"Cackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the cottage and continued some household duties. I sat quite still, with my eyes steadily fixed upon a dark object a little to the left of those white palings. Above my head a starling in a wicker cage was making an insane cackling, on the green patch in front a couple of tame rabbits sat and watched me, pink-eyed, imperturbable. Inside I could hear the slow ticking of an eight-day clock. The woman was humming to herself as she worked. All these things, ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... time the trio wandered about without making any further discoveries of importance until they came to a thicket, somewhat similar to the one near which they had been cast on shore, but much smaller. On entering it they were startled by a loud cackling noise, accompanied by the whirring ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'The man forlorn Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.' 'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn, Then spread his sooty wings and flitted to the croft With cackling laugh; Whom I, being half Enraged, called after, giving ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... meal. The poorest providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their producers. Who has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch and longed for cream on a dairy farm? What city boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connection between the cackling of hens and the certitude of fresh eggs on the table at the next meal? What muncher of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant has not thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... field and sky and forest fed his starved soul with one kind of beauty; and the sweet sounds of the outdoor world intoxicated him with another. The low of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the crowing of chanticleers, the cackling of hens, the gobble of turkeys, the multitudinous songs of the birds enveloped him in a sort of musical atmosphere. For the first time since his restoration to hope, the past seemed like a dream, and these few blissful moments became a prophecy of a new and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... neck tightly, quickly put an end to his resistance—and his existence at the same time; while his two wives, or rather widows, rushed back into the thick underbrush to avoid a like fate, making a great cackling and ado over the terrible catastrophe that had befallen ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... robbed and assaulted," Ezra said, steadying himself against the mantelpiece, for he was still weak and giddy. "Don't all start cackling, but do what I ask you. Light ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... out of the barn, listening to her cackling laugh, and not feeling comfortable until he had found his way into the open air. He at once gave orders to the stablemen and gardeners to search the barn and to turn out the strangers ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... stone upon another. Several single stones lay about, promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag-staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling bean-poles. For the heavy booming of cannon rose the "quauk!" of ducks and the cackling of hens. We went to the spot which tradition points out as the place where Jane McCrea met her death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below; women stood at their washing-tubs, and white-headed children stared at us from above; nor from the unheeding river or the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... we were to explain why the brilliant life of Magna Graecia was snuffed out suddenly, like a candle, without any appreciably efficient cause—how we listened to our preachers cackling about the inevitable consequences of Sybaritic luxury, and to the warnings of sage politicians concerning the dangers of mere town-patriotism as opposed to worthier systems of confederation! How we drank it all in! And how it warmed the cockles of our hearts to think ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... seemed full of new life. Many strange sounds were now audible, and the grasses waved as if stirred by some secret vital force. Frogs croaked lustily in a chorus; now and again some birds uttered a sharp discordant cry; while at no great distance, yet out of range, ducks could be heard cackling in the wet reeds. Yourii, however, felt no desire to shoot, but he shouldered his gun and turned homeward, listening to sounds of crystalline clearness in the grey ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... be bought, edelweiss penwipers, wooden paper-cutters, and clocks with chamois climbing wooden rocks. Nothing apparently in that shop had been "made in Germany." When we reached the verandah of the "Nassauer Hof" we were gladdened by bows from the "Assessor" and the student, who with the "cackling geese" were seated at a long table consuming piles of Apfelkuchen, Streuselkuchen, and Napfkuchen to an ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... her cord hood that for so long had not come out of its press. She washed her face in a bucket of water: that and the press and her bed with grey woollen curtains were all the furnishing her room had. The straw of the roof caught in her hood when she moved, and she heard her old father-in-law cackling to the serving-maids through ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... larger than the Sand-hill Crane, the latter having a total length of from forty to forty-two inches. The Sand-hill species may be distinguished from the Whooping-crane by its slate-blue color. The cackling, whooping, and screaming voices of an assembled multitude of these birds cannot be described. They can be heard for miles upon the open plains. These birds are found in Florida and along the Gulf coast as well ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... more delicious than what I find elsewhere, the bees knowing by instinct who they are working for; and the poultry is fatter and tenderer, the hens being careful never to over-fatigue themselves, and the peacocks and the geese not to exhaust themselves in screaming and cackling. All nature, alive and dead, takes upon itself a trimmer and more perfect seeming within ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... so soon as she an egg doth lay, (Spreads the fame of her doing what she may.) About the yard she cackling now doth go, To tell what 'twas she at her nest did do. Just thus it is with some professing men, If they do ought that good is, like our hen They can but cackle on't where e'er they go, What their right hand doth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gentleman might have spent his summer holidays after Sir Roger's death. It stands behind a high iron gate, surmounted by a handsome coat of arms; and before it there lies a pleasant patch of greensward, with a pond and a colony of cackling geese, which craned their necks and screamed at ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... down the steps, the whole family standing in the open door, with Mr. Snow, in his glasses, behind his good-natured, cackling flock, thoroughly glad that his protective services were deemed of so small value ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... flitted over the figure of my phantom had not yet vanished, and was enfolding me, diffused in the air.... It was the flush of dawn. All at once I was conscious of extreme fatigue and turned homewards. As I passed the poultry-yard, I heard the first morning cackling of the geese (no birds wake earlier than they do); along the roof at the end of each beam sat a rook, and they were all busily and silently pluming themselves, standing out in sharp outline against the milky sky. From time to time they all rose at once, and after a short flight, settled again in ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... room. The others, conducted by Robin, had all trooped out to inspect what Lady Susan gaily insisted upon referring to as the "Cottage Poultry Farm," and distantly through the open window came the fluttered cackling of the White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, resentful of this unaccountable intrusion of strangers ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... imp sat in the back of Keith's brain and criticised sardonically; Why will big women persist in being kittenish? Why doesn't she mend that awful rent, it's fairly sloppy! Suppose she thinks that kind of talk is funny! I do wish she wouldn't laugh in that shrill, cackling fashion! In short, the very tricks that an hour ago were jolly and amusing were now tiresome. Having been distrait, ungallant, masculinely put out for another fifteen minutes, he abruptly excused himself, sought out ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... senile, cackling laugh. He did not want to laugh, but laughed again and, stooping, reached for the bullets. He stared at his fingers, bewildered; they groped helplessly at a spot a foot from the place where lay the two bullets with ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... he had fallen even while the worthy smith had been talking to him overnight, his ears were assailed by the peaceful and comfortable sounds inseparable from farmhouse life and occupation. He heard the cackling of hens, the grunting of pigs, and the rough voices of the hinds as they got the horses out of the sheds, and prepared to commence the labours of the day with harrow or plough. These sounds were familiar ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... was in some diminutive room ashore; and my mistake was the more natural, as we had three horses, a dog, several pigs, hens, geese, and a canary bird on board, all respectively neighing, barking, grunting, cackling, and singing, as if ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... hours it was a question whether the cable would part or hold on: had the latter occurred, the frigate must have gone on shore. After hoping, wishing and expecting a breeze from the eastward, it made its appearance by cat's-paws. We weighed, and found the cackling and one strand of the cable cut through. As the wind freshened we worked up to our old station off Point St. Matthew, and anchored. The following morning we reconnoitred Brest, could make out fourteen of the enemy's ships of the line with their top-gallant ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... time, and then there was a cruel Scolding. However, in this Interim I did not leave off Feasting, Gaming, and other extravagant Diversions. And in short, my Father continuing to rate me, saying he would have no such cackling Gossips under his Roof, and ever and anon threatning to discard me, I march'd off, remov'd to another Place with my Pullet, and she brought me some ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... Lake Tanganika, been compelled by the absurd demands or fears of a crew of Wajiji to return to Unyanyembe without having resolved the problem of the Rusizi River, we had surely deserved to be greeted by everybody at home with a universal giggling and cackling. But Capt. Burton's failure to settle it, by engaging Wajiji, and that ridiculous savage chief Kannena, had warned us of the negative assistance we could expect from such people for the solution of a geographical problem. We had enough good sailors with us, who were entirely under ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Havana's sensuous-philtred Mead Dispels the cackling Hag of Night at Need, And, foggy-aureoled, the Smoke reveals The Poppy Flowers that ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... you the pains to dig out: it is a cheese, which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, and whereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best; it is a sack-posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg; but then, lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... are getting! The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished, though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced march to watch the labours of some pale mechanician seeking after perpetual motion and indulge in a little dry, cackling ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... pains to dig out. It is a cheese which, by how much the richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, and whereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best. It is a sack-posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is attended with an egg. But then, lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm. In consequence of these momentous truths, the Grubaean sages have always chosen to convey their precepts ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a great cackling and scurrying among the fowls. Those in the garden ran and cackled, those in the cornfield ran and cackled, those in the farmyard ran and cackled. They all ran as fast as they could to the ...
— Prince and Rover of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... morainal heaps—great hills of drift matter, heaps of worn pebbles and rolling plains of estuarine sediment. Much of this land seemed untouched with cultivation, and sublime forests of the loftiest trees covered it. The canal passed through solitudes, where the silence was only broken by the cackling laugh of a crane-like bird, marching in lines along the banks, or perched like sleepy sentinels amid the outstretched ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... fuss. No one seems to know the cause of it, but it was probably from her wanting him to be blind to everything on earth but her, and a man isn't going to be blind when he wants to see, and then she got hurt. I'd rather live in a house with a cackling hen or a grunting pig than the sort of person who is always getting hurt. But she's very pretty. Pink-and-white pretty, with uplifting eyes and a little mouth that shuts itself when mad and says nothing, and oozes more disagreeableness than if it talked. He still thinks there isn't another ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... the conductor whose voice was drowned by the cackling of the hens which were at that moment being lifted into the freight car. "I forgot to call you, Senor de Rey. I think they are waiting for you at ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... succeeded in reaching the doorstep, over which I tumbled into a pool of muddy water that lay before my father's cottage door. Ah, how vividly I remember the horror of my poor mother when she found me sweltering in the mud amongst a group of cackling ducks, and the tenderness with which she stripped off my dripping clothes and washed my dirty little body! From this time forth my rambles became more frequent and, as I grew older, more distant, until at last I had wandered far and near on the shore and in the woods around our humble dwelling, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... something between a hoot and a shriek, which causes us to cover our ears. After such an experience, we turn with relief to the sober hens who are contented to cluck peacefully through life, reserving their cackling until they have done something of which to boast, and wish to inform us that the egg they have laid ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... always takes his nap during the day in the open fields, along the sides of the ridges, or under the mountain, where he can look down upon the busy farms beneath and hear their many sounds, the barking of dogs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of hens, the voices of men and boys, or the sound of travel upon the highway. It is on that side, too, that he keeps the sharpest lookout, and the appearance of the hunter above and behind him ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... all took her advice, the barn-yard became a quiet, well-ordered barn-yard again, with only so much cackling and clucking, and so forth, as to give ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... bienvenues," was her gay greeting, seasoned with a high cackling laugh, as she waved us to two rickety chairs. "No, I'm not going out, not yet; there is plenty of time, plenty of time. It is you who are good, si aimables, to come out here to see me. And tired, too, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... time the chickens were cackling and screeching, as the house in the water lunged from one side to the other. It was a large new coop and built of strong material that made ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... presently above the conversation, which had again become general, his cackling voice was ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... relief she laughed, a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it as ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... she, poor thing, ventured to form a nest, and actually hatched a fine family of chickens amongst these sacred shavings! Loud was the outcry, and great the horror she occasioned when she marched forth cackling, with her merry brood around her. She and "all her little ones" were sacrificed instantly. What became of their bodies we could never learn; probably the workmen were not too ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... a hen flies, fluttering and cackling, so did Mrs. Pryor flutter and cackle, up the street, with Mrs. Weight, still breathless, pounding and gasping ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... old motherly hens, and pert, lively young ones; while the cocks strutted about and crowed one against another. Then a hen would come out of the hen-house, where the nests were, telling all the world, by her loud, proud cackling, that she had laid an egg. What noise there was then, for cocks and hens would all join in chorus. Some of the hens seemed to get together to have a quiet chat, as if they were talking over their family affairs; about which they did not always ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... old woman began to laugh like a cackling hen, and she laughed so loud and laughed so long that it scared me. I got up and pretended to be going home, but when I had gone a little way I hid behind a big tree, and watched the old woman's antics. She kept on laughing for some time, and then she reached out ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... snorts. On the barnyard gate the old Shanghai was lustily challenging to mortal combat one of his kind three miles across country. From the river arose the strident scream of her blue gander jealously guarding his harem. In the poultry-yard the hens made a noisy cackling party, and the stable lot was filled with cattle bellowing for the freedom of the meadow pasture, as yet ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Paul. "What the dooce am I to do? What shall I do? Suggest something, for Heaven's sake; don't stand cackling there in that unfeeling manner. Can't you see what a terrible, mess I've got into? Suppose—only suppose your sister or one of the servants were to come in, and see ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of one while at Chitimba's village, and they extend as far as Casembe's. I felt as if afloat, and as huts would not fall there was no sense of danger; some of them that happened at night set the fowls a cackling. The most remarkable effect of this one was that it changed the rates of the chronometers; no rain fell after it. No one had access to the chronometers but myself, and, as I never heard of this effect before, I may mention that ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... of birds is come, and the time of the cackling of homely, honest barn-yard fowls, who have never had justice done them. Why do we extol foreign growths and neglect the children of the soil? Where is there a more magnificent bird than the Rooster? What a lofty air! What a spirited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... in a line, were grazing and at times looking toward the house and lowing. The fowls made a colored patch on the dung-heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while two roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they were calling with ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the thorny wilderness vainly searching for suitable material, and was beginning to think that we should be forced to use iron columns for the piers, when one day I stumbled quite by accident on the very thing. Brock and I were out "pot-hunting," and hearing some guinea-fowl cackling among the bushes, I made a circuit half round them so that Brock, on getting in his shot, should drive them over in my direction. I eventually got into position on the edge of a deep ravine and knelt on one knee, crouching down among the ferns. There I had ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... face darkened with anger. Had some serving-maids dared to creep up to watch the doings in the banqueting-hall? But there was no one in the gallery, and she bent down, peering through the stucco balustrade into the hall below. Her attention was arrested by a cackling snigger behind her—a horrid, mocking, wheezy titter in the shadow of the overhanging ornamentation of the banqueting-hall roof, which came low down over the little gallery. She turned quickly and saw the grotesque, ape-like figure of one of the court dwarfs. Her Excellency had introduced ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... might think. Big enough as it goes, but it ain't the size what counts," and he broke into a cackling laugh, wagging his head, as if he held the secret of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season season'd are To their right praise, and true perfection! 1259 SHAKS.: M. of ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... came somewhat to himself he was in a close, stifling room where candle-light from a distance threw weird shadows over the adobe walls. The witch-like voices of a woman and a girl in harsh, cackling laughter, half suppressed, were not far away, and some one, whose face was covered, was holding a glass to his lips. The smell was sickening, and he remembered that he hated the thought of liquor. It did ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... much, that they must save this coin for a meal, that for a bed, this to pay toll on the road. She used such phrases of the gipsy jargon as she had picked up, and made jokes and bantering speeches which set their host cackling with laughter. Osmonde had seen her play a fantastic part before on their whimsical holidays, but never one which suited her so well, and in which she seemed so full of fire and daring wit. She was no Duchess, a man might have sworn, but a tall, splendid, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... (on the other side the hill fell abruptly to the river), and little farms. As the party came in sight of one of these farms, a great cry arose from the dooryard. The poultry was soundly disturbed—squawking, cackling, shrieking their protests noisily—while the deep baying of a dog rose savagely ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... gulls were flying overhead, uttering their well- known cry, and sandpipers coursed along the edge of the water. Here and there lonely wading-birds were stalking about; one of these, the Curiaca (Ibis melanopis), flew up with a low cackling noise, and was soon joined by a unicorn bird (Palamedea cornuta), which I startled up from amidst the bushes, whose harsh screams, resembling the bray of a jackass, but shriller, disturbed unpleasantly the solitude of the place. Amongst the willow bushes were flocks of a handsome bird ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... cock crowed in the yard, and a great uproar followed, with flapping of wings and cackling, grunting, and hoarse cries as if the whole yard were in a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... David said querulously. "You'll set a lot of women cackling, and what they don't know they'll invent. I ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hen cackling, but said: "I am very busy just at present, for this is the eve of a holy day, and I must clean and arrange this room. I will go for ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders. They showed inclinations for a rush, but Kettle held ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... it might, the hens were now scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the variations of their clucking and cackling. It was evident that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered people had existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which the present ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spy had never flown— All things, whatever she might see, In travelling from tree to tree. But, with her offer little pleased— Nay, gathering wrath at being teased,— For such a purpose, never rove,— Replied th' impatient bird of Jove. 'Adieu, my cackling friend, adieu; My court is not the place for you: Heaven keep it free from such a bore!' Madge flapp'd her wings, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... gentleman who goes about in a duster of that particular tint? Or, that gentleman yonder with his eye tied up in a wet handkerchief, do you suppose he's travelling for pleasure? Look at those young people from Omaha: they haven't ceased flirting or cackling since we left Kingston. Do you think everybody has such spirits out at Omaha? But behold a yet more surprising figure than any we have yet seen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... on the garden-gate and cackling airily to a parting visitor, slipped to the ground as Widewood's master suddenly appeared, although just then the first light-hearted smile of that day broke upon his face. It was the parting visitor, also mounted, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... moment came a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she had private business there which only hens can understand. Or it may be that she, too, had built a little house and hidden it away ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... rather ahead of the conclusions as yet reached by contemporary opinion. The best of compliments was paid them by the imitation of other navies; for, when the first one was finished, we sent her abroad on exhibition, much like a hen cackling over its last performance, with the result that we had not long to congratulate ourselves on the newest and best thing. It is this place in a long series of development which gives them ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... smiled once more. And when she found herself alone, and went back towards the Rue Pirouette, she reflected that those three cackling hussies were not worth a rope to hang them. She was, indeed, a little afraid that she might have been seen with them, and the idea somewhat troubled her, for she realised that it would be bad policy to fall out with the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and hired myself to the first Boer-woman whose farm I came to, to make fire under her soap-pot, if I had to live as the rest of the drove did. Can you form an idea, Waldo, of what it must be to be shut up with cackling old women, who are without knowledge of life, without love of the beautiful, without strength, to have your soul cultured by them? It is suffocation only to breathe the air they breathe; but I made them give me room. I told them I should leave, and they knew I came there on ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... observe. He would greet the news of our victorious onsweep with exultant crows, while at the announcement of any temporary set-back he would mutter gloomily and go and scratch under the shrubbery. On Armistice day he quite let himself go, cackling and mafficking round the yard in a manner almost absurd. But who did not unbend a ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... Some of these are white, as if covered with snow, from the deposit upon them of bird-manure. Tens of thousands of wild geese, ducks, gulls, and other water-fowls, were perched upon them, or sporting in the waters of the bay, making a prodigious cackling and clatter with their voices and wings. By the aid of oars and sails we reached the mouth of Sonoma creek about 9 o'clock at night, where we landed and encamped on the low marsh which borders the bay on this side. The ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... hopes of their coming to us, for we had passed several fires. After waiting near an hour I was surprised to see Nelson's assistant come out of the wood: he had wandered thus far in search of plants and told me that he had met with some of the natives. Soon after we heard their voices like the cackling of geese, and twenty persons came out of the wood, twelve of whom went round to some rocks where the boat could get nearer to the shore than we then were. Those who ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the dirt with more than their usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature is in a state ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... 2 A.M. there was a sound throughout the town of fowls cackling, as though they were being disturbed and caught ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... through the mountain forest, and then went humming northward across the quiet lake, down over the wooded littoral and far out to sea Silence once more, and then a mountain cock, who had scorned the sweeping rain, uttered his shrill, cackling, and defiant crow, as he shook the water from his black and golden back and long snaky ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... counted ten and threw up the sponge. The voice at the telephone became louder and more insistent. Flushed, hot and flurried, the G.S.O.3 thrust the receiver into the hands of the G.S.O.2, who handed it on to the General, who dropped it. Nobody spoke. Only the crackling and cackling voice could be heard from the receiver as it hung face downwards at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... said Quin, going forward, and quickly returning with the coop, from which a cackling of ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... seconds the motion ceased, and the noise gradually died away in hollow echoes in the distance—whereupon ensued such a crowing of cocks, cackling of geese, barking of dogs, lowing of kine, neighing of horses, and shouting of men, women, and children amongst the negro and coloured domestics, as baffles all description, whilst the various white inmates of the house ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars—the women who have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge—a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... river at Poplar Ridge, he looked out of the window at the pleasant farmyard of one of the old settlers on the Assiniboine; a fine brick house, with wide verandahs, an automobile before the door, a barnyard full of cackling hens, with a company of fine fat steers in an enclosure—a pleasing picture of farm life, which ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... food. Now and again one would dart quickly away from the flock, running with the swiftness of a pheasant, then suddenly stop, survey the ground in every direction, as if submitting it to examination, and finally, with a cackling note, summon the others to its side. After this a general cackle would spring up, as if they were engaged in some consultation that equally regarded the welfare ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... They all had prudently concluded to wait for the advent of more daylight, and, withdrawing from the barn, went down the yard talking as busily as if they were a lot of hens cackling after a successful venture at egg-laying. It had been left to Charlie to put above the ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... There was the bridge and the ditch. He heard the ducks cackling from the distance. He saw his mills again. Yes, yes, there they were. But their name was ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... fell to cackling grotesquely. "That was the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!—think of it! Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard a strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating my breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered Eden. That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without interruption, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... going swiftly toward the kitchen, and calling to Li Choo. As he went, he was conscious of low, cackling laughter, but when he turned to look, the two Chinamen stood where he had left them, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dodged, and scurried, and squawked, as the staff and the rejected, under Cheon's directions, chivied and danced and screamed between them and their desire, the lubras cheering to the echo every time one of the birds gave in, and stalked, cackling and indignant, up the ladder into the branches of the coolibar; or pursuing runaways that had outwitted them, in shrieking, pell-mell disorder, while Cheon, fat and perspiring, either shouted orders and cheered lustily, bounded ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... out, "What are you all afraid of! Here you are, a lot of grown men with fat bank accounts sitting around in a blue funk because Grant Adams does a little more or less objectionable talking. I don't agree with Grant much more than you do. But you're a lot of old hens, cackling around here because Grant Adams invades the roost to air his views. Let him talk. Let 'em all talk. Talk is cheap; otherwise we wouldn't have free speech." He grinned cynically as he asked, "Haven't you any faith in the Constitution of the fathers? They were smart enough to know ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... me go! How they all followed clamoring after me. My thoughts coursed backward faster than ever I could run away. If you could have heard that motley crew of the barnyard as I did—the hens all cackling, the ducks quacking, the pigs grunting, and the old mare neighing and stamping, you would have thought it a miracle that ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... saw it; and I've seen it every day since the police were taken off guard. Sick!" again came the cackling old laugh. "Sick! Why, she ain't no more sick ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... you would have known all about it," she said with a cackling little giggle. "Mind you tell me as soon as you're told: I want to be one of the first to congratulate your ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... sing as sweetly as the Larke When neither is attended: and I thinke The Nightingale if she should sing by day When euery Goose is cackling, would be thought No better a Musitian then the Wren? How many things by season, season'd are To their right praise, and true perfection: Peace, how the Moone sleepes with Endimion, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on the berries of the Winter's-bark; while numbers of the latter are seen, flitting to and fro, or poised on whirring wings before the bell-shaped blossoms of the fuchsias. [Note 3.] From the deeper recesses of the wood at intervals comes a loud, cackling cry, resembling the laugh of an idiot. It is the call-note of the black woodpecker. And, as if in response to it, a kingfisher, perched on the limb of a dead tree by the beach, now and then utters its shrill, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... exclaimed, cackling again. 'Not you! We mun have no scandals in th' family. But you can go and see him, quiet-like, I reckon. Dost think as John'll be stuck fast for six or seven hundred, or eight hundred? Not John! And happen a bit of money'll come in handy to th' old ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... with a self-control, or an art of hypocrisy equal to that of his ally, emitted a cackling laugh of triumph. But Morton refused to accept the charge. Instead, he spoke with an admirable conviction in his voice, a hint of indignant, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... warriors arrived before the cave, they were amazed at the hilarity which they found there—and inclined, at first, to resent it, being something to which they had no clue. What were all the old fools doing, dancing and cackling about the fire, and wasting good meat by poking it into the fire on the ends of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the haggard are dripping heavily with damp, and the hens and geese, bewildered with the noise and gloom, are cackling with uneasy dread. All one's senses are disturbed. As I walk backwards and forwards, a few yards above and below the door, the little stream I do not see seems to ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... they are led about to amuse mankind. It is astonishing, as well as ludicrous, to see them climb rocks, and tumble or rather roll down precipices. If they are attacked by any person on horseback, they stand erect on their hind legs, shewing a fine set of white teeth, and making a cackling kind of noise. If the horse comes near them, they try to catch him by the legs, and if they miss him, they tumble over and over several times. They are easily speared by a person mounted on a horse that is bold enough ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... bit of eloquent pantomime, Ciprianu turned and hastened out of the room and into the courtyard, whence he soon reappeared amid a great cackling of poultry. He brought with him, tied together by the feet, a cock and a hen of that splendid breed that so strangely resembles, in head and neck, the proudest of Calcutta turkeys. This pair of fowls he presented to Blanka. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... upon the ear. Vast piles of fuel, part neatly corded, part lying in huge logs, with heaps of brush, barricade the brown, paintless farmhouses. Swine, hanging by the ham-strings in the neighboring shed; the barn-yard speckled with the ruffled poultry, some sedate with recent bereavement, others cackling with a dim sense of temporary reprieve; the rough-coated steer butting in the fold, where the timid sheep huddle together in the corner; little boys on a single skate improving the newly frozen horse-pond—these furnish the foreground of the picture during the earlier hours of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... must talk all the time! Of course I talk entirely too much—no one knows that any better than I do—yet I can not help it! I know that my continual cackling is dreadful, and I know just exactly when it begins to bore people, but somehow I can't stop myself, but go right on and on in ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... great stir, sure enough, in the hen-house,—fowls were cackling and screaming with fright, and a curious snapping sound came from one corner. When the light fell here they saw a rough, hairy little animal, with small bright eyes like a pig, and a long smooth tail. But, worst of all, one of the beautiful white Leghorns lay before it, all mangled and ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... independent of all time and tune; grunting of priests answered by squealing of boys, slow Gregorian modulation interrupted by jaunty barrel-organ pipings, an insane, insanely merry jumble of bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, such as would have enlivened a witches' meeting, or rather some mediaeval Feast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music still more fantastic and Hoffmannlike, there was, besides, the magnificence of the piles of sculptured marbles and gilded ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... appointment in Lord Chatham's apartments; which, long the object of desire, now set his teeth on edge. Nor need he have learned much of them then; for he had only to cross the lobby of the east wing, and was in view of the hall barely three seconds. But, unluckily, Lady Dunborough, cackling shrewishly with a kindred dowager, caught sight of him as he passed; and in a trice her old limbs bore her in pursuit. Mr. Fishwick heard his name called, had the weakness to turn, and too late found that he had fallen into the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she cried, with cackling laughter. And I ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... miscellaneous Musical Interlude, commencing with The Lamentations of Jerom-iah! In nasal recitative. To be followed by The favourite Cackling Quartette, by Two ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... should he understand the farmyard value of a fowl? It may possibly strike him as odd that vegetables should be so dear when, as he rides about, he sees whole fields green with them. He sees plenty of fowls, and geese, and turkeys, gobbling and cackling about the farmyards, and can perhaps after awhile faintly perceive that they are the perquisites of the ladies of the tenants' households, who drive him a very hard bargain. He, too, has cast aside suits, shoes, hats, and so ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... wrapped about her head. Moreover, the circumstance that the two old aunts, with still more extraordinary gowns and be-ribboned head-dresses than I had yet seen them wear, were sweeping along one on each side of her and cackling their welcomes in French, whilst the Baroness was looking about her in a way so gentle as to baffle all description, nodding graciously first to one and then to another, and then adding in her flute-like ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... one of his cackling, ironic laughs. "I guess I'm not worrying as much about science as I might. But as to their coming back—why, it stands to reason that they'll have just as much curiosity about us as we have about them. Curiosity's a woman's strong point, you know. Oh, they'll come back all right! The only ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... which Jaques's was one, where we returned by another road to spend the night. After supper, we went to sleep in the barn, upon some straw spread with sheep-skins, in the midst of the continual grunting of hogs, squealing of pigs, bleating and coughing of sheep, barking of dogs, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, and, especially, a goodly quantity of fleas and vermin, of no small portion of which we were participants; and all with an open barn door, through which a fresh northwest wind was blowing. Though we could not sleep, we could not complain, inasmuch as ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... sueh; berry silly, obstinacious ol' man. Yes, suh indeed." And he went off cackling to himself. He had only just gone when I heard footsteps again behind my azalea clump, and Miss ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... porch. Mr. Brown, the overseer, was in the door of my half-brother Richard's room, with my brother's gun in his hands. At the end of the porch was a small room, called the "saddle room." A pane of glass was out of the window and a hen flew out, cackling. Aunt Judy, the colored woman, went in to get the egg, and walked in front of Mr. Brown, who raised the gun and said: "Judy, I am going to shoot you," not thinking the gun was loaded. It went off, and aunt Judy fell. Mr. Brown began to wring his hands and cry in great ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... hens, ducks, and geese fell a prey to it, and were seen by their surviving relatives featherless, pale, and stiff, borne away to some unknown place whence no fowl returned. Blot was waked one night by a great cackling and fluttering in the hen-house, and peeping down from her perch saw a great hand glide along the roost, clutch her beloved mother by the leg, and pull her off, screaming dolefully, 'Good-by, good-by, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... orchard. She realized now that she was utterly worn out with the excitement of her morning adventure. Mary and the little boys were playing in the old wagon that stood in the barnyard. She could hear them laughing and shouting. The old pig was grunting over his trough, the hens were cackling. She really ought to go and gather the eggs. She felt just then that drying dishes was an insupportable burden. It was always so with Elizabeth. She could toil strenuously all day, building a playhouse, or engineering a new game, running, leaping, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... to my story I return again: The trembling widow, and her daughters twain, This woful cackling cry with horror heard, Of those distracted damsels in the yard; And starting up beheld the heavy sight, 720 How Reynard to the forest took his flight, And 'cross his back, as in triumphant scorn, The hope and pillar of the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... John Tarwater stepped upon; and straight across the beach and up the trail toward Chilcoot he headed, cackling his ancient chant, a very Grandfather Argus himself, with no outfit worry in the world, for he did not possess any outfit. That night he slept on the flats, five miles above Dyea, at the head of canoe ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... distinctly heard. Whistling ducks, in close flocks, flew generally much higher, and with great rapidity. No part of the country we had passed, was so well provided with game as this; and of which we could have easily obtained an abundance, had not our shot been all expended. The cackling of geese, the quacking of ducks, the sonorous note of the native companion, and the noises of black and white cockatoos, and a great variety of other birds, gave to the country, both night and day, an extraordinary ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... description given by my companion of how these birds with magnificent snowy plumage would come flying in over the dark forest high in air and then volplane to the little pond where, in the heavily massed bushes, their nests were thickly clustered. With vivid distinctness he imitated the cackling notes of the {150} old birds as they settled on their nests, and the shrill cries of the little ones, as on unsteady legs they ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... unchewable old poultry, tough tup-mutton, stringy cow beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food. With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way, like a goose that has ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... weak, nervous, careless, and defiant in his attitude in regard to public opinion concerning his private life. He at one time asserted the right of living in any way he might choose, and resented the criticism of a few cackling busybodies, even though it was not in accordance with the views of the late Mr. Edward Cocker. It was his affair, and if his ideas differed from those of his critics, it was no business of theirs. His independence ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... stands Badged with black shame in all the baser lands. Use him, and—spit on him! That's Gentile wont; Make him gold-conduit, and befoul the font,— That's the true despot-plan through all the days, And cackling Gratianos chorus praise. "The Jew shall have all justice." Shall he so? The tyrant drains, his gold, then bids him—"Go!" Shylock? The name bears insult in its sound; But he was nobler than the curs who hound The patient Hebrew from his home, and drive Deathward the stronger souls they dread ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... stand hearing a carved turkey like you cackling rot about marriage. Think of your own mamma. If she hadn't got ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... Born in a lower station, Gilly Jillingham might have taken honours as a "prig"; in his own with less luck he might have been an Ishmaelite generally shunned. Phillipa also might have degenerated into a mere soured cackling hanger-on; but they were not pariahs by caste, but Brahmins, and entitled to all due honour so long as they floated on top of the wave. Perhaps if near drowning no finger would have been outstretched ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... circle, were two old men (one of them dead now), in Old Chester. "Well, Heaven knows a parson and a doctor are about as good friends as a woman can have." . . . But no women friends belonging to her past. "Thank the Lord! If she had a lot of cackling females coming to see her, I wouldn't want to!" . . . She is always so ready to ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... struck at last the open road beyond, and saw against a fading sky the low black bulk of the nunnery, pierced with orange squares. Past its landward wall, lanterns moved slowly, clustered here and there by twos and threes, and dispersed. Cackling argument came from the ditch, wherever the lantern-bearers halted; and on the face of the wall, among elbowing shadows, shone dim strips of scarlet. Both pillars of the gate were plastered ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... making a working constitution. We went to see them one day, and heard talking going on, but it all came to nothing. Of one thing we may be quite sure, that if this unlucky country ever does get set straight, it will not be done by a Mexican Congress sitting and cackling ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... white hen roosting next to the cock; then his eye fell upon Pigling Bland, squeezed up in a corner. He made a singular remark—"Hallo, here's another!"—seized Pigling by the scruff of the neck, and dropped him into the hamper. Then he dropped in five more dirty, kicking, cackling hens upon ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... a curious place. On account of the intense heat everything is brought alive to the market, and the quacking, cackling, gobbling, and crowing that go on are really marvellous. The whole street is alive with birds in baskets, cages, and coops, or tied by the leg and thrown down anyhow. There were curious pheasants and jungle-fowl from Perak, doves, pigeons, quails, besides cockatoos, parrots, parrakeets, and lories. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... farm buildings there awakens the old familiar chorus, the bleating of calves and lambs, and the answering bass of their distressed mothers; while the hens are cackling in the hay-loft, and the geese are noisy in the spring run. But the most delightful of all farm work, or of all rural occupations, is at hand, namely, sugar-making. In New York and northern New England the beginning of this season varies from the first to the middle of March, sometimes ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... round and judge for yourself. Every daily paper panders more or less to the lowest tastes of the mob, —while if the higher sentiments of man are not actually sneered at, they are made a subject for feeble surprise, or vapid 'gush.' An act of heroic unselfishness meets with such a cackling chorus of amazed, half-bantering approval from the leading-article writers, that one is forced to accept the suggestion implied,— namely that to BE heroic or unselfish is evidently an outbreak of noble instinct that is entirely unexpected and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... cackling so cocksurely Of some heavenly woodland dell Where the pipes of Pan blow purely; I have sampled ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... dignity). I am not aware that I wanted to get out of it. I merely proposed in your—(PODBURY suddenly explodes.) What are you cackling at now? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... but then no morning broke— Only a something showed that night was dead. A sea-bird, cackling like a devil, spoke, And the fog drew away and hung like lead. Like mighty cliffs it shaped, sullen and red; Like glowering gods at watch it did appear, And sometimes drew ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... a solemn sound in the man's face and voice, and dignity in his few and impressive gestures. It could hardly be believed that he was not in earnest; and yet Ralph remembered too the relish with which the man had dispersed his foul tales the evening before, and the cackling laughter with which their recital was accompanied. But it was all very wholesome ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Royalty, HUM, In that Palace or China-shop (Brighton, which is it?) Where FUM had just come to pay HUM a short visit.— Near akin are these Birds, tho' they differ in nation (The breed of the HUMS is as old as creation); Both, full-crawed Legitimates—both, birds of prey, Both, cackling and ravenous creatures, half way 'Twixt the goose and the vulture, like Lord Castlereagh. While FUM deals in Mandarins Bonzes, Bohea, Peers, Bishops and Punch, HUM.—are sacred to thee So congenial their ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. Sometimes when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... responded the Tenderloin Dionysius, not without a shade of regret in his cackling voice. Early eaters and short stayers reduced the percentage on tips, while moderate orders of drinks meant immoderate ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... foot and on horseback, and left their horses in the bushes and crowded the streets and filled the saloon of one Jack Woods—who had the cackling laugh of Satan and did not like the Guard, for good reasons, and whose particular pleasure was to persuade some customer to stir up a hornet's nest of trouble. From the saloon the crowd moved up towards the big spring at the foot of Imboden Hill, where, under beautiful trunk-mottled beeches, was ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... natural vigour and ability to maintain existence in adverse circumstances of its wild ancestors. As much can be said of the creolla fowl of the pampas; and some observations of mine on the habits of this variety will perhaps serve to throw light on a vexed question of Natural History—namely, the cackling of the hen after laying, an instinct which has been described as "useless" and "disadvantageous." In fowls that live unconfined, and which are allowed to lay where they like, the instinct, as we know it, is certainly detrimental, since ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... with the barking of curs, bawling of mastiffs, bleating of sheep, prating of parrots, tattling of jackdaws, grunting of swine, girning of boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of mice, squeaking of weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays, peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of swallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees, rammage of hawks, chirming ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the arm, and, ducking his head, fairly charged me past the 'longshoremen and out through the doorway into the street. As we gained it I heard the stranger in the taproom behind me break into a high, cackling laugh. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... group of antlers topping the bracken. The wild life of these forests crawled among thickets or lurked in sinister shadows. No bird poured out its heart in them; no lark soared out of them, breasting heaven. At rare intervals a note fell on the ear—the scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down the long waterway until the sound sank and was ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... taking a book from his crowded shelves, while Mr. By water and Mrs. Pattison smoked, with the after- luncheon coffee—and in those days a woman with a cigarette was a rarity in England—and sometimes, at a caustic mot of the former's there would break out the Rector's cackling laugh, which was ugly, no doubt, but, when he was amused and at ease, extraordinarily full of mirth. To me he was from the beginning the kindest friend. He saw that I came of a literary stock and had literary ambitions; and he tried to direct me. "Get to the bottom of something," he would say. "Choose ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the shade of some gigantic sycamore or overhanging willow. Here would he smoke his pipe of a sultry afternoon, enjoying the soft southern breeze and listening with silent gratulation to the clucking of his hens, the cackling of his geese, and the sonorous grunting of his swine; that combination of farmyard melody, which may truly be said to have a silver sound, inasmuch as it conveys a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving |
