"Rattling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Leprosy with us, you know, is not a thing to jest about. He made one leap across the floor, dragging Kaluna out of his chair with a clutch on his neck. He shook him back and forth savagely, till you could hear the half-caste's teeth rattling. ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... watch and made a calculation; Auber's train was probably at Newark. I could stand it no longer, and I went toward his room, stamping on the bare floor, whistling nervously, and rattling the rickety balustrade. I banged open the door and began to shout: ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... "Do you know his history?" I answered in the negative. "Why," said he, "that burning rascal set fire to the rope-house in the dockyard about the time you were born, and there the gentleman's bones are rattling to the breeze as a warning to others." The wind was blowing strong, and we were more than an hour before we reached the frigate, which was lying at Spithead. My eyes during that time were fixed on twelve sail of the line ready for sea. As I had never seen a line of battleship, I was ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... do this to please thee," she said, and loosening her hold of the bundle, she flung it suddenly into an empty red cart which was rattling by. "Take care of them, Shemi, thou know'st my ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... close at his heels, and altogether the rattling reports of the four exhausts quite excited the lumber-camp cook, who stood there in the doorway gaping, as long as ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... the road, for he wanted to be alone. And those fields looked more friendly now than they had looked at dawn, and his heart grew lighter with every step. Now and then a rabbit leaped from the grass before him, or a squirrel whisked up the rattling bark of a hickory-tree. A sparrow trilled from the swaying top of a purple ironwood, and from grass, and fence-rail, and awing, meadow larks were fluting everywhere, but the song of no wood-thrush reached his waiting ear. Over and over again his brain reviewed every incident of the day, only ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... every second. On by the Vecht river to Amsterdam, and thence—Lord, what a relief it was!—out into the North Sea again. The weather had been still and steamy; but it broke up finely now, and we had a rattling three-reef sail to the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... though none of right; and therefore I would counsel you to omit no decent nor manly degree of importunity. Your debts in the whole are not large, and of the whole but a small part is troublesome. Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger. You must, therefore, be enabled to discharge petty debts, that you may have leisure, with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... forged links of that strong chain That binds me to myself, and this to-day To yesterday. I heard it rattling near With a no more astonished ear. And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep, No more the long night rolled its great ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... very quiet during the drive to Macclesfield Buildings. But nobody spoke much, except Doctor Sophy, who made interjectional remarks, half lost in the rattling of the cab, by way of trying to keep up everybody's spirits. Caspar sitting opposite his wife, with his arms folded and his long legs carefully tucked out of the way, had an unusually serious and even anxious expression. Indeed it struck Lady Alice for the first time that ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that he could dance better than he could at thirty, and to prove it executed, with extraordinary agility for a man who rode at twenty stone, a pas seul which made the floor rock and set the windows and ornaments to rattling as if there had been an earthquake. Suddenly, with a loud "Whew," he flung himself into an arm-chair, panting and perspiring. "It's you, sir," he gasped—"you put me up ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... were dining at the other end of the table, the man, rattling like a broken down locomotive, was too short winded to talk while eating; but the woman never kept silent. She told all her impressions on the arrival of the Prussians, what they did, what they said, execrating them first because they cost them money, and then because ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... excitedly at his cousin's arm, gripping it almost painfully, and dragged at him to hurry him away. "Oh, I say," he whispered, for his laugh had turned into an almost unearthly burst of harsh chuckles and cries which went literally rattling away down the dark passage nearly choked with thick growth and only dimly-seen. "Oh, do come away, Mark! This isn't the passage we came to that day with uncle and the doctor. There must be something watching us—something no canny, ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... sometimes found among the ashes of bamboos that have been set on fire (by mutual friction?). Ordinarily, however, it is sought for by splitting open those bamboo stems which give a rattling sound when shaken. Such rattling sounds do not, however, afford infallible criteria as to the presence or absence of tabasheer in a bamboo, for where the quantity is small it is often found to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... Hence, although they had left Mafeking unobserved, when Mathakgong's party approached Mafeking on the return trip with the cattle, a strong Dutch force was waylaying him and waiting to give him and Colonel Plumer's cattle a hot reception. They opened a rattling fusillade upon the cattle drivers, which could be heard from Mafeking. Over half of the cattle were killed in the ensuing fight, and the remainder, like the fat carcases of the dead bullocks, fell into the hands of the Boers. The drivers escaped with only ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of another and larger cage. As a matter of fact they were the railings which afforded a modest protection to Number Nine. They ran the length of the house, and were much used by small boys as a means of rattling sticks. One of these stick-rattlers passed as Bill stood there looking down. The noise startled him for a moment, then he seemed to come to the conclusion that this sort of thing was to be expected if you went out into the great world and that a parrot who intended ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... winter—that is, about the second week in November—and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys—a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... imagine my excitement." Turn the hands up, Mr. Wyse!" "'Bout ship!" "Down with the helm!" "Helm a-lee!" Up comes the schooner's head to the wind, the sails flapping with the noise of thunder—blocks rattling against the deck, as if they wanted to knock their brains out—ropes dancing about in galvanised coils, like mad serpents—and everything to an inexperienced eye in inextricable confusion; till gradually ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... in a fairy tale, who has got hold of some magic words and doesn't know what effect they will produce. The topgallantsails and royals were quickly furled—those are the sails highest up, you know; and then the huge topsails came rattling down the masts, and the men lay out on the yards and caught hold of them, as they were bulging out and flapping fearfully about, to reef them. One of the topmen, Tom Hansard, was at the weather yardarm, and had hold of the earing, ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in particular, most Unix programmers will think of this as an {exec}. Oppose the more modern 'subshell'. 2. /n./ A series of linked data areas within an operating system or application. 'Chain rattling' is the process of repeatedly running through the linked data areas searching for one which is of interest to the executing program. The implication is that there is a very large number ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the golden lyre again: A louder yet, and yet a louder strain! Break his bands of sleep asunder, And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head: As awaked from the dead, And amazed he stares around. Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries, See the Furies arise! See the snakes ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand,—a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato; can talk Greek with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... 1863, Fontain set out from his father's home, at a considerable distance in the rear of the Federal lines. He was well mounted, and armed with an excellent revolver and a good sabre, which he carried in a wooden scabbard to prevent its rattling. His other burdens were his packet of percussion caps, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Yorker, however, said nothing more about the invention. He browsed about the shop with unfeigned pleasure, poking in among the cans of paint, oil, and varnish, rattling the nails in the dingy cigar-boxes, and examining the tools and myriad primitive devices Willie had contrived to aid ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... silent streets of Mirebeau, and the conductor, stationing himself beneath the window of a dwelling, called loudly to the sleepers within; no answer was returned, nor did he repeat his summons; but waited, with a patience peculiar to conducteurs, who do not care to hurry their horses, till a rattling on the wall announced the approach of a basket let down by a string. Into this he put the letters he had brought, and it re-ascended; after waiting a reasonable time, the silent messenger returned, and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good, old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet —these were the instruments. The trio took their places side by side, and began to play some rattling dance-music, and beat ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was chosen for me," Lone Chief was saying. His voice, shrill and piping, ever and again dropped plummet-like into a hoarse and rattling bass, and, just as one became accustomed to it, soaring upward into the thin treble—alternate cricket chirpings and bullfrog croakings, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... means of giving to other ship's companies, because they could not beat us—no, not even hold a candle to us. In both fore and main-top we had eight-and-twenty as smart chaps as ever put their foot to a rattling, or slid down by an a'ter backstay. Now, the two captains of the foretop were both prime young men, active as monkeys, and bold as lions. One was named Tom Herbert, from North Shields, a dark, good-looking chap, with teeth as white as a nigger's, and a merry chap he was, always a-showing them. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... on deck. The skies had blown clear and the brigantine was well in land-bound waters and still footing a rattling pace. The river-banks had narrowed until, beyond the dikes to right and left, the country-side stretched wide and flat, a plain of living green embroidered with winding roads and quaint Old-World hamlets whose red roofs shone ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... forgotten but the power to please, Each maid may give a loose to genial thought, 670 Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught: There the blithe youngster, just returned from Spain, Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main; The jovial Caster's set, and seven's the Nick, Or—done!—a thousand on the coming trick! If, mad with loss, existence 'gins to tire, And all your hope or wish is to expire, Here's POWELL'S [101] pistol ready for your life, And, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... a late hour. A moment's vision of Paula moving to swift tunes on the arm of a person or persons unknown was enough to impart the impetus required. He jumped up, flung his dress clothes into a portmanteau, sent down to call a cab, and in a few minutes was rattling off to the railway which had borne Paula away from ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... in the Chautauqua grape-belt, grape-growers not infrequently lose a large part of the crop by the premature falling of the grapes from the stems. The trouble is an ancient one and is designated as "shelling" or "rattling." This premature dropping usually begins at the end of a cluster, and clusters farthest from the trunk are earliest affected. When vineyards suffer badly from this shelling, the vines often take on ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... did not authorize him to pronounce its dissolution. Members of the Congress having entered into arguments with the sailors and the Red Guards, concerning the violence inflicted on the peasant delegates, the sound of the rattling of guns was heard and the leader of the pretorians declared that if the Congress would not submit to his orders he would stop at nothing. All the members of the Congress were forthwith searched ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the court, I heard a yell without, which my experience before Ty had taught me was the whoop the Hurons give when they attack. A rattling fire succeeded, and we were instantly engaged in a hot conflict. Our people fought under one advantage, which more than counter-balanced the disadvantage of their inferiority in numbers. While two sides of the buildings, including that of the meadows, or the one on ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... of wind rattling the iron doors causes the men to start; the lowest whisper is intensified to what seems a sonorous shout. In this strange theatre, the actors in what is to be the greatest world-drama, wait to be assigned their parts and to play the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... feebly to the passage-door and stands rattling the handle in an uncertain way. At last she breaks down and ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... during these three years I had been jolly enough, I had not been altogether happy. The hunting, the whisky punch, the rattling Irish life,—of which I could write a volume of stories were this the place to tell them,—were continually driving from my mind the still cherished determination to become a writer of novels. When I reached Ireland I had never put pen to paper; nor had I done so when I became engaged. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... kept her safe. Now Cap'n Bill was attacked, and Princess Clia as well. The half-dozen slender legs darted in every direction like sword thrusts to reach their victims, and the cruel claws snapped so rapidly that the sound was like the rattling of castanets. But the four prisoners regarded their enemy with smiling composure, and no yell greeted the ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... called him. His appearance was that of a natty staff officer, and did not fill one's ideal of a major general, or even a brigadier general by brevet. He affected the foreign style of seat on horseback, and it was "as good as a show" to see him dash along the flank of the column at a rattling pace, rising in his stirrups as he rode. I have always believed that had he remained with the Third Cavalry division long enough to get into a real charge, like the one at Gettysburg, he would have been glad enough to put ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... substitutes by taking stiff cardboard pill-boxes, about 11/4 inches in diameter, and filling them with cotton and shot to the desired weight. The shot must be embedded in the center of the cotton so as to prevent rattling. After the box has been loaded to the exact weight, the lid should be glued on firmly. If one does not have access to laboratory scales, it is always possible to secure the help of a druggist in the rather delicate task of ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... something awful must have taken place! Perhaps they had cut off the king's head as they did in France! But such was the rapidity of the horses' ascent in the hope of rest, and warmth, and supper, that the carriage was in the close, and rattling up to the door, ere she had got the long wick of the tallow candle to acknowledge the dominion of fire. The laird rose in haste from his arm-chair, and went to the door. There stood the chaise, in the cloud ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... glazing and staring painfully. And as his last words hovered on his lips they were drowned by the gurgling and rattling in his throat. Suddenly a shudder passed through his frame. He started, his eyes ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... through dark, box-lined aisles which had the smell of new shoes, until they came to an iron door which opened into the factory proper. There was a large, low-ceiled room, with clacking, rattling machines at which men in white shirt sleeves and blue gingham aprons were working. She followed him diffidently through the clattering automatons, keeping her eyes straight before her, and flushing slightly. They ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... water; and the engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet that they could find in the confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded, but calm. There was a sound below of things happening—a rushing, clicking, purring, grunting, rattling noise that did not last for more than a minute. It was the machinery adjusting itself, on the spur of the moment, to a hundred altered conditions. Mr. Wardrop, one foot on the upper grating, inclined his ear sideways, and groaned. You cannot stop engines working at twelve knots an ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Rochecliffe—I wish I had minded more—Oh!—the clergyman—the funeral service"—As he uttered these words, indicative, it may be, of his return to a creed, which perhaps he had never abjured so thoroughly as he had persuaded himself, his voice was lost in a groan, which, rattling in the throat, seemed unable to find its way to the air. These were the last symptoms of life: the clenched hands presently relaxed—the closed eyes opened, and stared on the heavens a lifeless jelly—the limbs extended themselves and stiffened. The body, which was lately animated ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... avenge On the Achaian host thy servant's tears. Such prayer he made, and it was heard.[7] The God, Down from Olympus with his radiant bow And his full quiver o'er his shoulder slung, 55 Marched in his anger; shaken as he moved His rattling arrows told of his approach. Gloomy he came as night; sat from the ships Apart, and sent an arrow. Clang'd the cord [8]Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow.[9] 60 Mules first and dogs he struck,[10] but ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own; and, deep among the foundations of these buildings, the ground was undermined and burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by rats, might be heard on a quiet Sunday rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in tales of haunted houses are said to clank ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... of what seems to have been an infected elbow by my informant's uncle and Blind Mike. The first step in the process was to blow smoke in a circle around the painful area so that the sickness couldn't move. This was followed by singing, rattling, and sucking until something bright began to come out. It was, according to witnesses, as bright as a star, so bright in fact that even Blind Mike could see it. The bright object proved to be (if we can trust descriptions) ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... profusion meet our gaze; with a quick sleight the captain distributes them, sends a half dozen to their owners in the forecastle by the steward, and then ensues a silence broken only by the snapping of seals, and the rattling of paper. Suddenly Mr. Stewart uttered an exclamation of surprise, and looking up from my letter, I noticed the quick exchange of significant glances between the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... barred, Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard: Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead: For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, It still looks home, and short excursions makes; But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, And never shocked, and never turned aside, Bursts out, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a moment or two, and then, streaming with water, he was swung high above the sea again. It was bad enough merely to hold on, but that was a very small share of his task, for the big black sail that cut the higher darkness came rattling down its stay and fell upon him and his companion. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. As he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... is, no doubt, good feeding; but it vanishes away like the morning cloud, and leaves behind it only an aching void. Kit felt the void, but he could not help it. Instead, however, of dwelling upon it, his mind was full of queer thoughts and funny imaginings. It is a strange thing that the thought of rattling on the ribs of a lazy, sleepy moon with a besom-shank pleased him as much as a plate of porridge and as much milk as he could sup to it. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Perhaps my young friend remembers the Casablanca incident in 1908 where again the Kaiser threatened France with war. Indeed, for the last twenty years, even while he was doubtless anxious to maintain peace, he has been rattling his sword in his scabbard and threatening war against the various nations of Europe. In most of these cases even when he wanted peace he bluffed with threats of war. Then came the Agadir incident in 1911 when once more the Kaiser bluffed. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... his hand in the air. I rose in my stirrups and bowed elaborately, and, taking off my hat in the act, put him to some shame, for he was without that equipment. He pulled a wry face at me, like any schoolboy, and cantered off on his spent horse, arms akimbo, and his irons rattling about him. My guide marked a furtive cross on his breast and vowed, I am pretty sure, a score candles to Santa Maria in Cosmedin if ever he reached home. "God is good," he said, "God is very good. That was ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... bearings, his tail, as he skims along, undulating behind him, and adding to the easy grace and dignity of his movements. Or else you are first advised of his proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... BILIN' of 'm 's frauds! Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a rattling powwow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Peeler with a swarm of men. The trees were cut and the song of the grasshopper choked beneath piles of boards. There was a great shouting and rattling of hammers. A whole street of houses, all alike, universally ugly, had been added to the vast number of new houses already built by that energetic carpenter and his ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... clever women, observe; the one is endowed with corporeal cleverness—the other with mental; and I don't know which of the two is the greater nuisance to society; the one torments you with her management—the other with her smart sayings; the one is for ever rattling her bunch of keys in your ears—the other electrifies you with the shock of her wit; and both talk so much and so loud, and are such egotists, that I rather think a clever woman is even a greater term of reproach than a good creature. But to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... mats and pillows to sleep on. Some of our party preferred a bad supper and wet bed to these accommodations; and, to consummate their discomfort, they were kept awake a great part of the night by sandflies. Our lot in the house was more fortunate. We heard the rattling of the pitiless rain, and commiserated those whose choice or distrust kept them in the boat. I obtained by this means an excellent opportunity of seeing a Malay menage in its primitive simplicity. Women, children, and all their domestic arrangements, were exposed to view. Nothing appeared to ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... rattling good comedy situation? Seems a kind of pity we were the right ones. It would have been such nuts to see the right ones come, and get fired out, and we chatting along comfortably and nobody suspecting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the post-office. I had never been in that department previously, I may mention. Then I was shown a box, and asked if I expected it, and from whom it came. I asserted utter ignorance; but, as I took it in my hand, I heard a rattling, and it suddenly flashed across my mind that it might be the proofs of some photographs which the Moscow artist had "hurried" through in one month. The amiable post-office "blindman," who had riddled out the address, was quite willing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... and the driver popped his hickory bark whip and the wagon rolled away. Jasper went into the house and sat down, deep in thought, but for a long time Margaret stood at the gate, and the old man saw her sobbing in her apron. She came into the room when no longer could she hear the wagon rattling over the stones, high up the hill, and he said to her: "In the way of nature, my dear, and you mustn't grieve. I count her a very lucky girl. That young feller will make ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... as to take every advantage of the wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas aloft like a thousand bees ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... One Tuesday morning, in December, she arose and dressed herself as usual, making many a pause, but doing everything for herself, and even endeavouring to take up her employment of sewing: the servants looked on, and knew what the catching, rattling breath, and the glazing of the eye too surely foretold; but she kept at her work; and Charlotte and Anne, though full of unspeakable dread, had still the faintest spark of hope. On that morning Charlotte wrote thus—probably in the very presence ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... made short work of the rocky lanes about La Mariniere. The high road towards Sonnay was smooth compared with these, running between belts of dark forest, and along it Monsieur Urbain drove at a good rattling pace of ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... As these sounds died away upon the breeze, the sun arose; the morning gun of the camp responded to the echoes of that from the fleet; the rattling of the marine sentries' muskets, discharged immediately after; the roll of drums, and the blast of trumpets, proclaimed that man had started from his couch, to toil or idle through another day. The smoke soon curled in thin white masses from the cottage chimneys of ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... Dr. Ferris, lending himself to this new turn of the conversation, but not half satisfied with the number of his jokes. "I used to be afraid I should, and so I tried to see everything I could of the world before my enthusiasm began to cool. And as for rattling to the next place, as you say, you show yourself to be no traveler by nature, or you wouldn't speak so slightingly. It is extremely dangerous to make long halts. I could cry with homesickness at the thought of the towns I have spent more than a month in; they are like the people one knows; ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... is Marechal taking a holiday," observed Savinien. "They are still at dinner," he added, entering the drawing-room, through the great doors of which sounds of voices and rattling of plates were heard. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... partings ahead. Welcome to England, mother! First step on the old land—eh? Feels nice and sound beneath your feet, doesn't it? Just the sort of solid, durable old place to take root in after a roaming life!" And Arthur led his mother on shore, rattling away in his old merry style, though the tears shone in his eyes also, and his voice was not so clear ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... and parting embraces given, we started, and rattling away to Margate, were soon on board the "Royal Adelaide" on our way up the Thames. Bitter as was the cold, I was too much occupied in running about and examining everything connected with the steamer to mind it. The helm, the machinery, the masts and rigging, the huge paddle-wheels, the lead and ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... front rooms in darkness. Either his wife or his mother, then, was sitting up in the drawing-room. He inserted a cautious latch-key into the door and entered the silent home like a sinner. The dim light in the hall gravely reproached him. All his movements were modest and restrained. No noisy rattling of his ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... composed the weary shepherd lies, Though through the woods terrific winds resound, Though rattling thunder shakes the vaulted skies, Or vivid lightning ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... bluff," he declared, "like so many we have had for the last thirty years; we get them regularly every spring and summer; just bullying and sabre-rattling." People did not believe in war, no one wanted it; war had been proved to be impossible,—it was a bugbear that must be got out of the heads of free democracies ... and he enlarged on this theme. The night was calm and sweet; all around familiar sounds and sights; ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... it! Hi, Bob!" and with a savage slash of the whip, an exciting cry, a terrible reeling and rattling, they did do it; for Bob cleared the track at a breakneck pace, just in time for the train to sweep ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... furiously charging up and down an abandoned battle-field, rattling the bleaching bones of a dead and gone enemy - for an ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... that my heart would serve me to speak to her, now she talks of her sprused husband! Well, I'll set a good face on't. Now I'll clap me as close to her as Jone's buttocks of a close-stool, and come over her with my rolling, rattling, rumbling eloquence. Sweet Peg, honey Peg, fine Peg, dainty Peg, brave Peg, kind Peg, comely Peg; my nutting, my sweeting, my love, my dove, my honey, my bunny, my duck, my dear, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... great rattling among the crockery in the kitchen. We ran to see what was the matter, and found that Miss Fan had made her way to a shelf of the dresser, about two feet from the ground, and was endeavoring to find ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... two or three priests, the conjurer, and a score or more of old men. They had Indian drums upon which they beat furiously, and long pipes made of reeds which gave forth no uncertain sound. Fixed upon a pole and borne high above them was the image of their Okee, a hideous thing of stuffed skins and rattling chains of copper. When they had joined themselves to the throng in the firelight the clamor became deafening. Some one piled on more logs, and the place grew light as day. Opechancanough was not there, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... equipages, what did his companion think of the new fashion of the Hungarian harness? His lively and kind companion encouraged the boy's tattle; and, emboldened by her good nature, he soon forgot his artificial speeches, and was quickly rattling on about Turriparva, and his horses, and his dogs, and his park, and his guns, and his grooms. Soon after the waltz, the lady, taking the arm of the young Prince, walked up to Mr. Beckendorff. He received her with great attention, and led her to Madame Carolina, who rose, seated Mr. Beckendorff's ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... speeding, And shocking and rocking, And darting and parting, And threading and spreading, And whizzing and hissing, And dripping and skipping, And hitting and splitting, And shining and twining, And rattling and battling, And shaking and quaking, And pouring and roaring, And waving and raving, And tossing and crossing, And flowing and going, And running and stunning, And foaming and roaming, And dinning and spinning, And dropping and hopping, And working and jerking, And guggling ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... daisy, especially to people well up in botany. La, si, do, re. Confound that re! Now to make the blue lake intelligible. We should have something moist, azure, moonlight—for the moon comes in too; here it is; don't let's forget the swan. Fa, mi, la, sol," continued Schaunard, rattling over the keys. "Lastly, an adieu of the young girl, who determines to throw herself into the blue lake, to rejoin her beloved who is buried under the snow. The catastrophe is not very perspicuous, but decidedly interesting. We must have something tender, melancholy. It's coming, it's ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... had been quite furious upon discovering that the "little episode" of the moonlit cottage had filched from him all his new won strength and nervous stamina, leaving him sleepless and unstrung, ready to jump at the rattling of a stone. More and more, there grew in him a fierce disdain of weakness and a cold determination to beat Nature at her own game. Let him once again be "fit" and wily indeed would be the trick which would steal his fitness ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... bed and ran to the window, pulled the cord of the green shade and sent it rattling to the top. Then she stood on tiptoe before the mirror in the walnut bureau, but the glass was hung too high for a satisfactory scrutiny of her features. She pushed a cane-seated chair before the bureau, knelt upon it and brought her face close ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... before-mentioned, Jack ascended the steps, and was admitted, on feeing the porter, by another iron gate, into the hospital. Here he was almost stunned by the deafening clamour resounding on all sides. Some of the lunatics were rattling their chains; some shrieking; some singing; some beating with frantic violence against the doors. Altogether, it was the most dreadful noise he had ever heard. Amidst it all, however, there were several light-hearted and laughing groups walking from cell to cell ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The host glanced round to make sure that the rattling servant had entirely gone. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... peeping through groves of bamboo, rhododendrons, and arbutus; the ascent is by broad flights of steps cut in the mica-slate rocks, up which shaven and girdled monks, with rosaries and long red gowns, were dragging loads of bamboo stems, that produced a curious rattling noise. At the summit there is a fine temple, with the ruins of several others, and of many houses: the greater part of the principal temple, which is two-storied and divided into several compartments, is occupied by families. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... saber-rattling in these years, Germany found herself checkmated in almost every move. The Monroe Doctrine, for which the United States showed willingness to fight in the Venezuela affair of 1902, balked her schemes ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... character is like a broken buggy; and his imagination—that's the unbroken colt. Every day, for a long time, the colt has run away with the wagon, tipping it over and dragging it in the ditch, until every bolt is loose, and every spoke rattling, and every wheel awry. I do hope ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... intentness—though a close observer might have detected furtive glances occasionally thrown upon a young man, with a pale and somewhat agitated countenance, who was pacing to and fro on the ground without. With the exception of these two, no person was within sight—though the rattling of a loom in the other apartment or cabin, betokened the vicinity ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... a little closer, but still its fleece showing under his kepi. Karl, his cheeks more cherubic than ever—unchanged but for a tiny yellow toy mustache curling up over the corners of his full lips. Karl, beaming at his companions in his old way, but rattling off French vivacities without the faintest trace of accent. Could he be mistaken? Was it some phenomenal resemblance, or had the soul of the German private been transmigrated to the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... be, I could hear the sound of the engine echoing back from the mountains; the chugging and rattling sounded double, like. Then, pretty soon, it kind ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had unconsciously left behind her. Had the Gypsy been following the trail with the silence of an American Indian, she could not have worked more carefully than she was now working while her tongue went rattling on. I afterwards found this to be a characteristic of her race, as I afterwards found that what is called the long sight of the Gypsies (as displayed in the following of the patrin [Footnote: Trail]) is ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... happen. The boys heard a queer rattling sound near by, and immediately the wooden "dummy" was jerked out of Obed's hands, to be drawn up until it struck against the limb of the tree fully ten feet above. Steve gave ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... I was getting up to the city. They are rattling it into her. She'll be loaded in a jiffy, and I've ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Playful, and white, and clean, the briars among, Till briars and thorns increasing fence them round, Where last year's mould'ring leaves bestrew the ground, And o'er their heads, loud lashed by furious squalls, Bright from their cups the rattling treasure falls; Hot thirsty food; whence doubly sweet and cool The welcome margin of some rush-grown pool, The wild duck's lonely haunt, whose jealous eye Guards every point; who sits prepared to fly, On the calm bosom of her little lake, Too closely screened for ruffian ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... brought to before a certain tree with the grace and dignity of an ocean liner coming into her slip. Zeke Wheeler dismounted, and, with the saddle mail pouch over his arm, stalked solemnly across the yard and into the house, his spurs clinking on the gravel and rattling over the floor. Following the mail carrier, the group of mountaineers entered, and, with Uncle Ike's entire family, took their places at a respectful distance from the holy place of mystery and might, in the north east corner of ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... like a mole in the winter under the grass. Those words, "fragile and valuable," had made the men lift Hirschvogel gently and with care. He had begun to get used to his prison, and a little used to the incessant pounding and jumbling and rattling and shaking with which modern travel is always accompanied, though modern invention does deem itself so mightily clever. All in the dark he was, and he was terribly thirsty; but he kept feeling the earthenware sides of the Nurnberg giant and ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... combining to make a momentary roaring noise at their nearest. The truck was not in a hurry. It simply lumbered along with loose objects in its cargo space rattling and bumping loudly. Its driver and his helper plainly knew nothing of untoward events behind them. They'd probably stopped somewhere to have a leisurely morning snack, with the truck waiting ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of musical science is to be effected by indecent tableaux vivans—by rattling peas against sieves, and putting out the lights (appropriately enough) when Beethoven is being murdered—by the most contemptible class of compositions that ever was put upon score-paper, and noised forth from an ill-disciplined band—if these be the means towards improving musical taste, Monsieur ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... have died when I saw you two girls rattling about in the what-you-call-it, like two little kernels in a very big nutshell, and Mother waiting in state to receive the throng," sighed Jo, quite ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... go on so! And with all those poor people ill close by. Miss Slater, who sat on the stairs just below me tying up flowers, is much grieved about a lad who was at work there till a fortnight ago, and now is dying of a fever, and harassed by all the rattling of the carriages." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rapidly rolled up the wall and over the roof, the savages raised shouts of exultation, which fell as a death-knell upon the hearts of those who had now no alternative but to be consumed in the flames or to surrender themselves to the merciless foe. The bullets were still rattling against the house, and fifteen hundred warriors were greedily watching to riddle with balls any one who should attempt to escape. The flames were crackling and roaring around the besieged, and their only alternative was to perish in the fire, or to go out and meet the bullet and the tomahawk ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... fitted before she went off for the day, and Elizabeth was ordered to sew while she was gone. The grandmother presided at the rattling old sewing-machine, and in two or three days Elizabeth was pronounced to be fixed up enough to do for the present till she could earn some new clothes. With her fine hair snarled into a cushion and puffed out ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... Captain, "you must dismount and take a glass of wine with me; do—I have some excellent old Madeira." The aide dismounted and the wine was hastily drunk by the impatient young Lieutenant, who did not enjoy it very much as there was a constant fire of grape and canister rattling about them all the time. But Captain Magruder desired very much to have a little agreeable chat over his wine, as, he remarked, it was no use popping away with his diminutive pieces against the heavy guns of the enemy. "But I am ordered by General ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... already at work on the cargo, were contagious. She noticed that Mademoiselle Brun was speaking to an officer, but was more interested in the carriage, which, in accordance with an order sent by the captain, was at this moment rattling across the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... did not quite fall out as expected. On the afternoon of that very same day, a carriage was heard to drive up to the little house. They heard the rattling of the wheels, the stopping of the vehicle, the descent of the passengers. It was in vain to put their heads out of window, they could see nothing there. But they heard the sound of unpacking, then the greeting of neighbours—it was evident, beyond a doubt, that their dreaded landlord ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... Shape came on. It stood beside Mistress Nutter, and she prostrated herself before it. The gestures of the figure were angry and imperious—those of Mistress Nutter supplicating. Their converse was drowned by the rattling of the storm. At last the figure pointed to Alizon, and the word "midnight" broke in tones louder than the thunder from its lips. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... act as guide and cook for parties of young ladies and gentlemen who started from the hotel to camp in the woods. This brought him into the society of cultivated people, for which he had a real passion. He had always had a few thoughts rattling round in his skull, and he liked to make sure of them in talk with those who had enjoyed greater advantages than himself. He never begrudged them their luck; he simply and sweetly admired them; he made studies of their several characters, and was never tired of analyzing them to their advantage ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the words of Chambers, "used to speak of his brother as at this period, to himself, a more admirable being than at any other. He recalled with delight the days when they had to go with one or two companions to cut peats for the winter fuel, because Robert was sure to enliven their toil with a rattling fire of witty remarks on men and things, mingled with the expressions of a genial glowing heart, and the whole perfectly free from the taint which he afterwards acquired from his contact with the world. Not even in those volumes which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... there was already a drizzle of rain. At last they saw a little black spot upon the road, which soon proved to be a cart drawn by a rough pony. On it came, until they could almost hear it splashing through the water where the stream had passed its bounds, or rattling over the rough stones in other places. But, to their surprise, there were two persons in the cart. Perhaps the boy Sawney had with him a traveller who was ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... in had a low parapet, and we threw ourselves down behind it. The street was full of horsemen, yelling and discharging their guns at the doors; but when, almost at the same moment, a rattling fire broke out from every roof, the scene in the street changed as if by magic. Men fell from their horses in all directions. The horses plunged and struggled, and so terrible was the melee that, had the houses stood touching each other, I doubt whether a man of those who entered ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... broadside. The gun was well aimed; but the schooner had already passed so far behind the point that the ball struck a projecting part of the cliff, dashed it into atoms, and, glancing upwards, passed through the cap of the Talisman's mizzen-mast, and brought the lower yard, with all its gear, rattling down on the quarter-deck. When the smoke cleared away, the Avenger had vanished ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... flinging his spear over the heads of the people, its inaudible hiss from heaven being as the song of Ate let loose on earth. Next in rank was Thor, the personification of the exploding tempest. The crashing echoes of the thunder are his chariot wheels rattling through the cloudy halls of Thrudheim. Whenever the lightning strikes a cliff or an iceberg, then Thor has flung his hammer, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... leave no doubt of the line of attack; but the anti-aircraft guns, plentiful now as other British material, would have caught it going, if not coming, provided it escaped being jockeyed to death by half a dozen British planes with their machine guns rattling. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... her bastions of brick, anxiously listening for the approach of the victorious Medes. "The noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of wheels; and prancing horses and jumping chariots; the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the glittering spear; and a multitude of slain and a great heap of carcases: and there is no end of the corpses; they stumble upon their corpses: because of the multitude ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious! My! I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetched me a rattling slap ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 9th, just before dawn, someone came rattling down the steep slope above us, and to our joy we found it was the Brigade-Major coming to look for us, and that Brigade H.Q. was just above us—"just above" being 600 feet up one of the steepest slopes ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... movement, and now, with her head sunk between her shoulders, she hugged herself with both her arms; and she stared at Almayer with wild eyes, while her teeth chattered, rattling violently and uninterruptedly, with a very loud sound, in the deep peace ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... our soldiers, when they came into the house, had none of them any shoes on, but wore buskins, like the Indians, without any feet to them. They all had monstrous great spurs, some of silver and others of copper, which made a rattling when they walked, like chains. They were all stout strong-looking men, as the Spaniards, natives of the island, in general are. After a good supper, we had sheep-skins laid near the fire for ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the clouds just hinted at parting, letting through a pale radiance from the western sky, where lingered the departing day. This light, as did the illuminating glare of the forked flames above, disclosed the while helmets of the trooping waters, rushing on with thunderous unison of tread; and the rattling thunder-shocks, intermittent, though coming steadily nearer, served but to emphasize these foot strokes of the waves. The heavens above and the waters under the earth—these conspired, these marched together, to assail, to overwhelm, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... hurled at his foe a gold-decked mace adorned with a hundred bells and looking like a blazing fire. Hurled forcibly by that achiever of fierce feats, that mace crushed into pieces the steeds, the driver, and the loud-rattling car of Alayudha. Having recourse to illusion, the latter, then, jumped down from that car of his, whose steeds and wheels and Akshas and standard and Kuvara had all been crushed into pieces. Relying on his illusion, he poured a copious shower ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles long. Another crack of the whip, and on they speed, at a smart gallop, the horses tossing their heads and rattling the harness, as if in exhilaration at the rapidity of the motion; while the coachman, holding whip and reins in one hand, takes off his hat with the other, and resting it on his knees, pulls out his handkerchief, and wipes his forehead, partly because he has a habit of doing it, and partly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... The rattling explosions of a motor cycle sounded from without; the first of the emergency surgeons to arrive ran up the steps and into the room, stripping off his coat while appraising with keen eyes ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... consciousness of our lost opportunities. If something could only have happened to Gleason before the start, so that the command might have devolved on Blake, we all felt that a very different account could have been rendered; for with all his rattling, ranting fun around the garrison, he was a gallant and dutiful soldier in the field. It was now after ten o'clock; most of the men, rolled in their blankets, were sleeping on the scant turf that could be found at intervals in the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... A rattling, banging, clattering sound, like a small army of tin pans on a rampage, suddenly woke the echoes one still, sultry afternoon. Auntie Jean thought it was the circus, and sighed as she wondered if they were going to keep it up long ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... profounder powers and could stir men to the depths. I have a vivid image of him at a banquet of the Harvard Alumni Association of which he was Second Vice-President, clothed in white summer garb, standing in a chair that his little figure might be in evidence in the crowd, merrily rattling off a string of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... broke in upon our dream of a steady and mild winter. It had been raining nearly all day, and we had just turned in about ten o'clock in the evening when a sudden gale sprung up from the northward. The water-soaked ground did not hold the tent pins very well, and the rattling of canvas warned us to look after the fastenings. The staff were all quickly at work, the servants being, as usual, slow in answering a call in the night. The front of our mess tent blew in, and the roof and sides were bellying ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... for her or for some other party on the line. On such lines, of course, code ringing is used and in most cases the operator's only way of distinguishing between calls for her and those for some sub-station parties on the line is by listening to the rattling noise which the drop armature makes. In the case of the Monarch drop the adjustable spring tension on the armature is intended to provide for such an adjustment as will permit the armature to give a satisfactory buzz in response to the alternating ringing ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... interest, wrote a handsome cheque for the surgeon who had attended me, and getting into the carriage, drove off with me still in a state of insensibility—that is, I was not so insensible, but I think I felt I had been removed, and I heard the rattling of the wheels; but my mind was so uncollected, and I was in a state of such weakness, that I could not feel assured of it for ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... on the parapet, and he was on the point of bargaining for some. He smiled, thrust his hands philosophically into his pockets, and fell to strolling on again with a proud disdain in his manner, when he heard to his surprise some coin rattling fantastically in ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... behind us. The day that we set out from Aversa was the hottest that I have ever felt, the sun beating down with an astonishing power even in the early hours, and the road being thick with a white and blinding dust. It was soon after midnight that our carriage began rattling over the great stone blocks with which the streets of Naples are paved. The suburbs that we at first passed through were, I remember, in darkness and perfect quiet; but after traversing the heart of the city and reaching the western ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... months before. Then they would take us to their son's bed. With what pleasure I stretched out my tired limbs! How I wished to sleep all our twelve hours' halt! But early in the morning, at daybreak, the rattling of the drums awoke me. I gazed at the brown rafters of the ceiling, the window-panes covered with frost, and asked myself where I was. Then my heart would grow cold, as I thought that I was at Bitche—at ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... a little hot water into the teapot, to scald it, and went to the cupboard and got another cup and saucer, and an old tobacco-tin of which the dingy label was half torn off, and which betrayed by a rattling noise that it contained lumps of sugar. The imaginary thoughtful observer already mentioned would have inferred from all this that Mr. Van Torp had resolved to put off making tea until some one came to share it with him, and that the some one might take sugar, though he himself ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... through the degenerating centuries, an eyebrow, a nostril of the first Englishmen who came to conjugal ties of Hindustan. The place sent up to the stars a vast noise of argument and anger and laughter, of the rattling of hoofs and wheels; but the babel was ordered in its exaggeration, the red turban of a policeman here and there denoted little more than a unit in the crowd. There were gas-lamps, and they sent a ripple of light like a sword-thrust ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... before Franklin was in readiness to co-operate. The battle was now fully developed, and the morning mists had been succeeded by dense clouds of smoke, shrouding bill and plain, through which the cannon flashed redly, and the defiant yells of Longstreet's riflemen, mingled with their rattling volleys, stirred the pulses of Jackson's veterans. As the familiar sounds were borne to their ears, it was seen that the dark lines beyond the Richmond road were moving forward, and the turn of the Second Corps ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the ferry and were rattling over the streets of New York, Edna took her hands from her eyes; and there was a rigid paleness in her face and a mournful hollowness in her voice, as she ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... see that, my dear Rattles." Forgetting his momentary displeasure, the A-B-Sea Serpent pulled himself out of the river, and waving his X Y Z blocks in farewell to the Scarecrow, went clattering down the road, the little Rattlesnake rattling ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... pass over the "delightfully keen impressions" which Mr Paton records as produced by the contrast between the shores of Bulgaria and the Syrian climes he had lately left; the practical result of which was, that "a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more welcome than all the balmy spices of Arabia," made it advisable to don a pea-jacket! The fortifications of Varna, we are informed, were thoroughly repaired in 1843; "and from Varna ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... a rattling speed and provided a number of most interesting situations. In the first place there was the joy—a simple but delightful one—on Monday morning, of thinking of those "others" who were entering, with laggard foot, into old Parlow's study—that ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... reached the door, Leneli sat down on the step, and Mother Adolf put the baby in her arms and went at once into the quiet house. Then there was a sound of quick steps about the kitchen, a rattling of the stove, and a clatter of tins which must have pleased the cuckoo, and soon she reappeared in the door with a bowl and spoon ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... a sharp rattling, a clamor at the door, and Isabel turned to Mr. Grimm mutely, with arms outstretched. The revolver barrel clicked under his hand, then, after a moment, he replaced the weapon ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... and was frequently obliged to stop and think what articles were required; but when the table was set, he was satisfied with its cheerful and neat appearance. By this time the tea-kettle was spouting out long jets of steam, and the lid was rattling under the influence of the commotion beneath it. Paul poured a little of the boiling water into the coffee-pot, and then came an appalling difficulty—he did not know how much to put in, and was not sure that he had taken the proper quantity of coffee. At ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick curtain behind which nothing could be heard save the soft closing of a porte-cochere, the rattling of the milkmen's tin cans, the bells of a herd of asses trotting by, followed by the short, panting breath of their conductor, and the rumbling of Jenkins' ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... quarters came a loud uproar; a thousand piercing, whistling yells; a rackety, rumbling, rattling commotion mixed with the beat and swish of wings. This was followed by an upward rush which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the magic word with the air of quite an old, old man of letters. "I ought to have been a grocer. My father's got a shop in Middleswick; he calls it The Emporium. I think that's why I couldn't stick it. Pity, isn't it? for it's a rattling good business. Another thing; I couldn't stand the apron. Guv'nor insisted on the apron; 'begin from the beginning' sort of thing, you know. And then I felt the call of literature. Fond of reading, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... boasted of his birth earlier than the date of his "Lenten Stuff," for G. Harvey, in his "Four Letters," &c., 1592, says: "I have enquired what speciall cause the pennyless gentleman hath to brag of his birth, which giveth the woeful poverty good leave, even with his Stentor's voice, and in his rattling terms, to revive the pitiful history ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... lightnings from your eyes; Inspire your underlings, and fling Your spirit into everything!" The Master's hand here dealt a whack Upon the Deputy's bent back, When straightway to the floor there fell A shrunken globe, a rattling shell A blackened, withered, eyeless head! The man had been a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Florence, greeting there These, and more brethren. Last, the world had sent The various children of her teeming flanks— Greeks, English, French—as if to a parliament Of lovers of her Italy in ranks, Each bearing its land's symbol reverent; At which the stones seemed breaking into thanks And rattling up the sky, such sounds in proof Arose; the very house-walls seemed to bend; The very windows, up from door to roof, Flashed out a rapture of bright heads, to mend With passionate looks the gesture's whirling off A hurricane of leaves. ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... not even fences, but a vast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept cropped to the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with their kites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges of their kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when the kite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if you put your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers. The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Ottilia arrived, poor Dolly's reputation was crushed in a month. The former wrote poems both in French and German; she painted landscapes and portraits in real oil; and she twanged off a rattling piece of Listz or Kalkbrenner in such a brilliant way, that Dora scarcely dared to touch the instrument after her, or ventured, after Ottilia had trilled and gurgled through "Una voce," or "Di piacer" (Rossini was in fashion then), to lift up her little modest pipe in a ballad. What was ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mean such as run into honest tradesmen's debts, for which they were not able to pay, as many of them did for French silver lace, against the last birth-day. Vide the shopkeepers' books.] Grave matrons are like clouds of snow, Where words fall thick, and soft, and slow; While brisk coquettes,* like rattling hail, *[Footnote: Girls who love to hear themselves prate, and put on a number of monkey-airs to catch men.] Our ears on every side assail. Clouds when they intercept our sight, Deprive us of celestial light: So when ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
