the land, and scarcely a ripple disturbed ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... o'clock. He was heartily welcomed; and under the plea of our being obliged to return to the ship early next morning, we soon took leave, and returned to the inn. As I was turning into the public room, the door was open, and I could see it full of blowsy-faced monsters, glimmering and jabbering, through the midst of hot brandy grog and gin twist; with poodle Benjamins, and greatcoats, and cloaks of all sorts and sizes, steaming on their pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the lodger. The servant answered him in French, which Alonzo did not understand: he replied in his own language, but found it was unintelligible to the servant. A grave middle aged gentleman then came to the door from within the room and ended their jabbering at each other: he, in the English language, desired Alonzo to walk in. It was an apartment, neatly furnished; no person was therein except the gentleman and servant before mentioned, and a person who sat writing in a corner of the room, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... store three little men were ironing, ironing away on boards covered with sheets, and jabbering in a strange language. And they wore clothes that were as strange as the words they spoke—clothes that looked like pajamas with dark blue tops and light blue trousers. And each of the little men had a yellow face, slant eyes, and a ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... them not to come nearer, and they seemed undecided what to do. Jabbering consultations were held, but while they were thus hesitating ten more canoes swung round the headland, and their appearance seemed to give the ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Excitedly jabbering in his intense emotion the lookout frantically pointed in the direction of the sinking ship. Without waiting for orders he came sliding down the halliards. As he landed on deck he turned an ashen face toward the captain. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Peterson are just alike,' Mrs. Morris used to say jokingly, when the parrot pushed herself into notice by her loud jabbering. 'Neither of them can endure to have any one else receive attention when ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... clad, and they must inevitably suffer in frosty mornings and evenings and on the raw, cold, rainy days that are frequent in the autumn months in this latitude; yet they go about their work singing, shouting, and jabbering as merrily as a party of comfortably clad school children at play. How any of them avoid colds, rheumatism, and a dozen other diseases is a mystery; and yet it is rarely that one of them is ill from the effects of this exposure. As many as 3000 or 4000 pickers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... and jabbering by the French interpreters we finally got started, and we soon left L——h far behind. I got out my poisoned (?) wine, and not wanting to take any risks myself I politely let Baldy have the first drink. I waited a few minutes and he still looked ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... received a certain sum of money from the owners. The accatosi deserve mention on account of the cleverness with which they contrived to assume the appearance of captives recently escaped from slavery. Shaking the chains with which they said they had been bound, jabbering unintelligible words, telling heart-rending tales of their sufferings and privations, and showing the marks of blows which they had received, they went on their knees, begging for money that they might buy off their brethren or their friends, whom they said they had ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... move slowly and stealthily; then, with a sudden wild spring, almost before you realize what has happened, he has grabbed the bright flowers, torn them out, and danced back to the very highest corner of his cage, where, jabbering with delight, he picks the petals off one by one, and lets them float down to the ground. He is big, so none of the others dare take his prize from him; but woe betide any little monkey who finds such a treasure. He ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... rubbish I am carting here, come from nobody guesses where! They fill me with small deer, these negroes, Bedouin Arabs, swashbucklers, adventurers from every land, and ragged settlers who poison me with their pipes, and all jabbering a language that the Tower of Babel itself could make nothing of! And, furthermore, you should see how they treat me—I mean, how they never treat me: never a brush or a wash. They begrudge me grease for ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... consultation was at an end—an old Indian who, from his dignified bearing and authoritative manner appeared to be their chief, made a sign with his hand, and spoke a few words in a loud tone. The incessant jabbering which they had kept up from the moment they halted instantly ceased, and one after another a number of young warriors, perhaps twenty, rode out in single file upon the prairie. After gaining a distance of about one hundred yards from the main body they increased the intervals separating them to ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... a comforting state of affairs, and Guy's spirits were at their lowest ebb as the steamer finally faded into the horizon. He put up the glasses and strode forward. From the lower deck came a confused babel of sounds, a harsh jabbering of foreign languages that ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... And thus jabbering, fixing and pushing about the revolving shelf, over his hall door, Mr. Mansfield worked away at his trap. Like that of most dwellings in Boston, Uncle Henry's front door was sunk some six or eight feet into the face of the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the innumerable multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... anything, my dear. He will fly from you as a hare to cover. I want you to be a belle, and you must help me.' I naturally asked her what I was to talk about, and she promptly replied 'Nothing. Study the American girl, they have the most brilliant way of jabbering meaningless recitativos of any tribe on the face of the earth. Every sentence is an epigram with the point left out. They are like the effervescent part of a bottle of soda-water.' This was while we were still in Wales, and she sent for six books by ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... almost as dark as their own skins, the remaining portions of our bodies, ordinarily protected from the sun by our clothing, should be so very much lighter. They were not oppressed by any feeling of false modesty or bashfulness, but examined us minutely at close quarters, jabbering together with the utmost animation all the while and lightly running their fingers over our arms and necks, with the apparent purpose of finding the join in the differently coloured portions ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... for one captain. Those fellows jump at any chance to get ashore, and when they are there, there's no knowing when you'll get them on board again, besides which, they wouldn't be careful, and French and English don't get on very well together after all that's gone by. Here, Cross, tell that jabbering Frenchman if he isn't off, he'll have to go back with a hole through the bottom of his boat. No, stop. Go and find Mr Craig. Tell him to set those six men ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... involvement, its butterflies and moths, its brilliant but harsh voiced birds, its lizards and flying foxes, its infinite variety of monkeys, sitting, hanging by hands or tails, leaping, grimacing, jabbering, pelting each other with fruits; and its loathsome saurians, lying in wait on slimy banks under the mangroves. All this and far more the dawn revealed upon the Linggi river; but strange to say, through all the tropic splendor ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... was, notwithstanding the hour! What a roaring and racing of engines, cars tearing here and tearing there, gendarmes everywhere, men with silver on their heads and silver on their toes; jabbering officials telling you to do twenty things at once, and quarrelling because you did them. The enclosure itself was like the meat-market at Smithfield on a busy morning. I never heard so much noise in any one place before; and if there was a man, woman, ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... hanging about the vestibule, talking and laughing amongst themselves and feasting on the debris from the patricians' table, brought out to them by servitors from within; some forty litters encumbered the floor, but Antinor, paying no heed to these, passed through the crowd of jabbering men and women and made his way across to the steps which led ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of and surprised at their own parts? I once carried this philosophy to that degree that in a knot of country folks who had a library amongst them, and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum in the business; one of our members, a little, wise-looking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back.—Johnnie took the hint; and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and, of course, another in returning, Bodkin ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and sleepy-eyed ladies roamed languidly about with much incoherent jabbering of parts, and frequent explosions of laughter. Princes, with varnished boots and suppressed cigars, fought, bled, and died, without a change of countenance. Damsels of unparalleled beauty, according to the text, gaped in the faces of adoring ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... occasion to remark on the curious manner in which two or three species of Alacacus and the Cynopithecus niger draw back their ears and utter a slight jabbering noise, when they are pleased by being caressed. With the Cynopithecus (fig. 17), the corners of the mouth are at the same time drawn backwards and upwards, so that the teeth are exposed. Hence this expression would never be recognized by a stranger as one of pleasure. The crest of long hairs ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... made a speech to her subjects, accompanying her expressions with violent motions and contortions, to make them understand her meaning. They understood it perfectly; for when they heard that she and her children were to leave them, they set up such a jabbering of lamentation as British ears never heard. We then formed a close circle round Agnes and the children, to the exclusion of the pongos that still followed behind, howling and lamenting; and that night we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... toward parks and open spaces. Union Square was crowded with a strangely varied human mass; opera singers from the St. Francis Hotel, jabbering excitedly in Italian or French, and making many gestures with their jeweled hands; Chinese and Japanese from the Oriental quarter hard by; women-of-the-town, bedraggled, sleepy-eyed and fearful; sailors, clerks, folk from ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... would imply,—the passengers, by availing themselves of the short cut, have ample time for striking up confabs, and inquiring into the comforts of the occupiers of the various compartments. Our friends of the "interior" were all busy jabbering and talking—some with their tongues, others with their hands and tongues—with the exception of the monster in the cloak, who sat like a sack in the corner, until the horses, having reached the well-known breathing place, made a dead halt, and the conducteur proceeded ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... says Bertrand. "We'll finish the camel's humps off to-morrow. Time for by-by." Each one then slowly retires to rest, but the jabbering hardly pauses. Man takes all things easily when he is under no obligation to hurry. The men go to and fro, each with some object in his hand, and along the wall I watch Eudore's huge shadow gliding, as he passes ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... panorama, was astonished to see at intervals around the sky-line little groups of men busily at work. They appeared to be digging; he could not be sure. One does not readily associate Indians with spades. His guards pointed out the workers to one another, jabbering ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... 'em up, letting their boat tow behind the schooner. There was five of 'em, a ragged and dirty lot of Malays and half-breeds. When they first climbed aboard, I see 'em looking the schooner over mighty sharp, and in a minute they was all jabbering together in native lingo. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Friedland's headquarters, 'tie plain If for every thunder, and every blast, Which blazing ye from your tongue-points cast, The bells were but rung, in the country round, Not a bellman, I ween, would there soon be found; And if for each and every unholy prayer Which to vent from your jabbering jaws you dare, From your noddles were plucked but the smallest hair, Ev'ry crop would be smoothed ere the sun went down, Though at morn 'twere as bushy as Absalom's crown. Now, Joshua, methinks, was a soldier as well— By the arm ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... at him in amazement, others passed on without taking any notice of him, thinking that he was drunk; one even said when he got home that he had met a Frenchman on the way who was jabbering away at something he did not understand. Nejdanov had common sense enough to know that what he was doing was unutterably stupid and absurd had he not got himself up to such a pitch of excitement ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... compulsory education. The working classes were driving trade out of the country, and the consequence was, we couldn't build a boat which didn't reek like an oil-shop. Even the sailors on board were French—jabbering idiots; not an honest British Jack-tar among the lot of them; though the stewards were English, and very inferior Cockney English at that, with their off-hand ways, and their School Board airs and graces. She'd School Board them ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... "Hold your jabbering tongues—!" cried Isaac, in vexation. "You're enough to bother a feller to death. I'd like to see some o' the rest on ye cramped up fur a toast, jest to see how you'd feel with all on 'em hollering like." A hearty laugh ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... chief preserved a dignified mien, his braves were disposed to be gay. They were in high glee over their feat of capturing the palefaces, and kept up an incessant jabbering. One Indian, who walked directly behind Joe, continually prodded him with the stock of a rifle; and whenever Joe turned, the brawny redskin grinned as he grunted, "Ugh!" Joe observed that this huge savage had a broad face of rather a lighter shade of red ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... him up and boosted him to the wagon, jabbering like a lot of sparrows perched on ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... lexicon of the establishment had come back to her; but Simanovsky, having lost his pince-nez, his face distorted, was looking at her with blurred eyes and jabbering whatever ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the tree trunks, and, guided by the voices of the gorillas, easily regained their course. The noises were no longer sharp screams or hoarse coughs, but a kind of jabbering jargon, as if the apes were ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... stay more than a day or so in Sale. Every morning at breakfast some one was sure to turn up the paper and begin jabbering about the same old infernal business, Hood's cattle, and what a lot were taken, and whether they'll catch Starlight and the other men, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... "Why, William," said I, "why not? You see they will not give any account of what is become of the white men." "Nay," says William, "do not say so; I suppose they have given thee a full account of every particular of it." "How so?" says I; "pray what are we the wiser for all their jabbering?" "Nay," says William, "that may be thy fault, for aught I know; thou wilt not punish the poor men because they cannot speak English; and perhaps they never heard a word of English before. Now, I may very well suppose that they have given thee a large account of everything; for thou ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... asked.... The Nautilus made a good run; then, about a day from land, Mr. Broadrick told me that there wouldn't be a seaman on the ship an hour after we anchored. They were all crazy with gold fever, he said. I could see, too, that they were excited; the watch hung under the weather rail jabbering like parrots; an uglier crew of sea ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Panama in pre-canal days. Clumsy boats, empty, or deep-laden with fruit from, or freight to, the several islands that sprinkle the bay, splash and bump against the little cement wharf. Aged wooden "windjammers" doze at their moorings, everywhere are jabbering natives with that shifty half-cast eye and frequent evidence of deep-rooted disease. Almost every known race mingles in Panama city, even to Chinese coolies in their umbrella hats and rolled up cotton trousers, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down and watch a camp fire—no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your jabbering, you villain, haud your jabbering; none of your romance or refinement till me. I have but one question to ask you—but one question—and then I have done with you for ever, for ever; therefore think before ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... So, jabbering, biting, clawing, they fell asleep this night—squeaking, scratching, and snarling forth their wicked feelings even in ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... you, they would, instead of praising you, have a laugh at your expense, and say that you don't mind your own business. We hadn't yet got rid of Hsiang Ling with all her rubbish, and here we have a chatterbox like you thrown on us! But what is it that that mouth of yours keeps on jabbering? What about the bathos of Tu Kung-pu; and the unadorned refinement of Wei Su-chou? What also about Wen Pa-ch'a's elegant diction; and Li I-shan's abstruseness? A pack of silly fools that you are! Do you in any way behave like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... fear of the Hans themselves that saved me. Through my ultroscope I saw sudden alarm on their faces, hesitation, a frantic officer in the control room jabbering into his phone. Then shakily the crew flipped their beam off to the side. The jar on my craft was terrific. Its nose caught the rushing tumble of air first, of course, and my tail sailing in a vacuum, swung around with a sickening wrench. My swooper might ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... brute animals have their peculiar natural voices, by which they indicate their feelings, whether pleasing or painful. But language is an attribute of reason, and differs essentially not only from all brute voices, but even from all the chattering, jabbering, and babbling of our own species, in which there is not an intelligible meaning, with division of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay down ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... knife through the arm; but he went up on to the poop; and as I followed, the Spaniards broke and threw down their arms—they saw 'twas no use, you see. When we reached the poop-stairs an officer in a blue coat came forward jabbering some jargon; but the captain would have no parley with him, but flung his dag clean into the man's face, and over he went backwards—with his damned ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... repeated the question, addressing more particularly a great, gaunt fellow at my elbow; yet again I received no answer. Then the man turned to a comrade and said something rapidly in a language that I did not understand; and, at once, the whole crowd of them fell to jabbering in what, after a few moments, I guessed to be pure Irish. At the same time they cast many glances in my direction. For a minute, perhaps, they spoke among themselves thus; then the man I had addressed faced 'round at me and said something. By the expression of his face I guessed that he, in turn, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... parried. "They're all right—nice, clean, healthy-looking lot. I did everything but take them apart and inspect the pieces while they were being unshackled at the stockade. I'd like to know where this Coru-hin-Whatshisname got them, though. They're not local stuff. Lot darker, and they're jabbering among themselves in some lingo I never heard before. A few are wearing some rags of clothing, and they have odd-looking sandals. I noticed that most of them showed marks of recent whipping. That may mean they're troublesome, or it may ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... Barthelmy Fair, where they held disputations on various subjects, much in the way as is done in the Netherlands. The scholars at Dean Colet's school were, however, interdicted from this amusement, he considering it as tending only to idle jabbering. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... emerging from behind the bamboo palings, disclosed the burly form of the boatswain with a shrinking Malay in tow. He was jabbering in his native tongue, with much gesticulation of his thin arms, and going into contortions at every dozen paces in a sort of pantomime to emphasize his words. Williams urged him along unceremoniously to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Guards spread through the house, opened the rooms, searched the cupboards and chests, and came at last, without having found anything, to the dormitories, where the Little Sisters' old nurselings were lying. Every head was upraised in astonishment and fear, and all, stammering and trembling, began jabbering out at once, "What are you doing here? You are not going to hurt the good Sisters? It's a shame! It's infamous! Go away! It's cowardly! My good monsieur, what will become of us if you take them away?" The old women were furious, and the old men in ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... hum of excited jabbering through their ranks, and they fired no more. I stood watching them, and presently I grasped my two hands together and shook hands with myself, to try to convey to them the idea that we were friendly; but it must have carried no ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... watch. An hour had passed since I climbed the wall. Where was my comrade? Suddenly I heard a voice from within the quadrangle say, quite loud, 'All up.' I crawled back to the wall. Two officers were walking up and down the other side jabbering Latin words, laughing and talking all manner of nonsense—amid which I caught my name. I risked a cough. One of the officers immediately began to chatter alone. The other said slowly and clearly, '... cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can you get back ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... crowd on to the highest turn of the zigzag path, and bidden to go on. There were five hundred faces below him, putting out hot breath in the cool morning air. The sun was shooting over the cliffs a canopy as of smoke above their heads. On the top of the crag the sea-fowl were jabbering, and the white sea itself was climbing ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... swiftly on deck, and stepped right among the jabbering Spaniards. He smiled as though nothing had happened, but when he saw one man lay hold of a bale he pulled him back. "Tell them I'll shoot the first man that tries to lift a bale till ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... of their native tongue did they speak. They had a long tramp that morning and there was much to talk about and the conversation was all in Chinese, according to the bargain. Dr. Campbell was ahead, and after an hour's talk he suddenly turned upon his companion: "Mackay!" he exclaimed, "this jabbering in Chinese is ridiculous, and two Scotchmen should have more sense; let us return to our mother tongue." Which advice ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... jabbering followed the question, which, by Oolibuck's interpretation, meant that their joy was ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... about noon, and this important station, where they had to change trains, had been the first dreaded anticipation of the journey. It certainly was a busy place—full of jabbering Mexicans, stalking, red-faced, wicked-looking cowboys, lolling Indians. In the confusion Helen would have been hard put to it to preserve calmness, with Bo to watch, and all that baggage to carry, and the other train to find; but the kindly brakeman ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... be useful, but for ordinary stop- at-home girls it's nonsense. What use would Latin be to me, I should like to know? I shall take modern languages instead. I can read and write French fluently, though it doesn't come quite so easy to speak it, and German, of course, is second nature after jabbering with Fraulein all these years. I should think in German if I would allow myself, but I won't. I don't think it is patriotic. There is not very much that any one can teach me ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wear a fez, but had on a turban, so dad did not give him any signs, but after jabbering a while they sent for an interpreter, who could talk pigeon English, and then dad had a trial, and I acted as his lawyer. I told about how dad had tried to be kind and genial to another man's wife, and how, in his hurry to get away from the murderous husband ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... and chatted with a hovering maid. Some elderly persons came out and sat near, and were grateful for the quiet and the tea. From the reception line, on the lawn, came such a brainless confusion of jabbering and chattering as might well appall ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris |
