"Whistling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... door, pulling out from his pocket the first thing his fingers hit on, and as he went downstairs whistling, "Farewell and Adieu, to you Spanish Ladies," he tossed and caught, and tossed and caught again, an old silver button burnt black ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... The sweet little thing she was then any way. Yellow hair at her, and eyes like the sea, and a voice same as the throstle! Well, well, to think, to think! Playing in the gorse and the ling together, and the daisies and the buttercups—and then the curlews whistling and the river singing like music, and the bees ahumoning—aw, terr'ble sweet and nice. And me going barefoot, and her bare-legged, and divil a hat at the one of us—aw, deary me, deary me! Wasn't much starch at her ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... acknowledged bravery, keeps carefully behind a rising ground, a house, or a tree—a sure sign of increasing danger. Grape rattles on the roofs of the houses and in the fields; cannon balls howl over us, and plough the air in all directions, and soon there is a frequent whistling of musket balls. A step farther towards the troops, to that sturdy infantry which for hours has maintained its firmness under this heavy fire; here the air is filled with the hissing of balls which announce their proximity by a short sharp noise as they pass ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... in a whaleman's life are varied and very stirring. Sometimes he is floating on the calm ocean, idling about the deck and whistling for a breeze, when all of a sudden the loud cry is heard, "There she blows!" and in a moment the boats are in the water, and he is engaged in all the toils of an exciting chase. Then comes the battle with the great leviathan of the deep, with all its risks and dangers. Sometimes he is unfortunate, ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... wild geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the neighboring ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... lighting of cigars and cigarettes, after which everybody went through interwoven moonlight and afterglow to the barn. Mr. Britling sat down to a pianola in the corner and began the familiar cadences of "Whistling Rufus." ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a retreat in a disarray of nerves, a whistling and clamour of his own arteries, and in short in such a final bodily disorder as made him alike incapable of speech or hearing. And in the midst of all this turmoil, a sense of unpardonable injustice remained graven ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they did not, that I was a protection to them. I tried to reassure the mother by addressing her in her own language (as it were), and she turned quickly, looked, listened, and returned to her tree, quieted. This sound is a low whistling through the teeth, which readily soothes cage birds. It interests and calms them, though I have no notion what it means to them, for I am speaking ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... very folds of their sagging surfaces moved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my advent made the man at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth could have made it do so? It was a whistling note like a bird's. For a long, long time I faced an empty world, steeped in an infinity of silence, through which the sunshine poured and flowed for some mysterious purpose. Then I heard Ransome's voice ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... delighted, as you may guess, when I got Mary's letter from London. I had just settled at the old house, and mighty lonely I felt with no one to speak to, and the wind whistling in at the broken windows, and the whole place in confusion. So putting aside Mary, I was glad enough to have some excuse for running away. I took the next coach for Dublin; found, by good luck, a packet just ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... things. A little after ten o'clock, Ben Mayberry came along and said he had a message which he had promised to deliver to a gentleman at the hotel in Moorestown. Jack told him the bridge was unsafe, but Ben said he knew how to swim, and started across, whistling and jolly as usual. Jack said at the same time he heard the sound of wheels, which showed that a wagon or carriage had driven on from the other side, which never ought to have been allowed when things ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... pleasure-grounds of the lords of the soil filled the air with sweet scents. One day, as I was approaching a village up a somewhat steep road, a little gray-haired man driving a wagon holding some sacks of flour passed me, whistling cheerfully. We gave each other the "Peace" salutation, knowing ourselves brother Jews, if only by our furred caps and ear-curls. Presently, in pity of his beast, I saw him jump down and put his shoulder to the wheel; but he had not made fifty paces when his horse ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one. Now form the procession and let us go in style," said Thorny, cheerily, as he swung Betty to his shoulder and marched away whistling "Hail! the conquering hero comes," while Ben and his Bow-wow followed arm-in-arm, and Bab brought up the rear, banging on a milk-pan ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... sensations. They are the principal ones. But the auditory sensations nevertheless play a role. First, the ear has also its internal sensations, sensations of buzzing, of tinkling, of whistling, difficult to isolate and to perceive while awake, but which are clearly distinguished in sleep. Besides that we continue, when once asleep, to hear external sounds. The creaking of furniture, the crackling of the fire, the rain beating against the window, the ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... then, said Hermes, shooting quick glances from his eyes: and he kept raising his brows and looking this way and that, whistling long and listening to Apollo's story ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... jingling their bells, groups of ragged thieves and bold beggars met and jostled the peaceful travellers on the road. Once a little band of robbers, riding across the valley to the land of Moab, turned from a distance toward the Nazarenes, circled swiftly around them like hawks, whistling and calling shrilly to one another. But there was small booty in that country caravan, and the men who guarded it looked strong and tough; so the robbers whirled away as swiftly as ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... again, so that the sailor should not see the trouble in his face, but he looked round in wonder, for there was a strange scuffling noise, the low whistling of the old tune "Jack Robinson," and there was the big sailor, with his arms swung across his breast, and the parcels dangling on the wrong side, going through the steps of the sailor's hornpipe, as if he were made of indiarubber; ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... him and that he had not had his sleep out; for in his ears was the trampling of horse-hoofs and the clashing of weapons and loud speech of men. So he leapt up hastily, and while he was yet scarce awake, took to whistling on his horse; but even therewith those men were upon him, and two came up to him and laid hold of him; and when he asked them what they would, they bade him ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... mounts, the smoking lake, The rock's resounding echo, The whistling winds, the woods that shake, Shall all with me sing Heigho! The tossing seas, the tumbling boats, Tears dripping from each oar, Shall tune with me their turtle notes: 'I'll never love thee more!'" [Footnote: Rushworth, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... By-and-by he came to the hatch, where the brook fell over with a splash, and a constant bubbling, and churning, and gurgling. A kingfisher, who had been perched on the rail of the hatch, flew off when he saw Bevis, whistling: "Weep! weep!" ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... The rider, still whistling his Texas tune, swung in the concha-decorated California stock saddle as if he were a part of his horse. He was a lithe young figure, dressed in fringed buckskin, touched here and there with the gay colors of ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... walk below, And should by right be singers too. What prince's choir of music can excel That which within this shade does dwell, To which we nothing pay or give - They, like all other poets, live Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains. 'Tis well if they become not prey. The whistling winds add their less artful strains, And a grave base the murmuring fountains play. Nature does all this harmony bestow; But to our plants, art's music too, The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe; The lute itself, which once was green and mute, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... invited his friends to step forward and examine the apartment as minutely as they might desire. Prior and Lang were the only ones to accept. The former wandered about among the pasteboard scenery, whistling to himself and occasionally tapping a part of it with his knuckles. Lang, who was in his element, ignored the rest of his party and commenced a patient, systematic search, on his own account, for secret apparatus. Faull and Mrs. Trent ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... now pressed on, for there was no time to lose. The roar of the battle was increasing; reports of musketry as well as cannon rent the air, and the sharp whistling of rifle-balls could frequently be heard. Reaching a wood road, they followed this for some distance, Almia in advance, when suddenly they came upon a man sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree. He had a little blank-book in his hand, and apparently he was making calculations in it with a lead-pencil. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... travel through the forest before he could reach the little log cabin where his wife, as well as his little daughter Zella, awaited his return, but he was used to long walks and tramped along the path whistling cheerfully to ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... be heard "The Whistling Woman"—dread harbinger of death and disaster to the mariner. The gale had been hourly increasing in violence, till for the last hour before arriving at our destination we had momentarily expected that the train would be blown from the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... knows it's no child's play to look after the estate even now, much smaller as it is! An ill day when the old General died, an ill day indeed, the saints rest his soul!" Saying this, Juan shrugged his shoulders, and whistling to Capitan, walked towards the sunny veranda of the south side of the kitchen wing of the house, where it had been for twenty odd years his habit to sit on the long bench and smoke his pipe of a morning. Before he had got half-way across the court-yard, however, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... suffering to others. It is annoying, I grant you, to be torn asunder in a collision, because red and green lights on the switches combined into a pleasing harmony before the brakeman’s eyes. The tone-deaf gentleman who insists on whistling a popular melody is almost as trying as the lady suffering from the same weakness, who shouts, “Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie!” until you feel impelled to cry, ”Que faites-vous, madame, with ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... interest and even a dissolution of the Union. The proper mode for all parties in this affair is to 'live and let live,' and then we will find a cessation of this trouble about the bridge. What mood were the steamboat men in when this bridge was burned? Why, there was a shouting and ringing of bells and whistling on all the boats as it fell. It was a jubilee, a greater celebration than follows an excited election. The first thing I will proceed to is the record of Mr. Gurney and the complaint of Judge Wead that the record did not extend back over all the time from the completion of the bridge. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... not wait for an answer, but went out at the front door, and Dick heard him whistling down the path. The whistle seemed like an intentional confirmation of his being in a cheerfully normal frame of mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... something of his Gethsemane as he realized that the glory of the sun and all the beauties of nature were no more for him,—that before him was only night eternal. Yet a moment afterwards when the supper bell rang the rattle of canes on the walks and the sound of scores of men whistling and singing as they came from all the buildings round about proved most convincingly that hundreds of others had gone through this same struggle and had ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... morning Will opened his eyes in a flood of sunshine, and at first could not recollect where he was, but the whistling of an engine near by soon recalled to him his situation, causing him at the same time to hurry with his dressing, that he might hasten over to the station for news of his brother. He did not have to go as far as that, however, for as he was going down stairs he ran against Charlie ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not been whistling round the tepees just then, causing some of the loosely-laced hides to flap spasmodically, it is extremely unlikely that either of the two men would have ventured even to whisper. But the tepee was dark, and Rory had ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... cheered Kenneth more than you might suppose, and he was actually whistling as he rode through the glen, where the country road wound its way beside the noisy, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Meadow Lark is not much varied, but its clear, whistling notes, so frequently heard in the early spring, are melodious and pleasing to the ear. It is decidedly the farmers' friend, feeding, as it does, on noxious insects, caterpillars, moths, grasshoppers, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... been transformed by some magic power into the living, seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of our brave men! I never shall forget the terrible sound of that awful blast of death, which swept down, shattered or dead, a thousand of our men. Not a shot had missed its aim. Every bolt of steel, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... is. Where would you have them go? and they bain't Christians. Hark! I won't say there be none flying about now. I fancy I hear a sort of a kind o' whistling." ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... chopping one of the poor little pigs in two to settle their dispute was too absurd. But Dolly pinched up her lips; she wasn't going to give in, and smiling would have been a sort of beginning of giving in, you see. And Max, to save himself from any weakness of the kind, started whistling, which nurse promptly put a stop to, telling him that whistling at table was not "manners" ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... gold-laced hat, his long cane, and gilt cuffs. He was biting his white mustache, and wiping off, with his left hand, the dust which the passing balls threw up from the ground they plowed so near him. They also saw, amidst this terrible fire, which filled the air with whistling hisses, officers handling the shovel, soldiers rolling barrows, and vast fascines, rising by being either carried or dragged by from ten to twenty men, cover the front of the trench reopened to the center by this ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, 800 And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December, Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows. Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning, Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it. Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... had risen an hour since. Heron had betaken himself to his workshop, whistling as he went, and in the kitchen his old slave Argutis was standing over the hearth preparing his master's morning meal. He dropped a pinch of dill into the barley-porridge, and shook ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sound, shot suddenly out from the concealment of their night's bivouac with erect heads and startled looks, sputtered heavily over the surface of their liquid bed, and rising into the air, flew in a wide circuit, with whistling wings, away from the scene of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... pit comes a hideous whistling and howling. The noise of wild beasts. The noise of exploding boilers. The noise of a music-hall audience giving ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... that he is whistling? and do you forget that it is a proof that he is furious? What new trial threatens ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... you are whistling, foretells a merry occasion in which you expect to figure largely. This dream for a young woman indicates indiscreet conduct and failure to obtain ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... He went whistling away. Adam sat down upon the broad steps whitened by the moon, filled his pipe, struck a spark from his flint and steel, and was presently enveloped in fragrant smoke. The dancing-master, hesitating ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... always manages to work in detail concerning the manners and customs of the peoples in the countries of his travels; on Friday he told us of Chinese farms and industries, of hawking and other sports, most curious of all, of the pretty amusement of flying pigeons with aeolian whistling pipes ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... upon them, and tried again to make them understand that we wished to do them no harm. Having now approached within about forty yards of us, they made another charge, and threw their boomerangs, which came whistling and whizzing past our ears, one of them striking my horse. I then gave orders to fire, which stayed their mad career for a little. Our pack-horses, which were on before us, took fright when they heard the firing and fearful yelling, and made off for the creek. Seeing some ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... short silence. Mrs Manderson looked at Trent, then hastily looked away. Colour began to rise in her cheeks, and she pursed her lips as if for whistling. Then with a defiant gesture of the shoulders which he remembered she rose suddenly from the piano and placed herself in a chair opposite ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the Moscow bells.... But alas, he no longer believes in the Moscow bells; Rome, laurels... . But he has no belief in laurels even.... We have a conventional attack of Byronic spleen, a grimace from Heine, something of Petchorin—and the machine goes on rolling, whistling, at full speed. "But you may praise me, you may praise me, that I like extremely; it's only in a manner of speaking that I lay down the pen; I shall bore you three hundred times more, you'll ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lips, whistling inaudibly. "Too bad, too bad!" he murmured sympathetically. "We're all hard hit, more or less." He lapsed into dejected apathy, from which Kirkwood, growing at length impatient, found it necessary to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... along, whistling townwards, a big basket over his head. No harm in asking where Mr. Warricombe lived. The reply was prompt: second house on the right hand, rather a large one, not a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... extending his strong brawny arms with a look of determined resolution, he offered himself to the contest. The soldier was nothing abashed by the muscular frame, broad chest, square shoulders, and hardy look of his antagonist, but, whistling with great composure, unbuckled his belt, and laid aside his military coat. The company stood round them, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'that boy's lame and I'm not, and I want to talk to him, too.' And up the lad has to get, and my lord trudges alongside of him with his hands in his pockets, and his cap on the back of his head, a-whistling and talking as easy as you please! And when we come to the cottage, an' the boy's mother come out all in a taking to see what's up, he whips off his cap an' ses he, 'I've brought your son home, ma'am,' ses he, 'because his leg hurt him, and I don't think that stick is enough ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cabin'd ships at sea, The boundless blue on every side expanding, With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves, Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine, Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails, She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night, By sailors young and old ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... convulsive trembling in his limbs, endeavoring to divert his thoughts to other things. Something within was ridiculing him, saying, "If you tremble now, before the supreme moment, how will you conduct yourself when you see blood flowing, houses burning, and bullets whistling?" ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... moonlight at the end of February. The bedroom windows were open to the cold clear air. Tom was not sleepy, and he lay for a long time recalling the dreams and emotions that had so stirred him earlier in the evening, as he had listened to the Marquis's playing. He kept whistling softly to himself such bars of the music as he could remember. Dan's chamber faced west, and Tom's bed was so placed that he could look out, without raising his head from the pillow, over the court in the rear of the Inn and into the misty depths of Lovel's Woods ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Rob did not meet until the next evening, when she rowed herself home from Dalveigh. He was at the shore to tie up her boat and help her out. They walked up the sands together in the heart of the autumn sunset, with the northwest wind whistling in their ears and the great star of the lighthouse gleaming wanly out against the golden sky. Nora felt uncomfortable, and resented it. Rob Fletcher was nothing to her; he never had been anything but the good friend to whom she told her strange thoughts and ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... nearer, and he would be able to make sure. Yes, now he was near enough. Yes, this man was the same height and not unlike in figure, but he was much younger. He was not the one who had been in the carriage with His Majesty. He was not more than thirty years old. He began swinging his cane and whistling a music-hall song softly as Marco passed ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bowed back by the empty fireplace, and looked across at Nigel with all the harsh lines of her old ruddled face softening into love and pride. The young Squire was busy cutting bird-bolts for his crossbow, and whistling softly as he worked. Suddenly he looked up and caught the dark eyes which were fixed upon him. He leaned forward and patted ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... away whistling. "A simple fellow is the black," he said to himself. "Three soverens ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... himself, been looking on, I think that even he must have admitted that he never saw any one stand so fiercely upright as I did behind mine, while the balls were rapping into it as fast as if a fellow had been hammering a nail on the opposite side, not to mention the numbers that were whistling past, within the eighth of an inch of every part of my body, both before and behind, particularly in the vicinity of my nose, for which the upper part of the tree ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him—the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trudged whistling up the path, striking at the hollyhocks with his rod, and wondering how long it would take Sally to brush the mud ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... be?" thought the young man, admiring the utter fearlessness with which she rode; then, feeling a little piqued, as he saw how the distance between them was increasing, he exclaimed, "Be she woman, or be she witch, I'll overtake her"; and, whistling to his own fleet animal, he too dashed ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... most unhappy man of men Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough Within thy hearing, or thou liest now Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den; O miserable chieftain!—where and when Wilt thou find patience?—Yet, die not, do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow; Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and Gracey sure enough. My head almost turned round, and I felt my heart beat—beat in a way it never did when the bullets were singing and whistling all about. It was the suddenness of it, I expect. I looked at them for a bit. They didn't see me, and were just looking about them as I did. They were dressed very quiet, but Gracey had a little more ornament on her, and a necklace or something ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... I tell you," I cried viciously; and there was another pause, during which Pomp made a low whistling noise, which was not such a very ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... not even touch the mallet, which was lying on the ground. He came nearer, looked at the animal, threw at his head a clump of earth which flattened out against the white hair, and he started off again, whistling. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... for those whistling heralds of death, how he waited for the approach of those whirring missiles to whom the transportation of a man to another world in a moment is nothing! They knew him well already and did ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... her lessons in book-keeping, practiced the writing hours on heavy masculine strokes, learned to walk without dancing little whirligigs on her tiptoes every other minute, and made some progress in the art of whistling. She felt that she had done much to earn his commendation, and was anxious ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... she broke into a little one-step dance, whistling her own accompaniment. Surely it was a strange proceeding, and yet it came natural to Alice. The young men, too, took heart at her manner of accepting the situation, and chopped away harder than ever at ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... bad boy," Johnnie Green's father said one day. "He's mischievous and destructive; and he's forever screeching and whistling. But there's something about him that I can't help liking.... Maybe it's because he always has ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... on deck again he noted that the "Bertha Millner" had already left the whistling-buoy astern. Off to the east, her sails just showing above the waves, was a pilot-boat with the number 7 on her mainsail. The evening was closing in; the Farallones were in plain sight dead ahead. Far behind, in a mass of shadow just ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... filing cabinet, unlocked it and searched through it, whistling tunelessly. He found a folder, pulled it ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there is an AFFLATED style,—when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin walked into ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... front was growing hotter. At least six or seven hundred sharpshooters were sending a fire which would have annihilated them if it had not been for the trees. As it was, fragments of bark, twigs, and leaves showered about them. The whistling of the bullets and their chugging as they struck the trees made a ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... often only a boy. Very likely rather a young terror in his way: shy before elders, but a desperate wag with his contemporaries. He had a habit of whistling during office hours; he took too long for dinner, and was much given to descending the stairs four at a time and shaking the premises, blurring the copying-book and under-stamping the letters. When sent to the bank, a few yards distant, he was absent for an hour. Cigarettes and late hours may have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... fearless bearing would awe the mob. But they only jeered him, and finding the attack growing hotter and more determined, he finally gave the order to fire. The howitzers belched forth on the crowd, the soldiers levelled their pieces, and the whistling of minie-balls was heard on every side. Men and women, reeled and fell on the sidewalk and in the street. One woman, with her child in her arms, fell, pierced with a bullet. The utmost consternation followed. The crowd knew from sad experience that the police would use their clubs, but they seemed ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... barely dipping his oars. It was slack tide now and the pea-pod just held her own. Down on the breeze floated a distant, melancholy note, the voice of the whistling buoy south of Roaring Bull Ledge, two miles from Isle au Haut. Was it ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... sack across his back and went away, whistling merrily. And so great were his strides that in less than a minute he ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... invirted; the Curvature being upwards in stead of downwards as those of most birds are- the substance of the beak is as flexable as whalebone and at a little distance precisely resembles that substance. their note is like that of the common whistling or grey plover tho reather louder, and more varied, and their habits are the same with that bird so far as I have been enabled to learn, with this difference however that this bird sometimes lights in the water and swims.- it generally feads ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... "You heard me whistling a little while ago outside? That was to give him a hint, as I came along, that it was time to bring in the dinner; ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the bridge of boats. It was the first time the boys had been under fire; and although they kept a good countenance, they acknowledged to each other afterwards that they had felt extremely uncomfortable as they traversed the bridge with the balls whistling over their heads, and sometimes striking the water close by and sending a shower of spray over ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... man gazed in turn at his countrymen and at the sergeants; and then, as if struck by the curious contrast between the courtesy of the former and the rudeness of the latter, he laughed right out, swept together his winnings, and walked away from the table, whistling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... slight breeze over the face of the waters, and then, as if some vast battering train had suddenly opened its hundred mouths of terror, vomiting forth showers of grape and other missiles, came astounding thunder-claps, and forked lightnings, and rain, and hail, and whistling wind—all in such terrible union, yet such fearful disorder, that man, the last to take warning, or feel awed by the anger of the common parent, Nature, bent his head in lowliness and silence to her voice, and awaited tremblingly the passing away ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the young Engineer officer very sharply and clearly, at the same time stepping a couple of paces down from the ridge over which a frontal fire of bullets now flew whistling from the loopholed houses in the town. 'For God's sake, shout and hurry up your men, or our chance this night ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... orders. The butcher's boy came whistling down the lane to deliver the rump-steak or mutton-chop I had decided on for dinner; the greengrocer delivered his vegetables; the cheesemonger took solemn affidavit concerning the freshness of his stale eggs and the superior quality of a curious article ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... buggy containing Judge Baxter and his two companions drove into the yard. The wagon belonging to Mr. Hallett, the undertaker, was at the front door, and Hallett and his assistant were loading in the folding chairs. Mr. Hallett was whistling a popular melody, but, somehow or other, the music only emphasized the lonesomeness. There is little cheer ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him, and as he called to him in a voice of anguished warning that was drowned by the whistling rush of the air currents through the wings of Icarus and the moist whisper of the clouds as through them he cleft a way for himself, there befell the dreaded thing. It seemed as though the strong wings had begun to lose their power. Like a ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... him as if he had been trying to burn up the sun at the equator. In his preaching he is equally intense and earnest. He puts on the steam at once, drives forward at limited mail speed; stops instantly; then rushes onto the next station—steam up instantly; stops again in a moment without whistling; is at full speed forthwith, everybody holding on to their seats whilst the regulator is open; and in this way he continues, getting safely to the end at last, but driving at such a frightfully rapid speed that travellers wonder how it is everything has not been smashed ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Whistling faintly behind his teeth, Forrester zipped up his filled briefcase and went out into the hall. He ignored the masses of students swirling back and forth in the corridors, and, finding a stairway, went up to ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a great big one, with a dozen beds in it, but not a boy that Tom could see except East and himself. East pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and then sat on the bottom of his bed whistling and pulling off his boots. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... melaleuca, backed it, in the thickest part of which we found a deserted native village. The spot was evidently chosen for shelter. The huts were large and long, all facing the same point of the compass, and in every way resembling the huts occupied by the natives of the Darling. Large flocks of whistling ducks, and other wild fowl, flew over our heads to the N.W., as if making their way to some large or favourite waters. My observations placed us in lat. 34 degrees 8 minutes 15 seconds south, and in east long. 141 degrees 9 minutes 42 seconds or nearly so; and I was at a loss to conceive what ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... the tall young man sat down, as if by a prearranged signal, there was a wild outburst of applause, stamping of feet, whistling catcalls, and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... workman in Edison's laboratory caught up a crying child and held it over the phonograph. Here is the phonogram it made, and here in England we can listen to its wailing, for the phonograph reproduces every kind of sound, high or low, whistling, coughing, sneezing, or groaning. It gives the accent, the expression, and the modulation, so that one has to be careful how one speaks, and probably its use will help us to ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... into her head: all the stories she had been told, when a child, of robberies and murders committed on travellers in inns, were now revived in her memory:—every little noise she heard made her fall into tremblings; and the very whistling of the wind, which at another time would have lulled her to sleep, now kept her waking: but these ideal terrors had not long possessed her, before she had an occasion of real ones, more shocking than her most timid fancy could ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... magnetic instant the keen blue eyes flashed a curious message of pleading and apology, then the aviator fell to whistling softly, struck the match and finding no immediate function for it, dropped ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... down on the lowest rung of the ladder, whistling softly to myself. For Freddie Swain's address was no longer 1010 Fifth Avenue, nor was he to be found in the luxurious rooms of the Calumet Club. In fact, it was nearly a year since he had entered either place. For ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... observation of the same qualities in untutored peasant children, I am inclined to think that Russian children are born more agreeable than Western children; yet they seem to be as cheerful and lively as is necessary, and in no way restricted. Whistling, howling, stamping, and kindred muscular exercises begin just over the Western frontier, and increase in violence as one proceeds westward, until Japan is reached, or possibly the Sandwich Islands, by which time, I am told, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the sharp crack of his rifle halted the train. I heard crashings in the thicket. Dick yelled for me to look up the slope, and there I saw three gray deer with white tails raised. I heard a strange, whistling sound. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey |
