"Braying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answering voice of Flitwick, "in consequence of a donkey braying somewhere near, I fear I shall find it difficult ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... bore down to the old Church, braying the streets with horns, drums and cymbals, and when they were at order in the immense auditorium, their banners hanging unfurled from the galleries, the Emperor entered, with his court; in a word, the brave, honest, white-haired Patriarch had company ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Jack-Ass, which ties cannot be easily dissolved, the affinity or similitude is perceptible to an indifferent observer in the accent, pronunciation, modulation of the voice of the biped animal, and in the braying of the quadruped. This Jack-Ass you might also behold perambulating the streets of ———, a second Judas Iscariot—a houseless, homeless, penniless, forlorn fugitive, like Old Nick or Beelzebub, seeking whom he might betray ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Watford road, and in a few minutes we swept through the north end of the town and, directed by a boy at the cross roads, made for Rickmansworth. Forrest took charge of the horn, and kept it braying continuously. We slackened speed through Rickmansworth, for the streets were full of vehicles, and there we learned that the white car was five minutes ahead. Once clear of the streets I let the car go again, and ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... shopkeeper who lives upon the agriculturist. I felt disposed to lunch at the grandest hotel in Villefranche, and a good woman whom I consulted on the subject led me through throngs of bartering peasants and cattle-dealers, forests of horns, and by the upturned jaws of braying asses, until she stopped before an inn. There all was bustle and commotion. A swarm of women had been called in to help in anticipation of the crush, and they got in one another's way, walked upon the cats' tails, and raised the tumult ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sheds lay off at the back. To the fore stretched broad pastures where numberless cattle and horses grazed. At sunset the scene was one of rich color. Prosperity and abundance and peace seemed attendant upon that ranch; lusty voices of burros braying and cows bawling seemed welcoming Jean. A hound bayed. The first cool touch of wind fanned Jean's cheek and brought a fragrance of wood ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... in and obscure or entirely destroy this line and tone music. That is to say, if the line and tone arrangement in the abstract is expressive of the sublime, and the objects whose representation they support something ridiculous, say a donkey braying, the associations aroused by so ridiculous an appearance will override those connected with the line and tone arrangement. But it is remarkable how seldom this occurs in nature, the sentiment of the line and tone arrangements things present being usually ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... over a pebbly, irregular pavement, with scarcely a sign of footpath, arrive at the lower end of the Bruhl. There is a murmur of business about the place, for this is the first week of the Easter Fair, but there are none of those common sounds usually associated with the name to English ears. No braying of trumpets, clashing of cymbals, or hoarse groaning of gongs; no roaring through broad-mouthed horns, smacking of canvass, or pattering of incompetent rifles. All these vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are banished out of the gates of the city: which is ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... by the blowing of horns and the beating of seven nogaras of various notes. Every dancer wore an antelope's horn suspended round the neck, which he blew occasionally in the height of his excitement. These instruments produced a sound partaking of the braying of a donkey and the screech of an owl. Crowds of men rushed round and round in a sort of "galop infernel," brandishing their lances and iron-headed maces, and keeping tolerably in line five or six deep, following the leader who headed them, dancing backwards. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... brother's voice; A sound unwelcome and inopportune As was the braying of Silenus' ass, Once heard in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... forbidden subject of politics crept into our quiet community, and the result was an explosive contention which drowned even the braying of the agonizing trumpets outside. The gentlemanly Frenchman is a sensible and consistent republican, the old filateur a violent monarchist, while Absalom, as I might have foreseen, is a Red, of the schools of Proudhon ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most ...
— The Diverting History of John Gilpin • William Cowper
... speak so loud. I don't jest as I did a little while ago. Look yonder! Agad, if he should hear the lion roar, he'd cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don't you remember the story in AEsop's Fables, bully? Agad, there are good morals to be picked out of AEsop's Fables, let me tell you that, and Reynard ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... grievance their stock in trade. In the simplicity of a noble spirit, he had eloquently implored quacks to take their degrees and follow practice, and solemnly advised travelling showmen not to disturb the public ear by the braying of their cracked trumpets, and he succeeded accordingly. Great as he unquestionably was, he could not make bricks without straw; and after wondering at the perversity of fortune, and lavishing his indignant soul on a hundred splendid perplexities touching the nature ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... never once uncovered her head, for fear of seeing something dreadful standing beside her; until, overcome by terror and fatigue, she fell fast asleep, and did not awake till roused by the shrill braying of the horns, and the shouts of the party who ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... worse than it now is." So I tackled up the Deacon's best mule with his saddle, &c., and started that night and went off eight or ten miles from home. But I found the mule to be rather troublesome, and was like to betray me by braying, especially when he would see cattle, horses, or any thing of ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... Instructed in his schools? With wit unseemly and profane, He mocks our venerable race— On each of his who lacketh brain Bestows our ancient surname, ass! And, with abusive tongue portraying, Describes our laugh and talk as braying! These bipeds of their folly tell us, While thus pretending to excel us." "No, 'tis for you to speak, my friend, And let their orators attend. The braying is their own, but let them be: We understand each other, and agree, And that's enough. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... not procure him the same favours. Accordingly, the master was no sooner come home from walking about his fields and gardens, and was seated in his easy chair, than the Ass, who observed him, came gamboling and braying towards him, in a very awkward manner. The master could not help laughing aloud at the odd sight. But the jest soon became earnest, when he felt the rough salute of the fore-feet, as the Ass, raising himself upon his hinder legs, pawed against his breast with a most loving ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... from the same consideration of guarding against the pursuit of those scribblers, who having no talents of a writer but what is taught by the writing-master, are yet nowise afraid nor ashamed to assume the same titles with the greatest genius, than their good brother in the fable was of braying ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of Don Quixote. Recollecting how the knight and Sancho had watched for auguries when they took the road to Toboso, I began, between jest and earnest, to feel a similar anxiety. It was gratified, and by a more poetical phenomenon than the braying of the dappled ass or the neigh of Rosinante. The sun, then just above the horizon, shone faintly through the fog, and formed a species of rainbow in the west, bestriding my intended road like a gigantic portal. I had never known before ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sound, some as were a war-horn braying, Some softly purl like streams on reedy strand. Half nature-sprite and half as man you stand, The two not yet one law ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... compete in their own line with the old Kshattriya bards. You do not find here so done to the life the chargings of lordly tuskers, the gilt and crimson, the scarlet and pomp and blazonry, of war. The braying of the battle conches is muted: all is cast in a more gentle mold. You get instead the forest and its beauty; you get tender idylls of domestic life.—This poem, like the Mahabharata, has come swelling down the centuries; but whereas the latter grew by the addition of new incidents, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... help me out of this plight, May eat my tail at a single bite! The Bear heard the braying, And without long delaying, He answered by saying: Long eared Donkey will you pay, Every word of what you say? If I save you by my might, Will you stand still while I bite? The lying Ass lay still, And answered, "Yes, I will." The Bear then gave a fearful roar, And dragged ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... different is the behaviour of the birds—for birds they are. One or another, every now and then, raises its head aloft, and so holds it, while giving utterance to a series of cries as hoarse and long-drawn as the braying of an ass, to which sound it bears ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... and shouts from the gathering crowd as five more wagons, each with a trailer hooked to its main bulk, pulled in around the edge of the open area, until the center of the town was full and the din of braying ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... on that pier George Talboys had first met his wife, under the blazing glory of a midsummer sky, and to the music of a braying band. It was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an influence upon ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... distracted, and did nought all day long but loiter about the village on the chance of catching sight of her. And if of a Sunday morning he espied her in church, he strove might and main to acquit himself of his Kyrie and Sanctus in the style of a great singer, albeit his performance was liker to the braying of an ass: whereas, if he saw her not, he scarce exerted himself at all. However, he managed with such discretion that neither Bentivegna del Mazzo nor any of the neighbours wist aught of his love. And hoping thereby to ingratiate himself with Monna Belcolore, he from time to ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... thing, not banishing it but giving due honour unto it, shall be our patron, and not our adversary. For indeed I had much rather (sith truly I may do it) show their mistaking of Plato, (under whose lion's skin they would make an ass-like braying against poesy,) than go about to overthrow his authority, whom the wiser a man is, the more just cause he shall find to have in admiration: especially, sith he attributeth unto poesy more than myself do; namely to be a very inspiring of a divine force, far above man's wit; ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... with outstretched hands! Appalling! Terrible! And yet, as she gazed at it, gradually the thing grew curiously real to her. She seemed to hear the gathering of the chariots, the neighing of the horses, the hurrying of many feet, the sound of an armouring multitude, the shouting, and the braying ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... undecided. Presently, lifting his hind legs high into the air he gave vent to a series of kickings and contortions which might have been taken for a comical imitation, while a second later as though realising how ridiculous he had been, he fell to braying with despair, and breaking into a gallop fled in the direction of his ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... huts, there was always a large party; one came to gossip, others brought meal with them, and kneaded their bread meanwhile, so as not to miss the conversation. In the background, the children were being washed and freed from vermin, the asses were braying, and the fowls covering everything with dirt. These, altogether, made the stay in this place more unbearable than even hunger and thirst. Still, I must say, to the credit of these people, that they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... he muttered to himself, "only I suppose that anything I said would sound like the braying of ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... flame, blue and yellow, beside a sweetmeat seller's basket, and showed his heap of cakes that they were well-browned and full of butter. From the "Cape of Good Cheer," where many bottles glistened in rows inside, came a braying upon the conch, and a flame of burnt brandy danced along the bar to the honour and propitiation of Lakshmi, that the able-bodied seaman might be thirsty when he came, for the "Cape of Good Cheer" did not owe ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... wedding-day? Against the blood that thou hast married? What, shall our feast be kept with slaughter'd men? Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,— Clamours of hell,—be measures to our pomp? O husband, hear me!—ay, alack, how new Is husband in my mouth!—even for that name, Which till this time my tongue did ne'er pronounce, Upon ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... "I'm going to lock you up tomorrow, for if anyone so much as rumples your noble topknot I'll cut him to ribbons—so'll Jack. Now kick us, and go to bed. We've been a pair of braying asses, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... am quite sure that a new weekly started now would inevitably fail. You could not print the war as Leslie and Harper do, and who cares for the still small voice of literature and fiction amongst the braying of trumpets and the roll of drums? Do the right thing at the right time, my boy: that is how hits are made. If you will postpone till a convenient season, I will work with you and will hold myself free of all engagements in order to do so. I am myself accumulating subjects with a similar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... that Ajeet will give you a present of rupees for this talk that is like the braying ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... the river, he began to tremble and give himself up for lost; but nothing distressed him more than hearing Dapple bray and seeing Rocinante struggling to get loose, and said he to his master, "Dapple is braying in grief at our leaving him, and Rocinante is trying to escape and plunge in after us. O dear friends, peace be with you, and may this madness that is taking us away from you, turned into sober sense, bring us back ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... walk, while the old birds themselves become thin. The young bird takes its food in a very curious way. When its mother has just returned from the sea, she stands up over her little one, and makes a great noise something between the quacking of a duck and the braying of an ass. After that has gone on for a minute or so, she puts down her head and opens her mouth, and the young one thrusts its beak in and takes out ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... me with all the curses he could command if I passed the gate which opened into the dock beyond; but such threats to a man whose business it was to lay bare mystery had no more effect on me than the braying of an ass in a field of clover. Minute by minute and hour by hour, I waited my opportunity. It came to me on the morning of the eighth day, when, in the poor hope of getting something by the loss of sleep, I reached the yard at four o'clock; and the gate being ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... night I had to cross a big field, without a path or fence for a guide. It was dark, and lightning hard. I made for a light, which I thought was the house. Going for some time, I came to a fence—I was lost. I unsaddled and lay down to sleep, the rain was pouring hard, when I heard a donkey braying, so I shouted, and was answered by a man in a puesto (out-station). The light I saw was a village ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... booths and hucksters and anxious buyers, that the peaceable pedestrian can scarcely wedge his way through. The noise moreover is deafening; above the cries of vendors and buyers rises a shriller chorus of bleating kids and squealing pigs and braying donkeys. ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... dead men's bones, Walk up! walk up! the circus is free, And this wonderful spectacle you shall see: Millions of voters who mostly are fools— Demagogues' dupes and candidates' tools, Armies of uniformed mountebanks, And braying disciples of brainless cranks. Many a week they've bellowed like beeves, Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves, Libeling freely the quick and the dead And painting the New Jerusalem red. Tyrants monarchical—emperors, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... smaller kind, Porphyriops melanops, has a night-cry like a burst of shrill hysterical laughter, which has won for it the name of "witch;" while another, Rallus rythyrhynchus, is called "little donkey" from its braying cries. Strange eerie voices have all these birds. Of the remaining aquatic species, the most important is the spur-winged crested screamer; a noble bird as large as a swan, yet its favourite pastime is to soar upwards until it loses itself to sight in the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... the Whig Ministry had run, Nor left behind a mother's son, The Tories, at their leader's call, Came thronging round him, one and all, Exulting, braying, cringing, coaxing, Expert at humbugging and hoaxing; By turns they felt an honest zeal For private good and public weal; Till all at once they raised such yells, As rung in Apsley House the bells: And as they sought snug berths to get In Bobby Peel's new cabinet, Each, for interest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities which common generals would not have dared to take; and when he had assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this Dreadnaught ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... cock is crowing, The cows are lowing, The ducks are quacking, The dogs are barking, The ass is braying, The horse is neighing; Was ...
— Little Songs • Eliza Lee Follen
... and to avoid that, Solomon worked round, made a bite at Dick, which took effect on his wet coat, tearing a piece right out. Then he swerved round like lightning and threw out his heels at Tom, tossed up his head, and then cantered off, braying as he went, as if nothing had been the matter, and making ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... round her, until Mary Corbet said that it was time for the horses to be round, and that she must go and get ready and not keep Mr. James and Mr. Anthony waiting. Then, as she and Anthony went towards the house, the old lady looked up from the braying stag and found ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... you hear how he neighed when you talked about leaving the country. My granny was a wise woman, and was up to all kind of signs and wonders, sounds and noises, the interpretation of the language of birds and animals, crowing and lowing, neighing and braying. If she had been here, she would have said at once that that horse was fated to carry you away. On that point, however, I can say nothing, for under fifty pounds no one can have him. Are you taking ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Prince Glace et la Princesse Etincelante is not bad; and La Princesse Camion attracts, by dint of extravagance in the literal sense. Fairy trials had gone far; but the necessity of either marrying a beautiful sort of mermaid or else of flaying her, and the subsequent trial, not of flaying, but braying her in a mortar as a shrimp, show at least a lively fancy. Nor is the anonymous Nourjahad—an extremely moral but not dull tale, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... bawled a fat ox in a stall to a lusty young ass who was braying outside; "the like of that is ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... defeat. You can see that a great battle must be a grand and terrible affair; but though you may use all your powers of imagination in endeavoring to picture the positions of the troops,—how they look, how they act, how they stand amid the terrible storm, braying death, how they rush into the thickest fire, how they fall like the sere leaves of autumn,—you will fail in your conceptions of the conflict. You must see it, and be in it, to ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... was dreadful. But worse followed. The waters gathered themselves and rose into a peak, the mule sliding swiftly to the apex, still holding me with his uncanny eyes. There came a shock, and Oscar said, "For the Lord's sake, kid! They've been braying away on that breakfast horn for the last five ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Fat from the cabin; "come on to supper while it's hot." Then the door closed again. The two started toward the cabin, leaving old Peanuts braying ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... posthumous sister, and not apply it to the clamour of parties, and the seditious rumours which commonly fly about upon the quelling of insurrections. Or who, upon hearing that memorable expedition of the gods against the giants, when the braying of Silenus' ass greatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not clearly conceive that this directly points to the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects, which are frequently disappointed and frustrated by vain ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... and bootless boast, for which he paid full dear! For, while he spake, a braying ass did sing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... declared. "What harm? That braying ass did us plenty of harm. He has lost the passwords. Better he had left ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... Goyaz, but the weak, mournful sound—ding ... ding ... ding—of tired, worn-out beasts, stumbling along anyhow. Occasionally one heard the crashing of broken branches or of trees collapsing at the collision with the packs, or the violent braying of the animals when stung in sensitive parts by an extra-violent fly; otherwise there was silence, the silence of death, all ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... night trumpeters, the big Missouri mules, sprawled about their roomy, sand-floored stables and drowsed in placid comfort, wearied with their musical efforts of the earlier hours of the night and gathering impetus for the sonorous braying with which they should presently ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... hound, the neighing steed, The lowing ox, the deer, The sheep, the hog, the braying ass, The sea-gulls hovering near, With groups of various birds and beasts, Of sorts both tall and scrimp, Were gather'd there upon the sands; And thither came ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... here not many minutes, before the shouts of the people, and the braying of martial music, and the confused sound of an approaching multitude, showed that the Queen was near. Troops of horse, variously caparisoned, each more brilliantly as it seemed than another, preceded a train of sumptuary elephants and camels, these too richly dressed, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... at this, for many had been awakened by the braying of the animal. And then one of the men in charge of the animals came out and ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... various sounds from the village reached him—the barking of dogs, voices, the striking of the clock, the noise of wheels, the donkey's braying, with a regularity wonderfully like that of the previous night, and then all silence and darkness, and ears strained to hear the rustling sound which must be made by any ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... of the geese or the braying of the asses on Langborough Common prevent my crossing it, then, and not till then, will my course be determined by Mrs. Bingham ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... hearing the ass's braying I was a long time before I came upon him quite down upon the stony shore, with not a blade of grass nor even a thistle for him to nibble at. How he got there is to me a problem to this day; but how I laboured to get him up again will ever remain in my mind, for it makes ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... several days after that, if anyone said "mule" to him, or even imitated the braying of that beast, Mr. Bunn scowled fiercely ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... little white tents were pitched as the wagons rolled in and were unloaded; and then the braying mules, rolling and kicking in their enjoyment of freedom from harness, were driven out and disposed upon the slopes at a safe distance from the horses. The smokes of little fires began to float into the air, and the jingle of spoon and coffee-pot and "spider" and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... late not permitted me to indulge. I had no horses to ride, but I took pleasure in looking at them; and I had already attended more than one of these fairs: the present was lively enough, indeed horse fairs are seldom dull. There was shouting and whooping, neighing and braying; there was galloping and trotting; fellows with highlows and white stockings, and with many a string dangling from the knees of their tight breeches, were running desperately, holding horses by the halter, and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... must hurry and tell you the rest, for I am afraid my story is getting too long. Thomas found for him a splendid menagerie, and all the animals made noises like real animals. There were roaring lions, and yelling tigers, and laughing hyenas, and braying asses, and chattering monkeys, and growling bears, and many other wild beasts. Oh, how pleased Thomas was, ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... rattlesnakes. Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... weary superiority, tilting his chair far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then, and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... from the cathedral to the church of St. Etienne. The procession marched into the choir, while the girl, still riding the ass, took a position in front of the altar. Then the mass was celebrated, and at the end of each part the words "Hin han" were chanted in imitation of the braying of the beast. The officiating priest, instead of chanting the "Ite missa est," invited the congregation to join ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... of astonishment and then shouts of laughter. A flea! Well, that was a good joke, a mighty good one! Caniveau was slapping his thigh, Cesaire Horlaville snapped his whip, the priest laughed like a braying donkey, the teacher cackled as though he were sneezing, and the two women were giving little screams of joy, like ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... side, in a very odd manner, as if the power of distinct vision lay only in the anterior and basal part of each eye. This bird is commonly called the jackass penguin, from its habit, while on shore, of throwing its head backwards, and making a loud strange noise, very like the braying of an ass; but while at sea, and undisturbed, its note is very deep and solemn, and is often heard in the night-time. In diving, its little wings are used as fins; but on the land, as front legs. When crawling, it may be said on four legs, through the tussocks or on the side ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to call for us at any time after midnight, and so slept with one eye and one ear open. About twenty asses were in a pasture near us, and were braying all night long. We had little refreshing sleep, and were glad to see the smoke of the Kilauea as she came round a point in the distance at six o'clock in the morning. We wended our way to the beach, and amused ourselves by watching little native children ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... among my people!' says Dravot. 'Not much. Peachey, you're a fool not to get a wife too. Where's the girl?' says he with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. 'Call up all the Chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor see if his ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... mammals that I can call to mind at this moment as showing any even apparent approach to an appreciation of the diatonic scale are the elephant and the rhinoceros. The braying (or whatever is the technical term for it) of an elephant comprises a pretty accurate third, and is of a rich mellow tone with a good deal of brass in it. The rhinoceros grunts a good fourth, beginning, we will say, on C, and dropping correctly ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... grass and patch of succulent clover. Cobwebs, woven in the night and bejeweled with dewdrops, festooned the boughs of the trees in the orchard and on the lawn. From the barn-yard back of the farmhouse a chorus of sounds was rising. Pigs were grunting and squealing, cows were mooing, a donkey was braying, ducks were quacking, hens were clucking, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... at which not a few of the fast fellows excel, is that of imitating upon a key-bugle various animals, in an especial manner the braying of an ass: when the fast fellows drive down to the Trafalgar at Greenwich, the Toy at Hampton Court, or the Swan at Henley upon Thames, the bugle-player mounts aloft, the rest of the fast fellows keeping a lookout for donkeys; when one is seen, a hideous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... anthems which attended the body of Captain le Harnois. Never man had merrier funeral. Singing being over, then commenced every possible variety of ingenious mimicry oft every possible sound known to the earth beneath or the waters under the earth—howling, braying, bleating, lowing, neighing, whinnying, hooting, barking, catterwauling; until at length a grave and well-dressed man stepped forward to expostulate with the insurgents. In this person Bertram immediately recognised the manager of the theatre, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Violet, raising her face, which became suddenly and violently flushed. "O good Lord! Are you a temperance preacher? Teach your granny! Bad for me? Say another word, and I'll box your ears for you! You braying jackass!—you snivelling idiot! Who makes the Brilliant draw? You or I? Tell me that, you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... reply from me, and he, therefore, gave a-loose to a most malignant spirit. The moment that I attempted to speak, the yell began. About fifty or sixty, or perhaps one hundred, out of two or three thousand persons assembled, commenced a bellowing and braying like so many of their four-legged brethren, and they were so well marshalled, and acted so well in concert, that it was impossible for the great majority of the people to gain me a hearing. At length the Sheriff, Hungerford Penruddock, Esq. who looked ready to faint with shame at ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... The braying of the band deadened the sound of laughter, and the rattle of glasses, and the talk going on below. Kars was still gazing down upon the throng of pleasure seekers, basking in the brilliant glare of light which searched the pallid and unhealthy, and enhanced the beauty where artificiality concealed ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... all hot, and thereby he might be healed of his measelry. And when he should ascend into his chariot for to go to the place where he should be bathed, the mothers of the children came crying and braying for sorrow of their children, and when he understood that they were mothers of the children, he had great pity on them and said to his knights and them that were about him: The dignity of the empire of Rome is brought forth of the fountain of pity, the which hath stablished by decree ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... and I write now rather than wait for a little inspiration, because the mail, I believe, starts to-morrow. The unwilling Minerva is at my elbow, and I feel that every sentence I write, were it pounded ten times in a mortar, would come out again unleavened and heavy. Braying some people in a mortar, you know, is but a weary and ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... exiled from Europe in the Middle Ages. The variety of races which one meets in these contracted passage-ways is curious, represented by faces yellow, bronze, white, and black. Add to all the crowd of donkey-boys, camels, goats, and street peddlers, crying, bleating, blustering, and braying, and you have a modern Babel of sights and sounds such as greet the stranger in the streets ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the braying of a jackass afflicted with bronchitis," as Charley said afterwards ruefully, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... against him. Spenser did not forget this, when in the Faery Queen he shadowed forth Lord Grey's career in the adventures of Arthegal, the great Knight of Justice, met on his return home from his triumphs by the hags, Envy and Detraction, and the braying of the hundred tongues of the Blatant Beast. Irish lords and partisans, calling themselves loyal, when they could not get what they wanted, or when he threatened them for their insincerity or insolence, at once wrote to England. His English colleagues, civil and military, were ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat—made on him—so very tight that it is as evident that he could never take it off, as that he never does. This hideous apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power of making a gong-like imitation of the braying of an ass: which feat requires that he should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw, double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself, with much staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his horrible broom, as if it were a mop. From the present minute, when he comes in ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... farmer is like, and what the beer (or bad champagne for festal occasions) and rabbit pie in the kitchen; with sudden frank explanations as to the imminence of the crisis in the interesting condition of Snowdrop the Alderney; what, too, is the Stonelands' notion of music and the dance, with Teddy's braying concertina and cousin Unity's quavering treble and the ragged bass and candid speech of old Caunter, the head ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... cry. It seemed to come from the sea, but was so far away that we could not clearly distinguish its precise direction. Rushing out of our bower, we hastened down to the beach and stayed to listen. Again it came quite loud and distinct on the night air—a prolonged, hideous cry, something like the braying of an ass. The moon had risen, and we could see the islands in and beyond the lagoon quite plainly, but there was no object visible to account for such a cry. A strong gust of wind was blowing from the point whence ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... at an end, however. As they left the tea-shop—he leaning on the arm of his son—they met a military funeral. There were wreaths and uniforms, a member of the Institute with his sword between his legs, and brass instruments braying out ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... will get at least five; which is just as it should be. For elegance of shape or quality of flesh, the Cochin cannot for a moment stand comparison with our handsome dunghill; neither can the indescribable mixture of growling and braying, peculiar to the former, vie with the musical trumpeting of our own morning herald: yet our poultry-breeders have been immense gainers by the introduction of the ungainly celestial, inasmuch as new blood has been infused ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the fancy of people of all classes. As the Benbow frigate sailed out of the bay, flags were flying at the mastheads of all the other vessels in the harbour and from the flagstaffs on shore, and guns were firing and trumpets braying to ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... received with applause and cheers. Bough departed, to pay the prison penalty of not keeping in touch with the Police.... More cheers, strongly deprecated by the Judge. The Dop Doctor could hear that ironical clapping and braying five years off. It was over, over! He was free! Oh, the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... what he had done; and, there being only one natural way of retreat from the brink of the rock, he likewise arose and pursued the affrighted culprit with all his speed towards the top of the hill. Wringhim was braying out, "Murder! murder!" at which George, being disgusted, and his spirits all in a ferment from some hurried idea of intended harm, the moment he came up with the craven he seized him rudely by the shoulder, and clapped his hand on his mouth. "Murder, you beast!" said ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... deal of noise in the village. The blacks were rejoicing over their victory, and there was no chance of our guards outside the hut being asleep. I waited, therefore, without moving, till the sounds of revelry subsided, the tom-toms were no longer beaten, the trumpets ceased braying, and the cymbals clashing. Then I could hear the guards talking to each other outside. The few words I could comprehend out of this jargon were not very consolatory. I made out clearly that they proposed to shoot all their prisoners the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatest three-horse rider in the world nimbly capers on the broad pad, and kisses his hand to the shouting and cheering spectators as he dashes from the ring past the braying and ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... been soon enough brought to a close. But away at St. Andrews, John Knox, broken in body, and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, still thundered in the parish church; and his voice, it was said, was like ten thousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism. All the Lowlands answered to his call. Our English Cromwell found in the man of religion a match for the man of honour. Before Cromwell, all over the Lothians, and across from St. Andrews to Stirling ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... without bells is like a blind man without a staff, an ass without a crupper, and a cow without cymbals. Therefore be assured, until you have restored them unto us, we will never leave crying after you, like a blind man that hath lost his staff, braying like an ass without a crupper, and making a noise like a cow without cymbals. A certain latinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the authority of one Taponnus,—I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet, —who wished those bells had been ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the "Fasti" (i. 433), describes the confusion of Priapus when, in the night following a feast of sylvan and Bacchic deities, the braying of the ass of Silenus wakened the company to detect the god in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... beginning, and he must have waved them away with a grave gesture of a long white hand, while in his mind the distant sound of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of his roan horse stamping nervously where he was tied to a twined Moorish column, memories of cavalcades filing with braying of trumpets and flutter of crimson damask into conquered towns, of court ladies dancing and the noise of pigeons in the eaves drew together like strings plucked in succession on a guitar into a great wave of rhythm in which his life was sucked ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... donkey, rousing to life, comes braying to him across the green. Charles-Norton gives him a handful of salt, and with a slap sends ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... not having experienced anything better, and not imagining that anything more excellent is to be found. Their principal articles of food are Indian corn and Brazilian beans, [191] which they prepare in various ways. By braying in a wooden mortar they reduce the corn to meal. They remove the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees. From this meal they make bread, using also beans which they first boil, as they do the Indian corn for soup, so that they may be more easily crushed. Then they mix all together, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... ever hear of "Constituted Anarchy"? Anarchy; the choking, sweltering, deadly and killing rule of No-rule; the consecration of cupidity, and braying folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men? Slop-shirts attainable three halfpence cheaper, by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls? Solemn Bishops and high Dignitaries, our divine "Pillars of Fire by night," ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is this the beginning of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... and weird Cossack ditties till the stars were paling, if not suppressed. As it was, one got little enough rest, what with the heat and flies at midday, and, at the halt about 8 a.m., the shouting, hammering of tent-pegs, and braying of camels that went on till the sun was high in ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... cortege of awe-struck innocents braying into the blackness under their umbrellas at the heels of a silver-plated idol (not yet paid for), an intelligent God might well be proud of his workmanship. So thought the parroco. He was undismayed. Come what might, he had an explanation ready. Saint Dodekanus, if the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in ten minutes a scene of (it may be) utter desolation becomes full of life and activity. For a couple of hours the columns continue to file in, until all the hillsides are covered with tents. Then, far into the night, is heard the braying of mules, the shouts of drivers, and the rattling of wheels, as the heavy wagon trains toil to the place of rest. All through the evening prevails that peculiar, cheerful din of a camp, as peculiar and characteristic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms, No braying horn, nor screaming fife, At dawn shall call ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Pink as a dog-rose were your plump cheeks then: Your hair'd the gloss and colour of clean straw: And when, at darkening, the naphtha flares were kindled, And all the red and blue and gold aglitter— Drums banging, trumpets braying, rattles craking; And we were rushing round and round, the music— The ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... of existence, he should again have the honour to ascend to the rank of human beings. But the stubborn little animal (who perfectly understood what he said) first leered at him with the most stupid resentment in the world, and then fell a braying and kicking with greater violence than when we first entered the room. "Soho! said Mr. Wiseman, is that your manners, my boy;"—and then giving him two or three hearty strokes, "well, well, said he, if this is all the return I am ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... reading. It was conducted on both sides with unbecoming violence. Among other expressions used by Calvin, the public prosecutor, were these: that he regarded Servetus's defence as no better than the braying of an ass, and that the prisoner was like a villainous cur wiping his muzzle. Servetus answered in the same tone, his spirit unbroken by abuse and by his confinement in a horrible dungeon, where he suffered from hunger, cold, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... braying in every conceivable key. Brazen women were leering at me. Potbellied men regarded me furtively. Alluringly the gambling-dens and dancing-dives invited me. The town was a giant spider drawing in its prey, and I was the prey, it seemed. Others there were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... battle-axes and clubs, or spears, or two-handed swords they have a fondness for their cutlasses and pistols. In the days, before Britannia could loudly roar with her thunder, naval combats were carried on with all the noise and hubbub the men on either side could create with their voices, as also with the braying forth of trumpets and beating of gongs and drums, in the hope of thus striking terror into the hearts of their enemies. How great is the contrast between such a naval engagement as has been described and one at the present day. In solemn silence the crews grimly stand ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... intervened, and brought about the most extraordinary incident of this wonderful story. He "opened the mouth of the ass," and lo! instead of braying Neddy spoke. Without a note of preparation he began to upbraid his master in good Moabitish. "What have I done," said he, "that thou hast smitten me ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... ten minutes I was at the base of the big pyramid, and the camel with dad on between the humps, was humping himself half a mile away, trying to get there, and the other camels, with the Arabs, were stretched out like horses in a race, behind, and my jackass was right next to dad's camel, braying and occasionally kicking dad's camel ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... crowd let out a laugh as loud as the braying of an ass. Others followed his example. The danger ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... what I had imagined to myself about his character, that I could not find it in my heart to be angry, and burst into a peal of hearty laughter. This seemed to strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by way of rejoinder; and we went on for a while, braying and laughing, until I began to grow aweary of it, and, shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. In so doing—it was like going suddenly into cold water—I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was all ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... horn, huntsman and horn, Shall scour your heaths and coverts lorn, Braying 'em shrill and clear, O; But lone and still Shall lift each hill, Each ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... because his soul held nothing in its vast vacuity but sensuous joy.[196] A musical Casanova, an unmalignant Aretino, he sang as vulgar nature prompted; but he always kept on singing. His partiality for detonating dissonances, squibs and crackers of pyrotechnical rhetoric, braying trumpets and exploding popguns, which deafen and distract our ears attuned to the suave cadence of the cantilena, is no less characteristic of the Neapolitan. Marino had the improvisatory exuberance, the impudence, the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The braying roused Hallam and Amy, also, from a night of dreamless sleep; and as they passed out from the musty house into the crisp air of a frosty morning, they felt more cheerful than they considered was quite the proper thing, under the circumstances. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... it you must go to Naples, and then you will never lose the sense of it. I had not been there since 1864, but when I woke up the morning after my arrival, and heard the chickens cackling in the Castel dell' Ovo, and the donkeys braying, and the cab-drivers quarrelling, and the cries of the street vendors, and the dogs barking, and the children wailing, and their mothers scolding, and the clatter of wheels and hoops and feet, and all that mighty harmony of the joyful Neapolitan noises, it seemed ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... quite fair for you to say I fell out on account of the donkey's braying. It was emotion, just ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... stood with a perfectly unmoved and vacant countenance beside the Dame, which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right side of her chair, William began upon the left a "hum," which, with a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at the Black Knight's unarmed leg, and smote him so sore a wound that down he fell clattering. Then arose the Red Knight, and thrust me from him with the left hand, and strode over my fellow-farer and thrust his sword through his throat. Then he turned to me, and spake in a braying voice as if ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... sugar piled upon a Poncho, a big can of hard-tack broken open, and the coffee had come to boil under his hands—three gallons at least. The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just so often, through their queer communications, that the bell-mare was still in the land of picket-line—before nose-bags were fastened. Then, with all the pack rigging in neat piles before the picket-line, and the untouched stores covered and piled, the packers ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... cabbage-leaves, broken hay-bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen expatiating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys braying. These and a hundred other sounds form a compound discordant enough to a Londoner's ears, and remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at the Hummums for ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... us, where so many Hogs are grunting, Camels and Asses braying, Jackdaws cawing, and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... presenting such a monotonous plain of sand as intervenes between Egypt and Siwah. It was bordered by precipitous limestone rocks, often completely filled with shells and marine remains. The caravan, while proceeding along these wild tracts, were alarmed by a tremendous braying of asses, and, on looking back, saw several hundred of the people of Siwah, armed and in full pursuit, mounted on these useful animals. The scouts, however, soon brought an assurance that they came with intentions perfectly peaceable, having merely understood ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... moments of sadness or joy, and, in short, become what are called national. National songs go with national airs, and spring up with circumstances. The English have few native airs, and as few native songs of any excellence. When an Englishman is in love, does he sing? In camp, what wretched braying goes by that name! at table, what have we of the generous, jovial sort? Generally speaking, our table songs—always excepting our glees—are pieces of bald sentiment, when they are English; but more generally, they are borrowed from the Scotch, the Irish, and other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... he owned, and which he represented as heads of families, ready to settle the land. His Majesty, ignorant that the Williams, Georges, and Susans seeking royal consideration were some squeaking in pig-pens, others braying in the luxuriant meadows for which they petitioned, issued the huge grant; and to-day there is serious reason to suppose that many of the wealthiest and oldest families around Winchester are enjoying their lands by virtue of titles given to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... The Inebriate died, under a strong pressure of delirium tremens, groaning and braying loud enough to scare away the fiends which gathered around. But, to the amazement of all parties upon the stage and behind the scenes, the fall of the curtain was accompanied by a thunder-roar of disgust, and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in gore, And front to front the armies Met with a mighty roar: And under that great battle The earth with blood was red; And, like the Pomptine fog at morn, The dust hung overhead; And louder still and louder Rose from the darkened field The braying of the war-horns, The clang of sword and shield, The rush of squadrons sweeping Like whirlwinds o'er the plain, The shouting of the slayers, And ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... us, and, save the snoring of some tired sleeper and the occasional braying of a mule or two, we slept soundly, with no fear of Indians. Here we met a white man and his wife, a squaw, and several others, who were waiting for Red Cloud and his chiefs, who were on their way to Washington from Fort Fetterman. They were ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... on further and further; suddenly, close by, we heard the terrific sound again. Fritz raised his gun, but almost as quickly dropped it, and burst into a hearty fit of laughter. There was no mistaking those dulcet tones—he-haw, he-haw, he-haw—resounded through the forest, and our ass, braying his approach right merrily, appeared in sight. To our surprise, however, our friend was not alone; behind him trotted another animal, an ass no doubt, but slim and graceful as a horse. We watched ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like Shakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... about the Queen of Sheba before he had stripped his life off in the bare room where they had measured him and made a soldier of him. Standing in the dark in the desert of his despair, he would hear the sound of a caravan in the distance, tinkle of bridles, rasping of horns, braying of donkeys, and the throaty voices of men singing the songs of desolate roads. He would look up, and before him he would see, astride their foaming wild asses, the three green horsemen motionless, pointing at him with their ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... added greatly to the confusion of the scene. One of the largest in the troop fell in the gateway, and lay there for some time on his side, unable to rise, and braying in a terrific manner. Another was excited to a phrensy by the loss of his master, who had fallen off from his head, wounded by a dart or a spear. The faithful animal turned around to save him. With his trunk he threw the men ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of David," and the fiddlers tuned for a moment and then played at once. Then they struck up, and the clerk, absolutely alone, in a majestic voice which swayed up and down without regard to time or tune, sang it through like the braying of an ass; not a soul else joined in; the farmers amused and smiling at each other. Such ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs, the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her light-headed. She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it was light she was up and out and on her way. "I must lose no time," she thought, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... tempted and fall like others, but I testify to a well-recognized intention of our profession, the rule is to learn the facts, and print them, too—to know the truth and not hide it under a bushel. Nine-tenths of the criticisms of the press one hears is the braying of the galled jades or the crackling ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... sunset is one of the grandest spectacles in the universe, set my face towards the yellow light in the west, and walked across Wandsworth Common, where faint wreaths of purple mist were rising from the hollows, and a deserted donkey was breaking the twilight stillness with a plaintive braying. Wandsworth Common was as lonely this evening as a patch of sand in the centre of Africa; and being something of a day-dreamer, I liked the place because of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... being his cousin, a readiness to exercise Executive clemency by pardoning the prisoner, might be construed into a species of bargain and sale; and his Excellency could not condone a crime merely because the culprit had relinquished a fortune to his relative. Braying an ordinary fool in a mortar is an unpromising job; but an extraordinary official leatherhead, PLUS thin-skinned conscience, and religious scruples, requires the upper and nether mill stone. You know, Churchill, it is tough work ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... enemy began the attack: the signal being given, and the asses braying on each side, for such are the trumpeters they make use of on these occasions, the left wing of the Heliots, unable to sustain the onset of our Hippogypi, soon gave way, and we pursued them with great slaughter: their right wing, however, overcame our left. The Aeroconopes falling upon us with astonishing ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian |
