"Noiseless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for an answer Carmencita sprang to her feet, and with noiseless movement skipped across the room, and from the middle drawer of the chest between the windows took ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... blanket that scarcely covered the two painted legs which seemed clothed in soiled yellow hose. In one hand it held a gun; the other was bent above its eyes in eager scrutiny of some distant point beyond and east of the spot where the children lay concealed. Presently, with a dozen quick noiseless strides of the pony's legs, the apparition moved to the right, its gaze still fixed on that mysterious part of the horizon. There was no mistaking it now! The painted Hebraic face, the large curved nose, the bony cheek, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... queerity? Now I can consort with such a sailor as yourself, Eau-douce, and find nothing very contrary in our gifts, though yours belong to the lakes and mine to the woods. Hark'e, Jasper," continued the scout, laughing in his noiseless manner; "suppose we try the temper of his blade and run ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the door, and then entered with the noiseless step that he had retained notwithstanding his lameness. The moonlight streamed through the windows, and lay in broad bands on the marble floor. In the chancel, especially, everything was as clearly visible as by daylight. At ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... her foot in a noiseless tattoo upon the stool, and for a time looked off into space. She wanted to draw him out, to know from what depth this particular enthusiasm had sprung. She was accustomed to his exuberance of spirits, it was one of the many things she loved him for. If this new craze ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with infinite precaution. He had tried to effect a noiseless entry, but every match, as it spurted and went out, was a little fiendish spit-fire tongue betraying him. From behind a bedroom door, ajar at the dark end of the passage, the voice of Mrs. Downey gently reminded him not to forget ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... had been restored, Dan broached the nature of his errand. As he mentioned Morton Bassett's name the huge editor's face grew blank for a moment; then he was shaken with mirth that passed from faint quivers until his whole frame was convulsed. His rickety chair trembled and rattled ominously. It was noiseless laughter so far as any vocal manifestations were concerned; but it shook the gigantic editor as though he were a mould of jelly. He closed his eyes, but otherwise his ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. I myself, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... vicar was in rather urgent circumstances just then, and his troubles had closed in recently with a noiseless, but tremendous contraction, like that iron shroud in Mr. Mudford's fine tale; and to have gone away into outer darkness, with no project on the stocks, and the attorney's countenance averted, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... apartment. Shelves of calf-bound law books; piles of japanned deed-boxes, some marked in white letters 'Trustees of,' or 'Executors of' and pigeon-holes full of papers seem to quite hide the walls. The floor is covered with some material noiseless to walk on (the door, too, is double, to exclude noise and draught); the furniture is solid and valuable; the arm-chair you occupy capacious and luxurious. On the wall hangs a section of the Ordnance map of the district. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... convulsions, he obeyed in silence, nay, even with propitiatory smiles and gestures. Ay, lay down your arms and bend the suppliant knee, sheathe your useless sword, and hush to soothing whisper the voice that thundered in command a week agone; hide away with noiseless hand the heavy boot and clinking spur; off with belt and buckle and scratching shoulder-strap, and don your softest dressing-gown and creakless slipper; submit to search for pins and needles you ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... he remarked dreamily and got up. His movements were particularly noiseless. "Well—thank you, Captain. If anything is not to your liking please mention it to your steward. I suppose you will be giving a dinner ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts with a continuous hissing rustle; and but for these sentient vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... introduced in the shape of the Stokes light trench mortar—a stove-pipe-like gun firing a cylindrical shell some 400 yards at the rate of 8 in the air at once. It was simply necessary to drop the shell into the gun, at the bottom of which was a striker, and the rest was automatic and almost noiseless, the shock of discharge being rather like a polite cough. Brigade Trench Mortar Companies were formed, in our case 2nd Lieuts. A.N. Bloor and W.R. Ashwell, with several other ranks, went to join the ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... this the Rutulians deemed the battle unequal, and their hearts are stirred in changeful motion; and now the more, as they discern nigher that in ill-matched strength . . . . heightened by Turnus, as advancing with noiseless pace he humbly worships at the altar with downcast eye, by his wasted cheeks and the pallor on his youthful frame. Soon as Juturna his sister saw this talk spread, and the people's mind waver in uncertainty, into the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... accent verged on the protective. "Old Jim's all right. He's in Congress now. I've got to have somebody up in Washington." He had thrust his hands in his pockets, and with his head thrown back and his lips shaped to the familiar noiseless whistle, was looking slowly ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and tied them on to sticks, then went out and stuck them in the ground in the garden outside the wash-house window, sprinkled crumbs of bread, and crept carefully back to watch. First came a robin with noiseless flight, and lit on the ground with its head on one side; but the children were too eager, and in their excitement they made a noise, and the robin flew away. Next came a sparrow, saw the children, saw the crumbs, and, with the habitual ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of wood ran round it, upon and beneath which in its heavy shade was an impenetrable gloom, while the twisted wooden pillars ran upward to the gallery, loggia-like. With rapid perception and intuition he divined rather than saw these things, and, swinging himself up with noiseless lightness, he threw himself full-length down on the rough flooring of the balcony. If they passed he was safe, for a brief time more at least; if they found him—his teeth clinched like a mastiff's where he lay—he had the strength in him ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... tall, attenuated form was clothed in the loose, black garments of a monk, and the few hairs which the rules of a severe order had left on his uncovered head, were white as the snows of winter. A cowl partially concealed his features, his waist was girt by a cord of discipline, and, as he moved with noiseless steps, he seemed counting the beads of a rosary, which he carried in his hand. The page was at first on the point of speaking, believing it to be father Ambrose, the Catholic missionary; but a second glance convinced him he was mistaken, and with ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... I led my little party aft. At the head of the companion ladder Dumaresq and the man Anstey came to a halt, the former engaging the drunken helmsman in conversation, while the remaining four of us stole down the ladder, bare-footed, and noiseless as cats. I had already mentally arranged my method of procedure; so, whispering to Hardy that he was to tackle the chief mate, while I would look after Renouf, I boldly knocked at the cabin door. A command ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... two, Noiseless as the silver dew; Hearts that had no need of speech In the silence spoke to each; And along the sapphire blue, Shot with shafts of sunset through, Fell a voice, a bodiless ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... soldier as his guide stole away from him with that noiseless gliding step which was peculiar to him, and vanished through a side door ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... air rushed out, displaced by the salt-water, till the great thing was full, securely corked, and deposited in the car. Tom's nose-bag was taken off, his bit replaced, the boys mounted, for they were too tired to walk along the sands, and they began their noiseless journey homewards, where they arrived just as the sun was beginning to sink behind the hills, and turning everything to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... teeth, better than a revolver for close work and entirely noiseless, the fellow began slowly and with great cunning to work his hand into the pockets of the coat. He found a long flat letter; this was what he was told to get. Now his cupidity was aroused. He had found nothing of pecuniary value, and he knew that this young fellow carried ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... He seemed powerless to move,—even to think. Then a slight noise roused him, and with every nerve tingling he crouched ready for a spring. With quick, agile movements, noiseless as a cat, sinuous and stealthy as a serpent, the dark figure of a man issued from Alice Renwick's chamber window and ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the raid he had little to offer. Terry turned to the sobbing mother and in a few minutes she had quieted sufficiently to tell her story. He grew paler and grimmer as she dramatized the terror of the midnight entrance of the ominous shadows, the noiseless gliding of bare feet, the vicious whispered threats, the cries of the girl as they bore her away into the night and the long wait for Ledesma's return. Finishing her story, she sank back upon the great bed, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... came in sleeking down their hair, and treading with earnest attempts at noiseless lightness of step over the floor of the aisle; and by-and-by, when all were assembled, Mr Benson followed, unmarshalled and unattended. When he had closed the pulpit-door, and knelt in prayer for an instant or two, he gave out a psalm from the dear old Scottish paraphrase, with its primitive ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... door of the elevator Farrington took his leave, and Madame Beaumont made her last ascent. But before they reached the noiseless cage he said: "Just forget that 'Harold Farrington,' will you?— McManus is the name—James McManus. Some call ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... already related, an American Relief Committee was organized in London to look out for the interests of stranded Americans. Page kept a close eye on its operations, and soon his attention was attracted by the noiseless efficiency of an American engineer of whom he had already caught a few fleeting glimpses in the period of peace. After he had finished his work with the American Committee, Mr. Herbert C. Hoover began to make his arrangements to leave for the United States. His ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... more than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey—why, God alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... slow stream its noiseless flood Poured o'er the glistening pebbles; All silent now the Yankees stood, And ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... pledge's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed bimbo straightway turns his head toward the dust-hole, and, again illustrating the first clause of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the metaphors fulfilled, of the pup turning again to his ashheap, and the papoose that was washed wallowing in the dust-hole. And so the pull-devil-pull-baker strife goes on to the last syllable of recorded time—not between mother and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the giddy town's tumultuous strife, Their wishes yet have never learned to stray, Content and happy in a single life, They keep the noiseless ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... now I watch beside thy grave, and with my tears Nourish the flowers that blossom over thee; I cannot think that thou art dead and gone; That naught remains to me of what thou wert, Save that which lieth here,—dust unto dust. When the bright sun arises, and its rays Pass noiseless through my chamber, then methinks That thou art with me still; that I can see Thy flowing hair; and thy bright glancing eye Beams on me with a look none other can. And when at noon life's busy tumult makes My ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... and then three times more firmly," said Mrs. Slade; and as she spoke, she glided past us with noiseless tread. ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... readily broken up under packing. This difference between the condition of the ice in summer and winter was apparent also to the ear, as the ice-packing in winter was always accompanied by the frequently mentioned loud noises, while the packing of the tough summer ice was almost noiseless, so that the most violent convulsions might take place close to us without our ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... as she. At length, it busied its hands in something, and she heard the chink of money. Then it dropped upon its hands and knees, and crawled away. It reached the door at last, the steps creaked beneath its noiseless tread, and it ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... The brilliant, noiseless, flying creature soared up and sailed down from flower to flower, resting finally on a humble little ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... in the shady porch, on her lap lay the brown baby with his face all puckered up with smiles; his tiny hole of a mouth just opened ready for the small moist thumb, and his bare rosy feet beating noiseless time to the birds; he was listening besides to his mother's voice as she sat rocking him and talking ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... her grief in a noiseless, refined whimper of despair; the French maid shrieked, and called on Heaven to witness the devastation of her every hope; but the master—who had lived, in spite of his Wall ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... were unaware. Pierre smoked rapidly, rolling cigarette after cigarette; he listened with a courteous air, he told stories in his soft, slow voice; once he went out to bring in a fresh log and, coming back on noiseless feet, saw Joan and her instructor bent over one of the books and Joan's face was almost that of a stranger, so eager, so flushed, with sparkles in the usually still, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... visible to us. Its elasticity, its power of yielding to compression, are enormous, and it gives back this elasticity of compression with almost inconceivable readiness and swiftness. To the eye, in watching the gliding and noiseless movements of one of the great modern engines, the power of which one has only a vague and inadequate conception seems not only inexplicable, but gentle. The ponderous iron pieces seem to weigh nothing. There is a feeling that one might hinder ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... smooth surface of the lagoon was now rippling into long furrow-like waves. Dark objects were gliding through the water with noiseless rapidity, converging on the point where the human quarry had now risen to breathe. More of the dreadful reptiles, with which the lagoons were swarming, had found out there was prey, and were bearing down to obtain their share. From his concealment, Laurence could see it all—the glistening ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... feathery and soft as strange plumage and costly velvet. Sometimes a little brook with bubbling laughter crept across her path and slid over the black rocks, gurgling and dimpling in the shadow or sparkling in the sun, while fish, red and gold-speckled, swam noiseless as dreams, and darting water-spiders, poised a moment on the surface, cast a glittering diamond reflection on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... on the plain," said Shag's thoughts, over and over. Perhaps the hunter was his trapper father, who with noiseless step and wary eye was this very moment stalking some precious fur-bearing animal, whose pelt would bring a good price at the great Hudson's Bay trading-post; a price that would go toward keeping his son at this Eastern college for many terms. Shag's grey-brown eyes grew dreamy. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... women—emerged in the twilight from the thick plantation, which protected the house on the north. They reached the flagged path with noiseless feet, and then pausing, they began what an intelligent spectator would have soon seen to be a careful reconnoitering of the whole northern side of the house. They seemed to examine the windows, a garden ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of work than purely mechanical; methods more noiseless and gentle, but not less effective, as the victories of peace ate no ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... girl that he cared nothing at all about, and then whispered in his ear that he would get home the quicker if in the obscurity he ran across the Johns' farm. Fate, laughing in her sleeve, led him to pass with noiseless footsteps quite near the house itself; then she was content to leave him to his own devices, for through the open window he caught sight of Helen Johns doing her gymnastics. Her figure was all aglow with the yellow lamplight; she was happy in the poetry of her motions and in the delight ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... and a sight made of bone imbedded in the wax. Through this tube, about ten feet long, they blow slender arrows cut from the leaf-stalks of a palm. These are winged with a tuft of silk-cotton (common cotton would be too heavy), and poisoned with urari, of which we shall speak hereafter. This noiseless gun is universally used ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... a dog—a huge sandy mastiff, with hanging jaws, wet with foam, a great square head, and broad noiseless feet. It shambles nearer, appearing so suddenly out of the gloom that it seems to materialise before her vision. It watches her as if about to spring; she cannot remember it is not a tiger ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... reconnoitred the position, gave minute directions to his men, and they all, with the noiseless, stealthy movement of the panther, worked their way along until they were within rifle distance of their foes. Every man selected his victim and took deliberate aim. The signal was given. The discharge ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... switch and illuminated the apartment. It was a little room innocent of windows, and lit as all the rest of the basement was by cornice lamps. In one corner was a grey-painted iron door. This Fall pushed aside on its noiseless runners. There was another elevator here. The two men stepped in and the lift sunk and sunk until it seemed as though it would never come to the end. It stopped at last, and the men stepped ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... she took out the blanket, and carried it to the sofa, doing everything in as noiseless a manner as possible. She spread the blanket over Hepzibah's feet, tucking the edges under very gently and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... was released. With a growing horror of I know not what, I set to work at the second screw, trying to be noiseless, but with hands shaking with excitement. The screw fell out into my palm. In my haste I dropped my knife, and had to grope for it on the floor. It was then that a woman screamed—a low, sobbing cry, broken off almost before it began. I had got my knife by that time, and in desperation ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to his polishing. His lips stammered and halted in the making of noiseless whispers, as, with corrugated brows of puzzlement, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... wide windows were flung open to the illuminated majesty of the Thames Embankment. The pale cream room was nearly full of expensive women, and expending men, and silver-chained waiters whose skilled, noiseless, inhuman attentions were remunerated at the rate of about four-pence a minute. Music, the midnight food of love, floated scarce heard through the tinted atmosphere. It was the best imitation of Roman luxury ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... coming,—in a little while it will be night. But, oh Youth, alas! alas! I can see the shadows have touched you already!" And so, with a quick upflung glance at the dismal house, he turned, waved his hand, and sped away on noiseless feet, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... noiseless, and dark—the Schwarzwasser of Casterbridge—ran beneath a low cliff, the two together forming a defence which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side unnecessary. Here were ruins of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... followed Alice. She knew the route well enough, and I overtook her in the great hall. We heard pursuing feet rattling down the echoing stair. To enter my room and bolt the door behind us was a moment's work; and a few moments more took us into the alley of the kitchen-garden. With speedy, noiseless steps, we made our way to the park, and across it to the door in the fence, where Wood was waiting for us, old Constancy pawing the ground with impatience ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... up the path. She halted halfway up the steps and leaned against the rail to catch her breath. Then she went on. Her step was noiseless, for tucked in behind a cushion aboard the Waterbug she had found an old pair of her own shoes, rubber-soled, and she had put them on to ease the ache in her feet born of thirty-six hours' encasement in leather. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... obeyed; and Theodore, trembling in every limb so that he dropped rather than sat down in his chair, again watched and waited. A shadow fell between him and the light and his raised eyes met the doctor's. He had come in through the room where Jim was waiting. He came with noiseless tread to the bedside, and the instant his practiced eyes fell on the sleeping face they lighted up with a quick, glad look. Moving silently back to the door again he signaled Theodore to come to him, while as silently Jim ...
— Three People • Pansy
... closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, noiseless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time to stand erect, he sprang back and fled, his legs working like those of an enormous cat, with noiseless swiftness. His door closed as gently as a feather blown in the wind, and the next moment Prim had ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here and there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel dropped from a lady's gown. Helmsley walked beside ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... around another way and dropped into the first handy chair. The truth was as bare as a model. The force of it came to me like a blow between the eyes. Long ago, because of chilblains, I had adopted felt shoes. In that second of time I stood at the door the noiseless footgear cured me of all the egotism I ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... hand. Then an arm followed. With a slow, gliding movement that even to Eva's strained ears was noiseless, a man, his back toward ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... how stealthy and noiseless and altogether perfect his maneuvering was. Although the trees that grew about were all small and the bushes bare, and although the white snow gave no background for concealment, he covered himself so perfectly at one time, and slipped in and out of sight so quickly ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... and raising a vertical base of black sod and tangled roots torn from the earth where a gaping wound shows its former place. Here a rock, moist with swamp-sweat, lichen-covered and set in moss. There a clump of thick-grown cedars, deep shelter for the timid rabbit. All is noiseless, breathless. Not even the squirrel chatters, for it is not long past noon. But farther on comes a dull, low murmuring, scarcely to be heard at first, so nicely does it fit this gentle monotone of silence, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... big round harvest moon fell through the warm air, which scarcely moved above the graves of the almost forgotten dead in the country churchyard. The low headstones cast long shadows over the long grass that merely trembled as the noiseless wind moved ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... he drove fast, then slowed down to a noiseless glide as he ran past the tall cactus fence bordering the Collector's domain. At the end of the fence where it turned at right angles dividing the "compound" from a paddock, the engines were reversed in the narrow ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... however, in any experience of Italy almost anywhere, and I shall probably in the future not be above sparing a light regret to several of the hours of which the one I speak of was composed. I shall remember a large cool bourgeois villa in the garden of a noiseless suburb—a middle-aged Villa Franco (I owe it as a genial pleasant pension the tribute of recognition), roomy and stony, as an Italian villa should be. I shall remember that, as I sat in the garden, and, looking up from my book, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... comforts and graces with which she must have been familiar. At the same time her new sphere of influence was boundless, and the means in her hand of leavening and moulding her new country almost unlimited—a thing above all others delightful to a woman, to whom the noiseless and gradual operation of influence is the chief weapon in ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... his back swept a big scarlet touring-car driven by a solitary man. It was coming at tremendous speed and no horn had given warning of its noiseless approach. Van had but an instant to step out of its path when on it shot, bearing down on the unconscious boy ahead. The little chap was walking in the middle of the road and whistling so loudly that no hint of the oncoming danger reached him. The man in the motor saw the child and sounding ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the dust and ivy round us, and every incident of which bore so awfully upon my own mysterious case—in this haunted spot, darkened by the towering foliage that rose on every side, dense and high above its noiseless walls—a horror began to steal over me, and my heart sank as I thought that my friends were, after all, not about to enter and disturb this ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with noiseless steps, and, unfastening the skiff which the smugglers had just used, they climbed down into it, and pushed off toward the Alert. A few strokes brought them alongside of her, and, thrusting their arms ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... of affection, to watch his quiet slumber, and catch the gentle breathing of his parted lips! I had scarcely reached the landing-place before the wretched woman's hand was laid lightly on my arm to arrest my progress. Her noiseless step had followed me without my being aware of it. 'How soon will your work be done?' said she, in a suffocated voice. 'To-morrow I could be here again,' answered I. 'To-morrow! and what am I to do, if my boy wakes before that time?' and her voice became louder and hoarse with fear. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... are gone! All is as silent as the voice I heard On a summer dawn When we two fished among the river reeds. As silent as the pain In a heart that feeds A sorrow, but does not complain. As silent as above the bridge in this July, Noiseless, far up in this mirror-lighted sky Wheels aimlessly a hydroplane: ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... only escape from the anomalous situation in which the nation found itself lay in a restoration of the legitimist monarchy, in the person of Don Alfonso, son of Isabella II. The collapse of the republic was as swift and as noiseless as had been its establishment. The principal agency in it was the army, which, in December, 1874, declared definitely for Alfonso, after he had pledged himself to a grant of amnesty and the maintenance of constitutional government. December 31 a regency ministry under the presidency of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone (her uncle being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless, cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as desolate as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and trackless wastes of Sahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an English home, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... tops of some bushes moving in a direction not with the wind, and he was equally sure that Shawnees were coming forward. Nearly half an hour passed and then a bead of fire appeared as a rifle was discharged, and the shot had an uncommonly loud sound in the clear, noiseless night. He heard, too, the click of the bullet as it struck against the stone near the mouth of the hollow, and once more he laughed. It was an amusing night for him. The warriors, now that they had crept within range, would be sure to sprinkle the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... side, a man could lose himself and find no person or any sign to give him his direction. The usual guide which one might derive from the Verey lights going up between the lines was here non-existent, as both sides kept extremely quiet. Even the guns were comparatively noiseless in these days, and were a man to find himself at night alone upon this ground, which lay between two and three miles behind our own lines, the only thing he could do would be to lie down and wait for the dawn to show ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... now half-past ten, and time to carry out his project. The back of his neck was aching and his breath was coming quick. With noiseless steps he walked to the door of the Father's room and listened again. Hearing nothing, he opened the door wide and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... they say he laughed as if he thought it a great joke that a cabin and a grave should be considered obstacles in his way. And he laughed when my father and I went to see him; yes, laughed, in that noiseless, oily, inside way of his, as you might think ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... twilight was going out in the sky, and the flakes of scarlet-dyed clouds were paling overhead, a body of men crept, with noiseless feet, through the clump of long grass in which Wan Bong was hiding. They saw him sitting on the earth, bent double over his folded arms, rocking his body to and fro, in the agony of the opium smoker, when the unsatisfied craving for the drug is strong upon him. There was a rustle ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Swift as a swallow on the wing and noiseless as a thief in the night the Minnie Williams left the smoking ways, with that deep and graceful bow always so thrilling to beholders when there are beholders; the first and most ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the steam man completed, so far as it was possible. He was painted up, and every improvement made that the extraordinarily keen mind of the boy could suggest. When he stood one side, and witnessed the noiseless but powerful workings of the enormous legs, he could not see that anything more could ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... sight, almost with a jerk. Through the greyness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of the moon, falling out of the Southern sky, toward the West. The evening seemed to merge into an almost instant night. Above me, the many constellations passed in a strange, 'noiseless' circling, Westward. The moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night-gulf, and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... fairly steep, so Brodie shut off the engine, and the big car crept on with a stealthy and noiseless rapidity which seemed to betoken ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... threadbare emblem of a journey which is implied in the text suggests how, moment by moment, we hurry on and how everything is slipping past us, as fields and towns do to a traveller in a train. Only our journey is smooth and noiseless, like the old-fashioned canal boat travelling, where, if you shut your eyes, you could not tell that you were moving. We glide on and never know it, and so gradually and silently is the scene 'changed by still degrees,' that it is only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... steadily; his forefinger played tentatively on the trigger; but on second thoughts he refrained. He was keenly conscious of the fact that the beast was doing its work with skill superior to his own. In comparison to his, its movements were almost noiseless. Jack Meredith was too clever a man to be conceited in the wrong place, which is the habit of fools. He recognised very plainly that he was not distinguishing himself in this new field of glory; he was not yet an accomplished ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... river and bay and haze on every side as far as the horizon's circle. At night it's just an endless waste of electric lights. There's very little sound from the street roar below. It's still up there in the sky, and sunny; silent and snowy; quiet and rainy; noiseless and dark—according to the hours, seasons, and meteorological conditions, my son. And it's some joint, believe me, with the dark old mahogany trim and furniture and the dull rich effects in azure and gold; and the Beluch carpets full of sombre purple and dusky fire, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... denizens Suddenly grew still, the squirrel on the bough, Quivering deer, the otter in his secret cave. Indian maids with look intent upon the goal, Savage yells restrained, upon the chase set forth, Swift, with noiseless ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... undulating. They parted—and a pillar of white stood for a moment before them. The thing resolved itself into a human figure, swathed, draped in white, the face concealed by a white veil which fell straight from the head. Now the white figure, with a noiseless, gliding motion, was crossing the room toward the white desk. It stopped, lifted a hand which crept toward the gaslight. With this motion, the veil fell away from the face. The gaslight shone upon it; he could see it in ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... ears and, though I could not put a name to it, I could have sworn that it came from the room where Bryce did his typing. It was a very faint noise, not the kind to bring a heavy sleeper instantly awake. But my nerves work like a hair-trigger, and the almost noiseless pad of a cat across the room at night is sufficient to rouse me. What I had heard had been so faint that a less matter-of-fact man might have imagined that he had dreamt it. But I knew ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... electric drive and the boat began to forge ahead again, but with all the stealth of a tiger in the jungle. The operation of its machinery was noiseless, and only the gentle slap of the waves against the bow gave audible evidence of its passage. For a considerable time they rode in silence. In the thick darkness the shore was almost invisible while the glowing street ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... sign of the tomb was upon them. Small, living, delicately formed, Hugh, could he have forgot the face they bore above, might have envied the floor which in their nakedness they seemed to caress, so lingeringly did they move from it in their noiseless progress. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... of the stubborn rock at the top, 70 feet high: and after heavy floods, forms a noble cascade of one unbroken sheet: but like others of its class, in summer fails in its amount, and often degenerates into a noiseless dribble. ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... drill holes in the door, and into these fit jack-screws worked by means of levers. The tremendous force thus exerted soon cuts the safe literally to pieces, and its contents are at the mercy of the thieves. The whole process is noiseless and rapid, and so complete has been the destruction of some safes that even the most experienced detectives have been astounded at the sight of the wreck. Such an operation is never undertaken without ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... in the wolf-pack's noiseless pursuit. The brutes drew nearer as the man's pace slowed to the wearying ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... they stept on tiptoe to the door; they cautiously fixt the iron key in the lock; Antonio was now straining his hand to draw back the bolt without noise; when he felt that some one else was working at the lock on the outside in the same noiseless manner. The door opened softly and in came face to face to Antonio ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... move, and was perfectly noiseless, Bumper concluded that it was harmless, and so he approached it and after sniffing at it began nibbling the lower part. Suddenly there was a loud squeak, and the big shadow seemed to part in the middle and fly in every direction. It took wings so strangely that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... was to provide myself with a weapon. I knew that if I were face to face with him I could tear his throat out, but I must so arrange that the fashion of his death should be a noiseless one. There was a hunting trophy in the hall, and from it I took a straight heavy knife which I sharpened upon my boot. Then I stole to my room, and sat waiting upon the side of my bed. I had made up my mind what I should do. There would be little satisfaction ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... somewhat darkened the window, a noiseless shadow; Mrs. Iden had come quietly round the house, and stood in the March wind, watching the sleeping man. She had a shawl about her shoulders—she put out her clenched hand from under its folds, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... indecisive; after which the French gave up the struggle at sea, confining themselves wholly to a commerce-destroying warfare. This feature of the War of the Spanish Succession characterizes nearly the whole of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the American Revolutionary struggle. The noiseless, steady, exhausting pressure with which sea power acts, cutting off the resources of the enemy while maintaining its own, supporting war in scenes where it does not appear itself, or appears only in the background, and striking open blows at rare intervals, though lost to most, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... a breeze went through the forest, and a voice cried, "Let the dead bury their dead!" At the word the contending thousands dropped noiseless, and when the sun looked in, he saw never a bone, but here and there a ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... child remained there; but her presence troubled Adone's mother, though Nerina was humble as a homeless dog, was noiseless and seldom seen, was obedient, agile, and became useful in many manners, and learned with equal eagerness the farm work taught her by Gianna, and the doctrine taught her by Don Silverio, for she was intelligent and willing in every way. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... and heath. No sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... With swift, noiseless steps she passed out of her room, down a back stairway into the hall just spoken of, and gained the library door, finding it, to her great joy, wide enough open for her to slip in without ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... turning away her charmed gaze, lost her balance from sheer dizziness and plunged forward. Ruth, with a look and cry of horror, bent over and saw the fearful descent, so quick and so noiseless until the dull splash was heard and the black water opened and closed again. Then she threw up her hands and started to run toward the hill, calling loudly. But already they had seen and were coming. One—Doctor Ebling—was far ahead of the rest. Ruth met ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "get out quickly." Used by the speaker, the word implies quick and noiseless movement in the opposite ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... so lose their sphericity. Pipestems and beads of bakelite have the clear brilliancy of amber and greater strength. Fountain pens made of it are transparent so you can see how much ink you have left. A new and enlarging field for bakelite and allied products is the making of noiseless gears for automobiles and other machinery, ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... plantation-houses for our meals, camp-arrangements being yet very imperfect. The officers board in different messes, the adjutant and I still clinging to the household of William Washington,—William the quiet and the courteous, the pattern of house-servants, William the noiseless, the observing, the discriminating, who knows everything that can be got, and how to cook it. William and his tidy, lady-like little spouse Hetty—a pair of wedded lovers, if ever I saw one—set our table in their one room, half-way between an un glazed window and a large wood-fire, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the danger is ever present. The sentinels are at their posts on the ramparts, and at the first attack of the sea, give the war-cry, whereupon Holland sends out arms, materials, and money. And even when great battles are not in progress, a slow, noiseless struggle is ever going on. Innumerable windmills, even in the drained lakes, are continually working to exhaust the rain-water and the water that oozes from the earth, and to pump it into the canals. Every day the locks ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... sitting-room, noiseless as ever, with pale, passionless face, the absolute prototype of the perfect French servant, to whom any expression of vigorous life seems to savour of presumption. He carried a small silver salver, on which reposed ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... remained in the rear, with the white- robed, skeletonlike image that had crept to my side unawares with its noiseless step. Thus, in each winding turn of the difficult path at which the convoy following behind me came into sight, I had seen, first, the two gayly dressed, armed men, next the black, bierlike litter, and last the Black-veiled Woman ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... The noiseless Morgan had listened to the conversation between Strong and Major Pendennis at the latter's own lodgings, and had carried away from it matter for much private speculation; and a desire of knowledge had led him to follow his master when the major came to the Wheel ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... make the attempt alone. He stepped softly from the tent, and made his way toward the horse. He had on a pair of tennis shoes that made his footsteps practically noiseless. Fortunately, Prince, should it prove to be that animal, stood sideways to the tent, his head away from it, so that he did not see Will. The boy tried to ascertain if there was a saddle on the horse, but there was the shadow of a tree across the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... then we both started apart. Behind us we could hear the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching, soft quick footsteps, muffled and almost noiseless upon the spongy turf. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back in his own quarters, moved about with a caution not untouched with apprehension. Mrs. Teetzel, he knew had a tread that was noiseless. She also had the habit of appearing, in curl-papers, at uncouth moments, as unheralded as an apparition from the other world. And Trotter's conscience was not clear. For months past he had kept secreted in his trunk one of those single-holed gas heaters known as a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... room with light and noiseless footsteps, treading as though in the presence of one sick unto death, she comes up to him, lays her hands upon his shoulders, and stooping, presses her fresh young lips to his worn ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... great wolf glided among the trees. For a full hour they had wandered through the willows in this manner, and Dan had made up his mind to surrender the search when Bart, returning from one of his noiseless detours, sprang out before his master and whined softly. Dan turned, loosening his revolver in the holster, and followed Bart through the soft gloom of the tree shadows and the moonlight. His step was almost as silent as that of the slinking animal which ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... narrow, dark street, very quiet, having about it a certain air of poor respectability,—an obscure, noiseless street, without even a sign of life. Some unfortunate one had endeavoured here to keep an hotel;—but there was no hotel kept there now. There had been much craft in selecting the place in which the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... practical-minded owner of such vast water-privileges. His water-power seems proof against all floods, while the corn of all nations must come to his door. Standing under these drooping elms, by this lazy stream, we hear none of the clatter of the great mill, and we cease to dream of affixing a period to its noiseless and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... lyre, and the innumerable croud was noiseless and silent as the chambers of death. They did not now wait for the pleasing tale of a luxuriant imagination, or the pathetic and melting strain of the mourner. They composed their spirits into the serenity of devotion. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... opening of this story Tom had perfected a noiseless aeroplane—or one so nearly silent as to justify the name. The details of it will be found in the book called "Tom Swift and His Air Scout." In this mechanism of the air Tom had had some wonderful experiences, and they ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... him, feeling my way among the trees in the darkness, stopping every moment to listen to his cry to guide me, when a heavy rustle came creeping down the hill and passed close before me. Something, perhaps, in the sound—a heavy, though almost noiseless, onward push which only one creature in the woods can possibly make— something, perhaps, in a faint new odor in the moist air told me instantly that keener ears than mine had heard the cry; that Mooween the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... his heavy step that made the house tremble, was tramping to and fro, from the window to the ingle, from the ingle to the opposite wall. Sometimes Aunt Bridget came down to say that everything was going on well, and at intervals of half an hour Doctor Conrad entered in his noiseless way and sat in silence by the fire, took a few puffs from a long clay pipe and then returned to his ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... 'toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary.' And then, all at once, out of the mysterious obscurity beneath the shadow of the hills, Something is seen moving, and it comes nearer; and the waves become solid beneath that light and noiseless foot, as steadily nearer He comes. Jesus Christ uses the billows as the pavement over which He approaches His servants, and the storms which beat on us are His occasion for drawing very near. Then they think Him a spirit, and cry out with voices that were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... moans and the coughing of the big cats mingled with the myriad noises of the lesser denizens of the jungle to fan the savage flame in the breast of this savage English lord. He tossed upon his bed of grasses, sleepless, for an hour and then he rose, noiseless as a wraith, and while the Waziri's back was turned, vaulted the boma wall in the face of the flaming eyes, swung silently into a great tree and ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... looked once more along the verandah. Nick's room was just round the corner of the bungalow. The nocturnal visitor had gone in that direction. With noiseless tread he followed. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the deepest; and the foe is most to be dreaded who never threatens till he strikes. You knights and men at arms go straight to your purpose with sword in hand. We who are clerks win our access with a noiseless step and an indirect approach, but attain ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... thoughts of Cecil Rhodes back to Oriel. Everywhere, balanced against the Town Hall or the Parliament House, will be the great university buildings and art museums, the lecture halls open to all comers, the great noiseless libraries, the book exhibitions and book and pamphlet stores, keenly criticized, keenly used, will teem with unhurrying, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... this—Hegel was convinced that no word of what he said was understood by Heinrich Beer; and he could therefore, in his presence, give himself up to all the intellectual outpourings of the moment. In general, Hegel's conversation was a sort of monologue, sighed forth by starts in a noiseless voice; the odd roughness of his expressions often struck me, and many of them have remained in my memory. One beautiful starlight evening we stood together at the window, and I, a young man of one-and-twenty, having just had a good dinner and finished my coffee, spoke with ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... knitting, and I by her side, gazing now on herself, now on her work, with a vague idea that the threads in the skein of my own web of love or of life were passing quick through those noiseless fingers. And, indeed, in every web of romance, the fondest, one of the Parcae is sure to be some matter-of-fact She, Social Destiny, as little akin to romance herself as was this ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... point and where we were lay the river, in a long, broad mirror-like expanse, like a pretty little inland lake. Occasionally a busy little tug would bustle up or down, a gunboat move along with noiseless dignity, suggestive of a reserved power, or a schooner beat lazily from one side to the other. But these were so few as to make even more pronounced the customary idleness that hung over the scene. The tug's activity seemed spasmodic and forced—a sort of protest against the gradually ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Robin came downstairs to find the house deserted except for the noiseless butlers who stared at her as though she were some strange freak. Apparently no one stirred before noon, for Tom, coming in from the garage, greeted her with a pleasant: "Say, you're an early bird, aren't you?" and then directed one of the butlers to bring her some ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... an old logging road, if they could but find it in the dark. The last mile could be covered more quickly by this route than by following the tump trail past the rapids, and it would lead them straight to the camp. The moon would not be up until after midnight and the tote road promised a more noiseless approach for the preliminary reconnoitring that was necessary to ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... pieces. During the day the mago was sleepy, short-sighted, and, when disturbed, morose; but with the decreasing daylight he expanded his pupils, and moved about in a lively and agile manner, with rapid noiseless leaps, generally sideways. He soon became tame, but to my regret died after a few weeks; and I succeeded only for a short time in keeping ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... gravely, and I assumed a peasant openness of look and honesty. She was deceived completely, and, without further speech, she stepped to the door like a ghost and was gone. I never saw a human being so noiseless, so uncanny. Our talk had been carried on silently, and I had closed the panel quietly, so that we could not be heard by Alixe or Doltaire. Now I was alone, to see and hear my wife in speech with my enemy, the man who had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... followed. "Well, what do you say to it now?" she asked, gliding among the beds with noiseless feet and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... second or two, the heavy stone rolled a few feet into the cave; the jaguar advanced her head then her shoulders, and at last, a noiseless bound brought her within four feet of Boone who at that critical moment collecting all his strength for a decisive blow, dashed her skull to atoms. Boone, quite exhausted, drank some of her blood to allay his thirst, pillowed his head upon ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the parent, who gathered her to her bosom, covered her with noiseless kisses, and murmured love over her like a cushat ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... flowing beneficence of our temperate zone it all presents! Nature in her kinder, gentler moods, dreaming of the tranquil herds and the bursting barns. Surely the vast army of the grass hath its victories, for the most part noiseless, peace-yielding victories that gladden the eye and tranquillize ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... gone downstairs to sit together and whisper. It was one of those grey days in early autumn which have an almost weird sense of stillness about them. Hardly a leaf stirred, and even the flight of the birds was noiseless and touched with the universal feeling of hush. The begonias and dahlias and flaming autumn flowers in the broad border below the southern terrace wall had lost half their colour in the grey afternoon, and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... ground floor, hardly looking at the counters bearing the Japanese goods, the gloves and the artificial flowers. She ascended a winding iron stairway draped with tapestries, her tiny feet sinking into the moquette that covered the steps, and entered a noiseless salon where men and women were silently sitting before three tables, writing or reading, just as in the drawing-room of a hotel. At a large round table, old ladies and young girls sat looking at the pictures in Illustration, the caricatures in the Journal Amusant, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... sate silent, for however enlightened and unprejudiced people may be, they never can perfectly free themselves from the impression of certain circumstances, such as presentiments, omens, apparitions, and forebodings, which, like owls on noiseless wings, have flown through the world ever since the time of Adam, when they first shouted their ominous "Too-who! too-whit!" People know that Hobbes, who denied the resurrection in the warmest manner, never could sleep in the neighbourhood of a room in which there had been a corpse. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... lads were cautiously scanning the shores of the inlet. Ross could sniff the unmistakable Cornish air. The call of home seemed irresistible. It looked a comparatively easy matter to slip quietly over the starboard side, and swim with noiseless strokes towards the weed-covered rocks that showed six feet or more above the sea. It was half ebb-tide; there was little or no drift out of the cove. Under the shadow of those dark cliffs detection seemed almost impossible, unless the submarine went to the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... nurse, still half-asleep, came forth, stood for a moment upon the topmost step to recover her senses, and then, with the wailing infant in her arms, descended and passed round the corner of the house. She had barely disappeared when the murderess crept from her lair, and, swift and noiseless as a serpent or a cat, glided up the steps through the open door, and in another moment had again concealed herself beneath the leaves of a large table that stood in the hall close to the door of the sick-room, which, standing ajar, gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... these anxieties I loved the school and could hardly be wrested from it even for a day. I bent to my books with eagerness, I joined a debating society, and I took a hand at all the games. The days went by on golden, noiseless, ball-bearing axles—and almost before I realized it, winter was upon the land. But oh! the luxury of that winter, with no snow drifts to climb, no corn-stalks to gather and no long walk to school. It was sweet to wake each morning in the shelter of our little house and know that ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Abel noiseless entered, with his foot-fall slight, He slipped along to the bedside; He oped the little curtain, without stirring of the rings; His father woke and smiled, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Anthony's elder sister to the younger, in a noiseless voice that certainly did not ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... precipices, and carried us with safety past the terrible abyss, at the bottom of which the stream leapt, with a frightful roaring, from rock to rock. This night-scene was so terrible and impressive that even my uncultivated companions were involuntarily silent—mute, and noiseless, we went on our way, nothing breaking the death-like stillness but the rattling ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... noiseless as startled deer, with every sense expectant. For a minute they heard nothing, and then came a faint rattling of dust down the gully, and ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... homage to such a character, though she had not been related to him, than did Dr. Johnson on every occasion that offered: his disquisition on Pope's epitaph placed over Mrs. Corbet is a proof of that preference always given by him to a noiseless life over a bustling one; but however taste begins, we almost always see that it ends in simplicity; the glutton finishes by losing his relish for anything highly sauced, and calls for his boiled chicken at the close of many years spent in the search of dainties; the connoisseurs ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... admire his versatility. Then motors had come in, and he had forsaken aquatic sports for the flying chariot. The canoes of birch-bark and canvas had been hoisted to the roof, the sail-boat had rotted at her moorings, and the movable floor of the boat-house, ingeniously contrived to slide back on noiseless runners, had lain undisturbed through several seasons. Even the key of the boat-house had been mislaid—by Isabel's fault, her husband said—and the locksmith had to be called in to make a new one when the purchase of the motor-boat made the lake once more the ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... allowed to play about the streets, and women went shopping, according to the custom of their sex all the world over. Kaffir girls stood in groups at street corners, swaying their bodies as they beat noiseless time with their bare feet to the monotonous drone of mouth-organs or Jews'-harps, which most of them carry strung about their necks, wherewith to banish dull care in the many moments of leisure snatched from toil, and beaming broad smiles ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... swiftly, straight ahead, taking no precaution save to keep always a vigilant watch and to avoid dark coverts whence tiger or leopard might spring upon him. He was in a region which he had often hunted over, and where he felt at home. He traveled very swiftly, at a long, noiseless lope; and when he wished to rest he climbed ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Burbank had mounted the garret stairs with footsteps far from noiseless, being, as she said, a "hefty" old lady; but Linda had been too much absorbed to notice her ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... the prairie. As he boarded the little vessel at the stern, a raccoon waddled in noiseless haste over the bow, and splashed into the wet covert of reeds beyond. If only to keep from sharing his quarters with all the refuge-hunting vermin of the noisome wilderness, the one human must move on. He turned the lugger's prow towards the lake, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... he limply yielded to his captor under the impression that the prisoners were loose and upon him. Jack tied the man's unresisting hands with his own canteen-straps; then seated him near the wall and lighted a match. Four men, undisturbed by this swift and noiseless coup, were stretched on the board floor, breathing the heavy, deep sleep of exhaustion. Jack aroused them with the greatest difficulty, and found it still harder to make them understand that, with courage and resolution, they ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan |
