"Strident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or three sound posts were standing, she spoke to her sister. There was something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... anisette to the flute, at once sugary and peppery, puling and sweet; while, to complete the orchestra, kirschwasser has the furious ring of the trumpet; gin and whiskey burn the palate with their strident crashings of trombones and cornets; brandy storms with the deafening hubbub of tubas; while the thunder-claps of the cymbals and the furiously beaten drum roll in the mouth by means of the rakis ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... became less of an effort, for young Wylie's voice was strident. The Wylie conversation had ever been limited largely to the Wylies, their accomplishments, their purposes, and their prospects; and now having the floor as host, he talked mainly about himself, his father, and their ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... want to accomplish your mission and serve your country you must make yourself unpleasant to the sensitive boys who only see the world through the eyes of their sweethearts. Or through something worse. Let your words be strident and rasping ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... near the end of the month, then he seemed for a while in doubt, or to be upon both sides of the question as to whether the army should be advanced or withdrawn; but ultimately, in the contemptuous language of Mr. Swinton, he "added his strident voice in favor of the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula." This settled the matter; for the President had decided to place himself under the guidance of his new military mentor; and, moreover, his endurance ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... pure girlish voice had just sung 'Full fathom five thy father lies,' when Lady Bracebridge, in her most strident voice, which went ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... oasis in the day. Since morning he had been toiling through the Sahara of the city's noise: arid, senseless, inhospitable noise: roaring of wheels, clanging of bells, shrieking of whistles, clatter of machinery, squawking of horns, raucous and strident voices: confused, bewildering, exhausting noise, a desolate and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... those ocean liners!" she cried. Her voice was sharp and strident. "They're paralyzed now, and because they are they're costing the big companies millions of dollars every day. That's what their time is worth to their owners. But what are those ships worth to you? Ten dollars a week and a broken arm—or a leg ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... was bad and the beds were worse. Norman and Roy longed for their new blankets and the woods, and slept with difficulty. Some time, about the middle of the night, the two boys heard the strident shriek of a locomotive. They at once rushed to Colonel Howell's room, eager to make their way back to the depot, but recalling the operator's promise, the prospector persuaded them to go to bed again and when it was ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... engines throbbed with a pulsation that set every bolt and joint creaking, the strident echoes of the firemen's shovels could he heard scraping against the iron floor, and little whistlings of steam came like higher notes in the general tune. Even the noises of the ship were strange ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... matter wid youse folks, anyway?" demanded the boy, in a strident tone. "I didn't promise to sit in a chair an' play ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... during ululations, the Bororos swung their bodies forward and backward—not unlike the howling dervishes of Egypt—uttering occasional high and strident notes. This was generally done before starting en masse on a hunt, when a ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the order to Janet, who had appeared to look after the visitor, and turned back at the sound of Azalea's loud, strident laughter. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the past, we have grown a little impatient with our North American civilisation, with its strident clamour, its noisy elections, its extremes of liberty, its occasional corruption and the faults that we now see were the necessary accompaniments of its merits. But let us set beside it a picture such as this, taken from the New York Imperial Gazette of 1925—or from any paper ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... chuckling morons through the roaring tumult of the editorial rooms. Copy boys rushed about, white sheets clutched in their grimy hands. Telephones jangled and strident voices blared through the haze that arose from the pipes and cigarettes of perspiring writers who feverishly transferred to paper the startling events that ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... Plooie reappeared and his strident falsetto appeal for trade rang shrill in the space of Our Square. Trouble developed at once. Small boys booed at him, called him "yellow," and advised him to go carefully, there was a German behind the next tree. Henri Dumain, our little old French David who fought the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he repeated, in a strident shout that echoed through the bare room. "Dog! Villain! You ensnare my daughter's affections—you entice her away from her father's house—you cover my family with eternal disgrace—and then you dare to tell me there is no harm done! Wait a little, and you shall see that there will be harm enough ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... cans, bottles, packing boxes, broken barrels. On one corner, diagonally across from where Morgan stood, facing on the other street, a ragged, weathered tent was pitched. Out of this the sound of contending children came, the strident, commanding voice of a woman breaking sharply to still the commotion that shook her unstable home. Morgan knew this must be the home of the cattle thief whose case Judge Thayer had undertaken. He wondered why even a cattle thief would choose that site at the back ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... production, they fancied it was of a queer shape, unlike the cards of ordinary gentlemen. But it was there only for an instant; for as it passed from his fingers to Arthur's, one or another slipped his hold. The strident, tearing gale in that garden carried away the stranger's card to join the wild waste paper of the universe; and that great western wind shook ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... missed of the strident town was the clustering round of fellow creatures, the eternal drumming of neighbour hearts, the feet upon the pavement and the eager faces all around that were so full of interest they did not let her seek into the depths ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the face: here and there on it is the mark of the sculptor's tool: now and then a glare or a smile reveals what deep creases and gashes the winds of the passing years have made in the soul behind the mask. Here and there, as a rising strident voice in passionate exhortation lifts, we may hear the roar of the narrowing channel into which his life is rushed with augmented force as he hurries forward into his destiny. In that tumult, family, home, ambition, his very child itself that was his first deep wellspring of love, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... blind impulse sprang up within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words. Geoffroi would only reply, in his venomous way, "Come to-night to the Valley and see if I lie." And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one straight blow from ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... back on that day, what might have happened if she had gone through with this truant indiscretion. But halfway on the journey her escort had deserted her momentarily to buy a cigar. Left alone upon the upper deck of a ferryboat, crowded with a strident and raucous company, she had felt herself suddenly grow cold, not with fear, but with a certain haughty and disdainful anger. These people were not her kind! She had risen swiftly from her seat and hidden discreetly in the ladies' washroom until after the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and for a little while ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... so bright were they that the colonel, looking around for the moon, was surprised to find that luminary invisible. On the green background of the foliage the fireflies glowed and flickered. There was no strident steam whistle from factory or train to assault the ear, no rumble of passing cabs or street cars. Far away, in some distant part of the straggling town, a sweet-toned bell sounded the hour of ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... mountain side forming the descent to Moraine Lake a flock of Clark's nutcrackers were flying about in the pine woods, giving expression to their feelings in a great variety of calls, some of them quite strident. A little junco came in sight by the side of the trail, and hopped about on the ground, and I was surprised to note a reddish patch ornamenting the centre of his back. Afterwards I learned that it was the gray-headed junco, which is distinctly a western species, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Bower's strident voice was hushed to a hoarse murmur. It reminded one of his hearers of a growling dog suddenly cowed by fear. Helen's ears were tuned to this perplexing note; but Spencer interpreted it according to his ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... 'nice,' too, as far as their appearance and breeding went, but Althea found their manners very bad. They were not strident and they were not arrogant, but so much noisiness and so much innocent assurance might, to unsympathetic eyes, seem so. They were handsome girls, fresh-skinned, athletic, tall and slender. They wore beautifully simple white lawn dresses, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to their allotted task, and his reeking pipe did its duty with hearty goodwill. There was the sound of strident voices in the outer room, and the rattle of the door handle ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... songstress so calumniated by the fable. She is, I grant you, an importunate neighbour. Every summer she takes up her station in hundreds before my door, attracted thither by the verdure of two great plane-trees; and there, from sunrise to sunset, she hammers on my brain with her strident symphony. With this deafening concert thought is impossible; the mind is in a whirl, is seized with vertigo, unable to concentrate itself. If I have not profited by the early morning ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... fully half an hour. I sought cautiously to move my cramped limbs, unlike Smith, who seeming to have sinews of piano-wire, crouched beside me immovable, untiringly. Then loud upon the stillness, broke the strident note ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... in fifteen minutes; therein following the fancy of that eminent French philosopher, who, being invited to climb Ben Lomond to enjoy the most magnificent of views, responded meekly, "Aimez-vous les beautes de la Nature? Pour moi, je les abhorre." Can you not fancy the strident emphasis on the last syllable, revealing how often the poor materialist had been victimized before he ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... undo thee,—foecunda domum tibi prole gravabit, [5786]thou wilt not be able to bring them up, [5787]"and what greater misery can there be than to beget children, to whom thou canst leave no other inheritance but hunger and thirst?" [5788]cum fames dominatur, strident voces rogantium panem, penetrantes patris cor: what so grievous as to turn them up to the wide world, to shift for themselves? No plague like to want: and when thou hast good means, and art very careful of their education, they will not be ruled. Think but of that old proverb, [Greek: ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... sat immobile in his place. The protuberant back gave him an extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-colored coat wrong side before. At intervals he jerked the reins like a large strange toy, and his strident voice said: ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... was the farmer's horse that grazed in the meadow. My life, for a whole month, was embittered by that roving mountain. Lying under the hedge, I could see his heavy feet disfiguring the ground. I breathed his vulgar odor and heard his strident cry shaking the air. Once when he was eating the lower twigs of the hedge, I saw myself—the whole of me—reflected in one of his eyes! I fled ... and from that day my hatred was so strong that I wildly hoped to annihilate the monster. ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... with a discordant suddenness which Farquaharson thought must arouse the household, but the snoring beyond the wall went on, unbroken, and there was no sound of a footfall on the creaking stair. At last Stuart, himself, irritated by the strident urgency of its repetitions, reached for his bath robe and went down. The clapper still trembled with the echo of its last vibrations as he put the receiver to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... attributes, and overshadowing them, he has imprinted on every human institution the tastes and tendencies of the male. As a male he fought, as a male human being he fought more, and deified fighting; and in a culture based on desire and combat, loud with strident self-expression, there could be but slow acceptance of the more human methods urged by Christianity. "It is a religion for slaves and women!" said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) "It is a religion for slaves and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... copy-book maxim, "Never tell a lie, but obey your superiors, and cherish virtue in your heart;" an everlasting scraping and shuffling of slippers up and down the room; a period of continually hearing a well-known, strident voice exclaim: "So you have been playing the fool again!" at times when the child, weary of the mortal monotony of his task, had added a superfluous embellishment to his copy; a period of experiencing the ever-familiar, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... It is unfortunate that the diminished seventh chord does not sound so fierce to our modern ears as it undoubtedly did in Beethoven's time, but that is simply because we have become accustomed to more strident effects.] ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... may have thought himself back amid the brilliant sunshine and strange perfumes of Espanola; and from a dream of some nymph hiding in the sweet groves of the Vega may have awakened with a sigh to the strident Alleluias of his brother priests. At any rate, farewell to James, safely seated beneath the Gospel light, and continuing to sit there until, in the year 1515, death interrupts him. We are not any more concerned with James in his priestly shelter, but with those elder brothers of his who are ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort to ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... men—most of them, I grant you, unfinished youths bound to offices in Calcutta, but still men. I thought it might be her brilliant conversation, but for the last half-hour I have listened,—indeed we have no choice but to listen, the voices are so strident,—and it can't be that, because it isn't brilliant or even amusing, unless to call men names like Pyjamas, or Fatty, or Tubby, and slap them playfully at intervals is amusing. A few minutes ago Mrs. Crawley came to sit with us looking so fresh in a white ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth; witness the strident self-assertion of the newly-constituted little nations in Europe, and the cult of "Nationalism" in South Africa to-day. It is natural for birds of feather to flock together and screech together, and in the same way throughout mankind particular ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... his foot came a strident, warning buzz, and an icy ripple moved down his back. A snake! And he couldn't even see it! He froze where he was, muscles tense for the shock of needle-sharp fangs. He waited an eternity, not even daring to breathe. There were voices ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... wrapper of pink and black, opened the door. Her hair was yellow, heightened, Roxanne imagined by a dash of peroxide in the rinsing water every week. Her eyes were a thin waxen blue—she was pretty and too consciously graceful. Her cordiality was strident and intimate, hostility melted so quickly to hospitality that it seemed they were both merely in the face and voice—never touching nor touched by the deep ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... rough, disagreeable, unpleasant, raucous; dissonant, strident, discordant, cacophonous: austere, morose, severe, ungracious, inurbane, discourteous, churlish, uncivil, blunt, bluff, brusque, acrimonious, caustic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... is a far more potent medium than sound. The sphere of sound is the earth-sphere; the little limits of our atmosphere mark the uttermost boundaries to which sound, even the most strident can possibly prevail. But the medium of light is the ether, which links us with the most distant stars. May not this serve as a symbol of the potency of light to usher the human spirit into realms of being at ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... where a long row of Kings and Queens, in their full-length portraits, stand like Banquo's descendants. The portraits begin with that of bluff King Hal, very bluff and strident. According to Mr. Hare's account, which he has taken from Holinshed, Henry VIII. got St. James's when it was an hospital for "fourteen maidens that were leprous," and having pensioned off the sisters, "reared a fine mansion ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... was now grown to be a deluge; the gutters of the house roared; the air was filled with the continuous, strident crash. The stolidity of his face, on which the rain streamed, was far from reassuring me. On the contrary, I was aware of a distinct qualm of apprehension, which was not at all lessened by a view of ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me his phosphorescent pupils he said, in a voice strident as the wails of a cat which has ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... table, Mr Butler was expressing his opinion upon various subjects in loud, strident tones, and with a disputatiousness of manner that caused most of those about him mentally to dub him a blatant cad, and to resolve that they would have as little as possible ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... student body. At either end above the floor-space was a gallery. One fronted the pulpit, curving widely and arranged with pews for the accommodation of the professors and their families. Opposite this was the choir loft over the preacher's head, a smaller gallery containing the strident old-fashioned reed organ, and seats for the dozen or so who made up the college choir. Places in the choir were much sought after, for a student could stretch his legs and indulge in a comfortable yawn unmolested by the scrutiny of the proctors who kept a sharp watch on their brethren ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... a strident voice to the soldiers about her dwelling. "Stand by, lazy rascals," cried she, "stand away from my gates. What are you ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... He was not mistaken. The sound was repeated, and it was the sound of laughter. But such an awful laugh! A strident laugh, evil as the laughter of a devil, and so shrill! It was more like the laugh of a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... crept steadily up to four thousand, and there stayed with an unmistakable air of finality. If the book had had any real literary merit its life would have started at that point, for the weary comments of reviewers and the strident outcries of publishers tend to obscure rather than reveal the permanent value of a book. But six months after publication "The Improbable Marquis" was completely forgotten, save by the second-hand booksellers, who found themselves embarrassed with a number of books for which no one seemed ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident with emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine and subtile emotion of scorn ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... cried sharply in his low, strident voice, "what's that bay there? Too weak for the work—no good. You want better stuff than that. An axle yonder not packed properly! . . . And look at that black pony—came out of a governess-cart, I should think! . . . Hey, you man there, you don't want to hang on that pack! Men get lazy ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... and exceeding fragile, but she was one of those who hold themselves erect and firm, however much old age may try to bend them. She had a sweet face and soft white hair. She looked so mild and gentle that it was surprising to hear her speak with a voice that was as strident and solemn as that of some ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... for they were too tired to think about the dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the room next door, where people were pushing trunks about and striking against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish syllables. It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... suppose," said Beth, her voice growing strident with dislike of the subject. "We do not correspond. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... hand stretched down to the shore-line, and a plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling "My Nannie's awa'." Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its Sylvan shades, and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labors with the old ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... whatever. She ranged from household discussions to the Orient. Then she stood up in the midst of the women, sunk her double chin in her lace collar, and read her paper in a voice like the whisper of a blade of grass. Doctor Sturtevant had a very low voice. His wife had naturally a strident one, but she essayed to follow him in the matter of voice, as in all other things. The poor hen bird tried to voice her thoughts like her mate, and the result was a strange and weird note. However, Mrs. Sturtevant herself was not ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... farther corner of the room came a strident voice. "They were all of them foolish to go at all, that's what I say. They will be out there all night, and in the morning we will be laughing at them when they return aboard. See here. ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... afternoon found him in a Midland northern-bound express, looking out on the undulating, green acres of Leicestershire. And while his train was making a three minutes' stop at Leicester itself, the purpose of his journey was suddenly recalled to him by hearing the strident voices of the porters on ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally; and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea's heart, their ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... surrounded by a high vine-covered lattice fence: over the entrance flamed forth in letters set with gas-lights the words "Meyer's Beer-Garden and Variety Hall. Welcome." He could hear the sound of music within,—a miserable orchestra, and a woman singing in a high strident voice. People were passing in and out of the place. He hesitated, and then, shaking himself, as if to shake off his scruples, turned towards the entrance. As he reached the door, a man who was standing beside it thrust a paper into his hand. He saw others refuse to take it as they passed. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the children were marched through the squalid streets, a strident band, to the dingy railway station, a grimy proletariat third-class railway station in which the sign "First Class Waiting Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the waiting train. The wonderful experience of which Paul had dreamed for weeks—he had never ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... not, Sweet, I am unkind" (As Colonel LOVELACE said) if I From festal scenes for you designed To solitude propose to fly; If, when the strident trumpets blare From Hampstead Heath to Clapham Junction, And bunting fills the ardent air, I don't assist at that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Pope. In the matter of discipline, concessions may be allowed, but in doctrine none.' Let us examine into this doctrine. It is the doctrine of Christ, plain and straightforward; enunciated in such simple words that even a child can understand them. But the Church announces with a strident voice that there can only be one interpreter,—the Pope. Nevertheless Truth has a more resonant voice than even that of the Church. Truth cries out at this present day, 'Unless you will listen to Me who am the absolute utterance of God, who spake by the prophets, who ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... and they ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev him?" said Emma in her strident voice. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the ocean sailing," came in mocking, strident accents from the wood-shed; "Oh, h—ll! give us a rest!" But dear Aunt Gozeman sang ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His body, catching up from behind, drops about him again—and then he knows. It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little Dolly ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... noiseless little noises of the earth Come with softest rustle; The shy, sweet feet of life; The silky mutter of moth-wings Against my restraining palm; The strident beat of insect-wings, The silvery trickle of water; Little breezes busy in the summer grass; The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves, The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves; The crystal splash of summer rain, Saturate ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... ends with melodrama, who prefer the hoarse cry of animal passion to the still, sad music of humanity, it would not be advisable to recommend a poem like The Listeners, where the people are ghosts and the sounds only echoes. Yet there are times when it would seem that every one must weary of strident voices, of persons shouting to attract attention, of poets who capitalize both their moral and literary vices, of hawking advertisers of the latest verse-novelties; then a poem like The Listeners reminds us of Lindsay's bird, whose simple melody ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... with walking, worn-out by grief and fear, he fell into a doze in his chair, for he was afraid of his bed, as one is of a haunted spot. But suddenly the strident cry of the preceding evening pierced his ears, so shrill that Ulrich stretched out his arms to repulse the ghost, and he fell on to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... blew strong from the east, that day; it whistled through the open, double-decked cars packed with gray, woolly bodies, whose voices were ever raised in strident complaint; and the stench of them smote the unaccustomed nostrils of the Happy Family and put them to disgusted flight up the track and across it to where ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... to worry him, however, and this was so evident to his devoted wife that her laugh was brief,—it was never loud or strident,—and she moved her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the sunlight, as they built their airy hammocks high among the swaying branches of the great willow, and one inquisitive robin swept boldly through the clustering vines which screened the front of the veranda and perched upon his shoulder. He heard the merry hum of the bees at work and the strident call of the locusts, mingled with the distant neighing of horses and the soft lowing of the cows, but all the sweetness of nature was powerless to lift the gloom which seemed to envelop him as in a shroud. His face was white and drawn ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... applied the match to the train. He advanced to my fellow visitor, all solemnly, with the offer of his missive. Mr. Searle made a movement as if to spring forward, but controlled himself. "Tottenham!" he called in a strident voice. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... turmoil of waters and wind along {24} the wave-lashed rocks came the hoarse, shrill, strident cry of the sea-lion, the boom and snort of the great walrus, the roar of the seal rookeries, where millions of cubs wallowed, and where bulls lashed themselves in their rage and fought for mastery of the herd. By November, Waxel alone was holding the vessel up ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... everywhere, as the crowd shoved and pushed into the line of march. Someone was bawling an old song about the lack of liquor, and the strident voice carried over the shouts ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this and that. Now it was a device for selling bread under a fancy name and so escaping the laws as to weight—this was afterwards floated as the Decorticated Health-Bread Company and bumped against the law—now it was a new scheme for still more strident advertisement, now it was a story of unsuspected deposits of minerals, now a cheap and nasty substitute for this or that common necessity, now the treachery of a too well-informed employee, anxious to become our partner. It was all put ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... pickets of police directed progress; the slowly advancing masses wheeled to left or right at word of command, carelessly obedient. But for an occasional bellow of hilarious blackguardism, or for a song uplifted by strident voices, or a cheer at some flaring symbol that pleased the passers, there was little noise; only a thud, thud of footfalls numberless, and the low, unvarying sound that suggested some huge beast purring to itself in ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... ventured on thy strident streets, Mid whir of traffic in the vibrant hour When Commerce with its clashing cymbal greets The mighty Mammon in his pomp of power.... And in the quiet dusk of eventide, As wearied toilers quit the marts of Trade, Have I been of their pageant—or ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... actually join the ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from Imperial Light Horse to Carbineers, who had not a bayonet amongst them, for irregular mounted ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... unpruned, SEXTON's exuberant speech Sprawled o'er the question with the which he'd grapple; PICTON prosed on,—the style in which men preach In a dissenting chapel. Prince ARTHUR twined one lank leg t'other round, Drooping a long chin like BURNE-JONES's ladies; And HARCOURT, sickening of the strident sound, Wished CONYBEARE in Hades. For over all there hung a cloud of fear, A sense of imminent doom the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The House ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 21, 1892 • Various
... reed) which is held against the lower lip of the player. The clarinet and bass clarinet are made of wood and are used in both bands and orchestras, but the saxophone is usually made of metal, and, the tone being more strident and penetrating, the instrument is ordinarily used only in combination with other wind instruments, i.e., ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... and bag-pipes were striking up in different parts of the hall. Simple ballads, smacking of old delights in an older land, songs, with which home-sick white men comforted themselves in far-off lodges—were roared out in strident tones. Feet were beating time to the rasp of the fiddles. Men rose and danced wild jigs, or deftly executed some intricate Indian step; and uproarious applause greeted every performer. The hall throbbed with confused ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... himself were projected out upon the sidewalk by one of his quick maneuvers. A crowd of men came running to the place. Above the rising murmur of their voices, raised in excitement, came a shrill and strident cry. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... tour of the Pacific Coast," declares a Berkeley bulletin, "Miss Case has made strident advances in her art." The lady, it ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... their ship's unerring landfall, ending the steady stretch of a hundred miles. She had made good her course, she had run her distance till the punctual islets began to emerge one by one, the points of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . and the cloud of birds hovered—the restless cloud emitting a strident and cruel uproar, the sound of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the high ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... direction till they were clear of the last houses of the town; then, extinguishing the lamps, returned upon their course, and followed a by-road toward Glencorse. There was no sound but that of their own passage, and the incessant, strident pouring of the rain. It was pitch dark; here and there a white gate or a white stone in the wall guided them for a short space across the night; but for the most part it was at a foot pace, and almost groping, that they picked their way through that resonant ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this moment the tender scene was abruptly ended by the shrill, strident tones of La ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss - it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shallow sea, yet mist veiled the sky, and they were above waters whose shallows drop to sudden abysmal depths of three thousand fathoms. Sheets of smoking vapor rose from the sea, sheets of flame-tinged smoke from the crevasses of land volcanoes which the fogs hid. Out of the sea came the hoarse, strident cry of the sea-lion, and the walrus, and the hairy seal. It was as if the poor Russians had sailed into some under-world. The decks were slippery as glass, the vessel shrouded in ice. Over all settled that ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... strident-voiced ... belligerent ... waving my arms wildly. It was said that, full of threats, I had taken a shotgun menacingly from a rack ... that a vicious bull dog lay between my feet, growling ... that I went, sockless, in sandals ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... men's conversation was abruptly ended. A loud, strident voice was heard from the head of the wide oak staircase, which was at some distance from ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... by long silence, so as to emerge fully capable of governing the world by word or by deed? Louis must, assuredly, have found much bitterness in his intercourse with men, or have striven hard with Society in terrible irony, without extracting anything from it, before uttering so strident a cry, and expressing, poor fellow, the desire which satiety of power and of all earthly things has led ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... here!" he said to me in a fierce undertone. "Wait outside and I will see you later!" Still, from the desk, resounded that harsh, strident voice, running on in an ascending scale, pouring forth a foaming torrent ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Monday, March 16.—The WINSOME WINSTON, sauntering in from behind SPEAKER'S Chair when Questions had advanced some way, startled by strident cheer from Ministerialists and Irish Nationalists. Opposition angrily replied. FIRST LORD, faintly blushing, found anchorage on Treasury Bench. Unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm meant as welcome back from Bradford, where he reviewed political situation with force and frankness that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... something about Yuletide which makes all men benign, and the joyful hypocrisy of Christmas Eve sounds quite the genuine emotion when uttered on Christmas Day. I am bound, however, to confess that the "good will" becomes a trifle strident towards nightfall. Many things conduce to this. The children are suffering from overfeeding; Mother is sick of Aunt Maria, her husband's sister; and Father is more than fed up with the pomposity of Uncle John. There is a general and half-uttered yearning among ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Duties of Men." For the most part, however, their literature was acridly republican in tone and of a levelling tendency. Thus, for the first time since the brief attempt of the Cromwellian Levellers, the rich and the poor began to group themselves in hostile camps, at the strident tones of Paine's cry for a graduated Income Tax. Is it surprising that the sight of the free institutions of France and of the forced economy of the Court of the Tuileries should lead our workers to question the utility of the State-paid debaucheries of Carlton House, and of the whole system of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... half before any of the others. I happened to be looking at it when the first impulse to get outside the nest seemed to seize it. Its parents were encouraging it with calls and assurances from some rocks a few yards away. It answered their calls in vigorous, strident tones. Then it climbed over the edge of the nest upon the plate, took a few steps forward, then a few more, till it was a yard from the nest and near the end of the timber, and could look off into free space. Its parents apparently shouted, "Come on!" But its courage was not quite ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... on for a long time—rising now to strident heights, now sinking off to the merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and again by intervals of utter hush. It did not prevent Alice from at once falling sound asleep; but Theron lay awake, it seemed to him, for hours, listening tranquilly, and letting his mind wander at will through ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... happened that Providence, in equipping the lady for her world-mending mission, had forgotten to give her a pleasant voice. Now if there was one thing in the world which made Snarley "madder" than anything else could do, it was the high-pitched, strident tones of a woman engaged in argument. The consequence was that his self-restraint broke down, and before the lady had said half the things she had meant to say, or come within sight of the splendid offer she was going to make on behalf of the Earl of Clodd, Snarley had spoken words ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. In voice and manner he betrayed the school in which he had been trained. "When I hear gentlemen," he cried in strident tones, "attempting to justify this unrighteous fine upon General Jackson upon the ground of non-compliance with rules of court and mere formalities, I must confess that I cannot appreciate the force of the argument. In cases of war and desolation, in times of peril and disaster, we should ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... seemingly in all earnestness, Paul and Dora resumed their quarrel, and Dora's strident voice echoed ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... woof of heaven were torn, A strident shout rang from some neighbour shrubs Three Nubian soldiers ran upon her with Delighted oily faces. Screaming first Commands to her small son to make for home, She laboured to recross the current as when In nightmares the scared soul expects to die Tortured by mutiny in limbs like ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... company were old men, bent and worn and twisted with years, and women aged to all appearance as the Fates themselves. They sat together in knots and talked—God only knows what they found to discuss—in low equable tones, curiously in contrast to the strident babble with which natives are accustomed to make day hideous. Now and then an access of that sudden fury which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep slope until, baffled and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... County, it had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Congress to meet in New York in October. Virginia did not attend, for Governor Fauquier would not call the assembly into session to elect representatives. Virginians did not need to be there. Everyone knew where they stood. The Stamp Act Congress quickly picked up the spirit, although not the strident language of the Henry Resolves, and declared all taxes, internal ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the last stroke of eleven sounded, awakening the echoes of the empty galleries, than in the Court of Assizes itself, under the monumental desk, before which the justices sat in state by day, a noise made itself heard, long, strident, nerve-racking—the noise ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... effective causes of her intervention were, firstly, her resolve to be consulted in every matter of importance, and, secondly, the disaster that befel the Russians at Mukden early in March 1905. At the end of the month, the Kaiser landed at Tangier and announced in strident terms that he came to visit the Sultan as an independent sovereign. This challenge to French claims produced an acute crisis. Delcasse desired to persevere with pacific penetration; but in the debate of April 19 the deficiencies of the French military system were admitted with startling frankness; ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... at the Hutchinsons' was almost like a life on another planet. Margaret was the younger, somewhat delicate daughter of a family of rather strident academics. Professor Hutchinson was not dependent on his salary to defray the expenses of his elegant establishment, but on his father, who had inherited from his father in turn the substantial fortune on which ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... strident, nervous laugh, which it was not pleasant to hear, and which revealed the fact that intense suffering was hidden beneath all this banter. "Would you like me to fight a duel then? After twenty years has the idea of ridding yourself of me ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... silence ensued within the house, but Betty's strident tones could be heard without, uplifted in shrill ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... men looked at the woman, Carroll with a courteous sympathy, and the interest of an observer of human nature. She was of a pronounced American type, coarse, vulgar, strident-voiced, smart, with a shrewdly working brain and of an unimpeachable heart. She was generosity and honesty itself, as she looked at the two men in a similar strait to the one from ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... are quite as effective by reason of their incoherence and misapplication as because of the relative truths which they originally conveyed. Optimism is the cry of the times, and of all the voices which declare it, this is the most strident and insistent, proclaiming the shortest of all the short roads to happiness, declaring the secret of a contentment ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... some others, while a woman screamed unmeaningly, all on one strident note. The man was picked up and carried to a hospital beside the Arts Club. There was a hole in the top of his head, and one does not know how ugly blood can look until it has been seen clotted in hair. As the poor man ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... the iron bellows, a sort of arquebuse barrel, turned one end toward the coals, and blew into the other in so unusual a way as to produce a strident whistle. Then he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... ice-fields; swam placidly among the narrow leads, or in huge bodies blackened the open pools or the projecting points of ice. Among them, too, wheeled many flocks of clamorous brent, while, from time to time, the desolate cry of the Moniac duck, or the shrill, monotonous, strident flight of the "Whistler" warned the sportsmen that new visitants were ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... power. One teacher who had an excellent record as a student and was, besides, a fine girl, had so unpleasant and absurd a voice that her students were in a continual state of amusement and would learn nothing from her. A great many teachers have lost in power because of a poor voice, strident, or lifeless, or husky, or falsetto. A poor enunciation, or words that do not carry, are ineffectual means by which to reach a class, to hold a customer, or to introduce one's self favourably to the interest of others. For a girl who is going to have any part in public life—and ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... shoes, followed by a lighter tread. Then a scream above which could be heard the jangling of a rusty lock and the bumping of a shoulder against wood. High and strident came ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... displayed her person less freely than her colleagues, being, not more modest, but more skilful in the art of seduction. The slang that served for dialogue in her part was delivered in all sorts of intonations, now demure and mischievous, anon strident and mock ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw |
