"Rattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... death of his late commander, but mingled signs of grief with them. At one moment bugles rang out cheerily, at the next they were answered by melancholy trumpet notes, and the wailing fife was heard at intervals between the lively rattle of the drum and the clash of arms. From one mast-head hung a Turkish banner reversed, and from another a long black streamer, the ends of which dipped in the water. In this manner he entered the river of London in his English ship, leaving the Portuguese ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this magnificent building, and which promised to be most airy and quiet; the river running at the bottom of the long street in which it was situated, the theatre before it, and the great square left at its side, with all its rattle of carts and wheelbarrows, and screaming commissioners. In the handsome, clean Hotel de Nantes we were accordingly deposited, and had reason to congratulate ourselves on our choice while we staid ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... proa descended with a rattle and bang, the man at the oar gave it several vigorous sweeps, and the strange-looking but astonishingly swift craft came to rest almost in the same position that the schooner Coral ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... grip when suddenly and without the least warning there started a tremendous racket such as he had noticed came to pass when that hogshead started rolling down the grade, and the stones with which it was loaded began to rattle about inside. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... rightly know, but I'll warrant Mr. Prigg'll have a good un—he knows what he be about; and all I hopes is, he'll rattle it into that there Snooks, for if ever there wur a bad un ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... sleeper, and snore me the song of life in the making, Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust, Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man, and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for I am Virile! Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... fulness of time is come, we alight at Fort-William-Henry Hotel, and all night long through the sentient woods I hear the booming of Johnson's cannon, the rattle of Dieskan's guns, and that wild war-whoop, more terrible than all. Again old Monro watches from his fortress-walls the steadily approaching foe, and looks in vain for help, save to his own brave heart. I see the light of conquest shining in his foeman's eye, darkened by the shadow of the fate ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... belongings were negligible. He stood at the window and looked out across the city, the city into whose labyrinths he was so eager to penetrate—the undiscovered country. By day and night its voices were in his ears, the rattle and roar of the overhead railway, the clanging of the street cars, the heavy traffic, the fainter but never ceasing foot-fall of the multitudes. He had sat there before dawn and watched the queer, pinky-white light steal with ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... illuminate citizen prose to a princely poetic That is life—when we dare death to live! That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial The burlesque Irishman can't be caricatured The well of true wit is truth itself They create by stoppage a volcano This love they rattle about and rave about Tooth that received a stone when it expected candy We live alone, and do not much feel it till we are visited Weather and women have some resemblance they say What a woman thinks of women, is the test of her nature Where she appears, ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... with death-rattle there bid the day farewell 'Mid the moans of prostrate foes? Of the hand of death the drawn features tell, Yet the dauntless hearts triumphant swell, For his Fatherland's safe each knows! Should you of the black-clad fallen demand— That is ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... a huge hairy limb was protruded below, and then another both terminating in broad ungulated paws, that in succession griped the rough bark of the tree, causing it to rattle and scale off. ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... rattle and laughter which this procession made all mystery was forgotten, and the two conspirators began to ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... he'll love you just the same and you'll love him. As for Brockton, let him get another girl; there're plenty 'round. Why, if this chance came to me I'd tie a can to Jerry so quick that you could hear it rattle all the way down Broadway. [Rises, crosses back of table to LAURA, leans over back of chair, and puts arms around her neck very tenderly.] Dearie, promise me that you won't ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... that shook the rigging and caused it to rattle like buckshot in a pan. A terrible cry—such a cry, indeed, as might burst from the lips of a mother seeing her only child run down by the Limited—burst from poor Captain Scraggs. "My ship! my ship!" he howled. "My darling ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... multitudinous newness, for ever reviving, and the diffusion of a hundred talents, ingenuities, experiments. The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of the great building; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the place with provocations; the rattle of plates at the restaurant sounded sociable in the distance, and our young man congratulated himself more than ever that he had not missed his chance. He felt how it would help him to settle something. At the moment he made this reflexion ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... pool known as "baby hole," despised of the ten-year-olds, who plunged into the deepest of the thicket and came out at the limekiln, where all day long one might hear "so-deep, so-deep, so-deep," and "go-round, go-round, go-round," until school commenced in the fall. Then the rattle of little homemade wagons, and the shrilling of boy voices might be heard all over the wilderness, and the black-stained hands of schoolboys told of the day of the walnut harvest. It was nearly a mile from the schoolhouse to the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... had already commenced as the long slow-moving train, to which they were attached, approached Gettysburg, and the awful roar of cannon and the scattering rattle of musketry ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... continued to bang and the windows to rattle all through that day and the greater part of the next, and it was not till the evening of the third day that Valmai ventured to put on her cloak and pay a visit to Nance's cottage. The tide was low as she crossed the Rock Bridge, and there was no danger, therefore, from the waves. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... courtyard with me; it's a beautiful moonlit night; we will walk up and down, arm in arm, under the trees, while you tell me your pitiful tale." He drew the doleful governor into the courtyard, took him by the arm as he had said, and, in his rough, good-humored way, cried: "Out with it, rattle away, Baisemeaux; what have ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dreamily as he went up the road. She sat down in a chair, the trance of the passionate moment still on her, and began to brood. She vaguely heard the rattle of a buggy—Christine's—as it passed the house, and her thoughts drifted into a new-discovered hemisphere where life was all a somnolent sort ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fresh egg looks dull and porous. As it begins to age, the shell takes on a shiny appearance. If an egg is kept any length of time, a portion of its water evaporates, which leaves a space in the shell, and the egg will "rattle." An egg that rattles may be perfectly good, and still ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer
... all Ford models to. On the doors they got painted "Hommes 40 Chevaux 8." Thats French for 40 men an 8 horses. That struck me as funny till I figgered out that they probably pack five men between each horse sos they wont rattle round so much. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... her inquiring eyes full of intelligence and understanding, and she realized at once that these trifles were not in his consideration for the moment. So she helped herself to what she wanted and sat down again in her armchair. She did not even rattle her teaspoon. Priscilla often made noises which irritated her when she was thinking. The old man came back to a remembrance of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the bloodthirsty savage Man's vast spirit strength shall unfold; And tales of red warfare and ravage Shall seem like ghost stories of old. For the booming of guns and the rattle Of carnage and conflict shall cease, And the bugle-call, leading to battle, Shall change to ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it, quotha! Ay, truly, but how? By rapine, taxation, wars, plunder! Therefore why shall not others use like means? If it be fair for them, I say it is fair for us!" Wulf brought down his fist upon the table with a blow that made the cups rattle. "Therefore now is our chance, say I! All is confusion; the lords fight amongst themselves; we are slowly gaining the ground they lose—let us ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Inst., XXIV., 169. See also Waitz, VI., 774; Macgillivray, II., 8; Hasskarl, 82. They have a peculiar rattle with mystic sculpturing, and Eyre says that its sound libertatem coeundi juventuti esse tum concessam omnibus indicat. Maclennan (287) cites G.S. Lang, who cites the fact that the old men get most of the young women. Connubium profecto valde est liberum. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, I take a cautious peep out. In the middle of the room in front of my father stands the Sand-man, the bright light of the lamp falling full upon ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to your uncle and you too, sir. But now there was a box which this same gentleman he give over into my charge, and thinking no harm after he was gone I took the liberty, knowing it was your uncle's property, to rattle it: and unless I'm most surprisingly deceived, in that box there was keys, but what keys, that, Doctor, is known Elsewhere, for open the box, no that I would ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... brutality seized him in its unmanageable grip. They heard him give a kind of frenzied cry of passion, saw him raise his hands, heard a hurried scuffle at the foot of the stairs, where the Clancys, both alarmed, drew back towards their room. And then the rattle of an arm against a rail, a slither, a bumping, and a low thud. Dad, overbalancing in his rage, had pitched and fallen headlong down the stairs. Mrs. Minto and Sally set up a thin screaming. The gas flickered and burned steadily again. A shriek came from Mrs. Clancy. It was repeated. Mr. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the hand warmly and asked me a few questions, and it was not until after this first interview that I discovered he had an impediment in his speech. A rapid talker, he would rattle on in conversation and then stop as suddenly as though you had put your hand over his mouth. You would look up in astonishment, and then find by the contortions of his face that he was trying to speak some troublesome word but could not. The word once ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... stood, And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood. No room to poise the lance or bend the bow; But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow: Wounded, they wound; and seek each other's hearts With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten'd darts. The falchions ring, shields rattle, axes sound, Swords flash in air, or glitter on the ground; With streaming blood the slippery shores are dyed, And slaughter'd heroes swell the ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... that in the meadow Or beneath the orchard's shadow Keepest up a constant rattle, Joyous as my children's prattle, Welcome to ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... long our men could hear the rattle of trains over the railroad, evidently conveying reinforcements to Kinston, against which General Foster had steadily pushed his advance, fighting for every inch of ground. The blows of axes, as the ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... stables which the village carpenters had been erecting close to the ordinary ones were rapidly filling. Cars and carriages stood side by side, as guests from town and the surrounding districts arrived; and the air resounded with the clatter and rattle of the horses' hoofs and carriage wheels, mingled with the hooting ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... chief dragon deserted Phronsie, and presently there resounded the rattle of the scales, the clanking of chains, and the dragging about of the rest of ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... old enough to "take notice" of things, I was fairly deluged with toys: Fuzzy dogs and cats; big, red, yellow and green balls; fancy rattle-boxes, and various other things were used to stimulate my perceptive faculties. All of which should be left to Mother Nature, who ever does these things well in her own good time and way. I became so accustomed to toys, having such an innumerable variety of them, ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... in circular form built with long poles set deep in the ground ten or twelve feet high, then covered tight all around with canvass or skins of animals, except the top is left open. Now the magician or the performer comes with the little flat magician's rattle like a tamborine. They always build a fire close to the lodge so that the attendants and spectators could light their pipes, as they generally smoke much during the performance. The magician sits by the fire also, and begins to talk to the people, telling them that he ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... good deal of unnecessary fuss, keeping an eye on the clock meanwhile. The boys wore the air of dogs who see their master coming to untie them; they jumped and quivered, making the benches squeak and rattle, and shifted their feet about on the uncarpeted floor, producing sounds of the kind most trying to a nervous teacher. A general expectation prevailed. Luckily, Miss Fitch was not nervous. She had that best of all gifts for teaching,—calmness; and she understood her ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... I'll do the best I can without stimulants, as the doctor says. If you hear my knees rattle just nudge ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... stream poured through the intervals between the squares. As they did so, crackling volleys broke out, while from the batteries on the sand hills an incessant fire was kept up upon them. Then, following the volleys, came the incessant rattle of musketry. The confusion among the cavalry grew greater and greater. Regiments were mixed up together, and their very numbers impeded their action. Many gallant fellows, detaching themselves from the mass, rode bravely at the squares, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... rattle behind the partition. Then answers:] That was in eighteen hundred and seventy-two, jus' as I ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... length was measured by the crawling hands of the school-clock. He tried sometimes, in mere self-defence, to force himself into an interest in his work, that the time might go the quicker; but the effort was miserably vain. His senses reeled amid the din and rattle of classes where discipline was unknown and intelligence almost indiscoverable. Not seldom his temper got the better even of sick lassitude; his face at such times paled with passion, and in ungoverned fury he raved at his tormentors. He awed them, too, but only for the moment, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... because the foundation on which your life rests is not your table, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money. In adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle and rattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like those with shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you will also be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse his jealousy, his base ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... or two now and then Will not count in the news of a battle; Not an officer lost! only one of the men Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... minutes more." Uncle Felix, however, said flatly, "They can't go till it's finished"—and he meant it. His voice was deep and gruff— "like a dog's," according to Maria—and his laugh was like a horse's neigh; it made the china rattle. He was "frightfully strong," too, stronger than Weeden, for he could take a child under each arm and another on his back—and run! He never smiled when he told his stories, and, though this made them ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... his age and the date when the picture had been taken. In the disorder of the top drawer, tumbled about among her coarse handkerchiefs, her collars, her Sunday black kid gloves, were relics of her son's babyhood: a little green morocco slipper, with a white china button on the ankle-band; a rubber rattle, cracked and crumbling.... What is one to do with things like these? Burn them, of course. There is nothing else that can be done. Yet the mourner shivers when the flame touches them, as though the cool fingers of the dead might feel the scorch! ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... was written while Mr. Wilkes was Sheriff of London, and when it was to be feared he would rattle his chain a year longer as Lord Mayor.' Note to Campbell's British Poets, p. 662. By 'here' the poet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the railway embankment with the bayonet, but the Belgians met them with blasts of lead which shrivelled the grey columns as leaves are shrivelled by an autumn wind. By mid-afternoon the Belgians and Germans were in places barely a hundred yards apart, and the rattle of musketry sounded like a boy drawing a stick along the palings of a picket-fence. During the height of the battle a Zeppelin slowly circled over the field like a great vulture awaiting a feast. So heavy was the fighting that the embankment of ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... down by a table, where there were candles, and began reading aloud from a county paper. She read anecdotes of men, remarkable for their success and piety, and an account of Indian fighting, interrupted, as a red man lifted his tomahawk to slay, by the rattle of an arrow on ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... ornament of wild cat and leopard tails, tied on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the centre of which was a little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt buttons. In among the tails hung three little brass bells and a brass rattle; these bells and rattles are not only "for dandy," but serve to scare away snakes when the ornament is worn in the forest. A fine strip of silky-haired, young gorilla skin made the band to sling the ornament from the shoulder when worn. Gorillas ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... those who mocked, "I am God Almighty," "The Father and the Son are one, and I am both of 'em put together," and "Oh, Dylks, save us!" "Don't leave us, Dylks!" "Make the Devil jump, Joseph! Make him rattle his scales for us!" "Fetch on your miracle!" The believing women turned away; some of the younger tittered hysterically at a droll profanation of their idol's name, and then one of the ruffians applauded. "That's right, sisters! We like to have you enjoy ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... carefully filled their glasses, emptied them in solemn silence, and put them almost simultaneously with a rattle on ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... that the most curious little silence followed this speech of hers, and yet she knew that in actual time it was nothing, and felt that it existed probably only in her own heart. She heard the clock on the mantelpiece across the room ticking; far off, the rattle of a taxicab. The air coming through the open window bore the damp, stirring ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hath, so he blesseth their path, And away they high-spirited rattle; Grim winter comes chiding—of them there's no tiding; Says Budrys: they've fallen ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... viewing the world from under the eaves of a roof, gave him a striking appearance. The immense restaurant, with its high, frescoed ceiling, the dazzling whiteness of its rows and rows of table-cloths, the crowd of well-dressed customers, the glint and rattle of knives and forks, the subdued tones of the orchestra, and the imposing black-and-white figures of the waiters struck terror into ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... anxiety, but it is perhaps, even in style, the most truly complete. The wonderful variety, elasticity, and freshness of the dialogue, the wit of the common scenes, the terrible power of the tragic scenes, the perfection of the mise-en-scene—the rattle, the fun, the glitter of the Fair, are sustained from end to end, from the first words of the ineffable Miss Pinkerton to the Vanitas Vanitatum when the showman shuts up his puppets in their box. There is not in all Vanity Fair ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... come up this very line some dozen hours before? Lavender asked himself as he looked out on the hills and valleys and woods of Buckinghamshire. Had the throbbing of the engine and the rattle of the wheels kept the piteous eyes awake all through the dark night, until the pale dawn showed the girl a wild vision of northern hills and moors, telling her she was getting near to her own country? Not thus had Sheila proposed to herself to return ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... always bite clear! I mean, the least thing keeps his teeth from driving straight into the flesh, so that the poison bag cannot empty its fluid under the skin. It is often a loose or sidewise bite, so that much of the poison never enters the wound. That is why so many folks survive rattle-snake bites. If it went clean, and the poison bag was emptied under ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des Francais.' Recollecting my friend's former republicanism, I smiled at this piece of furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without. Its iron gates were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall gentleman, with a cocked-hat ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fit and trim, Curly whiskered sons of battle, Very dignified and prim Till they hear the Jezails rattle; [25] Cattle thieves of yesterday, Now the wardens of the cattle, Fighting Brahmins of Lahore, ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of taps like—to settle it," deprecated the other. "Three fences from home I see I'd got the measure of 'em, and come away from the ruck with a rattle. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... hurtling down upon them. Nor was the fear entirely an illusion, for the barren valley was thickly strewn with trees and boulders which had fallen in a similar manner. Even as they passed, a great rock came thundering down with a hoarse rattle which woke the echoes in the silent gorges, and startled the weary ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... received her image distinctly into his mind, even to the minutia of the dress and ornaments he knew she wore, and felt an absolutely savage exultation in his ability to retain it. Then came the sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels, and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of George Feval. ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... jaw muscles tightened as I looked. He turned and went. Hewitt came back to me. "Pay the bill," he said, "and go back to your rooms; I will come on later. I must follow this man—it's the Foggatt case." As he went out I heard a cab rattle away, and ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... away from the entrance to Central Park, he found much of the Sunday quiet gone. It was nearly half-past ten o'clock; the sidewalks were covered with people, and the street resounded with the rattle ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... rate of not more than five or six miles an hour, the long train winding like a snake around the edges of precipices and feeling its way gingerly over the trestles that spanned the deep valleys. All trains made a great roar and rattle then, and the long ravines gave it back in a rumbling and menacing echo. Gusts of rain were swept now and then into the faces of the engineer, the ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... figure, interesting from the fact that he is so different from his companions. He has not the usual pinched-in waist of the Cretans, but is quite normally developed, and he bears in his hand the sistrum, or metal rattle, which was one of the regular sacred musical instruments of the Egyptians. In all probability he is meant to represent an Egyptian priest, though what he is doing in a Cretan festival it is hard to tell. The three figures, possibly ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... promptly, "Twenty rupees." We would offer two rupees, and, after a few minutes' bargaining, they took it quite cheerfully, the thing probably not being worth eight annas. I bought a prayer-wheel. It is a round silver thing with a handle rather like a child's rattle, and inside are slips of paper covered with writing. These are the prayers, and at intervals you twirl the wheel round, and the oftener you turn it the more devout ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Nashua on the one hand, and Hudson, once Nottingham, on the other. From time to time we scared up a kingfisher or a summer duck, the former flying rather by vigorous impulses than by steady and patient steering with that short rudder of his, sounding his rattle along the fluvial street. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... clang! the massive anvils ring,— Clang! clang! a hundred hammers swing, Like the thunder-rattle of a tropic sky, The mighty blows still multiply: Clang! clang! Say, brothers of the dusky brow, What are your strong ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... I said above, an instrument that we possess at birth, and with which we play unconsciously all our life, as a baby plays with its rattle. It is however a dangerous instrument; it can wound or even kill you if you handle it imprudently and unconsciously. It can on the contrary save your life when you know how to employ it consciously. One can say of it as Aesop said of the tongue: "It is at the same time the best and the worst thing ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... a heavy rattle of musketry, and bullets flew in all directions around them. The crew sat huddled together in a place of safety, terror written in every line of their brown faces. Naoum alone seemed impervious to the danger, and watched every movement of the men on ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... gave a long angry shriek as it flew round the corner of the house and fastened its teeth in its enemies, the eucalyptus trees; who shook it off with a loud furious rattle of their leaves and slapped the window ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... Eversleigh," continued Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, "My father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of the rouge et noir table were the most familiar sounds to my ears. Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father's rooms, and have ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 'Mid the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew, Hisses the rain of the rushing squall; The sails are aback from clew to clew, And now is the moment for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the forward hatch was opened, and soon there was a rattle of chains and clang of machinery. Then up from the hold come bales, boxes, and barrels which were unceremoniously dropped into the sea. The cargo must go. No help had yet been sighted, and if they were to remain afloat much longer, the ship would ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... antelope horns. Sighs and laughter and curses and weeping mingled with the wild strains of Homeric song and mystic rites of Chaldea and Babylon, and the sacred chant of Isis. The Voodoo danced to the rattle of shells and antelope hoofs before the shrines of Ethiopia's dark woman, crowned with the sickle moon, and vast multitudes knelt and lay prostrate before the car of Juggernaut and the passing image of Pracriti of Asia, the many-breasted, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... orator was dreaming that he had been chosen Grand Master of the Brotherhood, his wife stole out of the room and put the things in Bennie's sock, and then, just to please Bennie, she put a rubber rattle in the baby's little stocking. Her husband, being a great thinker, would not consent to having his hosiery hung up, so she would wait till breakfast time and hide the gloves under his plate. Then she went over to tuck the cover in around Bennie. He was smiling—dreaming, doubtless, of red ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... I abide my fate joyfully; for I know that, whatever betide me, my work is nearly done. Yes; Moral Force and 'Patience and Perseverance' are scattered to the wild winds of heaven. The music my countrymen now love best to hear is the rattle of arms and the ring of the rifle. As I sit here and write in my lonely cell, I hear, just dying away, the measured tramp of ten thousand marching men—my gallant confederates, unarmed and silent, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... a solemn and majestic manner. We cannot expect such big wheels to hurry themselves. Under the bridge, puffing a little more quickly, then we rattle through Westbourne Park and by Wormwood Scrubs. Puff-puffing much more quickly now, but not quite so loudly, as the driver has pulled the lever back and the steam goes up with less force through the chimney: working quietly. Away, away, on our iron steed through Ealing and Hanwell—across ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... so. The noise of carriages and carts, the rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys, all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude instinct with life and occupation, blended into one deep murmur, floated into the room. Above the hoarse loud hum, arose, from time to time, a boisterous laugh; or a scrap of some jingling song, shouted forth, by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... one, as fortune and knowledge of the game favour; the result is uninfluenced by any thing of his doing; with the last turned card of the croupier is he rich or ruined; and thus in the very abstraction of the anxiety is this the most painfully exciting of all gambling whatever; the very rattle of the dice-box to the hazard player is a relief; and the thought that he is in some way instrumental in his good or bad fortune gives a turn to his thoughts. There is something so like the inevitable character of fate associated with the result of a chance, which ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the summer morning sunshine breaking softly into it through leafy greenness, was a delightful thing to Miss Fox-Seton, who was accustomed to opening her eyes upon four walls covered with cheap paper, to the sound of outside hammerings, and the rattle and heavy roll of wheels. In a building at the back of her bed-sitting-room there lived a man whose occupation, beginning early in the morning, involved banging ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I could get great things done in the matter of fish culture and fish diseases at South Kensington, if poor dear X.'s rattle trappery could be turned to proper account, without in any way interfering with the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... a ball suspended from the top of his carriage or bed as early as the fifth month. About this time he discovers his toes while in his bath. He will handle a rattle at six or seven months, and shows delight ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... arrest. He thinks his God needs help, and would like to see the police crush the infidel. I would advise Mr. Talmage (hisses) to furnish his God with a rattle, so that when he is in danger again he can summon the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... exactly twelve years since he had been born, a tiny, shapeless, senseless, helpless, toothless, speechless, useless, feeble, deaf, myopic creature; and now he was a school-boy, strong, healthy, big, and clever, who could define a dodecahedron and rattle off the rivers of Europe like a house on fire. The change amounted to a miracle, and it was esteemed as such by those who had spent twelve years chiefly in watching it. One evening, in the very earliest stages, while his mother was nursing him, his father had come into the darkened chamber, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... will!" cry I, petulantly; "they must! I cannot do without them! I believe some people do not mind being alone—not even in the evenings, when the furniture cracks and the door-handles rattle. I dare say you do not; but I hate my own company; I have never been used to it. I have always been used to a great deal of noise—too much, I have sometimes thought, but I am sure that I never shall ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And as I listened my interest would wax intense at the picture of this world-charming ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... do," said Enid. "I learn the beginning of the history portion almost by heart. Then I look very intelligent and attentive, and when Miss Harper asks me a question, I rattle off a long answer nearly word for word from the book, at such a tremendous rate that she can scarcely follow me, and says, 'That will do, Enid'. It makes her think I know the whole lesson, and she keeps questioning the other girls who've hesitated ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... from the disconcertment into which O'Mara's coming had flung him. Slowly the former's lips twisted into a mocking leer; mockery rose and swam with the hatred in his inflamed eyes. He would have spoken, sparring for time, when Steve's hand leapt in and made of the joking effort only a rattle in his throat. Beneath the stiff red stubble the flesh was livid where those fingers had been, when he was able ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door. The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two sides drowned the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a noise when you shake them. And there is another kind of knowledge which goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth calling by the name; and that knowledge ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Nephew Isaac, by making over to him some years since A horned Searaboeus, The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and The Mummy of an Egyptian King, I make no further Provision for him in this ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... first thrill of real alarm. I shouted, but my voice fell dead in the snowy air. The gale was blowing more furiously than ever, and the cold was so intense that it penetrated my thick clothing and caused my teeth to rattle together! ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... less decent jokes of the men idling over the bulwarks. There she sold her wares to those men that spoke so loud and carried themselves so free. There was a throng, a constant coming and going; calls interchanged, orders given and executed with shouts; the rattle of blocks, the flinging about of coils of rope. She sat out of the way under the shade of the awning, with her tray before her, the veil drawn well over her face, feeling shy amongst so many men. She ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... gifted with great intelligence was thinking of it, the car endued with great effulgence and guided by Matali, came dividing the clouds and illuminating the firmament and filling the entire welkin with its rattle deep as the roar of mighty masses of clouds. Swords, and missiles of terrible forms and maces of frightful description, and winged darts of celestials splendour and lightnings of the brightest effulgence, and thunderbolts, and propellors furnished with wheels and worked with atmosphere ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... these there are, which frequent forlorn [1201]houses, which the Italians call foliots, most part innoxious, [1202]Cardan holds; "They will make strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains, shave men, open doors and shut them, fling down platters, stools, chests, sometimes appear in the likeness of hares, crows, black dogs," &c. of which read [1203]Pet Thyraeus the Jesuit, in his Tract, de locis infestis, part. 1. et cap. 4, who will have ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and the deep glens in the heart of the Island, so lonely except for the lord's red deer and little fierce black cattle. Why, if one of those foreign sailors attempted love-making with an Island lass, just as likely as not a pair of little brown fists would rattle about his amazed ears; the girls there know how ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... shook violently, her teeth chattered, and the sharp words seemed to rattle out like hail-stones. Horace had never seen her in such a mood, and was half inclined to run away; but when she took her hands down from her face, and he saw how pale she was, his heart ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... and the air grows thick and suffocating—full of dust and saltpetre and sulphur. We are like to choke. All around is dark as night. We can see nothing, hear nothing but the howling of the hurricane, and the thunder and rattle of falling trees and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the windows rattle; the weapon fell from her hand, having done its work and, amid the smoke, a body dropped heavily on the carpet, which was soon dyed ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Well-bred harpies won and lost fortunes, and the vice became a raging pest. A young politician could not further his own prospects better than by letting some high-born dame win his money; if the youth won the lady's money, then a discreet forgetfulness of the debt was profitable to him. The rattle of dice and the shuffle of cards sounded wherever two or three fashionable persons were gathered together; men and women quarrelled, and society became a mere jumble of people who suspected and hated and thought to rob each other. It is horrible, even at this distance of time, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... "and stay an hour if you like. I know Mrs. Richardson would wait upon me if I should need anything, which I am sure I shall not," she concluded, with a furtive glance toward the sitting-room, where, during the last half-hour, she had heard, now and then, the rattle of a newspaper, and surmised that her young hero was engaged in perusing ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... larger than the city and so empty that you rattle around in it until you wonder if you are ever going to get stuck to any place, especially if there isn't a house numbered anywhere. Our street is named Providence Road and the house Byrd Mansion and I am afraid I'll never ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... well again. The toy sovereignty began to rattle around in its own conceit, the "people" regarded themselves, and wished to be regarded, as a chartered Democracy. The little gim-crack economic system experienced the joys of reform. A "New Nationalism" was established in the brewery down by the railway station and a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... mark your bold bearing, Pride in each aspect and strength in each form, Hearts of warm impulse, and souls of high daring, Born in the battle and rear'd in the storm. The red levin flash and the thunder's dread rattle, The rock-riven wave and the war trumpet's breath, The din of the tempest, the yell of the battle, Nerve your steeled bosoms to ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... by sight what they could not take. Others walked amid the dishes on the purple table covers, breaking ivory stools, and phials of Tyrian glass to pieces with their feet. Songs mingled with the death-rattle of the slaves expiring amid the broken cups. They demanded wine, meat, gold. They cried out for women. They raved in a hundred languages. Some thought that they were at the vapour baths on account of the steam which floated ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... too quickly indeed. I must rest my poor brain now, or it will rattle in my head like a dry walnut. When it begins to rattle, I know that I have done enough for the present. May I walk in the garden again—not alone, but ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... making his way back to the desk, the roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and handed it to the young ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of the owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the likening the cry to the noise of the rhugylgroen is anything but unfortunate. For, after all, what does the voice of the ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... succession cracked in the clearing. Kyral to the contrary, someone must have had a pistol. I heard one of the cat-things wail, a hoarse dying rattle. Something dark clawed my arm and I slashed with the knife, going down as another set of talons fastened in my back, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... pale, and expressed herself as shocked, and then, having offered some cold condolences, spoke to the coachman; and as we passed on we heard the quick rattle of the horses' hoofs, as the barouche ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Who can sleep in these abominable large towns? The carriages, the watchmen, the drums, the cats, the soldiers, never cease to rattle, to call, to roll, to mew, and to swear; just as if the last thing the night is intended for was for sleep. Have a cup of tea, ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... proposed negotiations, they became less ardent and were all disposed to recede. At last, after much discussion, the matter was settled, and before nightfall a drummer was set upon the external parapet of the Porcupine, who forthwith began to beat vigorously for a parley. The rattle was a welcome sound in the ears of the weary besiegers, just drawn up in column for a desperate assault, and the tidings were at once communicated to the archduke in Fort St. Albert. The prince manifested at first some unwillingness to forego the glory of the attack, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... striving after truth, its fear of being duped, and its fretting dread that evolution and progress might prove antagonistic terms. And at that simple grave in Stockholm more than one bareheaded spectator must have heard the gravel rattle on the coffin-lid with a feeling that not only a great individual, but a whole human period—great in spite of all its weaknesses—was being laid ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg |
