"Tinkling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are written about China by two classes of people. There are books written by people who have spent the night in China, as it were, superficial and amusing, full of the tinkling of temple bells; and there are other books written by people who have spent years in China and who know it well,—ponderous books, full of absolute information, heavy and unreadable. Books of the first class get one nowhere. They are delightful ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... sitting with Emily at ten o'clock in the morning, heard a ring at the bell, which she thought she knew. She pricked up her head to listen, and as it ceased tinkling she bustled ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... at every lesson with dry matters to be learned, the advantage of which was not obvious to him, and the final aim of which he did not perceive. Until a correct touch has been acquired, it is of no use to talk about a fine singing tone. How can we expect to arouse an interest by mere toneless tinkling, while stiff, inflexible fingers are struggling with the notes; while the pupil sees only his inability to do any thing right, and receives nothing but blame from the teacher; while, at the same time, so much is to be kept in mind, and he must be required to observe the time, and to use the right ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... one the workmen moved away from the grating, counting the money that glistened in their black hands. There were disappointments, mutterings, remonstrances, hours missed, money drawn in advance; and above the tinkling of coins, Sigismond's voice could be heard, calm and relentless, defending the interests of his employers with a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... used it. The tombs and stones were many and nearly covered with moss and lichen and half-draped in creeping ivy. There, sitting on a tomb, I would watch the small woodland birds that made it their haunt, and listen to the delicate little warbling or tinkling notes, and admire the two ancient ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... alone, beneath the Almond blossoms, And see the white snow melting on the hills Till Khorassan is gay with water-courses, Glad with the tinkling sound of ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... northward, but not elsewhere: it commands the Assam valley and the Himalaya, and the billowy range of undulating grassy Khasia mountains. Few houses were visible, but the curling smoke from the valleys betrayed their lurking-places, whilst the tinkling sound of the hammers from the distant forges on all sides was singularly musical and pleasing; they fell on the ear like "bells upon the wind," each ring being exquisitely melodious, and chiming harmoniously with the others. The solitude and beauty of the scenery, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... bottom of the stairs, the interior of the two vermilion avenues so closely with all their fineries and embroideries that not the slightest space remained vacant among them. Not so much as the caw of a crow struck the ear. All that was audible was the report of jingling and tinkling, and the sound of the gold bells and jade ornaments slightly rocked to and fro. Besides these, the creaking noise made by the shoes of the inmates, while getting up and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... lattice of their foliage Tignonville's gaze sought eagerly but in vain the laughing eyes and piquant face of his new mistress. For with the closing of the door, and the passing from him of the horrors of the streets, he had entered, as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world of tennis and roses, of tinkling voices and women's wiles, a world which smacked of Florence and the South, and love and life; a world which his late experiences had set so far away from him, his memory of it seemed a dream. Now, as he drank in its stillness and its fragrance, as he felt ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... and went into the shop, which was all in darkness. Ayscough, waiting, heard the sound of a key being turned, then of a metallic tinkling; presently the girl came back, carrying a velvet-lined tray in one hand, and a jeweller's magnifying ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... knuckles, but the jab doubled the conductor forward, and coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the lantern in his hand sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps in the roof of the car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, dripping oil and burning wicks, came the wreckage to ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... mind. Her manner, which had been growing gentler, was now touched with a winsome melancholy, and her eyes appeared to be larger and dreamier. Of late an old minister, who for nearly half a century had worn a tinkling bell in the midst of a devoted flock, had called frequently to talk to her, and in her smile the old man saw the spirit of religion, though not of one creed, but the heart's religion of the past, of the ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... with now and then the neigh of some knight's steed in the distance, were the only sounds that broke the silence, till once, as they neared their destination, Sibyll started from her father's bosom, and shudderingly thought she recognized the hoarse chant and the tinkling bells of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... music of the parties of young girls as they drift along in the scarcely moving boats, and sing the glories of the lagoons and the loves of fishermen and gondoliers. In the Public Gardens they walk and sing; and wandering minstrels come forth before the caffe, and it is hard to get beyond the tinkling of guitars and the scraping of fiddles. It is as if the city had put off its winter humor with its winter dress; and as Venice in winter is the dreariest and gloomiest place in the world, so in spring it is the fullest of joy and light. There is a pleasant ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... bridle-rein. The tinkling rowels of his spurs resounded against the ribs of his horse. The trial of speed had commenced. The plain appeared to glide past him like the current of a river. The bushes and ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... in the night, that I was almost under the tropic line, my latitude being 23 degrees 29'. The horses fed well on the purple vetch, their bells melodiously tinkling in the air the whole night long. The sound of the animals' bells, in the night, is really musical to the explorer's ear. I called the creek after Mr. Carmichael; and hoping it would contain good water lower ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... flat," he told the animal. "Perhaps if I walk we can make it." He started on foot up the tinkling way, watching the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... scholar of his day who knew a God: "Whether there be prophecies they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal,..." ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Mrs. Fisher, except the past. It was astonishing, it was simply amazing, the superiority of the past to the present. Those friends of hers in London, solid persons of her own age, knew the same past that she knew, could talk about it with her, could compare it as she did with the tinkling present, and in remembering great men forget for a moment the trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed to litter the world in such numbers. She had not come away from these friends, these conversable ripe friends, in order ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... unrest, Up starting quickly to pursue Their intermitted game anew. It was a lovely sight to see Those fair ones, as they played, While fragrant robes were floating free, And bracelets clashing in their glee A pleasant tinkling made. The anklet's chime, the Koil's(82) cry With music filled the place As 'twere some city in the sky Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... till the tinkling of the bell. Had not rested well the first two or three hours, cold feet, and afterwards a good deal of rolling and pitching of the vessel. The conversation this morning at breakfast chiefly on the expense of dress. Mr. Seaton ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... with the cup of abominations, all shouting with revelry, and glorying in her triumph, treading down in their career those precious pearls, the saints and martyrs, into the mire beneath their swinish feet. "Before her you may behold Wantonness playing the tinkling cymbal, Insolence beating the drum, and Pride blowing the trumpet. Every vice is there with his emblems; and the seller of pardons, with his crucifix and triple crown, is distributing his largess of perdition. The voices of men shout to set wide the gates, to ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... but there was a thick mist which prevented us from seeing far ahead. It had just gone two bells in the morning watch, when, as I was forward, I heard a tinkling sound. I listened attentively. Again the sound distinctly struck my ear. It came borne along the surface of the water from some distance. I reported the circumstance to the officer of the watch, and he immediately sent to inform the captain. He soon reached the deck, and ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Only don't crush my poor little Erard with Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times, too. And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment—only the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But there! Are you quite comfortable?" And having seen to his guest's needs, and placed spirits and cigars and an ash-tray within his reach, the Padre sat himself comfortably in his chair to hear and expose ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... the peculiar tinkling sound seemed to recall something to his memory, for he gave a shiver—his nerves were very weak. In another moment the door was opened part way, and the occupant of the rooms stood examining her visitor through the opening with evident suspicion, her small eyes glimmering ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... laughed half under her breath, a pretty, tinkling laugh. "Honour bright, Max dear, you're the first man I ever said 'yes' to. I hope I shan't ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... Water)—are not half a mile apart. Towards Hochkirch and the top of this brook, the opposing posts are quite crammed close on one another; divided only by their hollow. Many brooks, each with a definite hollow, run tinkling about here, swift but straitened to get out; especially Lobau Water, which receives them all, has to take a quite meandering circling course (through Daun's quarters and beyond them) before it can disembogue in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... covers, and books torn from their bindings. As Magdalen turned to leave the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled against a fragment of china lying near it. She stooped, and discovered that the tinkling substance was a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... regardless of the piercing cold, occupied themselves in staring languidly at a reindeer sledge which stood outside one of the more distant huts, evidently waiting for some person within. The hoofs of the animals made no impression on the hardened snow—now and again they gently shook the tinkling bells on their harness, but otherwise were very patient. The sledge was in charge of a youthful Laplander—a hideous, stunted specimen of humanity, who appeared to be literally sewed up from ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... in his reeling mind while he listens, over the tinkling wire, to the enumeration of rooms, baths, pantries, mortgages, commuting schedules, commodious closets, open fireplaces, and what not. In the flash and coruscation of thought he has transported his helpless family to Yonkers, or to Manhasset, or to Forest Hills, or wherever ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... deeper bass of its hoarse organ the sea is now playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. Hear how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and stilled in its tortuous way, till it ends with a washing and dull hiss among the sea-weed, and, like a myriad of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is audible. There is fine music in ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... dreamed. She was trying to remember. Far-off, half-forgotten visions of brave, courtly men, of gracious, beautiful women, peopled the clouds of her imaginings. She heard them again, as voices beneath the roar of rapids, like far-away bells tinkling faintly through a wind, pitying her, exclaiming over her; she saw them dim and changing, as wraiths of a fog, as shadow pictures in a mist beneath the moon, leaning to her with bright, shining eyes full of compassion for the little girl who was to go so far away into an unknown ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... worldling knows, Here secure in calm repose, Far from life's perplexing maze, The pious fathers pass their days; While the bell's shrill-tinkling ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... we approached a watercourse, the upper part of the Rio Barriga Negra—Black Belly River—and on coming near it the tinkling of a bell attracted our attention. It is the usual thing for every man in the Banda Oriental to have one mare, called madrina, in his tropilla, or herd of geldings; the madrina always carries a bell attached to her neck, and at night ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... had come to him, lying sleepless at night under the star-lit sky, all alone excepting for the tinkling of his horse-bell: "What is to be the end for me? What is there to look forward to?" And his heart had sunk within him at the prospect. For what was in front? What could be? Shearing and waiting for shearing—that was his life. Working ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... had just gone tinkling along the line of the Japanese ships, informing those whom it might concern that the hour was ten o'clock in the morning, when a fresh wireless message came from our blockading squadron, informing us that at last the Russian fleet was actually steaming out of Port ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... contemplates him fondly—kisses him, pressing his cheeks to hers; or they sport with a rose, or an apple, or a bird; or he presents it to his mother; these originally mystical emblems being converted into playthings. In another sketch she is amusing him by tinkling a bell:—the bell, which has a religious significance, is here a plaything. One or more attendant angels may vary the group, without taking it out of the sphere of reality. In a quaint but charming picture in the Wallerstein Collection, an angel ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... and torrents and glimmering haze, And sheep-bells tinkling on mountain ways, And fluting shepherds ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... country. On both sides of the road bare, black rocks jutted out; here and there shrubs peeped forth from under the snow; but not a single withered leaf stirred, and amid that dead sleep of nature it was cheering to hear the snorting of the three tired post-horses and the irregular tinkling of the Russian ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... wanderers with a gush. One night the temperature rose high above the freezing point; next day all the sights and sounds of Nature's great awakening were in full play. The air fanned their cheeks like a summer breeze; the strange unwonted sound of tinkling and dropping water was heard; scents, as of green things, were met and inhaled greedily. As the thirsty Bedouin drinks from the well in the oasis, so did Roy and Nelly drink in the delicious influences of melting ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... now he remembered the Beautiful Wicked Witch and the bird she had caged in there. He saw a door in the tree trunk ajar, and swinging to and fro with tiny tinkling music. He peeped in, and between the swingings caught glimpses of little blue and yellow flowers arranged in tight bunches in hanging vases. He could smell their sweetness even out ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... remember?" repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... young heart were beating alike as these exiles followed the narrow footpath round the shoulder of the great hill; they could hear the lambs bleat and the tinkling of the sheep-bells that sweet May morning. From the lower hillside came the sound of voices. The neighbors had seen them pass, and were calling to each other across the fields. Oh, it was home, home! the sight ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... nowhere in particular, and his voice was the tinkling of a silver bell. It would have taken a score of him ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... out and hands clasp and shoulders touch—and all fades away. Around the vivid emerald lawn they group themselves, and Margarita, a pearl in pearly trailing laces, sits on a stone bench, defaced and mossy, in the centre, at the back; the lads adore at her feet, the banjo drops tinkling handfuls of chords at intervals, the birds flutter through the ivy overhead, the watered turf smells strong and sweet in the fanlike rays of the slow sun; bright pencils of yellow light fall like stained glass among the immemorial ivy; the day goes, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... watch and chain, but finally laid them with the others—a fair offering at the shrine of love, retaining only a plain gold pin and the rings her husband gave her. When baby took her afternoon nap, Faith gathered up her rings, and pins, and ear-rings, and bracelets, and chains, and all the other "tinkling ornaments," made them into a package, and went with a resolute look in her eyes to Mr. Seymour's—one of the largest jewellery stores in the city. Mr. Seymour was a member of the same church, and took a fatherly interest ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... of his lyre! What melody of words! They strike a pulse within the heart Like songs of forest-birds, Or tinkling of the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... shouts of the spectators, two vaqueros, dressed in black velvet short-clothes, dazzling linen, and stiff black sombreros, tinkling bells attached to their trappings, jingling spurs on their heels, galloped into the plaza, driving a large aggressive bull. They chased him about in a circle, swinging their reatas, dodging his onslaughts, then rode out, ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... time. When he listened to his heart, it always led him right. And if it led him above all things to repose complete confidence on his one intimate friend, that only draws us to him the more; he felt like Bacon that a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk is but a tinkling cymbal, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... thinking of that adaptable instrument that had thrummed an accompaniment to the arias of the Opera soprano, as to the Society drawing-room duets sung with the frisky married ladies who liked nice boys, and had made tinkling music for the twinkling small feet, and the strident voice of Lessie Lavigne of the Jollity Theatre, and now must serenade outside a Convent-close in beleaguered Gueldersdorp, where the whitest of maiden lilies bloomed, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and a clear vision of the man, his feelings, his surroundings, his hopes, his desires, and his sorrows,—these, and these alone, mean that complete sympathy, without which the white man among Malays, is but as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the streams are at their lowest ebb, with scarce a memory left of their wild spring floods. The small tributaries that do not reach back to the lasting snow fountains of the summit peaks shrink to whispering, tinkling currents. After the snow is gone from the basins, excepting occasional thundershowers, they are now fed only by small springs whose waters are mostly evaporated in passing over miles of warm pavements, and in feeling their way slowly from pool to pool through the midst of boulders and sand. ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... a small verandah, which was simply the projection of the roof of a thatched hut. Their horses were fastened to wooden stakes in the centre of the yard; their men were lying round them, warming themselves at their own fires. Sheep, beautiful sheep with tinkling bells hung round their necks, were chewing the cud in peace and happiness. But notwithstanding it was the hour of repose, the tongues of the female travellers were making a clatter which all the women of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... thing was to get in touch with "A" Company, who were putting out the platoon to guard "B" Company's left flank. Rather jumpy work, this joining hands in pitch darkness. It was a long, silent night. At 9.30 the tinkling sound of the wire being fixed was heard, and they knew from this that the digging had commenced—some 800 men, good and true, working silently as ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... how they might best devise means for obtaining notice of the approach of their great enemy the Cat. Among the many plans devised, the one that found most favor was the proposal to tie a bell to the neck of the Cat, that the Mice, being warned by the sound of the tinkling, might run away and hide themselves in their holes at his approach. But when the Mice further debated who among them should thus "bell the Cat," there was no ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... don't like it we can get rid of it," I said, as I poured his drink over the ice tinkling against the side ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sheep Along the upland steep Follow their shepherd from the wattled fold, With tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold As a stream's cadence, while a skylark sings High in the blue, with eager outstretched wings, Till the strong passion of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... stationary while we spoke, a space of fifty miles, partly mountain, and partly valley, lay above and below us, and glancing the eye from end to end of this immense tract, not a hut of any kind could be seen; but, faintly, the tinkling of bells attached to the necks of sheep, or cattle, could be heard, and that only when the feeble puffs of wind blew from a certain direction. We wandered for many miles over the desolate mountains, and found no signs by which we might be guided to the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... acknowledgment of experience. 'Give us the whole,' we cry, 'give us the truth.' Unless we can catch the undertone of this acknowledgment, a poet's voice is in our ears hardly more than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... chair sliding on the marble floor, seemed to issue from the inner room, and she paused to listen. Under the flare of the candle the vindictive face of Siva, and the hooded viper twined about his arm, looked more hideous than ever, warning her not to approach, yet all was silent, save the tinkling of a bell far down in the park, where the sheep clustered under the cedars. Opening the door, which was ajar, she entered, held the light high over her head, and peered a little nervously around the room; but, here, too, all was quiet as the grave, and quite ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... pink roses that grew in the rose garden of the old Thaine mansion house of her girlhood. A vision swept across her memory of Asher Aydelot—just Thaine's age then—of a moonlit night, sweet with the odor of many blossoms, and the tinkling waters of the fountain in the rose garden, and herself a happy ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... these activities in his own, is the poet, who is both acoustic and optic artist. He translates the sounds of the world, both external and internal,— the tumult of storms, the murmurs of waves, the SUSURRUS of the woodland, the tinkling of brooks, the throbbing of human hearts, the cries of all living creatures; all those groans of pain, stammers of desire, shrieks of despair, yawns even of languor, which are ever breaking out of the heart of things; and beside all ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... struggled out of the adjacent mire, and attained a rising ground, I could only see about four yards square of bare down, all the rest being grey fog. Altogether, the scene was worth something. I heard what I thought the tinkling of a sheep bell through the cloud, which dulled the sound like cotton wool; I pursued the call, when anon, the veil began to grow thin, and revealed, looking just like a transparency, a glimpse ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said he, "I am only too familiar with them. In childhood I learned the words of the prophet: 'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... language of depreciation, and therefore here I will once more endorse what an anonymous writer has said of him: "An unconscious Christianity covers all his sentiments. If the fair fame of the man is sullied, the aspiration to a higher life cannot be denied to the philosopher; if the tinkling cymbal of a stilted Stoicism sometimes sounds through the nobler music, it still leaves the truer melody vibrating on ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... suggested this, or was the hand of Providence in all that I did at this time? I had no sooner seated myself in the little room, where I had been accustomed to wait for him, than I saw what sent the blood tinkling to my finger-tips in sudden hope. It was my husband's vest hanging in one corner, the vest he had worn down-town that morning. The day was warm and he had taken it off. If the key should ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... only a half mile from home, measuring by a straight line through the intervening hill; in time they were two hours away. San Pietro had climbed gallantly, with little silvery bells tinkling at his ears, to the summit of the mountain, and had descended, with conviction and with accuracy, planting firm little hard hoofs in the slippery path where the dark soil bore a coating of green grass and moss. For all their hard morning's work they were still on the ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... garden-house, which seemed to have similar prospects and entrances on the other sides! The heavenly music which streamed from the building transported me still more than this model of architecture. I fancied that I heard now a lute, now a harp, now a guitar, and now something tinkling which did not belong to any of these instruments. The door for which we made opened soon on being lightly touched by the old man. But how was I amazed when the porteress who came out perfectly resembled ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... lifts a noble cone. It is an old friend, Acro-Corinthus. The plain within the hills is sprinkled with thriving farmsteads, green vineyards, darker olive groves. The stony hill-slopes are painted red by countless poppies. One hears the tinkling of the bells of roving goats. Thus the more distant view; while at the very foot of the hill of vision rises a temple with proud columns and pediments,—the fane of Demeter the "Earth Mother" and the seat of ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of vernal breeze, And beckoning bough of budding trees, Hast left thy sullen fire; And stretched thee in some mossy dell, And heard the browsing wether's bell, Blithe echoes rousing from their cell To swell the tinkling choir: ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... The tinkling of glasses and the sort murmuring of whispered conversation had ceased during Francis' story. Every one was a little affected—the soft throbbing of the violins upon the balcony was almost a relief. Then there was a little murmur of sympathetic remarks—but ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... struggle was being waged? When the railheads of these eager Atlantic promoters were laid down at Buffalo on Lake Erie and at Pittsburgh on the Ohio they looked out on a new world. The centaurs of the Western rivers were no less things of the far past than the tinkling bells borne by the ancient ponies of the pack-horse trade. The sons of this new West had their eyes riveted on the commerce of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. With road, canal, steamboat, and railway, they were renewing the struggle of their fathers but for prizes ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... which kept close to the shore, the crew disembarking and encamping each night. Dickenson tells with open-eyed wonder how the Spaniards kept their holiday of Christmas in the open boat and through a driving northeast storm; praying, and then tinkling a piece of iron for music and singing, and also begging gifts from the Indians, who begged from them in their turn; and what one gave to the other that they gave back again. Our baby at least, let us hope, had Christmas feeling ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... to her ears the sound of the double whistle for a hansom. She stood silently there listening to the driving up of the vehicle—she even heard the sound of the closing of the apron and then the tinkling of the horse's ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... A cab came tinkling up behind her, and Rachel half thought of hailing it, and driving through the lighted town after all; but the hansom was occupied, and the impulse passed. She put down her veil and turned into the stream without catching a suspicious eye. Why should they suspect ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... thought that amidst all the pain and weariness of this desert life of ours, though the gates of Paradise are shut against us, they who dwell beneath the shadow of the divine wing really have a paradise blooming around them; and have flowing ever by their side, with tinkling music, the paradisaical river of delights, in which they may bathe and swim, and of which they may drink. Certainly the joys of communion with God surpass any which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Piggy's quarter, and found to her distress that he had contrived to knock off the upper board from his pen. She had no hammer at hand; so she seized a large stone that lay near by and pounded at the board till the twice-tinkling bell recalled her to the house, and as soon as she had made confession to the census-taker she went back,—alas, too late! Piggy had redoubled his efforts, another board had yielded, and he was free! What a thing freedom is! how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... the morning the whole house was in silence, when there was heard the rattle of a latchkey in the stairway door, followed by footsteps in the corridor and then the querulous tinkling of the music-box upon ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... silence. Leon made a cigarette, which he smoked to an end, looking up into the trees, and, beyond them, at the constellations, of which he tried vainly to recall the names. The silence was broken by the church bell; it rang the four quarters on a light and tinkling measure; then followed a single deep stroke that died slowly away with a thrill; and stillness ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the horn of white hunter or of chance traveler, and the spot had been deserted on the instant, its peopling vanished beyond discovery. But there was no horn of hunter, no sound even of tinkling cow-bell, no voice of youth in song or conversation. Only the sound of the great drum, the drum made years ago and hidden in a spot known to few, spoke out its sullen summons, slowly, in savage deliberation. Its sound had a carrying quality of its own, unknown in white ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of some sweet, shabby fairy. What possible bell could be appropriate to that air? I began, stupidly, to recall the names of such flowers as bluebell, hare-bell, Canterbury-bell. In imagination I heard their chime as the distant tinkling ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... was being communicated as the party stood together in a group, when there was a light tinkling of bells, and two ladies in a light open carriage, drawn by two spirited ponies, dashed round the knoll; and at the moment something must have gone wrong with them, for there was a start, a pull, a call of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subjection. While the chief, Little White Belt, smokes, the women are silent in his wigwam; while Mahomet Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia to play round his beard, the women of the harem do not disturb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Professor Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and which holds a pound of canaster, the Frau Professorin ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of sparkling oratory, may command a hearing, may succeed in breathing a new life into this modern Mohammedanism, and make the name of the martyred Joseph ring as loud, and stir the souls of men as much, as the mighty ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... cure's sabots was the response that answered to the bell we pulled, a bell attached to a diminutive brick house lying at the foot of the churchyard. The tinkling of the cracked-voiced bell had hardly ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Kurdish women plodding along under heavy burdens of pine-branches like those that were now fumigating our eyes and nostrils. Across the hills the Kurdish shepherds were driving home their herds and flocks to the tinkling of bells. All this, to us, was deeply impressive. Such peaceful scenes, we thought, could never be the haunt of warlike robbers. The flocks at last came home; the shouts of the shepherds ceased; darkness fell; ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... her from visiting us, in fear * Of hate-full, slandering envier and his hired spies: The shining light of brow, the trinkets' tinkling voice, * And scent of essences that tell whene'er she tries: Gi'en that she hide her brow with edge of sleeve, and leave * At home her trinketry, how shall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... similar mortification nightly awaited the unconscious sleepers, although "upon uneasy pallets stretching them," in the occasional tinkling of an obtrusive bell, that peremptorily hurried them from their recumbent position to the cold stones of the chapel, where on bended knees they were obliged to pray ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... two women have entered the room. It is very early, but the Orbajosans are early risers. The birds are singing to burst their throats in their cages; the church-bells are ringing for mass, and the goats, going from house to house to be milked, are tinkling ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heaven, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells,— From the jingling and the tinkling ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... said Billy through his teeth. He hoisted himself cautiously, and with his handkerchief swept the top of the wall as clean as he could. He heard the little pieces fall with a perilously loud tinkling sound, and flattened himself upon the wall, and strained his eyes through the darkness of the garden, but no alarm was raised. The shadows ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... he goeth walking in his garden Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play; The posies they are good to him And bow them as they should to him As he fareth upon his kingly way: The birdlings of the wood to him Make music, gentle music, all the day When our babe he goeth walking in ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... fair and dark, The great arched brows, the parted lips, the teeth Like pearls a merchant picks to make a string, The satin-lidded eyes, with lashes dropped Sweeping the delicate cheeks, the rounded wrists The smooth small feet with bells and bangles decked, Tinkling low music where some sleeper moved, Breaking her smiling dream of some new dance Praised by the Prince, some magic ring to find, Some fairy love-gift. Here one lay full-length, Her vina by her cheek, and in its strings The ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... And from my land no answer came again, It was because of that your care and pain A house was building, and your bitter sighs Came hither as toil-helping melodies, And in the mortar of our gem-built wall Your tears were mingled mid the rise and fall Of golden trowels tinkling in the hands Of builders gathered wide from all the lands.— —Is the house finished? Nay, come help to build Walls that the sun of sorrow once did gild Through many a bitter morn and hopeless eve, That so at last in bliss ye may believe; Then rest with me, and turn no more to ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... just the young trees at the edge of the road that made music now, but the whole forest. There were organs and drums and trumpets; there were little thrush flutes and bullfinch pipes; there were gurgling brooks and singing water-sprites, tinkling bluebells and ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Well, as I live" . . .) He looks blank as a wall, Poor ferryman! Round him and round him he gazes, But only gets deeplier lost in the mazes Of utter bewilderment. All, all are gone, And he stands alone, Like a statue of stone, In a doldrum of wonder. He turns to steer, And a tinkling laugh salutes his ear, With other odd sounds: "Ha, ha, ha, ha! Fol lol! zidzizzle! quee quee! bah! bah! Fizzigig-giggidy! pshee! sha sha!" "O ye thieves, ye thieves, ye rascally thieves!" The good man cries. He turns to his pitcher, And there, alas, to his ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... tearing, deafening, sharp, metallic-sounding explosion, that seemed to shake the old mill to its foundations; the windows were blown out; bottles, vessels, and tray were shivered, and the glass flew tinkling in all directions; and then an awful silence, succeeded by a strange singing noise in the ears, through which, as Tom struggled half-stunned and helpless to his feet, he could hear a loud ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... meaning.] Unmeaningness — N. meaninglessness, unmeaningness &c adj.^; scrabble. empty sound, dead letter, vox et praeterea nihil [Lat.]; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. nonsense, utter nonsense, gibberish; jargon, jabber, mere words, hocus-pocus, fustian, rant, bombast, balderdash, palaver, flummery, verbiage, babble, baverdage, baragouin^, platitude, niaiserie^; inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a little cold spring, bubbling up beside the road and tinkling over the steep bank. The road at this point ran along a hillside, and the slope below the road was clothed with blueberry and other dense shrubs. The backwoodsman was hot and thirsty. Flinging aside his battered hat, he ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... blood, which, according to popular belief, can never be effaced. Finding we listened to him with easy faith, he added, that there was often heard at night, in the Court of Lions, a low, confused sound, resembling the murmuring of a multitude; with now and then a faint tinkling, like the distant clank of chains. These noises are probably produced by the bubbling currents and tinkling falls of water, conducted under the pavement, through pipes and channels, to supply the fountains; but, according to the legend of the son of the Alhambra, they are made ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... that all should yield her love and homage, Yet was no trifling, passionless coquette. Her winning beauty was the standing toast Of the wide neighborhood, and serenades From many a gallant woke the sleeping echoes Beneath her window, and her name was like The silvery pealing of a tinkling bell; (Perhaps 'tis yours, fair ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... conservatory is but dimly lit with lamps covered with pale pink shades. The soft musical tinkling of a fountain, hidden somewhere amongst the flowering shrubs, adds a delicious sense of coolness to the air. The delicate perfume of heliotrope mingles with the breath of the roses, yellow and red and amber, that, standing in their pots, nod their heads drowsily. The begonias, too, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... been to a concert, where he had heard a famous violinist, with whose admirable performances he was quite enchanted. The player had drawn a wonderful wealth of tone from the instrument: sometimes it had sounded like tinkling water-drops, like rolling pearls, sometimes like birds twittering in chorus, and then again it went swelling on like the wind through the fir trees. The poet thought he heard his own heart weeping, but weeping melodiously, like the sound of woman's ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... The tinkling of a small burn could be heard beside the road. Helbeck jumped down. "Don't be afraid; the pony is really quite ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... entrance of the court. They heard the remote tinkling of the front door bell. Jenkins passed through. The cold air invading the hall and the dining room told them he had opened the door. His sharp exclamation recalled Howells's report which, at their direction, he ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... horrors out of newspapers to Miss Fowler. Mary had seen it with her own eyes on the 'Royal Oak' kitchen table. She must not allow her mind to dwell upon it. Now Wynn was dead, and everything connected with him was lumping and rustling and tinkling under her busy poker into red black dust and grey leaves of ash. The thing beneath the oak would die too. Mary had seen death more than once. She came of a family that had a knack of dying under, as she told Miss Fowler, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... those tender names in one—thy love! The darksome pines that, o'er yon rocks reclined, Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind, The wandering streams that shine between the hills, The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, The dying gales that pant upon the trees, The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze; 160 No more these scenes my meditation aid, Or lull to rest the visionary maid. But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, Long-sounding ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... winter-proof; All night by the white stars' frosty gleams He groined his arches and matched his beams; Slender and clear were his crystal spars As the lashes of light that trim the stars; He sculptured every summer delight In his halls and chambers out of sight; Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest crypt. Long, sparkling aisles of steel stemmed trees Mending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Around in the shadows at the foot of the Cathedral the lights of the great gay city twinkled and danced and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer. The sound of clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels, of tinkling guitars and gay roundelays, rose out of that obscure distance, seeming far off and plaintive like the dream of a life that is past. The great church seemed a vast world; the long aisles of statued pinnacles with their pure floorings of white marble appeared as if they might be the corridors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... eyes again, and gave himself two or three little knocks upon the breast, as if he were answering two or three other little knocks from within, given by the tinkling hammer of his conscience, to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sonorous voice, and see his waving, outstretched arms. In his right hand he held the looped sceptre which, by his express wish I send to you with the drawings. I could see the flash of the jewels strung upon the wires, and in the great stillness, hear the tinkling of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... call if Simon arrived to give him a lesson in chivalrous sports. He found himself on the slope of one of the gorges down which smaller streams rushed in wet weather to join the Derwent. There was a sound of tinkling water, and leaning forward, Hal saw that a tiny thread of water dropped between the ferns and the stones. Therewith a low, soft chant in a manly voice, mingling with the ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to shout lustily for his father. But the men were now so far away that they could not hear him. He complained of hunger; and when presently they came to a blueberry patch, she flung herself down on the heather and allowed him to pick berries. She heard cow-bells and sheep-bells tinkling round about her, and concluded that she could not be far from the saeters, or mountain dairies. That was fortunate, indeed, for she would not have liked to sleep in the woods with wolves and bears ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sapphire blue of a Capri sea, and she must have emptied her apron all at once to have spangled the rough grass with cistus, anemone, and starry asphodel. Below them lay a stretch of rugged rocks and turquoise bay, with no sound to break the silence but the tinkling of goat-bells, or the piping of a little dark-eyed boy who practiced a rustic flute as he minded his flock. To poor Mr. Carson, wearied with the noise and clamor of Naples, it was a veritable Paradise, a haven of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the ensuing September, as Josiah Pricket and Mrs. Susan Ox, who had left Pricket's fort for the purpose of driving up their cows, were returning in the evening they were way laid by a party of Indians, who had been drawn to the path by the tinkling of the cowbell. Pricket was killed and scalped, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to the park to watch the first procession. It was a very pretty sight, for the hoops had been decorated with bright ribbons, and with bells which made a merry tinkling sound. Ned was the captain, as he was the oldest and could manage his hoop most skilfully. He led the children through the park, stopping now and then for breath. Whenever anyone dropped his hoop, he had to go to the end of the line, for that ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... table, talking together in excited whispers. The tall, rough-looking fellow who had frightened her before picked up one of the tubes, and then, whether by accident or intention, let it fall, and the tinkling smash of the glass frightened them all so precipitately that they came tumbling out into the larger room. The big fellow whispered something to the student, who at once became more self-important than ever, and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... had been said for the last two hours, had been said to a tinkling accompaniment performed by the Tinker, who had got to work upon some villager's pot or kettle, and was working briskly outside. This music still continuing, seemed to put it into Mr. Traveller's mind to have another ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens |
