"Clucking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woods in summer I have sometimes amused myself with imitating the violent chirping or clucking of young birds, in order to observe what different species were round me; for such sounds at such a season in the woods are no less alarming to the feathered tenants of the bushes than the cry of fire or murder in the street is to the inhabitants of a large city. On such occasion of alarm and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... a cheerful clucking of fowls outside our bedroom window, and on looking out saw that the wind had blown the meat-safe over and emptied its contents on the path. The fowls were having a fine feast off the suet. Graham was just in time to save the half leg of mutton. We live on mutton ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... whole evening in gazing in silent wonder at me and the bicycle; now and then giving expression to his utter inability to understand how such things can possibly be by shaking his head and giving utterance to a peculiar clucking of astonishment. He has heard me mention having come from Stamboul, which satisfies him to a certain extent; for, like a true Turk, he believes that at Stamboul all wonderful things originate; whether the bicycle ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... waving her battered old felt hat at the clucking cluster of hens eddying around her legs as she plowed through the flock towards the chicken house. "Scat. You, Solomon," she called out, directing her words at the bobbing comb of the big rooster strutting at the edge of the mob. "Don't just stand there like a satisfied cowhand after a night in ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... boars, yelping of foxes, mewing of cats, cheeping of mice, squeaking of weasels, croaking of frogs, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, calling of partridges, chanting of swans, chattering of jays, peeping of chickens, singing of larks, creaking of geese, chirping of swallows, clucking of moorfowls, cucking of cuckoos, bumbling of bees, rammage of hawks, chirming of linnets, croaking of ravens, screeching of owls, whicking of pigs, gushing of hogs, curring of pigeons, grumbling of cushat-doves, howling of panthers, curkling of quails, chirping of sparrows, crackling ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... times in the course of her life, generally alone, and at different stages the ghosts of past moods would flood her mind with a whole scene or train of thought merely at the sight of three trees from a particular angle, or at the sound of the pheasant clucking in the ditch. But to-night the circumstances were strong enough to oust all other scenes; and she looked at the field and the trees with an involuntary intensity as if they had no such associations ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... imagination are imbedded.[351] He wrote too much to write always well; for it is not a great Xerxes-army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand, that march safely down to posterity. He set tasks to his divine faculty, which is much the same as trying to make Jove's eagle do the service of a clucking hen. Throughout "The Prelude" and "The Excursion" he seems striving to bind the wizard Imagination with the sand-ropes of dry disquisition, and to have forgotten the potent spell-word which would make ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... bap! Shabaz!" and queer gurgling clucking of the throat, and a sonorous rumble from the wide, low wheels, the driver drove the tonga on into the moonlight. Barlow had saddled his horse and thrown his blanket loosely behind the saddle. The air was chilling, but his sheepskin coat would turn its cold ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... attention and praise with sheep of half-a-dozen different breeds and styes of bloated preposterous pigs, no more like a wild boar or sow than a city alderman is like an ourang-outang. The cattle show has been, and perhaps may again be, succeeded by a poultry show, of whose crowing and clucking prodigies it can only be certainly predicated that they will be very unlike the aboriginal Phasianus gallus. If the seeker after animal anomalies is not satisfied, a turn or two in Seven Dials will convince him that the breeds ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the same of the captain and Violet," pursued Betty, in a lower tone, and glancing toward that couple, as they sat side by side on the opposite sofa—Violet with her babe in her arms, the captain clucking and whistling to it, while it cooed and laughed in his face—Violet's ever-beautiful face more beautiful than its wont, with its expression of exceeding love and happiness as her glance rested now upon her husband and ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... then with their powerful arms pulled it down, a matter of not much difficulty with so loosely formed a stem as that of the plantain. They then set upon the juicy heart of the trees at the bases of the leaves, and devoured it with great voracity. While eating they made a kind of clucking noise, expressive of contentment. Many trees they destroyed apparently out of pure mischief. Now and then they stood still and looked around. Once or twice they seemed on the point of starting off in alarm, but recovered themselves and continued their work. Gradually they got nearer to the edge ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the early part of September, the air was warm and balmy, and barn-yard fowls were clucking and scratching about the rather meager soil ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... that of the Bushmen, grows in tufts, with spaces between, and they are like them in language, their method of speech consisting largely in a series of clicking sounds. Their manner of talking has been compared to the clucking of a hen, and by the Dutch to the "gobbling of a turkeycock." The Hottentots present every appearance of being a developed branch of the Pygmy family, or the result of a cross ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... police." He scrutinized McDermott closely as he spoke. "And it's not the money (which I know well you will give me anyhow) which makes me say you are more beautiful than ever, monsieur. The same elegant pallor; the same pursuit in the eye! Had I had your looks"; he made a clucking sound in his cheek with his tongue; "and your clothes! Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors," he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and trousers and wide green cravat ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... prolonged banquet, followed by a mixed ballet of soldiers and completely naked young women, who danced in a circle, beat time with their feet, and accompanied their gestures with a curious sound of clucking. At last the Austrian Consul, overcome by the exhilaration of the scene, flung himself in a frenzy among the dancers; the Governor-General, shouting with delight, seemed about to follow suit, when Gordon ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Hannibal-the-Fighter made a clucking sound of assent; Hasdrubal and the other guests seemed indifferent, but the Capuans ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... chest and straining muscles, but his brain was singularly clear and his observation acute. Gentleman Geoff seemed to be everywhere at once, urging, exhorting, commanding. The mozos, their yellow faces gray, were huddled in a corner, clucking like dismayed fowl at the approach of a storm, but a word from Billie sent them scurrying for the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... that met their eyes—one that all the four appreciated to the full: a long, low room with a French window standing wide open to the garden just a step or two below. On the evening breeze wafted in the scent of mignonette and flowers, and the low sleepy clucking of the hens, about to go to roost. Near the window stood the table, with a silver kettle boiling merrily on its stand, and fruit and flowers and pretty china in abundance, all looking as dainty and tempting as heart could desire. There was an abundance too of more substantial fare, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Evil, which even the touch of Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself—a privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and then a low humming sound, backed up by a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... I have listened to those village hens clucking till I could bear it no longer,' murmured she as she bounded along, hardly seeming to touch the ground. 'When you are fond of fowls and eggs it is the sweetest of all music. As sure as there is a sun in heaven I will have some of them this night, for I have ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... looking at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured—erroneously, as it happened—hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances, what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a redly glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... now (Agreeable to the law explained above). In proprium usum, for his private ends, The boy he chucked a brown i' the air, and bit I' the face the shilling; heaved a thumping stone At a lean hen that ran cluck-clucking by, (And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—What's the Ciceronian phrase? Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... child whom anybody would have hurried to comfort and humor. "I want to do what's right, I'm sure;" and her red under lip began to tremble and the water to gather in her eyes. She sat down to hear the rest of the lecture, but her mother stopped short. Presently, when the chickens came clucking, she went to mix their meal as usual, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... children have had a nickname for me. I noticed them laughing and nudging each other on the street and in the school, and whenever I passed they raised their right hands in salute, and gave a funny little clucking sound. They seemed to pass the word from one to another until every youngster in the neighborhood followed the trick. My curiosity was aroused to such a pitch that I got an interpreter to investigate the matter. When he came to report, he smilingly touched my little enamelled watch, ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... back to the clucking sounds which, among the Gnomes of the Moon, passed for speech. He pondered anew. He shaped his lips, as nearly as possible, to make the clucking sounds he had heard, and discovered that it was very difficult ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... person, and once remarked frankly that he had no passion for clean linen; that he ate voraciously, with a half-animal eagerness; that in the intervals of talking he 'would make odd sounds, a half whistle, or a clucking like a hen's, and when he ended an argument would blow out his breath like a whale.' More important were his dogmatism of opinion, his intense prejudices, and the often seemingly brutal dictatorial violence with which he ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to overlook the rookeries, calling out and listening as if for a familiar voice. Then changing to another place they do the same again...As soon as a female reaches the shore, the nearest male goes down to meet her, making meanwhile a noise like the clucking of a hen to her chickens. He bows to her and coaxes her until he gets between her and the water so that she cannot escape him. Then his manner changes, and with a harsh growl he drives her to a place in his harem. This continues until the lower row of harems is nearly full. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... feeling in woman's heart that she is in her wrong place; that it is she who ought to worship the man, and not the man her; and when she becomes properly conscious of her destiny, has not he a right to be conscious of his? If the grey hens will stand round in the mire clucking humble admiration, who can blame the old blackcock for dancing and drumming on the top of a moss hag, with outspread wings and flirting tail, glorious and self-glorifying. He is a splendid fellow; and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... a long look through them, and when he handed them back he uttered a clucking sound, significant ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I do sometimes wish I had not quite so many aunts. They are all very good to me, and I want to please them; but they are so different, I feel sort of pulled to pieces among them," said Rose, trying to express the emotions of a stray chicken with six hens all clucking over it ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... nudge from his neighbor. There was a second of absolute quiet after the pleasant voice finished the short invocation; then a shoving of benches, a rattle of dishes; and the meal progressed amid peals of laughter and an incessant clucking ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... tracery of shadow and sun on that smooth sward, only now and then roused by the fleet rush of a deer through the wood, or the brisk chatter of a plume-tailed squirrel, till one hears a distant, sharp, clucking chuckle, and in an instant more pulls the trigger, and upsets a grand old cock, every bronzed feather glittering in the sunshine, and now splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate underwing ground into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... on the ashes; chimney there was none, so the smoke eddied slowly round, a portion of it making its way into my throat and eyes; at least one pig reposed on the floor of the hut, and I heard a faint clucking of poultry roosting in some remote and dusky corner of the chamber. It really was a relief to get away from the motley group, and under Spira's guidance I soon reached the clean little inn of Cetigna. Here, in ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... supper, the peculiar shrill cry of a hawk is heard overhead, and the Doctor is seen circling in the air, uttering a scream occasionally. The fowls never find out that it is a hoax, but run to shelter, cackling in the greatest alarm—hens clucking loudly for their chicks, turkeys crouching under the bushes, the pigeons taking refuge in their house; as soon as the ground is quite clear, Cocky changes his wild note for peals of laughter from a high tree, and finally alighting on the top of a hen-coop filled with trembling chickens, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... anything by chastening my spirit with Mr. Carter and they didn't consider him in the matter at all, poor man. Of that I feel sure. Hillsboro is like that. It settled itself here in a Tennessee valley a few hundreds of years ago and has been hatching and clucking over its own small affairs ever since. All the houses set back from the street with their wings spread out over their gardens, and mothers here go on hovering even to the third and fourth generation. Lots of ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and carpentry of French-roofed villas. The old houses stood quite close to the street, with a strip of narrow door-yard before them; the new ones affected a certain depth of lawn, over which their owners personally pushed a clucking hand-mower in the summer evenings after tea. The fences had been taken away from the new houses, in the taste of some of the Boston suburbs; they generally remained before the old ones, whose inmates resented the ragged effect that their absence gave the street. The irregularity ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... wizard's voice as he asked to be permitted to use the hat for still another experiment, and she scarcely saw how he placed it on a table, a perfectly innocent looking table, and then proceeded to take from it a multitude of things—from a gold watch to a clucking hen. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... was for Hal and Ned, and was told that they had gone out after a flock of wild turkeys that had been heard clucking in the pecan trees, not far from camp. They had taken their guns with them, and expected to be ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... the priest flinched with pain and let the snake loose from his mouth. It hung on to his cheek with its fangs firmly implanted, and at last he tore him loose with both hands. The blood spurted from the wound, and a Hopi man beside me made a nervous clucking sound. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the leaves of the Manitoba maples trembled ever so little in the still air. The sun was setting, and fleecy fragments of cloud were painted ruddy gold against the silver background of the sky. From the barnyard came the contented sighing of the cows and the anxious clucking of a hen gathering in her belated brood. The whole country seemed bathed in peace—a peace deep and unpurchasable, having no part in any ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Moon to me, "I looked down upon a small courtyard surrounded on all sides by houses. In the courtyard sat a clucking hen with eleven chickens; and a pretty little girl was running and jumping around them. The hen was frightened, and screamed, and spread out her wings over the little brood. Then the girl's father came out ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... day, the fox will, however, usually seek the shelter of some bushes or trees, and on such occasion is usually found under the lee of some little wooded point, where, steeped in sweetest sleep, he can at leisure dream of clucking hens, fat turkeys, and tender leverets—sheltered from the storm, and still having an uninterrupted view before him. The hunter, when bent on a fox hunt, is careful to wear garments whose colour blends with the prevailing hue of frosted nature: a white cotton capot, and capuchon to match, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... What a clucking of surprise there would be when it was told that not from any hothouse whatever, but from the depths of the ocean came ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... he began, stroking his chin downward and letting his lips meet with a clucking sound, also another professional habit; "but, you'd find, ef you knew me better, that I never beat the devil round the stump, as the feller said, an' I'm above board." He paused for a moment; then he kicked a rotten spot on the log with the broad heel of his brogan till it crumbled into dust. "I've ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... air Osra and his wives took up the little fluffy chickens one by one, and swallowed them whole; the poor bewildered mothers clucking and screaming, and spreading out their wings, wondering where on earth their families ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... exhibited the shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been ashamed of. Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the variations of their clucking and cackling. It was evident that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered people had existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bickersdyke's eyes, which even in their normal state protruded slightly, now looked as if they might fall out at any moment. His face had passed from the plum-coloured stage to something beyond. Every now and then he made the clucking noise, but except for that he was silent. Psmith, having waited for some time for something in the shape of comment or criticism on his remarks, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... looker!" was all he said, with an appreciative clucking of the throat. Oh, how she hated him, and everything for ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... to go right through the flock of chickens, but Cousin Jack was a careful driver and didn't harm one of them. There was a terrific squawking and peeping and clucking as the absurd bipeds ran about in an utterly bewildered manner. The children and Cousin Ethel managed to count them fairly well, but Cousin Jack ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... and up the opposite wall in leisurely way, as if, being Sunday, they could "take it easy," also. The fowls clustered about the housewife as she went out into the yard. Fuzzy little chickens swarmed out from the coops where their clucking and perpetually disgruntled mothers tramped about, petulantly thrusting their heads through the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the safety of their young, they lead the sportsmen on a long way. As to hens, we see every day how they watch over their chicks, dropping their wings over some, and letting others climb on their backs, or anywhere about them, and clucking for joy all the time: and though they fly from dogs and dragons when only afraid for themselves, if they are afraid for their chicks they stand their ground and fight valiantly. Are we to suppose then that nature has only implanted ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... perhaps, I had heard from somewhere before me in the wood a strange, continuous noise, as of clucking, cooing, and gobbling, now and again interrupted by a harsh scream. As I advanced towards this noise, it began to grow lighter about me, and I caught sight, through the trees, of sundry gables and enclosure walls, and something ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he said. "Hark! I hear some curious clucking sounds. There's more than one bird there, or I am much mistaken." Stepping forward he peered over the branches, when he beckoned us to advance, and, he lifting me in his arms, I saw not only a hen turkey in the pen, but a brood of a dozen or more turkey poults running ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... a day in June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and presently there came a time when the out-of-doors was all so still that even the falling of a shadow ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... and, before each guest, an egg that had been proudly heralded by the clucking hen but a few hours before—truly a bountiful breakfast, discrediting the latest guest's anticipations! The manager, in high spirits, mercurial as the weather, came down from his room, a bundle of posters under his arm, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... such as are used for gold watches, struggled blindly out into the open air. A second, similarly hooded, followed. The pair, stupefied in their headgear, stood rigid and bewildered in their tracks, clucking uneasily. Their tails were closely sheared. Their legs, thickly muscled, and extraordinarily long, were furnished with enormous cruel-looking spurs. The breed was unmistakable. Annixter looked once at the pair, then shouted ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... if the Banshee storm Knocked screaming for his withered form; It shrieked and whistled like a parrot, Clucking and stuttering through the garret. With-out, the mailed hands of hail Battered the casements, and the gale About his low roof shuddered, sighing, As if it knew that he was dying. It breathed like waiting beasts outside, While soft feet ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... elm you may see their hives, filled, too, with luscious honey. There is the well, with its old sweep, and the "moss-covered bucket," too; and look at the corn-crib, and the old barn—and what a noisy set of fowls around it, cackling, clucking and crowing, as if they owned the soil; and how the pigs are scampering through the clover-field; ah! the little wretches, they have stolen a march, or rather a caper; at them, old Jowler, at them, my fine fellow, you will ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... call was answered instantly and the answering cry was repeated as she called again, the sound of the reply approaching near and nearer all the time. All at once the manner of her calling changed; it was an appeal no longer; it was a conversation, an odd, clucking, penetrating speech in the shortest of sentences. She was telling of the situation. There was prompt reply; the voice seemed suddenly higher in the air and then came, swinging easily from branch to branch along the treetops, the father of Ab, a person who ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... were fine, the thread was a length of cobweb. Everything about the basket was small except the hopes that she was stitching into it; they were so great that her heart could scarcely hold them. Nature was stirring everywhere. The seeds were springing in the warm earth. The hens were clucking to their downy chicks just out of the egg. The birds were flying hither and thither in the apple boughs, and there was one little home of straw so hung that Lyddy could look into it and see the patient mother brooding her nestlings. The sight of her bright eyes, alert for ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Rafael, Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, Redwood City and Palo Alto were next telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done, Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only to condemn him to be talked to death by ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... friendly. He uttered a clucking noise in advertisement of his friendliness, and Michael snarled at this black who had dared to lay hands upon him—a contamination, according to Michael's training—and who now dared to address him who associated only ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of thought was too complicated; and, besides, she had so entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to count how much money her mother owed her for eggs—which reminded her to look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I hope they haven't eaten it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... With a soft clucking sound the water ran over the small stones; spasmodically there was a soft soughing among the barren limbs; now and then a crow cawed above the lake; and morning threw its sharp bluish gleam over forest and sea, over the snow, and over the ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... was a human foot and crumbling indications of a boot, but no signs of a body. A hay rick, half ashes, stood near the centre of the gorge. Workmen who dug about it to-day found a chicken coop, and in it two chickens, not only alive but clucking happily when they were released. A woman's hat, half burned; a reticule, with a part of a hand still clinging to it; two shoes and part of a dress told the story of one unfortunate's death. Close at hand a commercial traveller had perished. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various direction,—the young responding. As no danger seems near, the cooing of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young move cautiously in the direction. Let me step never to carefully from my hiding-place, and all sounds instantly cease, and I search in vain for either parent ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... that were flung back and forth, and jests and gibes, and the butt of many of these was that poor Federal government which (as one gentleman avowed) was like a bantam hen trying to cover a nestful of turkey's eggs, and clucking with importance all the time. This picture brought on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... like sleigh-bells in winter; whips in the hands of fierce-eyed carters cracking round the heads of large, sad mules; hooters of automobiles and immense motor diligences blaring; men shouting at animals; animals barking or braying, snorting or clucking at men; unseen soldiers marching to music; a town clock sweetly chiming the hour, and, above all, rising like spray from the ocean of din, high voices of Arabs chaffering, disputing, arguing. This was the "Arabian Night's Paradise" ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... appear to be deserted. From the farther clumps came the calling of the male quail, and around sounded the different murmurs of clucking, of twittering, of the ruffling of feathers: in a word, the divers voices of the small inhabitants of the plains. Sometimes there flew up a whole covey of quail; the gaudy-topped pheasants scattered on their approach; the black squirrels dived into their holes; the rabbits disappeared in ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... King, who was individually unpleasant to me besides, comes a trotting along the sand, clucking, "Yup, So-Jeer!" I had a thundering good mind to let fly at him with my right. I certainly should have done it, but that it would have ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... saw Jung himself, seated in the place of the mahout, guiding the elephant which he bestrode very cleverly. When silence was required he made a peculiar clucking noise with his tongue; whereupon these docile creatures immediately became still and motionless: one would drop the tuft of grass which he was tearing up, another would stop instantly from shaking the dust out of the roots which he was preparing to eat, others left off chewing their food. ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... and down, her feathers on end, her face swollen, her crest red, clucking away, trying to persuade her babies not to venture into the water. For hens, like cats, hate the water. It was unspeakable torture to her. The children would not listen; deaf to her prayers, her cries, these rascally babies ventured farther and farther ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... once gets into the bathroom!" Floss sat up in bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o'clock in the morning, the most trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... it alive with sound and movement; for of all mercurial and fussy things there is nothing on the face of the earth to equal cocks and hens. They have such an utterly exaggerated sense, too, of their own importance; they make such a clacking and clucking over every egg, such a scratching and trumpeting over every morsel of treasure-trove, and such a striding and stamping over every bit of well-worn ground. On the whole, I think poultry have more humanity in them than any other race, footed or feathered; and cocks certainly must have been ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... that was! Such wonderful home-made bread! Fried potatoes straight from the stove, piping hot and done brown; sizzling pork and eggs that were fresh laid by those hens they could hear clucking outside; buns and molasses; even doughnuts and good-natured looking wedges of pie with the knife-cuts far apart—a wonderful meal of the substantial sort favored by those to whom eating at any hour is a serious business. And they ate it with hunger for condiment, chatting ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... chicken, startled by his silent approach, sprang out of the hedge and fluttered in front of his wheel, clucking madly. Grey pealed his bell, but it had no effect on the distracted chicken, which seemed bent on destruction. He clutched his brake; it would not work. There came a stifled squawk, and ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... of all these mutual confidences, the Captain chattering away like an old hen clucking round a pair of new-found chicks, and Bob and Nellie full of glee and exuberant anticipations of all the coming fun they were going to have afloat and ashore; when, suddenly, the light of the further window of the railway-carriage, opposite that near to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... kestrel at my footstep started, Just pouncing on a frightened mouse, And hung o'er head with wings a-hover; Through rustling heath an adder darted: A hundred rabbits bobbed to cover: A weasel, sleek and rusty-red, Popped out of sight as quick as winking: I saw a grizzled vixen slinking Behind a clucking brood of grouse That rose and cackled at my coming: And all about my way were flying The peewit, with their slow wings creaking; And little jack-snipe darted, drumming: And now and then a golden plover Or redshank piped with reedy whistle. But never shaken bent or thistle Betrayed the quarry ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Against the faint light, which showed from the lake through the fringe of trees, the great head and antlers stood out like an upturned root; but I had never known that a living creature stood there were it not for a soft, clucking rumble that the bull kept going in his throat,—a ponderous kind of love note, intended, no doubt, to let his elusive mate know that ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... 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, roosters were crowing. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... as ever; having teased his sister for a long time in vain, to play out of doors with him, the spoiled boy hissed at her, and said, "You are an ugly old cat!" Then slamming the door after him, he went into the barn-yard, where the screaming of the pigs, the gabble of the geese, and the clucking of the hens, soon proclaimed that he was venting his ill-temper on the dumb creatures who had their home there. Poor Charlie! the indulgence of his mother, and the almost constant absence of his father from home, had made him a very unhappy, mischievous boy, if, indeed, it had not wholly ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... said Mrs. Grayson softly. They both sat silent, looking into the fire. Through the open door, the hens could be heard pecking and clucking in the yard, and the rushing of a beck swollen by the rain, on the fell-side. Presently the farmer's wife ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of tongue and pen, His dam was a clucking Khuttuck hen; And the colt bred close to the vice of each, For he carried the curse of ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... five minutes I couldn't tell what had come over the old place to make it look so small and mean. It was just as if the walls of the rooms had been the bellows of a concertina and somebody had suddenly shut them. But there was the long clock clucking away on the landing, and there was Sir Thomas Traddles purring on the hearth-rug, and there were the same plates on the dresser, and the same map of Africa over the fireplace, with a spot of red ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the narrow hall, which I supposed to be her parlor, though it was at the back of the house, and we passed the closed door of another apartment which apparently enjoyed a view of the quince-trees. This one looked out upon a small woodshed and two clucking hens. But I thought it very pretty, until I saw that its elegance was of the most frugal kind; after which, presently, I thought it prettier still, for I had never seen faded chintz and old mezzotint engravings, framed in varnished autumn leaves, disposed in so ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... that evening, Mrs Mason collected "her young ladies" for an inspection of their appearance before proceeding to the shire-hall. Her eager, important, hurried manner of summoning them was not unlike that of a hen clucking her chickens together; and to judge from the close investigation they had to undergo, it might have been thought that their part in the evening's performance was to be far more important ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Superstitious and timorous, they regard a doctor with great veneration; and when to that is added his power of writing, drawing, and painting, their admiration knows no bounds: they flocked round my tent all day, scratching their ears, lolling out their tongues, making a clucking noise, smiling, and timidly peeping over my shoulder, but flying in alarm when my little dog resented their familiarity by snapping at their legs. The men spend the whole day in loitering about, smoking and spinning wool: the women in active ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the Australians often evince astonishment by a clucking noise. Europeans also sometimes express gentle surprise by a little clicking noise of nearly the same kind. We have seen that when we are startled, the mouth is suddenly opened; and if the tongue happens to be then pressed closely against the palate, its ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... to dispatch the missive by their negro gardener when Mamie and Sallie came clucking in. Mamie's face was pink and high-spirited, but Sallie was in one complete slump of mind ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "The sun is clucking, girls," announced Walter. "She may set at any time. Is there aught to eat at the Mote? Let us thither. We intended to go to the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... held. It was after a painting by Goya, and depicted a sneering skeleton scrawling on his dusty tomb, with a bony fore-finger, the sinister word, Nada—nothing! The perturbation of the woman increased, though physical power seemed denied her. "Aline, my child!" This time a clucking sound issued ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the clucking hen who had just laid an egg was also considered rather above the average. Might ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strove, in a gush of good-will, to distinguish the surrounding summits, and, on the top of the belvedere could be heard the clucking of the Peruvian family, pressing around a big devil, wrapped to his feet in a checked ulster, who was pointing out imperturbably, the invisible panorama of the Bernese Alps, naming in a loud voice the peaks that were lost in ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... his shoulders. In his hand, which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent upon his ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... vesicles or blisters forming on the mucous membrane of the mouth, lips, between and above the claws and the region of the udder. The inflammation of the mouth and feet may be very painful. Long strings of saliva may dribble from the mouth and collect about the lips (Fig. 106). A smacking or "clucking" sound is produced when the animal moves its jaws and lips. The severe pain resulting from the inflammation of the mouth and feet, and the difficulty in moving about and eating and drinking, cause the animal to lose flesh and become emaciated. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... and deserted. Some instinct told me she was not there. The little flower-beds looked shaggy, grass-grown, and uncared for. In the centre, among the geraniums, phlox-beds, and French marigolds, sat a dirty-white hen, clucking and calling a brood of dirty-white chickens. The box-bordered gravelled paths, which Wynne, in spite of his drunkenness, used to keep always so neat, were covered with leaves, shaken by the wind from the trees surrounding the garden. One of the dark green shutters ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before, she had been gone for weeks. Nor was Babbitt one of the detachable husbands who take separations casually He liked to have her there; she looked after his clothes; she knew how his steak ought to be cooked; and her clucking made him feel secure. But he could not drum up even a dutiful "Oh, she doesn't really need you, does she?" While he tried to look regretful, while he felt that his wife was watching him, he was filled with exultant ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... they spied her peeping: 330 Came towards her hobbling, Flying, running, leaping, Puffing and blowing, Chuckling, clapping, crowing, Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of airs and graces, Pulling wry faces, Demure grimaces, Cat-like and rat-like, 340 Ratel- and wombat-like, Snail-paced in a hurry, Parrot-voiced and whistler, Helter skelter, hurry ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... erect, and still hissing furiously, made off, and disappeared. The whole scene is now before me, as vividly as if it occurred yesterday—the gorgeous viper, my poor dear frantic brother, my agitated parent, and a frightened hen clucking under the bushes; and yet I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... magnificent alectors, which soon became tame. As to pelicans, kingfishers, water-hens, they came of themselves to the shores of the poultry-yard, and this little community, after some disputes, cooing, screaming, clucking, ended by settling down peacefully, and increased in encouraging proportion for the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... bill", continued Boone. "And while my cane was brandished in the air and about descending on its devoted head, a low clucking arrested my arm, and approaching closer to it than before, and gazing steadfastly a moment, I lowered my cane to its usual position, and fell back laughing on the grass among the raspberries ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... bee-bike! What's turned you vicious? I only want to smoke A cutty in peace: and you go on the rampage. I mustn't smoke young master's pipe, it seems— His pipe, no less! Young cock-a-ride-a-roosie Is on the muckheap now; and all the hens Are clucking round him. I ken what it is: The cockmadendy's been too easy with you. It doesn't do to let you womenfolk Get out of hand. It's time I came, i' faiks, To pull you up, and keep you in your place. I'll have no naggers, narr-narring all day ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... protection to the spawning fish, and the only way to do this effectually is to give the upper proprietors of rivers such an interest in the Salmon fisheries as will make them worth attention. At present this is far from being the case. Now the upper proprietors are merely considered as so many clucking hens, whose business and whose duty it is to hatch Salmon for the proprietors of fisheries at the mouths of rivers, who do not in many cases spend a farthing in their protection when spawning, and who grievously ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... upon his mistress, made no reply. Rigaud looked from one to the other, struck his ugly nose, and made a clucking with his tongue. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in the "Ark," now another. The crying of children which drifted so mournfully out of the long corridors whenever a door was opened turned to a feeble clucking every time some belated mother came rushing home from work to clasp the little one to her breast. And there was one that went on crying whether the mother was at home or at work. Her milk had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... pointed out everything—meadows full of flowers, trees full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by scarecrows. She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods, and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Blackie, the cat, then came Banty, the hen; and then came Gyp, the dog. And such a mew-mewing, and cluck-clucking, and bow-wowing you ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... sunlight was streaming in at the window. Beneath that window hens were clucking noisily. Also in the room adjoining someone was ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... house-serfs sauntered through the mud, stood still and scratched their spines meditatively; the constable's horse, tied up to a post, lashed his tail lazily, and with his nose high up, gnawed at the hedge; hens were clucking; sickly turkeys kept up an incessant gobble-gobble. On the steps of a dark crumbling out-house, probably the bath-house, sat a stalwart lad with a guitar, singing with some spirit the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... be safe at home again, to watch the tender, reddish brown shoots of the Virginia creeper reaching in at my study window, to see the green of my own quiet fields, to hear the peaceful clucking of the hens in the sunny dooryard—and Harriet humming at her ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... wrong!" she returned, fervidly. "I'll go and get you some lemonade." She rose rustling, and whisked away; when she came back with two tall glasses of clouded liquid on a tray, and the ice clucking in them, he still sat as she had left him, and she said, as if there had been no interruption: "But there is no question of wrong in this case. I call it a sacred war. A war for liberty and humanity, if ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... fruition. The entire lesson of the scene was one of an absolute fecundity. The grass was deep and green and lush. The sweet peas and the roses and the morning-glories, and the honeysuckles on the lattice, hung ranks deep in blossoms. A hundred flocks of fowl ran clucking and chirping about the yard. Across the lawn a mother swine led her brood of squeaking and squealing young. A half-hundred puppies, toddlers or half-grown, romped about, unused fragments of the great hunting pack of the owner of this kingdom. Life, perhaps short, perhaps rude, perhaps swiftly ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... the edge of the table and Gallito bent forward and scratched her head, making little clucking noises in his throat the while: "Our guest is a great poker player, Lolita, he understands how to make a bluff, but," again that single grating note of a laugh, "assure him, my Lolita, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... his waggon. A cow is there tethered; He churlishly kicks her. His hens begin clucking; He shouts at them, "Silence!" 20 The calf, which is shifting About in the cart. Gets a crack on the forehead. He strikes the roan mare With the whip, and departing He makes for the Volga. The moon is now shining, It casts on the roadway A comical ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... with perfumes of the South, came over the hill and on its crest the wild turkeys were still clucking to each other. Henry, through sheer energy and flush of life, ran up the slope, and watched them as they took flight through the trees, their brilliant plumage gleaming ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her. She had grown accustomed to darkness, but never before had she been alone in that darkness. Always there had been the guardianship of Kazan's presence. She heard the clucking sound of a spruce hen in the bush a few yards away, and now that sound came to her as if from out of another world. A ground-mouse rustled through the grass close to her forepaws, and she snapped at it, and closed her teeth on a rock. The muscles of her shoulders twitched ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... manner. He made no comment upon me, however. Indeed almost the only time he spoke during our passage was to voice his astonishment at not having been able to procure the London Times at the press-stalls along the way. His host made clucking noises of sympathy at this. He had, he said, already warned his lordship that America ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... else there were evergreens, holly and mistletoe of course, in plenty, as Christmas came on. And though some other parts of the market might be more amusing and exciting, where the cocks and hens, and geese and ducks, were all to be heard gabbling, and quacking and clucking and crowing, for instance; or the railed-in place where there were generally a few calves or poor little frightened sheep bleating and baa-ing, yet the little girl's first thought was always the flower corner. First thing on Thursday ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... old Hennypennies!" she said, and went out of the coop with the two old hens clucking ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... brown phalanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... beautiful April day and the doors of the carriage house and the big door of the barn were wide open. Mary-'Gusta could hear the hens clucking and the voices of people talking. The voices were two: one was that of Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper, and the other belonged to Mr. Abner Hallett, the undertaker. Mary-'Gusta did not like Mr. Hallett's voice; she liked neither it nor its owner's manner; ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of spring, and after a cessation at the end of summer, are the two periods at which fowls begin to lay. When the period of laying approaches, it is known by the redness of the comb in the hen, the brightness of her eyes, and her frequent clucking. She appears restless, and scratches and arranges the straw in her laying place, and at last begins to lay. She generally prefers to lay in a nest where there is one or more eggs; hence it is of use to put a chalk egg into the nest you wish her ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... away. And, thinking to be your own protector, stray Into the open jaws of death: for, see! An owl is sitting in this very tree You thought safe shelter. Go now to your pen." And, followed by the clucking, clamorous hen, So like the human mother here again, Moaning because a strong, protecting arm Would shield her little ones from cold and harm, I carried back my garden hat brimful Of chirping chickens, like white balls of wool, And snugly housed them. And just then I heard A ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... she tries to lead us up the hillside away from them. When we look for them again they are all safely hidden; not one can be seen. The mother desperately repeats her whining cry to entice us away and we walk on up to the top of the hill and away to relieve her anxiety. Anon we hear her softly clucking as she gathers ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... to starboard, and made for the lee of Cod Lead, rounding the island into the reach. He was safely away and, gazing into the faces of the Portuguese, he grimly reflected that for impressed men they seemed fully as glad to be away as he. They rowed now without further monition, clucking, each to himself, little prayers for their safe deliverance ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... about eight, to find her gone, but as I was dressing by the window I saw her below me in the garden, busy with some hens that were clucking ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... line, were grazing and at times looking toward the house and lowing. The fowls made a colored patch on the dung-heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while two roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they were calling with a loud clucking. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the shanty, I see the guide like a hen that has lost a chicken, shaking her wings, and clucking, and making a great ado. I could stay here all day. I would like to stay two or three—to see how it would look at sunrise, at sunset—to lie down in one of these sunny hollows, and look up into the sky—to ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in, and after some time announces that all the food and drink has been consumed. The people accept this statement as evidence that the ghost has entered the soul-house.[115] The DAYONG acts as though listening to the whispering of the soul within the house, starting and clucking from time to time. Then he announces the will of the ghost in regard to the distribution of the property, speaking in the first person and reproducing the phraseology and peculiarities of the dead man.[116] The directions ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though the Ark of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking, slip- slopped out of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental soul could be. What was in the far recesses of that soul, where these two young people were concerned, must remain unrevealed; but Li Choo and the halfbreed woman in their own language—which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my face, grew very wide and grave. I could only press her hand in parting for Grandpa, growing impatient, had succeeded in clucking Fanny on again. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... she hatched took to the water as soon as they saw it, as all little ducks will. The old hen was almost crazy at such behavior on the part of her chicks, and flew down to the water's edge, clucking and calling at a great rate. However,—to her great surprise, probably,—they all came safely to land. Every day after that, when the little ducks went for a swim, their hen-mother walked nervously ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... murmured Lemuel, his lips looking puffier and more cherry-fied than ever and his chin flattened itself back till he looked like a frustrated old hen who did not understand the perplexities of life and was clucking to find out, after having been startled ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... decided that it was a poor place, the barnyard. He was on the point of turning back to the green abundance of the garden, when a curious clucking sound attracted his attention. At the other side of the yard he saw a red hen in a coop. A lot of very young chickens, little yellow balls of down, were running about outside the coop. Young Grumpy strolled over. The chickens did not concern him in the least. He didn't know what ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... shall have peace, and rest, and quiet walks in stately woods; and you shall sit in the barn upon clover hay, and see the dear children play about and rejoice in your presence. You shall see us feed the hennipennies, and hear that most quiet sound of their clucking and murmuring. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... day Miki rushed to the defense of their meat. The big-eyed, clucking moose-birds were most annoying. Next to them the Canada jays were most persistent. Twice a little gray-coated ermine, with eyes as red as garnets, came in to get his fill of blood. Miki was at him so fiercely ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... the mamma, was very proud of her fine family; for the eight little daughters were all white and very pretty. She led them out into the farmyard, clucking and scratching busily; for all were hungry, and ran chirping round her to pick up the worms and seeds she found for them. Cocky soon began to help take care of his sisters; and when a nice corn or a fat bug was found, he would step ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... this Day of Atonement, and worshippers clad in rainbow hues crowd round the base of the volcano, while the priests of Siva, in motley robes of brilliant patchwork, adorned with cabalistic tracery in white, ascend the swaying rungs, bearing their struggling victims, bleating, crowing, and clucking in mortal terror. Stalwart arms toss the black goat with accurate aim to an assistant priest, who passes on his clever "catch" to a third expert in the task of hoodwinking Siva and depriving him of his lawful prey. Sundry cocks and hens, evidently toothsome morsels, are then thrown from one priest ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... in, The birds from the sky. Allie calls, Allie sings, Down they all fly. First there came Two white doves Then a sparrow from his nest, Then a clucking bantam hen, Then ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... telling him, from a branch near by, just what everybody thought of his disgraceful appearance; and two willow-grouse were clucking at him from some hazel-tops; whilst a raven, black as coal against the white of the woods, jabbed in gruff and very rude ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but they were the kind that lock with a key, and I couldn't move them. From the outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter, and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelt of cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... all tuckered out, I can see," she said, hovering around her like a clucking hen; "but a wash-up and a good dish o' chicken pie will put you all to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... levels or narrows in a village on the Std. Side call themselves E-chee-lute not withstanding those people live only 6 miles apart, but fiew words of each others language- the language of those above having great Similarity with those tribes of flat heads we have passed- all have the Clucking tone anexed which is predomint. above, all flatten the heads of their female children near the falls, and maney above follow the Same Custom The language of the Che-luc-it-to-quar a fiew miles below is different from both ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... old crone clucking and crowing, like a hen over its egg, of the happiness that had come to her old years; till recognising the youth's state she covered him over with a cloak amid exclamations ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... your shawls when you get there, an' carry them over your arms," said the mother, clucking like an excited hen to her chickens. "They'll do to keep the dust off your new dresses goin' an' comin'. An' when you eat your dinners don't get spots on you, an' don't point at folks as you ride by, an' stare, or they'll know you come from the ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... confused and out of focus. Yet time and space make little difference in the solution of these problems. Let us see what exists to-day. We see to-day that the lowest of savages—men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in many respects lower even than animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as well as any English baby, while no amount of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Noticing a fine large cock in the yard, I threw him a handful of bread-crumbs. He was all alone at the moment and might have easily gobbled them all up. Instead of doing such a selfish thing, he loudly summoned his harem with that peculiar clucking sound which is as unmistakable to fowls as is the word dinner or the boom of a gong to us. In a few seconds the hens had gathered and disposed of the bread, leaving not a crumb to their gallant lord and master. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... piece on me. Then he would rub it out and write it all over again, but more fully. He kept this up at intervals of every other day until he had writer's cramp. After that he used pins. He would pin the seams together, uttering little soothing, clucking sounds in German whenever a pin went through the goods and into me. The German cluck is not so soothing as the cluck of ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his vanity—unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his viol-strings—as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages yet unborn. He gazed on the simple moon with limpid, amiable eyes, and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... themselves, were these the Chosen People he had clothed with such romantic glamour?—fat burghers, clucking comfortably under the wing of the Protestant States-General; merchants sumptuously housed, vivifying Dutch trade in the Indies; their forms and dogmas alone distinguishing them from the heathen Hollanders, whom they aped even to the very patronage of painters; or, at the other end of this ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... children, it's time to be off." Dr. Morton suited the action to the word by clucking to the team of bays he drove, ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... except whittle. Mrs. Moss went to take a nap; Bab and Betty sat demurely on their bench reading Sunday books; no boys were allowed to come and play; even the hens retired under the currant-bushes, and the cock stood among them, clucking drowsily, as if reading ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... instance, the striking squeal of a hen, accompanied by the crouching attitude, together indicate the appearance of a hawk as plainly as though it uttered the warning in words. It is obvious, therefore, that all the sounds made by animals, such as cackling, clucking, crooning, purring, crowing, growling, and roaring, as well as modifications of these sounds, impart some meaning which can be distinguished by their kind, and are frequently recognized ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... with it. They'll soon discover some kind device for putting us out of the way. They've no use for us. And yet at the same time"—he flung his cigarette into the wood-fire beside him—"the fathers and mothers who brought them into the world will insist on clucking after them, or if they can't cluck themselves, making other people cluck. I shall have to try and cluck after Helena. It's absurd, and I shan't succeed, of course—how could I? But as I told you, her mother was a ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... big cluster of roses, which had climbed to the sill, swayed forward and peeped inside, sending a whiff of delicate perfume across to where Ann was kneeling, surrounded by trunks and suitcases, unpacking her belongings. Pleasant little sounds of life floated up from outdoors—the clucking of a hen, the stamping of the bay cob as Billy Brewster groomed him, whistling softly through his teeth while he brushed and curry-combed, the occasional honk of a motor-horn as a car sped by in the distance. Then came the beat of a horse's hoofs, stopping abruptly ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of a title—do not be too confident of his fealty. I know men better than you know them, my dear. Man loves beauty, but he does not always want to marry it. The rare white swan is admired, but the little brown partridge, clucking as she marshals her covey of chicks, is the type of the marrying woman. Again, no man is master of himself. That Strathay wishes to marry you, I can understand; but, perhaps, when he is not under the spell of your presence, he falls to wondering how you will pronounce the social shibboleths, ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black legs at ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me, and then, without warning and with incredible swiftness, he smote me a buffet on the head. I was knocked backward fully a dozen feet before I fetched up against the ground, and I remember, half-stunned, even as the blow was struck, hearing the wild uproar of clucking and shrieking laughter that arose from the caves. It was a great joke—at least in that day; and right heartily ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... edge of her darling's bed and patted the curly head resting on her faithful heart, to the accompaniment of little clucking sounds. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to sweetening and lime-washing their foul 'oles, And bright light and disinfectants are the fads of skunks and moles, Then poor souls in cellar-dwellings and in jerry-builders' dens, Will be smart as young canaries and as clean as clucking hens. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various |
