"Clinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... here and there upon the sunshiny steps, the only clients at the thresholds of the professional gentlemen whose names figure on brass-plates on the doors. A stand of lazy carmen, a policeman or two with clinking boot-heels, a couple of moaning beggars leaning against the rails and calling upon the Lord, and a fellow with a toy and book stall, where the lives of St. Patrick, Robert Emmet, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... setting him free; but there had already been interference with the judgment of God. More personally material events relieved the black from responsibility. His quick ear caught the sound of troopers, the sharp notes of steel clinking; he had no mind to be picked up by the enemy's horse, and dismissing all other considerations he took to the woods and walked rapidly away. Late in the evening he crossed the North Anna with a train of wagons, as driver of ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... without a murmur, to earthly life, die to their own names even, that they may know nothing but their holy duties,—while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,—I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Sexuel, p. 137. Bloch (Beitraege, etc., vol. ii, p. 355) quotes some remarks of Kistemaecker's concerning the sound of women's garments and the way in which savages and sometimes civilized women cultivate this rustling and clinking. Gutzkow, in his Autobiography, said that the frou-frou of a woman's dress was the music of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... their music is mingled with the numberless noises of camp, the hum of voices, the laughter from the groups around the fires, the clatter of hoofs as some rider hurries to the General, the distant challenges of the sentries, the neighing of horses, the hoarse bellowing of the mules, and the clinking of the cavalry anvils. This, at last, is the romance of war. How soon will our ears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... night through and now had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune. Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music, oh'd, squealed, and danced, squatting in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... that, although I did not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen fire when I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in the afternoon. But long after that, and long after I had heard the clinking of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the resolution to go down stairs. After all, I remained up there, repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me that I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tongues leaped and dropped, and the smoke mountains rolled sullenly over the faint, obscured stars. They spoke little, aware for the first time of a great exhaustion, hearing strangely the sounds of a life that went on as if unchanged and uninterrupted—the clinking of china, the fitful cries of children sinking to sleep, the barking of dogs, a voice crooning a song, and laughter, low-voiced ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... was sliding down the long curve among the shadows, with the great walls of the canon towering infinitely above me, and with the black depth below. And in my sleep I made again the dreadful passage, and heard the clinking of the chain as it parted, and the rattle of it as it struck the rocks, and felt the grasp of Rayburn as he caught me, just as the bar was twitched out of my hands—and so woke to find Young shaking me, and to hear him say: "There's no earthly sense in ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... ruffled slightly in a pleasing fashion. They stirred slowly in the warm air from the window. Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds. The clinking noises came through the open window. He knew now that they meant the impact of sledge on drill. Some one was drilling somewhere. His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... at such a period of the London season his journey would most probably be a fruitless one. But as he approached the house he found one or two carriages waiting outside, the horses troubling the hot afternoon stillness with the sharp clinking of harness as they tossed their impatient heads; and by the time he had reached the gate the clatter of china and the sustained chorus of female voices coming through the open windows made it plain enough that Mabel was 'at home,' in a sense that was only one degree less disappointing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... have been here last night!" He gave a mock shudder and broke it with a laugh. "Why, a truly haunted house wasn't a patch on it! If this place hasn't got a ghost, well then I'll eat my hat! I could fairly hear 'em, dozens and dozens of them, clinking and clanking all over the place. And if you could see my room! I sleep in a four-poster as big as a suburban villa, and every now and again the furniture gives a comfy little crack or two, like someone practising with a pistol, just ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... like a flushed marble under wide hoops and dyed silk. She was talking to Myrtle about the Court. "I am in waiting with the Princess Amelia Sophia," she explained; "I have her stockings. There is a frightful racket of music and parrots and German, with old Handel bellowing and the King eternally clinking one ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... on their scales. Clinking money and noisy arguing made the scene all the more like a public market. Jesus stood before the row of tables, looking at the money-changers. Suddenly he spoke in a voice that was firm and clear. The arguing stopped; men forgot ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... that fact so much as when in the army," replied Dr. Jones. "After a long day's march we would get into camp so tired that we could scarcely move. We would start our camp-fires, and very soon after you could hear a musical clink, clink, clinking in every direction. It was the sound produced by the soldier boys, pounding their coffee fine in their tin cups with the butt of their bayonets. And the effect of a pint of that hot Government Java coffee was ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... all sad and strange. He shoo-ed them from the clinking latch, And from the weeded, ancient thatch, Upon the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... poverty wearing a conspicuous stock, and the "glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," and the relative merits of Tennyson and Browning being talked over to the accompaniment of knives and forks rattling against plates of spaghetti and the clinking ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German carol; at the end of the fourth line ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to understand the purport of Kings and cities and the moving up and down of many people to the tune of the clinking of gold. Therefore hath Zornadhu gone far away from the sound of cities and from those that are ensnared thereby, and beyond Sidono's mountain hath come to rest where there are neither kings nor armies nor bartering for gold, but only the heads of the poppies that sway in the wind ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... wire must be patrolled, to prevent the enemy from creeping forward in the dark. The corn has grown to an uncomfortable height in places, so a fatigue party is told off to cut it—surely the strangest species of harvesting that the annals of agriculture can record. On the left front the muffled clinking of picks and shovels announces that a "sap" is in course of construction: those incorrigible night-birds, the Royal Engineers, are making it for the machine-gunners, who in the fulness of time will convey their voluble weapon to its forward extremity, and "loose off ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... himself poured the cognac, and begged the honor of drinking health and many pesetas to his two "friends." They craved a like boon, and the clinking of the ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... topmasts and brought up with a thud upon the caps, to the accompaniment of a jubilant cheer from the crowd on deck. Then, a minute later, when the ship had lost her way, followed the order: "Let go your anchor!" succeeded by a yell from the carpenter of "Stand clear of the cable!" a few clinking strokes of a hammer, the sudden plunging splash of the anchor into the placid waters of the lagoon, and the rattling roar of the cable through the hawse-pipe. Chips snubbed her with the twenty-five fathom shackle ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... nothing at all. For Felipe was wooing the daughter through the mother, as men have often done before him; and the widow smiled on Felipe's suit. The whole business, it appeared, was to be conducted in a sane and gentlemanly way, over a half of the widow's wine, with clinking glasses and a grave politeness. And, of course, Felipe had it all his own way. The question of rivalry did not so much as suggest itself to him, so he could the more easily be kind to the quiet man with ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... upon the plain. Meantime, the troops were being landed and formed into a column, whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he made it out, barring nearly the whole width of the wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, shuffling, murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the whole mass remained for about an hour motionless and silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On land nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the mastiffs at the railway yards, answered ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... spoke he gave the dagger a slight kick with his foot, so that it slid clinking and rattling along the smooth floor, until its progress was stopped by the corner of the altar steps against which the Caesar cowered in abject fear. "My guard is in the next room," said Caligula with an evil sneer, ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... concerning who and what I am. Suffice it to say I have gold plentiful as summer hay!" Then, drawing forth a leathern pouch, he proceeded: "This little purse contains the tenth of what I'll give. The rest shall soon be forthcoming. Now listen, my masters," continued he, clinking the coin; "all this trumpery is and shall remain yours if you promise to give me the first little soul that enters the door of the new ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... that had a few nights before blazed with lights and echoed with music, laughter, song and dance and clinking glasses, stood dark and silent behind its ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... way, we resumed our journey, dipping into the valley behind Sailly-au-Bois, and climbing the farther side, as I passed the officers' mess hut belonging to an anti-aircraft battery, which had taken up a position at the foot of the valley, and whence came a pleasant sound of clinking glass, a wild desire for permanent ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... is sitting In the neat back-parlour, knitting. Mr. Horne, who hears the din Which I make in coming in, Leaves the shop and says to her: "Martha, here's a customer. From the sound of clinking metal I should judge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... the Turners and us is little love lost, though no doubt Miss Mary with her clinking tongue has given you a glisk of the reason. He'll be wondering, Dugald, he'll be wondering, I'll warrant. And, man, there's nothing by-ordinar wonderful in it, for are we not but human men? There was a woman in Little Elrig who took Dugald's fancy (if you will let me say it, Dugald), and he was ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... a musical clinking. 'Now then, all of you, you 'op it. You're all bin poking your noses in 'ere long enough. Pop off. Get on with that tram, conductor.' Psmith and Mike settled themselves in a seat on the roof. When the conductor came along, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... employment in a city. Many a bright city chap quits his job in the evening to be almost certain to pick up a new one the following morning. But for Joe and Jim, filled as they were with childish dreams of easy fortune, it was a far different matter, especially while they had dollars clinking in their jeans, as a boy possessing plenty of loose change is mighty particular about the employment he accepts, so, although the lads hunted high and low, from early till late, they could not find suitable places, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... from my business, and where I might occasionally meet with undesirable associates. My salary was fixed at thirty guineas a week, and the Saturday after I came out I presented myself for the first and last time at the treasury of the theater to receive it, and carried it, clinking, with great triumph, to my mother, the first money I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... your orders, monseigneur." Aramis merely nodded his head, as much as to say, "Very good"; and signed to him with his hand to lead the way. Baisemeaux advanced, and Aramis followed him. It was a calm and lovely starlit night; the steps of three men resounded on the flags of the terraces, and the clinking of the keys hanging from the jailer's girdle made itself heard up to the stories of the towers, as if to remind the prisoners that the liberty of earth was a luxury beyond their reach. It might have been said that the alteration effected in Baisemeaux extended even to the prisoners. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hurrying from ring to ring in search of the paragon that they had now so little time to find. But the man from the Curragh came not. Fanny sent the mare in, and sat on under the trees, sunk in depression. It seemed to her she was the only person in the show who had nothing to do, who was not clinking handfuls of money, or smoothing out banknotes, or folding up cheques and interring them in fat and greasy pocket-books. She had never known this aspect of the Horse Show before, and—so much is in the point of view—it seemed to her sordid and detestable. Prize-winners with their coloured rosettes ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... clinking along the passages, looked dully round the ballroom, and said, yawning: 'Put out the lights, Mateus, and open the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... twelve o'clock at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... rumbling in the dark night across the waste and savage moorland, and while the children were sleeping hard at the back of the van, and while the crockery was restlessly clinking in the racks and the lamp swaying, and while he held the reins, the thin, lithe, greying man contrived to take into his arms the vast and amiable creature whom he desired. And the van became ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... carried through as his practical joke. After that the Maluka gravely proposed "Cheon," and Cheon instantly became statuesque and dignified, to the further diversion of Brown of the Bulls—gravely accepting a thimbleful for himself, and, as gravely, drinking his own health, the Maluka just as gravely "clinking glasses" with him. And from that day to this when Cheon wishes to place the Maluka on a fitting pedestal, he ends his long, long tale with a triumphant: "Boss bin knock glass ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... show new-comers all that's going on. Come along, and I'll show you the pretty new hall they are building for our parish; it's such a pleasure to stand and watch the lads at work there, as merry as grigs. Hark! you may hear their trowels clinking from here. And, Mr. Nupkins, you mustn't think I stole ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... shall be the tapster gay, To draw at nod or winking; And whether the clouds be gold or gray, Here's to the cup and its clinking! ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... o'clock the elevator-man brought Rosie Davis along the hall—Rosie, whose costume betrayed haste, and whose figure, under a gaudy motor-coat, gave more than a suggestion of being unsupported and wrapper-clad. She carried a clinking silver chatelaine, however, and at the door she opened it and took out a quarter, extending it with a regal gesture ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... master's frescos in the Chapel of the Annunziata,—which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the wall, and you sit down and take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... like it, he made sure, big Pommer was also pouring into the tiny ear of that conquering flirt, the volatile spouse of Captain Kahle. Having ascertained this, First Lieutenant Borgert rapidly strode toward the interesting pair, clinking his spurs and drawling forth an accented "G-o-o-d evening!" as he came up to them before they had had a chance to rise. Pommer looked indescribably much like an idiot in returning the salute; but the little woman, with the ready ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Goblet, Ducats, Dishes, Trinkets, And those two Children dear, A-quaking in the clinking and the clanking, ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... kissing Majesty's hand farewell, basking in the sudden sunburst of short notoriety, driving Bering almost mad by their exorbitant demands for luxuriously appointed barges to carry them down the Volga. Winter was passed at Tobolsk; but May of 1734 witnessed a firing of cannon, a blaring of trumpets, a clinking of merry glasses among merry gentlemen; for the caravans were setting out once more to the swearing of the Cossacks, the complaining of the scientists, the brawling of the underling officers, the silent chagrin of the endlessly patient Bering. One can easily ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... forenoon in June. As you try to disentangle the medley of sounds, the first, perhaps, which will strike your ear will be the loud, harsh, monotonous, flippant song of the chaffinch; and the metallic clinking of two or three sorts of titmice. But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting, tender and low. Above the pastures outside the skylark sings—as he alone can sing; and close by, from ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... that my chivalry is impugned. My confederates, too, round upon me; "Of course," they whisper, "had no idea the lady was an invalid." The brutes! I stutter an apology, and "climb down;" the windows are again hermetically sealed; and, as I slink away. I hear "Viva!" "Hoch!" and clinking glasses. Then ADOLF hurries up surreptitiously, and whispers, "Tell you vat, Sare: to-morrer you shoost dine on de terass; dere, plenty breeze, hein?" "Plenty breeze!"—and you pay three francs extra, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... affright weak people as a monitor of approaching death." Therefore, to prevent such causeless fears, I shall take this opportunity to undeceive the world, by shewing what it is, and that no such thing is intended by it. It has obtained the name of death-watch, by making a little clinking noise like a watch; which having given some disturbance to a gentleman in his chamber, who was not to be affrighted with such vulgar errors, it tempted him to a diligent search after the true cause of this noise, which I shall relate in ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... I think of a vast river of life. I catch a breath of the flame that was in the mind of the man who said, 'The land is flowing with milk and honey.' I am made happy by my thoughts not by the dollars clinking in ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... looking for tracks of reindeer and breaking paths in the snow. Sunlight glimmered in far-flung jewels of the Frost King. They lay deep, clinking as the foot sank in them. At the Vaughn home it was an eventful day. Santa Claus—well, he is the great Captain that leads us to the farther gate of childhood and surrenders the golden key. Many ways are beyond ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... sound of the clinking and rattling of the tray borne up the stairs. She was coming, the girl who loved him, the girl whose heart would be broken when he died. Yet, when the tray appeared in the doorway, and she behind it, the tray took precedence of her in his soul not less than in his sight. Twice, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... think on thy last hour, pray that God will guard thy sleep, and be ready for thy last hour when it comes." On the bottom of the cupboard was a representation of two individuals with chalk-white faces and inky eyes, smoking their pipes and clinking glasses. The same fondness for decorations and inscriptions is seen in all the houses in Tellemark and a great part of Hallingdal. Some of them are thoroughly Chinese in ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... youth, you feel that you have thoroughly categorized me, particularly since I am willing to admit that, though I shall have abundance of the clinking iron men to buy my share of our chow, I chance just for the leaden-footed second to lack the wherewithal to pay my railroad fare back to Blewett; and the bumpers and side-door Pullman of the argonauts like me not. Too damn dusty. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the horn of the oxherd wound far off on the hill, the tinkling of sheep-bells—of all these he knew the notes; and not only these, but the rhythmical swing of the scythes sweeping through the grass, the flails heard through the hot air from the barn, the clinking of the anvil in the village forge, the bubble of the stream through the weir—all these had a tale to tell him. Sometimes, for days together, he would hum to himself a few notes that pleased him by their sweet cadence, and he would string together some simple words to them, and sing them ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... preliminary, Coleman began to hurl books and papers from the table to the floor. A boy came with drinks. Most of the men, in order to prepare for the game, removed their coats and cuffs and drew up the sleeves of their shirts. The electric globes shed a blinding light upon the table. The sound of clinking chips arose; the elected banker spun the cards, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... frames on the walls. As we came into the room from the brightly lighted hall, a semi-circle of gray-green coats rose right up out of the dimness and we were blinded by a vision of shining buttons, polished boots, gleaming swords and a military salute accompanied by clinking spurs. At the end of the room stood Madame X. and her sons waiting for us. Naturally there were no presentations and the moment was unique in the extreme—nobody moved for a second which seemed like a decade and nobody spoke, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... was dripping, but there was a noise now of bullet clinking against bullet, of the ramrod sent home in the rifle barrel, and of ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... distinguish the road bed as something solid through the whirling haze, and he felt they were following a bend of it when Grant stopped and a clinking sound came out of the obscurity above them. It might have been made by somebody knocking out key wedges or spikes with a big hammer and in his haste striking ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... scurrying in to the angles of the church buttresses. Now and again, also, I could hear the dull sudden fall of a chestnut among the grass—the dog would bark before the rectory door—or there would come a clinking of pails from the stable-yard behind. But in spite of these occasional interruptions—in spite, also, of the continuous autumn twittering that filled the trees—the chief impression somehow was one as of utter silence, inasmuch that the little greenish bell that peeped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... consolation in the dark days of his later years. He set himself to this as to a congenial task, and he knew that he was writing himself into the hearts of unborn generations. His songs live; they are immortal, because every one is a bit of his soul. These are no feverish, hysterical jingles of clinking verse, dead save for the animating breath of music. They sing themselves, because the spirit of song is in them. Quite as marvellous as his excellence in this department of poetry is his variety of subject. He has a song for every age; a musical interpretation of every mood. But this is a ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... governesses and teachers, was a stranger to them; they could not understand her, and they instinctively kept closer to "Auntie," who called them by their names, continually pressed them to eat and drink, and, clinking glasses with them, had already drunk two wineglasses of rowanberry wine with them. Anna Akimovna was always afraid of their thinking her proud, an upstart, or a crow in peacock's feathers; and now while the foremen were crowding round the food, she did not leave the dining-room, but ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hard-working hands lay crossed in unwonted idleness on her check apron. Her knitting was by her side; and if she had been going through any accustomed calculation or consideration she would have had it busily clinking in her fingers. But she had something quite beyond common to think about, and, perhaps, to speak about; and for the minute she was not equal ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hell-vapour breaking Rolls on through the street, And higher and higher Aloft moves the Column of Fire! Through the vistas and rows Like a whirlwind it goes, And the air like the steam from a furnace glows. Beams are crackling—posts are shrinking— Walls are sinking—windows clinking— Children crying— Mothers flying— And the beast (the black ruin yet smouldering under) Yells the howl of its pain and its ghastly wonder! Hurry and skurry—away—away, And the face of the night is as clear as day! As the links in a chain, Again and again Flies the bucket from hand to hand; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... comic songs that sparkle with wit and whose music laughs with the hearer; sentimental and love songs whose sensuous cadences intensify the passion of their words; convivial songs where toasts are drunk to the accompaniment of the clinking glasses; and patriotic songs that roll with the ringing cheers of thousands and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... chokeful, and the dancer himself hardly able to bear the weight of all his treasure. But, mad with joy at the unexpected rushing back of all his wealth, he burst into the wildest laughter, flung himself about like a lunatic, and devoured with greedy gluttonous eyes the clinking, twinkling gold, that in starry showers discharged itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... With elbows touching—their shields slung in front, their short five-foot spears carried in their right hands, and their maces or swords ready at their belts, the deep column of men-at-arms moved onward. Again the storm of arrows beat upon them clinking and thudding on the armor. They crouched double behind their shields as they met it. Many fell, but still the slow tide lapped onward. Yelling, they surged up to the hedge, and lined it for half a mile, struggling ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stamped. Then followed swift rustling sounds—a clinking of spurs, then silence. The figures loomed clearer in the gloom.. Gale saw five or six horses, two with riders, and one other, at least, carrying a pack. When Gale got within fifteen feet of the group ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fifty men-at-arms, and although these had no means of communicating verbally with the new arrivals, they were not long in striking up such acquaintance as could be gained by friendly gestures and the clinking of wine-cups. Their quarters were beside those of the English, and the whole of the men- at-arms daily performed their exercises in the court-yard together, under the command of the castellan, while the archers marched out across the drawbridge and practised shooting at some butts pitched ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... a long moment, broken only by the soft sigh of their breathing. Then Costa stirred and there was the sound of metal clinking ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... Clinking his keys, the clerk walked away to his home, an ivy-covered cottage not a stone's-throw off; the clergyman lingered in the churchyard, reading the memorials on the tombstones. He was smiling at the quaintness of some of them, when the sound ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... passed more woodland and a well-known quarry, where, for a wonder, the derrick was not creaking and not a single hammer was clinking at the stone wedges, we did not see any one hoeing in the fields, as we had seen so many on the white rose road, the other side of the hills. Presently we met two or three people walking sedately, clad in their best clothes. There was a subdued air of public excitement ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and dearth of employment throughout the length and breadth of the land, albeit there might be feasting and hurrahing, and clinking of champagne glasses Unter ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... every morn, the river's banks shine bright With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail, By the frost's clinking hammers forged at night, "Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, Giving a pretty emblem of the day When guitar arms in light shall melt away, And states shall move free limbed, loosed from ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... had been clinking glasses pretended to be mightily offended in their dignity. They looked about for their hats, ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... They quarrelled over some louis, and a duel immediately ensued. I well remember that the Grand-Duke Paul of Mecklenburg-Schwerin told me he was there at the time, and, while walking with his tutors in the park, suddenly heard the clinking of swords in a neighbouring thicket. They ran to the place, and reached it just in time to see the head of Albert fall, cleft by one of those long and formidable sabres which were carried ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... bugle was in as high spirits as the grays; the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice; the wheels hummed cheerfully in unison; the brass work on 5 the harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus as they went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the leaders' coupling reins to the handle of the boot, was one great ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... without increased—the rattle of crockery, the clinking of glasses, the moving of feet, and all the sounds of hungry, boisterous sailors at table. Soon, too, a shout or cheer would be heard, then a verse of a song, roars of laughter, and now and then the tinkle of a guitar struck by vigorous fingers ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... considered it impolite, even sinful,—for, at the first draught, the so-called "John's-draught," it is looked upon as sinful to hold back—not to respond; and the men also let themselves be persuaded, so that for a time nothing was heard but the clinking and putting down ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... recital, to London in the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told, in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!" How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... sounds of retreating voices and horseshoes clinking on the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon the hollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil, and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteady hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... stopped. The little party remained silent, until Honora, looking at the still faces, so young and tender, thought of the mothers sitting in her place, and began to weep aloud. At this moment Captain Sydenham marched up the glen with clinking spur. He stopped at a distance and took off his hat with the courtesy of a gentleman and the sympathy of a soldier. Grahame went forward to meet him, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... of what you are talking about," had replied a very ruffled Jill, as with golden anklets softly clinking she withdrew to a distance. "If that is the effect of my dancing I will never ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... on, to the spring under the willows—musical as soft clinking glasses-pouring a sizeable stream, thick as my neck, pure and clear, out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof—gurgling, gurgling ceaselessly—meaning, saying something, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... searched. It was nowhere to be seen. "It may have slipped into the nick at the back," she thought, and she got a skewer and poked it into the narrow groove. Out fell the needle—and something else which made a clinking sound as it fell upon the brick floor. She stooped to see what it was, and there glittering in the firelight ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... his brim so low, However earnestly one tries One never sees the darkling glow, That must be nimble in his eyes. The fellow's judgment never nods, His watchful spirit never sleeps. There was a clinking ball! Ye gods, Why, what ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... name the books record? Your ancestor, who bore this sword As Colonel of the Volunteers, Mounted upon his old gray mare, Seen here and there and everywhere, To me a grander shape appears Than old Sir William, or what not, Clinking about in foreign lands With iron gauntlets on his hands, And on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the pitcher nearer him, clinking the ice invitingly, and directed his attention to our iris-bed as a more cheerful object of contemplation than the degeneracy of the inhabitants of Vermont. The flowers burned on their tall stalks like yellow tongues of flame. The ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... with Melissa Florian, I With mine affianced. Many a little hand Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, Many a light foot shone like a jewel set In the dark crag: and then we turned, we wound About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names Of shales and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... arrived by this time, and motion became impossible in the room. The noise of clinking plates and silver had ceased, and now a dispute was heard going on in the big drawing room, where the voice of the manager grumbled angrily. Nana was growing impatient, for she expected no more invited guests and wondered why they did not bring in supper. She had just sent Georges to find ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming with ferocity and triumph, and dragged Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel. All that was left of ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... clinking cups, The murky night grew wan, Till one rose, crowned with laurel-leaves, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... described, were peculiar, not an actual rotation, but a sort of half-turn to one side and then to the other, an advance followed by a retreat. While doing this the olapa, who were in two divisions, marked the time of the movement by clinking together two pebbles which they ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... of the smooth, verdureless heaps of volcanic cinders. Everywhere near was the desert of basalt, with nothing but the faint trail to point the way and the night slowly enwrapping us. On we urged our stumbling, weary beasts, their iron clinking on the metallic rocks; on till the thick blackness circled us like a wall. Then we halted and built a little brush fire, thinking to stay till dawn. At the instant a weird cry from far back fell ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... descended them. He counted fifteen. He emerged into a timbered underground passage, well lit with lamps, filled with what seemed to be mercury vapor. Behind him walked his guard: behind the guard he heard Luke Evans shambling. Both chains were clinking, and again ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... an idea. Taking a flint knife he sawed off a slice of copper from the lump and with his iron war-club he hammered it out on the Iron Star and fashioned a beautiful spearhead in no time, the iron clinking merrily beneath his blows. There was a great rush around him after that. Every one who had copper wanted it worked up, and Umpl was clear-headed enough to bargain for a hut for his people and ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... that followed Slade's words Ruth could hear faint sounds from below—the clinking of glasses, the scuffling of feet, a low murmur of voices. She knew, then, that they had brought her to a room above a saloon—the Wolf, she supposed, for that was where Warden said he ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the folding-doors in the lobby, and in a stentorian voice shouted some word, which Ellerey did not catch. Its effect was magical. Immediately there arose a loud hum of voices, the clinking and clatter of innumerable glasses and plates, and the rattle of dice and dominoes. Then Theodor let the door swing to again, muffling the sounds of this living hive, and led the way into a small bare room ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... brow rested a threatening cloud. He put his hand around the stem of the large glass goblet before him, and held it so firmly that the glass broke with startling clangor and poured its purple wine upon the tablecloth. The shrill clinking seemed to rouse him from his reverie; with a hasty movement he threw a napkin over the red stain, and again raised his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... that was what was in them trunks, and Old Dibs was pawing it out till it stuck up in the room, yards high, like a mountain. Occasionally he seemed to strike something harder than paper—something that would take both his hands to lift—and it was only a little clinking ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musick above is answered with the clinking below. The drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem of them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. 'Tis the best theater of natures, where they ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the sound as being that of a pen, and knew that some one was writing, and just as he had arrived at this conclusion, there was the faint scrape of a chair, a clinking noise such as might be made by the hilt of a sword against a breastplate, and directly after a sun-browned, anxious face was ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the dairy ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... were bareheaded. Many wore the pantaloons, but declined the shirts, while a few of the more original cut the seats from the pantaloons, leaving only leggings. Half of them were without boots or moccasins, but wore the clinking spurs with ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore |
