"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Isn't the wind nice? Isn't the sun nice? Isn't everything nice? Let us both chirp and hop and twitter. Come on! Come on!" ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his very best, and as the song was borne along on the bright morning air, and then died away, he became aware of a tender little note, a faint twitter which came from a branch immediately beneath him. He looked down, and, lo and behold, there, half concealed by spreading boughs, was a bird like himself, another Blackbird! This stranger Blackbird was very attractive-looking, but its plumage was not quite ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... sounded outside the door. There was a pause; a hurried whispering of women's voices; the twitter of a nervous laugh, and then the door was pushed softly opens and the girl to whom the one-eyed Hans had given the necklace of blue and white beads with the filigree cross hanging from it, peeped uncertainly into the room. Behind ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... taste more delicious to the rapidly invigorating boy, never was water fresher, sweeter, and cooler than that of which he partook. Then a good long hour's rest was taken as they all lay about listening to the hum of insects, the whistle, twitter, and shrieking of birds; and beneath it all, as it seemed, came the softened bass ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... tongue, or you'll find to your smart From rhyming in cars, you may swing in a cart. You found out my rebus with very much modesty; But thanks to the lady; I'm sure she's too good to ye: Till she lent you her help, you were in a fine twitter; You hit it, you say;—you're a delicate hitter. How could you forget so ungratefully a lass, And if you be my Phoebus, pray who was your Pallas? As for your new rebus, or riddle, or crux, I will either explain, or repay it by trucks; Though your lords, and your dogs, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... on the surface of the water affords the caddis worm no pleasure. It prefers to twitter in one spot, to remain stationary in flotillas. When the time comes to return to the quiet of the mud bed at the bottom, the animal, having had enough of the sun, draws itself wholly into its sheath ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... state is in general to exchange a prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities; but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter, encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they had passed through with their eyes ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... with brown grasses and patches of mallow or green rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft intermittent boom of ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... twitter, 'course, then—the whole town. He'd got another prize—so the paper said—an' there was a paragraph praisin' up some pictures of his in the magazine. He was our Jimmy, an' we was proud of him, yet we couldn't help wonderin' ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They twitter and run into the surf and back again, and I am one of them! I must be, for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen! Will the Speaker turn me ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... The only sound now came from a robin, hunting about the turf and now and then breaking out into an impatient twitter. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The mass of shifting gold and blue and crimson and pale purple lost little by little its brilliant splendor, and slowly over land and sky soft twilight fell, and only here and there was heard the song and twitter of birds as they made ready ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... whole pleasurableness of warm air, clear moist sky, the surprise of the shimmer of pale green, of the yellowing blossom on tree tops, the first flicker of faint shadow where all has been uniform, colourless, shadeless; the replacing of the long silence by the endless twitter and trill of birds, endless in its way as is the sea, twitter and trill on every side, depths and depths of it, of every degree of distance and faintness, a sea of bird song; and along with this the sense of infinite renovation to all the earth and to man's own heart. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... moult twice during the year, and those of the most brilliant colours exchange their gaudy hues for a sober grey or brown. Several varieties sing beautifully; the swallow also sings, although in Europe I have never heard it attempt more than its well-known twitter. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress ! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. Yet I am highly flattered by her invitation, and highly delighted in the prospect of being ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... that spring-tide brightness which aroused new hopes and a revived interest in the souls of men. The crocus of the glen, the anemone of the prairie, the cress of the sheltered waters, the hum of the first insect, the twitter from the mossy nest, the murmur of forest streams, were all so many types ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... something about the well-sweep, the orchard, the gardens, that spoke of neglect and desolation, and Peggy felt a chill go through her as she noted no stir of life about the place. From the open doors of the barn came no movement of restless horse, or low of cattle. Not a twitter nor cheep from the hen-house broke the quiet that brooded over everything. Though it was still early twilight the wooden shutters were tightly closed, and had it not been for the light which streamed ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... May—the time, morning. Cuckoos, thrushes, blackbirds, and sparrows gave forth a perfect confusion of song and twitter. The road was spotted white with the fallen leaves of apple-blossoms, and the sparkling grey dew still lingered on the grass and flowers. Two swans floated into view in front of the women, and then crossed the water ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... nid-nodding to its gossips,—just as the peddler on his way through the village at home stirs all the women-folk to chattering about the latest news from the whole countryside. In the thicket beside us a chorus of feathered singers were all a-twitter, each trying to outdo his neighbour; but one saucy fellow piped the merriest tune of all, mingling in a delicious medley the sweetest notes of all the rest. Of a sudden, as I listened, there was ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... is quite a young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... have been Italy for the blue of the sky and the caressing warmth of the sun. They threw open the big window and in flooded the perfume of lilacs and the twitter of sparrows, which is the nearest to a bird song one can expect in New York. But after all, this was n't New York; nor Spain; nor even the inner woods; it was just Here. And Here is where the eyes of a man and a woman meet with ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nobler uses, and in opening the way for poetry which should be Italian in sentiment as well as in words. At the north of Italy the influence of the trouveres was felt in like manner. Everywhere the desire for expression was manifest. The spring had come, the young birds had begun to twitter, but no full song was yet heard. Love was the main theme of the poets, but it had few accents of sincerity; the common tone ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... rayther have a sparrow, Rayther hear a robin twitter; Tho' they may net be thi marrow, May net fly ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... the fruit, and Halfman showing them tricks of carving faces in October apples, when Tiffany skipped into the room a-twitter with excitement. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... there were plenty of both in warm weather in this dry country. When there was no wind, the silence of the nights was impressive, with no sound save the lapping of the water against the banks. Sometimes a bird in the trees above would start up with a twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound being magnified by the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... rises like a morn When waves at sunrise glitter, Or as in June the golden corn While birds above it twitter. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... a sweet bird, but I like the lark better. The nightingale is more artistic, but his song is melancholy, he is so sentimental! The lark has a mere twitter like my own song, I like the lark better. How beautiful is this summer night; How glorious is the moon; how fragrant are the roses in the garden! It is a most auspicious ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... accepted the position, and always addressed her as "Ma'am" afore the hands, though "Miss Blake" in private. And in fulness of time, he called her "Miss Mary." The first time he went so far as that, she came running to me all in a twitter; but I could see she liked it at heart. She got to trust him a lot, and though I warned her more than once, it weren't easy to say anything against a man like Battle—as steady as you please, never market-merry, and always ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Aunt Rhody", an odor—can plunge us deeper and swifter down to the buried places of our memory than any process of deliberate recollection. No robin sings against my window of a morning here—only the noisy sparrows twitter and quarrel, reminding me of the curb market. No lilac sheds its perfume on the still air. I am perforce reduced to peppermints. The taste of peppermints on my tongue, the pungent fragrance of them in my nostrils, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... lightweight acrobat Ahmet Ali had rolled aside, put palm to ground, sprung to his feet. His face was bloody, his right knee shook. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood from his eyes. There was a twitter from the Syrians. The wrestler lumbered forward again.... A little quake of fear came into Campbell's being. There was an impersonal doggedness about the wrestler from Aleppo's eyes, a sense of inevitability.... Shane's eyes shifted, right ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... he went, he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... very quiet in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when the hour arrived, and seated herself in a great twitter before the machine. She began bravely enough: "My dear father," and then she paused, but slowly went on till she had completed half a page of typewritten words. Miss Dorothy did not offer any suggestions, but sat at the other side of the room before her writing-table. ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... legs covered with feathers quite down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in their nests, in a pretty, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... water-cart, and I say to her the child is right, but should have said wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"—this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!" This was accelerated, for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like one! 10 Like an ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... discover what particular combination of Latin syllables scientists have bestowed upon this or that flitting atom in feathers. Before the student is out of bed, a new warbler-note will distract her; in the twilight some tiny bird will fly over her head with an unfamiliar twitter; each and every one will rouse her to eager desire to see it, to ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... about him was intensely still. Not even the twitter of a snow-bird marred its silence. For a long time Wabi sat as immovable as the log upon which he had seated himself, resting and listening. Such a day as this held a peculiar and unusual fascination for him. It was as if the whole ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Said Twitter, you talk very large, And do not seem to know Our little wings have not yet power Beyond these trees ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... tipped with yellow; wings with red tips to coverts, resembling sealing-wax. Sexes similar. Silent, gentle, courteous, elegant birds. Usually seen in large flocks feeding upon berries in the trees or perching on the branches, except at the nesting season. Voices resemble a soft, lisping twitter. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... lustrous polish is on all the leaves— The birds flit in and out with varied notes— The noisy swallows twitter 'neath the eaves— A partridge-whistle thro' the garden floats, While yonder gaudy peacock harshly cries, As red and gold flush all the ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Fancy's two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil with these ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... air you could hear men and women talking fifty or a hundred yards away, the cry or laugh of a child and the clear crowing of a cock, also the smaller aerial sounds of nature, the tinkling notes of tits and other birdlings in the trees, the twitter of swallows and martins, and the "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain." It was sweet and restful in that home-like place, and hard to leave it to go back to the front to face the furious blasts once ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... study, while cricket occupies the afternoon, till music and sunset fill the grassy stretches above Iffley, and the college eights flash past among cheering and splashing? Then there is supper in the cool halls, darkling, and half-lit up; and after supper talk, till the birds twitter in the elms, and the roofs and the chapel spire look unfamiliar in the blue of dawn. How long the days were then! almost like the days of childhood; how distinct is the impression all experience used to make! In later seasons Care is apt to ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped with grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its windows and doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trailing feathery outlines; the gentle flutter of wings and soothing twitter of swallows and jays around its open rafters, and the drifting shadows of a few circling crows above it; the drowsy song of bees on the wild mustard that half hid its walls with yellow bloom; the sound of faintly-trickling water ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... furniture, rugs on the floor, gauzy window curtains, drapery wardrobes, and even tiny stoves for cool mornings and evenings. They combined the comforts of a house with the open air and delightful freshness of a tent, where one might hear every bird twitter, and see the dancing leaf shadows in the moonlight. Over the front platform the canvas cover extended to form an awning, and a wire-gauze door, in addition to one of wood, made them airy or snug ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... sleep. Thousands of aching demons in his weary limbs promised him surcease if he would. Every stir in nature, each drowsy twitter of the birds, coaxed him to relax his watchfulness, but he resisted. Time seemed a paralytic as Carter waited the passing of the day. A score of times his head bent forward in weariness. He could feel pain pass from him like a sigh, only to be called ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... she has composed herself with a book in the library, and before the fire sits half lost in reading, half in wondering. Without, the early gloom of the short day is gathering, and the bare trees cast murk shadows all across the frostbitten lawns, and late birds twitter their good-night notes, and a few sleepy rooks caw coldly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... his head fell too far forward, he righted himself and rested his right elbow on his left fist. He puffed out the grey smoke and dozed alternately, spitting now and then into the middle of the room or shifting his hands. When the pipestem began to twitter like a young sparrow, he knocked the bowl a few times against the bench, emptied the ashes, and poked his finger down. Yawning, he got up and laid the pipe on ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... creak, creak, creak, Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick, This hangin' on mont' arter mont' Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the twitter,— I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt The peth an' sperit of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... childhood. About him were strange plants, strange flowers, strange trees, the music of strange birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky, mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the twitter of swallows and the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... night, hoping that his chirping might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night—as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal—by night he pervaded the Nesbit home like ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... asked Polly, who was in such a twitter looking at everything that she didn't know ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my name ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the clock was so distinct that it made an echo in the high hall; the morning sun streamed across the pavement, from the cloistered garden the chirping of a few sparrows and the sharper twitter of the house-swallow that had already nested under the eaves sounded very clearly through the ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in the tops ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... right, 'cordin' to Nate's opinion, but he didn't seem anxious to spread his wings. He was white, and them nerves of his was all in a twitter. If ever there was a scart critter, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... being found troublesome and being sent to bed early for the comfort of her elders;—the cruel necessity of straining her pretty eyes, for many long hours at a time, over grimy desks in gloomy school-rooms, though birds might twitter and bright winds flutter in the trees without;—the austere constrains and heavy drowsiness of warm churches, filled with the droning echoes of a voice preaching incomprehensible things;—the progressively augmenting weariness of lessons in deportment, in dancing, in music, in the impossible art ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... burning Californian sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, though accustomed ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... be patient with Lemuel as he put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the first I have seen this season) finds occasion to come this ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the only passion of a true artist. The music of Palestrina resembles the music of Rossini about as much as the twitter of the swallow resembles ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... of Arden Court. Visitors departed, leaving Mr. Granger's gamekeepers with a plethora of sovereigns and half-sovereigns in their corduroy pockets, and serious thoughts of the Holborough Savings Bank, and Mr. Granger's chief butler with views that soared as high as Consols. All the twitter and cheerful confusion of many voices in the rooms and corridors of the grand old house dwindled and died away, until Mr. Granger was left alone with his wife and daughter. He was not sorry to see his visitors ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... how that could be," she retorted. "I haven't seen even a bird in the grounds. I don't remember hearing a single twitter in the trees. The whole place appeared utterly deserted except for ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... there came to his office a suave gentleman in frock-coat, carrying with him a card which was inscribed "Ministry of Supplies." And the end of that conversation was that Bones, all a twitter of excitement, drove to a gloomy office in Whitehall, where he interviewed a most sacred public official, to whom members of the public were not admitted, perhaps, more ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. We do not think very highly ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... and grunting, because our hands were tied together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of the Selenites standing in ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... she never was weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and new; was he riding out to seek his fortune, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the public that the distinguished performer already mentioned, had kindly consented to act a principal part in the entertainment of the evening. No sooner was this announced than the whole city was in one hubbub of curiosity—one twitter of delight; and Mr. Cooper had so many friends who were all at once intent upon giving him their dollar at his benefit, that the house was crammed, and there was as great an overflow from every part of it as ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... times there is borne to the nostrils the faint, stifling scent of burning brush, indicating that land is being cleared by the forehanded, thrifty farmer for early planting. Often at such times, before a shower, may be distinctly heard the faintest twitter and "peep, peep" of young sparrows, the harsh "caw, caw" of the crow, and the song of the bobolink, poised on the swaying branch of a tall tree, the happiest bird of Spring; the dozy, drowsy hum of bees; the answering call of lusty young chanticleers, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... whole picture and prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the early twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... riot during the day, has blown itself out by evening, and the birds have gone to sleep with heads tucked under their wings, or settled with soft breasts over nestlings that twitter soft "good nights" to mother love. The dark shadows of evening steal the daylight, and canon and ravine lose their rugged outlines, blending into soft, shadowy browns and purples. The moon peeps over the hilltop, the stars come out one by one, the day is swallowed up in night, and the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... the Semitic races broke it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face began to stiffen ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... success, whatever it was, had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. His return to town reminded her painfully of that other ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the twitter o' the bluebird and the jay, And that sassy little critter jes' a-peckin' all the day; There' music in the "flicker," and there' music in the thrush, And there' music in the snicker o' the ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... of more populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs, bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... forbidding stones. Above them was a sky of pure, brilliant blue, and around them was the gray of the everlasting granite. Except for the sound of their own footsteps, the canyon was absolutely silent. There was no call of animals one to another, or twitter of birds, or whirr of feathered wings, or piping of insects. Now and then a slender, graceful lizard darted silently out of the sunshine to hide beneath a stone, and far behind them in the canyon the buzzards wheeled ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... out of the house quickly and without scandal. Not to let her know for a moment, for the blink and twitter of an eyelid, of her triumph. To eject her with ignominy, retaining one's own dignity in the meantime. Never to let her dream of an uneasiness that might have screamed, an anger that could have bitten and scratched and been happy in the primitive exercise. Was such ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... cheek," or with "Roses, their sharp spines being gone." The lighter poetry of Carew's day is all powdered with gold dust, like the court ladies' hair, and is crowned and diapered with roses, and heavy with fabulous scents from the Arabian phoenix's nest. Little Cupids flutter and twitter here and there among the boughs, as in that feast of Adonis which Ptolemy's sister gave in Alexandria, or as in Eisen's vignettes ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... sway like the nixies he loved. Their every motion seems informed with the perfect suavity and spontaneity of pure nature. They tinkle down the air like sunset bells, they float like clouds, they wave like flowers, they twitter like skylarks, they have in them something of the swiftness and the certainty of exquisite physical sensations. In such a transcript as Sir Theodore's all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles of beautiful, varied colour. There ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... house upon the hill In summer time strange voices fill; With ceaseless rustle of the leaves, And birds that twitter in the eaves, And all the vines entangled so The village lights ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... chose her on account of her name, and it is a piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. There is also a maid, but we don't know her name, so we call her Magnolia. I'm really writing all this rot to get myself into the "twitter-twitter" mood. One of the characters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state of babbling fatuity before I can write her lines ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... wicked of me, but I can't help it," she sobbed to herself, in the corner of the carriage. "That music sets me all in a twitter, and I should have looked nice in Fan's blue tarlatan, and I know I could behave as well as any one, and have lots of partners, though I 'm not in that set. Oh, just one good gallop with Mr. Sydney or Tom! No, Tom would n't ask me there, and I would n't ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... north on his work of redemption. At the bend in the river he found Tom Gresh sitting on the flat stone slab. The light was gleaming through the shrubbery of the little cottage, and the homey sounds of evening and the twitter of late-coming birds were in ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... began to twitter, and from far out at sea in the direction of Dunkirk there came ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing pall From some black ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... fell asleep under the grateful shade of the nooning tree. So deep was the slumber that settled over exhausted body and troubled spirit that the gathering clouds, the sudden darkness, the distant muttering of thunder, the frightened twitter of the birds, passed unnoticed. A heavy drop of rain pierced the thick foliage and fell on his face, but the storm within had been too fierce for him to heed the storm without. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... little bird with sapphire breast balanced a slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great silence ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of sense, they would know that the denial of the family tie is sure to weaken the marriage tie. One thing I know is that society has put motherhood out of fashion. It considers the nursery a place of punishment instead of a place of pleasure. Young Mrs. Wrathall was here yesterday all in a twitter of pleasure, because her husband is letting her take lessons ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race who sing so sweetly. And you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk—it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run—and that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at the open windows chirp and put their pretty little heads aside when they hear him coming; they know perfectly well who he is and what he brings, and their twitter shapes itself into a greeting. The old raven perched on the edge of the basket feels like a superior being, and wonders why other birds make such a fuss over a little green stuff, but that is only because he ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... century had sullenly rolled away, while at every point of the horizon they were seen massing themselves anew in portentous and ever accumulating strength. At any moment the faint and sickly sunshine in which poor exhausted Humanity was essaying a feeble twitter of hope as it plumed itself for a peaceful flight might be again obscured. To us of a remote posterity the momentary division of epochs seems hardly discernible. So rapidly did that fight of Demons which we call the Thirty Years' War tread on the heels of the forty years' ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after they had listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will be the ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... such is the superiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passion for popping at sparrows, and other Italian sports, (complimented by the title of La caccia,) prefers the dear article. When they have killed off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in the whole country, they go to the river ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... quickly. The horses of the Asiatics grew restive, flocks of birds flew into the garden, and occupied all the trees, with noisy twitter. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter About your cottage eaves! ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... sing of the immortal gods, of war and sacrifice, while the flame mounts to manhood's cheek, red as the fires of Troy: They twitter of lovies and dovies, of posies and goose-liver pie, while pretty men applaud and sentimental maids get moonsick. Cincinnatus no longer waits for the office to seek the man: He sells his brace of bullocks and buys a political boom. No more the Spartan mother gives her long ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... eastern sky. All nature was stirring, refreshed with the balmy dew and coolness of the night. Far up in the higher branches of the Weymouth pines, the wrens were awake, calling to each other with tentative twitter, and pluming themselves the while for another day of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... brilliant orange and black, whistling his warm rich notes, and seeming like a dash of southern sunshine amidst the blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate, or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation whenever she found some particularly choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, while she took ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have grown empty, one ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the readiness with which it adapts itself to a change in surroundings. In perching, they cling to the side of the chimney, using the spine-pointed tails for a support. They are most active early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when one may hear their rolling twitter as they course ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... morning had only enveloped the shades of night, when I banished sleep, and the hour being yet too early to leave my bed, I lay listening to the growls of Sailor, as he remonstrated with Jacko for coming too close to him; while Jacko, in a low, murmuring twitter, pointed out how scantily the straw was spread in the hutch, and how chilly felt the Northern air to him, a little Indian born ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... "Not a damned twitter; maybe she's fainted. I dunno, but that's ther way females do. What shall I do with ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish |
