"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning broke. When the wind is easterly you can always see the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey dawn stole over the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... until she glanced up at last to see that the west was kindling, and that she must start back to the duller realities of home. She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little forest twitter of birds and now and then the cool splash where a bass leaped in ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... every house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just bitten a pill - When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... mere word-twisting, a mere inversion of the most ancient truisms—are actuated by the very basest jealousy. Let us listen, then, and be duly edified as he reads in a low, sweet voice, and the birds twitter about him in ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... that had been so firm when the hot iron burned, recalled that other Father who is always near, always tender and helpful; and, folding his hands, Rob said the heartiest little prayer he ever prayed, there on the hay, to the soft twitter of the brooding birds. It did him good; and wisely laying all his fear and doubt and trouble in God's hand, the boy felt ready for whatever was to come, and from that hour kept steadily before him the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Damaris? Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... replied the beach-comber. "Never heard of the parties. They're superstitious beggars, these Kanekas. You've heard of buying a thing 'for a song'? Well, I got my station for a whistle. They believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you'll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for fear of hearing the bogies. So I just went whistling, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Wilbrid said, "how all Nature welcomes the sunshine, hear the birds twitter, see the cattle slowly moving on that rise. All Nature here joins in a hymn of peace, yet far beyond those western ridges three million men lay trenched through the winter and stared in hellish hate at each other across a ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... little sleigh-bells accompanied the song, like the twitter of sparrows. His voice echoed through the trees, the religious service of a human soul ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... "and I can't wait to hear it; and besides, you can't play bean-bags, Alexia, with that arm. Well, do go on," and Polly was in quite a twitter for ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... here which will pay some of his way: and in the meantime he is a pleasant guest, for he plays the flute with little sentiment but great perfection, and endears himself by his simplicity. To me, especially; I am so weary of finding people approach me with precaution, pick their words, flatter, and twitter; but the muttons of the good God are not at all afraid of the lion. They take him as he comes, and he does not bite—at least not hard. This makes us a party of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, at table; deftly waited on by Mary Carter, a very nice Sydney girl, who served us at a boarding-house and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their eastern sides, while the sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque. Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house. And behind the white ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... a pleasant, one, in Spring, And Nature's varied voice is tuned to sing. The swallows twitter underneath the eaves, And zephyrs stir the newly-opened leaves; The cock's loud crowing sounds on every hand, Each bird is warbling praises through the land. Young COOPER thinks it were indeed a sin If he ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... intimated the watering-place supremacy which Leghorn enjoys in Italy, and which must make our quiet hotel in the season glisten and twitter and flutter with the vivid national life. The preparation includes a delightful drive by the seashore, with groves and gardens, to the city gate and indefinitely beyond it, which we one day followed as ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... dawn was scarcely breaking, the swallow began to twitter, and Fido to pull the blankets. "Let us go, master—let us go," said the two companions, in their language, which Graceful understood by the gift of the fairies; "the tide is already rising on the beach, the birds are singing, the flies are ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face began ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... taken time—some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and grunting, because our hands were tied together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of the Selenites standing in the doorway ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Lake Desolation the owls had begun to come to us, and Richards was one of the best owl hunters of the party. At first one or two a day were killed, but now whenever we halted an owl would fly into a tree and twitter, and, with a very wise appearance, proceed to look us over as though he wanted to find out what we were up to anyway, for these owls were very inquisitive fellows. He immediately became a candidate for our pot, and as ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... rather smaller than our rook, keep up a constant cawing in these plantations; the curious wood-swallows (Artami), which closely resemble swallows in their habits and flight but differ much in form and structure, twitter from the tree-tops; while a lyre-tailed drongo-shrike, with brilliant black plumage and milk-white eyes, continually deceives the naturalist by the variety of ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and waited. Vandeman played up to the situation as he saw it, with one of his ready smiles. Worth threw no life-line. Ina didn't think it worth while to apologize for her rudeness. Skeet was openly in a twitter of anticipation. There was nothing for me to do. A little commotion of skirts told us that she was drawing up her feet to sit cross-legged in ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... I am, the first hour after release, sitting on the porch of a villa, looking across a valley at amethyst mountains, crowned with a sprinkling of blue and white snow. The noises that come to me are not raucous;—the twitter of birds, a rooster crowing, a well-pump throbbing its heart out, the shouts of some children at play, a distant school bell, with no silver in its alloy, however, the swish of a wood-sawing machine in ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... minister's study. Diana was there alone sitting by one of the open windows, busy with some work; not so busy but that she smelt the roses, and felt the glory of light and colour that was outside, and heard the hum of bees and the twitter of birds and the soft indistinguishable chirrup of insects, which filled the air. Diana sewed on, till another slight sound mingled with those—the tread of a foot on the gravel walk down below; then she lifted her head suddenly, and with that her hands and her work fell into her lap. It was long ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... shrike resembles the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman whom I found staring at one would have it that he was a mocking-bird. "Don't you see he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn bush, right under the shrike's perch. The latter was all ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... whose highest peak we could see a wide extent of timbered country. Often in our evening rides we have gone round by that saddle, in spite of a break-neck track and quicksands and bogs, just to satisfy our constant longing for green leaves, waving branches, and the twitter of birds. Whenever any wood was wanted for building a stockyard, or slabbing a well, or making a post-and-rail fence around a new paddock, we were obliged to take out a Government license to cut wood in this splendid bush. Armed with the necessary document the next step was to engage ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... this scene—the quiet so profound, broken only by the bell-like dropping of a fountain—and the twitter of birds, hung in gilded cages, among the blossoms, had an overpowering charm even to a man so blase as the General. He paused in astonishment, looking around with pleasant interest—for an instant, forgetful of the person he was seeking. But, to a man so accustomed ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... whose convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... plum-trees were pink in blossom; there were vines twining all about; through the openings in the foliage shone the blue of sky and red of cliff. Patches of blossoming Bowers were here and there lit to brilliance by golden shafts of sunlight. The twitter of birds and hum of bees were almost drowned in the soft ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... sun rose and the birds began to twitter and sing, the girl rose and looked in her mirror. There she saw the bright, happy face that she ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he had reached Belgrave Square the sky was a faint blue, and the birds were beginning to twitter ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... enough in the daytime, but they are more interesting at night. Now they have their dress coats off and their buttons loosened. They sit and gossip among each other like a clique of jolly students. And if one gets a little sleepy and nods, the others will joggle him off the branch, and then twitter with congratulatory laughter at his tumble. Let us get beneath them quietly. We can see them now, black against the brightening eastern sky. See that fellow give his neighbour a push with his beak, and hear the assaulted one scream out just like Mr. Thomas Sawyer ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Aurelia in a twitter, "I am glad to see you again." She was tremulous, beautiful; she had her old wayward, ardent ways, her childish bloom and roundness had not left her, nor her sumptuousness, nor her allure—and yet I could look calmly into her face and know that she had no charm ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... went out of the room with a little hysterical twitter like a scared bird, and the two men were left alone. Silence came over them again. Both men looked moodily ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... linnets play among the leaves At hide-and-seek, and chirp and sing; While, flashing to and from the eaves, The swallows twitter on the wing. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... she, all in a twitter, 'you're never going to leave all that money here, and you away, and the child and me all alone. Can't you—can't you leave one ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Chillington Wood by the time she reached Three- Walks-End—the converging point of radiating trackways, now floored with a carpet of matted grass, which had never known other scythes than the teeth of rabbits and hares. The twitter overhead had ceased, except from a few braver and larger birds, including the cuckoo, who did not fear night at this pleasant time of year. Nobody seemed to be on the spot when she first drew near, but no sooner did Margery stand at the intersection of the roads ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... his very best, and as the song was borne along on the bright morning air, and then died away, he became aware of a tender little note, a faint twitter which came from a branch immediately beneath him. He looked down, and, lo and behold, there, half concealed by spreading boughs, was a bird like himself, another Blackbird! This stranger Blackbird was very attractive-looking, but its plumage was not ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... woman," replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... charming little companions are the canary-birds! To be sure, they would not often stay with us, if we did not confine them in cages; but they seem perfectly at home in their little wire houses, and sing and twitter with as much glee as if they were flying about in the woods of their native land—or rather, of the native land of their forefathers, for most of our canary-birds were born in the midst of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... Sister Lizzie's bed, and looked so pretty in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her sister, who had a theory that she was never able to do anything early ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... rose from his bed, and at that very moment a thousand little birds, who lived in his room, began to twitter and trill. "Awake so early, little ones!" whispered the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... occupation of his life, and she never was weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and new; was he riding out ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... pleasant to inhabit, we knew little of the place we had ventured into, or its location. How we were to get out did not appear, nor for the time being did this greatly concern us; and soon after supper the camp was wrapped in slumber, undisturbed by any coyote duet, or, on this occasion, even the twitter of a night bird. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... an odd colloquy the next morning with Miss Ambient, whom I found strolling in the garden before breakfast. The whole place looked as fresh and trim, amid the twitter of the birds, as if, an hour before, the housemaids had been turned into it with their dust- pans and feather-brushes. I almost hesitated to light a cigarette and was doubly startled when, in the act of doing so, I suddenly saw the sister of my host, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... together. They call us barbarians. What of it? We scorn them and their abuse. For my part, I hope that in this war we have merited the title of barbarians. Let neutral peoples and our enemies cease their empty chatter, which may well be compared to the twitter of birds. Let them cease to talk of the cathedral of Rheims and of all the churches and all the castles in France which have shared its fate. These things do not interest us. Our troops must achieve ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... sunshine amidst the blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate, or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation whenever she found some particularly choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, while she ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... fields of Louisburg there came a fearful sound, growing, rising, falling, stopping the singing and the twitter of the birds. Across the land there came a horrible procession, advancing with short, uncertain, broken pauses—a procession which advanced, paused, halted, broke into groups; advanced, paused, stopped, and stooped; a procession ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... never seeming artificial. His verses dance and sway like the nixies he loved. Their every motion seems informed with the perfect suavity and spontaneity of pure nature. They tinkle down the air like sunset bells, they float like clouds, they wave like flowers, they twitter like skylarks, they have in them something of the swiftness and the certainty of exquisite physical sensations. In such a transcript as Sir Theodore's all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... away. At least it seemed so to Sara, and nothing had ever been quite so beautiful to her as the things she saw as she stood on the table—her body half out of the skylight—the sparrows twittering with sunset softness on the slates. The sparrows always seemed to her to twitter with a sort of subdued softness just when ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... congeners by having that legs coveted with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests. During the time of breeding they are ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... here in the temple this Sunday morning; the natives themselves are not allowed to come in, and visitors only on production of a ticket costing twenty-four shillings, which admits to all the temples of Egypt; and, as it happens, there is no one but ourselves. The sparrows twitter overhead in the holes and crannies of the pillars, and the great grey and black crows wheel silently against the blue sky, throwing moving shadows on ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... place for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But really they have no right to take possession of a man's house ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... reason for this optimism. We had been shown the lizard-brooch, a dazzling thing of gold and precious stones, which Micklebrown had picked up last Bank Holiday on the cliff at Cocklesea and presented to his fiancee, Miss Twitter, after inquiry at the police-station had failed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... the clock was so distinct that it made an echo in the high hall; the morning sun streamed across the pavement, from the cloistered garden the chirping of a few sparrows and the sharper twitter of the house-swallow that had already nested under the eaves sounded very clearly ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... three Turks strolled by, holding their beads; and once some veiled women came, escorted by a eunuch, threw some petals of flowers upon the surface of the tinkling water, and walked on up the narrow valley, chattering in childish voices, and laughing with a twitter that was like the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of the 'ranche,' it will be remarked that there is not one word in the foregoing description to fix locality. The mine and the ranche together seem indeed to suggest South America. But—I ask for information—do birds twitter there in willow gorges? Younger sons of noble families proverbially come off second best in this country, but if one of them found his only 'appanage' was a mine, he would surely with some justice make ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Her twitter, from topical bough to topical bough, hardly demanded reply. She exclaimed over Zoe, admiring her extravagantly, insisted upon kissing away a purely imaginary look of headache from her brother's brow, and led the way quite tinily regal, her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... his smutched muzzle, another with his impertinencies, he makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances, Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, and chiefly when they are well whittled with nectar. Besides, what should I mention what these gods do when they are half drunk? Now ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... sank. The mass of shifting gold and blue and crimson and pale purple lost little by little its brilliant splendor, and slowly over land and sky soft twilight fell, and only here and there was heard the song and twitter of birds as they made ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... was sitting by the bedside reading her book of hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening to consciousness, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... only sound now came from a robin, hunting about the turf and now and then breaking out into an impatient twitter. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bill of fare like that passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it is appreciated—yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"—there the speaker became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure yourself now. You cannot take me in. And a certain gentleman is very close, you know, and stand-offish. It is ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... it easy to be patient with Lemuel as he put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... and the mystery of the flower blossoms, the invisible riddles of Heaven and earth, of all the concealed secrets beyond the blue of the sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not take ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... a blaze of splendor and the birds began to twitter. The gripsack which he carried grew strangely heavy, and he felt faint and weary. The long strain of the day before was beginning to tell upon him, and it was many hours since ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low voice ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Mrs Platt slept almost all the day and night through, and she was asleep now: so Margaret sat quite still, holding up her shawl before the pallid face which looked already dead. Nothing broke the silence but the twitter of the young birds in the thatch, and the mutterings of the sick man, whom Margaret imagined to be somewhat disturbed by the unusual light that was in the room. It had not been the custom of the sun to shine into any houses of late; and the place full of yellow light, did not look like ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... feeling. For Julian now gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the chimneys which ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set in and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... grew dim, and the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting; and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any farther; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the reflection of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sound reached her ears, save the sharp twitter of a sparrow now and then, the patter of Reno's feet on the ice, and the rattle of the loaded rifle against the buttons of her sweater-coat. The forest that surrounded the pond seemed uninhabited. The axes of ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... feet, and recollected that Aunt Judith would be lying awake praying for him. He found that when the first discomfort of awakening had passed off, he really was the better for his short sleep, and marched on more vigorously, presently hearing a cock begin to crow, and birds to twitter. Dawn was beginning, presently a lark sprang up and began to send down a wonderful cheerful song, that quite raised Johnnie's spirits; then over the quiet misty fields came the deep note of the great ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them. As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in their ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... little people will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time to open for them, if they would continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to contain. Finally, these energetic young ladies said their prayers by the morning twitter of the birds, and went to their beds, less from a desire for rest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the air is! How fair the scene! I wish I had as lovely a green To paint my landscapes and my leaves! How the swallows twitter under the eaves! There, now, there is one in her nest; I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast, And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook, In the margin ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... well as in words. At the north of Italy the influence of the trouveres was felt in like manner. Everywhere the desire for expression was manifest. The spring had come, the young birds had begun to twitter, but no full song was yet heard. Love was the main theme of the poets, but it had few accents of sincerity; the common tone ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... quietude brooded from the grey sky to the whispering earth. The birds had begun to bestir themselves but not to sing. Now and again a solitary wing feathered the chill air; but for the most part the birds huddled closer in the swinging nests, or under the bracken, or in the tufty grass. Here a faint twitter was heard and ceased. A little farther a drowsy voice called "cheep-cheep" and turned again to the warmth of its wing. The very grasshoppers were silent. The creatures who range in the night time had returned to their cells and were setting their households ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... by the little table that fronted the open window and rested his head on his hands. It was early spring; the snow was gone; dazzling sunshine bathed the prairies in the distance, and near at hand were the twitter of birds and the ripple of water. It was a day to ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow lark, and its sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take Your nooning in the shade of ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the feathered flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching to in the lovely fresco at Montefalco—if, as I say, there is throughout his life and thoughts a sort of perpetual whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, because the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the sunshine and storm, able above all to be like himself, poets singing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... He followed me and gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at its falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined himself to one a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the hog, and forms a striking contrast to its beautiful plumage. Numberless fly-catchers and shrikes (Muscicapidae and Laniadae) hover on tree and bush, watching for the passing insects, which they snatch up with extraordinary dexterity. Finches twitter on the summits of the loftiest trees beyond the reach of the hunter's shot: they are distinguished, like the Ampelidae, who, however, live amongst the lower bushes, by the lively and almost dazzling colors of their feathers. In modest plumage of cinnamon-brown, with head and neck of dark olive, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... bright dome of azure, there is a delightful frolicsome twitter heard. It is not the Nightingale; no, not so clear and mellow as that. Not the Thrush; no, not so loud or gushing as that. It is our little friend the Lark. Oh! how merry he is! more so than either of the other two. And ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... upon the dry leaves at once. Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the love-song he has, and he is evidently a very plain hero with his little brown mistress. He is not the bird you would send to the princess to "cheep and twitter twenty million loves"; she would go to sleep while he was piping. He assumes few attitudes, and is not a bold and striking gymnast, like many of his kindred. He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar, their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm reflections of the clouds. The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... hungry, to be petted and cried over and half crushed in mamma's arms, to be taken by papa out into the cool, clear dawning, with the sky just beginning to flush like a sea shell and a waking bird or two to twitter about getting up, to be put into a coach that rolled and rumbled, to be put into something else that rolled and rumbled a thousand times worse; nothing had ever happened anything like this in any of Tot's waking ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... Maggie," said Tildy as she swept the cups and saucers with noisy vehemence on to a tray, "I wouldn't worrit the poor mistress, and she just on the eve of a matrimonial venture. It's tryin' to the nerves, it is; so Mrs. Ross tells me. Says she, 'When I married Tom,' says she, 'I was on the twitter for a good month.' It's awful to think as your poor ma's so near the brink—for that's 'ow Mrs. Ross ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... a fine journey," said Joanna, drowning Mrs. Hill's apologetic twitter, "the train came the whole of sixty ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... book, suffering no sort of discomfort; he lazily smoked his pipe and thought how much better it was to be listening to the twitter of the birds, watching the clouds of rooks wheeling over the distant wood, and resting in peace, than slaving with an 18-ft. rod and straining every muscle in the effort to dispatch the unheeded fly across the big water to the core of the pool (for fishing purposes) under the cliff. Then, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... bark of squirrels and the chirp and twitter of birds that haunted the lonely place ceased and it was night. Only the notes of fall insects in their monotonous and ceaseless iteration were heard above the sighing wind, which now sounded like a requiem to the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... right, 'cordin' to Nate's opinion, but he didn't seem anxious to spread his wings. He was white, and them nerves of his was all in a twitter. If ever there was a scart ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already the tide is at the turn. The nightingale's rapturous song has become a lazy twitter; the bird has done with courtship; it has a family in immediate prospect, if not one already screaming for food, and the musician has half lost his passion for music. It will come again next year. How swiftly all this life and colour of spring passes away! So much to ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... with brown grasses and patches of mallow or green rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... was nothing ghostly in the shrill chatter as incessant as the twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them and hardly knew whether to scold or ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... student who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after they had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... shop along the street And pause a moment at the door-step, where, In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet, The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near, Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year, And twitter where the autumn hedges run, Join all the months ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... the poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader? What could he do but twitter in anguish? So there are tragedies and heartaches in ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Parrakeets began to twitter among the branches of the trees on every hand during their descent of the western slope. Ravens croaked and called from the heart of the forest, and the owl flitted by on silent wing. Black birds with orange heads and throats and splashed with scarlet on their ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... quiver-grass edged the path, and thistledown, drifting from the chalk uplands, lay like snow in the hollows, or danced like living things on the path before her. A brood of goldfinches, with merry twitter and flashing wings, flitted round a tall milk thistle with variegated leaves and a little farther on, just at the opening of a glade from the path, she beheld a huge dragon-fly, banded with green, black, and gold, poised on wings invisible in their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... immaculate patio thus formed before the porch, Dade led the way boldly, as one sure of his welcome. Behind the vines a girl's voice, speaking rapidly and softly with a laugh running all through the tones, hushed as suddenly as does a wild bird's twitter when strange steps approach. And just as suddenly did Dade's nostrils flare with the quick breath he drew; for tones, if one listens understandingly, may tell a great deal. Even Jack knew instinctively that a young man sat with the girl behind ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I knew what ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the woods, and twilight was coming on. Nothing broke the death-like stillness except the occasional twitter of a bird. My spirit was overawed by the solemnity of the scene. For more than ten years I had frequented this spot, but never had it seemed to me so sacred as now. A black stump, at the head of my mother's grave, was all that remained of a tree my father ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... things than the stillness of a summer's noon such as this, a summer's noon in a broken woodland, with the deer asleep in the bracken, and the twitter of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches that fling their cool shade over the grass. Afar off a gilded vane flares out above the grey Jacobean gables of Knoll, the chime of a village clock falls faintly ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... stones, all so familiar that relying on tread alone (as in fact they did) they could not miss their way. Below them, along the quay, and on the causeway at the head of it—voices were calling and lights moving; but the fog reduced the shouts to a twitter, as of birds, and the torches and lantern to mere glow-worm sparks. The coastguards were embarking and the Lord Proprietor, just arrived upon the scene, was running about—as Sergeant Archelaus put it afterwards, "like a paper man in a cyclone"—calling ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The abominable twitter of the sparrows in the hedgerows gave notice of the break of day—to travellers the most dismal of all hours, in my opinion—when I awoke from the comfortable nap into which I had fallen since the last change of horses. For some time we alternately dozed, tumbled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... girls, with a very, very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring, Till I too ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the canopy of heaven; The rivulets ripple with the merry tone Of wanton waters, and the breezes given To fan the budding hills are all thine own. Returning songsters from the tropic zone Their vernal love-songs in the tree tops sing, And talk and twitter in a tongue unknown Of joys that journey on thy golden wing, And God who sends thee forth to wake ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the village-clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning-breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed, Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... sort of voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The spirit of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... see how that could be," she retorted. "I haven't seen even a bird in the grounds. I don't remember hearing a single twitter in the trees. The whole place appeared utterly deserted except for ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... that glided past the bank was like crystal; the evening sun lit up the scene with orange and gold; and as the two boys lolled restfully upon the bank listening to the murmur of the running water, the twitter of birds, and the distant lowing of some ox, they thoroughly appreciated everything, even the rest after their tiring night's ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... that the blackbirds of letters—the harmless, kind singing creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at the little innocents, and pretend that ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... to her seat behind the table, near the bunk, and tried to take up her knitting again. The silence seemed to her so tremendous that she listened intently for some sound, any sound. Came only the twitter of a little near-by bird, the metallic clank of a meadow lark far off across the meadows. They at least were friendly, these birds. She could have kissed them, held them close ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... ashamed of them, and would be anxious to apologise for them, in the company of grown-up people. But the Count, apparently, sees nothing ridiculous in the amazing contrast between his colossal self and his frail little pets. He would blandly kiss his white mice and twitter to his canary-birds amid an assembly of English fox-hunters, and would only pity them as barbarians when they were all laughing ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... hour came, and passed, and paled slowly to gray. Birds began to twitter. Through the door of the cabin the light of day streamed in. The two Indian sentinels were building a fire on the stone hearth. One by one the other savages got up, stretched and yawned, and began the business of the day by cooking their ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... where she had so often scattered flowers. A squirrel leaped and frisked in the boughs above her, and she startled a rabbit from the thick grass and fallen yellow leaves: but neither these, nor the twitter of gossiping orioles, nor the harsh, hungry cry of a bluebird told her a syllable of all that had happened in ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... less incentive to laughter than that which they are in. The humid atmosphere around them has a cold, clammy feel, and the light is no better than shadowy twilight. A weird, unearthly silence pervades it, only broken by the harsh twitter of a diminutive bird—a species of creeper—that keeps them company on the way, the dismal woo-woo-a of an owl, and, at intervals, the rattling call-note of the Fuegian woodpecker. The last, though ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race who sing so sweetly. And you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... hit very near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp |
