"Strident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lifting his hand for silence. Men pulled each other by the sleeve, and a strident "'Ssh!" ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... unending streams. And the roadway clashed with trams following each other, up and down, at fraction of a second intervals, and with a congestion of waggons, carts, cabs, automobiles, waiting patiently on the pleasure of these relentless, strident symbols ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... old chap; is it so bad as all that?" Peter's somewhat strident voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand affectionately on Lancelot's tumbled hair. "You know I believe in you with all my soul. I never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I know too well that's ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... Silvery-strident throat— so assiduously serenading my brain, flinching under the glittering hail of your notes— were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall... I might fathom your golden delirium with throttle of finger and thumb ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... black and tan are excellent dogs for this sort of work. These little hunters are keen for the sport and make their way beneath the brush where a larger dog follows with difficulty. With strident yelps the pack picks up the hot trail, and off they rush, helter skelter, through the sage and chaparral; we circle and cross cut, dash down the draw, traverse the open forest meadow and follow the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... not, Sweet, I am unkind" (As Colonel LOVELACE said) if I From festal scenes for you designed To solitude propose to fly; If, when the strident trumpets blare From Hampstead Heath to Clapham Junction, And bunting fills the ardent air, I don't assist at that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... strident voice echoed weirdly in the small, close boudoir. Chauvelin made no reply. There was nothing that he could say. All that Robespierre had put so emphatically before him, he had fully realised, even whilst he was ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fellow-members and foreign yachtsmen the experience of the day, now speaking English, now French, now German. He seems quite in his element as sportsman, and puts every one at ease round him. His expression is animated and his voice hearty, if a little strident to foreign ears. His right hand and arm are in ceaseless movement, emphasizing and enforcing everything he says. He asks many questions and often invites opinion, and when it differs from his own, as sometimes happens, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... roads is the shorter?" asked the elder of the two travellers in a harsh, strident voice. Though visibly the elder, he was ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... only by the strident buzzing of the mosquitos, became unendurable. Gregorio gave a preparatory cough and opened his lips to speak, but the words refused to be born. He was unnerved. The odious visitor, the wearying day, the memory of Xantippe's face at the window, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... pilgrimages, some bound for the neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in the height of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... his head. For a moment he was the Arizona the sheriff had known, but his laughter was too strident, and it was easy to see that he was at a point ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... but ultimately faintly strident, rose a prolonged wail that seemed to issue from the very earth. The sound rose, and fell, and rose again. Frantically the pick of Old Man Anderson hacked away at the dirt, and then at whatever was in front of him. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... before the darkness, we would encounter all the types of men which go to make up Indian country life—the red-slippered banker jogging on his pony beneath a white umbrella, the vendor of palm-wine urging a donkey almost lost beneath the swollen skins, barefooted ryots with silent feet and strident tongues, crowds of boys and children driving buffaloes and cows, all coming homeward from ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... come thus straight from the wild seas and the company of outlaws into a place of silver and damask and satin coats and lace cravats and orderly wigs. The soft hum of gentlefolks' speech was all around me, those smooth Virginian voices compared with which my Scots tongue was as strident as a raven's. But as I listened, I remembered Ringan and Lawrence, and, "Ah, my silken friends," thought I, "little you know the judgment that is preparing. Some day soon, unless God is kind, there will be blood on the lace and the war-whoop ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... bellows, a sort of arquebuse barrel, turned one end toward the coals, and blew into the other in so unusual a way as to produce a strident whistle. Then he started ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... strident voice. Knowing myself helpless and quite convinced that I was indeed in the clutches of desperate people, I entered the doorway, the door being held open from within. She whom I had heard called Carneta followed. The door was reclosed; and I found myself in a perfectly bare and dim passageway. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... is fresh and green, But no more green than we Who help to run the Grit machine, Or bow the Tory knee. We hear the strident party call In words no one believes; The Liberals are traitors all, The ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... least qualification for the task he has undertaken. We trust there are not many "London Antiquaries" so ignorant as he. One curious fact we glean from his volume, namely, the currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus: "Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence," etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... At junctions, pickets of police directed progress; the slowly advancing masses wheeled to left or right at word of command, carelessly obedient. But for an occasional bellow of hilarious blackguardism, or for a song uplifted by strident voices, or a cheer at some flaring symbol that pleased the passers, there was little noise; only a thud, thud of footfalls numberless, and the low, unvarying sound that suggested some huge beast purring to itself ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... truth, the whole secret of Yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations, of selfishness, lust and hate are to be stilled by meditation, by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love, and needs no harsh vibration ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... unrelenting ferocity. Stabbing pains bored into his very brain, pains that carried with them an unspoken and unintelligible command. Why couldn't they let him alone; leave him to die in peace? He knew he was on his feet, swaying. There were voices, strident and guttural, and then by some magic the veil was lifted. His brain cleared and he saw that he stood before a dais where a much bejeweled and resplendently clad woman sat curled in the luxurious cushions of a golden ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... voice of the guide, its strident tones carrying clearly to Tad, filling him with a feeling as near akin to joy as was ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... "But I'm not quite ready to cash in my checks yet. The game isn't over!" He was pacing around the room, knocking on the metal walls with something that gave back a strident ring. "Have you any idea ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... happened if she had gone through with this truant indiscretion. But halfway on the journey her escort had deserted her momentarily to buy a cigar. Left alone upon the upper deck of a ferryboat, crowded with a strident and raucous company, she had felt herself suddenly grow cold, not with fear, but with a certain haughty and disdainful anger. These people were not her kind! She had risen swiftly from her seat and hidden discreetly in the ladies' washroom until after the boat had landed and was on its ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Gregory there was no change in the weather. There had been every probability of a breeze springing up at sundown, but the great orange globe had slowly rolled down and disappeared in the golden west, amidst the loud barking of the hornbills and the strident shrieks of flocks of parrots, and not a breath of wind was astir. Then came down the night, a purply black darkness spangled with stars overhead and reflected in the water, and with that ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... so different from the strident tones that every now and then, as some couple, laughing and talking, passed them, would fall upon him almost like a blow; her quick, graceful movements that always brought back to his memory the vision of hill and stream. In her little brown shoes ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... Severance were dawdling over coffee in the Piazza. A strident band sent up voluminous notes that boomed back and forth between the palace and the stone arches ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Song of Death all human life and its developments, recalling the sufferings of the cradle, swelling to the griefs of other ages in the stronger male voices and the quavering of the priests,—all this strident harmony, big with lightning and thunderbolts, does it not speak with equal force to the daring imagination, the coldest heart, nay, to philosophers themselves? As we hear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted arches of no church ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Stop them! Stop them!" yelled the strident voice of a man coming pell mell down the ravine path. He was in a frantic state of excitement and waving ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... in strident tones; this is no time for weeping. "What have you done? How came this body in your room? Speak freely to one who may be helpful. Do you imagine I would ruin you? Do you think this piece of dead flesh on your pillow can alter in any degree the sympathy with which you have inspired me? Credulous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and to the ears upon which its strident clamour fell the trump of doom could not have been ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... up to God from the souls of drowning men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally; and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea's heart, their music ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... till I was full, careless, as the natural man ever is, of the morrow. Then, stretched out upon the pine-needles at the foot of a great tree, I lay in drowsy contentment listening to the song of the birds, the hum of the myriad insects and the strident note of the squirrel high above me. At times I would give utterance to the soft answering call, known to every woodsman, that is part of the freemasonry of animal speech. As I lay thus, I would not have exchanged places ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... said to me in a fierce undertone. "Wait outside and I will see you later!" Still, from the desk, resounded that harsh, strident voice, running on in an ascending scale, pouring forth a foaming torrent ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... parable of the unforgiving debtor and the parallel passage containing the matchless story of the sinful woman and the proud Pharisee. In the reading of these lessons the voice, which had hitherto carried the strident note of nervousness, mellowed into rich and subduing fulness. The men listened with that hushed attention that they give when words are getting to the heart. The utter simplicity of the reader's manner, the dignity ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... was the work that had been ordered from him; and the gondoliers, meanwhile, in their splendid liveries, held converse with other gondoliers in lazily drifting barks, with hatchments of other noble houses embroidered on their sleeves; and their tones were strident and quarrelsome, or self-complacent and patronizing, as the quality of the silken sashes which displayed the color of their house was heavier ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... looking at it when the first impulse to get outside the nest seemed to seize it. Its parents were encouraging it with calls and assurances from some rocks a few yards away. It answered their calls in vigorous, strident tones. Then it climbed over the edge of the nest upon the plate, took a few steps forward, then a few more, till it was a yard from the nest and near the end of the timber, and could look off into free space. Its parents ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... morning after his return to the range Thornton rose early, scowled sleepily at the little alarm clock whose strident clamour had startled him out of his sleep at four o'clock, kicked off his pajamas and with towel in hand started down to the river for his morning plunge. Subconsciously he noted a scrap of white paper lying ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... these cries, accompanied by the strident clank of chains, produces upon me the effect of a galvanic battery, and I am obliged to put forth all that remains to me of moral strength to prevent myself from screaming and moaning like the others. With my feet in blood and my eyes burning with weeping, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mistresses—one a gaunt giant, the other rolling in billows of fat—and his "nieces," the crowds thronging the landing-place and streets greeted the "menagerie" with jeers and shouts of laughter. They nicknamed Schulenburg the "Maypole," and Kielmansegg the "Elephant," and pursued the cavalcade with strident mockeries and insults. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... o' flowers like this always puts me in mind o' funerals," he kept telling his niece, Fanny Minafer, who was with him; and he seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction out of this reminder. His tremulous yet strident voice cut through the voluminous sound that filled the room, and he was heard everywhere: "Always got to think o' funerals when I smell so many flowers!" And, as the pressure of people forced Fanny and himself against ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the stars, brighter than in more northern latitudes, looked out from a sky of darker blue; so bright were they that the colonel, looking around for the moon, was surprised to find that luminary invisible. On the green background of the foliage the fireflies glowed and flickered. There was no strident steam whistle from factory or train to assault the ear, no rumble of passing cabs or street cars. Far away, in some distant part of the straggling town, a sweet-toned bell sounded the hour of an evening ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... not run through in fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the most magnificent of views, responded meekly, "Aimez-vous les beautes de la Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre." Can you not fancy the strident emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor materialist had been victimized before he ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... went his way, flinging back a trail of chaff as long as his voice could carry to the room above, a room curiously dim and still, it seemed to him, as he came out into the strident sunshine of the July day. Once in the street, moreover, and safely out of range of Opdyke's windows, his fun dropped from him, and he shook his sturdy shoulders, as if he were trying to shake them free from an ugly, yet ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... attempt at drunken ribaldry, strident hisses, 'Sh! Sh!' Cries of 'Shame.' 'Chuck it!' Then again, McKeith's voice, this time like thunder. 'Stop that I say—one more word and out you go, whether you like it ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... large vacant piece of ground, a wilderness of cans, bottles, packing boxes, broken barrels. On one corner, diagonally across from where Morgan stood, facing on the other street, a ragged, weathered tent was pitched. Out of this the sound of contending children came, the strident, commanding voice of a woman breaking sharply to still the commotion that shook her unstable home. Morgan knew this must be the home of the cattle thief whose case Judge Thayer had undertaken. He wondered why even a cattle thief ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the altar lights because of a disappointment. The drama's loss was the Church's gain. You should have heard him on Sunday morning, now flaying them, now swaying them! He still had the actor's flexible voice, vibrant, tremulous, or strident, at will. And no amount of fasting or praying had ever dimmed that certain something in his eye—the something which makes ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... were past, when he suddenly heard shouts from the direction of the fort. Immediately afterwards the deep notes of the huge gong kept in Angria's courtyard boomed and reverberated across the harbor, echoed at brief intervals by the strident clanging of several smaller ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Another strident blast from the horn, that sent staid old cows scurrying this way and that to get out of the way, and the car swerved from the road and took to the open field, headed straight toward the hill where the two horsemen were. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... that interest in the universal which the average Teuton possesses and the average Englishman does not. It was, however illogically, the good, the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty, the adequate. It was a landscape of Bocklin's beside a landscape of Leader's, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural life. It sharpened idealism, stirred the soul. It may have been a bad ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... striking up in different parts of the hall. Simple ballads, smacking of old delights in an older land, songs, with which home-sick white men comforted themselves in far-off lodges—were roared out in strident tones. Feet were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Men rose and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate Indian step; and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall throbbed with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... known by trial. Halleck did not arrive in Washington till near the end of the month, then he seemed for a while in doubt, or to be upon both sides of the question as to whether the army should be advanced or withdrawn; but ultimately, in the contemptuous language of Mr. Swinton, he "added his strident voice in favor of the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula." This settled the matter; for the President had decided to place himself under the guidance of his new military mentor; and, moreover, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and so it was at this time. As twilight shut down upon the valley of the Kennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with the Grecian catechism. Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or by the colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque the scraggy evergreens on the horizon. His eyes were with his heart, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... strident Prussian bugles were blowing a harsh summons; the young officer stepped to the loop-hole and looked out, then hastily removed his helmet and thrust his blond head through the smoky aperture. "March those prisoners in ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... brigade receives orders to charge. "Charge!" The word carries magnificent poetic associations, but, alas, it is a very prosaic affair nowadays! The lines move onward in short rushes, and it seems as if a swarm of ants were migrating warily. The strident voices of the officers ring here and there: the men edge their way onward: it seems as if there were no method in the advance; but somehow the loose wavy ranks are kept well in hand, and the main movement ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. In voice and manner he betrayed the school in which he had been trained. "When I hear gentlemen," he cried in strident tones, "attempting to justify this unrighteous fine upon General Jackson upon the ground of non-compliance with rules of court and mere formalities, I must confess that I cannot appreciate the force of the argument. In cases ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... sockets, a little piquant nose that she had somehow managed to bring along with her unchanged from a frivolous girlhood, and a quaint old hymnal mouth. Looking up from the rug she took on an expression of pure and undefiled piety and began in the strident, cackling tones of an ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... his mother from the side steps, "did Mis' Mayberry hear about that fire down in town that burned up two firemen, a police and a woman?" At the sound of his mother's strident voice, Buck curled up in a tight knot and with a despairing ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Outside in the hall all was silence now—save for that crackle of flame that grew in volume, that came now in quick, sharp reports, like revolver shots. From out in the street swelled a cry: "Death to the Gray Seal!" Then the clang of bells, the roar and rattle of fire apparatus, strident voices bellowing orders, and the crowd again, blood hungry: "Death to the ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... you what it is," came the strident voice of the station-master. "It ain't no mortal manner of use. Why, they spotted me to onct; said how was they to know I ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... tremble of the steamer's engines, above the surge and gurgle of the sea, a cry swept toward them from the shore. Long-drawn, sweetly-penetrating, yet with some strident accent of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed upon them over the quiet water—then died away again among the mountains and the night. Its passage through the sky was torrential. The whole pouring flood of it dipped back with abrupt swiftness into silence. The Irishman understood ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... went, wing-footed, to get through his duty dance as best he could. Rose stayed behind, dodging amongst the bushes to hide her white dress, deaf to Jim's strident calls. And then, presently, the lovers flitted out of the gate, across the boys' cricket ground, and down the bank of one of the five creeks, where Rose knew of a nice seat beyond the area of possible ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Bugle-calls, loud, strident bugle-calls, leaping in unison from the brass throats of bugles; tawny soldiers lining up for guard-mount before the officer of the day, as spick and span as a toy soldier; troopers in blue shirts, with their mess-kits in their ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... his voice suddenly to a strident shout, "hear me all you within the house. Give up the girl and the child to their legal protectors, and no harm shall befall either life or property. We shall be on shipboard in half-an-hour. I shall see to it that every man within ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the darkness with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light. They creep up under the bridge which spans the river with its watching eyes, and vanish, crying back a warning note as they make the upper reach, or strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms passes, ploughing a ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... twilight stands, Above the shadowy pasture lands, With strained and strident cry, Beneath pale skies that sunset bands, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... proceeded from the open cabinot in great ponderous murdering clouds. In one of these clouds, erect and tense and beautiful as an angel—her wildly shouting face framed in its huge night of dishevelled hair, her deep sexual voice, hoarsely strident above the din and smoke, shouting fiercely through the darkness—stood, triumphantly and colossally young, Celina. Facing her, its clenched, pinkish fists raised high above its savagely bristling head in a big, brutal gesture ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... dashed through the deep rocky gorge leading to the Fort, the Governor's canoe, had on its high prow, conspicuous the French guide, who for the time gave commands. The Governor always took his Highland piper with him, and now there pealed forth from the canoe the strident strains of the bagpipes, while from the second canoe sounded the shrill call of the chief factor's bugle. As the party approached the Fort they saw the Union Jack with its magic letters H.B.C. floating from the tall flag-staff ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... cessation of the clamour, then the outlaws sent forth a cheer that echoed from all the hills around. They brandished their weapons aloft, and cheered again and again, the garrison of the castle, now bristling along the battlements, joining in the tumult with strident voices. Gottlieb advanced some distance toward the gate, and holding up his hand for silence ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... few moments the fatigue of the old dealer seemed to have disappeared. He was sitting up straight, with tremulous lips, with flashing eyes, and continued in a strangely strident voice,— ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... he cried out in a strident voice, raising his arm aloft, "I may say, with one foot on sea and one on land, for I hold the elemental secret of them both. And I swear by the living god—Science incarnate—that the suffering of the centuries is over, that for ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him; the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station bound ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... suvverings that you have got in it, wrapped up in paper. See if she haven't, Mr. Newcome," the refractory waiting-woman cried out, and again she laughed a strident laugh. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... champions of free silver replied in strident tones. They accused the gold advocates of being the aggressors who had assailed the labor and the homes of the people. William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska, voiced their sentiments in a memorable oration. He declared that their cause "was as holy as the cause of liberty—the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... strident cynicism. It was the laugh of the red, of bastardy, of blanketless nights in the hedgerows, and boot soles worn through to the macadam, with the dust of speeding automobiles blown in the gaunt face of hunger. Dellarme still hesitated, recollecting ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... knows that wretched men must toil for bread; The tragedy of life he has not read, Or deems it but the comedy of fear: He never lifts his eyes above the ground To gaze upon the glittering world of stars; The poet's richest music only mars The rasping of the locust's strident sound. And yet I've never seen a wilder light Glow in the beauteous eyes of dawning love, Than flashes from this strange man's soul at sight Of some rare flower he finds in mountain cove: Mere fungus, or the poisonous, dank mushroom, Enchants him ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... ensued within the house, but Betty's strident tones could be heard without, uplifted in ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... tentacle clutched the rim of the metal vessel; and one fixed its deadly suckers upon the bare black arm of a half-seen adversary who was trying to crowd him down into the dark prison. There was a strident yell. A sharp, authoritative voice exclaimed: "Look out! Don't hurt him! I'll make him let go!" But the next instant the frightened darky had whipped out a knife and sliced off a good foot of the clutching tentacle. As the injured stump shrank back upon its ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... came running. "Mummy! Mummy!" she cried in a shrill voice filled with the strident tones of alarm, "Dolly's sick and I ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... pretty good!" shouted such a loud voice that Nell would have covered her ears only she knew, from past experience, that Yellin' Kid did not keep up his strident tones long. But this time he went on, like an announcer at a hog-calling contest, with: "Fly paper! Ho! Ho! So Bud can stick! ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... all fled in utter fear, a woman was coming quickly to retrieve their reverse. "Red Annie," as she was known, strong, strident and feared by everyone within the castle, was on the trail. She was not to be fooled for an instant by this figure in armor. Noiseless as a lioness she crept up behind Jim and as he half turned to find another weapon to his ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... the cafe, the music, the laughter of women and the loud chatter in Italian, the strident cries of the newsvendors rose in the great moonlit Piazza, with its huge equestrian statue of the beloved Vittorio looming dark against ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... ascended to the station rafters. "Who pays the police?" "We do." "Who owns 'em?" "Cargan." Thus question and answer were bandied back and forth. Again a voice demanded in strident tones the ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the chapel as 'This Little Corner of the Vineyard,' and through the front windows of the latter, one sabbath morn after another for many years, lusty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Pacific Coast," declares a Berkeley bulletin, "Miss Case has made strident advances in her art." The lady, it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... more than apprehended; he had actually foreseen that the Abbot ought to manage his own monastery. It was as if centuries ago, in the cave at Subiaco, he had heard that strident voice of Brother Athanasius in this matchboarded Chapter-room, as if he had beheld Brother Dominic, while apparently he was striving to persuade his brethren to accept the Father Superior's advice, nevertheless taking sides, and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a wider ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... was the matter—and lingered curiously. Another, and another, did the same. A little crowd collected. The officer kept them back. Came then the strident clang of a gong and the rapid beat of horses' hoofs. A white-coated figure jumped from the ambulance, pushed his way forward, and bent over the form in Rhoda Gray's lap. A moment more, and they were carrying Gypsy Nan to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... gauzy wings and gleaming bodies. Once a white-necked sea eagle soared screaming high over the traveller's head, and again a flock of brown bustards popped up from among the bracken, and blundered away in their clumsy fashion, half running, half flying, with strident ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... over the paper, and for five minutes there was no sound in the room save the strident buzz of the sender and the whisper of Bob's pencil as it moved rapidly ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... uttered an exclamation, so unexpected and strident, that the words were not articulate. But the Bishop understood them, for, as all turned to him, "Nay," he said, "it shall be for the Colonel to say. But it's ill arguing with a fasting man," he ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... now; for most of our company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and talked—God only knows what they found to discuss—in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... up, urgent, strident; he did not seem conscious that he was talking to her; he seemed rather to be having something out with himself. The strain of the past weeks had come back to his face. "Plenty of people before this Steering have thought of ore in the Canaan Tigmores. Look at old Grierson himself! ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... waving plumes was overpowering enough, but her voice, strident and angry, seemed to fill the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... purse up their lips. This theme does not enter into their program. Suddenly a strident voice speaks ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... jeux," the croupiers were crying in their strident, monotonous voices, inviting players to stake their counters of cent-sous, their louis, or their hundred or five hundred franc notes upon the spin of the red and black wheel. It was the month of March, the height of the Riviera ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... me his phosphorescent pupils he said, in a voice strident as the wails of a cat which has just ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... lighted, but silent as the one in which we stood. This last fact struck us as the most incomprehensible of all. Mrs. Lansing was not the woman to sleep through a disturbance. Where was she, then? And why did we not hear her strident and aggressive tones rising in angry remonstrance at our intrusion? Had she followed her niece from the room? Should we in another minute encounter her ponderous figure in the group of people we could now ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... where they could get a good view of the lugger swinging by a rope abreast of the starboard gangway, and as they passed along the quarter-deck, the shrill strident tones of the American's voice reached them through one of the open cabin skylights, while directly after, Murray, keen and observant of everything, noted that the two marines of whom his companion had spoken were standing apparently simply on duty, but thoroughly upon the alert ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and yield a full image of reality. Ethics should be controlled by a physics that perceives the material ground and the relative status of whatever is moral. Otherwise ethics itself tends to grow narrow, strident, and fanatical; as may be observed in asceticism and puritanism, or, for the matter of that, in Mr. Moore's uncivilised leaning towards the doctrine of retributive punishment, or in Mr. Russell's intolerance of selfishness and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... spoke together with the loud peacock voices, and the rapid utterance, which in Italy are supposed to mark a special welcome. Strange that in the land of song the talking voices of women should be so harsh and strident! Yet so ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Mr Butler was expressing his opinion upon various subjects in loud, strident tones, and with a disputatiousness of manner that caused most of those about him mentally to dub him a blatant cad, and to resolve that they would have as little as possible ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... him than she had ever been with the shepherd Marcel. He was hunch-backed; his shoulders were higher than his ears; his body was supported by legs of different lengths; his rolling eyes flashed, from beneath his matted hair. From his throat issued a hoarse voice and strident laughter; he smelt of the cow-shed. However, to her he was beautiful. "A plant," as Gnatho says, "has been loved by one, a stream by another, a beast by ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... of day, His fiery steeds had yoked to flaming car (By which, my Gill, you may surmise The sun was just about to rise) And that be-feathered, crook-billed harbinger, The rosy-wattled herald of the dawn, Red comb aflaunt, bold-eyed and spurred for strife, Brave Chanticleer, his strident summons raised (By which fine phrase I'd have you know, The cock had just begun to crow) And gentle Zephyr, child of Boreas, Stole soft the hush of dewy leaves, And passing kissed the flowers to wakefulness. Thus, laden with their sweetness, Zephyr came O'er hill and dale, o'er battlement and wall, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... bed-linen. And now when I want her to call the child Yosef, after my first husband, peace be on him, her own father, she would out of sheer vexatiousness, call it Yechezkel." Malka's voice became more strident than ever. She had been anxious to make a species of vicarious reparation to her first husband, and the failure of Milly to acquiesce in the arrangement was a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Toys, Books, Stationery!" shouted the strident young voice mechanically as the doors whizzed back in their ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Rights of Men and the Duties of Men." For the most part, however, their literature was acridly republican in tone and of a levelling tendency. Thus, for the first time since the brief attempt of the Cromwellian Levellers, the rich and the poor began to group themselves in hostile camps, at the strident tones of Paine's cry for a graduated Income Tax. Is it surprising that the sight of the free institutions of France and of the forced economy of the Court of the Tuileries should lead our workers to question the utility of the State-paid debaucheries of Carlton House, and of the whole system ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which they had stopped was surrounded by a high vine-covered lattice fence: over the entrance flamed forth in letters set with gas-lights the words "Meyer's Beer-Garden and Variety Hall. Welcome." He could hear the sound of music within,—a miserable orchestra, and a woman singing in a high strident voice. People were passing in and out of the place. He hesitated, and then, shaking himself, as if to shake off his scruples, turned towards the entrance. As he reached the door, a man who was standing beside it thrust a paper into his hand. He saw others refuse to take it as they passed. It ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... commands, prophetically conscious of victory and death. I see my own apotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's tears, my burial in the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets sing my praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far end of the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful apparition, man and machinery blended in one—the new Centaur, half man, half chair—flew by me again in the dying light. "I am Shakespeare!" cried the frantic creature now. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... that Martha Foote was a beaming, motherly person who called you dearie. Neither was she one of those managerial and magnificent blonde beings occasionally encountered in hotel corridors, engaged in addressing strident remarks to a damp and crawling huddle of calico that is doing something sloppy to the woodwork. Perhaps the shortest cut to Martha Foote's character is through Martha Foote's bedroom. (Twelfth floor. Turn to your left. That's ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... dressed, a lyric enthusiast, chilled and disheartened, in whom the madness of inspiration can be divined only in the loose and neglected tie of his cravat. But also what success awaits him, when he delivers in a strident voice a tirade from his poem, the Credo of Love, more especially the one ending in this ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... strident cries produced by a pair of clarinets, and altogether there came from out of the knots of the serpents a hideous chaos of sound, drawn onward by a team of six horses, and received with wild cheers by the crowd, for it was really the new triumphal march freshly down from town, but in which the ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... strident note. Gwendolyn's mother was circling into sight once more. Fortunately, she was keeping close to the outer edge of the road. The Piper faced in the direction she was speeding, and prepared ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... we have grown a little impatient with our North American civilisation, with its strident clamour, its noisy elections, its extremes of liberty, its occasional corruption and the faults that we now see were the necessary accompaniments of its merits. But let us set beside it a picture such as this, taken from the New York Imperial Gazette of 1925—or from any paper of the same period, ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... suddenly shut off, the silence which came in their place was startling to the sense. The voices of the striking employees, who retained possession of the Union Passenger Depot, resounded strangely through the vast building, which was usually a babel of shrill and strident sounds. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of the shrill, weird cry, the animal stood at bay. Again came the well-known strident halloo. A maelstrom of memories was awakened by the call. Instinctively obeying the old summons she started toward the train, when from over the hill behind her ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch or two within the Bar whilst debate was going forward. Mr. Biggar's strident cry of "Order! Order!" reverberated through the House. Others joined in the shout, and the abashed offender hastily ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... with a coarse prettiness, laughed a mocking strident laugh that expressed the feelings of the crowd even more than the louder curses around her. The workers slowly dispersed, in little groups, talking in excited, angry tones. Dale Lynch detached himself from one of these ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... When Susan's strident call for supper rang through the hall, Mrs. Colebrook was with her brother in the studio. She had been bemoaning and bewailing the cruel fate that had overtaken "that dear boy," and had just asked ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... ten seconds after that brief speech during which the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... corporal remained where he was, leaning against a wall in the shade, eating an onion and ready to give the signal with his whistle; he did not glance towards the two watching officers. To Lieutenant Jovannic, the falsity and unreality of it all were as strident as a brass band; yet in the long vista of the village street, brimful of sun and silence, the few people who moved upon their business went indifferently as shadows upon a wall. An old man trudged in the wake of a laden donkey; a girl bore water-buckets slung from a yoke; a child was sweeping ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... were prepared to accept his concessions to Ulster feeling; but they did not like them. REDMOND'S declaration that the PREMIER "has gone to the very extremest limits of concession" drew from Ministerialists a more strident cheer than any accorded to their Leader ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... fugitives, and a roar of ironic mirth broke from his lips, resounding high above the strident rasping of the beetle-legs, and roaring ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... led the way through long passages and many doors, passing numbers of people, to his own room. He spoke to her once or twice on the way, but she was only able to answer confusedly, in a voice that was rendered strident by the great effort she had to make to control it. He busied himself with some papers for a few minutes when they reached his room, to give her time to recover herself, and then he said, standing with ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... extreme end of this gallery was a door, at which Trotto knocked softly. From within a strident voice said: "Come in!" Then followed an exclamation of pain, and a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... to emerge fully capable of governing the world by word or by deed? Louis must, assuredly, have found much bitterness in his intercourse with men, or have striven hard with Society in terrible irony, without extracting anything from it, before uttering so strident a cry, and expressing, poor fellow, the desire which satiety of power and of all earthly things has led even ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance,—young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes,—I say, I think the conversational soprano, heard under ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... more than subconscious in him. He stood now a few inches behind Hilda, and, above these thoughts, and beneath the stir and strident glitter and noise of the crawling ant-heap, his mind was intensely occupied with Hilda's ear and her nostril. He could watch her now at leisure, for the changeful interest of the scene made conversation unnecessary and even inept. What a lobe! What a nostril! Every curve of her features ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... I was depicted as strident-voiced ... belligerent ... waving my arms wildly. It was said that, full of threats, I had taken a shotgun menacingly from a rack ... that a vicious bull dog lay between my feet, growling ... that I went, sockless, in sandals ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... blows of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, [101] Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why [111] Man's tender pain, man's ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... assemble the parts which he had built during the long journey from Titan to Ganymede. Therefore, at sunrise of the designated day, he was ready, and, with Nadia hanging breathless over his shoulder, he closed the switch, a toothed wheel engaged a delicate interrupter, and a light sounder began its strident chatter. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... that I advanced barely a half-mile during this first day and, lost in my work, forgot the hour until it was suddenly recalled by the insistent, strident tooting of whistles that forewarns the setting-off of the dynamite charges from the little red electric boxes along the edge of the "cut." I turned back toward Paraiso and, all but stumbling over little red-wound wires everywhere on the ground, dodging in and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... A voice warned all and sundry that the train was about to leave, and over the voice rose the strident notes of a gong. Thompson climbed the steps, passed within, thrust his head through an open window as the Imperial Limited gathered way. His last glimpse of a familiar face was of Carr standing bareheaded, looking wistfully ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... roundhead maples that stood guard along the north wall of the Puritan sanctuary. The windows were open. We could see the rhythmic motion of the fan-drill in the pews. The pulpit was not visible; but from that unseen eminence a strident, persistent voice flowed steadily, expounding the necessity and uses of "a baptism of fire," with a monotonous variety of application. Fire was needful for the young, for the middle-aged, for the old, and for those, if any, who occupied the intermediate positions. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... before a platform, backed with a blackboard, on which are inscribed the names of the horses expected to start; and its alert, chattering auctioneer, gay as a sparrow, and equally active, fishing for bids, with strident voice and reassuring manner. A few words, however, may be spared to touch lightly on what is designated the "Mutuel" system, which was invented by M. Joseph Oller, an ingenious Frenchman, about 1866. Those who had the good fortune to ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... side. In reaction from the excitements and fatigues of the day, they all early sought the rest which is never found in such perfection as in a mountain camp. Hemlock boughs formed the mattresses on which their blankets were spread, and soon there were no sounds except the strident chirpings of insects ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... went on, strident and mirthless under the grey-white sky. But the thrushes, hunting amongst the fresh-turned earth for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... despair. For a while he stopped in the angle of a wall, and listened to the sounds of the city below him, the rush of the river below the Bastion, the motor and bell of the electric tram-car, the whistle of a freight locomotive at the further end of the town—strident noises brought from the West to break the drowsy murmur of the Orient, but not a sight nor a sound which could give him a clew as to the whereabouts of Linke or Countess Marishka. The inaction was maddening. In his ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... insulted," almost screamed Lucy, though there was a note of fear in her strident voice. "I'm going to ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... Embankment Gardens were nearly stripped of their leaves, and were tossing widely. Shutting the eyes, you could think you heard the sweep of deep-water seas with strident crests. The greater buildings, like St. Paul's, might have been promontories looming in a driving murk. The low sky was dark and riven, and was falling headlong. But I liked the look of it. Here, plainly, was the end of the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... situation aloft was bewildering and very, very ominous. There was strident argument. Presently Calhoun ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... you miser'ble hoboe!" cried the old woman's strident voice as her powerful arms swung her lusty broom aloft. "I'll teach you, you scallawag!" Thwack fell the broom, and, releasing Joan, the man sought to protect his head with his arms. "I'll give you a dose you won't fergit, you scum o' creation!" Thwack went the broom again. "Wait till the folks ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... whose hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel; its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or sat tranquil on the backs of ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... on board the train to London, he began to feel more like a fugitive escaping than a hero returning. This wasn't the end of soldiering that imagination had painted. There had been strident bands and hysteric shouting to start him on his way to the conflict. There had been pictorial challenges to his courage pasted on every hoarding. There had been extravagant promises of the welcome which would await him if he ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... space where two or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... landfall, ending the steady stretch of a hundred miles. She had made good her course, she had run her distance till the punctual islets began to emerge one by one, the points of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . and the cloud of birds hovered—the restless cloud emitting a strident and cruel uproar, the sound of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the high ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... so heartily tired were we of so continuously serpentine a track; we therefore kept pushing on. We saw several natives to-day, but they invariably fled to the fastnesses of their mountain homes, they raised great volumes of smoke, and their strident vociferations caused a dull and buzzing sound even when out of ear-shot. The pattering of the rain-drops became heavier, yet we kept on, hoping at every turn to see an opening which would free us from our prison-house; but ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles |
