"Humming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the crest of the hill, and in sight of the shack, shining with early lamp-light deep down among the trees of the gully, I could see Colin innocently at work on a salad, and hear him humming to himself his eternal "Vive ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... felt the effects of the fisherman's generosity, and that without needing to confess to him any necessities. As it was the custom for the little populace of Nisida to spend its leisure hours before Solomon's cottage, the old man, while he walked slowly among the different groups, humming his favourite song, discovered moral and physical weaknesses as he passed; and the same evening he or his daughter would certainly be seen coming mysteriously to bestow a benefit upon every sufferer, to lay a balm upon every wound. In short, he united in his person all those occupations whose business ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... just settled down at my writing-table, to appease the hungry appetite of my editor in Calcutta, there came a sound of footsteps on the stair, and the Devotee, humming a tune to herself, entered, and bowed before me. I lifted ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... eye!" yelled back a courageous Irishman. "What do you think these oars are, anyway—a flock of humming birds? Whoever heard of feathering a hundred-ton weight? Feather Pike's Peak, say I; it's ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... talks, these lungs that shout, These thews that hustle us about, This brain that fills the skull with schemes, And its humming hive ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... what they call a dance of peace, and is carried on in a manner like this: They—or all that wish to participate in the dance—form in a circle around the camp-fire, singing, or rather humming, a certain tune. I went to the people of the train and told them that the Indians and myself were going to have a peace dance, and all that wished to see it could come to the camp- fire and look on. I think every ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... changing his birch-bark shoes and the linen bands on his legs, started off to see the squire. After he had got three roubles from Volgin, and the same sum from Nicholas Petrovich, he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unbinding sheaves, others ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... enjoy the pleasant walk freely; for you know, or if you do not know I hope you will learn, that it is always those who are busiest at their work that can be merriest in their hours of leisure. Nothing gives us such an appetite for enjoyment as hearty work. So Amy tripped on, humming a cheerful hymn, while poor Kitty kept on saying over and over again the words of her hymn, and vainly trying to stop her ears from hearing and her eyes from seeing all the pleasant sights and sounds around her. But the birds were so busy singing, and the fish kept ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... him, do you ever reflect how little you know what goes on within him? Suppose that in his nerves there is a craving ten thousand times louder and stronger than your most virtuous arguments? What good will those arguments do? No use whispering poetry to a man in a boiler shop. No use humming a love song in ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the tune to be ground. And there is but one tune, and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind! Here's the Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why, good people, when he comes smoothly spinning through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going benevolent Humming-Top, and when you come about him with your complaints of the Grubber, you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is! What do you think of his showing himself to-night, that I may have all the blame on Monday? What do you think of his having had me over the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... are many and beautiful. Sun-birds rival the flashing colors of the humming-birds in the jungle openings; king-fishers of large size and brilliant blue plumage make the river banks gay; shrieking paroquets with coral-colored beaks and tender green feathers, abound in the forests; great, heavy-billed ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... themselves. She whined like a dog in great distress, and dragged herself along apparently with the greatest difficulty. As I pursued her, she ran very nimbly, and presently flew a few yards. Then, as I went on, she flew farther and farther each time, till at last she got up, and went humming through the woods as if she had no interest in them. I went back and caught one of the young, which had simply squatted close to the ground. I then put in my coatsleeve, when it ran and nestled ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... than ever, and when she thought she caught a triumphant gleam in Mr. Bombus's eyes and heard him humming in an aggravating undertone, "In the Sweet By-and-by," she could restrain herself no longer, but raised her hand and struck him a sounding blow. Instantly she was most deeply repentant, and would have begged his pardon; but as she turned to address him, his cocked ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... the Ladrones (Anson's Voyage). Those found in the Pellew Islands Crawfurd) are believed to be feral; and lastly, it is asserted that they have become feral in New Zealand, but whether this is correct I know not.) as that a humming-bird should be found in the Old World. From the character of the other gallinaceous birds of Africa, it is not probable that Gallus is an African genus. We need not look to the western parts of Asia, for Messrs. Blyth ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... who constantly sings a Voluntary in spite of the whole Company, was more musical than ordinary after reading my Paper; and has not been contented with that, but has danced up to the Glass in the Middle of the Room, and practised Minuet-steps to his own Humming. The incorrigible Creature has gone still further, and in the open Coffee-house, with one Hand extended as leading a Lady in it, he has danced both French and Country-Dances, and admonished his supposed Partner ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and went on. The house seemed strangely quiet to him, though he could hear Winnie humming in the kitchen and appetizing odors promised a dinner on time. In the upstairs hall, Rosemary tip-toed to meet him, her eyes ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... weak and unsteady; and after clearing the northern end of Luzon the Retriever kicked round in a belt of light and baffling airs for a week. Then the monsoon freshened somewhat and the Retriever once more rolled lazily away on her course, with young Matt Peasley humming chanteys on her quarter-deck and pondering the mystery that confronts all mankind in their first adventure in fatherhood. Would it be a boy or a girl? He was expressing to himself for perhaps the thousandth time the hope that ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Lady Juliana Douglas," said the little Baronet, with much difficulty hobbling towards her, and attempting to take her hand. "Come, Harry, love; here, Cupid," cried she; and without noticing the enraged Sir Sampson, she passed on, humming a tune, and leaning upon ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... at the window with his hands in his trousers' pockets, humming a little tune and watching this amazing phenomenon which a whole village had believed to be witchcraft, as though the thing surprised him not one whit; as though, in fact, he was a trifle amused at it. Which indeed ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... was cast, and there was no going back. She heard the deep voice humming the magic melody as he came. In a moment the superb figure came into sight, moving with that royal ease of carriage so ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... returning migrations. A voyager sometimes meets with many of our common birds far out at sea. Such wanderers, it is said, when suddenly overtaken by a fog, completely lose their sense of direction and become hopelessly lost. Humming birds, those delicately organized, glittering gems, are among the most common of the land species seen ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... constantly flying about, and often insects humming, even at Christmas, we have no conception of the utter want of all appearance of life in the mountain regions in which I was now travelling. We waited on the watch till the main body of our party came up, and then, seeing no enemies, pushed on to our ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... probably get the idea that Mote and Bate used to work for his folks. He can go to a musical show, and while the performance is going on he can tell everybody in his section just which composer each song number was stolen from, humming the original air aloud to show the points of resemblance. He can do this, I say, and, what is more, he does do it. At the table d'hote place, when the Neapolitan troubadours come out in their little green jackets and their wide red sashes he is right ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... homa. Humane humana. Humanity humaneco. Humanity (mankind) homaro. Humble humila. Humble humiligi. Humble, to be humiligxi. Humerus humero. Humid malseka. Humidity malsekeco. Humiliate humiligi. Humility humileco. Humming-bird kolibro. Humorous humora. Humour humoro. Hump gxibo. Hunchback gxibulo. Hunger malsato. Hungry malsata. Hungry, to be malsati. Hundred, 100 cent. Hundredweight centfunto. Hunt cxasi. Hunting-lodge cxasdometo. Hurdle ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that descent no pen can describe. Every moment I expected to feel my shoulder gripped from behind, or to feel the hands of some mysterious and infernal power around my neck. Close behind me followed my companion, humming— ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reptiles and the birds. Only two specimens of this same animal have been found. This could easily be an exceptional species of created birds differing no more from the normal bird than the ostrich or humming bird. If there were transitional forms we ought to have them by the millions. No transitional forms have been found between reptiles and mammals; and we have seen that there are no reliable forms between man and mammals. The numerous missing links make a chain impossible. Evolution ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... rode home by departing daylight, a solemn tranquillity reigned throughout the scene. The gentle lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep just penned in their folds, the humming of the insects of the night, the distant murmurs of the sea, the last notes of the birds of day, and the first warblings of the nightingale, broke upon the ear, and served rather to increase than lessen the peaceful ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... shot sounded amidst the tumult of rushing waters and singing rigging. The echo was quickly bitten off by the rising wind. The shot sounded dully above the humming ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... flower." It is again "the bouquet of jewels, which sparkles in the fire of the day." It can be believed that their imagination would know how to furnish a new poetical appellation for each of the one hundred and fifty species which constitute this marvelous tribe of humming-birds. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... to disentangle this desert-music that their intoning voices woke, from the humming of the blood in his own veins. But he succeeded only in part. Sand was already in the air. There was reverberation, rhythm, measure; there was almost the breaking of the stream into great syllables. But was ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... however, all was very quiet round the old inn. The birds were singing, and the bees humming in the pleasant sunshine. The house looked clean and tidy, and no one was to be seen except three persons bending over a table, with their heads close together, deeply absorbed in whatever business they were engaged in. Two of these persons were Dame Bedard, the sharp landlady of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... eastward of this gaily-humming hive the long shuttered front of a deserted ducal mansion struck a note of protest and mourning amid the noise and whirl and colour of a seemingly uncaring city. On the other side of the roadway, on the ...
— When William Came • Saki
... game, the more the merrier. Each player is told to play some imaginary instrument. The leader with an imaginary baton, begins by humming some lively, familiar tune. The players follow with motions suitable to their instruments and sing the ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... not see him, she did not hear him. The silence was profound. The only sound to be heard was the humming of the bees circling around the tall marshmallows. And on the terrace there was nothing to be seen but a little yellow dog, stretched at full length on the bare ground, seeking the coolness of the shade. He raised his head growling, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... and she shuddered a little at the thought of some hastily contrived grave, quite close to her, perchance. She had no intention of entering the tower, only to show herself in the ruins; surely if Martin were in hiding there he would contrive some means to let her know. Still humming the ballad, slightly louder than before, she went a little farther into the ruins, and stopped by a piece of fallen stone-work which had constantly afforded her a resting-place. It was here that Gilbert Crosby had caught his foot ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... bugles stopped of themselves, and Moti forgot about them, but the brightness did not go out of Sunni's face, and all day long he went about humming the air of 'Weel may the keel row,' with such variations as might be expected. He grew very thoughtful toward evening, but his eyes shone brighter than any sapphires in the Maharajah's iron boxes. As to an old Mahomedan woman from Rubbulgurh, who ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... twenty minutes they were out where the run of the sea from the south had a fair sweep. The wind was whistling now. All the roughened surface was spotted with whitecaps. The Chickamin would hang on the crest of a wave and shoot forward like a racer, her wheel humming, and again the roller would run out from under her, and she would labor heavily in ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... motion, justling and turning. It is an heape of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages, and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babell. The noyse of it is like that of bees, an humming buzze mixed with walking tongues, and feet. It is a kind of still rore, or loude whisper. It is the greate exchange of all discourse, and noe business whatsoever but it is here stirring and on foote. It is the Synode of all pates politicke, jointed and layed together in most serious ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... red hammock, showing slim ankles that gleamed like marble through a thin film of bronze-brown silk. As she went into the house humming some Italian air she had picked up, Mary thought how young and innocently gay she seemed. It was almost impossible to believe her the same woman who had sobbed behind a disguising veil in Rose Winter's drawing-room, begging Mary to swear ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wash my hands of you," concluded the woman defiantly. "Make your choice, my child," she added with a meaning laugh and moved away, humming a snatch from a French chanson which brought the hot ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... garments and stand forth at once in bright array bedecked with fruits and flowers; here in very deed, and on the grandest scale, Nature seems with one touch to sweep away the wintry snow, and with another to clothe the landscape with profuse and luxuriant vegetation. How strange to see the humming-bird dart like a streak of golden light among the fragrant shrubs; stranger still to see the butterfly, attracted by the lines of some stray wild flower, flutter away again, repelled by the chilling neighbourhood of the last remnant of a snow-drift lying ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... it? Out with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"—asks Mime, in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at twilight,... when there are sounds in the distance of rustling, humming and soughing, when wild muttering gusts sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker around you, a swelling confused sound surges toward you,—have you not felt a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning chill shakes your frame, your senses swim ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... top of the granite steps, waiting to greet the Durwards, whose approach was already heralded by the humming of a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... in La Plata, New York, 1892. Not about the Southwest or even North America, but Hudson's chapters on "The Puma," "Some Curious Animal Weapons," "The Mephitic Skunk," "Humming Birds," "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," "Horse and Man," etc. come home to the Southwest. Few writers tend to make readers so aware; no other has written so delightfully of the lands ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... over and over again, tapping my foot to keep time as I did so. Then Mac would join in, and perhaps another of our company. And before long everyone at the table would catch the infection, and either be humming the absurd words or keeping time with his feet, while the others did so. Sometimes people didn't care for my song; I remember one old Englishman, with a white moustache and a very red face, who looked as if ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... alert for any signs of awareness of their presence! Wait—" The Ihelian made a third adjustment on the mentacom, and it emitted a slight humming sound, and the orange glow vanished. "This will screen us for a short period, at least," he said. "And if we've not been already detected, perhaps we'll be able to follow. If you'll continue ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... doorway, then peered out cautiously. There was not a single pedestrian in sight. No need of hiking any further in this rain; so he hunted for a taxi. To-morrow he would set the wires humming relative to old Stefani Gregor. Boris Karlov, if indeed it were he, would lead the way. Hadn't Stefani and Boris been boyhood friends, and hadn't Stefani betrayed the latter in some political affair? He wasn't sure; but a glance among ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... often in my lonely wanderings, when I saw wee men in green coats among the heather, but oftener on the soft green turfy bits on the hill. And one awful time when the hill road was all silent and the grasshoppers hidden and quiet, an eerie humming came into my ears like a language I could not understand, and I felt myself waiting for something. Round the turn of the hill before you come to the old quarry it came, and I stopped stricken as a rabbit when a snake sways before it, for there ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... whenever he took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin breeches with the hair outside, he sat near the tail of his own smart mule, his great hat turned against the sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long face, humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, or, without a change of expression, letting out a yell at his small tropilla in front. A round little guitar hung high up on his back; and there was a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... months went by. Two years had passed. Angelique was now fourteen years of age and quite womanly. When she read the "Golden Legend," she would have a humming in her ears, the blood circulated quickly through the blue veins near her temples, and she felt a deep tenderness ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... Julia, at my right hand there. Ah! was I not right? The roses are creeping already—creeping into their proper place. Sit back in your chair and eat slowly and drink the yellow wine, and listen to the humming of those bees. So soon you will become normal, a woman, just what you should be. Heavens! It is well that I came to see Maraton. When I saw you this morning in that room, I said to myself—'There is a human creature who half lives. What a sin to half live!' . . . Taste that salad, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at last Edith went up the staircase, and Ellen, lying sleepless on her cot in the hot attic room, heard the girl softly humming to herself as she undressed, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... day off and he was going fishing. Humming to himself, he got out his reel and flies and other paraphernalia and contentedly arranged them in the back of his car. Visions of the fine, quiet time he was going to have went through George's mind, and his inhabitant decided he had better leave. He ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... like pennons on the breeze. Under the cottage eaves some swallows built their nests every spring, and to the garden came, as soon as the yellow and white honeysuckles and blue larkspurs and many-colored four-o'clocks bloomed, myriads of humming-birds, looking like rubies, and diamonds, and opals, and emeralds, and topazes, and sapphires, that had taken to themselves wings, and flown from all parts of the world to visit the living gems in this lovely spot. In the autumn, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... revealing a multitude of lines, so deeply scored, so terrible in their proclamation of deadly hate, that the sight of them would have startled the most case-hardened member of the crowds down there where the candles were twinkling in the humming camp. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... the waist. She is not beautiful, she is scarcely interesting in expression, and she is decidedly unsteady. She seems to have no more power of keeping herself in one position or of remaining in one part of the room, or even of being quiet, than a humming-top. The whole thing is an unutterable bore to her, for she does not even reap the reward—her father, or husband, or other male attendant always taking the money. She is petite, constitutionally phlegmatic, and as fat as her parents can manage to make her; ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... several times, and as these thoughts had come over her, her returning lucidity had vanished and a fresh attack of fever had shaken her. But this time her head seemed clearer; the cloud and humming had left her which had impeded the use of her ears ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... box. Mr Bickersdyke's clothes lay at the head of one of the sofas, but nobody else had staked out a claim. Psmith took possession of the sofa next to the manager's. Then, humming lightly, he undressed, and made his way downstairs to the Hot Rooms. He rather fancied himself in towels. There was something about them which seemed to suit his figure. They gave him, he though, rather a debonnaire look. He paused for a moment before the looking-glass to examine himself, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... a little distance from the house and Henrietta had to rouse herself from the state between waking and sleeping, thought and imagery, in which she had passed the journey. The jarring of the brake shocked her into a recognition of facts and the gentle humming of the engine reminded her that life had to go on as before. The persistent sound, regular, not loud, controlled, was like existence in Nelson Lodge; one wearied of it, yet one would weary more of accidents breaking the healthy beating of the engine: to-night had been one of the accidents ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... through the hot, deserted farm-yard to the house. As they entered the shaded living-room, his mother came from the kitchen, humming a bit of tune. Her eyes lit up when she saw them. She talked cheerfully as she worked. The boy said nothing. He seemed to be looking out of the open window into the orchard; instead, through his lowered eyelashes, he followed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her dutiful daughter, "I'm sure I hope not! Really, I'm very well satisfied with it;" and, getting up and going to the mirror, she set about altering the riband in her hair, humming the while the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... child—and of her face when she had lifted it to him out of the crowded street, that first day, and smiled at him... and of their long talks since. It was the Child who understood. The strange ladies had smiled at him and talked to him and drank their tea and talked again... he could hear the soft, keen humming of their voices and the flitter of garments all about him as they moved. But the child had sat very still—only her face lifted, while he told her of Athens and its beauty... and he had told her again—and again. She would never ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... purring noise the helicopter shot upward. Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint humming noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, crackling detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there was another ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... hot, the sky was blue, and the air was full of the humming and buzzing of bees and flies. A white butterfly flitted by, but soon went away over ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... herself in a little square place, with three doors, two opposite each other, and one opposite the top of the stair. She stood for a moment, without an idea in her little head what to do next. But as she stood, she began to hear a curious humming sound. Could it be the rain? No. It was much more gentle, and even monotonous than the sound of the rain, which now she scarcely heard. The low sweet humming sound went on, sometimes stopping for a little while and then beginning ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... ingenious uses to which bird lime is said to have been applied with success, is in the capture of humming-birds. The lime in this instance is made simply by chewing a few grains of wheat in the mouth until a gum is formed. It is said that by spreading this on the inside opening of the long white lily or trumpet-creeper blossom, the capture of a humming-bird is almost certain, and ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... and soaps, Pills and dopes, We all must advertise. Copper cents, Not common sense. Are the things we prize. We confess Such a dress Isn't quite becoming, But we suppose Hopkins knows This keeps business humming." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... impossible, the white man, tortured but a moment before, tipped sleepily into Fong Wu's arms. The Chinese waited until a full effect was secured, when he lifted his limp patient to the blanket-covered ironing-table. Then he went out for fuel, built a fire, and, humming softly—with no fear of waking the other—sat down to watch ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... humming as she put on her berry cap and pulled it over at a rakish angle. She had spent a very profitable afternoon laughing at herself. At first the laughter had been a little too grim, but before long the grimness had disappeared ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... he was apparently covering them with pictorial designs—strange-looking figures. He worked rapidly and attentively, sometimes threw back his head and held out his drawing at arm's-length, and kept up a soft, gay-sounding humming and whistling. The lady brushed past him in her walk; her much-trimmed skirts were voluminous. She never dropped her eyes upon his work; she only turned them, occasionally, as she passed, to a mirror suspended above the toilet-table ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... said nothing, but he looked at her, and she had no wish that he should say more. She was still calm and pale, but the blood throbbed in her temples. "You are Queen of France now," it seemed to be humming—"queen, queen, queen!" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gazetteer,—the gazetteers of all ages have always been so artless!—Loret was composing an account of the fetes at Vaux, before those fetes had taken place. La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody's elbow a thousand poetic abstractions. He so often disturbed Pelisson, that the latter, raising his head, crossly said, "At least, La Fontaine, supply me with a rhyme, since you have the run of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... days, Mr. King never let Phronsie out of his sight. A new and more splendid doll, if possible, was bought, and all sorts and styles of clothes for it, which Phronsie took the greatest delight in caring for, humming happily to herself at the pleasure the poor man's little girl was taking at the same time with ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... brought his filament points trembling together under the atmospheric pressure so far underground. A tiny spark danced and throbbed through the tiny glass tube before him, beginning to buzz as it started the circuit of increasing coils, and soon humming and vibrating as the helium and vacuum tubes swelled it to full power. Spark after spark, increased almost beyond imagination, followed one after another. The Miner throbbed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... one of the small iridescent beetles, of which there are many varieties. As they move about in the light, the color appears to change, like the color of the head and throat of a South American humming-bird. If the appetite of your horny toad is like that of a common toad, it will prefer an insect diet. But it will live weeks without eating anything, and unless you allow it to hunt for itself, it will probably die of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... back to the hanging between the two rooms, he listened again. This time she was awake and softly humming the air of "The sands of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... tired of hearing this, and now humming a soft note of thanks, proceeded with her task, declaring that she would make the best gingerbread boy that could possibly ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... of. To begin with she was more affectionate than usual, seeming to wish with the honey of her kisses to sweeten the bitter cross which the mistress was doomed to bear. Then she hesitated. She fidgeted about the room humming. At last she said that the doctor had come at the request of Serge, who was most anxious about his wife's health. And that excellent Doctor Rigaud, who had known her from a child, had found her suffering from great weakness. He ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... beautiful tribes by which they are inhabited. Our residence on the island of Wakenaam had been truly a tropical one. During the night, the tree frogs, crickets, razor-grinders, reptiles, and insects of every kind, kept up a continued concert. At sunrise, when the flowers unfolded themselves, the humming birds, with the metallic lustre glittering on their wings, passed rapidly from blossom to blossom. The bright yellow and black mocking-birds flew from their pendant nests, accompanied by their neighbours, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... things women die in childbirth,' kept humming in his brain from his ancient Hebrew lore. He did not remember what they were, except that one was the omission of the wife to throw into the fire the lump of dough from the Sabbath bread. But these neglects could not be visited on a Christian, he ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... imposing, with very few exceptions. Long, light, low one-story or two-story sheds they are, about as costly to erect as a row of wooden stables with us. Yet sheds like these turn out silks that sell all round the world. Sometimes only by inquiry, or by the humming of the machinery, can you distinguish a factory from an old yashiki, or an old-fashioned Japanese school building,—unless indeed you can read the Chinese characters over the garden gate. Some big brick factories and breweries exist; ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... it to me, for it begins to interest me." And the count, humming an air from "Lucia," went to sit down on a bench, while Bertuccio followed him, collecting his thoughts. Bertuccio ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hat under his left arm, walk'd with both hands in the waistband of his breeches, and his cane, that hung negligently down in a string from his right arm, trail'd most harmoniously against the pebbles, while the master of it was tripping it nicely upon his toes or humming to himself." About this period in cold weather men wore muffs as well as wigs. A ballad, describing the frost fair on the Thames in the winter of 1683-84, mentions amongst ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... assassin had fled. While I was looking round, with that pensive curiosity that one feels in places where great crimes have been committed, soldiers were ascending and descending; they stopped to look at me, and then went away singing and whistling; some near me were humming; others were laughing loudly in the courtyard. All this youthful gayety was in sharp and moving contrast to the sad gravity of those memories, and seemed like a festival of children in the room where died a grandparent ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... dug-out that the odious bombardment had compelled us to hollow out of the hillside ten metres deep. There, in complete darkness, night was awaited for the chance to get out. But once my fellow non-commissioned officers and I began humming the nine symphonies of Beethoven. I cannot tell what thrill woke those notes within us. They seemed to kindle great lights in the cave. We forgot the Chinese torture of being unable to lie, ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... cheerfully, "sometimes when I stand at our garden-gate, and look round me for miles and miles away, and the sweet air blows past me, and the bees are humming, and the birds calling to one another, and everything is so peaceful, with father happy over his work not far off, I think I don't know how happy I am. I try to catch hold of the feeling and keep it, but it slips away somehow. Only I thank ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time, and to hear his piping and humming notes. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... steadily, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. One was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... words, the father, who had been arranging his cravat in the glass, while he uttered them in a disconnected careless manner, withdrew, humming a tune as he went. The son, who had appeared so lost in thought as not to hear or understand them, remained quite still and silent. After the lapse of half an hour or so, the elder Chester, gaily dressed, went out. The younger still sat with his head resting on his hands, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... parlor and Mr. Allison's library. But she stopped short at the threshold, for there, just within the rich folds of the hanging barrier, apparently searching for some particular book among the shelves nearest the parlor and farthest from the library lights, and humming musically to himself as he ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... rest; all his weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... white as the tablecloth. She stared at the Jones man as if she couldn't believe her eyes, and her breath come short and quick. I thought sure she was going to cry. And what she ate of that meal wouldn't have made a lunch for a hearty humming-bird. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... as if especially intended for him; and he repeated them to himself that he might remember them, they sounded so sweet and comfortable heard for the first time just when he most needed comfort. Miss Celia saw a new expression in the boy's face as she glanced down at him, and heard a little humming at her side when all stood up to sing the cheerful hymn with which they ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... light from the wings, soon to give place, when the curtain rises, to the brilliant light from the theatre, Cardailhac in black coat and white cravat, his hat cocked over one ear, casts a last glance over the arrangement of the scenery, hastens the workmen, compliments the ingenue, humming a tune the while, radiant and superb. To see him, no one would ever suspect the terrible anxieties by which his mind is beset. As he was involved with all the others in the Nabob's downfall, in which his stock company was swallowed up, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cigarette with a resigned look and goes on making notes. DAN enters from the kitchen, keeping time to the music, carrying a bunch of roses, wearing overalls over flannel trousers and a brown golf jacket, and smoking. He goes to the fireplace and clumps the roses into a vase on the mantelpiece, humming the tune. He crosses to the gramophone, still in rhythm, MRS. BRAMSON keeping time skittishly with her hands. He turns off the gramophone and looks over OLIVIA'S shoulder ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... little drawing room, where she sat ready to preside over her china tea tray with its quaint Sevres cups and saucers and parcel gilt apostle spoons, while a tall stand was on her left with its bronze kettle humming and whispering, and uttering a pleasant coo now and then, as it felt the warm kisses of ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... pleasant place is a college dormitory at night! The rooms with their green-hooded lights and boyish similarity of decoration, the amiable buzz and stir of a game of cards under festoons of tobacco smoke, the wiry tinkle of a mandolin distantly heard, sudden clatter subsiding again into a general humming quiet, the happy sense of solitude in multitude, these are the partial ingredients of that feeling no alumnus ever forgets. In his pensive citadel, my friend J—— would be sitting, with his pipe (one of those new "class pipes" with inlaid silver numerals, which appear ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... who possessed a sweet mellow voice, and was cheering himself, as he stood at the helm, by humming a hymn, or something like one, for the words were not distinguishable in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... chamber; the charge singed the hair of a captain, and the bullet lodged in the middle of the word "Prudencia" on the facade of the Municipality. The captain would have it that he was killed, spun round on his own centre like a humming-top, and finally, coming to himself, shook out his clothes in search of the lead. There was a roar of laughter, and the careless soldier who had endangered the life of his officer was allowed to pass without rebuke. That was the worst point in Carlist discipline ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... wild, beautiful song, his sisters humming the accompaniment. Then one song and another was called for, and the night rang with ballad and barcarole, glee and round. There never seemed to be any limit to ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... took the fish right behind the gills. He gave a quick spurt that brought the line humming from its spool. Scotty followed quickly, caught the shaft, then sped upward ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... rivers, about the place of their confluence, are bordered by immense prairies covered with herbage, but destitute of trees. The point itself was ornamented with wild flowers of every hue, in which innumerable humming-birds were "banqueting nearly the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... unobserved. He might easily have passed her, for it was nearly dark from the yew-tree and the row of elms that shut out, the western sky, where the sunset was just dying away. His mind, too, was occupied with other things, and he was humming over the verse of a hymn the boys had been singing—'Far from my heavenly home.' There was no drilling into them the proper rendering of the ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... I knew them better!—are good to look at, and I think the bees, the woodpeckers, the humming-birds and other wood folk must find some of them good otherwise. At Eagles Mere there was a yellow birch in the bark of which scores of holes had been drilled by the woodpeckers or the bees, at regularly spaced intervals, to let the forest life drink at will of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances—a trifle clumsily—at harvest feast when the grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming bird and the bee dance about the flowers which dance to the breeze. The innocent lamb, type of the White Christ, dances on the green, and the matronly cow perpetrates an occasional stiff enormity when she fancies herself unobserved. All the sportive rollickings of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce |
