"Crooning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said, and from his accent it was impossible to discover whether he was American or English. "On behalf of self an' partner, we welcome you to Bughouse Lodge. When do you go to the chair—he's due to-day," he jerked his thumb at the crooning priest. "I can't say I'm sorry. So far as I am concerned he's been dead ever ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... group emerged from the prison door and was greeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heart there, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging her knees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws, ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... for lost honour, pain for joy; By what hot thought impelled, by that alone Win back; by violence violence atone. If by chicane thou fleddest, by chicane Win back thy blotted footprints. Out again With all thine arts of kisses slow and long, Of smiles and stroking hands, and crooning song Whenas full-fed with love thou lulledst asleep; Renew thine eyebright glances, whisper and creep And twine about his neck thy wreathing arms: As we with spears so do thou with thy charms, Arm thee and wait the hour of fire and smoke To purge this robbery. Paris by the stroke Of him ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... last wistful look Pat was off to the captain, but the guard gathered Cameron up in his arms tenderly and nursed him like a baby, crooning over him in the sleet and dark, till Pat came back with a stretcher and some men who bore him to the dressing station lying ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the rippling, crooning song, and before the verse was half done, joined unconsciously in with the others, forgetting the need of words in the melody ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk—sure herald of night—is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... sky, and the first streaks of day crept in at the window, when the lamp's yellow light was gone. Hugh Ritson sat in the gray gloom, his knees drawn close under his chin, his arms folded over his breast, his head bent heavily forward. He was crooning an old song. Presently the voice grew thick, the eye became clouded, and then the head fell back. He was asleep, and in his sleep he dreamed again. Or was it a vision, and not a dream, that came to him now? He thought he stood in a room which he had seen before. On the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... once into the lighted room. Peering cautiously through the window we were surprised to find that the only person within, save the newcomer, was a young woman, who, crouching over a smoldering fire, was crooning a lullaby while she attended to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... man his groaning; Hushed the wife her little ones; Alone they heard the drum-roll And the roar of Sepoy guns. But to sounds of home and childhood The Highland ear was true; As her mother's cradle crooning ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... that accident and the excitement of the music had enabled me to see the face behind the mask. I understood, or supposed I understood, Mrs. Ascher, too. All her foolish fine phrases and absurd enthusiasms were like cries in which tortured creatures find some kind of relief from pain, or the low, crooning laughter of a young mother with her baby at her breast. They were the inevitable, almost hysterical gaspings of a spirit wrought upon over highly and over often by the passion of romantic love. A mask hid the man's face. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap. Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, crooning over the spectacle in ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the comfort Mr. Thomas wanted, and for a few moments he just cradled her on his hungry heart, crooning a Hindostanee lullaby, while a few slow tears came dropping down upon the yellow head, so like those hidden for years under the Indian flowers. Presently he seemed to come back from the happy past to which the old letters had carried him. He wiped his eyes, and Rosy's also, with ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... almost three-quarters of an hour to bring her round. In one brief interval of calm she managed to slip to the telephone and call a taxi. The rest of the time she spent on her knees beside the girl in the chair crooning softly. And she never knew that most of the words she set to her soothing, extemporaneous tune would have contaminated anybody, most of all ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... crooning its lullaby with one unceasing melody, lapped the island to sleep with a thousand soft touches of its wave's white hands. The vast sky, like the outspread azure wings of the brooding mother-bird, nestled the ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... Memory. Again he watched His loved syringa whitening by the door, And knew the catbird's welcome; in his walks Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows Leonine, frosty with the breath of time, And listened to the crooning of the wind In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not changed. It was one of the oldest forms of present life, better fitted to survive than the breed of Plato, Shakespere, or Washington. Its insect kind was the most dangerous enemy man had: the only form of life he had not conquered, and would be crooning cradle-songs when humanity, perhaps through its agency, or perhaps through the sun growing cold, had passed from the earth. Not impossibly, insects would render extinct all other beings, and then the cockroach could ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... out his arms toward the president of the court, "You will let me go to her, senor? Your Mercy will let me go to her?" He murmured her name over and over, "Maria de la Luz! Maria—Luzita mia!" until the words became a kind of crooning. Then he would break forth again, entreating, commanding, "Your Mercy will let me see her? Senor, you will let ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the head, like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, both along the Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim doorways with their spindles, or crooning together in by-corners, they are like a population of Witches—except that they certainly are not to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold wine, and hung out ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of the Wick folk. She told him island stories about gentle fairies and good-humoured elves who lived in a green windy country by summer seas, and her air would be wistful as if she thought of her lost home. And she sang him to sleep with crooning songs which had the sweetness of the west wind in them. But her maids were a rougher stock, and they stuck to the Wicking lullaby which ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... they're tuning Has the sweet and sleepy crooning That the mother hums the baby at her breast, Till the world forgets its sorrow And the cares that haunt the morrow, And is sinking, hushed and happy, to its rest Sometimes bubbling o'er with gladness, Sometimes soft and fall of ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was drinking. It would dash a few paces into the stream and then look back to see if its mother approved. Evidently she did not, for she would stop her drinking and call the fawn back to her side with a soft, crooning noise. Suddenly she raised her head, the long ears shot up, and she seemed to sniff the air. She waded through the deeper water to get round a rocky bluff which ran out into the creek. Then she turned and called the little one. The fawn waded until the water reached its knees, then stopped ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... on the river-bank and gave myself up to the gracious influences that stole in upon, me from trees and air and grass and the flowing river. The Sabbath feeling began to grow upon me, as the pines behind and the river in front sang to each other soft, crooning songs. As I lay and listened to the solemn music of the great, swaying pines and the soft, full melody of the big river, my heart went back to my boyhood days when I used to see the people gather in the woods for the "Communion." There was the same soothing quiet over all, the ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... beyond, was absolutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever blest my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water! The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody.... We shall appreciate him better as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced. Henceforth, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... snuggled there even the very first time Talithie put her in the crib! Rarely did the child whimper, but this night small Margie was fretful. Talithie gathered her up and came back to the hearth crooning softly as she jolted to and fro in a straight chair. The Tipton household, like most in Crockett's Hollow, owned no such luxury as a rocker. But for all the crooning and jolting small Margie fretted, rubbed her small fists into her eyes, and drew ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... cottage back on the green hill, could not reach her in this unguessed retreat. With a sigh of unutterable content she made her way back into the extreme stern of the bateau, lugging the tempestuous basket with her. Sitting down flat, she took the basket in her lap and loosened the cover, crooning softly as she did so. Instantly a whiskered, brown snub-nose, sniffing and twitching with interrogation, appeared at the edge. A round brown head, with little round ears and fearless bright dark eyes, immediately popped over the edge. With ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Randolph was lying on his back on the floor of the car with his arm over his eyes. The rain fell endlessly, rattling on the roof of the car, dancing silver in the coffee-coloured puddles of the road. Their boredom fell into the rhythm of crooning self-pity ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... and the crooning stillness set in broken only by the many sounds of the night, we would sit huddled together by the fire. It was dread for him she felt, not for herself. And in both our minds rose red images of hideous foes skulking behind his brave form as he trod the forest floor. Polly Ann ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... awaken him at dawn by singing mass down on the beach or by climbing up the hill to fling stones at the door of the tower, the hermit rested on his mattress until late in the morning, listening to the music of the sea, the great crooning mother; watching the mysterious light, a mixture of golden sun and blue waters filtering through the cracks and trembling on the white walls; hearing the gulls scream outside, as they passed before the windows in joyous flight, flinging ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his female passengers by ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... more enchanting existed." But enough of subjective fancies. This study contains much beauty, and every bar rules over a little harmonic kingdom of its own. It is so lovely that not even the Brahms' distortion in double notes or the version in octaves can dull its magnetic crooning. At times so delicate is its design that it recalls the faint fantastic tracery made by frost on glass. In all instances save one it is written as four unbroken quarter triplets in the bar—right hand. Not so Riemann. He has views ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... game of the Maynards. Father Maynard had a knack of turning off verses, and they usually sang them to some well-known air, or perhaps made up a little crooning tune of their own. ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... the Upper Thames, which men may see from these hills. He looked at it with a mixture of curiosity, of memory, and of desire which was very interesting but also a little pathetic to watch. And as he looked at it he went on crooning his little song until he saw me, when with great courtesy he ceased and asked me in the English language whether I ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Tones of penitence and pain, Moanings of the Tropic sea; Low and tender in the cell Where a captive sits in chains, Crooning ditties treasured well From his Afric's torrid plains. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... he cried contritely, and in an instant his strong arms closed about the huddled figure, and he held her fast, crooning softly in her ear as a mother might over her babe, until at length the convulsive gasps eased, grew less ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... could hear Mhor, who always woke early, busy at some game—possibly wigwams with the blankets and sheets—already the chamber-maid had complained of finding the sheets knotted round the bed-posts. He was singing a song to himself as he played. Jean could hear his voice crooning. The sound filled her with an immense tenderness. Little Mhor with his naughtiness and his endearing ways! And beloved Jock with his gruff voice and surprised blue eyes, so tender hearted, so easily affronted. And David—the dear companion of her childhood who had shared with her all the pleasures ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... length mustered faith, and strength, and courage to thrust ourselves past a bundle of withered twigs, which served Janet as a door in summer, and as a door-protector in the blasts of winter. Janet was as usual at her wheel, and crooning some ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... It was a comfort and relief to pass from the funeral gloom to the little pink-ruffled chamber among the cherry-trees, where the birds were singing and the summer breezes blowing, and the pretty Kathleen was crooning her Irish songs, and invoking the holy virgin and all the saints to ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the effort of their wild exertions; their befeathered heads are rendered still more hideous by the lurid blending of conflicting lights. Thirty creatures, hardly recognizable as human beings, dance to the accompaniment of a strange crooning of the women onlookers; to the beating of sad-toned drums, and the harsh scraping of stringed instruments. But the dance is marked by a distinct time. It has unmistakable features and figures, and it proceeds to its natural finish which leaves the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... dear old darkey, In a cabin far away, Down in the sunny Southland, Where sunbeams dance and play. Yet oft in dreams I hear her crooning, Crooning soft and low: 'Sleep on, baby boy, The ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Christmas come again! Day gone beyond the last waving pines in a cold flush of red and gold: Christmas Eve here at last. Pattie Batch's soft arms were still wanting; there were a thousand kisses waiting on her tender lips for giving; her voice was all attuned to crooning sweetest lullabys; but her heart was empty—save for a child of mist and wishes. It was dark, now; but though the wind was still rollicking down there was no snow blowing, and the shy stars were winking wide-eyed ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, had ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... the creeper bursting into buds on the wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses and the low sweet crooning of baby voices—felt a tiny greedy hand upon her breast, was bewildered with a sudden overwhelming rush of mother-longing ... young, young? Oh, God, she was young, and in the springtime with its stirring sap, its call ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy biddies ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he was for a short space of time. But all was silent save for the maid crooning the hymn, and the occasional inquiring bark of the dog on the next place, who probably got a strange scent coming down the wind. As there was nothing more to be hoped for there, he shifted his position to ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... his own death was not far off. It took place on the eleventh day of the fourth month in the same year, B.C. 479 [1]. Early one morning, we are told, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by his door, crooning over,— 'The great mountain must crumble; The strong beam must break; And the wise man wither away like a plant.' After a little, he entered the house and sat down opposite the door. Tsze-kung had heard his words, and said to himself, 'If the great ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... bringing the children in, nurse became very cross indeed. Baby had been somewhat troublesome all the forenoon. Auntie Alice had lately got into the habit of taking him of a morning, walking him about in her arms, crooning sweet nothings over him in her soothing voice. He was old enough to miss her, and to-day was not satisfied at being put off with only nurse. He had, besides, a new tooth coming—a tiny pearly thing, peeping like a speck ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... and the man enters and closes it behind him. Each night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his arms; and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it close against his breast, kissing it and crooning to it, like a mother to her ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... gray mare Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind and rain and fire; Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet, While glow'ring round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... partnership in the care of the mill, Abel hastened to the outer door. As he passed the inner one, leading into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep. As Abel went out, she was ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... roses, in and away again, like a happy thought. Nothing else was stirring; not a single bird was to be seen or heard, except that now and then came a coo of the wood-pigeons among the beech-trees—a low, tender voice—reminding one of a mother's crooning over a cradled child; or of two true lovers standing clasped heart to heart, in the first embrace, which finds not, and needs not, a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... said in a kind of dreadful crooning whisper. "You calm down now. You younger fellows—you don't look at things the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. People trapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start losing the ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... break out and sing. All the world yearned one way; the stars leaned out of their courses and looked, not at him, but south; the north wind went by him, crooning, hurrying, and the moon sailed southward past the ragged clouds. All his soul went out with them, and his body sickened ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... that not so much as a rumor of the person Mudlow had reached me. My friend expressed surprise. It was now that the black boy Tom came up with the desired hat. Tom made his approach with a queer backward and forward shuffle, crooning to himself ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... began while I was in the City. I learnt afterwards that Marjorie (my wife) was crooning to her needles the unmetrical jumper lullaby, "Six purl, eight plain; then the same all over again." Anyhow she was knitting, when she suddenly found herself looking into the wistful eyes of a tortoiseshell cat ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... every golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building together, she with her hen-like crooning, he ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... thrown. Chaska hold him." The bright-eyed boy from the mountain top—yes, the same—came forward and, holding the pony's head, began crooning a little song. The pony rubbed his nose against him, recovered his calm, and thanks to Hartigan's help—for he had volunteered eagerly to lend a hand—the operation progressed without mishap. There were, however, one or two little tussles, in which the great blanket ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... louder the demons yelled for their pale-faced prey—but I scorned death's pangs, For I deemed it a doom that was half delight to die by the hand of LOBELIA BANGS! Then she whispered low in her dulcet tones, like the crooning coo of a cushat dove! (At the top of her voice). "Forgive me, CLEM, but I could not bear any squaw to torture my own true love!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... itself forth from the throat of thrush and blackbird. Through the whole land between the four seas benediction is everywhere; blue-bells and the rosy fingers of heath deck the mountain-tops, where the grouse are crooning to each other among the whins; down the hillsides into every valley pour gladness and greenness and song; there are flowers everywhere, even to the very verge of the whispering sea. There, among the gray bent-spikes and brackens on the sandhills, primroses weave their yellow wreaths; and little ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Father—one great family; For glimpses of the greater in the less; For touch of Thee in wife and child and friend; For noble self-denying motherhood; For saintly maiden lives of rare perfume; For little pattering feet and crooning songs; For children's laughter, and sweet wells of truth; For sweet child-faces and the sweet wise tongues; For childhood's faith that lifts us near to Thee And bows us with our own disparity; For childhood's sweet unconscious beauty sleep; For all that childhood ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... nursery many a crooning Indian lullaby is sung to the babies in their swinging white cradles; but in the Taraha nursery we sing sweet old hymns, in Tamil and English, and then all sensible people are supposed to go to sleep. But one evening after the singing, two little ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... well as the vast plain that stretches out from river to river. And it must suggest the toiler at his task, the employer at his desk, the man of leisure in his home, the voyager on the ocean, the soldier in the ranks, the child at his lessons, and the mother crooning her baby to sleep. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell; Tho' rude an' rough— Yet crooning to a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... plane is this northernmost symphony, with a crooning note almost of savage, and sudden, fitful bursts from languorous to fiery mood. The harmony, the turn of tune have a national quality, delicious and original, though the Oriental tinge appears, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... same singing woman Sat crooning in her need At the time of the winter weather; Friendless, fireless, She sang this song: "Life, thou'rt too long!" And there was ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... weave, crooning the mystic weaving-song meanwhile, so that the magic of its words might sink into every part of the Cloak, and make its power certain. He feared not to weave it under the eyes of him who should receive it, for he knew well that ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... lights gleamed only in upper windows of apartments, where sick sufferers tossed, or tender mothers sang soft lullabys to restless babies crooning in their cribs. Now and then a sudden gust of wind shook the yellow berries from the china trees, that bordered the pavements, and very soon the moonshine faded, then flashed fitfully, and finally vanished, as the blackening cloud swept over the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of crooning cries, She freed the aching limbs from pain, And lulled the eyes to sleep again With sweetness of her lullabies. Love mingled with her tender voice In tones that made the heart rejoice, And Heaven's music seemed to ring In songs that ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... peculiar fashion, entered, and appeared at once in the lighted room, of which we had a view. Gazing through the window we were surprised to find that the only person within save Andrew, was a young woman, who, crouching over a smouldering fire, was crooning a lullaby while she attended to a ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... to mutter as he turned back to the table, where he again dumped the contents of the money-pouch, running his fingers through the heap of shining metal; piling the coins into little towers; counting, recounting, and fondling the wealth the while he muttered on and on in a crooning undertone. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... little ones, and they were cosily 'tucked in,' then came 'father's turn,' which consisted of his sitting by their bedside—Owen and Geoffrey on one hand, and little queen Phyllis, maidenlike in solitary cot, on the other—and crooning to them a little evening song. In the dark, too, I should say, for it was one of his wise provisions that they should be saved from ever fearing that; and that, whenever they awoke to find it round them in the middle ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the floating countenance wasn't alarming enough, the ruby lips began to move. Monica's sweet-sultry voice, like the first drippings from a jar of honey, overcame the city sounds, and began crooning the syrupy strains of Love Me Alone. Which happened, by no coincidence, to be the title and theme ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... the Indians who had led us from the fort. Lifting the tent-flap, we found ourselves inside. A withered creature with snaky, tangled hair, toothless gums, eyes that burned like embers, and a haunched, shrivelled figure, stood gesticulating and crooning over a low monotone in the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Drusilla had found the Captain. Or, rather, he had found her. He had come upon her one rainy afternoon, and had not recognized her in her muddy uniform, with a strap under her chin. Then all at once he had heard her voice, crooning a song to a badly wounded boy whose head lay in ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... flat, music made part of every day's programme. Pixie, seated on the hearthrug, would sing Irish ballads in a voice of crooning sweetness, she and Pat would join in duets, occasionally Stephen was persuaded to join in a trio, and presently, as the performers became "worked up" to their task, they would recall one by one performances ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... raven, nevermore!" That sombre sentence haunted him. He tried to close his ears against it, but to no purpose. It crept up from some inward lurking place in his being, crooning a hundred cadences in spite of all that he could do to change the order of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... alone, produced for him unexpected and sometimes unpalatable dainties, of which he forced himself to eat. And one day, when he was forward, he was surprised to feel a caressing hand run down his shoulder, and to hear the voice of Sally Day crooning in his ear: "You gootch man!" He turned, and, choking down a sob, shook hands with the negrito. They were kindly, cheery, childish souls. Upon the Sunday each brought forth his separate Bible—for they were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleasing, wherefore she remembered them less, for it was always her habit to banish a disagreeable thought if she could. One day she went into the garden with her spade and an old tin biscuit-box. She put the box on the ground beside her, with the lid off, and began to dig. By-and-by the kitten came crooning and sidling up to her, and hopped into the box. Beth instantly put on the lid, and the kitten was a corpse which must be buried. She hurriedly dug its grave, put in the box, and covered it up with earth. Just as she had finished, a gruff voice exclaimed: "What are ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... face downwards across the body of his friend, and was crooning into his ear the great chorus from the third act of Helen in Leuce. He said that nobody but Spinky understood it. And Spinky couldn't understand it if ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... 'oman," Aunt Viney, a motherly soul of ample proportions, was accounted the best all-round nurse of the neighborhood. She was never happier than when bustling about in a service like the present; and within five minutes Sabella was nestled in the snowy centre of a huge bed, with Aunt Viney crooning over her like a brooding tenderness, and rapidly restoring the color to the child's ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... on his birthday! Sitting there in the fire-lit nursery, her heart sent out waves of love and sympathy to him across the distance and the twilight. On the rug at her feet Lucy rocked in her little chair, crooning to her doll with the beginnings of the mother instinct already softening her voice, and in the adjoining room Jenny lay asleep in her crib while the faithful Marthy watched by her side. Beyond the window a fine icy rain had begun to fall, and down ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... tried me with his supremest test. He gave me a heritage from the Old World, hate and vengeance and blood, and said, "Cast it all into my Crucible." And I said, "Even thy Crucible cannot melt this hate, cannot drink up this blood." And so I sat crooning over the dead past, gloating over the old blood-stains—I, the apostle of America, the prophet of the God of our children. Oh—how my music mocked me! And you—so fearless, so high above fate—how you ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... enjoyment. Under the spell of the music he relaxed, pushed out the footrest of the chair, and lay back at ease, smoking dreamily. The cigar finished and his hands at rest, his eyes closed of themselves. The music, now a crooning lullaby, grew softer and slower, until his deep and regular breathing showed that he was sound asleep. She stopped playing and sat watching him intently, her violin in readiness to play again, if he should show the least sign of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... old, almost supernaturally old, she thought to herself. It was very strangely adorned with red paint, which imparted to the eyes a ghastly pale appearance in the midst of the swarthy skin. A wiry grey beard covered the lower part of the face, and into this he was crooning a tuneless and wholly unintelligible song, while he squatted on the ground in front of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the beating upon iron. Thus you were to hammer;—Boys round—Old Clem! With a thump and a sound—Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout—Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire—Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem! One day I was crooning this ditty as I pushed Miss Havisham about. It happened to catch her fancy and she took it up in a low brooding voice. After that it became customary with us to sing it as we moved about, and often Estella joined in, though the whole strain was so subdued that it made less noise in the grim ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to me so sweet and low, These dreams I fain would keep— Then softly crooning, fly away, When ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... I was eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, and then threw more, getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each time; at last she actually took a piece from my hand. She did not ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the path up along the river, that lay half asleep and crooning drowsily to the little clouds that were mirrored upon its tranquil breast. Tiny blue pools among the rushes at the bend in the stream gave back glints of sapphire and turquoise, with now and then a glimmer of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... was bathing the white face of the contractor. Tressa, searching Helen's eyes for hope, saw it vanish in those tears. With a crooning cry she sank beside the couch and lifted her ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... dawn, but in his pride and delight he refused to touch a mouthful until the job was finished. Several times we urged him to stop long enough for even a bite. He steadily declined, and whetted his knife, his eyes gleaming with delight, his lips crooning one of his weird Monumwezi songs. At eleven o'clock the task was done. Then I presented Memba Sasa with a tall mug of coffee and lots of sugar. He ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... poor creature who has sought refuge with me from her persecutors," said Beniah, turning to the prince, while the old woman fell to crooning a wild song in a low voice, accompanying the music—if such it may be called—by a swaying motion of her body ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... leg of Betsy, the lost rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery, from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth the maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and went on his way crooning a road song of his brethren that no doll that has been brought up to the sheltered life should hear. Well for Betsy that she had no ears. And well that she had no eyes save unseeing circles of black; for the faces of Fuzzy and the Scotch terrier were those ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... but not so early that Vanna was not in her shop-door sewing and crooning to the baby on her lap. She heard his step the moment he rounded the bottom corner of the street, blushed prettily from neck to temples, caught up the child, and went out to meet her lord. Standing before ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... knock at the bedroom door, run down the steps to the queer little dressing-room where the roof nearly came on your head, and down more steps again to the sitting-room. Then when the door was shut, and she was crooning over the fire with her friend, she was entirely happy. The tiny room was built on the edge of the terrace, the ground fell rapidly below it, and the west window commanded a broad expanse of tame arable country, of square fields and hedges, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its pretty pillows told of days when a convalescent might look in comfort at the garden beneath; the counterpane, with its old-fashioned rose pattern, the little white tidies on the back of each chair, and Mandy crooning beside the window, all helped to ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... asleep, she began singing, in a monotonous, high voice, and took her way out of doors. She always sang at moments when she purposed leaping the bounds of domestic custom. Even Eben had learned that, dull as he was. If he heard that guilty crooning from the buttery, he knew she might be breaking extra eggs, or using more sugar ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... humble apartment in the village of Cawsand Bay an aged man stood, supported by an elderly man, at a window, gazing seaward with an expression of intense expectation, while a very aged woman sat crooning over the fire, holding the hand of a fair girl just verging ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... melting away like smoke wreaths! Ah! how sweet were those long, idle days full of dreams, when the noise of the waterfall dashing over the rocks lulled the senses like some merry song, or a nurse's tender, crooning lullaby. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the answer. "I guess 'twas all the talking I done last night that brung 'em into my head. I picked 'em up from that fellow I was telling you about. He'd start crooning 'em whenever he looked at the stars to find out ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown—a cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic figures. She surveyed it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lower as he checked his horse's pace to a canter, hushing the beat of its feet upon the soft sand as he rode on, seeing no one stirring, and at last, in the deepest despair, feeling as if he dare go no farther. But just at that moment a low crooning sound fell upon his ear, and the reaction was so sudden and so great that Dyke nearly shouted aloud as he pressed on to the door, feeling now that he had been letting his imagination run riot, and that ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... funny.' I had heard already of domestic differences. People were saying that Amy Foster was beginning to find out what sort of man she had married. He looked upon the sea with indifferent, unseeing eyes. His wife had snatched the child out of his arms one day as he sat on the doorstep crooning to it a song such as the mothers sing to babies in his mountains. She seemed to think he was doing it some harm. Women are funny. And she had objected to him praying aloud in the evening. Why? He expected the boy to ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... suppose some of Dr. Sandford's meditations and mine came near together. I do not know how time went; but then, the one to break silence was the one I had thought might never speak again. Suddenly she began in a low sort of crooning voice, saying over and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Bles and Zora dreamed, the dense black land sensed the cry and heard the bound of answering life within the vast dark breast. All that dark earth heaved in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... curiosity in the form of an altogether different mollusc which is commonly known as the "bleeding-tooth shell," the gory stains about the base of the tooth being highly significant. The local example of the whimsicality of Nature owes its excellence to absolute purity. No fond mother crooning to her first-born ever looked on budding teeth more delightful in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... they said. And "Good luck, Harry," they cried. And just before the bugles sounded all ashore I heard a few of them crooning an old Scots song: ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Chaldea's wink could convey volumes. At all events, Lambert and his companion were unmolested, and arrived in due course before the royal palace. A croaking voice announced that the queen was inside her Arab tent, and she was crooning some Romany song. Chaldea did not open her mouth, but simply snapped her fingers twice or thrice rapidly. The woman within must have had marvellously sharp ears, for she immediately stopped her incantation—the songs ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... it was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Far ahead hurried the others, driven to haste by low rumbles of thunder and the warning splashes of raindrops. The drizzle of the gray, lowering afternoon had ceased, but in its place came ominous skies and crooning winds. Back on the circus lot men were working frantically to complete the task of loading before the storm broke over them. Everywhere people were scurrying to shelter. David and Christine loitered on the way, with delicious ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... not rest, so rose. The air Was dark and sharp; the roosted birds Cheep'd, 'Here am I, Sweet; are you there?' On Avon's misty flats the herds Expected, comfortless, the day, Which slowly fired the clouds above; The cock scream'd, somewhere far away; In sleep the matrimonial dove Was crooning; no wind waked the wood, Nor moved the midnight river-damps, Nor thrill'd the poplar; quiet stood The chestnut with its thousand lamps; The moon shone yet, but weak and drear, And seem'd to watch, with bated breath, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... the woman in a crooning voice, somewhat hoarse from sleep. "Why, I was waiting for you and waiting, and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil' precious!" She drew him ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... chorus of crickets sang joyously in the short brown grass about the sunflowers. The cottonwoods along the river course gleamed like alabaster in the white night-splendor, and the prairie breeze sang its low crooning song of evening as it flowed gently over the land. "How beautiful the world is," Virginia said, as she caught the full radiance of the ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... gazed for a moment upon her son; then dropping upon her knees beside the bed, she slipped one arm underneath the pillows, and gently drew the wounded head upon her own breast, tenderly kissing the brow and cheeks; then taking his hand within her own, she stroked and caressed it, meanwhile crooning over him in low, murmuring tones, as though he ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... and they floated through waves as rosy as the rosy sky. A fresh wind filled the sail, and ruffled Gulliver's white breast as he sat on the mast-head crooning a cheery song to himself. Dan held the tiller, and Davy lay at his feet, with Nep bolt upright beside him; but the happiest face of all was Moppet's. Kneeling at the bow, she leaned forward, with her lips apart, her fuzzy ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and lay your listening ear Against the bare and branchless wood. Can you not hear it crooning clear, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... the attic. The baby lay asleep on the bed, and Tim, perched on his window seat, was crooning over ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Pani was crooning over a handful of fire. The May sunshine had not penetrated all the houses, and her old blood had lost ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as the Pipes ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... little bow, and hurried away without so much as one look behind him. But as he passed the next house, and heard a voice near some upper window crooning a lullaby, he smiled to himself, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... rose—a lovely azure crescent over the houses, and its faint mild rays were like a benediction upon us. Then we had turned to the left, and were in the Bois de Boulogne. We stopped the carriage under the trees, which met overhead; the delicatest breeze stirred the branches to a crooning murmur. All around was solitude and a sort of hushed expectation. Suddenly Rosa put her hand into mine, and with a simultaneous impulse we got out of the carriage and strolled along ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... trying To lull it asleep—balow! balow! And while she is singing, the snowflakes are winging And whirling in eddies all through, all through. I listed the rening and wondered the meaning: Was it the tale of her woe, her woe— A truthful crooning or a maniac mooning— All in the forest ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... stockings on, to save them from shrinking; and now she is reading to us from the old, red copy of Hazlitt's "British Poets," by the register, upon a winter night. Now she is a popular writer, incredulous of her first success, with her future flashing before her; and now she is a tired, tender mother, crooning to a sick child, while the MS. lies unprinted on the table, and the publishers are wishing their professor's wife were a free woman, childless and solitary, able to send copy as fast as it is wanted. The struggle killed her, but she ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... fabric blocking up the entire back garden. Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a full-grown sperm whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass, and further evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but pathetic crooning, as of an immature chimaera booming in the void. The truth flashed upon me in a moment. The Second Crinoline had fallen in ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... cloud on her wings that close And open slow, As a butterfly's move, on the breast of a rose Rocked to and fro By a crooning wind. ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... was quite mad. She whispered to me, but her dialect was so thick that I could follow only a few words, and would just as soon not have heard those few. An older chak grunted for silence and she subsided, swaying and crooning. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... earth as only the muskrat had done in the forgotten days of peace. Strong, unafraid men came from the ends of the world to die by its side. And it would have gladly sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30 with which mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had once rocked them to sleep—only now the sound of heavy firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Elvira, "there's one person out there that isn't hardened and degraded." She looked with reverent eyes at Angel, who was walking at the head of the foremost horse, crooning a psalm; "and, as for me, I still feel myself quite soft, almost pulpy, and on ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... are in full voice; their notes form a very pleasing addition to the avian chorus. Those magpie-robins that have not brought nesting operations to a close are singing vigorously. The king-crows are feeding their young ones in the greenwood tree, and crooning softly to them pitchu-wee. At the jhils the various waterfowl are nesting and each one proclaims the fact by its allotted call. Much strange music emanates from the well-filled tank; the indescribable cries of the purple coots, the curious "fixed bayonets" of the cotton teal and the weird ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... the studio was slightly ajar, and the sound of a singularly sweet voice crooning out a lullaby was plainly audible. Malcolm, who was about to knock, changed his mind and peeped in through the aperture; then he beckoned to Anna to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stolidly waiting. Mrs. Bagley was going to get no more information from him until she read that letter, and James was prepared to sit it out until she did. It placed Mrs. Bagley in the awkward position of having to decide what to do next. Then the muffled sound of little-girl crooning came from the distant room. That brought the realization that as odd as this household was, it was a home. Mrs. Bagley delayed no further. She opened the letter ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... wonder that they loved this amazing person who tugged their hearts this way and that with ail the dear old songs that those they'd loved best had once sung to them? Janet's crooning Scotch songs, Molly's wistful Irish ballads, Margot's naughty French and Marthy's sentimental loves, Grandy's English favorites too, it seemed as though she could never give them enough of them—ten minutes! They'd have kept her an hour if they could! She talked, she hummed, she played her lute—but ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... gentleman, we've waited for ye. We couldn't go till we'd seen ye; for we've something to tell ye. Come quietly this way, and say not a word, or the spell's broken—come, young gentleman; come, young gentleman;" and the old man went on crooning the words to himself as he led the way with tottering steps round the hedge, and discovered a sort of tent in which sat, with her face half shrouded in a shawl, an old woman who wagged her head incessantly ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... star; the great white river, the milky way, was illumining the arch of heaven. She thought of Him who created the gleaming worlds. Beneath her window the fireflies were lighting their lamps, and living their little lives. She could hear the swallows crooning in ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... breeze blew constantly from the dark-blue depths of the defile, and caused the stiff, upright larches on the knoll behind the barraque to rustle their boughs, and distilled from the rank soil the voluptuous scents of ace-rose and pitch-pine, and evoked in the trees' quiet gloom a soft, crooning, somnolent lullaby. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the woman. The blooming, rosy, graceful girl stood at the side of the pale, tear-eyed woman, and was quietly saying something to her; the latter was nodding her head and crooning unnecessary, belated words. Trirodov turned ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... to the gate to meet him, and gave him her hand in greeting, without a word—or the need of one—from either. Then together they set forth over the sun-flecked pavement, the maples swishing above them, heavier branches crooning in the strong breeze, under a sky like a Della Robbia background. And up against the glorious blue of it, some laughing, invisible god was blowing small, rounded clouds of pure cotton, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... about that!" breathlessly murmured Marion in her crooning voice. "A lake like that on top of a mountain—in weather like this, doesn't it sound like heaven?" She began to pick the pineapple out of her fruit salad, dabbing each morsel in the tiny mound ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... frosty, moonlight night—the sky was without a cloud, and the stars all blinking that it would delight anybody's heart to look at them, when Jack was crassing a bog that lay a few fields beyant his own cabin. He was just crooning the 'Humors of Glynn' to himself and thinking that it was a very hard case that he couldn't save anything at all, at all, to help him to the wife, when, on coming down a bank in the middle of the bog, he saw a dark-looking man leaning ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... her hitherto. The little school-teacher had turned shy again and said never a word, but, as he opened the gate to let her pass through, she saw the old, old telltale look in his sombre eyes. Her mother was crooning in ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... Matkah; "there's going to be now." And she sang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... this outburst, but they did not listen. They were absorbed in something else already, for the movements of the reeds were fascinating. They began to imitate them, swaying their heads and bodies to and fro in time, and crooning to themselves in an attempt to copy the sound made by the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... of the river—the Nile, Mother of Egypt, crooning to her disordered spirit, which kept her on her feet. Five miles, four miles, three miles, two, and then—she never quite remembered how she came to the hut where she was born. Two miles—two hours of incredible agony, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
