"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Said Twitter, you talk very large, And do not seem to know Our little wings have not yet power ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... as things were now. I marked down a few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper—that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but no ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... set in. There was nothing to be seen of any bird although some do flit to and fro through the forest in winter-time and the children on their way to Millsdorf had even heard some twitter. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... very quiet in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mass, save on Sunday to set an example. There were no shops open, not a sound about. I went out upon the ramparts to the Mont St. Lambert, where the band plays on Sundays. In all the trees there was not so much as the twitter of a bird. I could hear the river flowing swiftly below the wall, but I could not see it, except as something dark, a ravine of gloom below, and beyond the walls I did not venture to look. Why should I look? There was nothing, nothing, as I knew. But fancy is so uncontrollable, ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts—took heart and brightened up; the stream which had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... from the start. The young farmer's mind is on his work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... been squeezed by the rubbing and friction of years. Poetry, the feeling if not the words of poetry,—is he not dead to it, even as the pavement is dead over which his wheels trundle? Oh, my young friend! thou art ignorant in this—as in most other things. He may not twitter of sentiment, as thou doest; nor may I trundle my hoop along the high road as do the little boys. The fitness of things forbids it. But that old man's heart is as soft as thine, if thou couldst but read ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... confinement for life, I should say, "Turnkey, lock the cell!"' Companionship doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk—it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run—and ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress ! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. Yet I am highly flattered by her invitation, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... birds began to twitter, Hilda set out, with her pail and her wooden box, to climb the mountain to the upland dairy or "saeter", and fetch the milk and butter required by the family during the day. Although the maid was of noble ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... would have some work to do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late or ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Francesco," says Aurelia in a twitter, "I am glad to see you again." She was tremulous, beautiful; she had her old wayward, ardent ways, her childish bloom and roundness had not left her, nor her sumptuousness, nor her allure—and yet ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... entertainment as the programme of a concert he had been unable to attend. I have no more learning about bird-music than would help me to guess that a dull dissyllabic refrain in the heart of the wood came from the cuckoo; and when at moments I heard a twitter of fuller tone, with a more suggestive modulation, I could only hope it was the nightingale. I have listened for the nightingale more than once in places so charming that his song would have seemed but the articulate ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... no doubt that his detractors—who complain that his style is mere word-twisting, a mere inversion of the most ancient truisms—are actuated by the very basest jealousy. Let us listen, then, and be duly edified as he reads in a low, sweet voice, and the birds twitter about him ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... cages at the open windows chirp and put their pretty little heads aside when they hear him coming; they know perfectly well who he is and what he brings, and their twitter shapes itself into a greeting. The old raven perched on the edge of the basket feels like a superior being, and wonders why other birds make such a fuss over a little green stuff, but that is only because he has ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... there came a hustle and confusion of noise. Clocks began to strike, doors began to slam, dogs began to bark, cocks began to crow and hens to cluck; a breeze sprang up outside and set the branches of the trees swaying and creaking; the doves began to coo upon the roofs, the swallows to twitter under the eaves, flies came out and buzzed about the window, mice squeaked in the wainscot and ran scampering along the rafters. The fountain in the garden leapt up sixty feet into the air, and the goldfish swam among the water-lily leaves; ants left their nests and foraged about the paths, the butterflies ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... of the clock was so distinct that it made an echo in the high hall; the morning sun streamed across the pavement, from the cloistered garden the chirping of a few sparrows and the sharper twitter of the house-swallow that had already nested under the eaves sounded very clearly ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... in a twitter, 'you're never going to leave all that money here, and you away, and the child and me all alone. Can't you—can't you leave ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... costume and accent and manner. There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied—the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong. The falseness, the absence of the quality called "the real thing," ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... twinkling, golden bands from the openings of the black thatch, like ribbons from a braid of hair; and the sun teased the faces of the sleepers with its morning beams, like a village girl awakening her sweetheart with an ear of wheat. Already the sparrows had begun to hop and twitter beneath the thatch, already the gander had cackled thrice, and after it, as an echo, the ducks and turkeys resounded in chorus, and one could hear the bellowing of the kine on ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... days that were no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow lark, and its sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take Your nooning in the ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... a sweet bird, but I like the lark better. The nightingale is more artistic, but his song is melancholy, he is so sentimental! The lark has a mere twitter like my own song, I like the lark better. How beautiful is this summer night; How glorious is the moon; how fragrant are the roses in the garden! It is a most auspicious night, and all ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... not I do not know, for by that time we were halfway to Newmarket, flying through the darkness at a pace which two months previously I would not have dared venture upon in broad daylight. And right onward to St. Albans, we kept it up, reaching the ancient town just as the birds began to twitter in the hedges at the first grey light of early dawn. At St. Albans we stopped at the police-station. A man was ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... arise thee on a greater wing, Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing A pretty dalliance with grief—but try Some metre like a sky, Wherein to set Stars that may linger yet When I, thy master, shall have come to die. Twitter and tweet Thy carollings Of little ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... happily, "and I can't wait to hear it; and besides, you can't play bean-bags, Alexia, with that arm. Well, do go on," and Polly was in quite a twitter for ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... half-holiday the boys went on along the side of the common toward the dense furze clump, Green hectoring, throwing stones at everything he saw, from the donkeys and geese to the yellow-hammers which flitted along the hedge, stopping now and then to twitter out their quaint little song about "a little bit o' bread and no cheese," and looking as much like canaries as they could as they perched ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... for the night; and a calm and tranquil silence ensued, broken only by the gentle rustle of the fitful breeze through the foliage of some firs which were dotted here and there along the precipitous sides of the ravine, the chirping of insects, the occasional twitter of a sleeping bird, or a low murmur here and there in the serried ranks of armed men which stood awaiting the order to rush forth to death or victory. The stars flooded the scene with their subdued and mellow radiance, and, but for ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the associations of sounds rather than their actual quality which make them pleasant or unpleasant. The twitter of sparrows is, in itself, as prosaic a sound as there is in nature, but I never hear it on waking without a feeling of inward peace. It seems to link me with some incredibly remote and golden morning, and with a child in a cradle waking ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dome of azure, there is a delightful frolicsome twitter heard. It is not the Nightingale; no, not so clear and mellow as that. Not the Thrush; no, not so loud or gushing as that. It is our little friend the Lark. Oh! how merry he is! more so than either of the other two. And what is he about? He seems to be floating and soaring, ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... move, In this, the pause of nature and of love, When now the young are rear'd, and when the old, Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold— Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; All these were sad in nature, or they took Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, And of his mind—he ponder'd for a while, Then met his ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... a twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... before the fire sits half lost in reading, half in wondering. Without, the early gloom of the short day is gathering, and the bare trees cast murk shadows all across the frostbitten lawns, and late birds twitter their good-night notes, and a few sleepy rooks caw coldly to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting, and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... husband, the man who is in the way will almost always feel himself justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All the while he will not ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring, Till I too blossom and ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... sunset that evening camped on the tip of a wooded island a mile or two from the mainland. Olaf knew the island and had chosen it for reasons of his own. It was primitive and alive with birds. Olaf loved the birds, and the cheer of their vesper song and bedtime twitter comforted Alan. He seized an ax, and for the first time in seven months his muscles responded to the swing of it. And Ericksen, old as his years in the way of the north, whistled loudly and rumbled a bit of crude song through ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Estelle's reading till the low murmur, blending with the drowsy hum of the insects, the occasional twitter of a bird, and the warm fragrance of the pines, lulled him to sleep. Estelle read on till the story was finished; then sat gazing up into the green foliage above her. She was thinking that she was not unlike the girl in the story; her father was away, her mother was ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... who did peruse, Such a long-desiderated slice of good luck were sorry at, To a most prolific and polacious Poet-Laureate! For no poeta nascitur who is fitter To greet Royal progeny with melodious twitter. Seated on the resplendent cloud of official Elysium, Far away, far away from fuliginous busy hum You are now perched with phenomenal velocity On vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity! Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petition Of one ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... time—some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... departed, leaving Mr. Granger's gamekeepers with a plethora of sovereigns and half-sovereigns in their corduroy pockets, and serious thoughts of the Holborough Savings Bank, and Mr. Granger's chief butler with views that soared as high as Consols. All the twitter and cheerful confusion of many voices in the rooms and corridors of the grand old house dwindled and died away, until Mr. Granger was left alone with his wife and daughter. He was not sorry to see his visitors depart, though he was a man who, after his own fashion, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... banks of turf instead of hedge-rows, which were covered thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them. As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They twitter and run into the surf and back again, and I am one of them! I must be, for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen! Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... birds were beginning to twitter softly and the dew was rising noticeably from the ground. Frederick had slid down the trunk and was staring, with his arms crossed back of his head, into the rosy morning light softly stealing in. Suddenly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... pleasant all, and sunny, Bees are busy making honey, You can flit from bough to bough, You can sing and twitter now: Wait till winter comes, you rover, Then your frolic will be over. Cats are on the roof already: Birdie, dear, come ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... old languor, the dreamy, hushed steps of her former method. Now she appeared to dart about the lawn like a swallow, following the calls of the birds. She would stand poised to listen, her ear would catch a twitter, and she was gone; flitting, skimming, seeming not to touch the earth. She danced to the flowers in her hand, to the trees, the sky, her face aglint with changing smiles, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... of the lips that had been so firm when the hot iron burned, recalled that other Father who is always near, always tender and helpful; and, folding his hands, Rob said the heartiest little prayer he ever prayed, there on the hay, to the soft twitter of the brooding birds. It did him good; and wisely laying all his fear and doubt and trouble in God's hand, the boy felt ready for whatever was to come, and from that hour kept steadily before him the one duty that was ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... away; But through the slowly-mellowing avenues And solitary passes of the wood Rode Tristram toward Lyonnesse and the west. Before him fled the face of Queen Isolt With ruby-circled neck, but evermore Past, as a rustle or twitter in the wood Made dull his inner, keen his outer eye For all that walked, or crept, or perched, or flew. Anon the face, as, when a gust hath blown, Unruffling waters re-collect the shape Of one that in them sees himself, returned; But at the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Twitter and Downy also said, We, too, shall happy be, To bask within the sun's warm rays, And ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... casket little people will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time to open for them, if they would continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to contain. Finally, these energetic young ladies said their prayers by the morning twitter of the birds, and went to their beds, less from a desire for rest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... forgotten to what shrine they bent their steps, some little notes of bells swinging beneath the tufted chins of goats, the wail of a woman's song, old in its quiet melancholy, Oriental in its strange irregularity of rhythm, and the careless twitter of a tarantella, played upon a reed-flute by a secluded shepherd-boy beneath the bending silver green of tressy ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... where she had so often scattered flowers. A squirrel leaped and frisked in the boughs above her, and she startled a rabbit from the thick grass and fallen yellow leaves: but neither these, nor the twitter of gossiping orioles, nor the harsh, hungry cry of a bluebird told her a syllable of all that had ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... comrades in the air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race who sing so sweetly. And you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, unobtrusive acts of good-will and kindness ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just bitten a pill - When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly gamboge in the gill ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping forward, he seized the foremost man and ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Rev. Mr. Gershom Mendes Seixas, minister of New York's one synagogue, Shearith Israel. The tall pink and white hollyhocks that bordered the prim paths nodded languidly in the warm September breeze. From the trees came the twitter of sparrows, now low and conversational, now high and shrill, "just like people in the synagogue," thought little David Phillips, as he strolled in his grandmother's garden on the other side of the hedge. And if David had pulled ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... smacked essentially of cities. What he would do in this galere she knew not. She leaned back in her basket-chair and enjoyed herself quietly. The green peace, after London, was absolutely delicious. She could hear a hen clucking intermittently from the farmyard hard by, the twitter of birds from the yew-trees, the chirping voices of Tommy and the curate's little boys, who had been formally introduced to each other, and had retired to play in a paddock that was part of the rector's glebe. The rector ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... frog began to stir. He stretched his legs, and went down to the ditch to take his morning bath. The birds began to twitter in the wood, and the bellow of the stag echoed amongst the trees. It was on the point of dawn, and here came the Sun ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... blackbirds of letters—the harmless, kind singing creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... October last), I was surprised with what I supposed to be the notes of a bird, under or upon the sill of a window. My impression was, that they somewhat resembled the notes of a wild duck in its nocturnal flight, and, at times, the twitter of a redbreast, in quick succession. To be satisfied on the subject, I carefully removed the shutter, and, to my surprise, found it was a garden snail, which, in drawing itself along the glass, had produced sounds similar to those elicited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... to his office a suave gentleman in frock-coat, carrying with him a card which was inscribed "Ministry of Supplies." And the end of that conversation was that Bones, all a twitter of excitement, drove to a gloomy office in Whitehall, where he interviewed a most sacred public official, to whom members of the public were not admitted, perhaps, more than four times ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... perky little clump of trees, and facing East awaited developments. A thin, cold wind had sprung up, and was quietly stirring the leaves above me to an uneasy sibilance. I heard, now, too, an occasional sleepy twitter as if a few members of the orchestra had come into their places and were indolently testing the tune of their pipes. It came into my mind that the cold stir of air was the spirit of the dying night, fleeing westward before the sun. Also, I ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... southern sunshine amidst the blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate, or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation whenever she found some particularly choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, while she ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... with the first twitter of the birds my babies begin to stir. Through the mists of dispersing sleep, their chatter blends with the warblings that fill the morning air, or with the swallows' noisy debates—little cries of joy or woe, which make their way to my heart rather than my ears. While Nais struggles to get ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... that? You, Miss Damaris? Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go round the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... (Lioptila capistrata). This species is strictly arboreal. As mentioned previously, it is often found in company with flocks of tits and other gregarious birds. It feeds on insects, which it picks off the leaves of trees. Its usual call is a harsh twitter. It is a reddish brown bird, rather larger than a bulbul, with a black-crested head. There is a white bar ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... and accompanied the afflicted parent, who was all of a twitter. They crossed several fields and began to climb the hill; the tracks of Tommy Brock were plainly to be seen. He seemed to have put down the sack ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... whispering earth. The birds had begun to bestir themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled closer in the swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little farther a drowsy voice called "cheep-cheep" and turned again to the warmth of its wing. The very grasshoppers were silent. The creatures who range in the night time had returned ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... somewhat over close for one who loves the open air or the free timbered roof that loses itself in the smoke wreaths overhead, with the wind blowing through it as it blows through the forest whence it was wrought, and with twitter of birds to mind one of that also. Nevertheless, the old king in his purple mantle with its golden hem over the white linen tunic, and his little golden circlet on his curling white hair, seemed in place there, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... with Lemuel as he put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer him sonorously: the dog barked lazily as a nighthawk ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... of them, feeding and preening and chirping in the vines. The tangle was a-twitter with their quiet, cheery talk. Such a medley of notes you could not hear at any other season outside a city bird store. How far the different species understood one another I should like to know, and whether ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... said, "how all Nature welcomes the sunshine, hear the birds twitter, see the cattle slowly moving on that rise. All Nature here joins in a hymn of peace, yet far beyond those western ridges three million men lay trenched through the winter and stared in hellish hate at each other ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... horrid scorpion. He gave me such a fright: I am all of a twitter yet when I think of it. Grandfather went to Liverpool one Whitsun-week to go strolling about the docks and pick up what he could from the sailors, who often bring some queer thing or another from the hot countries they go to; and so he sees a chap with a bottle in his hand, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... All the sweetness to the lees Of all the kisses clustering In juicy Used-to-bes, To dip his rhymes therein and sing The blossoms on the trees—, "O Blossoms on the Trees," He would twitter, trill, and coo, "However sweet, such songs as these Are not as sweet as you—: For you are blooming melodies The eyes may ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... was already creeping up into the eastern sky. All nature was stirring, refreshed with the balmy dew and coolness of the night. Far up in the higher branches of the Weymouth pines, the wrens were awake, calling to each other with tentative twitter, and pluming themselves the while for another day of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... you I do the things which I do, as easily, as naturally, as happily as any fool of a dicky-bird does his infernal twittering on an April morning. God knows whether there's anything in my work or in his twitter; but neither he nor I are likely to improve our output by pondering and cogitation.... Please resume ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... neither the earl nor Lady Julia having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined there once, soon after we were married; but I never have ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... good woman," replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... student who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after they had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will be the ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... the wind is easterly you can always see the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey dawn stole over the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... and nice boys and girls, with a very, very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They courteously made room for one another, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... An impertinent, ridiculous twitter came from a tiny scarlet-crowned songster, as if it were trying to advise and direct the hard-pressed boy. Its solemn, round eyes stared at him, reproving and admonishing him for his foolhardiness. Piang, on his knees, struggling with the current, was unaware ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... fly the birds of heaven, the small and the great; they twitter and they sing as best they may, each bird ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... there is borne to the nostrils the faint, stifling scent of burning brush, indicating that land is being cleared by the forehanded, thrifty farmer for early planting. Often at such times, before a shower, may be distinctly heard the faintest twitter and "peep, peep" of young sparrows, the harsh "caw, caw" of the crow, and the song of the bobolink, poised on the swaying branch of a tall tree, the happiest bird of Spring; the dozy, drowsy hum of bees; the answering call of lusty young chanticleers, and the satisfied cackle of laying hens and ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... from his bed, and at that very moment a thousand little birds, who lived in his room, began to twitter and trill. "Awake so early, little ones!" whispered the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... he was early in the saddle. The sky was blue and clear, the air full of the fresh odor of earth and clover and wild flowers. The swallows were making a jubilant twitter, the larks singing on the edge of the prairie—the glorious prairie, which the giants of the unflooded world had cleared off and leveled for the dwelling-place of Liberty. In his own way he enjoyed the scene; but he could not, as he usually did, let ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... she said to her mates later on, "I don't mind telling you I was all of a twitter, first-along, wondering what card that man Oke was holding back—he looked so sly and so sure of hisself. But if he've no better card to play than Seth ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his success, whatever it was, had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... song of his little guest would come up in snatches to the lonely watcher, and at evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great grey bats slid out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed bird would return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the great bell of the Cathedral rang out daily its mocking message, "After joy . ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... each bald mountain top shone like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the plonk-plonk of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of the full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and enchanted, the girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch voices of hill and river were not silenced. With the wind ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... The twitter of the birds is still heard. The sheep graze upon the brown hillside. The merry whistle of the plowboy comes up from the field, and the cow lows ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... general to exchange a prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities; but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter, encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they had passed through with their eyes ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak, Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick, This hangin' on mont' arter mont' Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the twitter,— I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt The peth an' sperit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great silence full of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... window and leaned out. Dusk had gathered thick. The farm buildings and the wheel-house were all dim and bluish, the apple trees but a blurred wilderness; the air smelled of woodsmoke from the kitchen fire. One bird going to bed later than the others was uttering a half-hearted twitter, as though surprised at the darkness. From the stable came the snuffle and stamp of a feeding horse. And away over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the shy stars which had not as yet full light, pricking white ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... many hazels—a few bushes—here and there a holly—and why or wherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweet pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild without much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of small birds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire, since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... tureto. Turtle-dove turto. Tusk dentego. Tutor guvernisto. Twain du. Tweezers prenileto. Twelve dekdu. Twig brancxeto. Twilight vespera krepusko. Twin dunaskito. Twine sxnureto. Twinkle brileti. Twist tordi. Twitter pepi. Two du. Tympanum oreltamburo. Type (model) modelo. Type tipo, preslitero. Typhoid (fever) tifa febro. Typhus tifo. Typical modela. Typographist preslaboristo. Typography tipografio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman whom I found staring at one would have it that he was a mocking-bird. "Don't you see he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all attention ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the vigor of his trudgeon-stroke. Then turning from left to right, he employed the side-stroke. From that, he went to the breast-stroke. Last of all, he floated, dove, swam under water so long that the girls began uneasily to fly back and forth, to twitter with alarm. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... before her through this lonely hollow to the distant sleeping hills. The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped with grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its windows and doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trailing feathery outlines; the gentle flutter of wings and soothing twitter of swallows and jays around its open rafters, and the drifting shadows of a few circling crows above it; the drowsy song of bees on the wild mustard that half hid its walls with yellow bloom; the sound of faintly-trickling water in one of those old Indian-haunted springs that had given its name ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... covered the faded leaves of the bushes, and the haws and berries; and the flips especially, standing upright on their bare stems, seem coated with silver. The sparrows in the hedges twitter and fly away in restless groups at the children's approach; then they settle down not far off, only to go whirring up again, till at last they flutter into a garden and alight in an apple-tree with such force that the leaves come showering ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... romances than with your criticisms, have long wondered at the indefatigable hatred which pursues your memory. You, who knew the men, will not marvel that certain microbes of letters, the survivors of your own generation, still harass your name with their malevolence, while old women twitter out their incredible and unheeded slanders in the literary papers of New York. But their persistent animosity does not quite suffice to explain the dislike with which many American critics regard the greatest poet, perhaps the greatest literary genius, of their country. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... edge of a tub, formed of a barrel sawn in two, placed in the field for the horses to drink from, as there was no pond. Some swallows are very fond of a notice-board fastened to a pole beside the Hogsmill bank. Upon its upper edge they perch and twitter sweetly. There is a muddy pond by Tolworth Farm, near the road; it is muddy because a herd of cows drink from and stand in it, stirring up the bottom. An elm overhangs it, and the lower boughs are dead and leafless. On these there are always swallows twittering over the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130 Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... for the morrow. Moreover Mary Ellen liked our company. She had a spooky feeling about the parlour. Mr. Handsomebody gave her the creeps, she said, and once when she had turned her back she had heard one of the stuffed birds twitter. It was a ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche |
