"Twittering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carried her in and up the stairs to one of the newly furnished rooms. The little man was twittering with anxiety. He had a horror of knockout drops and the police. They laid her on the bed, her hat beside her; and Wilson, stripping down the long sleeve of ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... towards Wut-a-qut-o, behind the high brow of which, in summer-time, it used to hide itself. A slant ray found an opening in the thick tree-tops, and shone full upon Elizabeth's face; but it failed to rouse her; and it soon went up higher and touched a little song sparrow that was twittering in a cedar tree close by. Then the shadows of the trees fell long over the grass towards the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... recent guest, who was now their host, the lads descended into the interior of the vessel. Here a strange sight met their gaze. In cages canaries were twittering gaily while all about the bulkheads had been fastened pots of plants, some ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Believers' affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed to come back in the spring to their native village under the semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents." Ralston, Songs of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke next morning to a new day. But there was no corresponding sunshine in Bertram Wooster's soul and no answering twitter in his heart as he sat up in bed, sipping his cup of strengthening tea. It could not be denied ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... features of the landscape began to change but still appeared quiet and lonely. Soon we saw a spacious hotel standing on the edge of a wood that overhung a precipice. The broken window-panes, through which twittering swallows darted, the gray weather-beaten sides end unpatched moss-covered roof proclaimed that Trenton falls had had its day. Nature was making the old place a part of the landscape, and the birds were now the sole proprietors—gay summer tourists who never grow tired ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... poured his sad, sweet, monotonous notes on the spicy air; two purple pigeons, with rainbow necklaces, cooed and fluttered up and down from the church belfry, and close under the projecting roof of the granite vault, a pair of meek brown wrens were building their nest and twittering ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... of the earth; it seemed to be inhaling the glories of nature, as it were, through those channels which were not obliterated. The stirring of the leaves, the scent of the woodbine, the pattering of the winged seeds of the maple upon the pages of Boccaccio, the fitful twittering of the birds—all ascended as offerings of recompense to the blind man, but they only tended to enhance the sense of his affliction. He caught but the skirts of the goddess of that creation whose glories he had chanted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Plantagenet Palliser was still trembling in his ignorance. If only he could have been allowed to see Mrs Grantly's letter, and the lady's answer, and the lord's present! But no such seeing was vouchsafed to him, and he was carried off in his brougham to Lady de Courcy's house, twittering with expectant love, and trembling with expectant ruin. To this conclusion he had come at any rate, that if anything was to be done, it should be done now. He would speak a word of love, and prepare his future in accordance with the acceptance ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... neither spoke nor listened. To them the little girl's bird-like twittering covered the murmur of their own thoughts, and if Delfina stopped for a moment's breathing space, they felt as strangely perturbed and apprehensive as if the silence might disclose or ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... at the corner watching! I sent them word that I should come to-night: The birds all know it, for they crowd around, Twittering their welcome with a wild delight; And that old robin, with a halting wing— I saved her life, three ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... arm-in-arm on the gravel-walks, smelling at the mezereon, and admiring Miss Anna's border of yellow crocuses, as the gardener said, as much as if they had been fine plants out of a conservatory. The birds themselves seemed to begin their twittering in the trees, and the cows their lowing in the meadow, from the hour that Mrs Rowland went away. In other words, there were many whom that event left free and at ease to observe the harmonies of nature, who were usually compelled to observe only the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... impatient footsteps then to the calmer pace of more thoughtful years, as I gradually drew nearer to the holy sanctuary, although mine eyes would oft, despite my utmost endeavors, wander to the eaves of that time-worn, low-browed church, to watch the flight of the twittering host who came forth, I fancied, at my approach to bid me welcome! How I would cast one "longing, lingering look" at the warm, bright sunshine that irradiated even those gray walls, ere I entered the low porch whence it was all excluded by the ivy which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... practised an extreme ritual at this time, and found in it the most complete form of expression for her mood possible. And in those early morning walks when she brushed the dew-bespangled cobwebs from the gorse, and startled the twittering birds from their morning meal—in the caressing of healthy odours, the uplifting of all sweet natural sounds, the soothing of the great sea-voice, the sense of infinity in the level landscape, of beauty in form ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... dainty little shoes, pink garters, the muslin frock with silk embroidery,—all was laid out on my bed. Then the little brown heads had to be brushed, twittering merrily all the time like birds, answering each other's call. Armand's hair is in curls, while Nais' is brought forward softly on the forehead as a border to the pink-and-white cap. Then the shoes are buckled; and when the little bare legs and well-shod feet have trotted off to the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... knights? Cut your own chair-legs off! They do but sail with the stream. Her passion, Sir, Broke shell and ran out twittering before yours did, And unrequited love is mortal sin With this chaste world. My boy, my boy, I tell you, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength to keep silent and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... beautiful pink blossoms which leaned towards him from amid the green leaves. He was looking for a choice little bud to fasten in Emily's hair; and when he found it, he came whistling out into the clear grassy spaces again, a little bird in a bough overhead tilting, and twittering, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... me, Cecile, and I thank Him with all my heart for the blessings He has sent me to compensate for that one dreadful calamity, your dear father's sudden death ten years ago and my long illness and subsequent blindness. As I sat to-day in my little garden listening to the twittering of the birds, and inhaling the fragrance of my flowers, I was thinking how peaceful and happy my life is and how grateful I should be. You know, dear, just occasionally I long to be able to see again, to see the birds and the flowers, to see the beautiful world around me. That is very ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... hat left when he lifted it (his beautiful, beautiful hair had grown again), the trinkets at his watch-chain, the ring on his hand under his glove, the neat shining boot, so, so unlike Sam's high-low!—and after her hand had given a little twittering pressure to the lavender-coloured kid grasp which was held out to it, and after her mother had delivered herself of her speech, all Fanny could find to say was, "This is Mr. Samuel Huxter whom you knew formerly, I ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and dark for you to walk home alone. Once upon a time there was a girl and her name was Little Red Riding Hood, and once as she was walking home in the dark, after an unusually heavy tea, she met a wolf. And he said, 'Evening, Little Red Riding Hood,' and she, though she was twittering with fear, and in no condition for running because of the immensely heavy tea, said, ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... been evacuated by order. They were urging on miserable old horses, drawing frail carts, their wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded with mattresses and eiderdowns, with appliances for eating and sleeping, and sometimes too, with cages in which birds were twittering. On they went, from village to village, seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but not ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire. When the winter storms slam the roaring billows against the cliff faces and the spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... complainingly, but in her usual twittering manner of imparting information, as though it were an incident of a five-o'clock tea, but Lydia felt a pang of remorse for her usual thoughtless attitude of exasperated hilarity over Miss Burgess' peculiarities. She noticed that the kind, vacuous face was beginning ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the winds; I could sniff a thousand woodsy odors. Spears of sunlight made bright blobs on the brown grass; and every littlest bush and shrub wore a shimmering halo, as you see the blessed ones backgrounded in old pictures. There was a bird twittering somewhere; occasionally a twig snapped with a quick, secret sharpness; and once a thin brown rabbit took to his heels, right ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... a thrill wherever I am. The first bobolink I hear flying over northward and bursting out in song now and then, full of anticipation of those broad meadows where he will soon be with his mate; or the first swallow twittering joyously overhead, borne on a warm southern breeze; or the first high-hole sounding out his long, iterated call from the orchard or field—how all these things send a wave of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... decided he must marry Ethel with no more delay. I love the girl he said to himself and she must be mine but I somehow feel I can not propose in London it would not be seemly in the city of London. We must go for a day in the country and when surrounded by the gay twittering of the birds and the smell of the cows I will lay my suit at her feet and he waved his arm wildly at the gay thought. Then he sprang from bed and gave a rat ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... letter to Lady Beaumont, about a year earlier: "Though I am at present sadly below even my par of health, or rather unhealth, and am the more depressed thereby from the consciousness that in this yearly resurrection of Nature from her winter sleep, amid young leaves and blooms and twittering nest-building birds, the sun so gladsome, the breezes with such healing on their wings, all good and lovely things are beneath me, above me, and everywhere around me, and all from God, while my incapability of enjoying, or, at best, languor in receiving them, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... fell slanting across her feet. Amongst the trees two or three birds were twittering softly; it was warm, it was dreamy, she was forgetting Marcello. She tried to rouse herself as the thought of him crossed her mind, and she fancied that she almost rose from the chair; but she had hardly ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... thinking about. She and Olly were out all day, and nearly every afternoon nurse lifted the tea-table through the low nursery window on to the lawn, and let them have their tea out of doors among the flowers and trees and twittering birds. They had found out a fly-catcher's nest in the ivy above the front door, and every evening the two children used to fetch out their father to watch the parent birds catching flies and carrying them to the hungry little ones, whom they could just hear chirping ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so bright and fresh and comfortable, and there were actually easy-chairs! From the window she could see far-stretching peaceful green fields, where the grass was getting tall and thick. Cowslips would grow there, without doubt. The only sounds were the twittering evening song of the birds, the cooing of the pigeons in the stable-yard, and far off a distant cry of someone calling home the cows to be milked. How Iris loved it all! How different it was to Albert Street! If you looked out of the window from the bare little room ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... also in the park belonging to the chateau, and in the village orchards, spring had donned a holiday costume. Through the open windows, between the massive bunches of lilacs, hawthorn, and laburnum blossoms, Julien de Buxieres caught glimpses of rolling meadows and softly tinted vistas. The gentle twittering of the birds and the mysterious call of the cuckoo, mingled with the perfume of flowers, stole into his study, and produced a sense of enjoyment as novel to him as it was delightful. Having until the present time lived a sedentary life in cities, he had had no opportunity of experiencing this ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... some of them turn an instant toward the wood, for a little bird, disturbed in its hiding there, lilted forth a twittering ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... evening in the early spring, after the sun had dipped below the line of the high hedge-row, though it was still shining in level rays through it. No sound had disturbed the deep silence for a long time, except the twittering of birds among the branches; for up here even the sea could not be heard when it was calm. I suppose my face was sad, as most human faces are apt to be when the spirit is busy in its citadel, and has left ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... small birds, chirping, singing, twittering. A long black line of crows passed, tumbling in the air, with much confusion of chatter and clangour of complaint that their harvest, too, had been disturbed. They had been busy. Why should men play this game when there were ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... repetition of a particle; the emphatic phrase for which no emphatic place can be found without disorganising the structure of the period; the pert intrusion on a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful of its position and duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its predecessor;—these are a select few of the difficulties that the nature of language ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... of taste, the finger its sense of touch. Bad weather was welcome; it subdued the noises, made men quieter. Cursed be the mill that clappers, the carpenter who drives the nails, the teamster who calls to his jaded pair, the laughter of children, the croaking of frogs, the twittering of birds! An insensate man looks down upon the scene, one who is deaf and dumb, one who would snatch all clothing and decorations from the world, to the end that neither colour nor splendour of any description may divert his eye, one who mounts ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... other side of the fence she moved on through the meadow, over another fence, and another meadow, skirting the edge of a cool little strip of woods which lured her with its green mysterious shadows, its whispering leaves, and twittering birds. One wistful glance she gave into the sweet silence, seeing a clump of maiden-hair ferns rippling their feathery locks in the breeze. Then resolutely turning away she sped on to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sun was shining, birds were twittering; somewhere in the world lambkins frisked and peasants sang blithely at their toil (flat, perhaps, but still blithely), but to Mike at that moment the sky was black, and an icy wind blew over the face of ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... lengthened until they lay like long fingers across the earth; and still she did not come. Bill Holmes and Luis, secure in the knowledge that Ramon was on guard against any unlooked-for visitors, slept heavily on the crude bunks in the cabin. Birds began twittering animatedly as the beat of the day cooled and they came forth from their shady retreats—and still Annie-Many-Ponies sat on the little hilltop, within easy calling distance of the cabin, and never once looked down that way. Still the little black dog curled at her feet ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... was their vigil. Yet nature, overtasked, at length gave way, and sleep came down upon their eyelids; deep, unbroken sleep, which lasted till the broad sunlight breaking through the leafy curtains of their forest-bed, and the sound of waving boughs and twittering birds, once more wakened them to life and light; recalling them from happy dreams of home and friends, to an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. This day they did not wander far from the valley, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... in front of Bart had been talking softly, in their fast twittering speech; but as the hum of the crowds on the upper levels grew louder, they raised their voices, and Bart could hear what they were saying. He was a little surprised to find that he could still understand the Lhari language. He hadn't heard ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... lindens on both sides, amid whose tops the first tiny green leaves were forcing their way out of the pointed buds, nor the birds that flew hither and thither among the hospitable boughs of the stately trees, building their nests and twittering to each other, for he had no thought in his mind except to reach ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Fanny. She found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise of ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... grandame's knee. Thither Seltanetta directed her steps: there she rested from the looks which so tormented her: all around was so still, so soft, so happy; and all augmented but the more her sadness: the light trembling on the wall, the twittering of the swallows, the murmur of the fountain, melted into tears the load that weighed upon her breast, and her sorrow dissolved into lamentation: Sekina went to pluck the pears which grew in abundance round the church; and Seltanetta ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... noble, fair woman. Hard duty's compulsion no longer spurred me; but my thoughts still drove in a wild whirl. There was a glassy reflection of a faded moon on the water, and daybreak came rustling through the trees which nodded and swayed overhead. A twittering of winged things arose in the branches, first only the cadence of a robin's call, an oriole's flute-whistle, the stirring wren's mellow note. Then, suddenly, out burst from the leafed sprays a chorus of song that might have rivaled angels' melodies. The robin's call was a ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... than any one else the next morning. Before the dawn a linnet in the tree overhead called him with twittering songs. He was rested by his long sleep. His breath came lightly. The spirit of youth was beating in his limbs, His heart was eager for adventure. He longed for the top of a high hill—for the wide, blue sky—for the world at ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... not a clod, intent On being just an earthly thing, I'd be that rare embodiment Of Heart and Spirit, Voice and Wing, With pure, ecstatic, rapture-sent, Divinely-tender twittering That Echo swoons to re-present,— A bluebird in ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... sunshine and the flower-scented silence, broken only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... male guests, whose cruel but profoundly human instincts found pleasure in the fact that, no matter when they came in from their wanderings, the pretty captives were always there in the bureau, smiling welcome, puzzling stupid little brains and puckering pale brows over enormous ledgers, twittering borrowed facetiousness from rosy mouths, and smoothing out seductive toilettes with long thin hands that were made for ring and bracelet and rudder-lines, and not a bit for the ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... a summer night, if it turn the milk—a judgment! Luckily Monsignore has broad shoulders by all accounts; per Bacco!—He had need. Now then, look at this case. A belated woman with a baby stumbles upon a company of shepherds all in the twittering dark. Hearts jump to mouths, flesh creeps, hairs stand tiptoe—Madonna, of course! Whom else could they call her, pray? They don't know the woman: name her they must. Well! Who is there they don't know whose name comes readiest to the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... got up over the hill, and the warmth dried their wings, the intervale began to hum softly with dancing flies and hurrying beetles, and the king-bird was continually on the move, twittering with soft monotony (his sole attempt at song), between each successful sally. At length the female rose from her eggs, stood on the edge of the nest, and gave an impatient call. Her mate flew down to take her ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... through a crevice in the blinds; the birds were twittering in the ivy outside; oxen were lowing to each other across the park. Morning, with all her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... discovering point by point, How all the records erred, until the fame Of this new master, hovering above the schools Like a strange hawk, threatened the creeping dreams Of all the Aristotelians, and began To set their mouse-holes twittering ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... but not the excitement. Women and girls were seeking their wraps even before the corporal came, and now went twittering homeward, each on the arm of her escort, except in the case of those allied forces, the wives of certain seniors, who long had lived, moved, and ruled in the regiment, and now in eager yet guarded tones ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... child, and little green buds came cropping up sparsely and timidly out of the brown bosom of the earth; and, presently, all the glory of the golden crocuses unfolded itself in long golden lines in the vicarage garden; and there were twittering of birds and flutterings of soft breezes among the tree-tops, and a voice seemed to go forth over the face of the earth. The winter is over, and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... silence," he commands (lest any unlucky word be spoken); and in a stillness broken only by the auspicious twittering of the sparrows amid the Parthenon gables, he takes barley corns from a basket, an sprinkles them on the altar and over the lamb. With his sacred knife he cuts a lock of hair from the victims head and casts it on the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... character of the pathway chosen by the artist as the shortest route between the two hotels. It passed through a dense forest, and was ankle deep in water. Fallen trunks lay across its sinuous track, and no sound save a twittering bird or crackling branch broke the silence of the rugged, lonely way. The active guide strode on from stone to stone, returning short answers to his companion, whose doubts began to take the form of questions as to 'the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the singing of her own heart the poor girl was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every note ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... influence of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... reached the bend in the bank, beside some red-bud bushes, and there he stayed. A level shaft of light shot through the forest. The birds, twittering, awoke. A great hawk soared high in the blue over our heads. An hour passed. I had sighted the rifle among the yellow leaves of the fallen oak an hundred times. But Polly Ann looked not once to the right or left. Her eyes and her prayers followed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... drops; the grass, that had been rustling in the wind, was still, thirstily drinking in the moisture; the drenched trees were languidly shaking all their leaves; the birds were busily singing, and it was pleasant to hear their twittering chatter mingling with the fresh gurgle and murmur of the running rain-water. The dusty roads were steaming and slightly spotted by the smart strokes of the thick drops. Then the clouds passed over, a slight ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the woods than in the quiet bedrooms at home. Birds were twittering around the little camp before sunrise, the breeze blew noisily through the low-hanging branches, and the children were awake before the night ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... time after time large, wide-winged, diurnal moths and glistening butterflies flew up from where they had settled on the dew-drenched herbage and fluttered before them. Not far onward a flock of finches flew from the tops of the green banks, twittering loudly as they displayed the brilliance of the blue and yellow and green of their plumage and its varying shades. But this was only for a time. The jungle growth rose higher on either side till it shut out the sunshine, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... lute); so the introduction is an honest musical description of things which the composer is not willing to confess, and least of all the stage manager, for when the curtain opens there is not presented even the picture called for by the German libretto. Nevertheless, morn is dawning, birds are twittering, and the young lover, kneeling before his mistress on a divan, is bemoaning the fact that day is come and that he cannot publish his happiness to the world. The tete-a-tete is interrupted by a rude boor of a nobleman, who come to consult his ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... when, instead of singing "Auld Robin Grey," she placed herself at the piano, and, with a smiling glance over her shoulder at the children, broke out in the old bird song which first won Rose. But the chirping, twittering, and cooing were now the burden to three verses of a charming little song, full of springtime and the awakening life that makes it lovely. A rippling accompaniment flowed through it all, and a burst of delighted laughter from the children filled ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to say—but that poor Jim lies under a forest oak on a sandhill, and I—well, I'm here, and if I'd listened to her advice I should have been a free man. A free man! How it sounds, doesn't it? with the sun shining, and the blue sky over your head, and the birds twittering, and the grass beneath your feet! I wonder if I shall go mad before my ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... eastern hills the moon and stars were shining from the dark gray heavens. In the garden, the shrubs and flowers, not yet damp with dew, were sending forth their richest fragrance; the latest birds were twittering softly before settling themselves to sleep in their leafy nests; and the earliest insects were tuning up their tiny, gleeful pipes before ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the evening, when resting from my toil, I sit out under the leafy canopy and revel in the sounds that can be heard only in the country—the croaking of the frogs, the soft twittering of the birds somewhere near, yet out of sight, the cosey crooning of the chickens as they settle upon their perches for the night, and the lonely hooting of the owl somewhere in the big tree down in the pasture. I need not move from my seat nor barter my money for a concert in some ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... were as tame and gentle as farm cattle; and we noticed some new species at every turn. There were strange plants too, growing in the fields and garden, and vines trained upon espaliers, and corn-cribs filled with yellow corn, and dove-cotes, and martin-boxes, with swallows twittering around them. All formed a curious ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was tremulous with sounds: The thrilling chirp of insects, twittering birds, Barking of shepherds' fierce, white, Roman dogs; While from the narrow path, far down below, We heard a mournful rondinella ring, Sung by a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... day amid a thousand clouds, which hung in thick masses below the sky, and covered it with an opaque and gloomy screen; the mournful twittering of the warbling birds bespoke anxiety and alarm; the hoarse rushing of the wind threatened destruction to the woods; the flowers of the fields began to droop; the sun withdrew his light from the world beneath, and all seemed to presage a day of grief and bitterness—save in the home where the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... was along about fourteen years old his father died. 'Twas of a Sunday afternoon that we stowed un away. I mind the time: spring weather and a fair day, with the sun low, and the birds twittering in the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... on with hearts uplifted, and one shouted joyously to another as some pretty dark birds flew twittering toward them, a sign of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enough question to ask and, to them, hovering twittering upon high heels a trifle worn to one side, a simple one for her to answer. She looked at them in that humorous, kindly way of hers, looked at their silly, excited, made-up faces with noses sticking out stark, like handles, from a too-heavy application of purplish-white powder. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... migration, as Mr. White used to see them at Selborne. Eheu fugaces! Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and rolls his distant thunders night and day in the wide-throated chimneys, still sprinkles the evening air with his merry twittering. The populous heronry in Fresh Pond meadows has wellnigh broken up, but still a pair or two haunt the old home, as the gypsies of Ellangowan their ruined huts, and every evening fly over us riverwards, clearing their throats with a hoarse hawk as they go, ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... gloom of the silent forest ere the village woke to life. Right beside the thatch-covered dwelling of Macy O'Shea, now a man of might, there towers a stately TAMANU tree; and, as the first faint murmur of women's voices arises from the native huts, there is a responsive twittering and cooing in the thickly-leaved branches, and further back in the forest the heavy, booming note of the red-crested pigeon sounds forth like the beat of ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... and stretched his one good arm and the other that was visibly twisted and scarred between wrist and elbow, above his head, "let's go downstairs and prattle. I see a car in front, and I hear twittering voices." ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Abbey was because he had promised these two women that even death should not separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this out-of-the-way country place, they rest—these three, side by side, and the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... there was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence, profound and deep, ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... mutineers. The hope of prolonging their existence by means of raiding the storeroom had ebbed after Joe's investigation. Such provisions as had been broken out of bulk were kept in lockers and pantries on deck where they were convenient to the galley and forecastle. It was realized also that their twittering nerves could not long withstand the darkness and suspense once the brig had put out to sea. Joe Hawkridge had nothing more to say about enduring it a month ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... water. Numerous rock-holes were to be seen, but all were dry, and my hopes of making this our base from which to prospect in various directions were at first short-lived; but before long I was overjoyed to hear the twittering of a little flock of Diamond sparrows—a nearly certain sign that water must be handy; and sure enough I found their supply at the bottom of a narrow, round hole, down which I could just stretch ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... for me the dawn was beginning to break; the morning star was shining in the sky; the earliest birds were twittering, and cocks answered each other from distance to distance; but not a human being was to be seen. We crossed ploughed fields and stubble to find the road, and I felt the truth of my guide's augury of the night before. Had I attempted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... But that solemn-soft smile of his gathered me in and covered me, very much as the rumpled feathers of a mother-bird cover her young, her crazily twittering and crazily wandering young who ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... among the thickets of The Heart where they are bred, And catch the twittering beauties as They fly ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... carried from the wheat field. The redstart yonder has given forth a few notes, the whitethroat flings himself into the air at short intervals and chatters, the shrike calls sharp and determined, faint but shrill calls descend from the swifts in the air These descend, but the twittering notes of the swallows do not reach so far—they are too high to-day. A cuckoo has called by the brook, and now fainter from a greater distance. That the titlarks are singing I know, but not within hearing from here; a dove, though, is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... small chest. "But that's what daddy said. He called it the friendly eye. Being friendly to people, he said, was as if you had a candle in your heart and the light shines through your eyes. Oh, Mrs. Schuneman, I do believe Germania is going to like it here." For Germania was twittering as if she did find her new ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... morning Annie Forest opened her eyes with that strange feeling of indifference and want of vivacity which come so seldom to youth. She saw the sun shining through the closed blinds; she heard the birds twittering and singing in the large elm-tree which nearly touched the windows; she knew well how the world looked at this moment, for often and often in her old light-hearted days she had risen before the maid came to call her, and, kneeling ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Nature as if tired of waiting—like some professed friends—for one who was long in dying, ceased its breathless hush. A fresh breeze rustled the motionless leaves, birds withdrew their heads from under their wings, and began the twittering preliminary to their morning songs; and two squirrels, springing from their nest in a hollow tree, like children from a cottage door, scrambled down and over Van Berg's prostrate form in their ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... view the sunrise. The grass is green, the flowers are all in bloom, Spring is here. The faint gray streaks of the dawn are in the sky and soon the whole East is suffused with a roseate flush. There is a hush of expectancy in the air, the breeze is soft, the birds are twittering drowsily in the tree-tops, and then in a flood of golden splendor "the morning sun comes peeping over the hills." Instantly all nature is alive, the birds pour forth their sweet melodies, the drowsy hum of the bees floats lazily ...
— Silver Links • Various
... he found himself on the green knoll whence he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his eyes—it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The strange man with the keg of liquor—the mountain ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... With twittering exclamations of dismay over the, accident the two women hurried away to minister to the burned legs of Francisco, and Jack rose and flung away his cigarette. His mouth had again the stubborn look which Dade knew ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Cherry, twittering in the window, chirped something vague and unsatisfactory. Polly brought up her brown ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... For, you know, the birds when they say their prayers speak the common language, but when they chat together in private they use a twittering ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... was garlanded with fantastic orchids; while ferns and creepers glided up the tall, smooth trunks, mingling with the boughs, and spreading in every direction waving curtains of flowers of the rarest fragrance and vividest hues imaginable. With shrill twittering cry and rapid wing flashed the humming-bird through the transparent air; the pepper-pecker, with glowing plumage, rose timorously upwards; while parrots and parroquets, and innumerable birds of beautiful appearance, enhanced, by ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... dawn was on the windows when I awoke, my body aching from its unnatural position. For the instant I imagined some unusual sound had aroused me, yet all was quiet, the only noise the twittering of birds from without. I closed my eyes again, but a ceaseless train of thought kept me wide awake, and, finally, I got upon my feet and looked out into the dawn, determining to explore our strange surroundings ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... music, and it floods a thousand acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of twittering ecstasy upon the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle and birds of prey. It mounts up like a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches' heritage, rabbits hopped away; sometimes a cock grouse, running like a rat, fled, crested head erect; twice twittering woodcock whirred upward, beating wings tangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caught ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... told the doctors' decision about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and through years the odor, the light, the sense of their few hours may be recalled as vividly as when they were lived. This May day the birds were twittering beside the veranda where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner came up the drive. The long windows of the house were opened to admit the soft air, for it was already summer. Margaret was dressed in a black gown that relieved the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... bright purple tints of the dogwood, blended with the browner shades of the dwarf birch, and frequently intermixed with the gay yellow flowers of the shrubby cinquefoil. With all these charms, the scene appeared desolate from the want of the human species. The stillness was so great, that even the twittering of the whiskey-johneesh, or cinereous crow, caused us to start. Our voyage to-day was sixteen ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... to wake to bright sunshine the next morning, and to hear the sparrows twittering in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... be a high consolation, mademoiselle, one of these days, when the King sits upon his throne in England, to think that your self-sacrifice had set him there." And Mr. Wogan hopped like a bear on hot bricks, twittering irreproachable sentiments until ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... strange sight. Silvia sat by our bedroom window twittering soft, cooing nonsensical nothings to Diogenes, who was clasped in her arms, his flushed little face pressed ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... proportions. Temples and other buildings of the most elaborate and artistic design and construction showed here and there amid a profusion of gloriously-foliaged trees and flowering shrubs. No sound broke the silence except the twittering of birds; and not ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke |
