"Humming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one! Yes; just caught a glimpse of her in the High on Thursday. Very pretty, certainly, and as airy as a humming-bird.' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... humming a quick measure, and Dorothy trod lightly back and forth, the wheel-pin in one hand, the other upraised holding the tense, lengthening thread, which ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... soon as they emerged from the narrow streets into the Old Market, they found the place packed with excited groups of men and women humming with gossip. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... loving Marguerite, I know more than you think. I could indeed tell you much that you little dream of, but why is it thus?" and humming an old-fashioned air Jennie mechanically went back to her household duties, as if all the world were sunshine and brightness, and not a troubled thought had ever found a resting-place within ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... soft and balmy; a little haze on the sky, the least veil upon the Mong's further shore; the summer roses hanging their heads, heavy with sleep and sweetness. The honeysuckles on the porch grew sweeter and sweeter as the sun went down, and the humming-birds dipped into those long flagons, or poised them selves in mid-air ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... kingfishers, of vivid red, yellow, and changing-green. I remarked a long-tailed jay called Gobiyan or Fat [2], russet-hued ringdoves, the modest honey-bird, corn quails, canary-coloured finches, sparrows gay as those of Surinam, humming-birds with a plume of metallic lustre, and especially a white-eyed kind of maina, called by the Somal, Shimbir Load or the cow-bird. The Armo-creeper [3], with large fleshy leaves, pale green, red, or crimson, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... of the perfumed talcum powder mingled with the odor of the grass, the trees, and the flowers, over which the bees were humming. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... for an instrument made of a small flat slip of wood, through a hole in one end of which a string is passed; swung round rapidly it makes a booming, humming noise. Though treated as a toy by Europeans, the bullroarer has had the highest mystic significance and sanctity among primitive people. This is notably the case in Australia, where it figures in the initiation ceremonies and is regarded with the utmost awe by the "blackfellows." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... gloves). Did you notice the tune I was playing when you came in? (Sits down at the piano.) I heard it everywhere in Germany. (Begins to play and sing, but stops short.) But, bless my soul, here is the music! You can play it and sing it for yourself. (Goes out, humming the air.) ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... been named with reference to its uses, for here, too, was the old theatre, gone long ago, where Fannie Ellsler danced with a wavering, quivering, shimmering grace that drove humming-birds to despair. In that theatre it may be that Paul Hayne heard Jenny Lind fill the night with a melody which would irradiate his soul throughout life and reproduce itself in the music-tones of his gently cadenced ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... canary birds, and native birds in cages. Here also were archaeological relics, plants, beetles and birds for gathering. And here too, for the first time, I had the opportunity of examining his great collection of Ecuadorean humming-birds and a magnificent lot of Guatemalan quetzal skins, among them probably ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... always, the theater and concerts. He loved music passionately, especially Italian music, and like all great amateurs was hard to please. He would have much liked to sing had he been able, but he had no voice, though this did not prevent his humming now and then pieces which struck his fancy; and as these little reminiscences usually recurred to him in the mornings, he regaled me with them while he was being dressed. The air that I have heard him thus mutilate most frequently was that of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... cloistered existence in the ruins of old splendour, used to call that thievish rabble Lugarenos—villagers. They were sea-thieves, but they were dangerous. At night, from these clusters of hovels surrounded by the banana plantations, there issued a villainous noise, the humming of hived scoundrels. Lights twinkled. One could hear the thin twanging of guitars, uproarious songs, all the sounds of their drinking, singing, gambling, quarrelling, love-making, squalor. Sometimes the long shriek of a woman rent the air, or ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... on each side, situated on a high hill, with trees on the lawn giving homes to the birds and shade to the master, mistress and their guests where they could hear the chant of the lark or the melodious voices of the slaves humming some familiar tunes that suited their ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... shone brightly and the air, though snappy and cold, was brisk and fresh. It was the first free walk of a mile Elizabeth had ever taken since her marriage. Elizabeth was herself again. She skirted around the long drifts as she crossed the field humming a snatch of tune with all her blood atingle with the delight of being alone in the vast silent fields. The mere passing of time since Aunt Susan's death had gradually worked a change in her condition, which Luther's presence and the stimulating quality of his words, ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the French battery commander, yesterday. He was cantering a showy chestnut mare over the turf, humming a tune aloud. He looked very fit and very much in love with the world. I asked him what he meant by it. He replied that he couldn't help it; everybody was combining to make him happy; his C.O. had fallen down a gun-pit and broken a leg; he had won two hundred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... million more men and women are working today than were working 2 years ago. The average factory work week is once again more than 40 hours; our industries are turning out more goods than ever before; and more than half of the manufacturing capacity that lay silent and wasted 100 weeks ago is humming with activity. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... gained a slight rising ground, discovered the Senegal at no great distance from them. We hastened our march, and for the first time since our shipwreck, a smiling picture presented itself to our view. The trees always green, with which that noble river is shaded, the humming birds, the red-birds, the paroquets, the promerops, &c. who flitted among their long yielding branches, caused in us emotions difficult to express. We could not satiate our eyes with gazing on the beauties of this place, verdure being so enchanting to the sight, especially after having travelled ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... rose, and after women wailed their warriors slain, List the Saxon's silvery laughter, and his humming hives of gain. Swiftly sped the tawny runner o'er the pathless prairies then, Now the iron-reindeer sooner carries weal or woe to men. On thy bosom, Royal River, silent sped the birch canoe Bearing brave with bow and quiver on his way to war or woo; Now with flaunting flags and streamers—mighty ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... in the rushlight a woman against the arras; there was a humming of viola d'amore from the musicians' balcony; she smiled at you, lingering, and then vanished with a whisper of brocade de Lyons on a sanded floor. Nothing else but a soft white glove, eternally fragrant, in ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... spray aloft till the green drooping branches of the bananas and those feathery tree-ferns are everywhere spangled with diamonds. I will rest here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds—mere sparks of light and colour that flit and buzz from flower to flower. I wish I ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the gallant warriors coming, bade them welcome, and led them to their ship. The wind whistled in the sails, and a pleasant humming sound was heard as the good ship sped on her way. So Beowulf returned home, having done mighty deeds ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... there, Humming a song upon the old black settle, "Or leave a kiss within the cup And I'll not ask for wine," But meanwhile, he drank malmsey. [Footnote: Tales of the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the milkweed nodded a soft welcome to the butterflies winging, like flying flowers, over the fields. A bumblebee droned drowsily near, humming his song to unheeding ears. Where the tall pine trees of the forest met the sky argosies of clouds spread their portly sails along the blue. In the heat of the July morning Peggy ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional. Some of our best novelists patronize this tone. The words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning. This is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... heap as if exhausted, but each time, as though a puff of wind had caught her up, she rose again fluttering and swiftly turning through the air. The dawn birds twittered and piped soft music for her, and the sea murmured a humming, rushing melody, and still she danced on. As she danced, there arose in the sky above—slow, bright and clear—the Morning Star. Yama saw her twinkling feet pass him as she drew nearer and nearer to the sea; and as the first pink light began to show behind the pine trees she reached ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... the very faint humming sound which was natural in the ship in motion. It would be deadly to the nerves if there were ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... skillet to either you or Dabney whilst I did it. The Lord wouldn't listen to no shoutin' from a cook whose chicken was frying black while she did her praisin'," and as she spoke Mammy began a low humming, swaying from table to stove with a rhythm in the swing of her fat body that had a certain dignified beauty to it. It was crude emotion, and I knew it, but I felt it work in my own body as I let the significance of what she had told ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... bookman he's a humming-bird— His feasts are honey-fine,— (With hi! hilloo! And clover-dew And roses lush and rare!) His roses are the phrase and word Of olden tomes divine; (With hi! and ho! And pinks ablow And posies everywhere!) ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... clover, the heat shimmered in dancing waves. Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the light and heat with eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was ringing through the land. The air was sweet with scents of the hay fields, and the whole country side was humming with the sound of the mowers. It was the crowning time of the year; toward this season all the life of the farm moved steadily the whole year long; the next two months or three would bring to the farmer the fruit of long days of toil and waiting. Every minute of these harvest days, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... silver like stately ships sailing over it, and such a shimmering, bright photograph of it in the water; then Tom was so pleasant, and rowed so fast, and let Gypsy help, and she could keep time with him, and the spray dashed up like silver-dust about the oars, and the bees were humming among the buds on the trees, and the blue dragon-flies, that skipped from ripple to ripple, seemed to be having such a holiday. Altogether, Gypsy felt like ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... from which he selected a cigar with anxious care and much sniffing; then he bade me a ceremonious adieu and departed down the stairs, blithely humming a melody from ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... into the garden to brush the mud from his neat white jacket. His face was inscrutable. Gissing sat by the spare-room bed until he was sure the puppies were sleeping correctly. He closed the door so that Fuji would not hear him humming a lullaby. Three Blind Mice was the only nursery song he could remember, and he sang it over and ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... that 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
... with his crucifix in his hands; the barber, a-quiver with morbid excitement; the stolid guide, not at all surprised, rather gratified, preparing to make the descent to recover the body of that "tall monsieur" who had, after all, "arrived." The telegraph wires were already humming with the message. In a few hours ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... quintessences—pines reduced to a drop of honeyed delight; bananas whose life lay in points of bewildering sweetness; enormous steamboat puddings compressed within the compass of a thimble, exclusive of the sauce; chocolates, oceans of which lay in mimic lakes, each of which the bill of a humming-bird might expand; tongues of most melodious singing birds—the nightingale, the thrush, and the goldfinch; lambs en supreme, each eliminated of earthly particles, and spiritualized in scarcely tangible results. Over all hovered the memories of exquisite beverages, which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thy Princely goll, which thus I kisse, to whom I crouch and bow; But see my royall sparke, this head-strong swarme that follow me humming like a master Bee, have I led forth their Hives, and being on wing, and in our heady flight, have seazed him shall ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... cabin and flitted about restlessly. Soon I became conscious that I was humming an air. It was not, in itself, a sad air; but there was a certain sadness as well as appropriateness ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... is likely enough that in the whole of West Cornwall, at the moment, Roger Stephen was the man least aware of the meaning of the Under-Sheriff's visit and least alive to its consequences. Ever since his father's death that desolate county had been humming with his fame: his wrongs had been discussed at every hearthside, and his probable action. There were cottages so far away as St. Ives where the dispute over Steens had been followed intently through each ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The niece, who followed her, presuming on "Auntie's" high spirits, was flounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smarting and half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay. Still humming, Christina divested herself of her finery, and put her treasures one by one in her great green trunk. The last of these was the psalm-book; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old-faced type, on paper that had begun to grow foxy ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the soft lamplight like an enormous azalea in full bloom. She sat with folded hands humming a tune, not any known air, but one of those nasal harmonies women sometimes accomplish through their noses as a cat ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... know not what evil is coming, But my heart feels sad and cold; A song in my head keeps humming, A tale from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and he proceeded to wallop the second ball pitched to him, driving it humming down the third-base line for two sacks, which caused the horns and cowbells to break into a tumultuous uproar. Sanger followed, and he straightened out a bender into a whistling line drive to the left of Chipper Cooper; whereupon Cooper made up for his error in the first ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... last a lifetime. Then, as sometimes happens in similar circumstances, a half-forgotten tune took possession of his tired brain, the once familiar melody of Queen Mab's hymn; and in a dreamy fashion he kept humming it over and over again, sometimes the air alone, and sometimes with snatches of the words, as they ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... rowers, in which we could proceed up some of the smaller rivers. Nothing could surpass the luxuriance of the foliage, which not only lined their banks, but extended a long way inland, strange birds of all sizes, from the diminutive humming-bird to others of immense bulk, of the most gorgeous plumage, flew about among the trees; while, as we paddled along, we heard the most curious chatterings, and now and then, if we remained quiet for a few minutes, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... and humming its cadences, It slips past me under the rim of the gorge, As I peer down through the scarlet sumacs. Sparkling in the sunlight, Shimmering in the moonlight, On and on it goes, A silvery ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... horseman of the King had suddenly spurred hot-foot through the town, and alighted at the shop of Maitre Jehan le Tellier, with the stupefying request for the hand of his only daughter Alice in marriage, by virtue of the King's command signed and sealed in his pocket. The belfry-fountain was humming like a swarm of bees as all the chambermaids and goodwives in the street rushed up to fill their pitchers at the very moment when Le Tellier's housemaid happened to be ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... shows that in the dark very distinct things are heard during the playing of delicate instruments, such as mouth-organs. The humming approaches and withdraws, then it comes on various sides, and finally one has the feeling that the whole room is full of humming and winging insects. And this may go on indefinitely. There is a large collection of reasons for this reduplication of monotonous ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Humph! You can set in the dark or anywhere else you please." With that she slammed the door and was gone. Rosemary came in, after a little, humming to herself with an assumed cheerfulness she was far from feeling. Then she went out into the kitchen and came back with a match. The feeble flicker of it revealed only Aunt Matilda—and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... at home, as if I had been at some vestry-meeting, or some committee in the old country, when Elatreus got up. He was stout, very bald, and had a way of thrusting his arm behind him, and of humming and hawing, which vividly brought back to mind the oratory of my native land. He had also, plainly enough, the trick of forgetting what he intended to say, and of running off after new ideas, a trick very uncommon among these natives, who are born ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... woollen threads were being wound by the revolutions of the machinery overhead. These reels whirled round so rapidly that Amy could not follow their motion, and the buzz-buzz, as of a thousand bees humming, filled her ears and confused the instructions of the girl who was to give her her first lesson ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... six cart-loads of sugar-plumbs, a thousand ells of gingerbread, eight dancing dogs, a bear and a monkey, four toy-shops with all their contents, and seven dozen of bibs and aprons of the newest fashion. They were jogging on with all this cargo over mount Caucasus, when an immense humming-bird, who had been struck with the beauty of the ladybird's wings, that I had forgot to say were of ruby spotted with black pearls, sousing down at once upon her prey, swallowed ladybird, Pissimissi, the elephant, and all their ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... say, they seemed to like the shade. They were all of the big, black, lazy variety. We came upon flights of humming-birds. I was rather tired of the saddle, and of the slow jog, jog, jog. But at last there came an hour which made the trouble worth while. When our camp was set, our fire lighted, our supper eaten, and we ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... humming a little, pretending to read the titles of the books by moonlight, taking off and putting on one of her stained yellow gloves. Now and again she would move up as far as the posters outside the Hall, scrutinising them as if interested in the future, then stroll back again. In her worn ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... probably 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
... to his apartments, and threw his hat on one sofa, his sword on another. Little Napoleon entered, took his uncle's sword, passed the belt round his neck, put the hat on his head, and then kept step gravely, humming a march behind the Emperor and Empress. Her Majesty, turning round, saw him, and caught him in her arms, exclaiming, "What a pretty picture!" Ingenious in seizing every occasion to please her husband, the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... progress was being made in this and other directions, the wheels of industry were humming merrily at the Edison Tube Works, for over fifteen miles of tube conductors were required for the district, besides the boxes to connect the network at the street intersections, and the hundreds of junction boxes for taking the service conductors into each of the hundreds ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... just stared at me, not knowing what it meant. When I made it all clear she began crying, and then she dropped on her knees and I dropped alongside of her, and when she got through praying I took up the job and kept things humming for another half hour. After I'd let up I grabbed her in my arms, and we danced about that cabin, just as she used to do when she was the belle of the town, and we laughed and frolicked and made a couple of ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... treasures of the estate, anxious to ascertain whether the night had stolen the statues and urns, uprooted the centenary trees, dried up the sparkling fountains that plashed noisily in their bowls. Then the bright southern sun, humming and vibrating, outlined upon the gravel of a path, or against the white supporting wall of a terrace, that tall old woman's figure, slender and straight as her distaff, picking up pieces of dead wood, breaking off a branch from a shrub that was out of line, heedless ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... sank limply into a chair. The windows were wide open; she heard the rippling of the brook, and the insects humming and buzzing in the big willow. At last she roused herself. She must be certain if Trautvetter was right in his suspicion, and that would need cunning. Her plan was soon made; it was very simple: she need only behave as if she had been following her husband's hint, then he would ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... strikingly proved by the admirable sculpture on Diatoms and Foraminifera; beings whose very existence was unknown prior to the invention of the microscope. The Duke of Argyll has illustrated this in the "Reign of Law," by the variety, graceful forms and beautiful colouring of the humming birds in forests which ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... enslaved men so completely that they dared not conceive an alternative? The machine was grown so huge that man could no longer peer over its side; man could see nothing but its cranks and levers, could hear nothing but its humming, could mark the spinning fly-wheel and fancy himself in contemplation of the revolving spheres. Annihilation was the only escape for the Roman citizen from the Roman Empire. Yet, while in the West Hadrian was raising the Imperial talent for brutalisation to a system and a science, somewhere ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... "young man of melancholy thoughts, with a character as gloomy as a stormy day. . . . And you, gigantic Fleury, with your immense hands and your alarming beard. . . . And you, dear Sandeau, agreeable and light, like the humming bird of ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... rustic porch the humming-bird Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal stirred, The Old World ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Mr. Butteridge was likely to affect either of their lives in any special manner, that it would in any way single them out from the millions about them; and when they had witnessed it from the crest of Bun Hill and seen the fly-like mechanism, its rotating planes a golden haze in the sunset, sink humming to the harbour of its shed again, they turned back towards the sunken green-grocery beneath the great iron standard of the London to Brighton mono-rail, and their minds reverted to the discussion that had engaged them before Mr. Butteridge's triumph had come ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... over the grass, with their hands under their aprons, looking like silhouettes against the brilliant sky. They were humming a soft folk-song, and one by one sank on to the grass beside the men; the evening twilight was in their hearts, and made their figures and voices as soft as a caress. But the men's mood was not a gentle one, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... on the abundance of the game; and the scattered garrisons, or occasional hunters, that here and there were to be met with on that vast surface, had no other influence than the bee on the buckwheat field, or the humming-bird on the flower. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the garden again, humming occasionally and swinging his stick. I took note of the oddly feminine shape of his knees, and the unusual plumpness of his thighs; there was something unnatural about this plumpness, as though it did not belong to ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... I remember the humming of our bees around the sawdust, and my craze for flower seeds and a garden of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... passengers as they used to be; whether any real cure for seasickness has yet been found, and why are they always painting the ship? Not being able to think of anything else she leaves her victim, to his infinite relief. Oh you! iridescent humming-bird! ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... Europe of a native of Guiana, we figure to ourselves a man whose head and waist are decorated with the fine feathers of the macaw, the toucan, and the humming-bird. Our painters and sculptors have long since regarded these ornaments as the characteristic marks of an American. We were surprised at not finding in the Chayma Missions, in the encampments of Uruana and of Pararuma (I ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Moore," (said Henry, with a forced laugh,) "we must e'en wed to-morrow, or remain single at our peril," and he walked off, humming the tune of "Gai, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... through the round towers. Silence was everywhere, save that from a remote quarter of the Monastery came a faint sound of music. Upon such a time as Christmas Eve, it might well be that carols in plenty would be sung or studied by the saintly men. But this sounded like no carol. At times the humming murmur of the storm drowned the measure, whatever it was, and again it came along the dark, cold entries, clearer than before. Away in a long vaulted room, whose only approach was a passage in the thickness of the ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... scouring-rush,) and the rich coarse vegetation of the veratrum, or American hellebore. In moist copses the ferns and osmundas begin to uncurl in April, opening their soft coils of spongy verdure, coated with woolly down, from which the humming-bird steals the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... grum Esther; "no more of your quiddities in a healthy family, say I! Here was I doing well, only a little out of sorts with over instructing the young, and you dos'd me with a drug that hangs about my tongue, like a pound weight on a humming-bird's wing!" ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hidden from sight. Slowly he whirled the thin slab of wood round his head, hitting it on the ground once or twice to make it spin. The thing gave out a droning sound. The crowd of yelling fiends around the corpse became suddenly quiet. The droning increased to a loud humming. Every eye ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... sailing kites. One of the models fluttered and settled down before it reached the other side, and David's machine, which had commanded most attention because it was different, started out bravely enough, its little propeller making a busy humming as it skimmed along. But it had gone hardly ten yards before it collapsed and ignominiously crashed to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... confidence restored, when in the doorway sounded a virile voice, gaily humming, and they became aware of a tall young man, red-headed, anything but handsome, flushed and perspiring from the sunny road; his open jacket showed a blue cotton shirt without waistcoat, in his hand was a shabby straw hat, and thick dust covered ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Mr. Bradshaw began humming the hymn, "When I can read my title clear," adding some variations of his own. "That 's the solo ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the farmer made it known that the rick was to be finished that night, since there was a moon by which they could see to work, and the man with the engine was engaged for another farm on the morrow. Hence the twanging and humming and rustling proceeded with even less intermission ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... in the centre of a Mad Tea-party, where every one was convinced of the madness, and yet resolutely protested that nothing had happened. The public events of those days were simple enough. While Lord Mulross's ankle approached convalescence, the hives of politics were humming with rumours. Vennard's speech had dissolved his party into its parent elements, and the Opposition, as nonplussed as the Government, did not dare as yet to claim the recruit. Consequently he was left alone till he should see fit to take a ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... the eyes, fringed with almost white lashes, and the lips and the cheeks and the chin and the dimples in the chin, and even the tip of her turned-up nose. She went up to the little looking glass beside the cupboard and, screwing up her eyes and humming through her teeth, began tidying her hair. Kuzma Vassilyevitch followed her movements intently.... He ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... vault of purple with a flaming topaz in the center; the sea, a heavenly blue; the warm air breathed heavenly odors; flaming macaws wheeled overhead; humming-birds, more gorgeous than any flower, buzzed round their heads, and amazed the eye with delight, then cooled it with the deep green of the jungle into which ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... then sits up and begs," sang Cora helping herself to that portion of the fare, and keeping time with the humming toast. ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... the fire of Mafuie. "I must go and get some," said the son. "No," said the father; "he will be angry. Don't you know he eats people?" "What do I care for him?" said the daring youth; and off he went, humming a ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love, News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock; Although between it and the garden ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses. Faint sounds were now audible from the crockery department, and then a hissing, which passed by degrees into a humming, a long, loud droning noise. It resembled as nearly as anything the boiling of an urn at a tea-meeting, and awoke in the breasts of my wife and her army an intense and unconquerable longing for tea, which was accentuated as four o'clock was reached. Still no Wenuses. Another hour dragged wearily ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... the petals prest Of humid honeysuckles, rest From nightly fog defended, Flutter their fragrant wings between, Like humming-birds that scarce are seen, They seem ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... big nest of wood-pulp suspended from a branch ten feet or so above the "set," and, every afternoon, the badgers, as they waited near the mouth of their dwelling for the darkness to deepen, heard the shrill, long continued humming of the sentinel wasps around the big ball in the tree—surely one of the most appetising sounds that could ever reach a badger's ears. But the wasps that had built among the ferns near the river-path, and in the hollows of the hedges, were remorselessly hunted and despoiled. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming snatches of his songs, Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment's notice, and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... free breezy memories of the quadrangles and common rooms of Christ Church or of Trinity. But in the tropical university everybody passes his time in arcades of Greek or Pompeian airiness: the palm-trees wave and whisper around his head as he sits for coolness on his wide verandah; the humming-birds dart from flower to flower on the delicate bouquets that crowd his drawing-room. I knew a lady who made a capital collection of butterflies and moths at her own dinner-table by simply impounding in paper boxes the insects that flitted about the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... girls, so warmly that Joyce went up-stairs for her drawing material. Betty watched her spread her paper on the library table. "I believe that I could put that story into rhyme," she said, after a few minutes of silent thought. "I can feel it humming ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sitting-room, unlocked the door, and ordered a servant to fetch a hansom-cab. Then he occupied himself by setting some of the books straight on the shelves, humming a tune to himself meanwhile, as if nobody ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... carried on the shoulders of two others. She sits with outstretched arms as they walk about with her, and all the rest clap their hands and, stopping before each hut, sing pretty airs, some beating time on their little skirts of cow-skin, and others making a curious humming sound between the songs. Excepting this and the skipping-rope, the play of the girls consists in imitating the serious work of their mothers—building little huts, making small pots and cooking, pounding ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... fire: the unfriendly elements Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time To give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight Must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze; Where, for a monument upon thy bones, And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse, Lying with simple shells. O Lychorida. Bid Nestor bring me spices, ink and paper, My casket and my jewels; and bid Nicander Bring me the satin coffer: lay the babe Upon the pillow: hie thee, whiles I say A priestly ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... in silence, the other wagons rumbling slowly away into the distance until their sound came only as a low humming from the frozen earth. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... were her lips— The bee or humming-bird that sips From scarlet blossoms in the South Beguiled might be by such ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... bought one you'd HAVE business," responded Selden. "That's what's the matter. It's the up-to-date machines that set things humming. A slow, old-fashioned typewriter uses a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Small as the humming-bird is, it has great courage and violent passions. If it find a flower that has been deprived of its honey, it will pluck it off, throw it on the ground, and sometimes tear it ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... rumored promise. He had stayed away for three weeks, following his departure on the special car after bringing Judge Lindman, and when he stepped off the car again at the end of that time Manti was "humming," as he had predicted. During the three weeks of his absence, the switch at Manti had never been unoccupied. Trains had been coming in regularly bearing merchandise, men, tools, machines, supplies. Engineers had arrived; the basin near Manti, choked by a narrow gorge at its westerly ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deck was fixed on the four seamen as, rapidly but steadily, they proceeded to furl and stow the sail. There was still not a breath of wind, but a low humming noise ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... night I was in Zinkand's," he said. "The music playing, glasses clinking, voices humming, women laughing, and I was ordering eggs—yes, sir, eggs, fried and boiled and poached and scrambled, and in all sorts of ways, and downing them as fast ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... chance, Thad found it when the man at the fire was humming a snatch of a song to himself, as though care set ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... strolled toward us, his hands in his pockets, humming an aria, and an expression of amiable good humor on his face. Stephane extended his arms towards him, but one of those looks which always petrifies him kept him silent and motionless in the middle of the pathway. ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the steps with the humming of an opera melody: Beauchamp tripped into the hall-passage. A young maid-servant held the door open, and she accosted him: 'If you please, there is a lady up-stairs in the drawing-room; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he slowly rolled himself over. The sun slapped him hard against the eyes. He blinked against the pain and saw that he was still in Venusport; rather he was at the edge of the swamp near the sprawling compound. Overhead the ionic field was aglow, humming softly, beating ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... of popular opinion in favor of intervention kept pace with the trend of diplomatic negotiations. Italy, especially the northern provinces, was a great beehive, humming with patriotic fervor. Evenings in almost any northern town might be seen companies of young men in civilian dress marching in companies and maneuvering with military precision. At first the organizers of these "training walks," as they were called, maintained ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... I rather agree with Nordau, Mrs. Fridolin—the whole affair reminds me of a tank-drama I once saw in Chicago." It was the cool voice of Miss Bredd that sounded in the hot, humming lane ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... fretful, blameful, scolding myself, condoling with myself, vowing the whole problem a plague and a cheat. This idle wandering might have lasted until dawn, had it not been for my neighbour in the room to my left, who began to talk with a low buzz as of a night-insect humming in a bed-curtain. The surging of the voice amused me; I lay quite still and listened to it. Now it rose loud—I gleaned a word, and was pleased; now it fell—and I fretted; but anon another voice was added to the first, and, if ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first time I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swelling heart for the great city. The sight of this man did me good, for he was humming a song as he broke his stones. We exchanged a few words, and he said at the end: "Well, good-by, my boy, good courage and good luck!" Since then I have passed and repassed along that same route, under circumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... hill; Jack very fresh, the sun (close on noon) staring hot, the breeze very strong and pleasant; the ineffable green country all round—gorgeous little birds (I think they are humming-birds, but they say not) skirmishing in the wayside flowers. About a quarter way up I met a native coming down with the trunk of a cocoa palm across his shoulder; his brown breast glittering with sweat and oil: "Talofa"—"Talofa, alii—You see that white ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stores on Saturdays, or tended furnaces. Sometimes he donned the virile—and noisy—uniform of an electrician: army gauntlets, a coil of wire, pole-climbers strapped to his legs. Crunching his steel spurs into the crisp pine wood of the lighting-poles, he carelessly ascended to the place of humming wires and red cross-bars and green-glass insulators, while crowds of two and three small boys stared in awe from below. At such moments Carl did not envy the aristocratic leisure of his high-school classmate, Fatty Ben Rusk, who, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... I snapped as I hurried to the instrument. "Dival, take those reports." I gestured towards the two attention signals that were glowing and softly humming and thrust my head into the shelter of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... with his own thoughts and dreading the moment when Lawrence would come and lie down beside him. Behind her curtain he heard Claire moving about, humming a little song, and it added to his torture. He turned restlessly on his ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... went to a window and stood looking out. The city was not quiet, but its mighty roar of the day was lowered to a monotonous, drowsy humming. From the east, reflected against low-hanging clouds, was the dull red of his own steel mills, looking like the reflection ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 'Oh, for the wings'! If you could have heard it!— A clear, clear voice, so thrillingly sweet, soaring away up to that wonderful roof. And he sang with such feeling." ... She began softly humming the air, and Stephen knew then for a certainty whence had come those rich, soft notes which had come to his ears ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... soon found, he was just the same. In camp he would get himself, up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or longer, if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows, and "working" at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping rustics were looking on all the while it ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... then jump on. The propulsion was effected by a pump-like action of the legs, very tiresome and elegant. The passenger generally leaned forward in a position strongly suggestive of the favorite attitude of his arboreal ancestors. It was the peculiarity of the Trol-lee that it made a sort of humming roar as it went that sounded like a hundred prisoners groaning in unison; but the By-sigh-kel made no noise in going except in collisions and wrecks. The latter were so frequent that a whole cycle of ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various |
