"Cackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their clothes and went in, and then, sitting down on the bench, they all said to one another, 'Come, let us lay eggs: whosoever does not lay an egg shall pay the expenses of the bath'; after which they began to make a great noise, cackling like hens, and flinging the eggs which they had brought on the stone bench. Cogia Efendi, seeing what they were about, suddenly began to make a great noise and crow like a cock. 'What are you about, Cogia Efendi?' said the boys. 'Why,' ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca
... waiting near an hour I was surprised to see Nelson's assistant come out of the wood: he had wandered thus far in search of plants and told me that he had met with some of the natives. Soon after we heard their voices like the cackling of geese, and twenty persons came out of the wood, twelve of whom went round to some rocks where the boat could get nearer to the shore than we then were. Those who remained ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... and hoarse like a fit of coughing, and rose to the high cackling mirth of extreme age. At the sound both Anton and the monk took to praying. Presently it stopped, and her voice came full and strong as ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... regard to the child, whom he cleansed and clothed, and taught, and formed with a care which was all the more remarkable because he was thought to be utterly devoid of tenderness, were interpreted in a variety of ways by the cackling society of the town, whose gossip often gave rise to fatal blunders, like those relating to the birth of Agathe and that of Max. It is not easy for the community of a country town to disentangle the truth from the mass of conjecture and contradictory ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... decent yet!" sighed Aveline, watching with envious eyes as Hermie exhibited her treasure to the admiring visitors. "The Sixth are cackling ever so hard." ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... cataract in her left eye, who sat at the far end of the table; a little fidgety, stupid-looking, and very ugly woman who sat next the bearded young man; and a young girl, with dancing, roguish black eyes, who sat beside me. The bearded young man talked at a great rate, and judging from the cackling laughter of the fidgety woman and the intensely interested expression of the cataracted lady, the subject ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... rambling buildings. On the fourth side, facing the sea, the dusty road wound east toward Megara. Here, by the gate, were gathered a rustic company: brown-faced village lads and lasses, toothless graybeards, cackling old wives. Above the barred gate swung a festoon of ivy, whilst from within the court came the squeaking of pipes, the tuning of citharas, and shouted orders—signs of a mighty bustling. Then even while the company ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... which A miscellaneous Musical Interlude, commencing with The Lamentations of Jerom-iah! In nasal recitative. To be followed by The favourite Cackling Quartette, by Two Hen-birds who ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... water was lazily lapping against the sands. The people were within doors,—of that he was pretty well assured—for the Island was in a state of terror and depression. There was no sign of life down there except now and again the barking of a dog or the cackling of a hen. Unconsciously the little homes waited the death and outrage that were coming to them as fast as four strong horses could carry them. 'Strengthen thou mine arm,' cried Father Anthony aloud, 'that the wicked prevail ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... who returned with a barn-door fowl in his hand, a well-fed chanticleer, whose crow that morning had awakened his cackling dames ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... room itself are steeped in sunlight. The ringing of church bells indicates that the morning services are just over. Now and then the cackling of hens is heard ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... summer holidays after Sir Roger's death. It stands behind a high iron gate, surmounted by a handsome coat of arms; and before it there lies a pleasant patch of greensward, with a pond and a colony of cackling geese, which craned their necks and screamed at ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... wild geese are generally brought down with a shot-gun, but in the Bad Lands it was not unusual to bring them down with a rifle, provided the hunter was quick and accurate enough in his aim. One morning, just before dawn, Theodore Roosevelt was riding along the edge of a creek when he heard a cackling that he knew must come from some geese, and he determined if possible ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... south. All these ceremonies were performed with care, but Phelim's malady appeared to set them at defiance; and the old crone would have lost her character in consequence, were it not that Larry, on the day of the cure, after having promised not to swear, let fly an oath at a hen, whose cackling disturbed Phelim. This saved her character, and threw Larry and ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... curious place. On account of the intense heat everything is brought alive to the market, and the quacking, cackling, gobbling, and crowing that go on are really marvellous. The whole street is alive with birds in baskets, cages, and coops, or tied by the leg and thrown down anyhow. There were curious pheasants and jungle-fowl ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... The cackling continued a longer time than is usual and ended in another masculine crow. Then there solemnly stalked into the little yard a very handsome fowl, of the Plymouth Rock species, who strutted about as if she were ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... over!" groaned Paul. "What the dooce am I to do? What shall I do? Suggest something, for Heaven's sake; don't stand cackling there in that unfeeling manner. Can't you see what a terrible, mess I've got into? Suppose—only suppose your sister or one of the servants were to come in, and see me ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... we have prudent men of business able to add two and two together, and justice may be out of hand distinguished from injustice by an impanelment of the nearest twelve fools. Here we have many Helmases a-cackling wisely under a goose-feather. But yonder are Cato and Nestor and Merlin and Socrates, Abelard sits with Aristotle there, and the seven sages confer with the major prophets, and yonder is all that was worthiest in ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... working staff of a dozen hens were doing their duty, which, on that first night of the "brown angels' visit," consisted of silent slumber, when all at once the hens and the new hands were aroused by a clamorous cackling, which speedily stopped. It sounded like a hen falling in a bad dream, then regaining her perch to go to sleep again. But next morning the body of one of these highly esteemed branches of the egg-plant was found in the corner, partly ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... foresight as they prepared to embark. Clenk had an ill-savored story to tell of the apprehension of a malefactor through the coercion of hunger, constrained to stop and beg a meal as he fled from justice, and Drann had known a man whose neck was forfeited by the necessity of robbing a hen-roost, the cackling poultry in this instance as efficient in the cause of law and order as the geese that saved Rome. Copenny, listening sardonically, could not be thankful for such small favors. His venture as a moonshiner at all events was, so to speak, a side line of employ. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... be bought, edelweiss penwipers, wooden paper-cutters, and clocks with chamois climbing wooden rocks. Nothing apparently in that shop had been "made in Germany." When we reached the verandah of the "Nassauer Hof" we were gladdened by bows from the "Assessor" and the student, who with the "cackling geese" were seated at a long table consuming piles of Apfelkuchen, Streuselkuchen, and Napfkuchen to an ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... historical reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. Sometimes when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly perish where he stood and leave me to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mumpson in her high, cackling tones, "that he's said things and done things too awful to speak of; that he's broken his agreement and ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... delayed the Greyhound for a moment and gave Jack time to dash through the hen-hole into the yard, where he hid to one side. The Greyhound rushed around to the low gate, leaped over that among the Hens, and as they fled cackling and fluttering, some Lambs bleated loudly. Their natural guardian, the big black Dog, ran to the rescue, and Warhorse slipped out again by the hole at which he had entered. Horrible sounds of Dog hate and fury were heard ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... valuables were to be saved. The house seemed full of smoke as they entered it; and Dorcas led them up the stairs into the parlour, at the window of which her mistress was standing, leaning upon her stick, and uttering a succession of short, sharp exclamations, intermingled with the cackling laugh ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... intimate second phrase. There is almost the sense of lullaby before the sudden plunge to wildest chaos, the only portent being a constant trembling of low strings. All Bedlam is let loose, where the rogue's shriek is heard through a confused cackling and a medley of voices here and there on the running phrase (that ever ends the second theme). The sound of a big rattle is added to the scene,—where perhaps the whole village is in an uproar over some ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... halted at a corner grocery and produce store, as I took it, and the smooth-faced, shaven- headed man in woolen shirt, short vest, and suspenderless trousers so boisterously addressed by the Major, was just lifting from the back of his cart a coop of cackling chickens. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... of white gulls were flying overhead, uttering their well- known cry, and sandpipers coursed along the edge of the water. Here and there lonely wading-birds were stalking about; one of these, the Curiaca (Ibis melanopis), flew up with a low cackling noise, and was soon joined by a unicorn bird (Palamedea cornuta), which I startled up from amidst the bushes, whose harsh screams, resembling the bray of a jackass, but shriller, disturbed unpleasantly the solitude of the place. Amongst the willow ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... led into the orchard. She realized now that she was utterly worn out with the excitement of her morning adventure. Mary and the little boys were playing in the old wagon that stood in the barnyard. She could hear them laughing and shouting. The old pig was grunting over his trough, the hens were cackling. She really ought to go and gather the eggs. She felt just then that drying dishes was an insupportable burden. It was always so with Elizabeth. She could toil strenuously all day, building a playhouse, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of the place offered at her side, soon the marquis was cackling after the manner of a senile beau of the old school; relating spicy anecdotes of dames who had long departed this realm of scandal; and mingling witticism and wickedness in one continual flow, until like a panorama another age was ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Matter out in three or four Days time, and then there was a cruel Scolding. However, in this Interim I did not leave off Feasting, Gaming, and other extravagant Diversions. And in short, my Father continuing to rate me, saying he would have no such cackling Gossips under his Roof, and ever and anon threatning to discard me, I march'd off, remov'd to another Place with my Pullet, and she ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... can't stand hearing a carved turkey like you cackling rot about marriage. Think of your own mamma. If she hadn't got married, where would ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... and heard talking going on, but it all came to nothing. Of one thing we may be quite sure, that if this unlucky country ever does get set straight, it will not be done by a Mexican Congress sitting and cackling over it. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Ferragus, Jules asked himself whether it were not wisest to conclude the arrangement he had come to make with the old woman in the crowded antechamber. A hen, which descended cackling from a loft, roused him from this inward meditation. He came to a resolution, and followed Ida's mother into the inner room, whither they were accompanied by the wheezy pug, a personage otherwise mute, who jumped upon a stool. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... he laughed, and the gold in his few remaining teeth glistened. Cackling and shuffling along beside Nancy, he muttered—his mind again on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... yard near a barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing, one a young man of nineteen, the other a younger lad, both barefoot and bareheaded. Just at the moment when the trap drove into the yard the younger one flung high up a hen which, cackling, described an arc in the air; the elder shot at it with a gun and the hen fell ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... such a clatter outside the door that he sprang to his feet to see what was the matter, and the two kittens waked up in alarm. Outside, the yard was in a commotion. Everybody was talking at the same time. The hens were cackling, the roosters crowing, the ducks quacking, the calf crying, and the sound of flying hoofs could be ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... comically pathetic than the head-piece to the "Contents" in vol. I. of the "Birds"? The old horse has been seized with an invincible fit of stubbornness. The day is both windy and rainy. The rider has broken his stick and lost his hat; but he is too much encumbered with his cackling and excited stock to dare to dismount. Nothing can help him but a Deus ex machina,—of whom there is ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... pattens paddle through the dirt with more than their usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature is in a state of 'dissolution ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... sort of animal I should choose to resemble. I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life. Fowls cackle, asses bray, women chatter, and philosophers spin false reasons—that's the effect the sight of the world brings out of them. Well, I am an animal that paints instead of cackling, or braying, or spinning lies. And now, I think, our business is done; you'll keep to your side of the bargain about the Oedipus ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... The old joy in life and gaiety of heart have vanished, though we do sometimes pause for a few moments in our long forced march to watch the labours of some pale mechanician seeking after perpetual motion and indulge in a little dry, cackling laugh at his expense. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... a rich veil wrapped about her head. Moreover, the circumstance that the two old aunts, with still more extraordinary gowns and be-ribboned head-dresses than I had yet seen them wear, were sweeping along one on each side of her and cackling their welcomes in French, whilst the Baroness was looking about her in a way so gentle as to baffle all description, nodding graciously first to one and then to another, and then adding in her flute-like voice ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... fine cackling in Barbie as Gourlay's men dropped away from him one by one; and now it was worse than ever. When Jimmy Bain and Sandy Cross were dismissed last winter, "He canna last long now," mused the bodies; and then when even Riney got the sack, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... came a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she had private business there which only hens can understand. Or it may be that she, too, had ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... consisting of Jacky, Jem, Robinson and George, had traversed about one half the bush, when a great heavy crow came wheeling and cackling over their heads, and then joined a number more who were now seen circling over a gum-tree some ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... on the stage: I know I could act." At this, her father abruptly gave utterance to a feeble cackling of laughter; and when Alice, surprised and a little offended, pressed him for his reason, he tried to evade, saying, "Nothing, dearie. I just thought of something." But she persisted ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... there was absolute silence in the room. From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner. Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail the record of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... morsel seemed more tempting than another, driving their weaker brethren away from it, and fighting over it as if the sea was not covered with other bits equally good. All the time the noise they made "poultering" down in the water, and quacking or cackling—I do not know which ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... white women and a yellow-haired child drive by; carabao, wallowing in the muddy water of a near-by stream, stared at us stolidly; fighting-cocks crowed lustily as we passed; and hens barely escaped with their cackling lives from ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... bombard, Till all the window panes are starred! A third augments the vocal shock Till steeples to their bases rock, Confessing, as they humbly nod, They hear and mark the will of God. A fourth in oral thunder vents His awful penury of sense Till dogs with sympathetic howls, And lowing cows, and cackling fowls, Hens, geese, and all domestic birds, Attest the wisdom of his words. Cranks thus their intellects deflate Of theories about the State. This one avers 'tis built on Truth, And that on Temperance. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... sing as sweetly as the Larke When neither is attended: and I thinke The Nightingale if she should sing by day When euery Goose is cackling, would be thought No better a Musitian then the Wren? How many things by season, season'd are To their right praise, and true perfection: Peace, how the Moone sleepes with Endimion, And would ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the kettle. She was a woman older than any one even dared guess. With a cackling laugh she always answered questions as to her age with the assertion that she was "nigh on to two hundred and a deal more than that," and no one could contradict her, for she was old when Orn Skinner was ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... came somewhat to himself he was in a close, stifling room where candle-light from a distance threw weird shadows over the adobe walls. The witch-like voices of a woman and a girl in harsh, cackling laughter, half suppressed, were not far away, and some one, whose face was covered, was holding a glass to his lips. The smell was sickening, and he remembered that he hated the thought of liquor. It did not fit with those who ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... of them. The black hen was settin' on them, but I drove her away, and you can hear her cackling. Shure, Andy needs them more ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... heard their cawing and saw them pursuing the hawk, and then saw her swoop upon them or turn over in the air beneath them, as if to show them what feats she could do on the wing that were beyond their powers. The crows often made a peculiar guttural cawing and cackling as if they enjoyed the sport, but they were clumsy and awkward enough on the wing compared to the hawk. Time after time she came down upon them from a point high in the air, like a thunderbolt, but never seemed to touch them. Twice I saw her swoop upon them as they sat upon the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... charcoal-burners, with their loads of fuel slung on poles dangling from their shoulders. A box wallah with his attendant coolie, staggering under the weight of a huge box of Manchester goods, hurries by. It is a busy sight in the bazaar. What a cackling! What a confused clatter of voices! Here also the women are the chief contributors to the din of tongues. There is no irate husband here or moody master to tell them to be still. Spread out on the ground are heaps of different grain, bags of flour, baskets ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... tremendous watches of river captains who had aspired to go to sea, and old crutch escapement watches which Huygens himself had perhaps handled in Holland. The window was filled with trains of wheels and pinions, snails and racks, crystals, and faces and watches, cackling at each other. There were striking clocks which rung chimes or rocked like little vessels on apparent billows, or started off with notes like grasshoppers. A hundred of the most musical tree-frogs shut up in a piano ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... I return again: The trembling widow, and her daughters twain, This woful cackling cry with horror heard, Of those distracted damsels in the yard; And starting up beheld the heavy sight, 720 How Reynard to the forest took his flight, And 'cross his back, as in triumphant scorn, The hope and pillar of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... lowest point of human misery. While they were sitting there the Blackfoot band, under cover of the night, was softly creeping up the zigzag path. Great events often turn on small points. Rome was saved by the cackling of geese, and Tim's Folly was lost by the slumbering of a goose! The goose in question was a youth, who was so inflated with the miraculous nature of the deeds which he intended to do that he did not ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... gazing smirkily after him. Then we went into the park a few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking—or Peter was—most volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out—and saw Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the yew-tree arbor surprised several fowls that were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr. Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... already familiar voice of my landlady, shrill as the cackling of a hen—"grands Dieux! not a single soul from Ville-en-bois can rest here, neither man nor woman! They have the fever like a pest there. No, no, m'sieur, that is impossible; go away, you and your ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... with the village organ. If I had, I don't think I should have chosen the Ave Maria of Cherubini, which has a final amble with the organ, sounding well enough on the piano; but on that particular organ it sounded like two hens cackling and chasing each other. I had to mount the spiral staircase behind the belfry and wobble over the rickety planks before reaching the organ-loft. Fortunately, Count Metternich went with me and promised to stay with me till the bitter end; ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... could not look for a minute out of the schoolroom window without seeing something alive. Cows strolling across the meadow; Aunt Katharine's chickens venturing into the garden, and driven out by Peter, cackling and shrieking; companies of busy starlings working away on the lawn; it was all lively and cheerful, though Mrs Trevor always said it was "buried in the country." Haughton Park was considered a "beautiful place," and Philippa was used to ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... in the bundle of straw which was left standing outside. All the young children arrange themselves behind her in a row. She then walks slowly round the hall and the adjoining rooms, throwing handfuls of straw on the floor and imitating the cackling of a hen, while all the children follow her peeping with their lips as if they were chickens cheeping and waddling after the mother bird. When the floor is well strewn with straw, the father or the eldest member of the family throws a few walnuts ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... upon the barbarian himself. Some took the stranger as a joke, and laughed and made funny remarks upon his appearance. Here and there an old woman, peeping through the doorway, would utter a loud cackling laugh, and pointing a wizened finger at the missionary would cry: "Eh, eh, look at him! Tee hee! He's got a wash basin on for a hat!" A Hoa was distressed at these remarks, but ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... had been piled in five great heaps upon the ground, Louis made his oration to the accompaniment of the squealing of pigs, the cackling of hens, and the roar of the surf.... A speech was made in return on behalf of the village.... Each speaker finished by coming forward with one of the smaller things in his hand, which he offered personally to Louis, and then ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... after you had been gabbling and cackling about it to the whole Court, and it had even reached the ears of the people? Besides, I was given to understand that this daughter of Chrysopras's was a mere girl. If she had been—But what have you brought us?—a middle-aged matron with ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... A.M. there was a sound throughout the town of fowls cackling, as though they were being disturbed and ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... original was scarce discernible; and his tattered hose; and his shoes, cobbled above and below. And while as he made the change in dress he made so many whimsical comments also about a man's pride and the dress that makes a man, that the palmer was like to choke with cackling laughter. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved the Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannae, and heaping them into bushels, and to be so ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... he had fallen even while the worthy smith had been talking to him overnight, his ears were assailed by the peaceful and comfortable sounds inseparable from farmhouse life and occupation. He heard the cackling of hens, the grunting of pigs, and the rough voices of the hinds as they got the horses out of the sheds, and prepared to commence the labours of the day with harrow or plough. These sounds were familiar enough to Paul; they seemed to carry ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her children, absolutely forgot everything in the charm and wonder of the scene, in the pure, delicate unimaginable odour of the primroses, in debating with Allen whether (cockneys that they were) it could be a nightingale "singing by day when every goose is cackling," in listening to the marvellous note, only pausing to be answered from further depths, in the beauty of the whole, and in the individual charm of every flower, each heavily-laden arch of dark blue-bells ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rita Simons and Dr. Terry Gould—the young smart set of Gopher Prairie. She was led to them. Juanita Haydock flung at her in a high, cackling, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... water and Mrs. Pattison smoked, with the after- luncheon coffee—and in those days a woman with a cigarette was a rarity in England—and sometimes, at a caustic mot of the former's there would break out the Rector's cackling laugh, which was ugly, no doubt, but, when he was amused and at ease, extraordinarily full of mirth. To me he was from the beginning the kindest friend. He saw that I came of a literary stock and had literary ambitions; and he tried to direct me. "Get to the bottom of something," ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mrs. Sherman was first taken in the arms of two stout natives; Mary Lynch, carrying Lizzie, was carried by two others; and I followed, mounted on the back of a strapping fellow, while fifty or a hundred others were running to and fro, cackling ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Richard was half-way down the lane at the heels of the geese. There he stooped and caught one of them, but instead of a goose he had a huge hedgehog in his hands, which he dropped in dismay; whereupon it waddled away a goose as before, and the whole of them began cackling and hissing in a way that he could not mistake. For the turkey-cock, he gobbled and gabbled and choked himself and got right again in the most ridiculous manner. In fact, he seemed sometimes to forget that he was a turkey, and laughed like a fool. All at once, with a simultaneous ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... various ways; the corn waved its yellow ears between the dark stumps of the trees in the cleared land, and the smoke from the chimney of the house mounted straight up in a column to the sky; the grunting of the pigs and the cackling of the fowls, and the occasional bleating of the calves, responded to by the lowing of the cows, gave life and animation to the picture. At a short distance from the shore the punt was floating on ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... was from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her specialty was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and its real business was ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to produce new art of all kinds, knowing and confessing all the while that the greater part of it is bad, but struggling still to produce new patterns of wall-papers, and new shapes of teapots, and new pictures, and statues, and architecture; and pluming and cackling if ever a teapot or a picture has the least good in it;—all the while taking no thought whatever of the best possible pictures, and statues, and wall-patterns already in existence, which require nothing but to be taken common care of, and kept from ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... random. She re-entered the cottage and continued some household duties. I sat quite still, with my eyes steadily fixed upon a dark object a little to the left of those white palings. Above my head a starling in a wicker cage was making an insane cackling, on the green patch in front a couple of tame rabbits sat and watched me, pink-eyed, imperturbable. Inside I could hear the slow ticking of an eight-day clock. The woman was humming to herself as she worked. All these things, which my senses took quick note of and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Comidetta, dear Yates, we pronounce absolution and remission of thy sins, so wickedly committed in the washy melo-drama, and cackling vaudeville, thou hast recently affronted common-sense withal! Thine own acting as the courtier was natural, except when thou didst interpolate the dialogue with the baby—a crying sin, believe us. Else, thy bows were graceful; and thy shoulder-shrugs—are they not chronicled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... alternately weak, nervous, careless, and defiant in his attitude in regard to public opinion concerning his private life. He at one time asserted the right of living in any way he might choose, and resented the criticism of a few cackling busybodies, even though it was not in accordance with the views of the late Mr. Edward Cocker. It was his affair, and if his ideas differed from those of his critics, it was no business of theirs. His independence in this, as well as in the practical ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... beginning, they were thoroughly up-to-date, abreast and rather ahead of the conclusions as yet reached by contemporary opinion. The best of compliments was paid them by the imitation of other navies; for, when the first one was finished, we sent her abroad on exhibition, much like a hen cackling over its last performance, with the result that we had not long to congratulate ourselves on the newest and best thing. It is this place in a long series of development which gives ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders. They showed inclinations for a rush, but Kettle held up his left hand for them to keep back, and they obeyed the order. They saw that vicious ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... you know, I could imagine the baby goo-gooing something out in reply, with its fists in its mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back, and she a-laughing and admiring and worshipping, and now and then tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe throwing in a word of answer to me herself—and so on and so on —well, don't you know, I could sit there in the cave with my pen, and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. Why, it was almost like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... back against the White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulder the Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's vivid cheek. "Silly—Pink and White—Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't you know there isn't any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her own superior knowledge she folded her little arms and began to rock herself ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Mussalman—which the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars—the women who have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their charge—a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no time by the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and joyous laughter. It sounded like the cackling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow sternly. This strange gayety of a man who was to be executed was an offence to the prison, as well as to the very executioner; it made them appear absurd. And suddenly, for ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... Look round and judge for yourself. Every daily paper panders more or less to the lowest tastes of the mob, —while if the higher sentiments of man are not actually sneered at, they are made a subject for feeble surprise, or vapid 'gush.' An act of heroic unselfishness meets with such a cackling chorus of amazed, half-bantering approval from the leading-article writers, that one is forced to accept the suggestion implied,— namely that to BE heroic or unselfish is evidently an outbreak of noble instinct that is entirely unexpected and remarkable,—nay, even eccentric and inexplicable! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a delicious reverie. How infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... Dade, watching, could see his profile sharply defined in the yellow light of the fire, as he stared toward the offending camp. The lips that smiled so often were drawn tight and thin; the nostrils flared like a frightened horse. While the laughs were still cackling derision, Valencia jumped up and ran; and Dade, even before he sat up to look, knew ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... three-quarters of the distance when the diligence was brought to a halt before a high stone wall and a solid barred gate. The nuns came back to the present with an excited cackling. Who would believe they had reached the convent so soon! They made their adieus and ponderously descended, their departure accelerated by Tony who had become of a sudden alertly helpful. As they started again he slid along into the Mother Superior's ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... the younger birds of a brownish color. This species is larger than the Sand-hill Crane, the latter having a total length of from forty to forty-two inches. The Sand-hill species may be distinguished from the Whooping-crane by its slate-blue color. The cackling, whooping, and screaming voices of an assembled multitude of these birds cannot be described. They can be heard for miles upon the open plains. These birds are found in Florida and along the Gulf coast as well as over large areas of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she cried, with cackling laughter. And ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the motion ceased, and the noise gradually died away in hollow echoes in the distance—whereupon ensued such a crowing of cocks, cackling of geese, barking of dogs, lowing of kine, neighing of horses, and shouting of men, women, and children amongst the negro and coloured domestics, as baffles all description, whilst the various white inmates of the house (the rooms, for air and coolness, being without ceiling, and simply ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... learning how to die, and meet the issue unafraid. For the Desert Rat was a philosopher, and even at this ghastly spectacle his sense of humor did not desert him. He sat down on the skull of one of the burros and laughed—a dry cackling gobble. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... streams of awakening life that we all manifest at sunrise; then comes a change of magnetic polarity after the first fiery flush of cosmic life; the gleeful chattering of the birds and the cackling of the poultry. A reaction is noted; all things before active become ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling shrilly. "Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... stir, sure enough, in the hen-house,—fowls were cackling and screaming with fright, and a curious snapping sound came from one corner. When the light fell here they saw a rough, hairy little animal, with small bright eyes like a pig, and a long smooth tail. But, worst of all, one of the beautiful ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... was quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or the hovels ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... much surprized to hear Fowls speak, as they were to see such a Monster as I appeared to be. I answer'd in her own Words, Ednu sinvi, upon which she ask'd me, I suppose, a String of Questions, with a Loquacity common to the sex and then fell a cackling. Three or four Chickens came running to her, and at the Sight of me hid their Heads under their Mother's Wing, as I suppos'd her. One of them, who was a Cock not above Five Foot high, at last took Courage to ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... about two o'clock in the afternoon, and I suddenly heard a strange sound, that of our fowl cackling. Yesterday I heard her tell-tale note about noon, and the day before just as I was eating my breakfast. I knew that it would be so! The serpent has entered Eden. That fowl has laid before eight in the morning for three weeks without interruption, ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... very wide rent in the wall laid open to view an enclosure which had once been a garden, but was now a wilderness. For a time the sorrowful effect which all this decay produced on my mind was increased by the extreme solitude which reigned around. This, however, was presently relieved by a cackling sign of life which issued from a brood-hen as it flew from the sill of a side-parlour window. On casting my eyes further into the landscape, I also perceived a very fat cow lazily browsing on the rich ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's slim finger had been ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... for suitable material, and was beginning to think that we should be forced to use iron columns for the piers, when one day I stumbled quite by accident on the very thing. Brock and I were out "pot-hunting," and hearing some guinea-fowl cackling among the bushes, I made a circuit half round them so that Brock, on getting in his shot, should drive them over in my direction. I eventually got into position on the edge of a deep ravine and knelt ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... in the yard. Rosa and he were feeding the poultry, and the birds were pecking and scraping and cackling and quarrelling, as they greedily looked for the yellow corn that ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... same: I will take no notice of ye, But if I do not fit ye, let me fry for't; Is all this Cackling for your egg? they are fair ones, Excellent rich no doubt too; and may stumble A good staid mind, but I can go thus by 'em; My honest friend; do ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that with his noise gives men warning to avoid him, otherwise he will make them wish they had. He is, like a bell, good for nothing but to make a noise. He is like common fame, that speaks most and knows least, Lord Brooks, or a wild goose always cackling when he is upon the wing. His tongue is like any kind of carriage, the less weight it bears the faster and easier it goes. He is so full of words that they run over and are thrown away to no purpose, and so empty of things or sense ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... flung him gibes as he passed, to which he replied disdainfully. A group of girls who had been singing together, turned round upon him, 'chaffing' him with shrill voices and outstretched necks, like a flock of young cackling geese, while he, holding himself erect, threw them back flinty words and glances, hitting at every stroke, striding past them with the port of a young king. Then they broke into a song which they could hardly sing for laughing—about a lover who had been jilted ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... struck the broader path to the house, the cackling laugh of a goat chained to a roadside log followed her cynically. Where had she heard this bleat before? Ah, yes, from the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... and all her race; 'Tis the same rope at different ends they twist; To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.[272]) Shall I, like Curtins, desperate in my zeal, O'er head and ears plunge for the common weal? 210 Or rob Rome's ancient geese[273] of all their glories, And, cackling, save the monarchy of Tories? Hold—to the minister I more incline; To serve his cause, O queen! is serving thine. And see! thy very gazetteers give o'er, Ev'n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more. What then remains? Ourself. Still, still ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... family out for a walk in the fields, Medio Pollito would hop away by himself and hide among the corn. Many an anxious minute his brothers and sisters had looking for him, while his mother ran to and fro cackling ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... chops uttered a sort of cackling, ghastly laugh, resembling, to a certain degree, the cry of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... saw during the whole war, and I have no desire to see another. Those hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked sufferers, shot in every conceivable part of the body; some shrieking, and calling upon their mothers; some laughing the hard, cackling laugh of the sufferer without hope, and some cursing like troopers, and some writhing and groaning as their wounds were being bandaged and dressed. I saw a man of the Twenty-seventh, who had lost his right hand, another his leg, then another whose head was laid open, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... that much, that they must save this coin for a meal, that for a bed, this to pay toll on the road. She used such phrases of the gipsy jargon as she had picked up, and made jokes and bantering speeches which set their host cackling with laughter. Osmonde had seen her play a fantastic part before on their whimsical holidays, but never one which suited her so well, and in which she seemed so full of fire and daring wit. She was no Duchess, a man might have sworn, but a tall, splendid, black-eyed laughing ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Pierre following sulkily behind. But just as they reached the door there was a commotion outside, and the sound of quacking and men's laughter. And there came in a serving man bearing in his arms a great white goose, which was flapping his wings and cackling hoarsely in fright. ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... cackling here attracted the attention of the sisters, who started towards Pucklechurch's cottage, and the fowl-house, (a very foul house by the by) in front of which, on a low wooden stool, sat a tidy old woman, Betty Pucklechurch in fact, in a tall muslin cap, spotted kerchief blue ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white body very finely; besides the Tufter is very wise. You sometimes hear persons say—as silly as a goose, but never as silly as a Tufter. Still the Tufters are geese after all, and are very fond of cackling. So, when the Phoenix had done speaking, the Tufters looked at one another and burst into a fit of cackling. The Phoenix was very much displeased at this. "How often have I told you," said he, "not to cackle in that way. It is very disrespectful in you. Besides ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... CACKLING. Is covering a cable spirally (in opposition to rounding, which is close) with three-inch old rope to protect it from chafe in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... which will do them good, without the red rag of an official name, which sends them cackling off like frightened turkeys.—Such private confession as is going on between you and me now. Here am I confessing ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... off in a towering bad humor, and afterwards I heard him cursing the stout gentleman's black groom as he mounted his great horse. And then he cursed the horse as it reared and plunged, while the stout gentleman stood at the coach door, cackling at his discomfiture. The gentleman did ride home with Mrs. Temple, Nick going into another coach. I afterwards discovered that the gentleman had bribed him with a guinea. And Mr. Riddle more than once came near running down my pony on his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
